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.