INFLUENCES OF GEOGRAPHIC ENVIRONMENT ON THE BASIS OF RATZEL'S SYSTEM OF ANTHROPO-GEOGRAPHY

 BY ELLEN CHURCHILL SEMPLE

 TO THE MEMORY OF FRIEDRICH RATZEL

 Hither, as to their fountain, other stars Repairing, in their golden urns draw light. MILTON. 

PREFACE

The present book, as originally planned over seven years ago, was to bea simplified paraphrase or restatement of the principles embodied inFriedrich Ratzel's _Anthropo-Geographie_. The German work is difficultreading even for Germans. To most English and American students ofgeographic environment it is a closed book, a treasure-house bolted andbarred. Ratzel himself realized "that any English form could not be aliteral translation, but must be adapted to the Anglo-Celtic andespecially to the Anglo-American mind. " The writer undertook, withRatzel's approval, to make such an adapted restatement of theprinciples, with a view to making them pass current where they are nowunknown. But the initial stages of the work revealed the necessity of aradical modification of the original plan. 

Ratzel performed the great service of placing anthropo-geography on asecure scientific basis. He had his forerunners in Montesquieu, Alexander von Humboldt, Buckle, Ritter, Kohl, Peschel and others; but hefirst investigated the subject from the modern scientific point of view, constructed his system according to the principles of evolution, andbased his conclusions on world-wide inductions, for which hispredecessors did not command the data. To this task he brought thoroughtraining as a naturalist, broad reading and travel, a profound andoriginal intellect, and amazing fertility of thought. Yet the fieldwhich he had chosen was so vast, and its material so complex, that evenhis big mental grasp could not wholly compass it. His conclusions, therefore, are not always exhaustive or final. 

Moreover, the very fecundity of his ideas often left him no time to testthe validity of his principles. He enunciates one brilliantgeneralization after another. Sometimes he reveals the mind of a seer orpoet, throwing out conclusions which are highly suggestive, on the faceof them convincing, but which on examination prove untenable, or atbest must be set down as unproven or needing qualification. But thesewere just the slag from the great furnace of his mind, slag not alwaysworthless. Brilliant and far-reaching as were his conclusions, he didnot execute a well-ordered plan. Rather he grew with his work, and hiswork and its problems grew with him. He took a mountain-top view ofthings, kept his eyes always on the far horizon, and in the splendidsweep of his scientific conceptions sometimes overlooked the detailsnear at hand. Herein lay his greatness and his limitation. 

These facts brought the writer face to face with a serious problem. Ratzel's work needed to be tested, verified. The only solution was to goover the whole field from the beginning, making research for the data asfrom the foundation, and checking off the principles against the facts. This was especially necessary, because it was not always obvious thatRatzel had based his inductions on sufficiently broad data; and hispublished work had been open to the just criticism of inadequatecitation of authorities. It was imperative, moreover, that anyinvestigation of geographic environment for the English-speaking worldshould meet its public well supported both by facts and authorities, because that public had not previously known a Ritter or a Peschel. 

The writer's own investigation revealed the fact that Ratzel'sprinciples of anthropo-geography did not constitute a complete, well-proportioned system. Some aspects of the subject had been developedexhaustively, these of course the most important; but others had beentreated inadequately, others were merely a hint or an inference, and yetothers were represented by an hiatus. It became necessary, therefor, towork up certain important themes with a thoroughness commensurate withtheir significance, to reduce the scale of others, and to fill upcertain gaps with original contributions to the science. Always it wasnecessary to clarify the original statement, where that was adhered to, and to throw it into the concrete form of expression demanded by theAnglo-Saxon mind. 

One point more. The organic theory of society and state permeates the_Anthropo-geographie_, because Ratzel formulated his principles at atime when Herbert Spencer exercised a wide influence upon Europeanthought. This theory, now generally abandoned by sociologists, had to beeliminated from any restatement of Ratzel's system. Though it wasapplied in the original often in great detail, it stood therenevertheless rather as a scaffolding around the finished edifice; andthe stability of the structure, after this scaffolding is removed showshow extraneous to the whole it was. The theory performed, however, agreat service in impressing Ratzel's mind with the life-givingconnection between land and people. 

The writer's own method of research has been to compare typical peoplesof all races and all stages of cultural development, living undersimilar geographic conditions. If these peoples of different ethnicstocks but similar environments manifested similar or related social, economic or historical development, it was reasonable to infer that suchsimilarities were due to environment and not to race. Thus, by extensivecomparison, the race factor in these problems of two unknown quantitieswas eliminated for certain large classes of social and historicalphenomena. 

The writer, moreover, has purposely avoided definitions, formulas, andthe enunciation of hard-and-fast rules; and has refrained from anyeffort to delimit the field or define the relation of this new scienceof anthropo-geography to the older sciences. It is unwise to put tightclothes on a growing child. The eventual form and scope of the science, the definition and organization of its material must evolve gradually, after long years and many efforts of many workers in the field. Theeternal flux of Nature runs through anthropo-geography, and warnsagainst precipitate or rigid conclusions. But its laws are none the lesswell founded because they do not lend themselves to mathematicalfinality of statement. For this reason the writer speaks of geographicfactors and influences, shuns the word geographic determinant, andspeaks with extreme caution of geographic control. 

The present volume is offered to the public with a deep sense of itsinadequacy; with the realization that some of its principles may have tobe modified or their emphasis altered after wider research; but alsowith the hope that this effort may make the way easier for the scholarwho shall some day write the ideal treatise on anthropo-geography. 

In my work on this book I have only one person to thank, the greatmaster who was my teacher and friend during his life, and after hisdeath my inspiration. 

ELLEN CHURCHILL SEMPLE. LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY, _January_, 1911. 

CONTENTS

PREFACE

CHAPTER I. OPERATION OF GEOGRAPHIC FACTORS IN HISTORY

Man a product of the earth's surface--Persistent effect of geographicbarriers--Recurrent influences of nature-made highways--Regions ofhistorical similarity--Persistence of climatic influences--Relation ofgeography to history--Multiplicity of geographic factors--Evolution ofgeographic relations--Interplay of geographic factors--Direct andindirect effects of environment--Indirect effects in differentiation ofcolonial peoples--General importance of indirect effects--Timeelement--Previous habitat--Transplanted religions--Partial response toenvironment--The larger conception of environment--Unity of the earthand the human race. 

CHAPTER II. CLASSES OF GEOGRAPHIC INFLUENCES

Four classes of influences--Physical effects of environment--Statureand environment--Effects of dominant activities--Physical effects ofclimate--Pigmentation in relation to heat and light--Pigmentationand altitude--Difficulty of generalization from geographicdistribution--Psychical effects--In Religion--In mind and character--Inlanguage--The great man in history--Economic and social effects--Size ofthe social group--Effects on movements of peoples--Segregation andaccessibility--Change of habitat. 

CHAPTER III. SOCIETY AND STATE IN RELATION TO THE LAND

People and land--Political geography--Political versus socialgeography--Land basis of society--Morgan's _societas_--Land bond inprimitive hunter tribes--In fisher tribes--In pastoral tribes--Land andstate--Strength of the land bond in the state--Evolution of landtenure--Land and food supply--Advance from natural to artificial basisof subsistence--Land basis in relation to agriculture--Migratory andsedentary agriculture--Geographic checks to progress in economic andsocial development--Native animal and plant life as factors inprogress--Density of population under different cultural and geographicconditions--Its relation to government--Territorial expansion of thestate--Artificial checks to population--Extra-territorial relations ofstate and people--Theory of progress from the standpoint ofgeography--Progressive dependence of man upon nature. 

CHAPTER IV. MOVEMENTS OF PEOPLES IN THEIR GEOGRAPHICAL SIGNIFICANCE

Universality of such movements--The name Historical Movement--Itsevolution--Its importance in history--Geographical interpretation ofhistorical movement--Mobility of primitive peoples--Civilization andmobility--Migration and ethnic mingling--Cultural modification duringmigration--The transit land--War as form of historicalmovement--Slavery--Military colonies--Withdrawal and flight--Naturalregions of asylum--Emigration and colonization--Commerce as a form ofhistorical movement--Movements due to religion--Historical movement andrace distribution--Zonal distribution--Movements to like or bettergeographic conditions--Their direction--Return movements--Regions ofattraction and repulsion--Psychical influences in certain movements--Tworesults of historical movement--Differentiation andarea--Differentiation and isolation--Geographic conditions ofheterogeneity and homogeneity--Assimilation--Elimination of unfitvariants through historical movement--Geographical origins. 

CHAPTER V. GEOGRAPHICAL LOCATION

The importance of geographical location--Content of the termlocation--Intercontinental location--Natural versus vicinallocation--Naturally defined location--Vicinal location--Vicinal groupsof similar or diverse race and culture--Thalassic vicinallocation--Complementary locations--Continuous and scatteredlocation--Central versus peripheral location--Mutual relations betweencenter and periphery--Inland and coastward expansion--Reaction betweencenter and periphery--Periphery in colonization--Dominant historicalside--Change of historical front--Contrasted historical sides--One-sidedhistorical location--Scattered location--Due to adverse geographicconditions--Island way stations on maritime routes--Scattered locationof primitive peoples--Ethnic islands of expansion anddecline--Discontinuous distribution--Contrasted location--Geographicalpolarity--Geographical marks of growth and decline--Interpretation ofscattered and marginal location--Contrast between ethnic islands ofgrowth and decline. 

CHAPTER VI. GEOGRAPHICAL AREA

The size of the earth--Relation of area to life--Area anddifferentiation--The struggle for space--National area an indexof social and political development--The Oikoumene--The unity ofthe human species in relation to the earth--Isolation anddifferentiation--Monotonous race type of small area--Wide racedistribution and inner diversities--Large area a guarantee of racial ornational permanence--Weakness of small states--Protection of large areato primitive peoples--Contrast of large and small areas inbio-geography--Political domination of large areas--Area andliterature--Small geographic base of primitive societies--Influence ofsmall, confined areas--The process of territorial growth--Historicaladvance from small to large areas--Gradations in area and indevelopment--Preliminaries to ethnic and politicalexpansion--Significance of sphere of influence or activity--Nature ofexpansion in new and old countries--Relation of ethnic to politicalexpansion--Relation of people and state to political boundary--Expansionof civilization--Cultural advantages of large politicalarea--Politico-economic advantages--Political area and the nationalhorizon--National estimates of area--Limitations of small tribalconceptions--Evolution of territorial policies--Colonial expansion--Themind of colonials. 

CHAPTER VII. GEOGRAPHICAL BOUNDARIES

The boundary zone in Nature--Oscillating boundaries of the habitablearea of the earth--Wallace's Line a typical boundary zone--Boundaries aslimits of expansion--Boundary zone as index of growth ordecline--Breadth of boundary zone--Broad frontier zones of activeexpansion--Value of barrier boundaries--The sea as the absoluteboundary--Natural boundaries as bases of ethnic and politicalboundaries--Primitive waste boundaries--Alien intrusions into borderwastes--Politico-economic significance of the waste boundary--Commonboundary districts--Tariff free zones--Boundary zones of mingled raceelements--Assimilation of civilization in boundary zones--Relation ofethnic and cultural assimilation--The border zone of assimilation inpolitical expansion--Tendency toward defection along politicalfrontiers--The spirit of colonial frontiers--Free border states aspolitical survivals--Guardians of the marches--Lawless citizens deportedto political frontiers--Drift of lawless elements to thefrontiers--Asylums beyond the border. 

CHAPTER VIII. COAST PEOPLES

The coast a zone of transition--The inner edge--Shifting of the inneredge--Outer edge in original settlement--In early navigation--Incolonization--Inland advance of colonies--Interpenetration of land andsea--Ratio of shore-line to area--Criticism of theformula--Accessibility of coasts from hinterland--Accessibility ofcoasts from the sea--Embayed coasts--Contrasted coastal belts--Evolutionof ports--Influence of offshore islands--Previous habitat ofcoast-dwellers--Habitability of coasts as a factor in maritimedevelopment--Geographic conditions for brilliant maritimedevelopment--Scope and importance of seaward expansion--Ethnic contrastbetween coast and interior peoples--Ethnic amalgamations ofcoastlands--_Lingua franca_ a product of coasts--Coast-dwellers asmiddlemen--Differentiation of coast from inland people--Earlycivilization of coasts--Progress from thalassic to oceaniccoasts--Importance of geographic location of coasts--Historical declineof certain coasts--Complex interplay of geographic factors incoastlands. 

CHAPTER IX. OCEANS AND ENCLOSED SEAS

The water a factor in man's mobility--Oceans and seas the factor ofunion in universal history--Origin of navigation--Primitiveforms--Relation of river to marine navigation--Retarded and advancednavigation--Geographic conditions in Polynesia--Mediterranean versusAtlantic seamanship--Three geographic stages of maritimedevelopment--Enclosed seas as areas of ethnic and culturalassimilation--Assimilation facilitated by ethnic kinship--Importance ofzonal and continental location of enclosed seas--Thalassic character ofthe Indian Ocean--Limitations of small area in enclosed seas--Successivemaritime periods in history--Contrasted historical rôles of northern andsouthern hemispheres--Size of the ocean--Neutrality of the seas--_Mareclausum and Mare liberum_. 

CHAPTER X. MAN'S RELATION TO THE WATER

The protection of a water frontier--Pile villages of ancienttimes--Modern pile dwellings--Their geographicdistribution--River-dwellers in old and popular lands--Man'sencroachment upon the sea by reclamation of land--The struggle with thewater--Mound villages in river flood-plains--Social and political gainby control of the water--A factor in early civilization of aridlands--The economy of the water--Fisheries--Factors in maritimeexpansion--Fisheries as nurseries of seamen--Anthropo-geographicimportance of navigation. 

CHAPTER XI. THE ANTHROPO-GEOGRAPHY OF RIVERS

Rivers as intermediaries between land and sea--Sea navigation mergesinto river navigation--Historical importance of seas and oceansinfluenced by their debouching streams--Lack of coast articulationssupplied by rivers--River highways as basis of commercialpreëminence--Importance of rivers in large countries--Rivers as highwaysof expansion--Determinants of routes in arid or semi-aridlands--Increasing historical importance of rivers from source tomouth--Value of location at hydrographic centers--Effect of current upontrade and expansion--Importance of mouth to upstream people--Preventionof monopoly of river mouths--Motive for canals in lowercourse--Watershed canals for extension of inland waterways--Rivers andrailroads--Natural unity of every river system--In arid lands as commonsource of water supply--Tendency towards ethnic and cultural unity in ariver valley--Identity of country with river valley--Rivers asboundaries of races and peoples--Rivers as political boundaries--Fluvialsettlements and peoples--Boatman tribes or castes--River islands asprotected sites--River and lake islands as robber strongholds--Riverpeninsulas--River islands as sites of trading posts and colonies--Swampsas barriers and boundaries--Swamps as regions of survivals--Swamps asplaces of refuge--The spirit of the marshes--Economic and politicalimportance of lakes--Lakes as nuclei of states--Lakes as fresh-waterseas. 

CHAPTER XII. CONTINENTS AND THEIR PENINSULAS

Insularity of the land-masses--Classification of land-masses accordingto size and location--Effect of the size of land-masses--Independencedue to location versus independence due to size--Continental convergenceand ethnic kinship--Africa's location--The Atlantic abyss--Geographicalcharacter of the Pacific--Pacific affinities of North America--TheAtlantic face of America as the infant Orient of the world--The Atlanticabyss in the movements of peoples--Races and continents--Contrast of thenorthern and southern continents--Effects of continental structure uponhistorical development--Structure of North and South America--Culturalsuperiority of Pacific slope Indians--Coast articulations ofcontinents--Importance of size in continental articulations--Peninsularconditions most favorable to historical development--The continentalbase of peninsulas--Continental base a zone of transition--Continentalbase the scene of invasion and war--Peninsular extremities as areas ofisolation--Ethnic unity of peninsulas--Peninsulas as intermediaries. 

CHAPTER XIII. ISLAND PEOPLES

Physical relationship between islands and peninsulas--Character ofinsular flora and fauna--Paradoxical influences of island habitat onman--Conservative and radical tendencies born of isolation andaccessibility--Islands as nurseries and disseminators of distinctivecivilizations--Limitation of small area in insular history--Sources ofethnic stock of islands on nearest mainland. Ethnic divergence withincreased isolation--Differentiation of peoples and civilizations inislands--Differentiation of language--Unification of race inislands--Remoter sources of island populations--Double sources--Mixedpopulation of small thalassic isles--Significant location of island waystations--Thalassic islands as goals of maritime expansion--Politicaldetachability of islands--Insular weakness based upon small area--Islandfragments of broken empires--Area and location as factors in politicalautonomy of islands--Historical effects of island isolation in primitiveretardation--Later stimulation of development--Excessiveisolation--Protection of an island environment--Islands as places ofrefuge--Islands as places of survival--Effects of small area inislands--Economic limitations of their small area--Dense population ofislands--Geographic causes of this density--Oceanic climate asfactor--Relation of density to size--Density affected by a focallocation for trade--Overflow of island population and colonies to themainland--Precocious development of island agriculture--Intensivetillage--Emigration and colonization from islands--Recent emigrationfrom islands--Maritime enterprise as outlet--Artificial checks topopulation--Polyandry--Infanticide--Low valuation of human life. 

CHAPTER XIV. PLAINS, STEPPES AND DESERTS

Relief of the sea floor--Mean elevations of the continents--Distributionof relief--Homologous reliefs and homologoushistories--Anthropo-geography of lowlands--Extensive plains unfavorableto early development--Conditions for fusion in plains--Retardation dueto monotonous environment--Influence of slight geographic features inplains--Plains and political expansion--Arid plains--Nomadism--Pastorallife--Pastoral nomads of Arctic plains--Historical importance of steppenomads--Mobility of pastoral nomads--Seasonal migrations--Maraudingexpeditions--Forms of defense against nomad depredations--Pastoral lifeas a training for soldiers--Capacity for political organization andconsolidation--Centralization versus decentralization innomadism--Spirit of independence among nomads--Resistance toconquest--Curtailment of nomadism--Supplementary agriculture of pastoralnomadism--Irrigation and horticulture--Scant diet of nomads--Effects ofa diminishing water supply--Checks to population--Trade ofnomads--Pastoral nomads as middlemen--Desert markets--Nomadindustries--Arid lands as areas of arrested development--Mental andmoral qualities of nomads--Religion of pastoral nomads. 

CHAPTER XV. MOUNTAIN BARRIERS AND THEIR PASSES

Man as part of the mobile envelope of the earth--Inaccessibility ofmountains--Mountains as transit regions--Transition forms of reliefbetween highlands and lowlands--Piedmont belts as boundaryzones--Density of population in piedmont belts--Piedmont towns andcities--Piedmonts as colonial or backwoods frontiers--Mountaincarriers--Power of mountain barriers to block or deflect historicalmovement--Significance of mountain valleys--Longitudinal valleys--Passesin mountain barriers--Breadth of mountain barriers--Dominanttransmontane routes--Height and form of mountain barriers--Contrastedaccessibility of opposite slopes--Political and ethniceffects--Persistence of barrier nature--Importance of mountainpasses--Geographic conditions affecting the historical importance ofpasses--Passes determine the transmontane routes--Navigable riverapproaches to passes--Types of settlement in the valley approaches--Passcities and their markets--Pass peoples--Their political importance. 

CHAPTER XVI. INFLUENCES OF A MOUNTAIN ENVIRONMENT

Zones of altitude--Politico-economic value of a varied relief--Beliefand climate--Altitude zones of economic and culturaldevelopment--Altitude and density belts in tropicalhighlands--Increasing density where altitude confers safety--Geographicconditions affecting density of mountain population--Terraceagriculture--Its geographical distribution--Terrace agriculture inmountainous islands--Among savage peoples--Fertilizing terracelands--Economy of level land--Mountain pastures and stock-raising--Lifeand industry of the summer herdsmen--Communal ownership of mountainpastures--Hay making in high mountains--Winter industries of mountainpeoples--Overpopulation and emigration--Preventive checks to increase ofpopulation--Religious celibacy--Polyandry--Marauding tendencies inmountaineers--Historical consequences of mountain raiding--Conquest ofmountain regions--Political dismemberment of mountain peoples--Types ofmountain states--Significance of their small size--Mountain isolationand differentiation--Survival of primitive races in mountains--Diversityof peoples and dialects--Constriction of mountain areas of ethnicsurvival--Isolation and retardation of mountain regions--Mental andmoral qualities of mountain people. 

CHAPTER XVII. THE INFLUENCES OF CLIMATE UPON MAN

Importance of climatic influences--Climate in the interplay ofgeographic factors--Its direct and indirect effects--Climate determinesthe habitable area of the earth--Effect of climate upon relief and henceupon man--Man's adaptability to climatic extremes--Temperature asmodified by oceans and winds--Rainfall--Temperature and zonallocation--Mutual reactions of contrasted zones--Isothermal lines inanthropo-geography--Historical effects of compressedisotherms--Historical effects of slight climatic differences--Theirinfluence upon distribution of immigration--Temperature and racetemperament--Complexity of this problem--Monotonous climaticconditions--Effects of Arctic cold--Effect of monotonous heat--Thetropics as goals of migration--The problem ofacclimatization--Historical importance of the temperate zone--Contrastof the seasons--Duration of the seasons--Effect of long winters and longsummers--Zones of culture--Temperate zone as cradle of civilization

INDEX

LIST OF MAPS. 

DENSITY OF POPULATION IN THE EASTERN HEMISPHERE 8DENSITY OF POPULATION IN THE WESTERN HEMISPHERE 9POWELL'S MAP OF INDIAN LINGUISTIC STOCKS 54PRIMITIVE INDIAN STOCKS OF SOUTH AMERICA 101ETHNOGRAPHICAL MAP OF INDIA 102ETHNOGRAPHICAL MAP OF ASIA 103ETHNOGRAPHICAL MAP OF AFRICA 105DISTRIBUTION OF WILD AND CIVILIZED TRIBES IN THE PHILIPPINES 147DISTRIBUTION OF POPULATION IN THE PROVINCE OF FINMARKEN 153DISTRIBUTION OF POPULATION IN THE UNITED STATES IN 1800 156THE SLAV-GERMAN BOUNDARY IN EUROPE 223ETHNOGRAPHICAL MAP OF RUSSIA 225THE GERMAN NORTH SEA COAST 243ANCIENT PHOENICIAN AND GREEK COLONIES 251RIPARIAN VILLAGES OF THE LOWER ST. LAWRENCE 365LAKE OF THE FOUR FOREST CANTONS 374THE ANNUAL RAINFALL OF THE WORLD 484THE CULTURAL REGIONS OF AFRICA AND ARABIA 487DISTRIBUTION OF RELIGIONS IN THE OLD WORLD 513DENSITY OF POPULATION IN ITALY 559MEAN ANNUAL ISOTHERMS AND HEAT BELTS 612

CHAPTER I

THE OPERATION OF GEOGRAPHIC FACTORS IN HISTORY

[Sidenote: Man a product of the earth's surface. ]

Man is a product of the earth's surface. This means not merely that heis a child of the earth, dust of her dust; but that the earth hasmothered him, fed him, set him tasks, directed his thoughts, confrontedhim with difficulties that have strengthened his body and sharpened hiswits, given him his problems of navigation or irrigation, and at thesame time whispered hints for their solution. She has entered into hisbone and tissue, into his mind and soul. On the mountains she has givenhim leg muscles of iron to climb the slope; along the coast she has leftthese weak and flabby, but given him instead vigorous development ofchest and arm to handle his paddle or oar. In the river valley sheattaches him to the fertile soil, circumscribes his ideas and ambitionsby a dull round of calm, exacting duties, narrows his outlook to thecramped horizon of his farm. Up on the wind-swept plateaus, in theboundless stretch of the grasslands and the waterless tracts of thedesert, where he roams with his flocks from pasture to pasture and oasisto oasis, where life knows much hardship but escapes the grind ofdrudgery, where the watching of grazing herd gives him leisure forcontemplation, and the wide-ranging life a big horizon, his ideas takeon a certain gigantic simplicity; religion becomes monotheism, Godbecomes one, unrivalled like the sand of the desert and the grass of thesteppe, stretching on and on without break or change. Chewing over andover the cud of his simple belief as the one food of his unfed mind, hisfaith becomes fanaticism; his big spacial ideas, born of that ceaselessregular wandering, outgrow the land that bred them and bear theirlegitimate fruit in wide imperial conquests. 

Man can no more be scientifically studied apart from the ground which hetills, or the lands over which he travels, or the seas over which hetrades, than polar bear or desert cactus can be understood apart fromits habitat. Man's relations to his environment are infinitely morenumerous and complex than those of the most highly organized plant oranimal. So complex are they that they constitute a legitimate andnecessary object of special study. The investigation which they receivein anthropology, ethnology, sociology and history is piecemeal andpartial, limited as to the race, cultural development, epoch, country orvariety of geographic conditions taken into account. Hence all thesesciences, together with history so far as history undertakes to explainthe causes of events, fail to reach a satisfactory solution of theirproblems largely because the geographic factor which enters into themall has not been thoroughly analyzed. Man has been so noisy about theway he has "conquered Nature, " and Nature has been so silent in herpersistent influence over man, that the geographic factor in theequation of human development has been overlooked. 

[Sidenote: Stability of geographic factors in history. ]

In every problem of history there are two main factors, variously statedas heredity and environment, man and his geographic conditions, theinternal forces of race and the external forces of habitat. Now thegeographic element in the long history of human development has beenoperating strongly and operating persistently. Herein lies itsimportance. It is a stable force. It never sleeps. This naturalenvironment, this physical basis of history, is for all intents andpurposes immutable in comparison with the other factor in theproblem--shifting, plastic, progressive, retrogressive man. 

[Sidenote: Persistent effect of remoteness. ]

History tends to repeat itself largely owing to this steady, unchanginggeographic element. If the ancient Roman consul in far-away Britainoften assumed an independence of action and initiative unknown in theprovincial governors of Gaul, and if, centuries later, Roman Catholicismin England maintained a similar independence towards the Holy See, bothfacts have their cause in the remoteness of Britain from the center ofpolitical or ecclesiastical power in Rome. If the independence of theRoman consul in Britain was duplicated later by the attitude of theThirteen Colonies toward England, and again within the young Republic bythe headstrong self-reliance, impatient of government authority, whichcharacterized the early Trans-Allegheny commonwealths in theiraggressive Indian policy, and led them to make war and conclude treatiesfor the cession of land like sovereign states; and if this attitude ofindependence in the over-mountain men reappeared in a spirit ofpolitical defection looking toward secession from the Union and a newcombination with their British neighbor on the Great Lakes or theSpanish beyond the Mississippi, these are all the identical effects ofgeographical remoteness made yet more remote by barriers of mountain andsea. This is the long reach which weakens the arm of authority, nomatter what the race or country or epoch. 

[Sidenote: Effect of proximity. ]

As with geographical remoteness, so it is with geographical proximity. The history of the Greek peninsula and the Greek people, because oftheir location at the threshold of the Orient, has contained aconstantly recurring Asiatic element. This comes out most often as anote of warning; like the _motif_ of Ortrud in the opera of"Lohengrin, " it mingles ominously in every chorus of Hellenicenterprise or paean of Hellenic victory, and finally swells into anational dirge at the Turkish conquest of the peninsula. It comes outin the legendary history of the Argonautic Expedition and the TrojanWar; in the arrival of Phoenician Cadmus and Phrygian Pelops inGrecian lands; in the appearance of Tyrian ships on the coast of thePeloponnesus, where they gather the purple-yielding murex and kidnapGreek women. It appears more conspicuously in the Asiatic sources ofGreek culture; more dramatically in the Persian Wars, in the retreatof Xenophon's Ten Thousand, in Alexander's conquest of Asia, andHellenic domination of Asiatic trade through Syria to theMediterranean. Again in the thirteenth century the lure of theLevantine trade led Venice and Genoa to appropriate certain islandsand promontories of Greece as commercial bases nearer to Asia. In 1396begins the absorption of Greece into the Asiatic empire of the Turks, the long dark eclipse of sunny Hellas, till it issues from the shadowin 1832 with the achievement of Greek independence. 

[Sidenote: Persistent effect of natural barriers. ]

If the factor is not one of geographical location, but a naturalbarrier, such as a mountain system or a desert, its effect is just aspersistent. The upheaved mass of the Carpathians served to divide thewestward moving tide of the Slavs into two streams, diverting one intothe maritime plain of northern Germany and Poland, the other into thechannel of the Danube Valley which guided them to the Adriatic and thefoot of the Alps. This same range checked the westward advance of themounted Tartar hordes. The Alps long retarded Roman expansion intocentral Europe, just as they delayed and obstructed the southwardadvance of the northern barbarians. Only through the partial breaches inthe wall known as passes did the Alps admit small, divided bodies of theinvaders, like the Cimbri and Teutons, who arrived, therefore, withweakened power and at intervals, so that the Roman forces had time togather their strength between successive attacks, and thus prolonged thelife of the declining empire. So in the Middle Ages, the Alpine barrierfacilitated the resistance of Italy to the German emperors, trying toenforce their claim upon this ancient seat of the Holy Roman Empire. 

It was by river-worn valleys leading to passes in the ridge thatEtruscan trader, Roman legion, barbarian horde, and German army crossedthe Alpine ranges. To-day well-made highways and railroads converge uponthese valley paths and summit portals, and going is easier; but the Alpsstill collect their toll, now in added tons of coal consumed by enginesand in higher freight rates, instead of the ancient imposts of physicalexhaustion paid by pack animal and heavily accoutred soldier. Formerlythese mountains barred the weak and timid; to-day they bar the poor, andforbid transit to all merchandise of large bulk and small value whichcan not pay the heavy transportation charges. Similarly, the widebarrier of the Rockies, prior to the opening of the first overlandrailroad, excluded all but strong-limbed and strong-hearted pioneersfrom the fertile valleys of California and Oregon, just as it excludescoal and iron even from the Colorado mines, and checks the freemovement of laborers to the fields and factories of California, therebytightening the grip of the labor unions upon Pacific coast industries. 

[Sidenote: Persistent effect of nature-made highways. ]

As the surface of the earth presents obstacles, so it offers channelsfor the easy movement of humanity, grooves whose direction determinesthe destination of aimless, unplanned migrations, and whose terminibecome, therefore, regions of historical importance. Along thesenature-made highways history repeats itself. The maritime plain ofPalestine has been an established route of commerce and war from thetime of Sennacherib to Napoleon. [1] The Danube Valley has admitted tocentral Europe a long list of barbarian invaders, covering the periodfrom Attila the Hun to the Turkish besiegers of Vienna in 1683. Thehistory of the Danube Valley has been one of warring throngs, ofshifting political frontiers, and unassimilated races; but as the riveris a great natural highway, every neighboring state wants to front uponit and strives to secure it as a boundary. 

The movements of peoples constantly recur to these old grooves. Theunmarked path of the voyageur's canoe, bringing out pelts from LakeSuperior to the fur market at Montreal, is followed to-day by whalebacksteamers with their cargoes of Manitoba wheat. To-day the Mohawkdepression through the northern Appalachians diverts some of Canada'strade from the Great Lakes to the Hudson, just as in the seventeenthcentury it enabled the Dutch at New Amsterdam and later the English atAlbany to tap the fur trade of Canada's frozen forests. Formerly a lineof stream and portage, it carries now the Erie Canal and New YorkCentral Railroad. [2] Similarly the narrow level belt of land extendingfrom the mouth of the Hudson to the eastern elbow of the lower Delaware, defining the outer margin of the rough hill country of northern NewJersey and the inner margin of the smooth coastal plain, has been fromsavage days such a natural thoroughfare. Here ran the trail of theLenni-Lenapi Indians; a little later, the old Dutch road between NewAmsterdam and the Delaware trading-posts; yet later the King's Highwayfrom New York to Philadelphia. In 1838 it became the route of theDelaware and Raritan Canal, and more recently of the PennsylvaniaRailroad between New York and Philadelphia. [3]

The early Aryans, in their gradual dispersion over northwestern India, reached the Arabian Sea chiefly by a route running southward from theIndus-Ganges divide, between the eastern border of the Rajputana Desertand the western foot of the Aravalli Hills. The streams flowing downfrom this range across the thirsty plains unite to form the Luni River, which draws a dead-line to the advance of the desert. Here a smooth andwell-watered path brought the early Aryans of India to a fertile coastalong the Gulf of Cambay. [4] In the palmy days of the Mongol Empireduring the seventeenth century, and doubtless much earlier, it became anestablished trade route between the sea and the rich cities of the upperGanges. [5] Recently it determined the line of the Rajputana Railroadfrom the Gulf of Cambay to Delhi. [6] Barygaza, the ancient seaboardterminus of this route, appears in Pliny's time as the most famousemporium of western India, the resort of Greek and Arab merchants. [7] Itreappears later in history with its name metamorphosed to Baroche orBroach, where in 1616 the British established a factory for trade, [8]but is finally superseded, under Portuguese and English rule, by nearbySurat. Thus natural conditions fix the channels in which the stream ofhumanity most easily moves, determine within certain limits thedirection of its flow, the velocity and volume of its current. Every newflood tends to fit itself approximately into the old banks, seeks firstthese lines of least resistance, and only when it finds them blocked orpre-empted does it turn to more difficult paths. 

