a French traveller has given an excellent explanation of the matter. The inhabitants of those countries are to this day shepherds, for agriculture is scarcely possible there. They kill their cattle, and sometimes cook the meat, but they also smoke it for the purpose of keeping it, and such smoked meat they eat raw, which is not done in the other parts of Greece. Sometimes also they act like the savages in America: they cut the meat into very thin slices, dry it in the air, and then eat it. As far back as we can trace history, we always find the AETOLIANS and CURETES as two nations dwelling by the side of each other in the south of Aetolia: such is the case in the Iliad. Afterwards the Curetes disappear, and all the country is occupied by the Aetolians alone. But that country is only a very small portion of what is subsequently called Aetolia, for it embraced only the district of Pleuron and Calydon, about the Evenus. These two towns play as prominent a part in the legends as Mycenae and Tiryns, and Oeneus and Meleager are as familiar to you as Agamemnon and Menelaus. This was Aetolia proper, and a truly Hellenic country: from it proceeded the emigration of Oxylus, which must not be viewed as if Oxylus had served the Heracleids as a guide and joined them; but the Aetolian migration to which Elis owed its origin, was an occurrence quite distinct from the migration of the Dorians into the other parts of Peloponnesus. The Aetolians farther inland were subsequently joined by other Pelasgian tribes of Epirus. As early as the Peloponnesian war, Aetolia was a country of considerable extent, and Thucydides mentions the Bomians, Ophians (Ophionians), and Eurytanians, as its greatest tribes; but these names are uncertain, at least the first two. Within these limits the Aetolians were united during the Peloponnesian war. Their union may be conceived as a relation of isopolity, in which each nation formed an independent community, but on certain emergencies they united and acted as one state. They seem to have met in common sanctuaries, and to have mutually had the perfect right of isopolity, a connection which was however extremely loose, and did not oblige the several members to join one another in offensive operations. In the Peloponnesian war, the Aetolians resisted the Athenians; they were hostile to Naupactus and allied with Ampracia[62]; but beyond their own territory they were weak, and the expedition of the Athenians into Aetolia did the country much harm. The Aetolians showed themselves equally independent towards the Spartans, for when the latter, after the battle of Leuctra, wanted to interfere in their affairs, they were repulsed by the Aetolians. They did not, however, rise to any importance till after the death of Alexander. During the latter part of his life, they took Oeniadae, expelled its inhabitants, and colonised the place anew. Alexander, whose fate was that of all other conquerors, did not know in the end whither to turn;