Adriatic, and was gradually extended by the Romans from the Alps
to the Euxine Sea. See Severini Pannonia, l. i. c. 3.]
The province of Rhaetia, which soon extinguished the name of the
Vindelicians, extended from the summit of the Alps to the banks of
the Danube; from its source, as far as its conflux with the Inn. The
greatest part of the flat country is subject to the elector of Bavaria;
the city of Augsburg is protected by the constitution of the German
empire; the Grisons are safe in their mountains, and the country of
Tirol is ranked among the numerous provinces of the house of Austria.
The wide extent of territory which is included between the Inn, the
Danube, and the Save,--Austria, Styria, Carinthia, Carniola, the Lower
Hungary, and Sclavonia,--was known to the ancients under the names of
Noricum and Pannonia. In their original state of independence, their
fierce inhabitants were intimately connected. Under the Roman government
they were frequently united, and they still remain the patrimony of a
single family. They now contain the residence of a German prince, who
styles himself Emperor of the Romans, and form the centre, as well as
strength, of the Austrian power. It may not be improper to observe, that
if we except Bohemia, Moravia, the northern skirts of Austria, and
a part of Hungary between the Teyss and the Danube, all the other
dominions of the House of Austria were comprised within the limits of
the Roman Empire.
Dalmatia, to which the name of Illyricum more properly belonged, was a
long, but narrow tract, between the Save and the Adriatic. The best
part of the sea-coast, which still retains its ancient appellation, is
a province of the Venetian state, and the seat of the little republic
of Ragusa. The inland parts have assumed the Sclavonian names of Croatia
and Bosnia; the former obeys an Austrian governor, the latter a Turkish
pacha; but the whole country is still infested by tribes of barbarians,
whose savage independence irregularly marks the doubtful limit of the
Christian and Mahometan power. [80]
[Footnote 80: A Venetian traveller, the Abbate Fortis, has lately given
us some account of those very obscure countries. But the geography
and antiquities of the western Illyricum can be expected only from the
munificence of the emperor, its sovereign.]
After the Danube had received the waters of the Teyss and the Save, it
acquired, at least among the Greeks, the name of Ister. [81] It formerly
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