[Sidenote: Regions of historical similarity. ]

Geographical environment, through the persistence of its influence, acquires peculiar significance. Its effect is not restricted to a givenhistorical event or epoch, but, except when temporarily met by somestrong counteracting force, tends to make itself felt under varyingguise in all succeeding history. It is the permanent element in theshifting fate of races. Islands show certain fundamental points ofagreement which can be distinguished in the economic, ethnic andhistorical development of England, Japan, Melanesian Fiji, PolynesianNew Zealand, and pre-historic Crete. The great belt of deserts andsteppes extending across the Old World gives us a vast territory of rarehistorical uniformity. From time immemorial they have borne and bredtribes of wandering herdsmen; they have sent out the invading hordeswho, in successive waves of conquest, have overwhelmed the neighboringriver lowlands of Eurasia and Africa. They have given birth in turn toScythians, Indo-Aryans, Avars, Huns, Saracens, Tartars and Turks, as tothe Tuareg tribes of the Sahara, the Sudanese and Bantu folk of theAfrican grasslands. But whether these various peoples have been Negroes, Hamites, Semites, Indo-Europeans or Mongolians, they have always beenpastoral nomads. The description given by Herodotus of the ancientScythians is applicable in its main features to the Kirghis and Kalmuckwho inhabit the Caspian plains to-day. The environment of this drygrassland operates now to produce the same mode of life and socialorganization as it did 2, 400 years ago; stamps the cavalry tribes ofCossacks as it did the mounted Huns, energizes its sons by its drybracing air, toughens them by its harsh conditions of life, organizesthem into a mobilized army, always moving with its pastoralcommissariat. Then when population presses too hard upon the meagersources of subsistence, when a summer drought burns the pastures anddries up the water-holes, it sends them forth on a mission of conquest, to seek abundance in the better watered lands of their agriculturalneighbors. Again and again the productive valleys of the Hoangho, Indus, Ganges, Tigris and Euphrates, Nile, Volga, Dnieper and Danube have beenbrought into subjection by the imperious nomads of arid Asia, just asthe "hoe-people" of the Niger and upper Nile have so often beenconquered by the herdsmen of the African grasslands. Thus, regardless ofrace or epoch--Hyksos or Kaffir--history tends to repeat itself in theserainless tracts, and involves the better watered districts along theirborders when the vast tribal movements extend into these peripherallands. 

[Illustration: DENSITY OF POPULATION IN EASTERN HEMISPHERE]

[Illustration: DENSITY OF POPULATION IN WESTERN HEMISPHERE]

[Sidenote: Climatic influences. ]

Climatic influences are persistent, often obdurate in their control. Arid regions permit agriculture and sedentary life only throughirrigation. The economic prosperity of Egypt to-day depends ascompletely upon the distribution of the Nile waters as in the days ofthe Pharaohs. The mantle of the ancient Egyptian priest has fallen uponthe modern British engineer. Arctic explorers have succeeded only byimitating the life of the Eskimos, adopting their clothes, food, fuel, dwellings, and mode of travel. Intense cold has checked both native andRussian development over that major portion of Siberia lying north ofthe mean annual isotherm of degree C. (32 degrees F. ); and it has had alike effect in the corresponding part of Canada. (Compare maps pages 8and 9. ) It allows these sub-arctic lands scant resources and apopulation of less than two to the square mile. Even with the intrusionof white colonial peoples, it perpetuates the savage economy of thenative hunting tribes, and makes the fur trader their modern exploiter, whether he be the Cossack tribute-gatherer of the lower Lena River, orthe factor of the Hudson Bay Company. The assimilation tends to beethnic as well as economic, because the severity of the climate excludesthe white woman. The debilitating effects of heat and humidity, aided bytropical diseases, soon reduce intruding peoples to the dead level ofeconomic inefficiency characteristic of the native races. These, as thefittest, survive and tend to absorb the new-comers, pointing tohybridization as the simplest solution of the problem of tropicalcolonization. 

[Sidenote: The relation of geography to history. ]

The more the comparative method is applied to the study ofhistory--and this includes a comparison not only of differentcountries, but also of successive epochs in the same country--the moreapparent becomes the influence of the soil in which humanity isrooted, the more permanent and necessary is that influence seen to be. Geography's claim to make scientific investigation of the physicalconditions of historical events is then vindicated. "Which was therefirst, geography or history?" asks Kant. And then comes his answer:"Geography lies at the basis of history. " The two are inseparable. History takes for its field of investigation human events in variousperiods of time; anthropo-geography studies existence in variousregions of terrestrial space. But all historical development takesplace on the earth's surface, and therefore is more or less molded byits geographic setting. Geography, to reach accurate conclusions, mustcompare the operation of its factors in different historical periodsand at different stages of cultural development. It therefore regardshistory in no small part as a succession of geographical factorsembodied in events. Back of Massachusetts' passionate abolitionmovement, it sees the granite soil and boulder-strewn fields of NewEngland; back of the South's long fight for the maintenance ofslavery, it sees the rich plantations of tidewater Virginia and theteeming fertility of the Mississippi bottom lands. This is thesignificance of Herder's saying that "history is geography set intomotion. " What is to-day a fact of geography becomes to-morrow a factorof history. The two sciences cannot be held apart without doingviolence to both, without dismembering what is a natural, vital whole. All historical problems ought to be studied geographically and allgeographic problems must be studied historically. Every map has itsdate. Those in the Statistical Atlas of the United States showing thedistribution of population from 1790 to 1890 embody a mass of historyas well as of geography. A map of France or the Russian Empire has along historical perspective; and on the other hand, without that mapno change of ethnic or political boundary, no modification in routesof communication, no system of frontier defences or of colonization, no scheme of territorial aggrandizement can be understood. 

[Sidenote: Multiplicity of geographic factors. ]

The study of physical environment as a factor in history wasunfortunately brought into disrepute by extravagant and ill-foundedgeneralization, before it became the object of investigation accordingto modern scientific methods. And even to-day principles advanced in thename of anthropo-geography are often superficial, inaccurate, based upona body of data too limited as to space and time, or couched in terms ofunqualified statement which exposes them to criticism or refutation. Investigators in this field, moreover, are prone to get a squint intheir eye that makes them see one geographic factor to the exclusion ofthe rest; whereas it belongs to the very nature of physical environmentto combine a whole group of influences, working all at the same timeunder the law of the resolution of forces. In this plexus of influences, some operate in one direction and some in another; now one loses itsbeneficent effect like a medicine long used or a garment outgrown;another waxes in power, reinforced by a new geographic factor which hasbeen released from dormancy by the expansion of the known world, or theprogress of invention and of human development. 

[Sidenote: Evolution of geographic relations. ]

These complex geographic influences cannot be analyzed and theirstrength estimated except from the standpoint of evolution. That is onereason these half-baked geographic principles rest heavy on our mentaldigestion. They have been formulated without reference to theall-important fact that the geographical relations of man, like hissocial and political organization, are subject to the law ofdevelopment. Just as the embryo state found in the primitive Saxon tribehas passed through many phases in attaining the political character ofthe present British Empire, so every stage in this maturing growth hasbeen accompanied or even preceded by a steady evolution of thegeographic relations of the English people. 

Owing to the evolution of geographic relations, the physical environmentfavorable to one stage of development may be adverse to another, and_vice versa_. For instance, a small, isolated and protected habitat, like that of Egypt, Phoenicia, Crete and Greece, encourages the birthand precocious growth of civilization; but later it may cramp progress, and lend the stamp of arrested development to a people who were once themodel for all their little world. Open and wind-swept Russia, lackingthese small, warm nurseries where Nature could cuddle her children, hasbred upon its boundless plains a massive, untutored, homogeneous folk, fed upon the crumbs of culture that have fallen from the richer tablesof Europe. But that item of area is a variable quantity in the equation. It changes its character at a higher stage of cultural development. Consequently, when the Muscovite people, instructed by the example ofwestern Europe, shall have grown up intellectually, economically andpolitically to their big territory, its area will become a greatnational asset. Russia will come into its own, heir to a long-withheldinheritance. Many of its previous geographic disadvantages will vanish, like the diseases of childhood, while its massive size will dwarf manyprevious advantages of its European neighbors. 

[Sidenote: Evolution of world relations. ]

This evolution of geographic relations applies not only to the localenvironment, but also to the wider world relations of a people. Greeksand Syrians, English and Japanese, take a different rank among thenations of the earth to-day from that held by their ancestors 2, 000 yearsago, simply because the world relations of civilized peoples have beensteadily expanding since those far-back days of Tyrian and Atheniansupremacy. The period of maritime discoveries in the fifteenth andsixteenth centuries shifted the foci of the world relations of Europeanstates from enclosed seas to the rim of the Atlantic. Venice and Genoagave way to Cadiz and Lagos, just as sixteen centuries before Corinthand Athens had yielded their ascendency to Rome and Ostia. The keen butcircumscribed trade of the Baltic, which gave wealth and historicalpreeminence to Lübeck and the other Hanse Towns of northern Germany fromthe twelfth to the seventeenth century, lost its relative importancewhen the Atlantic became the maritime field of history. Maritimeleadership passed westward from Lübeck and Stralsund to Amsterdam andBristol, as the historical horizon widened. England, prior to thissudden dislocation, lay on the outskirts of civilized Europe, a terminalland, not a focus. The peripheral location which retarded her earlydevelopment became a source of power when she accumulated sufficientdensity of population for colonizing enterprises, and when maritimediscovery opened a way to trans-oceanic lands. [9]

Meanwhile, local geographic advantages in the old basins remain thesame, although they are dwarfed by the development of relatively greateradvantages elsewhere. The broken coastline, limited area and favorableposition of Greece make its people to-day a nation of seamen, and enablethem to absorb by their considerable merchant fleet a great part of thetrade of the eastern Mediterranean, [10] just as they did in the days ofPericles; but that youthful Aegean world which once constituted so largea part of the _oikoumene_, has shrunken to a modest province, and itshighways to local paths. The coast cities of northern Germany stillmaintain a large commerce in the Baltic, but no longer hold thepre-eminence of the old Hanse Towns. The glory of the Venetian Adriaticis gone; but that the sea has still a local significance is proven bythe vast sums spent by Austria and Hungary on their hand-made harbors ofTrieste and Fiume. [11] The analytical geographer, therefore, whilestudying a given combination of geographic forces, must be prepared fora momentous readjustment and a new interplay after any marked turningpoint in the economic, cultural, or world relations of a people. 

[Sidenote: Interplay of geographic factors. ]

Skepticism as to the effect of geographic conditions upon humandevelopment is apparently justifiable, owing to the multiplicity of theunderlying causes and the difficulty of distinguishing between strongerand weaker factors on the one hand, as between permanent and temporaryeffects on the other. We see the result, but find it difficult to statethe equation producing this result. But the important thing is to avoidseizing upon one or two conspicuous geographic elements in the problemand ignoring the rest. The physical environment of a people consists ofall the natural conditions to which they have been subjected, not merelya part. Geography admits no single blanket theory. The slow historicaldevelopment of the Russian folk has been due to many geographiccauses--to excess of cold and deficiency of rain, an outskirt locationon the Asiatic border of Europe exposed to the attacks of nomadichordes, a meager and, for the most part, ice-bound coast which wasslowly acquired, an undiversified surface, a lack of segregated regionswhere an infant civilization might be cradled, and a vast area ofunfenced plains wherein the national energies spread out thin anddissipated themselves. The better Baltic and Black Sea coasts, thefertility of its Ukraine soil, and location next to wide-awake Germanyalong the western frontier have helped to accelerate progress, but theslow-moving body carried too heavy a drag. 

[Sidenote: Land and sea in co-operation. ]

The law of the resolutions of forces applies in geography as in themovement of planets. Failure to recognize this fact often enablessuperficial critics of anthropo-geography to make a brave show ofargument. The analysis of these interacting forces and of their variouscombinations requires careful investigation. Let us consider theinterplay of the forces of land and sea apparent in every country witha maritime location. In some cases a small, infertile, niggardly countryconspires with a beckoning sea to drive its sons out upon the deep; inothers a wide territory with a generous soil keeps its well-fed childrenat home and silences the call of the sea. In ancient Phoenicia andGreece, in Norway, Finland, New England, in savage Chile and Tierra delFuego, and the Indian coast district of British Columbia and southernAlaska, a long, broken shoreline, numerous harbors, outlying islands, abundant timber for the construction of ships, difficult communicationby land, all tempted the inhabitants to a seafaring life. While the seadrew, the land drove in the same direction. There a hilly or mountainousinterior putting obstacles in the way of landward expansion, sterileslopes, a paucity of level, arable land, an excessive or deficientrainfall withholding from agriculture the reward of tillage--some or allof these factors combined to compel the inhabitants to seek on the seathe livelihood denied by the land. Here both forces worked in the samedirection. 

In England conditions were much the same, and from the sixteenth centuryproduced there a predominant maritime development which was due notsolely to a long indented coastline and an exceptional location forparticipating in European and American trade. Its limited island area, its large extent of rugged hills and chalky soil fit only for pasturage, and the lack of a really generous natural endowment, [12] made it slow toanswer the demands of a growing population, till the industrialdevelopment of the nineteenth century exploited its mineral wealth. Sothe English turned to the sea--to fish, to trade, to colonize. Holland'sconditions made for the same development. She united advantages ofcoastline and position with a small infertile territory, consistingchiefly of water-soaked grazing lands. When at the zenith of hermaritime development, a native authority estimated that the soil ofHolland could not support more than one-eighth of her inhabitants. Themeager products of the land had to be eked out by the harvest of thesea. Fish assumed an important place in the diet of the Dutch, and whena process of curing it was discovered, laid the foundation of Holland'sexport trade. A geographical location central to the Baltic and NorthSea countries, and accessible to France and Portugal, combined with aposition at the mouth of the great German rivers made it absorb thecarrying trade of northern Europe. [13] Land and sea coöperated in itsmaritime development. 

[Sidenote: Land and sea opposed. ]

Often the forces of land and sea are directly opposed. If a country'sgeographic conditions are favorable to agriculture and offer room forgrowth of population, the land forces prevail, because man is primarilya terrestrial animal. Such a country illustrates what Chisholm, withAttic nicety of speech, calls "the influence of bread-power onhistory, "[14] as opposed to Mahan's sea-power. France, like England, hada long coastline, abundant harbors, and an excellent location formaritime supremacy and colonial expansion; but her larger area andgreater amount of fertile soil put off the hour of a redundantpopulation such as England suffered from even in Henry VIII's time. Moreover, in consequence of steady continental expansion from thetwelfth to the eighteenth century and a political unification which madeits area more effective for the support of the people, the French ofRichelieu's time, except those from certain districts, took to the sea, not by national impulse as did the English and Dutch, but rather underthe spur of government initiative. They therefore achieved far less inmaritime trade and colonization. [15] In ancient Palestine, a longstretch of coast, poorly equipped with harbors but accessible to therich Mediterranean trade, failed to offset the attraction of the gardensand orchards of the Jezreel Valley and the pastures of the Judean hills, or to overcome the land-born predilections and aptitudes of thedesert-bred Jews. Similarly, the river-fringed peninsulas of Virginiaand Maryland, opening wide their doors to the incoming sea, werepowerless, nevertheless, to draw the settlers away from the riotousproductiveness of the wide tidewater plains. Here again the geographicforce of the land outweighed that of the sea and became the dominantfactor in directing the activities of the inhabitants. 

The two antagonistic geographic forces may be both of the land, one bornof a country's topography, the other of its location. Switzerland'shistory has for centuries shown the conflict of two political policies, one a policy of cantonal and communal independence, which has sprungfrom the division of that mountainous country into segregated districts, and the other one of political centralization, dictated by the necessityfor coöperation to meet the dangers of Switzerland's central locationmid a circle of larger and stronger neighbors. Local geographicconditions within the Swiss territory fixed the national ideal as aleague of "sovereign cantons, " to use the term of their constitution, enjoying a maximum of individual rights and privileges, and tolerating aminimum of interference from the central authority. Here was physicaldismemberment coupled with mutual political repulsion. But a location atthe meeting place of French, German, Austrian and Italian frontiers laidupon them the distasteful necessity of union within to withstandaggressions crowding upon them from without. Hence the growth of theSwiss constitution since 1798 has meant a fight of the Confederationagainst the canton in behalf of general rights, expanding the functionsof the central government, contracting those of canton and commune. [16]

[Sidenote: Local and remote geographic factors. ]

Every country forms an independent whole, and as such finds its nationalhistory influenced by its local climate, soil, relief, its locationwhether inland or maritime, its river highways, and its boundaries ofmountain, sea, or desert. But it is also a link in a great chain oflands, and therefore may feel a shock or vibration imparted at theremotest end. The gradual desiccation of western Asia which took a freshstart about 2, 000 years ago caused that great exodus and displacement ofpeoples known as the _Völkerwanderung_, and thus contributed to thedownfall of Rome; it was one factor in the Saxon conquest of Britain andthe final peopling of central Europe. The impact of the Turkish hordeshurling themselves against the defenses of Constantinople in 1453 wasfelt only forty years afterward by the far-off shores of savage America. Earlier still it reached England as the revival of learning, and it gavePortugal a shock which started its navigators towards the Cape of GoodHope in their search for a sea route to India. The history of SouthAfrica is intimately connected with the Isthmus of Suez. It owes itsPortuguese, Dutch, and English populations to that barrier on theMediterranean pathway to the Orient; its importance as a way station onthe outside route to India fluctuates with every crisis in the historyof Suez. 

[Sidenote: Direct and indirect effects of environment. ]

The geographic factors in history appear now as conspicuous directeffects of environment, such as the forest warfare of the AmericanIndian or the irrigation works of the Pueblo tribes, now as a group ofindirect effects, operating through the economic, social and politicalactivities of a people. These remoter secondary results are often ofsupreme importance; they are the ones which give the final stamp to thenational temperament and character, and yet in them the causalconnection between environment and development is far from obvious. Theyhave, therefore, presented pitfalls to the precipitate theorizer. He haseither interpreted them as the direct effect of some geographic causefrom which they were wholly divorced and thus arrived at conclusionswhich further investigation failed to sustain; or seeing no direct andobvious connection, he has denied the possibility of a generalization. 

Montesquieu ascribes the immutability of religion, manners, custom andlaws in India and other Oriental countries to their warm climate. [17]Buckle attributes a highly wrought imagination and gross superstition toall people, like those of India, living in the presence of greatmountains and vast plains, knowing Nature only in its overpoweringaspects, which excite the fancy and paralyze reason. He finds, on theother hand, an early predominance of reason in the inhabitants of acountry like ancient Greece, where natural features are on a smallscale, more comprehensible, nearer the measure of man himself. [18] Thescientific geographer, grown suspicious of the omnipotence of climateand cautious of predicating immediate psychological effects which areeasy to assert but difficult to prove, approaches the problem moreindirectly and reaches a different solution. He finds that geographicconditions have condemned India to isolation. On the land side, a greatsweep of high mountains has restricted intercourse with the interior; onthe sea side, the deltaic swamps of the Indus and Ganges Rivers and anunbroken shoreline, backed by mountains on the west of the peninsula andby coastal marshes and lagoons on the east, have combined to reduce itsaccessibility from the ocean. The effect of such isolation is ignorance, superstition, and the early crystallization of thought and custom. Ignorance involves the lack of material for comparison, hence arestriction of the higher reasoning processes, and an unscientificattitude of mind which gives imagination free play. In contrast, theaccessibility of Greece and its focal location in the ancient world madeit an intellectual clearing-house for the eastern Mediterranean. Thegeneral information gathered there afforded material for widecomparison. It fed the brilliant reason of the Athenian philosopher andthe trained imagination which produced the masterpieces of Greek art andliterature. 

[Sidenote: Indirect mental effects. ]

Heinrich von Treitschke, in his recent "Politik, " imitates the directinference of Buckle when he ascribes the absence of artistic and poeticdevelopment in Switzerland and the Alpine lands to the overwhelmingaspect of nature there, its majestic sublimity which paralyzes themind. [19] He reinforces his position by the fact that, by contrast, thelower mountains and hill country of Swabia, Franconia and Thuringia, where nature is gentler, stimulating, appealing, and not overpowering, have produced many poets and artists. The facts are incontestable. Theyreappear in France in the geographical distribution of the awards madeby the Paris _Salon_ of 1896. Judged by these awards, the roughhighlands of Savoy, Alpine Provence, the massive eastern Pyrenees, andthe Auvergne Plateau, together with the barren peninsula of Brittany, are singularly lacking in artistic instinct, while art nourishes in allthe river lowlands of France. Moreover, French men of letters, by thedistribution of their birthplaces, are essentially products of fluvialvalleys and plains, rarely of upland and mountain. [20]

This contrast has been ascribed to a fundamental ethnic distinctionbetween the Teutonic population of the lowlands and the Alpine or Celticstock which survives in the isolation of highland and peninsula, thusmaking talent an attribute of race. But the Po Valley of northern Italy, whose population contains a strong infusion of this supposedlystultifying Alpine blood, and the neighboring lowlands and hill countryof Tuscany show an enormous preponderance of intellectual and artisticpower over the highlands of the peninsula. [21] Hence the same contrastappears among different races under like geographic conditions. Moreover, in France other social phenomena, such as suicide, divorce, decreasing birth-rate, and radicalism in politics, show this samestartling parallelism of geographic distribution, [22] and these cannotbe attributed to the stimulating or depressing effect of natural sceneryupon the human mind. 

Mountain regions discourage the budding of genius because they are areasof isolation, confinement, remote from the great currents of men andideas that move along the river valleys. They are regions of much laborand little leisure, of poverty to-day and anxiety for the morrow, oftoil-cramped hands and toil-dulled brains. In the fertile alluvialplains are wealth, leisure, contact with many minds, large urban centerswhere commodities and ideas are exchanged. The two contrastedenvironments produce directly certain economic and social results, which, in turn, become the causes of secondary intellectual and artisticeffects. The low mountains of central Germany which von Treitschke citesas homes of poets and artists, owing to abundant and varied mineralwealth, are the seats of active industries and dense populations, [23]while their low reliefs present no serious obstacle to the numeroushighways across them. They, therefore, afford all conditions forculture. 

[Sidenote: Indirect effects in differentiation of colonial peoples. ]

Let us take a different example. The rapid modification in physical andmental constitution of the English transplanted to North America, SouthAfrica, Australia and New Zealand has been the result of severalgeographic causes working through the economic and social media; but ithas been ascribed by Darwin and others to the effect of climate. Theprevailing energy and initiative of colonists have been explained by thestimulating atmosphere of their new homes. Even Natal has not escapedthis soft impeachment. But the enterprise of colonials has cropped out, under almost every condition of heat and cold, aridity and humidity, ofa habitat at sea-level and on high plateau. This blanket theory ofclimate cannot, therefore, cover the case. Careful analysis supersedesit by a whole group of geographic factors working directly andindirectly. The first of these was the dividing ocean which, prior tothe introduction of cheap ocean transportation and bustling steerageagents, made a basis of artificial selection. Then it was the man ofabundant energy who, cramped by the narrow environment of a Norwegianfarm or Irish bog, came over to America to take up a quarter-section ofprairie land or rise to the eminence of Boston police sergeant. TheScotch immigrants in America who fought in the Civil War were nearly twoinches taller than the average in the home country. [24] But the oceanbarrier culled superior qualities of mind and characteralso--independence of political and religious conviction, and thecourage of those convictions, whether found in royalist or Puritan, Huguenot or English Catholic. 

[Sidenote: Indirect effect through isolation. ]

Such colonists in a remote country were necessarily few and could not bereadily reinforced from home. Their new and isolated geographicalenvironment favored variation. Heredity passed on the characteristics ofa small, highly selected group. The race was kept pure from intermixturewith the aborigines of the country, owing to the social and culturalabyss which separated them, and to the steady withdrawal of the nativesbefore the advance of the whites. The homogeneity of island peoplesseems to indicate that individual variations are in time communicated byheredity to a whole population under conditions of isolation; and inthis way modifications due to artificial selection and a changedenvironment become widely spread. 

Nor is this all. The modified type soon becomes established, because theabundance of land at the disposal of the colonists and the consequentbetter conditions of living encourage a rapid increase of population. Asecond geographic factor of mere area here begins to operate. Ease ingaining subsistence, the greater independence of the individual and thefamily, emancipation from carking care, the hopeful attitude of mindengendered by the consciousness of an almost unlimited opportunity andcapacity for expansion, the expectation of large returns upon labor, and, finally, the profound influence of this hopefulness upon thenational character, all combined, produce a social rejuvenation of therace. New conditions present new problems which call for prompt andoriginal solution, make a demand upon the ingenuity and resourcefulnessof the individual, and therefore work to the same end as his previousremoval from the paralyzing effect of custom in the old home country. Activity is youth and sluggishness or paralysis is age. Hence theenergy, initiative, adaptability, and receptivity to new ideas--allyouthful qualities--which characterize the Anglo-Saxon American as wellas the English Africander, can be traced back to the stimulatinginfluences, not of a bracing or variable climate, but of the abundantopportunities offered by a great, rich, unexploited country. Variationunder new natural conditions, when safe-guarded by isolation, tends toproduce modification of the colonial type; this is the direct effect ofa changed environment. But the new economic and social activities of atransplanted people become the vehicle of a mass of indirect geographicinfluences which contribute to the differentiation of the nationalcharacter. 

[Sidenote: General importance of indirect effects. ]

The tendency to overlook such links between conspicuous effects andtheir remote, less evident geographic causes has been common ingeographic investigation. This direct rather than indirect approach tothe heart of the problem has led to false inferences or to theassumption that reliable conclusions were impossible. Environmentinfluences the higher, mental life of a people chiefly through themedium of their economic and social life; hence its ultimate effectsshould be traced through the latter back to the underlying cause. Butrarely has this been done. Even so astute a geographer as Strabo, thoughhe recognizes the influence of geographic isolation in differentiatingdialects and customs in Greece, [25] ascribes some nationalcharacteristics to the nature of the country, especially to its climate, and the others to education and institutions. He thinks that the natureof their respective lands had nothing to do with making the Athenianscultured, the Spartans and Thebans ignorant; that the predilection fornatural science in Babylonia and Egypt was not a result of environmentbut of the institutions and education of those countries. [26] But herearise the questions, how far custom and education in their turn dependupon environment; to what degree natural conditions, molding economicand political development, may through them fundamentally affect socialcustoms, education, culture, and the dominant intellectual aptitudes ofa people. It is not difficult to see, back of the astronomy andmathematics and hydraulics of Egypt, the far off sweep of the rain-ladenmonsoons against the mountains of Abyssinia and the creeping of thetawny Nile flood over that river-born oasis. 

[Sidenote: Indirect political and moral effects. ]

Plutarch states in his "Solon" that after the rebellion of Kylon in 612B. C. The Athenian people were divided into as many political factions asthere were physical types of country in Attica. The mountaineers, whowere the poorest party, wanted something like a democracy; the people ofthe plains, comprising the greatest number of rich families, wereclamorous for an oligarchy; the coast population of the south, intermediate both in social position and wealth, wanted somethingbetween the two. The same three-fold division appeared again in 564 B. C. On the usurpation of Peisistratus. [27] Here the connection betweengeographic condition and political opinion is clear enough, though thelinks are agriculture and commerce. New England's opposition to the Warof 1812, culminating in the threat of secession of the HartfordConvention, can be traced back through the active maritime trade to thebroken coastline and unproductive soil of that glaciated country. 

In all democratic or representative forms of government permitting freeexpression of popular opinion, history shows that division intopolitical parties tends to follow geographical lines of cleavage. In ourown Civil War the dividing line between North and South did not alwaysrun east and west. The mountain area of the Southern Appalachianssupported the Union and drove a wedge of disaffection into the heart ofthe South. Mountainous West Virginia was politically opposed to thetidewater plains of old Virginia, because slave labor did not pay on thebarren "upright" farms of the Cumberland Plateau; whereas, it wasremunerative on the wide fertile plantations of the coastal lowland. Theethics of the question were obscured where conditions of soil andtopography made the institution profitable. In the mountains, as also inNew England, a law of diminishing financial returns had for itscorollary a law of increasing moral insight. In this case, geographicconditions worked through the medium of direct economic effects to moreimportant political and ethical results. 

The roots of geographic influence often run far underground beforecoming to the surface, to sprout into some flowering growth; and totrace this back to its parent stem is the necessary but not easy task ofthe geographer. 

[Sidenote: Time element. ]

The complexity of this problem does not end here. The modification ofhuman development by environment is a natural process; like all othernatural processes, it involves the cumulative effects of causesoperating imperceptibly but persistently through vast periods of time. Slowly and deliberately does geography engrave the subtitles to apeople's history. Neglect of this time element in the consideration ofgeographic influences accounts equally for many an exaggerated assertionand denial of their power. A critic undertakes to disprove modificationthrough physical environment by showing that it has not producedtangible results in the last fifty or five hundred years. This attituderecalls the early geologists, whose imaginations could not conceive thevast ages necessary in a scientific explanation of geologic phenomena. 

The theory of evolution has taught us in science to think in largerterms of time, so that we no longer raise the question whether Europeancolonists in Africa can turn into negroes, though we do find the recentamazing statement that the Yankee, in his tall, gaunt figure, "thecolour of his skin, and the formation of his hair, has begun todifferentiate himself from his European kinsman and approach the type ofthe aboriginal Indians. "[28] Evolution tells the story of modificationby a succession of infinitesimal changes, and emphasizes the permanenceof a modification once produced long after the causes for it cease toact. The mesas of Arizona, the earth sculpture of the Grand Canyonremain as monuments to the erosive forces which produced them. So ahabitat leaves upon man no ephemeral impress; it affects him in one wayat a low stage of his development, and differently at a later or higherstage, because the man himself and his relation to his environment havebeen modified in the earlier period; but traces of that earlieradaptation survive in his maturer life. Hence man's relation to hisenvironment must be looked at through the perspective of historicaldevelopment. It would be impossible to explain the history and nationalcharacter of the contemporary English solely by their twentieth centuryresponse to their environment, because with insular conservatism theycarry and cherish vestiges of times when their islands representeddifferent geographic relations from those of to-day. Witness thewool-sack of the lord chancellor. We cannot understand the location ofmodern Athens, Rome or Berlin from the present day relations of urbanpopulations to their environment, because the original choice of thesesites was dictated by far different considerations from those rulingto-day. In the history of these cities a whole succession of geographicfactors have in turn been active, each leaving its impress of which thecities become, as it were, repositories. 

[Sidenote: Effect of a previous habitat. ]

The importance of this time element for a solution ofanthropo-geographic problems becomes plainer, where a certain localityhas received an entirely new population, or where a given people bymigration change their habitat. The result in either case is the same, anew combination, new modifications superimposed on old modifications. And it is with this sort of case that anthropo-geography most often hasto deal. So restless has mankind been, that the testimony of history andethnology is all against the assumption that a social group has everbeen subjected to but one type of environment during its long period ofdevelopment from a primitive to a civilized society. Therefore, if weassert that a people is the product of the country which it inhabits ata given time, we forget that many different countries which its forbearsoccupied have left their mark on the present race in the form ofinherited aptitudes and traditional customs acquired in those remoteancestral habitats. The Moors of Granada had passed through a wide rangeof ancestral experiences; they bore the impress of Asia, Africa andEurope, and on their expulsion from Spain carried back with them toMorocco traces of their peninsula life. 

A race or tribe develops certain characteristics in a certain region, then moves on, leaving the old abode but not all the accretions ofcustom, social organization and economic method there acquired. Thesetravel on with the migrant people; some are dropped, others arepreserved because of utility, sentiment or mere habit. For centuriesafter the settlement of the Jews in Palestine, traces of their pastorallife in the grasslands of Mesopotamia could be discerned in their socialand political organization, in their ritual and literature. Survivals oftheir nomadic life in Asiatic steppes still persist among the Turks ofEurope, after six centuries of sedentary life in the best agriculturalland of the Balkan Peninsula. One of these appears in their choice ofmeat. They eat chiefly sheep and goats, beef very rarely, and swine notat all. [29] The first two thrive on poor pastures and travel well, sothat they are admirably adapted to nomadic life in arid lands; the lasttwo, far less so, but on the other hand are the regular concomitant ofagricultural life. The Turk's taste to-day, therefore, is determined bythe flocks and herds which he once pastured on the Trans-Caspian plains. The finished terrace agriculture and methods of irrigation, which theSaracens had learned on the mountain sides of Yemen through a schoolingof a thousand years or more, facilitated their economic conquest ofSpain. Their intelligent exploitation of the country's resources for thesupport of their growing numbers in the favorable climatic conditionswhich Spain offered was a light-hearted task, because of the severetraining which they had had in their Arabian home. 

