It was, in fact, this Etruscan people who first gave an Italian stock the chance of rising into a great Mediterranean power; and in order to understand how this was, we must look at a good map of central Italy, which gives a fair idea of the elevations in this part of the peninsula. Looking at such a map, it is easy to see that the long, narrow leg of Italy is cloven in twain about the middle by a river, the Tiber, the only river of considerable size and real historical importance, south of the Po. It is formed of several streams which descend from the central mass of the Apennines, now called the Abruzzi, but soon gathers into a swift though not a wide river, and emerges from that mountainous district some five-and-twenty miles from the sea, into what we now call the Roman Campagna, the Latium of ancient times; skirting the northern edge of this comparatively level district it falls into the sea, without forming a natural harbour, about half-way up the western coast of the peninsula. To the north of it and of the plain were settled a number of cities, more or less independent of each other, forming the Etruscan people, whose origin we do not yet know for certain, and whose language has never been deciphered from the inscriptions they have left behind them; a mysterious race, active in war and commerce, who had subdued but not exterminated the native population around them. To the east and south of the Tiber, stretching far along the mountainous region and its western outskirts, was a race of hardy mountaineers, broken up, as hill peoples usually are, into a number of communities without any principle of cohesion except that of the various tribes to which they belonged. The northern part of this sturdy hill-folk was known as Umbrians and Sabines; the southern part as Samnites or Oscans. They all spoke dialects of the same tongue, a tongue akin to those which most European peoples still speak. Lastly, immediately to the south of the Tiber in the last part of its course, occupying the plain which stretches here between the mountains, the river, and the sea, there was settled another branch of this same stock, speaking another dialect destined to be known for ever as Latin. These three sub-races of a great stock—Umbrians, Samnites, and Latins—are meant when we speak of a native Italian population as opposed to Greek or Etruscan immigrants. Doubtless they were not the aboriginal inhabitants of the country, but of older stocks history knows nothing that concerns us in this book. These are the peoples who were destined to be supreme in the Mediterranean basin, and eventually to govern the whole civilised world.