The Pindus, which forms the central chain of Southern Turkey, passes over into Greece, and imparts to it an analogous orographical character. On both sides of this conventional boundary we meet with the same rocks, the same vegetation, the same landscape features, and the same races of people. By dividing the Epirus and handing over Thessaly to the Turks, European diplomacy has paid no attention to natural features. The eastern portion of the boundary is made to follow the line of water parting over the range of the lofty Othrys, commanding the plain of the Sperchius. Westward of the Pindus the boundary {46} crosses transversely the valley of the Achelous, and the hills which separate it from the Gulf of Arta. [Illustration: Fig. 11.—MOUNT PARNASSUS AND DELPHI.] The isolated summit of Mount Tymphrestus, or Velukhi, which rises where the grand chain of the Othrys branches off from the Pindus, is not the culminating point of continental Greece, but it is a centre from which the principal mountain spurs and rivers radiate. Within its spurs lies hidden the charming valley of Karpenisi, and an elevated ridge joins them, towards the south-east, to the most important mountain mass of modern Greece, viz. the group surmounted by the snow-clad pyramids of the Vardusia and Khiona, whose slopes are covered with dark firs, and to the superb Katavothra, the Œta of the ancients, on which Hercules built his funeral pile. The mountains of Vardusia and Khiona are face to face with the fine mountain masses of Northern Morea, likewise wooded and covered with snow during the greater part of the year. The mountains of Ætolia, to the west of the Velukhi and the Vardusia, are far less elevated, but they are rugged, and form a veritable chaos of rocks, savage defiles, and thickets, into which only Wallachian herdsmen venture. In Southern Ætolia, on the shores of the lakes and along the rivers, the country is more accessible, but mountains rise there likewise, and by tortuous ridges they are brought into connection with the system of the Pindus. Those on the coast of Acarnania, opposite to the Ionian Islands, are steep, covered with trees and shrubs; they are the mountains of the “Black Continent” mentioned by Ulysses. {47} To the east of the Achelous there is another coast chain, well known to mariners: this is the Zygos, the southern slopes of which, arid and austere, are seen from off Missolonghi. Still further to the east another range comes down to the seashore, and, together with the promontories on the opposite coast of the Morea, forms the narrow entrance to the Gulf of Corinth. Close to this entrance, on the Ætolian side, there rises bold Mount Varassova, a huge block of rock. Local tradition tells us that the Titans endeavoured to throw this rock into the sea, so that it might form a bridge between the two coasts; but the rock proved too heavy, and it was dropped where we now see it.