The origin of Roman political institutions is intimately connected withconditions of the naturally small territory where arose the greatness ofRome. But now, after two thousand years we see the political impress ofthis narrow origin spreading to the governments of an area of Europeimmeasurably larger than the region that gave it birth. In the UnitedStates, little New England has been the source of the strongestinfluences modifying the political, religious and cultural life of halfa continent; and as far as Texas and California these influences bearthe stamp of that narrow, unproductive environment which gave to itssons energy of character and ideals. 

[Sidenote: Transplanted religions. ]

Ideas especially are light baggage, and travel with migrant peoplesover many a long and rough road. They are wafted like winged seed by thewind, and strike root in regions where they could never have originated. Few classes of ideas bear so plainly the geographic stamp of theirorigin as religious ones, yet none have spread more widely. The abstractmonotheism sprung from the bare grasslands of western Asia made slow butfinal headway against the exuberant forest gods of the early Germans. Religious ideas travel far from their seedbeds along established linesof communication. We have the almost amusing episode of the brawnyBurgundians of the fifth century, who received the Arian form ofChristianity by way of the Danube highway from the schools of Athens andAlexandria, valiantly supporting the niceties of Greek religious thoughtagainst the Roman version of the faith which came up the Rhone Valley. 

If the sacred literature of Judaism and Christianity take weak hold uponthe western mind, this is largely because it is written in the symbolismof the pastoral nomad. Its figures of speech reflect life in deserts andgrasslands. For these figures the western mind has few or vaguecorresponding ideas. It loses, therefore, half the import, for instance, of the Twenty-third Psalm, that picture of the nomad shepherd guidinghis flock across parched and trackless plains, to bring them at evening, weary, hungry, thirsty, to the fresh pastures and waving palms of someoasis, whose green tints stand out in vivid contrast to the tawny wastesof the encompassing sands. "He leadeth me beside the still waters, " notthe noisy rushing stream of the rainy lands, but the quiet desert poolthat reflects the stars. What real significance has the tropicalradiance of the lotus flower, the sacred symbol of Buddhism, for theMongolian lama in the cold and arid borders of Gobi or the wind-swepthighlands of sterile Tibet? And yet these exotic ideas live on, even ifthey no longer bloom in the uncongenial soil. But to explain them interms of their present environment would be indeed impossible. 

[Sidenote: Partial response to environment]

A people may present at any given time only a partial response to theirenvironment also for other reasons. This may be either because theirarrival has been too recent for the new habitat to make its influencefelt; or because, even after long residence, one overpoweringgeographic factor has operated to the temporary exclusion of all others. Under these circumstances, suddenly acquired geographic advantages of ahigh order or such advantages, long possessed but tardily made availableby the release of national powers from more pressing tasks, mayinstitute a new trend of historical development, resulting more fromstimulating geographic conditions than from the natural capacities oraptitudes of the people themselves. Such developments, though oftenbrilliant, are likely to be short-lived and to end suddenly ordisastrously, because not sustained by a deep-seated national impulseanimating the whole mass of the people. They cease when the firstenthusiasm spends itself, or when outside competition is intensified, orthe material rewards decrease. 

[Sidenote: The case of Spain. ]

An illustration is found in the mediæval history of Spain. Theintercontinental location of the Iberian Peninsula exposed it to theSaracen conquest and to the constant reinforcements to Islam powerfurnished by the Mohammedanized Berbers of North Africa. For sevencenturies this location was the dominant geographic factor in Spain'shistory. It made the expulsion of the Moors the sole object of all theIberian states, converted the country into an armed camp, made thegentleman adventurer and Christian knight the national ideal. It placedthe center of political control high up on the barren plateau ofCastile, far from the centers of population and culture in the riverlowlands or along the coast. It excluded the industrial and commercialdevelopment which was giving bone and sinew to the other Europeanstates. The release of the national energies by the fall of Granada in1492 and the now ingrained spirit of adventure enabled Spain andPortugal to utilize the unparalleled advantage of their geographicalposition at the junction of the Mediterranean and Atlantic highways, andby their great maritime explorations in the fifteenth and sixteenthcenturies, to become foremost among European colonial powers. But thedevelopment was sporadic, not supported by any widespread nationalmovement. In a few decades the maritime preëminence of the IberianPeninsula began to yield to the competition of the Dutch and English, who were, so to speak, saturated with their own maritime environment. Then followed the rapid decay of the sea power of Spain, followed bythat of Portugal, till by 1648 even her coasting trade was in the handsof the Dutch, and Dutch vessels were employed to maintain communicationwith the West Indies. [30]

[Sidenote: Sporadic response to a new environment. ]

We have a later instance of sporadic development under the stimulus ofnew and favorable geographic conditions, a similar anti-climax. Theexpansion of the Russians across the lowlands of Siberia was quite inharmony with the genius of that land-bred people; but when they reachedBering Sea, the enclosed basin, the proximity of the American continent, the island stepping-stones between, and the lure of rich sealskins tothe fur-hunting Cossacks determined a sudden maritime expansion, forwhich the Russian people were unfitted. Beginning in 1747, it swept thecoast of Alaska, located its American administrative center first onKadiak, then on Baranof Island, and by 1812 placed its southern outpostson the California coast near San Francisco Bay and on the FarraloneIslands. [31] Russian convicts were employed to man the crazy boats builtof green lumber on the shores of Bering Sea, and Aleutian hunters withtheir _bidarkas_ were impressed to catch the seal. [32] The movement wasproductive only of countless shipwrecks, many seal skins, and anopportunity to satisfy an old grudge against England. The territorygained was sold to the United States in 1867. This is the one instancein Russian history of any attempt at maritime expansion, and also of anywithdrawal from territory to which the Muscovite power had onceestablished its claim. This fact alone would indicate that onlyexcessively tempting geographic conditions led the Russians into aneconomic and political venture which neither the previously developedaptitudes of the people nor the conditions of population and historicaldevelopment on the Siberian seaboard were able to sustain. 

[Sidenote: The larger conception of the environment. ]

The history and culture of a people embody the effects of previoushabitats and of their final environment; but this means something morethan local geographic conditions. It involves influences emanating fromfar beyond the borders. No country, no continent, no sea, mountain orriver is restricted to itself in the influence which it either exercisesor receives. The history of Austria cannot be understood merely fromAustrian ground. Austrian territory is part of the Mediterraneanhinterland, and therefore has been linked historically with Rome, Italy, and the Adriatic. It is a part of the upper Danube Valley and thereforeshares much of its history with Bavaria and Germany, while the lowerDanube has linked it with the Black Sea, Greece, the Russian steppes, and Asia. The Asiatic Hungarians have pushed forward their ethnicboundary nearly to Vienna. The Austrian capital has seen the warringTurks beneath its walls, and shapes its foreign policy with a view tothe relative strength of the Sultan and the Czar. 

[Sidenote: Unity of the earth. ]

The earth is an inseparable whole. Each country or sea is physically andhistorically intelligible only as a portion of that whole. Currents andwind-systems of the oceans modify the climate of the nearby continents, and direct the first daring navigations of their peoples. Thealternating monsoons of the Indian Ocean guided Arab merchantmen fromancient times back and forth between the Red Sea and the Malabar coastof India. [33] The Equatorial Current and the northeast trade-windcarried the timid ships of Columbus across the Atlantic to America. TheGulf Stream and the prevailing westerlies later gave English vessels theadvantage on the return voyage. Europe is a part of the Atlantic coast. This is a fact so significant that the North Atlantic has become aEuropean sea. The United States also is a part of the Atlantic coast:this is the dominant fact of American history. China forms a section ofthe Pacific rim. This is the fact back of the geographic distribution ofChinese emigration to Annam, Tonkin, Siam, Malacca, the Philippines, East Indies, Borneo, Australia, Hawaiian Islands, the Pacific CoastStates, British Columbia, the Alaskan coast southward from Bristol Bayin Bering Sea, Ecuador and Peru. 

As the earth is one, so is humanity. Its unity of species points to somedegree of communication through a long prehistoric past. Universalhistory is not entitled to the name unless it embraces all parts of theearth and all peoples, whether savage or civilized. To fill the gaps inthe written record it must turn to ethnology and geography, which bytracing the distribution and movements of primitive peoples can oftenreconstruct the most important features of their history. 

Anthropo-geographic problems are never simple. They must all be viewedin the long perspective of evolution and the historical past. Theyrequire allowance for the dominance of different geographic factors atdifferent periods, and for a possible range of geographic influenceswide as the earth itself. In the investigator they call for pains-takinganalysis and, above all, an open mind. 

NOTES TO CHAPTER I

[1] George Adam Smith, Historical Geography of the Holy Land, pp. 149-157. New York, 1897. 

[2] A. P. Brigham, Geographic Influences in American History, Chap. I. Boston, 1903. 

[3] R. H. Whitbeck, Geographic Influences in the Development of NewJersey, _Journal of Geography_, Vol. V, No. 6. January, 1908. 

[4] Hans Helmolt, History of the World, Vol. II, p. 372. London and NewYork, 1902-1906. 

[5] Jean Baptiste Tavernier, Travels in India, 1641-1667. Vol. I, chap. V and map. London, 1889. 

[6] Sir Thomas Holdich, India, p. 305. London, 1905. 

[7] Bunbury, History of Ancient Geography, Vol. II, pp. 464-465, 469. London, 1883. 

[8] _Imperial Gazetteer for India_, Vol. III, p. 109. London, 1885. 

[9] G. G. Chisholm, The Relativity of Geographic Advantages, _ScottishGeog. Mag_. , Vol. XIII, No. 9, Sept. 1897. 

[10] Hugh Robert Mill, International Geography, p. 347. New York, 1902. 

[11] Joseph Partsch, Central Europe, pp. 228-230. London, 1903. 

[12] H. J. Mackinder, Britain and the British Seas, pp. 317-323. London, 1904. 

[13] Captain A. T. Mahan, Influence of Sea Power upon History, pp. 36-38. Boston, 1902. 

[14] G. G. Chisholm, Economic Geography, _Scottish Geog. Mag_. , March, 1908. 

[15] Captain A. T. Mahan, Influence of Sea Power upon History, pp. 37-38. Boston, 1902. 

[16] Boyd Winchester, The Swiss Republic, pp. 123, 124, 145-147. Philadelphia, 1891. 

[17] Montesquieu, Spirit of the Laws, Book XIV, chap. IV. 

[18] Henry Buckle, History of Civilization in England, Vol. I, pp. 86-106. 

[19] Heinrich von Treitschke, _Politik_, Vol. I, p. 225. Leipzig, 1897. This whole chapter on _Land und Leute_ is suggestive. 

[20] W. Z. Ripley, Races of Europe, pp. 524-525. New York, 1899. 

[21] _Ibid. _, 526. 

[22] _Ibid. _, 517-520, 533-536. 

[23] Joseph Partsch, Central Europe, pp. 256-257, 268-271. London, 1903. 

[24] W. Z. Ripley, Races of Europe, p. 89. New York, 1899. 

[25] Strabo, Book VII, chap. I, 2. 

[26] Strabo, Book II, chap. III, 7. 

[27] Plutarch, Solon, pp. 13, 29, 154. 

[28] Hans Helmolt, History of the World, Vol. II, pp. 244-245. New York, 1902-1906. 

[29] Roscher, _National-oekonomik des Ackerbaues_, p. 33, note 3. Stuttgart, 1888. 

[30] Captain A. T. Mahan, Influence of Sea Power upon History, pp. 41-42, 50-53. Boston, 1902. 

[31] H. Bancroft, History of California, Vol. I, pp. 298, 628-635. SanFrancisco. 

[32] Agnes Laut, Vikings of the Pacific, pp. 64-82. New York, 1905. 

[33] Bunbury, History of Ancient Geography, Vol. II, pp. 351, 470-471. London, 1883. 

CHAPTER II

CLASSES OF GEOGRAPHIC INFLUENCES

Into almost every anthropo-geographical problem the element ofenvironment enters in different phases, with different modes ofoperation and varying degrees of importance. Since the causal conceptionof geography demands a detailed analysis of all the relations betweenenvironment and human development, it is advisable to distinguish thevarious classes of geographic influences. 

[Sidenote: Physical effects. ]

Four fundamental classes of effects can be distinguished. 

1. The first class includes direct physical effects of environment, similar to those exerted on plants and animals by their habitat. Certaingeographic conditions, more conspicuously those of climate, applycertain stimuli to which man, like the lower animals, responds by anadaption of his organism to his environment. Many physiologicalpeculiarities of man are due to physical effects of environment, whichdoubtless operated very strongly in the earliest stages of humandevelopment, and in those shadowy ages contributed to thedifferentiation of races. The unity of the human species is as clearlyestablished as the diversity of races and peoples, whose divergencesmust be interpreted chiefly as modifications in response to varioushabitats in long periods of time. 

[Sidenote: Variation and natural conditions. ]

Such modifications have probably been numerous in the persistent andunending movements, shiftings, and migrations which have made up thelong prehistoric history of man. If the origin of species is found invariability and inheritance, variation is undoubtedly influenced by achange of natural conditions. To quote Darwin, "In one sense theconditions of life may be said, not only to cause variability, eitherdirectly or indirectly, but likewise to include natural selection, forthe conditions determine whether this or that variety shall survive. "[34]The variability of man does not mean that every external influenceleaves its mark upon him, but that man as an organism, by thepreservation of beneficent variations and the elimination of deleteriousones, is gradually adapted to his environment, so that he can utilizemost completely that which it contributes to his needs. Thisself-maintenance under outward influences is an essential part of theconception of life which Herbert Spencer defines as the correspondencebetween internal conditions and external circumstances, or August Comteas the harmony between the living being and the surrounding medium or_milieu_. 

According to Virchow, the distinction of races rests upon hereditaryvariations, but heredity itself cannot become active till thecharacteristic or _Zustand_ is produced which is to be handed down. [35]But environment determines what variation shall become stable enough tobe passed on by heredity. For instance, we can hardly err in attributingthe great lung capacity, massive chests, and abnormally large torsos ofthe Quichua and Aymara Indians inhabiting the high Andean plateaus tothe rarified air found at an altitude of 10, 000 or 15, 000 feet above sealevel. Whether these have been acquired by centuries of extreme lungexpansion, or represent the survival of a chance variation of undoubtedadvantage, they are a product of the environment. They are a serioushandicap when the Aymara Indian descends to the plains, where he eitherdies off or leaves descendants with diminishing chests. [36] [See map page101. ]

[Sidenote: Stature and environment]

Darwin holds that many slight changes in animals and plants, such assize, color, thickness of skin and hair, have been produced through foodsupply and climate from the external conditions under which the formslived. [37] Paul Ehrenreich, while regarding the chief race distinctionsas permanent forms, not to be explained by external conditions, nevertheless concedes the slight and slow variation of the sub-raceunder changing conditions of food and climate as beyond doubt. [38]Stature is partly a matter of feeding and hence of geographic condition. In mountain regions, where the food resources are scant, the varietiesof wild animals are characterized by smaller size in general than arecorresponding species in the lowlands. It is a noticeable fact thatdwarfed horses or ponies have originated in islands, in Iceland, theShetlands, Corsica and Sardinia. This is due either to scanty andunvaried food or to excessive inbreeding, or probably to both. Thehorses introduced into the Falkland Islands in 1764 have deteriorated soin size and strength in a few generations that they are in a fair way todevelop a Falkland variety of pony. [39] On the other hand, Mr. HomerDavenport states that the pure-bred Arabian horses raised on his NewJersey stock farm are in the third generation a hand higher than theirgrandsires imported from Arabia, and of more angular build. The resultis due to more abundant and nutritious food and the elimination of longdesert journeys. 

The low stature of the natives prevailing in certain "misery spots" ofEurope, as in the Auvergne Plateau of southern France, is due in part torace, in part to a disastrous artificial selection by the emigration ofthe taller and more robust individuals, but in considerable part to theharsh climate and starvation food-yield of that sterile soil; for thechildren of the region, if removed to the more fertile valleys of theLoire and Garonne, grow to average stature. [40] The effect of a scant anduncertain food supply is especially clear in savages, who have erectedfewer buffers between themselves and the pressure of environment. TheBushmen of the Kalahari Desert are shorter than their Hottentot kindredwho pasture their flocks and herds in the neighboring grasslands. [41]Samoyedes, Lapps, and other hyperborean races of Eurasia are shorterthan their more southern neighbors, the physical record of an immemorialstruggle against cold and hunger. The stunted forms and wretched aspectof the Snake Indians inhabiting the Rocky Mountain deserts distinguishedthese clans from the tall buffalo-hunting tribes of the plains. [42] Anyfeature of geographic environment tending to affect directly thephysical vigor and strength of a people cannot fail to prove a potentfactor in their history. 

[Sidenote: Physical effects of dominant activities. ]

Oftentimes environment modifies the physique of a people indirectly byimposing upon them certain predominant activities, which may develop onepart of the body almost to the point of deformity. This is the effect ofincreased use or disuse which Darwin discusses. He attributes the thinlegs and thick arms of the Payaguas Indians living along the ParaguayRiver to generations of lives spent in canoes, with the lowerextremities motionless and the arm and chest muscles in constantexercise. [43] Livingstone found these same characteristics of broadchests and shoulders with ill-developed legs among the Barotse of theupper Zambesi;[44] and they have been observed in pronounced form, coupled with distinctly impaired powers of locomotion, among theTlingit, Tsimshean, and Haida Indians of the southern Alaskan andBritish Columbia coast, where the geographic conditions of a mountainousand almost strandless shore interdicted agriculture and necessitatedsea-faring activities. [45] An identical environment has produced a likephysical effect upon the canoemen of Tierra del Fuego[46] and theAleutian Islanders, who often sit in their boats twenty hours at atime. [47] These special adaptations are temporary in their nature andtend to disappear with change of occupation, as, for instance, among theTlingit Indians, who develop improved leg muscles when employed aslaborers in the salmon canneries of British Columbia. 

[Sidenote: Effects of climate. ]

Both the direct and indirect physical effects of environment thus farinstanced are obvious in themselves and easily explained. Far differentis it with the majority of physical effects, especially those ofclimate, whose mode of operation is much more obscure than was oncesupposed. The modern geographer does not indulge in the naive hypothesisof the last century, which assumed a prompt and direct effect ofenvironment upon the form and features of man. Carl Ritter regarded thesmall, slit eyes and swollen lids of the Turkoman as "an obvious effectof the desert upon the organism. " Stanhope Smith ascribed the highshoulders and short neck of the Tartars of Mongolia to their habit ofraising their shoulders to protect the neck against the cold; theirsmall, squinting eyes, overhanging brows, broad faces and high cheekbones, to the effect of the bitter, driving winds and the glare of thesnow, till, he says, "every feature by the action of the cold is harshand distorted. "[48] These profound influences of a severe climate uponphysiognomy he finds also among the Lapps, northern Mongolians, Samoyedes and Eskimo. 

[Sidenote: Acclimatization]

Most of these problems are only secondarily grist for the geographer'smill. For instance, when the Aryans descended to the enervating lowlandsof tropical India, and in that debilitating climate lost the qualitieswhich first gave them supremacy, the change which they underwent wasprimarily a physiological one. It can be scientifically described andexplained therefore only by physiologists and physico-chemists; and upontheir investigations the geographer must wait before he approaches theproblem from the standpoint of geographical distribution. Into thissub-class of physical effects come all questions of acclimatization. [49]These are important to the anthropo-geographer, just as they are tocolonial governments like England or France, because they affect thepower of national or racial expansion, and fix the historical fate oftropical lands. The present populations of the earth represent physicaladaptation to their environments. The intense heat and humidity of mosttropical lands prevent any permanent occupation by a native-bornpopulation of pure whites. The catarrhal zone north of the fortiethparallel in America soon exterminates the negroes. [50]

The Indians of South America, though all fundamentally of the sameethnic stock, are variously acclimated to the warm, damp, forestedplains of the Amazon; to the hot, dry, treeless coasts of Peru; and tothe cold, arid heights of the Andes. The habitat that bred them tends tohold them, by restricting the range of climate which they can endure. Inthe zone of the Andean slope lying between 4, 000 and 6, 000 feet ofaltitude, which produces the best flavored coffee and which must becultivated, the imported Indians from the high plateaus and from the lowAmazon plains alike sicken and die after a short time; so that they takeemployment on these coffee plantations for only three or five months, and then return to their own homes. Labor becomes nomadic on theseslopes, and in the intervals these farm lands of intensive agricultureshow the anomaly of a sparse population only of resident managers. [51]Similarly in the high, dry Himalayan valley of the upper Indus, over10, 000 feet above sea level, the natives of Ladak are restricted to ahabitat that yields them little margin of food for natural growth ofpopulation but forbids them to emigrate in search of more, --applies atthe same time the lash to drive and the leash to hold, for thesehighlanders soon die when they reach the plains. [52] Here are twoantagonistic geographic influences at work from the same environment, one physical and the other social-economic. The Ladaki have reached aninteresting resolution of these two forces by the institution ofpolyandry, which keeps population practically stationary. 

[Sidenote: Pigmentation and climate. ]

The relation of pigmentation to climate has long interested geographersas a question of environment; but their speculations on the subject havebeen barren, because the preliminary investigations of the physiologist, physicist and chemist are still incomplete. The general fact ofincreasing nigrescence from temperate towards equatorial regions isconspicuous enough, despite some irregularity of the shading. [53] Thisfact points strongly to some direct relation between climate andpigmentation, but gives no hint how the pigmental processes areaffected. The physiologist finds that in the case of the negro, the darkskin is associated with a dense cuticle, diminished perspiration, smaller chests and less respiratory power, a lower temperature and morerapid pulse, [54] all which variations may enter into the problem of thenegroes coloring. The question is therefore by no means simple. 

Yet it is generally conceded by scientists that pigment is a protectivedevice of nature. The negro's skin is comparatively insensitive to a sunheat that blisters a white man. Livingstone found the bodies of albinonegroes in Bechuana Land always blistered on exposure to the sun, [55]and a like effect has been observed among albino Polynesians, andMelanesians of Fiji. [56] Paul Ehrenreich finds that the degree ofcoloration depends less upon annual temperature than upon the directeffect of the sun's rays; and that therefore a people dwelling in acool, dry climate, but exposed to the sun may be darker than another ina hot, moist climate but living in a dense forest. The forest-dwellingBotokudos of the upper San Francisco River in Brazil are fairer than thekindred Kayapo tribe, who inhabit the open campos; and the Arawak of thePurus River forests are lighter than their fellows in the central MattoGrosso. [57] Sea-faring coast folk, who are constantly exposed to thesun, especially in the Tropics, show a deeper pigmentation than theirkindred of the wooded interior. [58] The coast Moros of western Mindanaoare darker than the Subanos, their Malay brethren of the back country, the lightness of whose color can be explained by their forest life. [59]So the Duallas of the Kamerun coast of Africa are darker than theBakwiri inhabiting the forested mountains just behind them, though bothtribes belong to the Bantu group of people. [60] Here light, incontradistinction to heat, appears the dominant factor in pigmentation. A recent theory, advanced by von Schmaedel in 1895, rests upon thechemical power of light. It holds that the black pigment renders thenegro skin insensitive to the luminous or actinic effects of solarradiation, which are far more destructive to living protoplasm than themerely calorific effects. [61]

[Sidenote: Pigmentation and altitude]

Coloration responds to other more obscure influences of environment. Aclose connection between pigmentation and elevation above sea level hasbeen established: a high altitude operates like a high latitude. Blondness increases appreciably on the higher slopes of the BlackForest, Vosges Mountains, and Swiss Alps, though these isolatedhighlands are the stronghold of the brunette Alpine race. [62] Livi, inhis treatise on military anthropometry, deduced a special action ofmountains upon pigmentation on observing a prevailing increase ofblondness in Italy above the four-hundred meter line, a phenomenon whichcame out as strongly in Basilicata and Calabria provinces of the southas in Piedmont and Lombardy in the north. [63] The dark Hamitic Berbersof northern Africa have developed an unmistakable blond variant in highvalleys of the Atlas range, which in a sub-tropical region rises to theheight of 12, 000 feet. Here among the Kabyles the population is fair;grey, blue or green eyes are frequent, as is also reddish blond orchestnut hair. [64] Waitz long ago affirmed this tendency of mountaineersto lighter coloring from his study of primitive peoples. [65] Themodification can not be attributed wholly to climatic contrast betweenmountain and plain. Some other factor, like the economic poverty of theenvironment and the poor food-supply, as Livi suggests, has had a handin the result; but just what it is or how it has operated cannot yet bedefined. [66]

[Sidenote: Difficulty of Generalization]

Enough has been said to show that the geographer can formulate no broadgeneralization as to the relation of pigmentation and climate from theoccurrence of the darkest skins in the Tropics; because this fact isweakened by the appearance also of lighter tints in the hottestdistricts, and of darker ones in arctic and temperate regions. Thegeographer must investigate the questions when and where deeper shadesdevelop in the skins of fair races; what is the significance of darkskins in the cold zones and of fair ones in hot zones. His answer mustbe based largely on the conclusions of physiologists and physicists, andonly when these have reached a satisfactory solution of each detail ofthe problem can the geographer summarize the influence of environmentupon pigmentation. The rule can therefore safely be laid down that inall investigation of geographic influences upon the permanent physicalcharacteristics of races, the geographic distribution of these should beleft out of consideration till the last, since it so easilymisleads. [67] Moreover, owing to the ceaseless movements of mankind, these effects do not remain confined to the region that produced them, but pass on with the wandering throng in whom they have once developed, and in whom they endure or vanish according as they prove beneficial ordeleterious in the new habitat. 

[Sidenote: Psychical effects. ]

II. More varied and important are the psychical effects of geographicenvironment. As direct effects they are doubtless bound up in manyphysiological modifications; and as influences of climate, they helpdifferentiate peoples and races in point of temperament. They arereflected in man's religion and his literature, in his modes of thoughtand figures of speech. Blackstone states that "in the Isle of Man, totake away a horse or ox was no felony, but a trespass, because of thedifficulty in that little territory to conceal them or to carry themoff; but to steal a pig or a fowl, which is easily done, was a capitalmisdemeanour, and the offender punished with death. " The judges ordeemsters in this island of fishermen swore to execute the laws asimpartially "as the herring's backbone doth lie in the middle of thefish. "[68] The whole mythology of the Polynesians is an echo of theencompassing ocean. The cosmography of every primitive people, theirfirst crude effort in the science of the universe, bears the impress oftheir habitat. The Eskimo's hell is a place of darkness, storm andintense cold;[69] the Jew's is a place of eternal fire. Buddha, born inthe steaming Himalayan piedmont, fighting the lassitude induced by heatand humidity, pictured his heaven as Nirvana, the cessation of allactivity and individual life. 

[Sidenote: Indirect effect upon language]

Intellectual effects of environment may appear in the enrichment of alanguage in one direction to a rare nicety of expression; but this maybe combined with a meager vocabulary in all other directions. Thegreatest cattle-breeders among the native Africans, such as the Hererosof western Damaraland and the Dinkas of the upper White Nile, have anamazing choice of words for all colors describing their animals--brown, dun, red, white, dapple, and so on in every gradation of shade and hue. The Samoyedes of northern Russia have eleven or twelve terms todesignate the various grays and browns of their reindeer, despite theirotherwise low cultural development. [70] The speech of nomads has anabundance of expressions for cattle in every relation of life. Itincludes different words for breeding, pregnancy, death, andslaughtering in relation to every different kind of domestic animal. TheMagyars, among whom pastoral life still survives on the low plains ofthe Danube and Theiss, have a generic word for herd, _csorda_, andspecial terms for herds of cattle, horses, sheep, and swine. [71] Whilethe vocabulary of Malays and Polynesians is especially rich in nauticalterms, the Kirghis shepherd tribes who wander over the highlands ofwestern Asia from the Tian Shan to the Hindu Kush have four differentterms for four kinds of mountain passes. A _daban_ is a difficult, rockydefile; an _art_ is very high and dangerous; a _bel_ is a low, easypass, and a _kutal_ is a broad opening between low hills. [72]

To such influences man is a passive subject, especially in the earlierstages of his development; but there are more important influencesemanating from his environment which affect him as an active agent, challenge his will by furnishing the motives for its exercise, givepurpose to his activities, and determine the direction which they shalltake. [73] These mold his mind and character through the media of hiseconomic and social life, and produce effects none the less importantbecause they are secondary. About these anthropo-geography can reachsurer conclusions than regarding direct psychical effects, because itcan trace their mode of operation as well as define the result. Directpsychical effects are more matters of conjecture, whose causation isasserted rather than proved. They seem to float in the air, detachedfrom the solid ground under foot, and are therefore subject matter forthe psychologist rather than the geographer. 

[Sidenote: The great man in history. ]

What of the great man in this geographical interpretation of history? Itseems to take no account of him, or to put him into the melting-pot withthe masses. Both are to some extent true. As a science, anthropo-geography can deal only with large averages, and these excludeor minimize the exceptional individual. Moreover, geographic conditionswhich give this or that bent to a nation's purposes and determine itsaggregate activities have a similar effect upon the individual; but hemay institute a far-seeing policy, to whose wisdom only gradually is thepeople awakened. The acts of the great man are rarely arbitrary orartificial; he accelerates or retards the normal course of development, but cannot turn it counter to the channels of natural conditions. As arule he is a product of the same forces that made his people. He moveswith them and is followed by them under a common impulse. Daniel Boone, that picturesque figure leading the van of the westward movement overthe Allegheny Mountains, was born of his frontier environment and founda multitude of his kind in that region of backwoods farms to follow himinto the wilderness. Thomas Jefferson of Virginia, in the LouisianaPurchase, carried out the policy of expansion adumbrated in GovernorSpottswood's expedition with the Knights of the Golden Horseshoe overthe Blue Ridge in 1712. Jefferson's daring consummation of the purchasewithout government authority showed his community of purpose with themajority of the people. Peter the Great's location of his capital at St. Petersburg, usually stigmatized as the act of a despot, was made inresponse to natural conditions offering access to the Baltic nations, just as certainly as ten centuries before similar conditions andidentical advantages led the early Russian merchants to build up a townat nearby Novgorod, in easy water connection with the Balticcommerce. [74]

[Sidenote: Economic and social effects. ]

III. Geographic conditions influence the economic and social developmentof a people by the abundance, paucity, or general character of thenatural resources, by the local ease or difficulty of securing thenecessaries of life, and by the possibility of industry and commerceafforded by the environment. From the standpoint of production andexchange, these influences are primarily the subject matter of economicand commercial geography; but since they also permeate national life, determine or modify its social structure, condemn it to the dwarfingeffects of national poverty, or open to it the cultural and politicalpossibilities resident in national wealth, they are legitimate materialalso for anthropo-geography. 

[Sidenote: Size of the social group. ]

They are especially significant because they determine the size of thesocial group. This must be forever small in areas of limited resourcesor of limited extent, as in the little islands of the world and the yetsmaller oases. The desert of Chinese Turkestan supports, in certaindetached spots of river-born fertility, populations like the 60, 000 ofKashgar, and from this size groups all the way down to the singlefamilies which Younghusband found living by a mere trickle of a streamflowing down the southern slope of the Tian Shan. Small islands, according to their size, fertility, and command of trade, may harbor asparse and scant population, like the five hundred souls struggling foran ill-fed existence on the barren Westman Isles of Iceland; or acompact, teeming, yet absolutely small social group, like that crowdingMalta or the Bermudas. Whether sparsely or compactly distributed, suchgroups suffer the limitations inherent in their small size. They areforever excluded from the historical significance attaching to thelarge, continuously distributed populations of fertile continentallands. 

[Sidenote: Effect upon movements of peoples. ]

IV. The next class belongs exclusively to the domain of geography, because it embraces the influence of the features of the earth's surfacein directing the movements and ultimate distribution of mankind. Itincludes the effect of natural barriers, like mountains, deserts, swamps, and seas, in obstructing or deflecting the course of migratingpeople and in giving direction to national expansion; it considers thetendency of river valleys and treeless plains to facilitate suchmovements, the power of rivers, lakes, bays and oceans either to blockthe path or open a highway, according as navigation is in a primitive oradvanced stage; and finally the influence of all these natural featuresin determining the territory which a people is likely to occupy, and theboundaries which shall separate from their neighbors. 

