GENERAL VIEW OF THE GRECIAN STATES AND ISLANDS.

The country called HELLAS by the Helle'nes, its native inhabitants,
and known to us by the name of Greece, forms the southern part
of the most easterly of the three great peninsulas of Southern
Europe, extending into the Mediterranean between the AEge'an Sea,
or Grecian Archipelago, on the east, and the Ionian Sea on the
west. The whole area of this country, so renowned in history, is
only about twenty thousand square miles; which is considerably
less than that of Portugal, and less than half that of the State
of Pennsylvania.

The mainland of ancient Greece was naturally divided into Northern
Greece, which embraced Thessaly and Epi'rus; Central Greece,
comprising the divisions of Acarna'nia, AEto'lia, Lo'cris, Do'ris,
Pho'cis, Breo'tia, and At'tica (the latter forming the eastern
extremity of the whole peninsula); and Southern Greece, which the
ancients called Pel-o-pon-ne'sus, or the Island of Pe'lops, which
would be an island were it not for the narrow Isthmus of Corinth,
which connects it on the north with Central Greece. Its modern
name, the Mo-re'a, was bestowed upon it from its resemblance to
the leaf of the mulberry. The chief political divisions of
Peloponnesus were Corinth and Acha'ia on the north, Ar'golis on
the east, Laco'nia and Messe'nia at the southern extremity of
the peninsula, E'lis on the west, and the central region of Arca'dia.

Greece proper is separated from Macedonia on the north by the
Ceraunian and Cambunian chain of mountains, extending in irregular
outline from the Ionian Sea on the west to the Therma'ic Gulf on