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EABLIEST CONDITION OF THE NATION.CHAPTER II.EABLIEST CONDITION OF THE NATION ;BRANCHES.AND ITSTHE nation of the Hellenes, as they called themselves after anancient leader, (for they received the name of Greeks fromforeigners,) preserved many a tradition respecting theirearliest state, representing them to have been nearly on alevel with the savage tribes which now wander in the forestsof North America. 1 From these traditions, it would seem,that there was once a time when they had no agriculture,but lived on the spontaneous produce of the woods ;andwhen even fire could not be appropriatedto the service ofman, till it had first been stolen from heaven. Yet, in themean while, they gradually spread over the country, whichthey afterwards possessed and all foreigntribes were either;driven from the soil, or were mingled with them. Muchis told of the emigration of individual tribes, from the southern districts to the northern, and from these back again intothe southern ;but the peculiar habits of nomacles, as seen inthe nations of middle Asia, belonged to the Greeks as littleas to the Germanic race. The moderate extent and thehilly character of their country, which afforded pasture onlyfor less numerous herds, did not admit of that kind of life,As far as we can judge from the very indefinite accountsof this early period, it seems, especiallyin the fourteenthand thirteenth centuries before the Christian era, that therace of the Hellenes was already so far extended over Hellas,as to be every where predominant. For it appearsas sucheven then, before the Trojan war. The nation of thePelasgi, which, no less than that of the Hellenes, belongedto the first inhabitants of the country, and which must beconsidered as having had a different origin,since their language was different, 2 may at an early period have been the1JKschyl, Prom, vinct. v. 442, etc*aHerod, i. 57. The relation of the Pelasgi to the Hellenes is of difficultsolution. But the judgment of Herodotus in the passage now cited, rests onthe comparison of the language of of whom some ware found evenPelaBgi,in his times, in the city Crustoh, and Placioe, and Scylace, the two last on the