[Sidenote: River routes. ]

The lines of expansion followed by the French and English in thesettlement of America and also the extent of territory covered by eachwere powerfully influenced by geographic conditions. The early Frenchexplorers entered the great east-west waterway of the St. Lawrence Riverand the Great Lakes, which carried them around the northern end of theAppalachian barrier into the heart of the continent, planted them on thelow, swampy, often navigable watershed of the Mississippi, and startedthem on another river voyage of nearly two thousand miles to the Gulf ofMexico. Here were the conditions and temptation for almost unlimitedexpansion; hence French Canada reached to the head of Lake Superior, andFrench Louisiana to the sources of the Missouri, To the lot of theEnglish fell a series of short rivers with fertile valleys, nearlybarred at their not distant sources by a wall of forested mountains, butseparated from one another by low watersheds which facilitated lateralexpansion over a narrow belt between mountains and sea. Here a region ofmild climate and fertile soil suited to agriculture, enclosed by strongnatural boundaries, made for compact settlement, in contrast to the widediffusion of the French. Later, when a growing population pressedagainst the western barrier, mountain gates opened at Cumberland Gap andthe Mohawk Valley; the Ohio River and the Great Lakes became interiorthoroughfares, and the northwestern prairies lines of least resistanceto the western settler. Rivers played the same part in directing andexpediting this forward movement, as did the Lena and the Amoor in theRussian advance into Siberia, the Humber and the Trent in the progressof the Angles into the heart of Britain, the Rhone and Danube in themarch of the Romans into central Europe. 

[Sidenote: Segregation and accessibility. ]

The geographical environment of a people may be such as to segregatethem from others, and thereby to preserve or even intensify theirnatural characteristics; or it may expose them to extraneous influences, to an infusion of new blood and new ideas, till their peculiarities aretoned down, their distinctive features of dialect or national dress orprovincial customs eliminated, and the people as a whole approach to thecomposite type of civilized humanity. A land shut off by mountains orsea from the rest of the world tends to develop a homogeneous people, since it limits or prevents the intrusion of foreign elements; or whenonce these are introduced, it encourages their rapid assimilation by thestrongly interactive life of a confined locality. Therefore large orremote islands are, as a rule, distinguished by the unity of theirinhabitants in point of civilization and race characteristics. WitnessGreat Britain, Ireland, Japan, Iceland, as also Australia and NewZealand at the time of their discovery. The highlands of the SouthernAppalachians, which form the "mountain backyards" of Kentucky, Tennesseeand North Carolina, are peopled by the purest English stock in theUnited States, descendants of the backwoodsmen of the late eighteenthcentury. Difficulty of access and lack of arable land have combined todiscourage immigration. In consequence, foreign elements, including theelsewhere ubiquitous negro, are wanting, except along the few railroadswhich in recent years have penetrated this country. Here survive aneighteenth century English, Christmas celebrated on Twelfth Night, thespinning wheel, and a belief in Joshua's power to arrest the course ofthe sun. [75]

An easily accessible land is geographically hospitable to allnew-comers, facilitates the mingling of peoples, the exchange ofcommodities and ideas. The amalgamation of races in such regions dependsupon the similarity or diversity of the ethnic elements and the durationof the common occupation. The broad, open valley of the Danube from theBlack Sea to Vienna contains a bizarre mixture of several stocks--Turks, Bulgarians, various families of pure Slavs, Roumanians, Hungarians, andGermans. These elements are too diverse and their occupation of thevalley too recent for amalgamation to have advanced very far as yet. Themaritime plain and open river valleys of northern France show a completefusion of the native Celts with the Saxons, Franks, and Normans who havesuccessively drifted into the region, just as the Teutonic and scanterSlav elements have blended in the Baltic plains from the Elbe to theVistula. 

[Sidenote: Change of habitat. ]

Here are four different classes of geographic influences, all which maybecome active in modifying a people when it changes its habitat. Many ofthe characteristics acquired in the old home still live on, or at bestyield slowly to the new environment. This is especially true of thedirect physical and psychical effects. But a country may work a promptand radical change in the social organization of an immigrant people bythe totally new conditions of economic life which it presents. These maybe either greater wealth or poverty of natural resources than the racehas previously known, new stimulants or deterrents to commerce andintercourse, and new conditions of climate which affect the efficiencyof the workman and the general character of production. From these awhole complex mass of secondary effects may follow. 

The Aryans and Mongols, leaving their homes in the cool barren highlandsof Central Asia where nature dispensed her gifts with a miserly hand, and coming down to the hot, low, fertile plains of the Indian rivers, underwent several fundamental changes in the process of adaptation totheir new environment. An enervating climate did its work in slakingtheir energies; but more radical still was the change wrought by thecontrast of poverty and abundance, enforced asceticism and luxury, presented by the old and new home. The restless, tireless shepherdsbecame a sedentary, agricultural people; the abstemious nomads, --spare, sinewy, strangers to indulgence--became a race of rulers, revelling inluxury, lording it over countless subjects; finally, their numbersincreased rapidly, no longer kept down by the scant subsistence of aridgrasslands and scattered oases. 

In a similar way, the Arab of the desert became transformed into thesedentary lord of Spain. In the luxuriance of field and orchard whichhis skilful methods of irrigation and tillage produced, in the growingpredominance of the intellectual over the nomadic military life, of thecomplex affairs of city and mart over the simple tasks of herdsman orcultivator, he lost the benefit of the early harsh training andtherewith his hold upon his Iberian empire. Biblical history gives usthe picture of the Sheik Abraham, accompanied by his nephew Lot, movingup from the rainless plains of Mesopotamia with his flocks and herdsinto the better watered Palestine. There his descendants in the gardenland of Canaan became an agricultural people; and the problem of Mosesand the Judges was to prevent their assimilation in religion and customto the settled Semitic tribes about them, and to make them preserve theideals born in the starry solitudes of the desert. 

[Sidenote: Retrogression in new habitat. ]

The change from the nomadic to the sedentary life represents an economicadvance. Sometimes removal to strongly contrasted geographic conditionsnecessitates a reversion to a lower economic type of existence. TheFrench colonists who came to Lower Canada in the seventeenth andeighteenth centuries found themselves located in a region of intensecold, where arable soil was inferior in quality and limited in amount, producing no staple like the tobacco of Virginia or the wheat ofMaryland or the cotton of South Carolina or the sugar of the WestIndies, by which a young colony might secure a place in European trade. But the snow-wrapped forests of Canada yielded an abundance offur-bearing animals, the fineness and thickness of whose pelts were bornof this frozen north. Into their remotest haunts at the head of LakeSuperior or of Hudson Bay, long lines of rivers and lakes opened levelwater roads a thousand miles or more from the crude little colonialcapital at Quebec. And over in Europe beaver hats and fur-trimmedgarments were all the style! So the plodding farmer from Normandy andthe fisherman from Poitou, transferred to Canadian soil, wereirresistibly drawn into the adventurous life of the trapper andfur-trader. The fur trade became the accepted basis of colonial life;the _voyageur_ and _courier de bois_, clad in skins, paddling upice-rimmed streams in their birch-bark canoes, fraternizing with Indianswho were their only companions in that bleak interior, and married oftento dusky squaws, became assimilated to the savage life about them andreverted to the lower hunter stage of civilization. [76]

[Sidenote: The Boers of South Africa]

Another pronounced instance of rapid retrogression under new unfavorablegeographic conditions is afforded by the South African Boer. Thetransfer from the busy commercial cities of the Rhine mouths to thefar-away periphery of the world's trade, from the intensive agricultureof small deltaic gardens and the scientific dairy farming of the moistNetherlands to the semi-arid pastures of the high, treeless _veldt_, where they were barred from contact with the vivifying sea and itsship-borne commerce, has changed the enterprising seventeenth centuryHollander into the conservative pastoral Boer. Dutch cleanliness hasnecessarily become a tradition to a people who can scarcely find waterfor their cattle. The comfort and solid bourgeois elegance of the Dutchhome lost its material equipment in the Great Trek, when the long wagonjourney reduced household furniture to its lowest terms. House-wifelyhabits and order vanished in the semi-nomadic life which followed. [77]The gregarious instinct, bred by the closely-packed population of littleHolland, was transformed to a love of solitude, which in all landscharacterizes the people of a remote and sparsely inhabited frontier. Itis a common saying that the Boer cannot bear to see another man's smokefrom his _stoep_, just as the early Trans-Allegheny pioneer was alwayson the move westward, because he could not bear to hear his neighbor'swatch-dog bark. Even the Boer language has deteriorated under theeffects of isolation and a lower status of civilization. The native_Taal_ differs widely from the polished speech of Holland; it preservessome features of the High Dutch of two centuries ago, but has lostinflexions and borrowed words for new phenomena from the English, Kaffirs and Hottentots; can express no abstract ideas, only the concreteideas of a dull, work-a-day world. [78]

The new habitat may eliminate many previously acquired characteristicsand hence transform a people, as in the case of the Boers; or it mayintensify tribal or national traits, as in the seafaring propensities ofthe Angles and Saxons when transferred to Britain, and of theseventeenth century English when transplanted to the indented coasts ofNew England; or it may tolerate mere survival or the slow dissuetude ofqualities which escape any particular pressure in the new environment, and which neither benefit nor handicap in the modified struggle forexistence. 

NOTES TO CHAPTER II

[34] Darwin, Origin of Species, Chap. V, p. 166. New York, 1895. 

[35] E. Virchow, _Rassenbildung und Erblichkeit_, BastianFestschrift, pp. 14, 43, 44. Berlin, 1896. 

[36] Darwin, Descent of Man, pp. 34-35. New York, 1899. 

[37] Darwin, Origin of Species, Chap. I, pp. 8-9. New York, 1895. 

[38] P. Ehrenreich, _Die Urbewohner Brasiliens_, p. 30. Braunschweig, 1897. 

[39] Ratzel, _Die Erde und das Leben_, Vol. I, pp. 364, 365. Leipzig andVienna, 1901. 

[40] W. Z. Ripley, Races of Europe, pp. 79-86, 96, 100. New York, 1899. 

[41] T. Waitz, Anthropology, pp. 57-58. Edited by J. F. Collingwood. London, 1863. 

[42] Schoolcraft, Indian Tribes of the United States, Vol. I, pp. 198-200, 219. Philadelphia, 1853. 

[43] Darwin, Descent of Man, p. 33. New York, 1899. 

[44] D. Livingstone, Missionary Travels, p. 266. New York, 1858. 

[45] Alaska, _Eleventh Census Report_, pp. 54, 56. Washington, 1893, andAlbert P. Niblack, The Coast Indians of Southern Alaska and NorthernBritish Columbia, p. 237. Washington, 1888. 

[46] Fitz-Roy, Voyage of the Beagle, Vol. II, pp. 130-132, 137, 138. London, 1839. 

[47] H. Bancroft, Native Races, Vol. I, pp. 88-89. San Francisco, 1886. 

[48] S. Stanhope Smith, Essay on the Causes of the Variety of Complexionand Figure in the Human Species, pp. 103-110. New Brunswick and NewYork, 1810. 

[49] For full discussion see A. R. Wallace's article on acclimatizationin Encyclopedia Britanica, and W. Z. Ripley, Races of Europe. Chap. XXI. New York, 1899. 

[50] D. G. Brinton, Races and Peoples, pp. 39-41. Philadelphia, 1901. 

[51] Darwin, Descent of Man, pp. 34-35. New York, 1899. 

[52] E. F. Knight, Where Three Empires Meet, pp. 137-138. London, 1897. 

[53] W. Z. Ripley, Races of Europe, pp. 58-71, Map. New York, 1898. 

[54] _Ibid. _, p. 566. D. G. Brinton, Races and Peoples, pp. 29-30. Philadelphia, 1901. 

[55] D. Livingstone, Missionary Travels, p. 607. New York, 1858. 

[56] Williams and Calvert, Fiji and the Fijians, p. 83, New York, 1859. 

[57] P. Ehrenreich, _Die Urbewohner Brasiliens_, p. 32. Braunschweig, 1897. 

[58] T. Waitz, Anthropology, pp. 46-49. Edited by Collingwood, London, 1863. 

[59] _Philippine Census_, Vol. I, p. 552. Washington, 1903. 

[60] F. Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. III, p. 106. London, 1908. 

[61] Major Charles E. Woodruff, The Effect of Tropical Light on theWhite Man, New York, 1905, is a suggestive but not convincing discussionof the theory. 

[62] W. Z. Ripley, Races of Europe, pp. 74-77. New York, 1899. 

[63] Quoted in G. Sergi, The Mediterranean Race, p. 73. London and NewYork, 1901. 

[64] _Ibid. _, pp. 63-69, 74-75. 

[65] T. Waitz, Anthropology, pp. 44-45. Edited by J. F. Collingwood, London, 1863. 

[66] W. Z. Ripley, Races of Europe, p. 76. New York, 1899. 

[67] For able discussion, see Topinard, Anthropology, pp. 385-392. Tr. From French, London, 1894. 

[68] J. Johnson, Jurisprudence of the Isle of Man, pp. 44, 71. Edinburgh, 1811. 

[69] Charles F. Hall, Arctic Researches and Life among the Eskimo, p. 571. New York, 1866. Franz Boas, The Central Eskimo, _Sixth AnnualReport of the Bureau of Ethnology_, pp. 588-590. Washington, 1888. 

[70] Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. I, p. 35. London, 1896-1898. 

[71] Roscher, _National-Oekonomik des Ackerbaues_, p. 34, note 8. Stuttgart, 1888. 

[72] Elisée Reclus, The Earth and Its Inhabitants, _Asia_, Vol. I, p. 171. New York, 1895. 

[73] Alfred Hettner, _Die Geographie des Menschen_, pp. 409-410 in_Geographische Zeitschrift_, Vol. XIII, No. 8. Leipzig, 1907. 

[74] S. B. Boulton, The Russian Empire, pp. 60-64. London, 1882. 

[75] E. C. Semple, The Anglo-Saxons of the Kentucky Mountains, _TheGeographical Journal_, Vol. XVII, No. 6, pp. 588-623. London, 1901. 

[76] E. C. Semple, American History and its Geographic Conditions, pp. 25-31. Boston, 1903. The Influence of Geographic Environment on theLower St. Lawrence, Bull. _Amer. Geog. Society_, Vol. XXXVI, p. 449-466. New York, 1904. 

[77] A. R. Colquhoun, Africander Land, pp. 200-201. New York, 1906. 

[78] _Ibid. _, pp. 140-145. James Bryce, Impressions of South Africa, p. 398. New York, 1897. 

CHAPTER III

SOCIETY AND STATE IN RELATION TO THE LAND

[Sidenote: People and land. ]

Every clan, tribe, state or nation includes two ideas, a people and itsland, the first unthinkable without the other. History, sociology, ethnology touch only the inhabited areas of the earth. These areas gaintheir final significance because of the people who occupy them; theirlocal conditions of climate, soil, natural resources, physical featuresand geographic situation are important primarily as factors in thedevelopment of actual or possible inhabitants. A land is fullycomprehended only when studied in the light of its influence upon itspeople, and a people cannot be understood apart from the field of itsactivities. More than this, human activities are fully intelligible onlyin relation to the various geographic conditions which have stimulatedthem in different parts of the world. The principles of the evolution ofnavigation, of agriculture, of trade, as also the theory of population, can never reach their correct and final statement, unless the data forthe conclusions are drawn from every part of the world, and each factinterpreted in the light of the local conditions whence it sprang. Therefore anthropology, sociology and history should be permeated bygeography. 

[Sidenote: Political geography and history. ]

In history, the question of territory, --by which is meant mere area incontrast to specific geographic conditions--has constantly come to thefront, because a state obviously involved land and boundaries, andassumed as its chief function the defence and extension of these. Therefore political geography developed early as an offshoot of history. Political science has often formulated its principles without regard tothe geographic conditions of states, but as a matter of fact, the mostfruitful political policies of nations have almost invariably had ageographic core. Witness the colonial policy of Holland, England, Franceand Portugal, the free-trade policy of England, the militantism ofGermany, the whole complex question of European balance of power and theBosporus, and the Monroe Doctrine of the United States. Dividing linesbetween political parties tend to follow approximately geographic linesof cleavage; and these make themselves apparent at recurring intervalsof national upheaval, perhaps with, centuries between, like a submarinevolcanic rift. In England the southeastern plain and the northwesternuplands have been repeatedly arrayed against each other, from the Romanconquest which embraced the lowlands up to about the 500-foot contourline, [79] through the War of the Roses and the Civil War, [80] to thestruggle for the repeal of the Corn Laws and the great Reform Bill of1832. [81] Though the boundary lines have been only roughly the same andeach district has contained opponents of the dominant local party, nevertheless the geographic core has been plain enough. 

[Sidenote: Political versus social geography. ]

The land is a more conspicuous factor in the history of states than inthe history of society, but not more necessary and potent. Wars, whichconstitute so large a part of political history, have usually aimed moreor less directly at acquisition or retention of territory; they havemade every petty quarrel the pretext for mulcting the weaker nation ofpart of its land. Political maps are therefore subject to sudden andradical alterations, as when France's name was wiped off the NorthAmerican continent in 1763, or when recently Spain's sovereignty in theWestern Hemisphere was obliterated. But the race stocks, languages, customs, and institutions of both France and Spain remained after theflags had departed. The reason is that society is far more deeply rootedin the land than is a state, does not expand or contract its area soreadily. Society is always, in a sense, _adscripta glebae_; an expandingstate which incorporates a new piece of territory inevitablyincorporates its inhabitants, unless it exterminates or expels them. Yetbecause racial and social geography changes slowly, quietly andimperceptibly, like all those fundamental processes which we callgrowth, it is not so easy and obvious a task to formulate a natural lawfor the territorial relations of the various hunter, pastoral nomadic, agricultural, and industrial types of society as for those of thegrowing state. 

[Sidenote: Land basis of society. ]

Most systems of sociology treat man as if he were in some way detachedfrom the earth's surface; they ignore the land basis of society. Theanthropo-geographer recognizes the various social forces, economic andpsychologic, which sociologists regard as the cement of societies; buthe has something to add. He sees in the land occupied by a primitivetribe or a highly organized state the underlying material bond holdingsociety together, the ultimate basis of their fundamental socialactivities, which are therefore derivatives from the land. He sees thecommon territory exercising an integrating force, --weak in primitivecommunities where the group has established only a few slight andtemporary relations with its soil, so that this low social complexbreaks up readily like its organic counterpart, the low animal organismfound in an amoeba; he sees it growing stronger with every advance incivilization involving more complex relations to the land, --with settledhabitations, with increased density of population, with a discriminatingand highly differentiated use of the soil, with the exploitation ofmineral resources, and finally with that far-reaching exchange ofcommodities and ideas which means the establishment of variedextra-territorial relations. Finally, the modern society or state hasgrown into every foot of its own soil, exploited its every geographicadvantage, utilized its geographic location to enrich itself byinternational trade, and when possible, to absorb outlying territoriesby means of colonies. The broader this geographic base, the richer, morevaried its resources, and the more favorable its climate to theirexploitation, the more numerous and complex are the connections whichthe members of a social group can establish with it, and through it witheach other; or in other words, the greater may be its ultimatehistorical significance. The polar regions and the subtropical deserts, on the other hand, permit man to form only few and intermittentrelations with any one spot, restrict economic methods to the lowerstages of development, produce only the small, weak, loosely organizedhorde, which never evolves into a state so long as it remains in thatretarding environment. 

[Sidenote: Morgan's Societas. ]

Man in his larger activities, as opposed to his mere physiological orpsychological processes, cannot be studied apart from the land which heinhabits. Whether we consider him singly or in a group--family, clan, tribe or state--we must always consider him or his group in relation toa piece of land. The ancient Irish sept, Highland clan, Russian mir, Cherokee hill-town, Bedouin tribe, and the ancient Helvetian canton, like the political state of history, have meant always a group of peopleand a bit of land. The first presupposes the second. In all cases theform and size of the social group, the nature of its activities, thetrend and limit of its development will be strongly influenced by thesize and nature of its habitat. The land basis is always present, inspite of Morgan's artificial distinction between a theoreticallylandless _societas_, held together only by the bond of common blood, andthe political _civitas_ based upon land. [82] Though primitive societyfound its conscious bond in common blood, nevertheless the land bond wasalways there, and it gradually asserted its fundamental character withthe evolution of society. 

The savage and barbarous groups which in Morgan's classification wouldfall under the head of _societas_ have nevertheless a clear conceptionof their ownership of the tribal lands which they use in common. Thisidea is probably of very primitive origin, arising from the associationof a group with its habitat, whose food supply they regard as amonopoly. [83] This is true even of migratory hunting tribes. They claim acertain area whose boundaries, however, are often ill-defined andsubject to fluctuations, because the lands are not held by permanentoccupancy and cultivation. An exceptional case is that of the ShoshoneIndians, inhabiting the barren Utah basin and the upper valleys of theSnake and Salmon Rivers, who are accredited with no sense of ownershipof the soil. In their natural state they roved about in small, totallyunorganized bands or single families, and changed their locations sowidely, that they seemed to lay no claim to any particular portion. Thehopeless sterility of the region and its poverty of game kept itsdestitute inhabitants constantly on the move to gather in the meagerfood supply, and often restricted the social group to the family. [84]Here the bond between land and tribe, and hence between the members ofthe tribe, was the weakest possible. 

[Sidenote: Land bond in hunter tribes. ]

The usual type of tribal ownership was presented by the Comanches, nomadic horse Indians who occupied the grassy plains of northern Texas. They held their territory and the game upon it as the common property ofthe tribe, and jealously guarded the integrity of their domain. [85] Thechief Algonquin tribes, who occupied the territory between the OhioRiver and the Great Lakes, had each its separate domain, within which itshifted its villages every few years; but its size depended upon thepower of the tribe to repel encroachment upon its hunting grounds. Relying mainly on the chase and fishing, little on agriculture, fortheir subsistence, their relations to their soil were superficial andtransitory, their tribal organization in a high degree unstable. [86]Students of American ethnology generally agree that most of the Indiantribes east of the Mississippi were occupying definite areas at the timeof the discovery, and were to a considerable extent sedentary andagricultural. Though nomadic within the tribal territory, as they movedwith the season in pursuit of game, they returned to their villages, which were shifted only at relatively long intervals. [87]

The political organization of the native Australians, low as they werein the social scale, seems to have been based chiefly on the claim ofeach wretched wandering tribe to a definite territory. [88] In northcentral Australia, where even a very sparse population has sufficed tosaturate the sterile soil, tribal boundaries have become fixed andinviolable, so that even war brings no transfer of territory. Land andpeople are identified. The bond is cemented by their primitive religion, for the tribe's spirit ancestors occupied this special territory. [89] Ina like manner a very definite conception of tribal ownership of landprevails among the Bushmen and Bechuanas of South Africa; and to thepastoral Hereros the alienation of their land is inconceivable. [90] [Seemap page 105. ]

A tribe of hunters can never be more than a small horde, because thesimple, monotonous savage economy permits no concentration ofpopulation, no division of labor except that between the sexes, andhence no evolution of classes. The common economic level of all isreflected in the simple social organization, [91] which necessarily haslittle cohesion, because the group must be prepared to break up andscatter in smaller divisions, when its members increase or its savagesupplies decrease even a little. Such primitive groups cannot grow intolarger units, because these would demand more roots sent down into thesustaining soil; but they multiply by fission, like the infusorialmonads, and thereafter lead independent existences remote from eachother. This is the explanation of multiplication of dialects amongsavage tribes. 

[Sidenote: Land bond in fisher tribes. ]

Fishing tribes have their chief occupation determined by their habitats, which are found along well stocked rivers, lakes, or coastal fishinggrounds. Conditions here encourage an early adoption of sedentary life, discourage wandering except for short periods, and facilitate theintroduction of agriculture wherever conditions of climate and soilpermit. Hence these fisher folk develop relatively large and permanentsocial groups, as testified by the ancient lake-villages of Switzerland, based upon a concentrated food-supply resulting from a systematic andoften varied exploitation of the local resources. The coöperation andsubmission to a leader necessary in pelagic fishing often gives thepreliminary training for higher political organization. [92] All theprimitive stocks of the Brazilian Indians, except the mountain Ges, arefishermen and agriculturists; hence their annual migrations are keptwithin narrow limits. Each linguistic group occupies a fixed andrelatively well defined district. [93] Stanley found along the Congolarge permanent villages of the natives, who were engaged in fishing andtilling the fruitful soil, but knew little about the country ten milesback from the river. These two generous means of subsistence areeverywhere combined in Polynesia, Micronesia and Melanesia: there theyare associated with dense populations and often with advanced politicalorganization, as we find it in the feudal monarchy of Tonga and thesavage Fiji Islands. [94] Fisher tribes, therefore, get an early impulseforward in civilization;[95] and even where conditions do not permit theupward step to agriculture, these tribes have permanent relations withtheir land, form stable social groups, and often utilize their locationon a natural highway to develop systematic trade. For instance, on thenorthwest coast of British Columbia and Southern Alaska, the Haida, Tlingit and Tsimshean Indians have portioned out all the land abouttheir seaboard villages among the separate families or households ashunting, fishing, and berrying grounds. These are regarded as privateproperty and are handed down from generation to generation. If they areused by anyone other than the owner, the privilege must be paid for. Every salmon stream has its proprietor, whose summer camp can be seenset up at the point where the run of the fish is greatest. Combined withthis private property in land there is a brisk trade up and down thecoast, and a tendency toward feudalism in the village communities, owingto the association of power and social distinction with wealth andproperty in land. [96]

[Sidenote: Land bond in pastoral societies. ]

Among pastoral nomads, among whom a systematic use of their territorybegins to appear, and therefore a more definite relation between landand people, we find a more distinct notion than among wandering huntersof territorial ownership, the right of communal use, and the distinctobligation of common defense. Hence the social bond is drawn closer. Thenomad identifies himself with a certain district, which belongs to histribe by tradition or conquest, and has its clearly defined boundaries. Here he roams between its summer and winter pastures, possibly onehundred and fifty miles apart, visits its small arable patches in thespring for his limited agricultural ventures, and returns to them in thefall to reap their meager harvest. Its springs, streams, or wells assumeenhanced value, are things to be fought for, owing to the prevailingaridity of summer; while ownership of a certain tract of desert orgrassland carries with it a certain right in the bordering settleddistrict as an area of plunder. [97]

The Kara-Kirghis stock, who have been located since the sixteenthcentury on Lake Issik-Kul, long ago portioned out the land among theseparate families, and determined their limits by natural features ofthe landscape. [98] Sven Hedin found on the Tarim River poles set up tomark the boundary between the Shah-yar and Kuchar tribal pastures. [99]John de Plano Carpini, traveling over southern Russia in 1246, immediately after the Tartar conquest, found that the Dnieper, Don, Volga and Ural rivers were all boundaries between domains of the variousmillionaries or thousands, into which the Tartar horde wasorganized. [100] The population of this vast country was distributedaccording to the different degrees of fertility and the size of thepastoral groups. [101] Volney observed the same distinction in thedistribution of the Bedouins of Syria. He found the barren cantons heldby small, widely scattered tribes, as in the Desert of Suez; but thecultivable cantons, like the Hauran and the Pachalic of Aleppo, closelydotted by the encampments of the pastoral owners. [102]

The large range of territory held by a nomadic tribe is all successivelyoccupied in the course of a year, but each part only for a short periodof time. A pastoral use of even a good district necessitates a move offive or ten miles every few weeks. The whole, large as it may be, isabsolutely necessary for the annual support of the tribe. Hence anyoutside encroachment upon their territory calls for the unitedresistance of the tribe. This joint or social action is dictated bytheir common interest in pastures and herds. The social administrationembodied in the apportionment of pastures among the families or clansgrows out of the systematic use of their territory, which represents acloser relation between land and people than is found among purelyhunting tribes. Overcrowding by men or livestock, on the other hand, puts a strain upon the social bond. When Abraham and Lot, typicalnomads, returned from Egypt to Canaan with their large flocks and herds, rivalry for the pastures occasioned conflicts among their shepherds, sothe two sheiks decided to separate. Abraham took the hill pastures ofJudea, and Lot the plains of Jordan near the settled district ofSodom. [103]

[Sidenote: Geographical mark of low-type societies. ]

The larger the amount of territory necessary for the support of a givennumber of people, whether the proportion be due to permanent poverty ofnatural resources as in the Eskimo country, or to retarded economicdevelopment as among the Indians of primitive America or the presentSudanese, the looser is the connection between land and people, and thelower the type of social organization. For such groups the organictheory of society finds an apt description. To quote Spencer, "Theoriginal clusters, animal and social, are not only small, but they lackdensity. Creatures of low type occupy large spaces considering the smallquantity of animal substance they contain; and low-type societies spreadover areas that are wide relatively to the number of their componentindividuals. "[104] In common language this means small tribes or evendetached families sparsely scattered over wide areas, living intemporary huts or encampments of tepees and tents shifted from place toplace, making no effort to modify the surface of the land beyondscratching the soil to raise a niggardly crop of grain or tubers, and noinvestment of labor that might attach to one spot the sparse and migrantpopulation. [See density maps pages 8 and 9. ]

[Sidenote: Land and state. ]

The superiority over this social type of the civilized state lies in thehighly organized utilization of its whole geographic basis by the maturecommunity, and in the development of government that has followed theincreasing density of population and multiplication of activitiesgrowing out of this manifold use of the land. Sedentary agriculture, which forms its initial economic basis, is followed by industrialism andcommerce. The migratory life presents only limited accumulation ofcapital, and restricts narrowly its forms. Permanent settlementencourages accumulation in every form, and under growing pressure ofpopulation slowly reveals the possibilities of every foot of ground, ofevery geographic advantage. These are the fibers of the land whichbecome woven into the whole fabric of the nation's life. These are thegeographic elements constituting the soil in which empires are rooted;they rise in the sap of the nation. 

[Sidenote: Strength of the land bond in the state. ]

The geographic basis of a state embodies a whole complex of physicalconditions which may influence its historical development. The mostpotent of these are its size and zonal location; its situation, whethercontinental or insular, inland or maritime, on the open ocean or anenclosed sea; its boundaries, whether drawn by sea, mountain, desert orthe faint demarking line of a river; its forested mountains, grassyplains, and arable lowlands; its climate and drainage system; finallyits equipment with plant and animal life, whether indigenous orimported, and its mineral resources. When a state has taken advantageof all its natural conditions, the land becomes a constituent part ofthe state, [105] modifying the people which inhabit it, modified by themin turn, till the connection between the two becomes so strong byreciprocal interaction, that the people cannot be understood apart fromtheir land. Any attempt to divide them theoretically reduces the socialor political body to a cadaver, valuable for the study of structuralanatomy after the method of Herbert Spencer, but throwing little lightupon the vital processes. 

[Sidenote: Weak land tenure of hunting and pastoral tribes. ]

A people who makes only a transitory or superficial use of its land hasupon it no permanent or secure hold. The power to hold is measured bythe power to use; hence the weak tenure of hunting and pastoral tribes. Between their scattered encampments at any given time are wideinterstices, inviting occupation by any settlers who know how to makebetter use of the soil. This explains the easy intrusion of the Englishcolonists into the sparsely tenanted territory of the Indians, of theagricultural Chinese into the pasture lands of the Mongols beyond theGreat Wall, of the American pioneers into the hunting grounds of theHudson Bay Company in the disputed Oregon country. [106] The frail bondswhich unite these lower societies to their soil are easily ruptured andthe people themselves dislodged, while their land is appropriated by theintruder. But who could ever conceive of dislodging the Chinese or theclose-packed millions of India? A modern state with a given populationon a wide area is more vulnerable than another of like population moreclosely distributed; but the former has the advantage of a reserveterritory for future growth. [107] This was the case of Kursachsen andBrandenburg in the sixteenth century, and of the United Statesthroughout its history. But beside the danger of inherent weaknessbefore attack, a condition of relative underpopulation always threatensa retardation of development. Easy-going man needs the prod of apressing population. [Compare maps pages 8 and 103 for examples. ]

[Sidenote: Land and food supply. ]

Food is the urgent and recurrent need of individuals and of society. Itdictates their activities in relation to their land at every stage ofeconomic development, fixes the locality of the encampment or village, and determines the size of the territory from which sustenance isdrawn. The length of residence in one place depends upon whether thesprings of its food supply are perennial or intermittent, while theabundance of their flow determines how large a population a given pieceof land can support. 

