, which belong to the continent of Europe, are
those which belong to Asia--Tenedos, small but fertile; Lesbos, celebrated
for wine, the fourth in size of all the islands of the AEgean; Chios, also
famed for wine; Samos, famous for the worship of Juno, and the birthplace
of Pythagoras; Patmos, used as a place of banishment; Cos, the birthplace
of Apelles and Hippocrates, exceedingly fertile; and south of all, Rhodes,
the largest island of the AEgean, after Crete and Euboea. It was famous for
the brazen and colossal statue of the sun, seventy cubits high. Its people
were great navigators, and their maritime laws were ultimately adopted by
all the Greeks and Romans. It was also famous for its schools of art.

Such were the States and islands of Greece, mountainous, in many parts
sterile, but filled with a hardy, bold, and adventurous race, whose
exploits and arts were the glory of the ancient world.

(M308) The various tribes and nations all belonged to that branch of the
Indo-European race to which ethnographers have given the name of
Pelasgian. They were a people of savage manners, but sufficiently
civilised to till the earth, and build walled cities. Their religion was
polytheistic--a personification of the elemental powers and the heavenly
bodies. The Pelasgians occupied insulated points, but were generally
diffused throughout Greece; and they were probably a wandering people
before they settled in Greece. The Greek traditions about their migration
rests on no certain ground. Besides this race, concerning which we have no
authentic history, were the Leleges and Carians. But all of them were
barbarous, and have left no written records. Argos and Sicyon are said to
be Pelasgian cities, founded as far back as one thousand eight hundred and
fifty-six years before Christ. It is also thought that Oriental elements
entered into the early population of Greece. Cecrops imported into Attica
Egyptian arts. Cadmus, the Phoenician, colonized Boeotia, and introduced
weights and measures. Danaus, driven out of Egypt, gave his name to the
warlike Danai, and instructed the Pelasgian women of Argos in the mystic
rites of Demetus. Pelope is supposed to have passed from Asia into Greece,
with great treasures, and his descendants occupied the throne of Argos.

(M309) At a period before written history commences, the early inhabitants
of Greece, whatever may have been their origin, which is involved in
obscurity, were driven from their sett