Apennines. This mountain-system nowhere rises abruptly into
a precipitous chain, but, spreading broadly over the land and
enclosing many valleys and table-lands connected by easy passes,
presents conditions which well adapt it to become the settlement of
man. Still more suitable in this respect are the adjacent slopes
and the coast-districts on the east, south, and west. On the
east coast the plain of Apulia, shut in towards the north by the
mountain-block of the Abruzzi and only broken by the steep isolated
ridge of Garganus, stretches in a uniform level with but a scanty
development of coast and stream. On the south coast, between the
two peninsulas in which the Apennines terminate, extensive lowlands,
poorly provided with harbours but well watered and fertile,
adjoin the hill-country of the interior. The west coast presents
a far-stretching domain intersected by considerable streams, in
particular by the Tiber, and shaped by the action of the waves and
of the once numerous volcanoes into manifold variety of hill and
valley, harbour and island. Here the regions of Etruria, Latium,
and Campania form the very flower of the land of Italy. South of
Campania, the land in front of the mountains gradually diminishes,
and the Tyrrhenian Sea almost washes their base. Moreover, as
the Peloponnesus is attached to Greece, so the island of Sicily is
attached to Italy--the largest and fairest isle of the Mediterranean,
having a mountainous and partly desert interior, but girt, especially
on the east and south, by a broad belt of the finest coast-land,
mainly the result of volcanic action. Geographically the Sicilian
mountains are a continuation of the Apennines, hardly interrupted
by the narrow "rent" --Pegion--of the straits; and in its historical
relations Sicily was in earlier times quite as decidedly a part of
Italy as the Peloponnesus was of Greece, a field for the struggles
of the same races, and the seat of a similar superior civilization.

The Italian peninsula resembles the Grecian in the temperate climate
and wholesome air that prevail on the hills of moderate height, and
on the whole, also, in the valleys and plains. In development of
coast it is inferior; it wants, in particular, the island-studded
sea which made the Hellenes a seafaring nation. Italy on the
other hand excels its neighbour in the rich alluvial plains and
the fertile and grassy mountain-slopes, which are requisite for
agriculture and the rea