[Sidenote: Advance from natural to artificial basis of subsistence. ]

Hunter and fisher folk, relying almost exclusively upon what their landproduces of itself, need a large area and derive from it only anirregular food supply, which in winter diminishes to the verge offamine. The transition to the pastoral stage has meant the substitutionof an artificial for a natural basis of subsistence, and therewith achange which more than any other one thing has inaugurated the advancefrom savagery to civilization. [108] From the standpoint of economics, theforward stride has consisted in the application of capital in the formof flocks and herds to the task of feeding the wandering horde;[109] fromthe standpoint of alimentation, in the guarantee of a more reliable andgenerally more nutritious food supply, which enables population to growmore steadily and rapidly; from the standpoint of geography, in themarked reduction in the per capita amount of land necessary to yield anadequate and stable food supply. Pastoral nomadism can support in agiven district of average quality from ten to twenty times as many soulsas can the chase; but in this respect is surpassed from twenty tothirty-fold by the more productive agriculture. While the subsistence ofa nomad requires 100 to 200 acres of land, for that of a skillful farmerfrom 1 to 2 acres suffice. [110] In contrast, the land of the Indiansliving in the Hudson Bay Territory in 1857 averaged 10 square miles percapita; that of the Indians in the United States in 1825, subsidizedmoreover by the government, 1-1/4 square miles. [111]

[Sidenote: Land in relation to agriculture. ]

With transition to the sedentary life of agriculture, society makes afurther gain over nomadism in the closer integration of its socialunits, due to permanent residence in larger and more complex groups; inthe continuous release of labor from the task of mere food-getting forhigher activities, resulting especially in the rapid evolution of thehome; and finally in the more elaborate organization in the use of theland, leading to economic differentiation of different localities andto a rapid increase in the population supported by a given area, so thatthe land becomes the dominant cohesive force in society. [See maps pages8 and 9. ]

[Sidenote: Migratory agriculture]

Agriculture is adopted at first on a small scale as an adjunct to thechase or herding. It tends therefore to partake of the same extensiveand nomadic character[112] as these other methods of gaining subsistence, and only gradually becomes sedentary and intensive. Such was thesuperficial, migratory tillage of most American Indians, shifting withthe village in the wake of the retreating game or in search of freshunexhausted soil. Such is the agriculture of the primitive Korkus in theMahadeo Hills in Central India. They clear a forested slope by burning;rake over the ashes in which they sow their grain, and reap a fairlygood crop in the fertilized soil. The second year the clearing yields areduced product and the third year is abandoned. When the hamlet of fiveor six families has exhausted all the land about it, it moves to a newspot to repeat the process. [113]

The same superficial, extensive tillage, with abandonment of fieldsevery few years, prevails in the Tartar districts of the Russiansteppes, as it did among the cattle-raising Germans at the beginning oftheir history. Tacitus says of them, _Arva per annos mutant et superestager_, [114] commenting at the same time upon their abundance of land andtheir reluctance to till. Where nomadism is made imperative by aridity, the agriculture which accompanies it tends to become fixed, owing to thefew localities blessed with an irrigating stream to moisten the soil. These spots, generally selected for the winter residence, have theirsoil enriched, moreover, by the long stay of the herd and thus avoidexhaustion. [115] Often, however, in enclosed basins the salinity of theirrigating streams in their lower course ruins the fields after one ortwo crops, and necessitates a constant shifting of the cultivatedpatches; hence agriculture remains subsidiary to the yield of thepastures. This condition and effect is conspicuous along the termini ofthe streams draining the northern slope of the Kuen Lun into the Tarimbasin. [116]

[Sidenote: Geographic checks to progress. ]

The desultory, intermittent, extensive use of the land practised byhunters and nomads tends, under the growing pressure of population, topass into the systematic, continuous, intensive use practised by thefarmer, except where nature presents positive checks to the transition. The most obvious check consists in adverse conditions of climate andsoil. Where agriculture meets insurmountable obstacles, like the intensecold of Arctic Siberia and Lapland, or the alkaline soils of Nevada andthe Caspian Depression, or the inadequate rainfall of Mongolia andCentral Arabia, the land can produce no higher economic and socialgroups than pastoral hordes. Hence shepherd folk are found in theirpurest types in deserts and steppes, where conditions early crystallizedthe social form and checked development. [Rainfall map chap. XIV. ]

[Sidenote: Native animal and plant life as factors. ]

Adverse conditions of climate and soil are not the only factors in thisretardation. The very unequal native equipment of the several continentswith plant and animal forms likely to accelerate the advance to nomadismand agriculture also enters into the equation. In Australia, the lack ofa single indigenous mammal fit for domestication and of all cerealsblocked from the start the pastoral and agricultural development of thenatives. Hence at the arrival of the Europeans, Australia presented theunique spectacle of a whole continent with its population still held inthe vise of nature. The Americas had a limited variety of animalssusceptible of domestication, but were more meagerly equipped than theOld World. Yet the Eskimo failed to tame and herd the reindeer, thoughtheir precarious food-supply furnished a motive for the transition. Moreover, an abundance of grass and reindeer moss (_Cladoniarangiferina_), and congenial climatic conditions favored it especiallyfor the Alaskan Eskimo, who had, besides, the nearby example of theSiberian Chukches as reindeer herders. [117] The buffalo, whosedomesticability has been proved, was never utilized in this way by theIndians, though the Spaniard Gomara writes of one tribe, living in thesixteenth century in the southwestern part of what is now United Statesterritory, whose chief wealth consisted in herds of tame buffalo. [118]North America, at the time of the discovery, saw only the dog hangingabout the lodges of the Indians; but in South America the llama andalpaca, confined to the higher levels of the Andes (10, 000 to 15, 000feet elevation) were used in domestic herds only in the mountain-rimmedvalleys of ancient Peru, where, owing to the restricted areas of theseintermontane basins, stock-raising early became stationary, [119] as wefind it in the Alps. Moreover, the high ridges of the Andes supported aspecies of grass called _ichu_, growing up to the snowline from theequator to the southern extremity of Patagonia. Its geographicaldistribution coincided with that of the llama and alpaca, whose chiefpasturage it furnished. [120] In contrast, the absence of any wild fodderplants in Japan, and the exclusion of all foreign forms by thesuccessful competition of the native bamboo grass have togethereliminated pastoral life from the economic history of the island. 

The Old World, on the other hand, furnished an abundant supply ofindigenous animals susceptible of domestication, and especially thosefitted for nomadic life, such as the camel, horse, ass, sheep and goat. Hence it produced in the widespread grasslands and deserts of Europe, Asia, and Africa the most perfect types of pastoral development in itsnatural or nomadic form. Moreover, the early history of the civilizedagricultural peoples of these three continents reveals their previouspastoral mode of life. 

North and South America offered over most of their area conditions ofclimate and soil highly favorable to agriculture, and a fair list ofindigenous cereals, tubers, and pulses yielding goodly crops even tosuperficial tillage. Maize especially was admirably suited for a race ofsemi-migratory hunters. It could be sown without plowing, ripened in awarm season even in ninety days, could be harvested without a sickle andat the pleasure of the cultivator, and needed no preparation beyondroasting before it was ready for food. [121] The beans and pumpkins whichthe Indians raised also needed only a short season. Hence many Indiantribes, while showing no trace of pastoral development, combined withthe chase a semi-nomadic agriculture; and in a few districts wheregeographic conditions had applied peculiar pressure, they hadaccomplished the transition to sedentary agriculture. 

[Sidenote: Land per capita under various cultural and geographicconditions. ]

Every advance to a higher state of civilization has meant a progressivedecrease in the amount of land necessary for the support of theindividual, and a progressive increase in the relations between man andhis habitat. The stage of social development remaining the same, the percapita amount of land decreases also from poorer to better endowedgeographical districts, and with every invention which brings into usesome natural resource. The following classification[122] illustrates therelation of density of population to various geographic andsocio-economic conditions. 

Hunter tribes on the outskirts of the habitable area, as in ArcticAmerica and Siberia, require from 70 to 200 square miles per capita; inarid lands, like the Kalahari Desert and Patagonia, 40 to 200 squaremiles per capita; in choice districts and combining with the chase someprimitive agriculture, as did the Cherokee, Shawnee and IroquoisIndians, the Dyaks of Borneo and the Papuans of New Guinea, 1/2 to 2square miles per capita. 

Pastoral nomads show a density of from 2 to 5 to the square mile;practicing some agriculture, as in Kordofan and Sennar districts ofeastern Sudan, 10 to 15 to the square mile. Agriculture, undeveloped butcombined with some trade and industry as in Equatorial Africa, Borneoand most of the Central American states, supports 5 to 15 to the squaremile; practised with European methods in young or colonial lands, as inArkansas, Texas, Minnesota, Hawaii, Canada and Argentine, or in Europeanlands with unfavorable climate, up to 25 to the square mile. 

Pure agricultural lands of central Europe support 100 to the squaremile, and those of southern Europe, 200; when combining some industry, from 250 to 300. But these figures rise to 500 or more in lowland Indiaand China. Industrial districts of modern Europe, such as England, Belgium, Saxony, Departments Nord and Rhone in France, show a density of500 to 800 to the square mile. [See maps pages 8 and 9. ]

[Sidenote: Density of population and government. ]

With every increase of the population inhabiting a given area, and withthe consequent multiplication and constriction of the bonds unitingsociety with its land, comes a growing necessity for a more highlyorganized government, both to reduce friction within and to secure tothe people the land on which and by which they live. Thereforeprotection becomes a prime function of the state. It wards off outsideattack which may aim at acquisition of its territory, or an invasion ofits rights, or curtailment of its geographic sphere of activity. Themodern industrial state, furthermore, with the purpose of strengtheningthe nation, assists or itself undertakes the construction of highways, canals, and railroads, and the maintenance of steamship lines. Theseencourage the development of natural resources and of commerce, andhence lay the foundation for an increased population, by multiplying therelations between land and people. 

[Sidenote: Territorial expansion of the state. ]

A like object is attained by territorial expansion, which often followsin the wake of commercial expansion. This strengthens the nationpositively by enlarging its geographic base, and negatively by forcingback the boundaries of its neighbors. The expansion of the ThirteenColonies from the Atlantic slope to the Mississippi River and the GreatLakes by the treaty concluding the Revolution was a strong guarantee ofthe survival of the young Republic against future aggressions either ofEngland or Spain, though it exchanged the scientific or protectingboundary of the Appalachian Mountains for the unscientific and exposedboundary of a river. The expansion to the Rocky Mountains by theLouisiana purchase not only gave wider play to national energies, stimulated natural increase of population, and attracted immigration, but it eliminated a dangerous neighbor in the French, and placed a widebuffer of untenanted land between the United States and the pettyaggressions of the Spanish in Mexico. Rome's expansion into the valleyof the Po, as later into Trans-Alpine Gaul and Germany, had for itspurpose the protection of the peninsula against barbarian inroads. Japan's recent aggression against the Russians in the Far East wasactuated by the realization that she had to expand into Korea at thecost of Muscovite ascendency, or contract later at the cost of her ownindependence. 

[Sidenote: Checks to population. ]

If a state lacks the energy and national purpose, like Italy, or thepossibility, like Switzerland, for territorial expansion, and acceptsits boundaries as final, the natural increase of population upon a fixedarea produces an increased density, unless certain social forcescounteract it. Without these forces, the relation of men to the landwould have tended to modify everywhere in the same way. Increase innumbers would have been attended by a corresponding decrease in theamount of land at the disposal of each individual. Those states which, like Norway and Switzerland, cannot expand and which have exploitedtheir natural resources to the utmost, must resign themselves to theemigration of their redundant population. But those which have remainedwithin their own boundaries and have adopted a policy of isolation, likeChina, feudal Japan during its two and a half centuries of seclusion, and numerous Polynesian islands, have been forced to war with natureitself by checking the operation of the law of natural increase. All therepulsive devices contributing to this end, whether infanticide, abortion, cannibalism, the sanctioned murder of the aged and infirm, honorable suicide, polyandry or persistent war, are the socialdeformities consequent upon suppressed growth. Such artificial checksupon population are more conspicuous in natural regions with sharplydefined boundaries, like islands and oases, as Malthus observed;[123] butthey are visible also among savage tribes whose boundaries are fixed notby natural features but by the mutual repulsion and rivalrycharacterizing the stage of development, and whose limit of populationis reduced by their low economic status. 

[Sidenote: Extra-territorial relations. ]

There is a great difference between those states whose inhabitantssubsist exclusively from the products of their own country and thosewhich rely more or less upon other lands. Great industrial states, likeEngland and Germany, which derive only a portion of their food and rawmaterial from their own territory, supply their dense populationsthrough international trade. Interruption of such foreign commerce isdisastrous to the population at home; hence the state by a navy protectsthe lines of communication with those far-away lands of wheat fields andcattle ranch. This is no purely modern development. Athens in the timeof Pericles used her navy not only to secure her political domination inthe Aegean, but also her connections with the colonial wheat landsabout the Euxine. 

The modern state strives to render this circle of trade both large andpermanent by means of commercial treaties, customs-unions, trading-postsand colonies. Thus while society at home is multiplying its relationswith its own land, the state is enabling it to multiply also itsrelations with the whole producing world. While at home the nation isbecoming more closely knit together through the common bond of thefatherland, in the world at large humanity is evolving a brotherhood ofman by the union of each with all through the common growing bond of theearth. Hence we cannot avoid the question: Are we in process of evolvinga social idea vaster than that underlying nationality? Do the Socialistshint to us the geographic basis of this new development, when theydescribe themselves as an international political party?

[Sidenote: Geography in the philosophy of history. ]

It is natural that the old philosophy of history should have fixed itsattention upon the geographic basis of historical events. Searching forthe permanent and common in the outwardly mutable, it found always atthe bottom of changing events the same solid earth. Biology has had thesame experience. The history of the life forms of the world leads alwaysback to the land on which that life arose, spread, and struggled forexistence. The philosophy of history was superior to early sociology, inthat its method was one of historical comparison, which inevitablyguided it back to the land as the material for the first generalization. Thus it happens that the importance of the land factor in history wasapproached first from the philosophical side. Montesquieu and Herder hadno intention of solving sociological and geographical problems, whenthey considered the relation of peoples and states to their soil; theywished to understand the purpose and destiny of man as an inhabitant ofthe earth. 

[Sidenote: Theory of progress from the standpoint of geography. ]

The study of history is always, from one standpoint, a study ofprogress. Yet after all the century-long investigation of the history ofevery people working out its destiny in its given environment, struggling against the difficulties of its habitat, progressing when itovercame them and retrograding when it failed, advancing when it madethe most of its opportunities and declining when it made less orsuccumbed to an invader armed with better economic or political methodsto exploit the land, it is amazing how little the land, in which allactivities finally root, has been taken into account in the discussionof progress. Nevertheless, for a theory of progress it offers a solidbasis. From the standpoint of the land social and politicalorganizations, in successive stages of development, embrace everincreasing areas, and make them support ever denser populations; and inthis concentration of population and intensification of economicdevelopment they assume ever higher forms. It does not suffice that apeople, in order to progress, should extend and multiply only its localrelations to its land. This would eventuate in arrested development, such as Japan showed at the time of Perry's visit. The ideal basis ofprogress is the expansion of the world relations of a people, theextension of its field of activity and sphere of influence far beyondthe limits of its own territory, by which it exchanges commodities andideas with various countries of the world. Universal history shows usthat, as the geographical horizon of the known world has widened fromgray antiquity to the present, societies and states have expanded theirterritorial and economic scope; that they have grown not only in thenumber of their square miles and in the geographical range of theirinternational intercourse, but in national efficiency, power, andpermanence, and especially in that intellectual force which feeds uponthe nutritious food of wide comparisons. Every great movement which haswidened the geographical outlook of a people, such as the Crusades inthe Middle Ages, or the colonization of the Americas, has applied anintellectual and economic stimulus. The expanding field of advancinghistory has therefore been an essential concomitant and at the same timea driving force in the progress of every people and of the world. 

[Sidenote: Man's increasing dependence upon nature. ]

Since progress in civilization involves an increasing exploitation ofnatural advantages and the development of closer relations between aland and its people, it is an erroneous idea that man tends toemancipate himself more and more from the control of the naturalconditions forming at once the foundation and environment of hisactivities. On the contrary, he multiplies his dependencies uponnature;[124] but while increasing their sum total, he diminishes theforce of each. There lies the gist of the matter. As his bonds becomemore numerous, they become also more elastic. Civilization haslengthened his leash and padded his collar, so that it does not gall;but the leash is never slipped. The Delaware Indians depended upon theforests alone for fuel. A citizen of Pennsylvania, occupying the formerDelaware tract, has the choice of wood, hard or soft coal, coke, petroleum, natural gas, or manufactured gas. Does this meanemancipation? By no means. For while fuel was a necessity to the Indianonly for warmth and cooking, and incidentally for the pleasureableexcitement of burning an enemy at the stake, it enters into themanufacture of almost every article that the Pennsylvanian uses in hisdaily life. His dependence upon nature has become more far-reaching, though less conspicuous and especially less arbitrary. 

[Sidenote: Increase in kind and amount. ]

These dependencies increase enormously both in variety and amount. GreatBritain, with its twenty thousand merchant ships aggregating over tenmillion tons, and its immense import and export trade, finds its harborsvastly more important to-day for the national welfare than in Cromwell'stime, when they were used by a scanty mercantile fleet. Since thegeneration of electricity by water-power and its application toindustry, the plunging falls of the Scandinavian Mountains, of the Alpsof Switzerland, France, and Italy, of the Southern Appalachians and theCascade Range, are geographical features representing new andunsuspected forms of national capital, and therefore new bonds betweenland and people in these localities. Russia since 1844 has built 35, 572miles (57, 374 kilometers) of railroad in her European territory, andthereby derived a new benefit from her level plains, which so facilitatethe construction and cheap operation of railroads, that they have becomein this aspect alone a new feature in her national economy. On the otherhand, the galling restrictions of Russia's meager and strategicallyconfined coasts, which tie her hand in any wide maritime policy, work agreater hardship to-day than they did a hundred years ago, since hergrowing population creates a more insistent demand for internationaltrade. In contrast to Russia, Norway, with its paucity of arable soiland of other natural resources, finds its long indented coastline andthe coast-bred seamanship of its people a progressively importantnational asset. Hence as ocean-carriers the Norwegians have developed amerchant marine nearly half as large again as that of Russia and Finlandcombined--1, 569, 646 tons[125] as against 1, 084, 165 tons. 

This growing dependence of a civilized people upon its land ischaracterized by intelligence and self-help. Man forms a partnershipwith nature, contributing brains and labor, while she provides thecapital or raw material in ever more abundant and varied forms. As aresult of this coöperation, held by the terms of the contract, hesecures a better living than the savage who, like a mendicant, acceptswhat nature is pleased to dole out, and lives under the tyranny of hercaprices. 

NOTES TO CHAPTER III

[79] H. J. Mackinder, Britain and the British Seas, p. 196. London, 1904. 

[80] Gardner, Atlas of English History, Map 29. New York, 1905. 

[81] Hereford George, Historical Geography of Great Britain, pp. 58-60. London, 1904. 

[82] Lewis Morgan, Ancient Society, p. 62. New York, 1878. 

[83] Franklin H. Giddings, Elements of Sociology, p. 247. New York, 1902. 

[84] Schoolcraft, The Indian Tribes of the United States, Vol. I, pp. 198-200, 224. Philadelphia, 1853. 

[85] _Ibid. _, Vol. I, pp. 231-232, 241. 

[86] Roosevelt, The Winning of the West, Vol. I, pp. 70-73, 88. NewYork, 1895. 

[87] McGee and Thomas, Prehistoric North America, pp. 392-393, 408, Vol. XIX, of _History of North America_, edited by Francis W. Thorpe, Philadelphia, 1905. _Eleventh Census Report on the Indians_, p. 51. Washington, 1894. 

[88] Hans Helmolt, History of the World, Vol. II, pp. 249-250. New York, 1902-1906. 

[89] Spencer and Gillen, Northern Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 13-15. London, 1904. 

[90] Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. I, p. 126. London, 1896-1898. 

[91] Roscher, _National-Oekonomik des Ackerbaues_, p. 24. Stuttgart, 1888. 

[92] Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. I, p. 131. London, 1896-1898. 

[93] Paul Ehrenreich, _Die Einteilung und Verbreitung der VölkerstämmeBrasiliens_, Peterman's _Geographische Mittheilungen_, Vol. XXXVII, p. 85. Gotha, 1891. 

[94] Roscher, _National-Oekonomik des Ackerbaues_, p. 26, Note 5. Stuttgart, 1888. 

[95] _Ibid. _, p. 27. 

[96] Albert Niblack, The Coast Indians of Southern Alaska and NorthernBritish Columbia, pp. 298-299, 304, 337-339. Washington, 1888. 

[97] Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. III, p. 173. London, 1896-1898. 

[98] _Ibid. _, Vol. III. Pp. 173-174. 

[99] Sven Hedin, Central Asia and Tibet, Vol. I, p. 184. New York andLondon, 1903. 

[100] John de Plano Carpini, Journey in 1246, p. 130. _Hakluyt Society_, London, 1904. 

[101] Journey of William de Rubruquis in 1253, p. 188. _HakluytSociety_, London, 1903. 

[102] Volney, quoted in Malthus, Principles of Population, Chap. VII, p. 60. London, 1878. 

[103] Genesis, Chap. XIII, 1-12. 

[104] Herbert Spencer, Principles of Sociology, Vol. I. P. 457. NewYork. 

[105] Heinrich von Treitschke, _Politik_, Vol. I, pp. 202-204. Leipzig, 1897. 

[106] E. C. Semple, American History and Its Geographic Conditions, pp. 206-207. Boston, 1903. 

[107] Roscher, _Grundlagen des National-Oekonomik_, Book VI. _Bevölkerung_, p. 694, Note 5. Stuttgart, 1886. 

[108] Edward John Payne, History of the New World Called America, Vol. I, p. 303-313. Oxford and New York, 1892. 

[109] Roscher, _National-Oekonomik des Ackerbaues_, pp. 31, 52. Stuttgart, 1888. 

[110] _Ibid. _, p. 56, Note 5. 

[111] For these and other averages, Sir John Lubbock, Prehistoric Times, pp. 593-595. New York, 1872. 

[112] Roscher, _National-Oekonomik des Ackerbaues_, pp. 79-80, p. 81, Note 7. Stuttgart, 1888. William I. Thomas, Source Book for SocialOrigins, pp. 96-112. Chicago, 1909. 

[113] Capt. J. Forsyth, The Highlands of Central India, pp. 101-107, 168. London, 1889. 

[114] Tacitus, _Germania_, III. 

[115] Roscher, _National-Oekonomik des Ackerbaues_, p. 32, Note 15 on p. 36. Stuttgart, 1888. 

[116] E. Huntington, The Pulse of Asia, pp. 202, 203, 212, 213, 236-237. Boston, 1907. 

[117] Sheldon Jackson, Introduction of Domesticated Reindeer intoAlaska, pp. 20, 25-29, 127-129. Washington, 1894. 

[118] Quoted in Alexander von Humboldt, Aspects of Nature in DifferentLands, pp. 62, 139. Philadelphia, 1849. 

[119] Edward John Payne, History of the New World Called America, Vol. I, pp. 311-321. 333-354, 364-366. New York, 1892. 

[120] Prescott, Conquest of Peru, Vol. I, p. 47. New York, 1848. 

[121] McGee and Thomas, Prehistoric North America, Vol. XIX, pp. 151-161, of _The History of North America_, edited by Francis W. Thorpe, Philadelphia, 1905. 

[122] Ratzel, _Anthropo-geographie_, Vol. II, pp. 264-265. 

[123] Malthus, Principles of Population, Chapters V and VII. London, 1878. 

[124] Nathaniel Shaler, Nature and Man in America, pp. 147-151. W. Z. Ripley, Races of Europe, Chap. I, New York, 1899. 

[125] Justus Perthes, _Taschen-Atlas_, pp. 44, 47. Gotha, 1910. 

CHAPTER IV

THE MOVEMENTS OF PEOPLES IN THEIR GEOGRAPHICAL SIGNIFICANCE

[Sidenote: Universality of these movements. ]

The ethnic and political boundaries of Europe to-day are the residuum ofcountless racial, national, tribal and individual movements reachingback into an unrecorded past. The very names of Turkey, Bulgaria, England, Scotland and France are borrowed from intruding peoples. NewEngland, New France, New Scotland or Nova Scotia and many more on theAmerican continents register the Trans-Atlantic nativity of their firstwhite settlers. The provinces of Galicia in Spain, Lombardy in Italy, Brittany in France, Essex and Sussex in England record in their namesstreams of humanity diverted from the great currents of theVölkerwanderung. The Romance group of languages, from Portugal toRoumania, testify to the sweep of expanding Rome, just as the widedistribution of the Aryan linguistic family points to many roads andlong migrations from some unplaced birthplace. Names like Cis-Alpine andTrans-Alpine Gaul in the Roman Empire, Trans-Caucasia, Trans-Caspia andTrans-Baikalia in the Russian Empire, the Transvaal and Transkei inSouth Africa, indicate the direction whence the advancing people havecome. 

[Sidenote: Stratification of races]

Ethnology reveals an east and west stratification of linguistic groupsin Europe, a north and south stratification of races, and anotherstratification by altitude, which reappears in all parts of the world, and shows certain invading dominant races occupying the lowlands andother displaced ones the highlands. This definite arrangement points tosuccessive arrivals, a crowding forward, an intrusion of the strong intofertile, accessible valleys and plains, and a dislodgment of the weakinto the rough but safe keeping of mountain range or barren peninsula, where they are brought to bay. Ethnic fragments, linguistic survivals, or merely place names, dropped like discarded baggage along the marchof a retreating army, bear witness everywhere to tragic recessionals. 

[Sidenote: The name Historical Movement. ]

Every country whose history we examine proves the recipient ofsuccessive streams of humanity. Even sea-girt England has receivedvarious intruding peoples from the Roman occupation to the recent influxof Russian Jews. In prehistoric times it combined several elements inits population, as the discovery of the "long barrow" men and "roundbarrow" men by archaeologists, and the identification of a survivingIberian or Mediterranean strain by ethnologists go to prove. [126] Egypt, Mesopotamia, and India tell the same story, whether in their recorded orunrecorded history. Tropical Africa lacks a history; but all that hasbeen pieced together by ethnologists and anthropologists, in an effortto reconstruct its past, shows incessant movement, --growth, expansionand short-lived conquest, followed by shrinkage, expulsion or absorptionby another invader. [127] To this constant shifting of races and peoplesthe name of historical movement has been given, because it underliesmost of written history, and constitutes the major part of unwrittenhistory, especially that of savage and nomadic tribes. Two things arevital in the history of every people, its ethnic composition and thewars it wages in defense or extension of its boundaries. Both rest uponhistorical movements, --intrusions, whether peaceful or hostile, into itsown land, and encroachments upon neighboring territory necessitated bygrowth. Back of all such movements is natural increase of populationbeyond local means of subsistence, and the development of the war spiritin the effort to secure more abundant subsistence either by raid orconquest of territory. 

[Sidenote: Evolution of the Historical Movement. ]

Among primitive peoples this movement is simple and monotonous. Itinvolves all members of the tribe, either in pursuit of game, orfollowing the herd over the tribal territory, or in migrations seekingmore and better land. Among civilized peoples it assumes various forms, and especially is differentiated for different members of the socialgroup. The civilized state develops specialized frontiersmen, armies, explorers, maritime traders, colonists, and missionaries, who keep apart of the people constantly moving and directing external expansion, while the mass of the population converts the force once expended in themigrant food-quest into internal activity. Here we come upon a paradox. The nation as a whole, with the development of sedentary life, increasesits population and therewith its need for external movements; it widensits national area and its circle of contact with other lands, enlargesits geographical horizon, and improves its internal communication over agrowing territory; it evolves a greater mobility within and without, which attaches, however, to certain classes of society, not to theentire social group. This mobility becomes the outward expression of awhole complex of economic wants, intellectual needs, and politicalambitions. It is embodied in the conquests which build up empires, inthe colonization which develops new lands, in the world-wide exchange ofcommodities and ideas which lifts the level of civilization, till thismovement of peoples becomes a fundamental fact of history. 

[Sidenote: Nature of primitive movements. ]

This movement is and has been universal and varied. When mostunobtrusive in its operation, it has produced its greatest effects. Toseize upon a few conspicuous migrations, like the _Völkerwanderung_ andthe irruption of the Turks into Europe, made dramatic by their relationto the declining empires of Rome and Constantinople, and to ignore thevast sum of lesser but more normal movements which by slow incrementsproduce greater and more lasting results, leads to wrong conclusionsboth in ethnology and history. Here, as in geology, great effects do notnecessarily presuppose vast forces, but rather the steady operation ofsmall ones. It is often assumed that the world was peopled by a seriesof migrations; whereas everything indicates that humanity spread overthe earth little by little, much as the imported gypsy moth is graduallyoccupying New England or the water hyacinth the rivers of Florida. LouisAgassiz observed in 1853 that "the boundaries within which the differentnatural combinations of animals are known to be circumscribed upon thesurface of the earth, coincide with the natural range of distinct typesof man. "[128] The close parallelism between Australian race and flora, Eskimo race and Arctic fauna, points to a similar manner of dispersion. Wallace, in describing how the Russian frontier of settlement slowlycreeps forward along the Volga, encroaching upon the Finnish and Tartarareas, and permeating them with Slav blood and civilization, adds thatthis is probably the normal method of expansion. [129] Thucydides describesthe same process of encroachment, displacement, and migration in ancientHellas. [130] Strabo quotes Posidonius as saying that the emigration of theCimbrians and other kindred tribes from their native seats was gradualand by no means sudden. [131] The traditions of the Delaware Indians showtheir advance from their early home in central Canada southward to theDelaware River and Chesapeake Bay to have been a slow zigzag movement, interrupted by frequent long halts, leaving behind one laggard grouphere and sending out an offshoot there, who formed new tribes andthereby diversified the stock. [132] It was an aimless wandering, withoutdestination and purpose other than to find a pleasanter habitat. TheVandals appear first as "a loose aggregation of restless tribes who mustnot be too definitely assigned to any precise district on the map, "somewhere in central or eastern Prussia. [133] Far-reaching migrationsaiming at a distant goal, like the Gothic and Hunnish conquests ofItaly, demand both a geographical knowledge and an organization too highfor primitive peoples, and therefore belong to a later period ofdevelopment. [134]

[Sidenote: Number and range. ]

The long list of recorded migrations has been supplemented by theresearches of ethnologists, which have revealed a multitude ofprehistoric movements. These are disclosed in greater number and rangewith successive investigation. The prehistoric wanderings of thePolynesians assume far more significance to-day than a hundred yearsago, when their scope was supposed to have its western limit at Fiji andthe Ellice group. They have now been traced to almost every island ofMelanesia; vestiges of their influence have been detected in thelanguages of Australia, and the culture of the distant coasts of Alaskaand British Columbia. The western pioneers of America knew the ShoshoneIndians as small bands of savages, constantly moving about in search offood in the barren region west of the Rocky Mountains, and occasionallyventuring eastward to hunt buffalo on the plains. Recent investigationhas identified as offshoots of this retarded Shoshonean stock thesedentary agriculturalists of the Moqui Pueblo, and the advancedpopulations of ancient Mexico and Central America. [135] Here was a greathuman current which through the centuries slowly drifted from thepresent frontier of Canada to the shores of Lake Nicaragua. Powell's mapof the distribution of the linguistic stocks of American Indians isintelligible only in the light of constant mobility. Haebler's map ofthe South American stocks reveals the same restless past. Thiscartographical presentation of the facts, giving only the final results, suggests tribal excursions of the nature of migrations; but ethnologistssee them as the sum total of countless small movements which are more orless part of the normal activity of an unrooted savage people. [Map page101. ]

Otis Mason finds that the life of a social group involves a variety ofmovements characterized by different ranges or scopes. I. The dailyround from bed to bed. II. The annual round from year to year, like thatof the Tunguse Orochon of Siberia who in pursuit of various fish andgame change their residence within their territory from month to month, or the pastoral nomads who move with the seasons from pasture topasture. III. Less systematic outside movements covering the tribalsphere of influence, such as journeys or voyages to remote hunting orfishing grounds, forays or piratical descents upon neighboring landseventuating usually in conquest, expansion into border regions foroccasional occupation or colonization. IV. Participation in streams ofbarter or commerce. V. And at a higher stage in the great currents ofhuman intercourse, experience, and ideas, which finally compass theworld. [136] In all this series the narrower movement prepares for thebroader, of which it constitutes at once an impulse and a part. 

[Sidenote: Importance of such movements in history. ]

The real character and importance of these movements have beenappreciated by broad-minded historians. Thucydides elucidates theconditions leading up to the Peloponnesian War by a description of thesemi-migratory population of Hellas, the exposure of the more fertiledistricts to incursions, and the influence of these movements indifferentiating Dorian from Ionian Greece. [137] Johannes von Muller, inthe introduction to his history of Switzerland, assigns to federationsand migrations a conspicuous rôle in historical development. Edward A. Ross sees in such movements a thorough-going selective process whichweeds out the unfit, or rather spares only the highly fit. He lays downthe principle that repeated migrations tend to the creation of energeticraces of men. He adds, "This principle may account for the fact thatthose branches of a race achieve the most brilliant success which havewandered the farthest from their ancestral home.... The Arabs and Moorsthat skirted Africa and won a home in far-away Spain, developed the mostbrilliant of the Saracen civilizations. Hebrews, Dorians, Quirites, Rajputs, Hovas were far invaders. No communities in classic timesflourished like the cities of Asia created by the overflow from Greece. Nowhere under the Czar are there such vigorous, progressive communitiesas in Siberia. "[138] Brinton distinguishes the associative and dispersiveelements in ethnography. The latter is favored by the physicaladaptability of the human race to all climates and external conditions;it is stimulated by the food-quest, the pressure of foes, and theresultant restlessness of an unstable primitive society. [139]

The earth's surface is at once factor and basis in these movements. Inan active way it directs them; but they in turn clothe the passive earthwith a mantle of humanity. This mantle is of varied weave and thickness, showing here the simple pattern of a primitive society, there theintricate design of advanced civilization; here a closely woven or agauzy texture, there disclosing a great rent where a rocky peak or theice-wrapped poles protrude through the warm human covering. This is themagic web whereof man is at once woof and weaver, and the flying shuttlethat never rests. Given a region, what is its living envelope, asksanthropo-geography. Whence and how did it get there? What is thematerial of warp and woof? Will new threads enter to vary the color anddesign? If so, from what source? Or will the local pattern repeat itselfover and over with dull uniformity?

