Italy proper, as defined by Augustus, commenced at the _Alpes Maritimae_; the Alps are then further divided into the Cottian, Graian, Pennine, Raetian, Carnian, and Julian Alps. I shall explain to you each of these names, so as to enable you to find your way among, and to become familiar with, those mountains. From the Alps, then, which form the boundary, the APENNINES branch off in the north of Piedmont in two ranges; on the one side from the two St. Bernards near Aosta and Ivrea, and on the other from the Maritime Alps, and the two uniting in the territory of Montferrat run through Liguria close to the coast, so that in many parts of the territory of Genoa roads for vehicles along the sea have had to be made by blowing up the rocks, and horses often still find it difficult to pass along the sea-coast. They then turn east from the sea into Tuscany, where the mountains, properly speaking, first receive the name of Apennines. Afterwards they spread and extend in a south-eastern direction towards the Adriatic; then proceeding through the middle of the kingdom of Naples they fill, in many, though not parallel ranges, the whole of Lucania and Bruttium; but there the mountains all at once disappear, though in the Abruzzi, where the isthmus separates the southern from the northern country, they in some parts reach a height of 8,000 feet. For a distance of many miles nothing but small hills are visible. If that country were inhabited by an enterprising people, such as the French or English, the isthmus would long since have been broken through, for nothing would be easier than to make a canal there and to connect the two seas. The Alps, as is well known, are primary mountains; and their ramifications in the territory of Genoa, which proceed from mount St. Bernard and the Maritime Alps, are of the same character; but the Apennines assume a different nature, and appear throughout Italy as rocks of limestone; in the Majella they may be of a different character, for Alpine productions are found there. In the southernmost part of Italy, facing Sicily, another range of mountains rises of quite a different character, being a continuation of the Sicilian mountains, of which Aetna is the central knot. The country near Rhegium is evidently torn off, as is indicated even by its name.