The _Apennines_ prolong the Maritime Alps, and run like a backbone
through the peninsula of Italy. Cleared of its natural wood, and
scorched by the southern sun, this range is generally dreary and barren
in aspect, like a long wall, with few peaks or salient points to recall
the magnificent forms of the Alps. The volcano of _Vesuvius_, the only
active one in all the continental part of Europe, rises over the coast
plain of Campania.
The lines of the eastern wing of the Alps are prolonged north-eastward
across the Danube by the grand curve of the wooded _Carpathians_ and
_Transylvania Alps_, circling round the plain of Hungary. Southeastward
they branch into the many ranges which support between them the confused
mass of highlands of Bosnia, Herzegovina, and Montenegro, of Servia and
Albania. Farther on these heights take more definite shape in the range
of the _Balkan_ which runs east to the Black Sea, in the mass of the
_Rhodope_ mountains extending south-eastward to the Ægean Sea, and in
the _Pindus_ range, which gives shape to Greece, and runs out into the
Mediterranean in the peninsulas of the Morea.