[Sidenote: Geographical interpretation of historical movement. ]

It was the great intellectual service of Copernicus that he conceived ofa world in motion instead of a world at rest. So anthropo-geography mustsee its world in motion, whether it is considering English colonization, or the westward expansion of the Southern slave power in search ofunexhausted land, or the counter expansion of the free-soil movement, orthe early advance of the trappers westward to the Rockies after theretreating game, or the withdrawal thither of the declining Indiantribes before the protruding line of white settlement, and theirultimate confinement to ever shrinking reservations. In studyingincrease of population, it sees in Switzerland chalet and farm creepinghigher up the Alp, as the lapping of a rising tide of humanity below; itsees movement in the projection of a new dike in Holland to reclaim fromthe sea the land for another thousand inhabitants, movement in Japan'sdoubling of its territory by conquest, in order to house and feed itsredundant millions. 

The whole complex relation of unresting man to the earth is the subjectmatter of anthropo-geography. The science traces his movements on theearth's surface, measures their velocity, range, and recurrence, determines their nature by the way they utilize the land, notes theirtransformation at different stages of economic development and underdifferent environments. Just as an understanding of animal and plantgeography requires a previous knowledge of the various means ofdispersal, active and passive, possessed by these lower forms of life, so anthropo-geography must start with a study of the movements ofmankind. 

[Sidenote: Mobility of primitive peoples. ]

First of all is to be noted an evolution in the mobility of peoples. Inthe lower stages of culture mobility is great. It is favored by thepersistent food-quest over wide areas incident to retarded economicmethods, and by the loose attachment of society to the soil. The smallsocial groups peculiar to these stages and their innate tendency tofission help the movements to ramify. The consequent scattereddistribution of the population offers wide interstices betweenencampments or villages, and into these vacant spaces other wanderingtribes easily penetrate. The rapid decline of the Indian race in Americabefore the advancing whites was due chiefly to the division of thesavages into small groups, scattered sparsely over a wide territory. Hunter and pastoral peoples need far more land than they can occupy atany one time. Hence the temporarily vacant spots invite incursion. Moreover, the slight impedimenta carried by primitive folk minimize thenatural physical obstacles which they meet when on the march. Thelightly equipped war parties of the Shawnee Indians used gorges and gapsfor the passage of the Allegheny Mountains which were prohibitive to allwhite pioneers except the lonely trapper. Finally, this mobility getsinto the primitive mind. The _Wanderlust_ is strong. Long residence inone territory is irksome, attachment is weak. Therefore a small causesuffices to start the whole or part of the social body moving. Atemporary failure of the food supply, cruelty or excessive exaction oftribute on the part of the chief, occasions an exodus. The history ofevery negro tribe in Africa gives instances of such secessions, whichoften leave whole districts empty and exposed to the next wanderingoccupant. Methods of preventing such withdrawals, and therewith thediminution of his treasury receipts and his fighting force, belong tothe policy of every negro chieftain. 

[Sidenote: Natural barriers to movement. ]

The checks to this native mobility of primitive peoples are two:physical and mental. In addition to the usual barriers of mountains, deserts, and seas before the invention of boats, primeval forests havealways offered serious obstacles to man armed only with stone or bronzeaxe, and they rebuffed even man of the iron age. War and hunting partieshad to move along the natural clearings of the rivers, the tracks ofanimals, or the few trails beaten out in time by the natives themselves. Primitive agriculture has never battled successfully against the phalanxof the trees. Forests balked the expansion of the Inca civilization onthe rainy slope of the Andes, and in Central Africa the negro invadedonly their edges for his yam fields and plantain groves. The earliestsettlements in ancient Britain were confined to the natural clearings ofthe chalk downs and oolitic uplands; and here population was chieflyconcentrated even at the close of the Roman occupation. Only gradually, as the valley woodlands were cleared, did the richer soil of thealluvial basins attract men from the high, poor ground where tillagerequired no preliminary work. But after four centuries of Roman rule andRoman roads, the clearings along the river valleys were still merestrips of culture mid an encompassing wilderness of woods. When theGermanic invaders came, they too appropriated the treeless downs andwere blocked by the forests. [140] On the other hand, grasslands andsavannahs have developed the most mobile people whom we know, steppehunters like the Sioux Indians and Patagonians. Thus while the forestdweller, confined to the highway of the stream, devised only canoe anddugout boat in various forms for purposes of transportation, steppepeoples of the Old World introduced the use of draft and pack animals, and invented the sledge and cart. 

[Sidenote: Effect of geographical horizon. ]

Primitive peoples carry a drag upon their migrations in their restrictedgeographical outlook; ignorance robs them of definite goals. Theevolution of the historical movement is accelerated by every expansionof the geographical horizon. It progresses most rapidly where theknowledge of outlying or remote lands travels fastest, as along riversand thalassic coasts. Rome's location as toll-gate keeper of the Tibergave her knowledge of the upstream country and directed her conquest ofits valley; and the movement thus started gathered momentum as itadvanced. Cæsar's occupation of Gaul meant to his generation simply thecommand of the roads leading from the Mediterranean to the northernsources of tin and amber, and the establishment of frontier outposts toprotect the land boundaries of Italy; this represented a bold policy ofinland expansion for that day. The modern historian sees in that stepthe momentous advance of history beyond the narrow limits of theMediterranean basin, and its gradual inclusion of all the Atlanticcountries of Europe, through whose maritime enterprise the historicalhorizon was stretched to include America. In the same way, mediævaltrade with the Orient, which had familiarized Europe with distant Indiaand Cathay, developed its full historico-geographical importance when itstarted the maritime discoveries of the fifteenth century. The expansionof the geographical horizon in 1512 to embrace the earth inaugurated awidespread historical movement, which has resulted in theEuropeanization of the world. 

[Sidenote: Civilization and mobility. ]

Civilized man is at once more and less mobile than his primitivebrother. Every advance in civilization multiplies and tightens the bondsuniting him with his soil; makes him a sedentary instead of a migratorybeing. On the other hand every advance in civilization is attended bythe rapid clearing of the forests, by the construction of bridges andinterlacing roads, the invention of more effective vehicles fortransportation whereby intercourse increases, and the improvement ofnavigation to the same end. Civilized man progressively modifies theland which he occupies, removes or reduces obstacles to intercourse, andthereby approximates it to the open plain. Thus far he facilitatesmovements. But while doing this he also places upon the land a densepopulation, closely attached to the soil, strong to resist incursion, and for economic reasons inhospitable to any marked accession ofpopulation from without. Herein lies the great difference betweenmigration in empty or sparsely inhabited regions, such as predominatedwhen the world was young, and in the densely populated countries of ourera. As the earth grew old and humanity multiplied, peoples themselvesbecame the greatest barriers to any massive migrations, till in certaincountries of Europe and Asia the historical movement has been reduced toa continual pressure, resulting in compression of population here, repression there. Hence, though political boundaries may shift, ethnicboundaries scarcely budge. The greatest wars of modern Europe havehardly left a trace upon the distribution of its peoples. Only in theBalkan Peninsula, as the frontiers of the Turkish Empire have beenforced back from the Danube, the alien Turks have withdrawn to theshrinking territory of the Sultan and especially to Asia Minor. 

[Sidenote: Diffusion of culture. ]

Where a population too great to be dislodged occupies the land, conquestresults in the eventual absorption of the victors and their civilizationby the native folk, as happened to the Lombards in Italy, the Vandals inAfrica and the Normans in England. Where the invaders are markedlysuperior in culture though numerically weak, conquest results in thegradual permeation of the conquered with the religion, economic methods, language, and customs of the new-comers. [141] The latter process, too, isalways attended by some intermixture of blood, where no race repulsionexists, but this is small in comparison to the diffusion ofcivilization. This was the method by which Greek traders and colonistsHellenized the countries about the eastern Mediterranean, and spreadtheir culture far back from the shores which their settlements hadappropriated. In this way Saracen armies soon after the death ofMohammed Arabized the whole eastern and southern sides of theMediterranean from Syria to Spain, and Arab merchants set the stamp oftheir language and religion on the coasts of East Africa as far asMoçambique. The handful of Spanish adventurers who came upon therelatively dense populations of Mexico and Peru left among them acivilization essentially European, but only a thin strain of Castilianblood. Thus the immigration of small bands of people sufficed toinfluence the culture of that big territory known as Latin America. 

[Sidenote: Ethnic intermixture. ]

That vast sum of migrations, great and small, which we group under thegeneral term of historical movement has involved an endless mingling ofraces and cultures. As Professor Petrie has remarked, the prevalentnotion that in prehistoric times races were pure and unmixed is withoutfoundation. An examination of the various forms of the historicalmovement reveals the extent and complexity of this mingling process. 

In the first place, no migration is ever simple; it involves a numberof secondary movements, each of which in turn occasions a newcombination of tribal or racial elements. The transference of a wholepeople from its native or adopted seat to a new habitat, as in the_Völkerwanderungen_, empties the original district, which then becomesa catchment basin for various streams of people about its rim; and inthe new territory it dislodges a few or all of the occupants, andthereby starts up a fresh movement as the original one comes to rest. 

Nor is this all. A torrent that issues from its source in the mountainsis not the river which reaches the sea. On its long journey fromhighland to lowland it receives now the milky waters of a glacier-fedstream, now a muddy tributary from agricultural lands, now the clearwaters from a limestone plateau, while all the time its racing currentbears a burden of soil torn from its own banks. Now it rests in a lake, where it lays down its weight of silt, then goes on, perhaps across anarid stretch where its water is sucked up by the thirsty air ordiverted to irrigate fields of grain. So with those rivers of men whichwe call migrations. The ethnic stream may start comparatively pure, butit becomes mixed on the way. From time to time it leaves behind laggardelements which in turn make a new racial blend where they stop. Suchwere the six thousand Aduatici whom Cæsar found in Belgian Gaul. Thesewere a detachment of the migrating Cimbri, left there in charge ofsurplus cattle and baggage while the main body went on to Italy. [142]

[Sidenote: Complex currents of migration. ]

A migration rarely involves a single people even at the start. Itbecomes contagious either by example or by the subjection of severalneighboring tribes to the same impelling force, by reason of which allstart at or near the same time. We find the Cimbri and Teutons combinedwith Celts from the island of Batavia[143] in the first Germanic invasionof the Roman Empire. Jutes, Saxons and Angles started in closesuccession for Britain, and the Saxon group included Frisians. [144] Anunavoidable concomitant of great migrations, especially those of nomads, is their tendency to sweep into the vortex of their movement any peoplewhom they brush on the way. Both individuals and tribes are thus caughtup by the current. The general convergence of the central German tribestowards the Danube frontier of the Roman Empire during the MarcomannicWar drew in its train the Lombards from the lower Elbe down to themiddle Danube and Theiss. [145] The force of the Lombards invading Italyin 568 included twenty thousand Saxons from Swabia, Gepidae from themiddle Danube, Bulgarians, Slavs from the Russian Ukraine, together withvarious tribes from the Alpine district of Noricum and the fluvialplains of Pannonia. Two centuries later the names of these non-Lombardtribes still survived in certain villages of Italy which had formedtheir centers. [146] The army which Attila the Hun brought into Gaul was amotley crowd, comprising peoples of probable Slav origin from theRussian steppes, Teutonic Ostrogoths and Gepidae, and numerous Germantribes, besides the Huns themselves. When this horde withdrew after thedeath of Attila, Gepidae and Ostrogoths settled along the middle Danube, and the Slavonic contingent along the Alpine courses of the Drave andSave Rivers. [147] The Vandal migration which in 409 invaded Spainincluded the Turanian Alans and the German Suevi. The Alans found atemporary home in Portugal, which they later abandoned to join theVandal invasion of North Africa, while the Suevi settled permanently inthe northwestern mountains of Spain. The Vandals occupied in Spain twowidely separated districts, one in the mountain region of Galicia nextto the Suevi, and the other in the fertile valley of Andalusia in thesouth, while the northeastern part of the peninsula was occupied byintruding Visigoths. [148] Add to these the original Iberian and Celticstocks of the peninsula and the Roman strain previously introduced, andthe various elements which have entered into the Spanish people becomeapparent. [149]

[Sidenote: Cultural modification during migration. ]

The absorption of foreign elements is not confined to large groups whosenames come down in history, nor is the ensuing modification one of bloodalone. Every land migration or expansion of a people passes by orthrough the territories of other peoples; by these it is inevitablyinfluenced in point of civilization, and from them individuals areabsorbed into the wandering throng by marriage or adoption, or a scoreof ways. This assimilation of blood and local culture is facilitated bythe fact that the vast majority of historical movements are slow, aleisurely drift. Even the great _Völkerwanderung_, which history hasshown us generally in the moment of swift, final descent upon theimperial city, in reality consisted of a succession of advances withlong halts between. The Vandals, whose original seats were probably incentral or eastern Prussia, drifted southward with the general movementof the German barbarians toward the borders of the Empire late in thesecond century, and, after the Marcomannic War (175 A. D. ), settled inDacia north of the lower Danube under the Roman sway. In 271 they werelocated on the middle Danube, and sixty years afterwards in Moravia. Later they settled for seventy years in Pannonia within the Empire, where they assimilated Roman civilization and adopted the Arian form ofChristianity from their Gothic neighbors. [150] In Spain, as we have seen, they occupied Galicia and Andalusia for a time before passing over intoAfrica in 429. Here was a migration lasting two centuries and a half, reaching from the Baltic to the southern shores of the Mediterranean, starting on the bleak sterile plains of the north amid barbarousneighbors, ending in the sunny grain fields and rich cities of RomanAfrica. The picture which we get of the victorious Vandals parceling outthe estates of Roman nobles, and, from the standpoint of their moreliberal faith, profiting by the dissensions of the two Catholic sects ofAfrica, shows us a people greatly modified by their long sweep throughthe civilized outskirts of the Empire. So it was with the Lombards andGoths who invaded Italy. 

Among primitive tribes, who move in smaller groups and must conformclosely to the dictates of their environment, the modifying effects ofpeople and land through which they pass are conspicuous. Ratzeldescribes the gradual withdrawal of a Hottentot people from western CapeColony far into the arid interior before the advance of Kaffirs andEuropeans by saying: "The stock and name of the Namaquas wanderednorthward, acquiring new elements, and in course of time filling the oldmold with new contents. "[151] This is the typical result of suchprimitive movements. The migration of the Delaware Indians from an earlyhome somewhere northwest of the Great Lakes to their historical habitatbetween the Hudson and Potomac Rivers was a slow progress, whichsomewhere brought them into contact with maize-growing tribes, and gavethem their start in agriculture. [152] The transit lands through whichthese great race journeys pass exercise a modifying effect chieflythrough their culture and their peoples, less through their physicalfeatures and climate. For that the stay of the visitants is generallytoo brief. 

[Sidenote: Effect of early maritime migration. ]

Even early maritime migrants did not keep their strains pure. Theuntried navigator sailing from island to headland, hugging the coast andputting ashore for water, came into contact with the natives. Crosscurrents of migration can be traced in Polynesian waters, where certainislands are nodal points which have given and received of races andculture through centuries of movement. The original white population ofUruguay differed widely from that of the other Spanish republics ofSouth America. Its nucleus was a large immigration of Canary Islanders. These were descendants of Spaniards and the native Guanches of theCanaries, mingled also with Norman, Flemish and Moorish blood. [153] TheNorse on their way to Iceland may have picked up a Celtic element in theislands north of Scotland; but from the Faroe group onward they foundonly empty Iceland and Greenland. This was an exceptional experience. Early navigation, owing to its limitations, purposely restricted itselfto the known. Men voyaged where men had voyaged before and were to befound. Journeys into the untenanted parts of the world were rare. However, the probable eastward expansion of the Eskimo along the Arcticrim of North America belongs in this class, so that this northern folkhas suffered no modification from contact with others, except whereAlaska approaches Asia. 

[Sidenote: The transit land. ]

The land traversed by a migrating horde is not to be pictured as a deadroad beneath their feet, but rather as a wide region of transit andtransition, potent to influence them by its geography and people, and tomodify them in the course of their passage. The route which they followis a succession of habitats, in which they linger and domicilethemselves for a while, though not long enough to lose wholly the habitsof life and thought acquired in their previous dwelling place. Althoughnature in many places, by means of valleys, low plains, mountain passesor oasis lines, points out the way of these race movements, it is saferto think and speak of this way as a transit land, not as a path or road. Even where the district of migration has been the sea, as among theCaribs of the Antilles Islands, the Moros of the Philippines, and thePolynesians of the Pacific, man sends his roots like a water plant downinto the restless element beneath, and reflects its influence in all histhought and activities. 

[Sidenote: War as a form of the historical movement. ]

Every aggressive historical movement, whether bold migration or forcibleextension of the home territory, involves displacement or passivemovement of other peoples (except in those rare occupations of vacantlands), who in turn are forced to encroach upon the lands of others. These conditions involve war, which is an important form of thehistorical movement, contributing to new social contacts and fusion ofracial stocks. Raids and piratical descents are often the preliminaryof great historical movements. They first expand the geographicalhorizon, and end in permanent settlements, which involve finallyconsiderable transfers of population, summoned to strengthen theposition of the interloper. Such was the history of the Germanicinvasions of Britain, the Scandinavian settlements on the shores ofIceland, Britain, and France, and the incursions of Saharan tribes intothe Sudanese states. Among pastoral nomads war is the rule; the tribe, amobilized nation, is always on a war footing with its neighbors. Thescant supply of wells and pasturage, inadequate in the dry season, involves rivalry and conflict for their possession as agricultural landsdo not. Failure of water or grass is followed by the decline of theherds, and then by marauding expeditions into the river valleys tosupply the temporary want of food. When population increases beyond thelimits of subsistence in the needy steppes, such raids become the ruleand end in the conquest of the more favored lands, with resultingamalgamation of race and culture. [154]

[Sidenote: Primitive war. ]

The wars of savage and pastoral peoples affect the whole tribe. All theable-bodied men are combatants, and all the women and childrenconstitute the spoils of war in case of defeat. This fact is important, since the purpose of primitive conflicts is to enslave and pillage, rather than to acquire land. The result is that a whole district may belaid waste, but when the devastators withdraw, it is graduallyrepopulated by bordering tribes, who make new ethnic combinations. Afterthe destruction of the Eries by the Iroquois in 1655, Ohio was leftpractically uninhabited for a hundred and fifty years. Then theIroquoian Wyandots extended their settlements into northwestern Ohiofrom their base in southern Michigan, while the Miami Confederacy alongthe southern shore of Lake Michigan pushed their borders into thewestern part. The Muskingum Valley in the eastern portion was occupiedabout 1750 by Delawares from eastern Pennsylvania, the Scioto byShawnees, and the northeast corner of the territory by detachments ofIroquois, chiefly Senecas. [155] The long wars between the AlgonquinIndians of the north and the Appalachian tribes of the south kept thedistrict of Kentucky a No Man's Land, in convenient vacancy foroccupation by the white settlers, when they began the westwardmovement. [156] [Map page 156. ]

[Sidenote: Slavery as form of historical movement. ]

This desolation is produced partly by killing, but chiefly byenslavement of prisoners and the flight of the conquered. Bothconstitute compulsory migrations of far-reaching effect in the fusion ofraces and the blending of civilizations. The thousands of Greek slaveswho were brought to ancient Rome contributed to its refinement andpolish. All the nations of the known world, from Briton to Syrian andJew, were represented in the slave markets of the imperial capital, andcontributed their elements to the final composition of the Roman people. When we read of ninety-seven thousand Hebrews whom Titus sold intobondage after the fall of Jerusalem, of forty thousand Greeks sold byLucullus after one victory, and the auction _sub corona_ of whole tribesin Gaul by Cæsar, the scale of this forcible transfer becomes apparent, and its power as an agent of race amalgamation. Senator Sam Houston ofTexas, speaking of the Comanche Indians, in the United States Senate, December 31, 1854, said: "There are not less than two thousand prisoners(whites) in the hands of the Comanches, four hundred in one band in myown state.... They take no prisoners but women and boys. "[157] It wascustomary among the Indians to use captured women as concubines and toadopt into the tribe such boys as survived the cruel treatment to whichthey were subjected. Since the Comanches in 1847 were variouslyestimated to number from nine to twelve thousand, [158] so large aproportion of captives would modify the native stock. 

In Africa slavery has been intimately associated with agriculture as asource of wealth, and therefore has lent motive to intertribal wars. Captives were enslaved and then gradually absorbed into the tribe oftheir masters. Thus war and slavery contributed greatly to thatwidespread blending of races which characterizes negro Africa. Slavesbecame a medium of exchange and an article of commerce with othercontinents. The negro slave trade had its chief importance in the eyesof ethnologists and historians because, in distributing the black racesin white continents, it has given a "negro question" to the UnitedStates, superseded the native Indian stock of the Antilles by negroes, and left a broad negro strain in the blood of Colombia, Venezuela, andBrazil. This particular historical movement, which during the twocenturies of its greatest activity involved larger numbers than theTartar invasion of Russia or the Turkish invasion of Europe, for a longperiod gave to black Africa the only historical importance which itpossessed for the rest of the world. [159]

[Sidenote: Fusion by deported and military colonies. ]

In higher stages of political development, war aiming at the subjugationof large territories finds another means to fuse the subject peoples andassimilate them to a common standard of civilization. The purpose isunification and the obliteration of local differences. These are alsothe unconscious ends of evolution by historical movement. With thisobject, conquerors the world over have used a system of tribal andracial exchanges. It was the policy of the Incas of ancient Peru toremove conquered tribes to distant parts of the realm, and supply theirplaces with colonists from other districts who had long been subjectedand were more or less assimilated. [160] In 722 B. C. The Assyrian king, Sargon, overran Samaria, carried away the Ten Tribes of Israel beyondthe Tigris and scattered them among the cities of Media, where theyprobably merged with the local population. To the country left vacant bytheir wholesale deportation he transplanted people from Babylon andother Mesopotamian cities. [161] The descendants of these, mingled withthe poorer class of Jews still left there, formed the despisedSamaritans of the time of Christ. The Kingdom of Judah later wasdespoiled by Nebuchadnezzar of much of its population, which was carriedoff to Babylon. 

This plan of partial deportation and colonization characterized theRoman method of Romanization. Removal of the conquered from their nativeenvironment facilitated the process, while it weakened the spirit andpower of revolt. The Romans met bitter opposition from the mountaintribes when trying to open up the northern passes of the Apennines. Consequently they removed the Ligurian tribe of the Apuanians, forty-seven thousand in number, far south to Samnium. When in 15 B. C. The region of the Rhaetian Alps was joined to the Empire, fortythousand of the inhabitants were transplanted from the mountains to theplain. The same method was used with the Scordisci and Dacians of theDanube. More often the mortality of war so thinned the population, thatthe settlement of Roman military colonies among them sufficed to keepdown revolt and to Romanize the surviving fragment. The large area ofRomance speech found in Roumania and eastern Hungary, despite thecontroversy about its origin, [162] seems to have had its chief source inthe extensive Roman colonies planted by the Emperor Trajan in conqueredDacia. [163] In Iberian Spain, which bitterly resisted Romanization, theprocess was facilitated by the presence of large garrisons of soldiers. Between 196 and 169 B. C. The troops amounted to one hundred and fiftythousand, and many of them remained in the country as colonists. [164]Compare the settlement of Scotch troops in French Canada by land grantsafter 1763, resulting in the survival to-day of sandy hair, blue eyes, and highland names among the French-speaking _habitants_ of Murray Bayand other districts. The Turks in the fifteenth century brought largebodies of Moslem converts from Asia Minor to garrison Macedonia andThessaly, thereby robbing the Anatolian Plateau of half its originalpopulation. Into the vacuum thus formed a current of nomads from innerAsia has poured ever since. [165]

[Sidenote: Withdrawal and flight. ]

Every active historical movement which enters an already populatedcountry gives rise there to passive movements, either compression of thenative folk followed by amalgamation, or displacement and withdrawal. The latter in some degree attends every territorial encroachment. Onlywhere there is an abundance of free land can a people retire as a wholebefore the onslaught, and maintain their national or racial solidarity. Thus the Slavs seem largely to have withdrawn before the Germans in theBaltic plains of Europe. The Indians of North and South America retiredwestward before the advance of the whites from the Atlantic coast. TheCherokee nation, who once had a broad belt of country extending from theTennessee Valley through South Carolina to the ocean, [166] firstretracted their frontier to the Appalachian Mountains; in 1816 they wereconfined to an ever shrinking territory on the middle Tennessee and thesouthern end of the highlands; in 1818 they began to retire beyond theMississippi, and in 1828 beyond the western boundary of Arkansas. [167]The story of the Shawnees and Delawares is a replica of this. [168] In thesame way Hottentots and Kaffirs in South Africa are withdrawingnorthward and westward into the desert before the protruding frontier ofwhite settlement, as the Boers before the English treked farther intothe veldt. [See map page 105. ]

Where the people attacked or displaced is small or a broken remnant, itoften takes refuge among a neighboring or kindred tribe. The smallSiouan tribes of the Carolinas, reduced to fragments by repeatedIroquois raids, combined with their Siouan kinsmen the Catawbas, whoconsequently in 1743 included twenty dialects among their littleband. [169] The Iroquoian Tuscaroras of North Carolina, defeated andweakened by the whites in 1711, fled north to the Iroquois of New York, where they formed the Sixth Nation of the Confederation. The YameseIndians, who shifted back and forth between the borders of Florida andSouth Carolina, defeated first by the whites and then by the Creeks, found a refuge for the remnant of their tribe among the Seminoles, inwhom they merged and disappeared as a distinct tribe[170]--the fate ofmost of these fragmentary peoples. [See map page 54. ]

[Sidenote: Dispersal in flight. ]

When the fugitive body is large, it is forced to split up in order toescape. Hence every fugitive movement tends to assume the character of adispersal, all the more as organization and leadership vanish in thecatastrophe. The fissile character of primitive societies especiallycontributes to this end, so that almost every story of Indian and nativeAfrican warfare tells of shattered remnants fleeing in severaldirections. Among civilized peoples, the dispersal is that ofindividuals and has far-reaching historical effects. After thedestruction of Jerusalem, the Jews were scattered over the earth, thedebris of a nation. The religious wars of France during the sixteenthand seventeenth centuries caused Huguenots to flee to Switzerland, Germany, Holland, England, and South Carolina; they even tried toestablish a colony on the coast of Brazil. Everywhere they contributed avaluable element to the economic and social life of the community whichthey joined. The great schism in the Russian Church became an agent ofemigration and colonization. It helped to spread the Russian nationalityover remote frontier regions of the empire which previously had beenalmost exclusively Asiatic; and distributed groups of dissenters in theneighboring provinces of Turkey, Roumania, Austria, Poland andPrussia. [171]

[Sidenote: Natural regions of retreat. ]

The hope of safety from pursuit drives fugitive peoples into isolatedand barren places that are scarcely accessible or habitable, and therebyextends the inhabited area of the earth long before mere pressure ofpopulation would have stretched it to such limits. We find these refugeefolk living in pile villages built over the water, in deserts, inswamps, mangrove thickets, very high mountains, marshy deltas, andremote or barren islands, all which can be classified as regions ofretreat. Fugitives try to place between themselves and their pursuers abarrier of sea or desert or mountains, and in doing this have themselvessurmounted some of the greatest obstacles to the spread of the humanrace. 

Districts of refuge located centrally to several natural regions ofmigration receive immigrants from many sides, and are therefore oftencharacterized by a bizarre grouping of populations. The cluster ofmarshy islands at the head of the Adriatic received fugitives from along semi-circle of north Italian cities during the barbarian invasions. Each refugee colony occupied a separate island, and finally allcoalesced to form the city of Venice. Central mountain districts likethe Alps and Caucasus contain "the sweepings of the plains. " TheCaucasus particularly, on the border between Europe and Asia, containsevery physical type and representative of every linguistic family ofEurasia, except pure Aryan. Nowhere else in the world probably is theresuch a heterogeneous lot of peoples, languages and religions. Ripleycalls the Caucasus "a grave of peoples, of languages, of customs andphysical types. "[172] Its base, north and south, and the longitudinalgroove through its center from east to west have been swept by variousracial currents, which have cast up their flotsam into its valleys. Thepueblos of our arid Southwest, essentially an area of asylum, areinhabited by Indians of four distinct stocks, and only one of them, theMoquis, show clearly kinship to another tribe outside thisterritory, [173] so that they are survivals. The twenty-eight differentIndian stocks huddled together in small and diverse linguistic groupsbetween the Pacific Ocean and the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada andCascade Range[174] leave the impression that these protected valleys, similar to the Caucasus in their ethnic diversity, were an asylum forremnants of depleted stocks who had fled to the western highlands beforethe great Indian migrations of the interior. [175] Making their waypainfully and at great cost of life through a region of mountain anddesert, they came out in diminished bands to survive in the protectionof the great barrier. Of the twenty-one Indian linguistic stocks whichhave become extinct since the arrival of the white man, fifteen belongto this transmontane strip of the Pacific slope[176]--evidence of thefragmentary character of these stocks and their consequently small powerof resistance, [See map page 54. ]

[Sidenote: Emigration and colonization. ]

Advance to a completely sedentary life, as we see it among moderncivilized nations, prohibits the migration of whole peoples, or even oflarge groups when maintaining their political organization. On the otherhand, however, sedentary life and advanced civilization bring rapidincrease of population, improved methods of communication, and anenlarged geographical horizon. These conditions encourage and facilitateemigration and colonization, forms of historical movement which havecharacterized the great commercial peoples of antiquity and theovercrowded nations of modern times. These forms do not involve a wholepeople, but only individuals and small groups, though in time the totalresult may represent a considerable proportion of the originalpopulation. The United States in 1890 contained 980, 938 immigrants fromCanada and Newfoundland, [177] or just one-fifth the total population ofthe Dominion in that same year. Germany since 1820 has contributed atleast five million citizens to non-European lands. Ireland since 1841has seen nearly four millions of its inhabitants drawn off to othercountries, [178] an amount only little less than its present population. It is estimated that since 1851 emigration has carried off from CountyClare and Kerry seventy-two per cent. Of the average population; and yetthose counties are still crowded. [179] Among those who abandon theirhomes in search of easier conditions of living, certain ages and certainsocial and industrial classes predominate. A typical emigrant group toAmerica represents largely the lower walks of life, includes an abnormalproportion of men and adults, and about three-fourths of it areunskilled laborers and agriculturists. [180]

Colonization, the most potent instrument of organized expansion, has inrecent centuries changed the relative significance of the great colonialnations of Europe. It raised England from a small insular country to thecenter of a world power. It gave sudden though temporary preëminence toSpain and Portugal, a new lease of life to little Holland, and ominousimportance to Russia. Germany, who entered the colonial field only in1880, found little desirable land left; and yet it was especiallyGermany who needed an outlet for her redundant population. With allthese states, as with ancient Phoenicia, Greece and Yemen, the initialpurpose was commerce or in some form the exploitation of the newterritory. Colonies were originally trading stations established as safetermini for trade routes. [181] Colonial government, as administered bythe mother country, originally had an eye single for the profits oftrade: witness the experience of the Thirteen Colonies with GreatBritain. Colonial wars have largely meant the rivalry of competingnations seeking the same markets, as the history of the Portuguese andDutch in the East Indies, and the English and French in America prove. The first Punic War had a like commercial origin--rivalry for the tradeof _Magna Græcia_ between Rome and Carthage, the dominant colonialpowers of the western Mediterranean. Such wars result in expansion forthe victor. 

[Sidenote: Commerce. ]

Commerce, which so largely underlies colonization, is itself a form ofhistorical movement. It both causes and stimulates great movements ofpeoples, yet it differs from these fundamentally in its relation to theland. Commerce traverses the land to reach its destination, but takesaccount of natural features only as these affect transportation andtravel. It has to do with systems of routes and goals, which it aims toreach as quickly as possible. It reduces its cortege to essentials;eliminates women and children. Therefore it surmounts natural barrierswhich block the advance of other forms of the historical movement. Merchant caravans are constantly crossing the desert, but not sopeoples. Traders with loaded yaks or ponies push across the KarakorumMountains by passes where a migrating horde would starve and freeze. Thenorthern limit of the Mediterranean race in Spain lies sharply definedalong the crest of the Pyrenees, whose long unbroken wall forms one ofthe most pronounced boundaries in Europe;[182] yet traders and smugglershave pushed their way through from time immemorial. Long after Etruscanmerchants had crossed northward over the Alps, Roman expansion andcolonization made a detour around the mountains westward into Gaul, withthe result that the Germans received Roman civilization not straightfrom the south, but secondhand through their Gallic neighbors west ofthe Rhine. 

[Sidenote: Commerce a guide to various movements. ]

Commerce, though differing from other historical movements, may give tothese direction and destination. The trader is frequently the herald ofsoldier and settler. He becomes their guide, takes them along the trailwhich he has blazed, and gives them his own definiteness of aim. Theearliest Roman conquest of the Alpine tribes was made for the purpose ofopening the passes for traders and abolishing the heavy transit dutiesimposed by the mountaineers. [183] Fur-traders inaugurated Frenchexpansion to the far west of Canada, and the Russian advance intoSiberia. The ancient amber route across Russia from the Baltic to theEuxine probably guided the Goths in their migration from their northernseats to the fertile lands in southern Russia, where they first appearin history as the Ostrogoths. [184] The caravan trade across the Saharafrom the Niger to the Mediterranean coast has itself embodied anhistorical movement, by bringing out enough negro slaves appreciably tomodify the ethnic composition of the population in many parts of NorthAfrica. [185] It was this trade which also suggested to Prince Henry ofPortugal in 1415, when campaigning in Morocco, the plan of reaching theGuinea Coast by sea and diverting its gold dust and slaves to the portof Lisbon, a movement which resulted in the Portuguese circumnavigationof Africa. [186]

Every staple place and trading station is a center of geographicalinformation; it therefore gives an impulse to expansion by widening thegeographical horizon. The Lewis and Clark Expedition found the Mandanvillages at the northern bend of the Missouri River the center of atrade which extended west to the Pacific, through the agency of the Crowand Paunch Indians of the upper Yellowstone, and far north to theAssiniboine and Saskatchewan Rivers. Here in conversation with Britishand French fur-traders of the Northwest Company's posts, they securedinformation about the western country they were to explore. [187]Similarly the trade of the early Jesuit missions at La Pointe near thewest end of Lake Superior annually drew the Indians from a wide circlesweeping from Green Bay and the Fox River in the south, across theMississippi around to the Lake of the Woods and far north of LakeSuperior. [188] Here Marquette first heard of the great river destined tocarry French dominion to the Gulf of Mexico. 

[Sidenote: Movements due to religion. ]

Trade often finds in religion an associate and coadjutor in directingand stimulating the historical movement. China regards modern Christianmissions as effective European agencies for the spread of commercial andpolitical power. Jesuit and fur-trader plunged together into the wildsof colonial Canada; Spanish priest and gold-seeker into Mexico and Peru. American missionary pressed close upon the heels of fur-trader into theOregon country. Jason Lee, having established a Methodist mission on theWillamette in 1834, himself experienced sudden conversion fromreligionist to colonizer. He undertook a temporary mission back to thesettled States, where he preached a stirring propaganda for thesettlement and appropriation of the disputed Oregon country, before theBritish should fasten their grip upon it. The United States owes Hawaiito the expansionist spirit of American missionaries. Thirty years aftertheir arrival in the islands, they held all the important offices underthe native government, and had secured valuable tracts of lands, layingthe foundation of the landed aristocracy of planters established thereto-day. Their sons and grandsons took the lead in the Revolution of1893, and in the movement for annexation to the United States. Thussometimes do the meek inherit the earth. 

[Sidenote: Religious pilgrimages. ]

The famous pilgrimages of the world, in which the commercial element hasbeen more or less conspicuous, [189] have contributed greatly to thecirculation of peoples and ideas, especially as they involve multitudesand draw from a large circle of lands. Their economic, intellectual andpolitical effects rank them as one phase of the historical movement. Herodotus tells of seven hundred thousand Egyptians flocking to the cityof Bubastis from all parts of Egypt for the festival of Diana. [190] Theworship of Ashtoreth in Bambyce in Syria drew votaries from all theSemitic peoples except the Jews. As early as 386 A. D. Christianpilgrims flocked to Jerusalem from Armenia, Persia, India, Ethiopia, andeven from Gaul and Britain. Jerusalem gave rise to those armedpilgrimages, the Crusades, with all their far-reaching results. Thepilgrimages to Rome, which in the Jubilee of 1300 brought two hundredthousand worshipers to the sacred city, did much to consolidate papalsupremacy over Latin Christendom. [191] As the roads to Rome took thepious wayfarers through Milan, Venice, Genoa, Florence, Bologna, andother great cities of Italy, they were so many channels for thedistribution of Italian art and culture over the more untutored lands ofwestern Europe. 

Though Mecca is visited annually by only seventy or eighty thousandpilgrims, it puts into motion a far greater number over the wholeMohammedan world, from westernmost Africa to Chinese Turkestan. [192]Yearly a great pilgrimage, numbering in 1905 eighty thousand souls, moves across Africa eastward through the Sudan on its way to the Red Seaand Mecca. Many traders join the caravans of the devout both forprotection and profit, and the devout themselves travel with herds ofcattle to trade in on the way. The merchants are prone to drop out andsettle in any attractive country, and few get beyond the populousmarkets of Wadai. The British and French governments in the Sudan aidand protect these pilgrimages; they recognize them as a political force, because they spread the story of the security and order of Europeanrule. [193] The markets of western Tibet, recently opened to Indianmerchants by the British expedition to Lhassa, promote intercoursebetween the two countries especially because of the sacred lakes andmountains in their vicinity, which are goals of pilgrimage alike toHindu and Tibetan Buddhist. They offer an opportunity to acquire meritand profit at the same time, an irresistible combination to the needy, pious Hindu. Therefore across the rugged passes of the Himalayas hedrives his yaks laden with English merchandise, an unconsciousinstrument for the spread of English influence, English civilization andthe extension of the English market, as the Colonial Office wellunderstands. [194]

[Sidenote: Historical movement and race distribution. ]

The forms which have been assumed by the historical movement are varied, but all have contributed to the spread of man over the habitable globe. The yellow, white and red races have become adapted to every zone; theblack race, whether in Africa, Australia or Melanesia, is confinedchiefly to the Tropics. A like conservatism as to habitat tends tocharacterize all sub-races, peoples, and tribes of the human family. Thefact which strikes one in studying the migrations of these smallergroups is their adherence each to a certain zone or heat belt defined bycertain isothermal lines (see map chap. XVII. ), their reluctance toprotrude beyond its limits, and the restricted range and small numericalstrength of such protrusions as occur. This seems to be the conservatismof the mature race type, which has lost some of its plasticity and shunsor succumbs to the ordeal of adaptation to contrasted climaticconditions, except when civilization enables it partially to neutralizetheir effects. 

[Illustration: PRIMITIVE INDIAN STOCKS OF SOUTH AMERICA (From Helmolt's_History of the World_. By permission of Dodd, Mead & Co. )]

[Sidenote: Migrations in relation to zones and heat belts. ]

In South America, Caribs and Arawaks showed a strictly tropicaldistribution from Hayti to the southern watershed of the Amazon. TheTupis, moving down the Parana-La Plata system, made a short excursionbeyond the Tropic of Capricorn, though not beyond the hot belt, thenturned equator-ward again along the coast. [195] In North America we findsome exceptions to the rule. For instance, though the main area of theAthapascan stock is found in the frigid belt of Canada and Alaska, northof the annual isotherm of 0°C. (32°F. ) small residual fragments ofthese people are scattered also along the Pacific coast of Oregon andCalifornia, marking the old line of march of a large group which driftedsouthward into Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and the northern part ofMexico. The Shoshone stock, which originally occupied the Great Basinand western intermontane plateau up to the borders of Canada, sent outoffshoots which developed into the ancient civilized tribes of tropicalMexico and Central America. Both these emigrations to more southernzones were part of the great southward trend characterizing allmovements on the Pacific side of the continent, probably from anoriginal ethnic port of entry near Bering Strait; and part also of thegeneral southward drift in search of more genial climate, which landedthe van of northern Siouan, Algonquin and Iroquoian stocks in thepresent area of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi andLouisiana, while the base of their territory stretched out to itsgreatest width in southern Canada and contiguous parts of the UnitedStates. [See map page 54. ][196]

[Illustration: ETHNOGRAPHICAL MAP OF INDIA FROM THE INDIAN CENSUS OF1901. ]

[Illustration: ETHNOGRAPHICAL MAP OF ASIA. Vertical Shading in theNorth is Slav. ]

[Sidenote: Range of movements in Asia. ]

If we turn to the eastern hemisphere, we find the Malays andMalayo-Polynesians, differentiated offshoots of the Mongolian stock, restricted to the Tropics, except where Polynesians have spread tooutlying New Zealand. The Chinese draw their political boundary nearlyalong the Tropic of Cancer, but they have freely lapped over thisfrontier into Indo-China as far as Singapore. [197] Combined with thisexpansion was the early infiltration of the Chinese into thePhilippines, Borneo, and the western Sunda Isles, all distinctlytropical. The fact that the Chinese show a physical capacity foracclimatization found in no other race explains in part their presenceinto the Tropics. In contrast, the Aryan folk of India, whether in theirpure type as found in the Punjab and Rajputana Desert, or mingled withthe earlier Dravidian races belong to the hot belt but scarcely reachthe Tropic of Cancer, [198] though their language has far overshot thisline both in the Deccan and the Ganges Delta. One spore of Aryan stock, in about 450 B. C. , moved by sea from the Bay of Cambay to Ceylon;mingling there with the Tamil natives, they became the progenitors ofthe Singhalese, forming a hybrid tropical offshoot. 

Europe, except for its small sub-arctic area, has received immigrants, according to the testimony of history and ethnology, only from thetemperate parts of Asia and Africa, with the one exception of theSaracens of Arabia, whose original home lay wholly within the hotclimate belt of 20°C. (68°F. ). Saracen expansion, in covering Persia, Syria, and Egypt, still kept to this hot belt; only in the Barbary Coastof Africa and in Spain did it protrude into the temperate belt. Thoughthis last territory was extra-tropical, it was essentially semi-arid andsub-tropical in temperature, like the dry trade-wind belt whence theSaracens had sprung. 

[Illustration: ETHNOGRAPHICAL MAP OF AFRICA AND ARABIA. ]

[Sidenote: Range of movements in Africa. ]

The Semitic folk of Arabia and the desert Hamites of northern Africa, bred by their hot, dry environment to a nomadic life, have been drawnsouthward over the Sahara across the Tropic into the grasslands of theSudan, permeating a wide zone of negro folk with the political control, religion, civilization and blood of the Mediterranean north. Heresimilar though better conditions of life, a climate hotter though lessarid, attracted Hamitic invasion, while the relatively dense nativepopulation in a lower stage of economic development presented to thecommercial Semites the attraction of lucrative trade. South of theequator the native Bantu Kaffirs, essentially a tropical people, spreadbeyond their zonal border to the south coast of Africa at 33° S. L. , and displaced the yellow Hottentots[199] before the arrival of the Dutchin 1602; while in the early nineteenth century we hear of the Makololo, a division of this same Kaffir stock, leaving their native seats nearthe southern sources of the Vaal River at 28° S. L. And moving some ninehundred miles northward to the Barotse territory on the upper Zambesi at15° S. L. [200] This again was a movement of a pastoral people across atropic to other grasslands, to climatic conditions scarcely differentfrom those which they had left. 

[Sidenote: Colonization and latitude. ]

The modern colonial movements which have been genuine race expansionshave shown a tendency not only to adhere to their zone, but to followparallels of latitude or isotherms. The stratification of Europeanpeoples in the Americas, excepting Spanish and Portuguese, coincideswith heat zones. Internal colonization in the United States reveals thesame principle. [201] Russian settlements in Asia stretch across Siberiachiefly between the fiftieth and fifty-fifth parallels; these same linesinclude the ancient Slav territory in Germany between the Vistula andWeser. The great efflux of home-seekers, as opposed to the smallercontingent of mere conquerors and exploiters, which has poured forthfrom Europe since the fifteenth century, has found its destinationslargely in the temperate parts of the Americas, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. Even the Spanish overlords in Mexico and Perudomiciled themselves chiefly in the highlands, where altitude in partcounteracts tropical latitude. European immigration into South Americato-day greatly predominates in the temperate portions, --in Argentine, Uruguay, Paraguay, southern Brazil and southern Chile. While Argentine'spopulation includes over one million white foreigners, who comprisetwenty per cent. Of the total, [202] Venezuela has no genuine whiteimmigration. Its population, which comprises only one per cent. Of purewhites, consists chiefly of negroes, mulattoes, and Sambos, hybrids ofnegro and Indian race. In British Guiana, negroes and East Indiancoolies, both importations from other tropical lands, compriseeighty-one per cent. Of the population. [203]

The movement of Europeans into the tropical regions of Asia, Australasia, Africa and America, like the American advance into thePhilippines, represents commercial and political, not genuine ethnicexpansion. Except where it resorts to hybridization, it seeks not newhomesteads, but the profits of tropical trade and the markets forEuropean manufactures found in retarded populations. These it secureseither by a small but permanently domiciled ruling class, as formerly inSpanish and Portuguese America, or by a body of European officials, clerks, agents and soldiers, sent out for a term of years. Such are theseventy-six thousand Britishers who manage the affairs of commerce andstate in British India, and the smaller number of Dutch who perform thesame functions in the Dutch East India islands. The basis of this systemis exploitation. It represents neither a high economic, ethical, norsocial ideal, and therefore lacks the stamp of geographic finality. 

[Sidenote: Movement to like geographic conditions. ]

A migrating or expanding people, when free to choose, is prone to seek anew home with like geographic conditions to the old. Hence the stamponce given by an environment tends to perpetuate itself. All people, especially those in the lower stages of culture, are conservative intheir fundamental activities. Agriculture is intolerable to pastoralnomads, hunting has little attraction for a genuine fisher folk. Therefore such peoples in expansion seek an environment in which thenational aptitudes, slowly evolved in their native seats, find a readyfield. Thus arise natural provinces of distribution, whose location, climate, physical features, and size reflect the social and economicadaptation of the inhabitants to a certain type of environment. Ashepherd folk, when breaking off from its parent stock like Abraham'sfamily from their Mesopotamian kinsmen, seeks a land rich in openpastures and large enough to support its wasteful nomadic economy. Aseafaring people absorb an ever longer strip of seaboard, like theEskimo of Arctic America, or throw out their settlements from inlet toinlet or island to island, as did Malays and Polynesians in the Pacific, ancient Greeks and Phoenicians in the subtropical Mediterranean, and theNorse in the northern seas. The Dutch, bred to the national professionof diking and draining, appear in their element in the water-loggedcoast of Sumatra and Guiana, [204] where they cultivate lands reclaimedfrom the sea; or as colonists in the Vistula lowlands, whither Prussiaimported them to do their ancestral task, just as the English employedtheir Dutch prisoners after the wars with Holland in the seventeenthcentury to dike and drain the fens of Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire. Moreover, the commercial talent of the Dutch, trained by theiradvantageous situation on the North Sea about the Rhine mouths, guidedtheir early traders to similar locations elsewhere, like the Hudson andDelaware Rivers, or planted them on islands either furnishing orcommanding extensive trade, such as Ceylon, Mauritius, the East Indies, or the Dutch holdings in the Antilles. 

Much farther down in the cultural scale we find the fisher tribes ofCentral Africa extending their villages from point to point along theequatorial streams, and the river Indians of South America graduallyspreading from headwaters to estuary, and thence to the relatedenvironment of the coast. The Tupis, essentially a water race, have lefttraces of their occupation only where river or coast enabled them tolive by their inherited aptitudes. [205] The distribution of the ancientmounds in North America shows their builders to have sought with fewexceptions protected sites near alluvial lowlands, commanding rich soilfor cultivation and the fish supply from the nearby river. Mountaineerfolk often move from one upland district to another, as did the Lombardsof Alpine Pannonia in their conquest of Lombardy and Apennine Italy, where all their four duchies were restricted to the highlands of thepeninsula. [206] The conquests of the ancient Incas and the spread oftheir race covered one Andean valley after another for a stretch of onethousand five hundred miles, wherever climatic and physical conditionswere favorable to their irrigated tillage and highland herds of llamas. They found it easier to climb pass after pass and mount to ever higheraltitudes, rather than descend to the suffocating coasts where neitherman nor beast could long survive, though they pushed the politicalboundary finally to the seaboard. [Map page 101. ]

[Sidenote: Movement to better geographic conditions. ]

The search for better land, milder climate, and easier conditions ofliving starts many a movement of peoples which, in view of theirpurpose, necessarily leads them into an environment sharply contrastedto their original habitat. Such has been the radial outflow of theMongoloid tribes down from the rugged highlands of central Asia to thefertile river lowlands of the peripheral lands; the descent of the Iranpastors upon the agricultural folk of the Indus, Ganges and Mesopotamianvalleys, and the swoop of desert-born conquerors upon the unresistingtillers of well-watered fields in all times, from the ancient Hyksos ofthe Nile to the modern Fulbe of the Niger Valley. 

[Sidenote: Southward and westward drifts in the northern hemisphere. ]

The attraction of a milder climate has caused in the northern hemispherea constantly recurring migration from north to south. In primitive NorthAmerica, along the whole broad Atlantic slope, the predominant directionof Indian migrations was from north to south, accompanied by a driftfrom west to east. [207] On the Pacific side of the continent also thetrend was southward. This is generally conceded regardless of theory asto whether the Indians first found entrance to the continent at itsnortheast or northwest corner. It was a movement toward milderclimates. [208] Study of the _Völkerwanderungen_ in Europe reveals twocurrents or drifts in varied combination, one from north to south andthe other from east to west, but both of them aimed at regions of betterclimate; for the milder temperature and more abundant rainfall ofwestern Europe made a country as alluring to the Goths, Huns, Alans, Slavs, Bulgars and Tartars of Asiatic deserts and Russian steppes, aswere the sunny Mediterranean peninsulas to the dwellers of the bleakBaltic coasts. This is one geographic fact back of the conspicuouswestward movement formulated into an historical principle: "Westward thestar of empire takes its course. " The establishment of European colonieson the western side of the Atlantic, their extension thence to thePacific and ever westward, till European culture was transplanted to thePhilippines by Spain and more recently by the United States, constitutethe most remarkable sustained movement made by any one race. 

[Sidenote: Eastward movements. ]

But westward movements are not the only ones. On the Pacific slope ofAsia the star has moved eastward. From highland Mongolia issued thethrong which originally populated the lowlands of China; and eversince, one nomad conqueror after the other has descended thence to rulethe fruitful plains of Chili and the teeming populations of the YangtzeValley. [209] Russia, blocked in its hoped for expansion to the west bythe strong powers of central Europe, stretched its dominion eastward tothe Pacific and for a short time over to Alaska. The chief expansion ofthe German people and the German Empire in historical times has alsobeen from west to east; but this eastward advance is probably onlyretracing the steps taken by many primitive Teutonic tribes as theydrifted Rhineward from an earlier habitat along the Vistula. 

[Sidenote: Return movements. ]

Since the world is small, it frequently happens that a people after aninterval of generations, armed with a higher civilization, will reëntera region which it once left when too crude and untutored to develop thepossibilities of the land, but which its better equipment later enablesit to exploit. Thus we find a backward expansion of the Chinese westwardto the foot of the Pamir, and an internal colonization of the empire tothe Ili feeder of Lake Balkash. The expansion of the Japanese into Koreaand Saghalin is undoubtedly such a return current, after an intervallong enough to work a complete transformation in the primitiveMongolians who found their way to that island home. Sometimes the returnrepresents the ebbing of the tide, rather than the back water of astream in flood. Such was the retreat of the Moors from Spain to theBerber districts of North Africa, whither they carried echoes of thebrilliant Saracen civilization in the Iberian Peninsula. Such has beenthe gradual withdrawal of the Turks from Europe back to their nativeAsia, and slow expulsion of the Tartar tribes from Russia to the barrenAsiatic limits of their former territory. [See map page 225. ]

[Sidenote: Regions of attraction and repulsion. ]

Voluntary historical movements, seeking congenial or choice regions ofthe earth, have left its less favored spots undisturbed. Paucity ofresources and isolation have generally insured to a region a peacefulhistory; natural wealth has always brought the conqueror. In ancientGreece the fruitful plains of Thessaly, Boeotia, Elis and Laconia had afatal attraction for every migrating horde; Attica's rugged surface, poor soil, and side-tracked location off the main line of travelbetween Hellas and the Peloponnesus saved it from many a roughvisitant, [210] and hence left the Athenians, according to Thucydides, anindigenous race. The fertility of the Rhine Valley has always attractedinvasion, the barren Black Forest range has repelled and obstructed it. 

The security of such unproductive highlands lies more in their failureto attract than in their power to resist conquest. When to abundantnatural resources, a single spot adds a reputation for wealth, magnificence, an exceptional position for the control of territory orcommerce, it becomes a geographical magnet. Such was Delphi for theGauls of the Balkan Peninsula in the third century, Rome for theGermanic and Hunnish tribes of the _Völkerwanderung_, Constantinople forthe Normans, Turks and Russians, Venice for land-locked Austria, theMississippi highway and the outlet at New Orleans for ourTrans-Allegheny pioneers. 

[Sidenote: Psychical influences in certain movements. ]

Sometimes the goal is fabulous or mythical, but potent to lure, like theland of El Dorado, abounding in gold and jewels, which for two centuriesspurred on Spanish exploration in America. Other than purely materialmotives may initiate or maintain such a movement, an ideal or a dream ofgood, like the fountain of eternal youth which brought Ponce de Leon toFlorida, the search for the Islands of the Blessed, or the spirit ofreligious propaganda which stimulated the spread of the Spanish inMexico and the French in Canada, or the hope of religious tolerationwhich has drawn Quaker, Puritan, Huguenot, and Jew to America. It was anidea of purely spiritual import which directed the century-long movementof the Crusades toward Jerusalem, half Latinized the Levant, and widenedthe intellectual horizon of Europe. A national or racial sentiment whichenhaloes a certain spot may be pregnant with historical results, becauseat any moment it may start some band of enthusiasts on a path ofmigration or conquest. The Zionist agitation for the return of oppressedJews to Palestine, and the establishment of the Liberian Republic forthe negroes in Africa rest upon such a sentiment. The reverence of theChristian world for Rome as a goal of pilgrimages materially enhancedthe influence of Italy as a school of culture during the Middle Ages. The spiritual and ethnic association of the Mohammedan world with Meccais always fraught with possible political results. The dominant tribesof the Sudan, followers of Islam, who proudly trace back a fictitiousline of ancestry to the Arabs of Yemen, are readily incited to support anew prophet sprung from the race of Mecca. [211] The pilgrimages which theBuddhists of the Asiatic highlands make to the sacred city of Lhassaensure China's control over the restless nomads through theinstrumentality of the Grand Lama of Tibet. 

[Sidenote: Results of historical movement. ]

Historical movements are varied as to motive, direction, numericalstrength, and character, but their final results are two, differentiation and assimilation. Both are important phases of theprocess of evolution, but the latter gains force with the progress ofhistory and the increase of the world's population. 

[Sidenote: Differentiation and area. ]

A people or race which, in its process of numerical growth, spreads overa large territory subjects itself to a widening range of geographicconditions, and therefore of differentiation. The broad expansion of theTeutonic race in Europe, America, Australia and South Africa has broughtit into every variety of habitat. If the territory has a monotonousrelief like Russia, nevertheless, its mere extent involves diversity ofclimate and location. The diversity of climate incident to large areainvolves in turn different animal and plant life, different crops, different economic activities. Even in lowlands the relief, geologicstructure, and soil are prone to vary over wide districts. Themonotonous surface of Holland shows such contrasts. So do the NorthGerman lowlands; here the sandy barren flats of the "geest" alternatewith stretches of fertile silt deposited by the rivers or the sea, [212]and support different types of communities, which have been admirablydescribed by Gustav Frenssen in his great novel of Jön Uhl. The flatsurface of southern Illinois shows in small compass the teemingfertility of the famous "American bottom, " the poor clay soil of "Egypt"with its backward population, and the rich prairie land just to thenorth with its prosperous and progressive farmer class. 

When the relief includes mountains, the character not only of the landbut of the climate changes, and therewith the type of community. Henceneighboring districts may produce strongly contrasted types of society. Madison County of Kentucky, lying on the eastern margin of the Bluegrassregion, contains the rich landed estates, negro laboring class andaristocratic society characteristic of the "planter" communities of theold South; and only twenty miles southeast of Richmond, the center ofthis wealth and refinement, it includes also the rough barren hillcountry of the Cumberland Plateau, where are found one-room cabins, moonshine stills, feuds, and a backward population sprung from the samepure English stock as the Bluegrass people. 

[Sidenote: Contrasted environments. ]

Here is differentiation due to the immediate influences of environment. The phenomenon reappears in every part of the world, in every race andevery age. The contrast between the ancient Greeks of the mountains, coasts and alluvial valleys shows the power of environment to directeconomic activities and to modify culture and social organization. Sodoes the differences between the coast, steppe, and forest Indians ofGuiana, [213] the Kirghis of the Pamir pastures and the Irtysh Rivervalley, the agricultural Berbers of the Atlas Mountains and the Berbernomads of the Sahara, the Swiss of the high, lonely Engadine and thoseof the crowded Aar valley. 

Contrasted environments effect a natural selection in another way andthereby greatly stimulate differentiation, whenever an intruding peoplecontest the ownership of the territory with the inhabitants. Thestruggle for land means a struggle also for the best land, whichtherefore falls to the share of the strongest peoples. Weaklings mustcontent themselves with poor soils, inaccessible regions of mountain, swamp or desert. There they deteriorate, or at best strike a slower paceof increase or progress. The difference between the people of thehighlands and plains of Great Britain or of France is therefore in parta distinction of race due to this geographical selection, [214] in part adistinction of economic development and culture due to geographicinfluences. Therefore the piedmont belts of the world, except in aridlands, are cultural, ethnic and often political lines of cleavage, showing marked differentiation on either side. Isotherms are other suchcleavage lines, marking the limits beyond which an aggressive people didnot desire to expand because of an uncongenial climate. The distinctionbetween Anglo-Saxon and Latin America is one of zone as well as race. Everywhere in North America the English stock has dominated or displacedFrench and Spanish competitors down to the Mexican frontier. 

As the great process of European colonization has permeated the earthand multiplied its population, not only the best land but the amount ofthis has commenced to differentiate the history of various Europeannations, and that in a way whose end cannot yet be definitely predicted. The best lands have fallen to the first-comers strong enough to holdthem. People who early develop powers of expansion, like the English, orwho, like the French and Russians, formulate and execute vastterritorial policies, secure for their future growth a wide base whichwill for all time distinguish them from late-comers into the colonialfield, like Germany and Italy. These countries see the fecundity oftheir people redounding to the benefit of alien colonial lands, whichhave been acquired by enterprising rivals in the choice sections of thetemperate zone. German and Italian colonies in torrid, unhealthy, orbarren tropical lands, fail to attract emigrants from the mothercountry, and therefore to enhance national growth. 

[Sidenote: Two-type populations. ]

When colonizers or conquerors appropriate the land of a lower race, wefind a territory occupied at least for a time by two types ofpopulation, constituting an ethnic, social and often economicdifferentiation. The separation may be made geographical also. TheIndians in the United States have been confined to reservations, likethe Hottentots to the twenty or more "locations" in Cape Colony. This isthe simplest arrangement. Whether the second or lower type survivesdepends upon their economic and social utility, into which againgeographic conditions enter. The Indians of Canada are a distincteconomic factor in that country as trappers for the Hudson Bay Company, and they will so remain till the hunting grounds of the far north areexhausted. The native agriculturists in the Tropics are indispensable tothe unacclimated whites. The negroes of the South, introduced for aneconomic purpose, find their natural habitat in the Black Belt. Here wehave an ethnic division of labor for geographical reasons. Castes orsocial classes, often distinguished by shades of color as in BrahmanIndia, survive as differentiations indicating old lines of racecleavage. There is abundant evidence that the upper classes in Germany, France, Austria, and the British Isles are distinctly lighter of hairand eyes than the peasantry. [215] The high-class Japanese are taller andfairer than the masses. Nearly all the African tribes of the Sudan andbordering Sahara include two distinct classes, one of lighter and one ofdarker shade. Many Fulbe tribes distinguish these classes by the namesof "Blacks" and "Whites. "[216] The two-type people are the result ofhistorical movements. 

[Sidenote: Differentiation and isolation. ]

Differentiation results not only from contrasted geographic conditions, but also from segregation. A moving or expanding throng in search ofmore and better lands drops off one group to occupy a fertile valley orplain, while the main body goes on its way, till it reaches asatisfactory destination or destinations. The tendency to split anddivide, characteristic of primitive peoples, is thus stimulated bymigration and expansion. Each offshoot, detached from the main body, tends to diverge from the stock type. If it reaches a naturally isolatedregion, where its contact without is practically cut off, it grows fromits own loins, emphasizes its group characteristic by close in-breeding, and tends to show a development related to biological divergence underconditions of isolation. Since man is essentially a gregarious animal, the size of every such migrating band will always prevent the evolutionof any sharply defined variety, according to the standard of biology. Nevertheless, the divergent types of men and societies developed insegregated regions are an echo of the formation of new species underconditions of isolation which is now generally acknowledged bybiological science. Isolation was recognized by Darwin as an occasionalfactor in the origin of species and especially of divergence; incombination with migration it was made the basis of a theory ofevolution by Moritz Wagner in 1873;[217] and in recent years has come tobe regarded as an essential in the explanation of divergence of types, as opposed to differentiation. [218]

[Sidenote: Differentiation and digression. ]

The traditions of the Delaware Indians and Sioux in the north of theUnited States territory, and of the Creeks in the south, commence witheach stock group as a united body, which, as it migrates, splits intotribes and sends out offshoots developing different dialects. Here wastribal differentiation after entry into the general stock area, theprocess going on during migration as well as after the tribes had becomeestablished in their respective habitats. Culture, however, made littleprogress till after they became sedentary and took up agriculture tosupplement the chase. [219] Tribes sometimes wander far beyond the limitsof their stock, like the Iroquoian Cherokees of East Tennessee and NorthCarolina or the Athapascan Navajos and Apaches of arid New Mexico andArizona, who had placed twenty or thirty degrees of latitude betweenthemselves and their brethren in the basins of the Yukon and Mackenzierivers. Such inevitably come into contrasted climatic conditions, whichfurther modify the immigrants. [See map page 54. ]

Wide digressions differentiate them still further from the parent stockby landing them amid different ethnic and social groups, by contact withwhom they are inevitably modified. The Namaqua Hottentots, living on thesouthern margin of the Hottentot country near the frontier of theEuropean settlements in Cape Colony, acquired some elements ofcivilization, together with a strain of Boer and English blood, and insome cases even the Dutch vernacular. They were therefore differentiatedfrom their nomadic and warlike kinsmen in the grasslands north of theOrange River, which formed the center of the Hottentot area. [220] A viewof the ancient Germans during the first five or six centuries afterChrist reveals differentiation by various contacts in process along allthe ragged borders of the Germanic area. The offshoots who pushedwestward across the Rhine into Belgian Gaul were rapidly Celticized, abandoning their semi-nomadic life for sedentary agriculture, assimilating the superior civilization which they found there, andsteadily merging with the native population. They became _Belgae_, though still conscious of their Teutonic origin. [221] The Batavians, anoffshoot of the ancient Chatti living near the Thuringian Forest, appropriated the river island between the Rhine and the Waal. There inthe seclusion of their swamps, they became a distinct national unit, retaining their backward German culture and primitive type of Germanspeech, which the Chatti themselves lost by contact with the HighGermans. [222] Far away on the southeastern margin of the Teutonic areathe same process of assimilation to a foreign civilization went on alittle later when the Visigoths, after a century of residence on thelower Danube in contact with the Eastern Empire, adopted the Arian formof Christianity which had arisen in the Greek peninsula. [223] The borderregions of the world show the typical results of the historicalmovement--differentiation from the core or central group throughassimilation to a new group which meets and blends with it along thefrontier. 

[Sidenote: Geographic conditions of heterogeneity and homogeneity. ]

Entrance into a naturally isolated district, from which subsequentincursions are debarred, gives conditions for divergence and thecreation of a new type. On the other hand, where few physical barriersare present to form these natural pockets, the process of assimilationgoes on over a wide field. Europe is peculiar among the family ofcontinents for its "much divided" geography, commented upon by Strabo. Hence its islands, peninsulas and mountain-rimmed basins have produced avariegated assemblage of peoples, languages and culture. Only where itruns off into the monotonous immensity of Russia do we find a people whoin their physical traits, language, and civilization reflect theuniformity of their environment. [224]

Africa's smooth outline, its plateau surface rimmed with mountains whichenclose but fail to divide, and its monotonous configuration haveproduced a racial and cultural uniformity as striking as Europe'sheterogeneity. Constant movements and commixture, migration andconquest, have been the history of the black races, varied by victoriousincursions of the Hamitic and Semitic whites from the north, which, however, have resulted in the amalgamation of the two races afterconquest. [225] Constant fusion has leveled also the social and politicalrelations of the people to one type; it has eliminated primordialgroups, except where the dwarf hunters have taken refuge in theequatorial forests and the Bushmen in the southwestern deserts, just asit has thwarted the development of higher social groups by failure tosegregate and protect. It has sown the Bantu speech broadcast over theimmense area of Central Africa, and is disseminating the Hausa languagethrough the agency of a highly mixed commercial folk over a wide tractof the western Sudan. The long east-and-west stretch of the Sudangrasslands presents an unobstructed zone between the thousand-mile beltof desert to the north and the dense equatorial forests to the south, between hunger and thirst on one side, heat and fever and impenetrableforests on the other. Hence the Sudan in all history has been thecrowded Broadway of Africa. Here pass commercial caravans, hybridmerchant tribes like the Hausa, throngs of pilgrims, streams of peoples, herds of cattle moving to busy markets, rude incursive shoppers orlooters from the desert, coming to buy or rob or rule in this highwaybelt. [See map page 105. ]

[Sidenote: Differentiation versus assimilation. ]

Historical development advances by means of differentiation andassimilation. A change of environment stimulates variation. Primitiveculture is loath to change; its inertia is deep-seated. Only a sharpprod will start it moving or accelerate its speed; such a prod is foundin new geographic conditions or new social contacts. Divergence in asegregated spot may be overdone. Progress crawls among a people too longisolated, though incipient civilization thrives for a time in seclusion. But in general, accessibility, exposure to some measure of ethnicamalgamation and social contact is essential to sustained progress. [226]As the world has become more closely populated and means ofcommunication have improved, geographical segregation is increasinglyrare. The earth has lost its "corners. " All parts are being drawn intothe circle of intercourse. Therefore differentiation, the first effectof the historical movement, abates; the second effect, assimilation, takes the lead. 

[Sidenote: Elimination by historical movement. ]

The ceaseless human movements making for new combinations havestimulated development. They have lifted the level of culture, andworked towards homogeneity of race and civilization on a higher plane. Since the period of the great discoveries inaugurated by Columbusenabled the historical movement to compass the world, whole continents, like North America and Australia, have been reclaimed to civilization bycolonization. The process of assimilation is often ruthless in itsmethod. Hence it has been attended by a marked reduction in the numberof different ethnic stocks, tribes, languages, dialects, social andcultural types through wide-spread elimination of the weak, backward orunfit. [227] These have been wiped out, either by extermination or theslower process of absorption. The Indian linguistic stocks in the UnitedStates have been reduced from fifty-three to thirty-two; and of thosethirty-two, many survive as a single tribe or the shrinking remnant ofone. [228] In Africa the slave trade has caused the annihilation of manysmall tribes. [229] The history of the Hottentots, who have been passivebefore the active advance of the English, Dutch and Kaffirs about them, shows a race undergoing a widespread process of hybridization[230] andextermination. [231]

Strong peoples, like the English, French, Russians and Chinese, occupyever larger areas. Where an adverse climate precludes genuinecolonization, as it did for the Spanish in Central and South America, and for the English and Dutch in the Indies, they make theircivilization, if not their race, permeate the acquired territory, andgradually impose on it their language and economic methods. The Poles, who once boasted a large and distinguished nationality, are beingGermanized and Russified to their final national extinction. The Finns, whose Scandinavian offshoot has been almost absorbed in Sweden, [232] arebeing forcibly dissolved in the Muscovite dominion by powerful reägents, by Russian schoolmasters, a Russian priesthood, Russian militaryservice. 

[Sidenote: No new ethnic types. ]

No new types of races have been developed either by amalgamation or bytransfer to new climatic and economic conditions in historic times. Contrasted geographic conditions long ago lost their power to workradical physical changes in the race type, because man even with thebeginnings of civilization learned to protect himself against extremesof climate. He therefore preserved his race type, which consequently inthe course of ages lost much of its plasticity and therewith itscapacity to evolve new varieties. [233] Where ethnic amalgamations on alarge scale have occurred as a result of the historical movement, as inMexico, the Sudan and Central Africa, the local race, being numericallystronger than the intruders and better adapted to the environment, hassucceeded in maintaining its type, though slightly modified, side byside with the intruders. The great historical movements of modern times, however, have been the expansion of European peoples over the retardedregions of the world. These peoples, coming into contact with inferiorraces, and armed generally with a race pride which was antagonistic tohybrid marriages, preserved their blood from extensive intermixture. Hybridism, where it existed, was an ephemeral feature restricted topioneer days, when white women were scarce, or to regions of extremeheat or cold, where white women and children could with difficultysurvive. Even in Spanish America, where ethnic blendings were mostextensive, something of the old Spanish pride of race has reasserteditself. 

[Sidenote: Checks to differentiation. ]

Improved communication maintains or increases the ranks of the intrudersfrom the home supply. The negroes in North America, imported as theywere _en masse_, then steadily recruited by two centuries of the slavetrade, while their race integrity was somewhat protected by socialostracism, have not been seriously modified physically by severalgenerations of residence in a temperate land. Their changes have beenchiefly cultural. The Englishman has altered only superficially in thevarious British colonial lands. Constant intercourse and the progress ofinventions have enabled him to maintain in diverse regions approximateuniformity of physical well-being, similar social and political ideals. The changed environment modifies him in details of thought, manner, andspeech, but not in fundamentals. 

Moreover, civilized man spreading everywhere and turning all parts ofthe earth's surface to his uses, has succeeded to some extent inreducing its physical differences. The earth as modified by human actionis a conspicuous fact of historical development. [234] Irrigation, drainage, fertilization of soils, terrace agriculture, denudation offorests and forestration of prairies have all combined to diminish thecontrasts between diverse environments, while the acclimatization ofplants, animals and men works even more plainly to the same end ofuniformity. The unity of the human race, varied only by superficialdifferences, reflects the unity of the spherical earth, whosediversities of geographical feature nowhere depart greatly from the meanexcept in point of climate. Differentiation due to geography, therefore, early reached its limits. For assimilation no limit can be forseen. 

[Sidenote: Geographical origins. ]

In view of this constant differentiation on the one hand, andassimilation on the other, the historical movement has made it difficultto trace race types to their origin; and yet this is a task in whichgeography must have a hand. Borrowed civilizations and purloinedlanguages are often so many disguises which conceal the truth of ethnicrelationships. A long migration to a radically different habitat, intoan outskirt or detached location protected from the swamping effects ofcross-breeding, results eventually in a divergence great enough toobliterate almost every cue to the ancient kinship. The long-headedTeutonic race of northern Europe is regarded now by ethnologists as anoffshoot of the long-headed brunette Mediterranean race of Africanorigin, which became bleached out under the pale suns of Scandinavianskies. The present distribution of the various Teutonic stocks is ageographical fact; their supposed cradle in the Mediterranean basin is ageographical hypothesis. The connecting links must also be geographical. They must prove the former presence of the migrating folk in theintervening territory. A dolichocephalic substratum of population, witha negroid type of skull, has in fact been traced by archaeologists allover Europe through the early and late Stone Ages. The remains of theseaboriginal inhabitants are marked in France, even in sparsely tenanteddistricts like the Auvergne Plateau, which is now occupied by thebroad-headed Alpine race; and they are found to underlie, in point oftime, other brachycephalic areas, like the Po Valley, Bavaria andRussia. [235]

The origin of a people can be investigated and stated only in terms ofgeography. The problem of origin can be solved only by tracing a peoplefrom its present habitat, through the country over which it hasmigrated, back to its original seat. Here are three geographicalentities which can be laid down upon a map, though seldom with sharplydefined boundaries. They represent three successive geographiclocations, all embodying geographic conditions potent to influence thepeople and their movement. Hence the geographical element emerges inevery investigation as to origins; whether in ethnology, history, philology, mythology or religion. The transit land, the course betweenstart and finish, is of supreme importance. Especially is this true forreligion, which is transformed by travel. Christianity did not conquerthe world in the form in which it issued from the cramped and isolatedenvironment of Palestine, but only after it had been remodelled in AsiaMinor, Egypt, Greece and Rome, and cosmopolized in the wide contact ofthe Mediterranean basin. The Roman speech and civilization, which spreadthrough the Romance speaking peoples of Europe, were variously dilutedand alloyed before being transplanted by French, Spaniard and Portugueseto American shores, there to be further transformed. 

[Sidenote: Large centers of dispersion. ]

In view of the countless springs and tributaries that combine to swellthe current of every historical movement, anthropo-geography looks forthe origin of a people not in a narrowly defined area, but in a broad, ill-defined center of dispersion, from which many streams simultaneouslyand successively flow out as from a low-rimmed basin, and which has beenfilled from many remoter sources. Autochthones, aborigines are thereforemerely scientific tropes, indicating the limit beyond which the movementof people cannot be traced in the gray light of an uncertain dawn. Thevaguer and more complex these movements on account of their historicalremoteness, the wider their probable range. The question as to thegeographical origin of the Aryan linguistic family of peoples brings usto speculative sources, more or less scientifically based, reaching fromScandinavia and Lithuania to the Hindu Kush Mountains and northernAfrica. [236] The sum total of all these conjectural cradles, amountingto a large geographical area, would more nearly approximate the truth asto Aryan origins. For the study of the historical movement makes itclear that a large, highly differentiated ethnic or linguistic familypresupposes a big center end a long period of dispersion, protractedwanderings, and a diversified area both for their migrations andsuccessive settlements. 

[Sidenote: Small centers. ]

The slighter the inner differences in an ethnic stock, whether inculture, language or physical traits, the smaller was their center ofdistribution and the more rapid their dispersal. The small initialhabitat restricts the chances of variation through isolation andcontrasted geographic conditions, as does also the short duration oftheir subsequent separation. The amazing uniformity of the Eskimo typefrom Bering Strait to eastern Greenland can only thus be explained, evenafter making allowance for the monotony of their geographic conditionsand remoteness from outside influences. The distribution of the Bantudialects over so wide a region in Central Africa and with such slightdivergences presupposes narrow limits both of space and time for theirorigin, and a short period since their dispersal. [237]

Small centers of dispersion are generally natural districts with fixedboundaries, favored by their geographical location or natural resourcesor by both for the development of a relatively dense population. Whenthis increases beyond the local limits of subsistence, there follows anemigration in point of number and duration out of all proportion to thesmall area whence it issues. Ancient Phoenicia, Crete, Samos, mediævalNorway, Venice, Yemen, modern Malta, Gilbert Islands, England and Japanfurnish examples. Such small favored areas, when they embody also strongpolitical power, may get the start in the occupation of colonial lands. This gives them a permanent advantage, if their colonies are chosen witha view to settlement in congenial climates, as were those of theEnglish, rather than the more ephemeral advantage of trade, as werethose of the Dutch and Portuguese in the Tropics. It seems alsoessential to these centers of dispersion, that, to be effective, theymust command the wide choice of outlet and destination afforded by themighty common of the sea. Only the Inca Empire in South America givesus an example of the extensive political expansion of a small mountainstate. 

[Sidenote: Tests of origin. ]

The question arises whether any single rule can as yet be formulated foridentifying the original seats of existing peoples. By some ethnologistsand historians such homes have been sought where the people aredistributed in the largest area, as the Athapascan and Algonquin Indiansare assigned to a northern source, because their territories attainedtheir greatest continuous extent in Canada, but were intermittent orattenuated farther south. The fact that colonial peoples often multiplyinordinately in new lands, and there occupy a territory vastly greaterthan that of the mother country, points to the danger in such ageneralization. Of the ten millions of Jews in the world, only a handfulremain in the ancient center of dispersion in Palestine, while abouteight millions are found in Poland and the contiguous territories ofwestern Russia, Roumania, Austria-Hungary and eastern Germany. Moreover, history and the German element in the "Yiddish" speech of the RussianJews point to a secondary center of dispersion in the Rhine cities andFranconia, whither the Jews were drawn by the trade route up the RhoneValley in the third century. [238]

A more scientific procedure is to look for the early home of a race inthe locality around which its people or family of peoples centers inmodern times. Therefore we place the cradle of the negro race in Africa, rather than Melanesia. Density often supplies a test, because coloniallands are generally more sparsely inhabited than the mother country. Buteven this conclusion fails always to apply, as in the case of Samos, which has a population vastly more dense than any section of the Grecianmainland. The largest compact area including at once the greatestdensity of population and the greatest purity of race would more nearlyindicate the center of dispersion; because purity of race isincompatible with long migrations, as we have seen, though in the nativeseat it may be affected by intrusive elements. When this purity of raceis combined with archaic forms of language and culture, as among theLithuanians of Aryan speech among the Baltic swamps, it may indicatethat the locality formed a segregated corner of the early center ofdispersion. It seems essential to such an original seat that, whetherlarge or small, it should be marked by some degree of isolation, as thecondition for the development of specific racial characteristics. 

The complexity of this question of ethnic origins is typical ofanthropo-geographic problems, typical also in the warning which it givesagainst any rigidly systematic method of solution. The whole science ofanthropo-geography is as yet too young for hard-and-fast rules, and itssubject matter too complex for formulas. 

NOTES TO CHAPTER IV

[126] H. J. Mackinder, Britain and the British Seas, pp. 179-187. London, 1904. W. Z. Ripley, The Races of Europe, pp. 306-310, 319-326. New York, 1899. 

[127] Compare observations of Georg Schweinfurth, The Heart of Africa, Vol. I, pp. 312-313. London, 1873. 

[128] Nott and Gliddon, Types of Mankind, p. Lvii. Philadelphia, 1868. 

[129] D. M. Wallace, Russia, pp. 151-155. New York, 1904. 

[130] Thucydides, Book I, chap. II. 

[131] Strabo, Book II, chap. III, 7. 

[132] McGee and Thomas, Prehistoric North America, pp. 408-414, Vol. XIXof _History of North America_, edited by T. N. Thorpe. Philadelphia, 1905. 

[133] Hodgkin, Italy and Her Invaders, Vol. II, p. 214. Oxford, 1892. 

[134] Sir John Lubbock, Prehistoric Times, p. 587. New York, 1872. 

[135] D. G. Brinton, The American Race, pp. 116-119. Philadelphia, 1901. 

[136] O. T. Mason, Primitive Travel and Transportation, pp. 249-250. _Smithsonian Report_, Washington, 1896. 

[137] Thucydides, Book I, chap. II. 

[138] Edward A. Boss, Foundations of Sociology, pp. 359-363, 386-389. New York, 1905. 

[139] D. G. Brinton, Races and Peoples, pp. 73-75. Philadelphia, 1901. 

[140] John Richard Green, The Making of England, Vol. I, pp. 9-11, 45-46, 52-54, 57, 62. London, 1904. 

[141] James Bryce, The Migration of the Races of Men ConsideredHistorically, _Scottish Geographical Magazine_, Vol. VIII, pp. 400-421, and _Smithsonian Report_ for 1893, pp. 567-588. 

[142] Cæsar, _De Bello Gallico_, Book II, chap. 29. 

[143] Motley, Rise of the Dutch Republic, Vol. I, p. 5. New York, 1883. 

[144] John Richard Green, The Making of England, Vol. I, p. 46. London, 1904. 

[145] Hodgkin, Italy and Her Invaders, Vol. V, pp. 99-101. Oxford, 1895. 

[146] _Ibid. _, Vol. V, pp. 156-157. 

[147] Hodgkin, Italy and Her Invaders, Vol. II, pp. 107, 195. Oxford, 1892. 

[148] _Ibid. _, Vol. II, pp. 219-223, 230. 

[149] W. Z. Ripley, Races of Europe, pp. 276-277. New York, 1899. 

[150] Hodgkin, Italy and Her Invaders, Vol. II, pp. 214-219. Oxford, 1892. 

[151] Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. II, p. 296. London, 1896-1898. 

[152] McGee and Thomas, Prehistoric North America, pp. 408-412, Vol. XIXof _History of North America. _ Philadelphia, 1905. 

[153] Hugh R. Mill, International Geography, p. 858. New York, 1902. 

[154] Roscher, _National-Oekonomik des Ackerbaues, _ pp. 44-48. Stuttgart, 1888. 

[155] Cyrus Thomas, The Indians of North America in Historical Times, p. 261. Vol. II of _History of North America, _ Philadelphia, 1903. 

[156] Roosevelt, Winning of the West, Vol. I, pp. 134-135, 250. NewYork, 1895. Justin Winsor, The Westward Movement, p. 16. Boston, 1899. 

[157] Eleventh Census, _Report on the Indians_, p. 54. Washington, 1894. 

[158] _Ibid. _, p. 531. 

[159] Hans Helmolt, History of the World, Vol. III, p. 411. New York, 1902-1906. 

[160] Edward John Payne, History of the New World Called America, Vol. II, pp. 57-58. Oxford, 1899. 

[161] _II Kings_, Chap. XVII, 6-24. 

[162] W. Z. Ripley, Races of Europe, pp. 432-434. New York, 1899. 

[163] Hans Helmolt, History of the World, Vol. V, pp. 353-354. New York, 1902-1906. 

[164] _Ibid. _, Vol. VI, p. 15. 

[165] D. G. Hogarth, The Nearer East, p. 247. London, 1902. 

[166] Roosevelt, Winning of the West, Vol. I, p. 248. New York, 1895. 

[167] C. C. Royce, The Cherokee Nation of Indians, pp. 130-131. Maps VIIIand IX. _Fifth Annual Report of Bureau of Ethnology_, Washington, 1887. 

[168] Albert Gallatin, Report on the Indians in 1836, reprinted inEleventh Census, _Report on the Indians_, p. 33. Washington, 1894. 

[169] Cyrus Thomas, Indians of North America in Historical Times, pp. 94, 96. Vol. II of _History of North America_, Philadelphia, 1903. 

[170] _Ibid. _, Vol. II, pp. 100-101. 

[171] Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu, The Empire of the Tsars, Vol. III, pp. 333-334. New York, 1902. 

[172] W. Z. Ripley, Races of Europe, pp. 437-438. New York, 1899. 

[173] D. G. Brinton, The American Race, pp. 115-116. Philadelphia, 1901. 

[174] H. Bancroft, The Native Races, Vol. III, pp. 559, 635-638. SanFrancisco, 1886. 

[175] Cyrus Thomas, Indians of North America in Historical Times, pp. 381-382, Vol. II of _History of North America_. Philadelphia, 1903. 

[176] Eleventh Census, _Report on the Indians_, p. 35. Washington, 1894. 

[177] Eleventh Census, _Report on Population_, Vol. I, p. Cxxxviii. Washington, 1894. 

[178] Justus Perthes, _Taschen Atlas_, p. 38. Gotha, 1905. 

[179] Richmond Mayo-Smith, Emigration and Immigration, p. 24. New York. 

[180] _Ibid. _, pp. 79-80, 113-115. 

[181] Capt. A. T. Mahan, Influence of Sea Power upon History, pp. 27-28. Boston, 1902. 

[182] W. Z. Ripley, Races of Europe, pp. 247, 272-274. New York, 1899. 

[183] Cæsar, _Bella Gallico_, Book III, chap. I. 

[184] Hodgkin, Italy and Her Invaders, Vol. I, Part I, pp. 34-43. Oxford, 1892. 

[185] Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. III, pp. 242, 245, 250, 257. London, 1896-1898. 

[186] John Fiske, Discovery of America, Vol. I, pp. 316-317. Boston, 1893. 

[187] Elliott Coues, History of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, Vol. I. Pp. 193-198, 203-212, 240. New York, 1893. 

[188] Francis Parkman, La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West, pp. 39-40, Note 2. Boston, 1904. 

[189] George G. Chisholm, Commercial Geography, pp. 56-57. London, 1904. 

[190] Herodotus, Book II, 60. 

[191] Encyclopædia Britanica, Article Pilgrimages. 

[192] E. Huntington, The Pulse of Asia, p. 88. Boston, 1907. 

[193] Boyd Alexander, From the Niger to the Nile, Vol. II, pp. 3-7. London, 1907. 

[194] C. A. Sherring, Western Tibet and the British Borderland, pp. 3-4, 144-145, 280-284. London, 1906. 

[195] Hans Helmolt, History of the World, Vol. I, pp. 189-191. Map p. 190. New York and London, 1902-1906. 

[196] J. W. Powell, Map of Linguistic Stocks of American Indians, AnnualReport of Bureau of Ethnology, Vol. VII. 

[197] Archibald Little, The Far East, Ethnological Map, p. 8. Oxford, 1905. 

[198] Census of India, 1901, General Report by H. H. Risley and E. A. Gait, Vol. I, Part I, pp. 500-504; and Ethnographic Appendices by H. H. Risley, Vol. I, map, p. 60. Calcutta, 1903. P. Vidal de la Blache, _LePeuple de l'Inde, d'après la série des recensements_, pp. 431-434, _Annales de Géographie_, Vol. XV. Paris, 1906. 

[199] Hans Helmolt, History of the World, Vol. III, pp. 422, 424, 434-436. New York, 1902-1906. 

[200] D. Livingstone, Missionary Travels, pp. 97-102. New York, 1858. 

[201] James Bryce, Migrations of the Races of Men ConsideredHistorically, _Scottish Geographical Magazine_, Vol. VIII, pp. 400-421, May, 1892. 

[202] Justus Perthes, _Taschen Atlas_, p. 78. Gotha, 1905. 

[203] _Ibid. _, p. 80. 

[204] Hugh R. Mill, International Geography, p. 878. New York, 1902. 

[205] Hans Helmolt, History of the World, Vol. I, pp. 189-191. New York, 1902-1906. 

[206] Hodgkin, Italy and Her Invaders, Vol. VI, pp. 23-27, 38-42, 63-68, 83-87. Oxford, 1896. 

[207] McGee and Thomas, Prehistoric North America, Chap. XXI, Vol. XIXof _History of North America_, Philadelphia, 1905. 

[208] _Ibid. _, pp. 83, 87, Map of Migrations, p. 3. 

[209] Archibald Little, The Far East, pp. 34-38. Oxford, 1905. 

[210] Strabo, Book VIII, chap. I, 2. 

[211] Heinrich Barth, Travels in North and Central Africa, Vol. II, p. 548. New York, 1857. 

[212] Joseph Partsch, Central Europe, pp. 104-105. London, 1903. 

[213] E. F. Im Thurn, Among the Indians of Guiana, pp. 167-171, 202-207. London, 1883. 

[214] W. Z. Ripley, Races of Europe, p. 237. New York, 1899. 

[215] _Ibid. _, p. 469. 

[216] H. Barth, Human Society in Northern Central Africa, _Journal ofthe Royal Geog. Society_, Vol. XXX, p. 116. London, 1860. 

[217] Moritz Wagner, _Die Entstehung der Arten durch räumlicheSonderung_. Basel, 1889. 

[218] H. W. Conn, The Method of Evolution, pp. 282-295. New York, 1900. 

[219] McGee and Thomas, Prehistoric North America, pp. 418, 424, Vol. XIX of _History of North America_. Philadelphia, 1905. 

[220] Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. II, pp. 280-283. London, 1896-1898. 

[221] Cæsar, _Bella Gallico_, Book II, chap. IV. 

[222] H. Helmolt, History of the World, Vol. VI, pp. 32-33. New York, 1902-1906. 

[223] Hodgkin, Italy and Her Invaders, Vol. I, Part I, pp. 75, 81, 82. Oxford, 1895. 

[224] W. Z. Ripley, Races of Europe, pp. 34, 341-342. New York, 1899. 

[225] H. Helmolt, History of the World, Vol. III, pp. 400, 417, NewYork, 1902-1906. 

[226] A. C. Haddon, The Study of Man, p. Xix. New York and London, 1898. 

[227] James Bryce, Migrations of the Races of Men ConsideredHistorically, _Scottish Geographical Magazine_, Vol. VIII, pp. 400-421. May, 1892. 

[228] Eleventh Census, _Report on the Indians_, pp. 34-35. Washington, 1894. 

[229] H. Helmolt, History of the World, Vol. III, p. 42. New York, 1902-1906. 

[230] Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. II, pp. 279-283, London, 1896-98. 

[231] Jerome Dowd, The Negro Races, Vol. I, pp. 47-48, 61-62. New York, 1907. 

[232] Sweden, Its People and Its Industries, p. 93. Edited by G. Sundbärg, Stockholm, 1904. 

[233] Sir John Lubbock, Prehistoric Times, pp. 589-593. New York, 1872. 

[234] G. P. Marsh, The Earth as Modified by Human Action, New York, 1877. 

[235] W. Z. Ripley, Races of Europe, pp. 261-267. New York, 1899. 

[236] _Ibid. _, pp. 475-485. 

[237] Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. II, pp. 402-405. London, 1896-1898. 

[238] W. Z. Ripley, Races of Europe, pp. 371-372. Map, p. 374. New York. 1899. 

CHAPTER V

GEOGRAPHICAL LOCATION

[Sidenote: Importance of geographical location. ]

The location of a country or people is always the supreme geographicalfact in its history. It outweighs every other single geographic force. All that has been said of Russia's vast area, of her steppes and tundrawastes, of her impotent seaboard on land-locked basins or ice-boundcoasts, of her poverty of mountains and wealth of rivers, fades into thebackground before her location on the border of Asia. From her defeat bythe Tartar hordes in 1224 to her attack upon the Mongolian rulers of theBosporus in 1877, and her recent struggle with Japan, most of her warshave been waged against Asiatics. Location made her the bulwark ofCentral Europe against Asiatic invasion and the apostle of Westerncivilization to the heart of Asia. If this position on the outskirts ofEurope, remote from its great centers of development, has made Russiaonly partially accessible to European culture and, furthermore, hassubjected her to the retarding ethnic and social influences emanatingfrom her Asiatic neighbors, [239] and if the rough tasks imposed by herfrontier situation have hampered her progress, these are all thelimitations of her geographical location, limitations which not even theadvantage of her vast area has been able to outweigh. 

Area itself, important as it is, must yield to location. Location maymean only a single spot, and yet from this spot powerful influences mayradiate. No one thinks of size when mention is made of Rome or Athens, of Jerusalem or Mecca, of Gibraltar or Port Arthur. Iceland andGreenland guided early Norse ships to the continent of America, as theCanaries and Antilles did those of Spain; but the location of thesmaller islands in sub-tropical latitudes and in the course of thenortheast trade-winds made them determine the first permanent pathacross the western seas. 

The historical significance of many small peoples, and the historicalinsignificance of many big ones even to the _nil_ point, is merely theexpression of the preponderant importance of location over area. ThePhoenicians, from their narrow strip of coast at the foot of MountLebanon, were disseminators of culture over the whole Mediterranean. Holland owed her commercial and maritime supremacy, from the thirteenthto the middle of the seventeenth century, to her exceptional position atthe mouth of the great Rhine highway and at the southern angle of theNorth Sea near the entrance to the unexploited regions of the Baltic. The Iroquois tribes, located where the Mohawk Valley opened a waythrough the Appalachian barrier between the Hudson River and LakeOntario, occupied both in the French wars and in the Revolution astrategic position which gave them a power and importance out of allproportion to their numbers. 

Location often assumes a fictitious political value, due to acombination of political interests. The Turkish power owes its survivalon the soil of Europe to-day wholly to its position on the Bosporus. Holland owes the integrity of her kingdom, and Roumania that of hers, totheir respective locations at the mouths of the Rhine and the Danube, because the interest of western Europe demands that these two importantarteries of commerce should be held by powers too weak ever to tie themup. The same principle has guaranteed the neutrality of Switzerland, whose position puts it in control of the passes of the Central Alps fromSavoy to the Tyrol; and, more recently, that of the young state ofPanama, through which the Isthmian Canal is to pass. 

[Sidenote: Content of the term location. ]

Geographical location necessarily includes the idea of the size and formof a country. Even the most general statement of the zonal andinteroceanic situation of Canada, the United States, Mexico, and theRussian Empire, indicates the area and contour of their territories. This is still more conspicuously the case with naturally definedregions, such as island and peninsula countries. But location includes acomplex of yet larger and more potent relations which go with mereattachment to this or that continent, or to one or another side of acontinent. Every part of the world gives to its lands and its peoplesome of its own qualities; and so again every part of this part. Arabia, India and Farther India, spurs of the Asiatic land-mass, havehad and will always have a radically different ethnic and politicalhistory from Greece, Italy and Spain, the corresponding peninsulas ofEurope, because the histories of these two groups are bound up in theirrespective continents. The idea of a European state has a differentcontent from that of an Asiatic, or North American or African state; itincludes a different race or combination of races, different social andeconomic development, different political ideals. Location, therefore, means climate and plant life at one end of the scale, civilization andpolitical status at the other. 

[Sidenote: Intercontinental location. ]

This larger conception of location brings a correspondingly largerconception of environment, which affords the solution of many otherwisehopeless problems of anthropo-geography. It is embodied in the law thatthe influences of a land upon its people spring not only from thephysical features of the land itself, but also from a wide circle oflands into which it has been grouped by virtue of its location. Almostevery geographical interpretation of the ancient and modern history ofGreece has been inadequate, because it has failed sufficiently toemphasize the most essential factor in this history, namely, Greece'slocation at the threshold of the Orient. This location has given toGreek history a strong Asiatic color. It comes out in the accessibilityof Greece to ancient Oriental civilization and commerce, and isconspicuous in every period from the Argonautic Expedition to theachievement of independence in 1832 and the recent efforts for theliberation of Crete. This outpost location before the Mediterraneanportals of the vast and arid plains of southwestern Asia, exposed toevery tide of migration or conquest sent out by those hungry lands, hadin it always an element of weakness. In comparison with the shadow ofAsia, which constantly overhung the Greek people and from 1401 to 1832enveloped them, only secondary importance can be attributed toadvantageous local conditions as factors in Greek history. 

It is a similar intercontinental location in the isthmian region betweenthe Mediterranean on the west and the ancient maritime routes of theRed Sea and Persian Gulf on the east, which gave to Phoenicia the officeof middleman between the Orient and Occident, [240] and predestined itsconquest, now by the various Asiatic powers of Mesopotamia, now by thePharaohs of Egypt, now by European Greeks and Romans, now by asuccession of Asiatic peoples, till to-day we find it incorporated inthe Asiatic-European Empire of Turkey. Proximity to Africa has closelyallied Spain to the southern continent in flora, fauna, and ethnicstock. The long-headed, brunette Mediterranean race occupies the IberianPeninsula and the Berber territory of northwest Africa. [241] Thiscommunity of race is also reflected in the political union of the twodistricts for long periods, first under the Carthaginians, then theRomans, who secured Hispania by a victory on African soil, and finallyby the Saracens. This same African note in Spanish history recurs to-dayin Spain's interest in Morocco and the influence in Moroccan affairsyielded her by France and Germany at the Algeciras convention in 1905, and in her ownership of Ceuta and five smaller _presidios_ on theMoroccan coast. Compare Portugal's former ownership of Tangier. 

In contradistinction to continental and intercontinental location, anthropo-geography recognizes two other narrower meanings of the term. The innate mobility of the human race, due primarily to the eternalfood-quest and increase of numbers, leads a people to spread out over aterritory till they reach the barriers which nature has set up, or meetthe frontiers of other tribes and nations. Their habitat or theirspecific geographic location is thus defined by natural features ofmountain, desert and sea, or by the neighbors whom they are unable todisplace, or more often by both. 

[Sidenote: Natural versus vicinal location. ]

A people has, therefore, a twofold location, an immediate one, basedupon their actual territory, and a mediate or vicinal one, growing outof its relations to the countries nearest them. The first is a questionof the land under their feet; the other, of the neighbors about them. The first or natural location embodies the complex of local geographicconditions which furnish the basis for their tribal or nationalexistence. This basis may be a peninsula, island, archipelago, an oasis, an arid steppe, a mountain system, or a fertile lowland. The strongerthe vicinal location, the more dependent is the people upon theneighboring states, but the more potent the influence which it can, under certain circumstances, exert upon them. Witness Germany inrelation to Holland, France, Austria and Poland. The stronger thenatural location, on the other hand, the more independent is the peopleand the more strongly marked is the national character. This isexemplified in the people of mountain lands like Switzerland, Abyssiniaand Nepal; of peninsulas like Korea, Spain and Scandinavia; and ofislands like England and Japan. To-day we stand amazed at that strongprimordial brand of the Japanese character which nothing can blur orerase. 

[Sidenote: Naturally defined location. ]

Clearly defined natural locations, in which barriers of mountains andsea draw the boundaries and guarantee some degree of isolation, tend tohold their people in a calm embrace, to guard them against outsideinterference and infusion of foreign blood, and thus to make themdevelop the national genius in such direction as the local geographicconditions permit. In the unceasing movements which have made up most ofthe historic and prehistoric life of the human race, in their migrationsand counter-migrations, their incursions, retreats, and expansions overthe face of the earth, vast unfenced areas, like the open lowlands ofRussia and the grasslands of Africa, present the picture of a greatthoroughfare swept by pressing throngs. Other regions, more secluded, appear as quiet nooks, made for a temporary halt or a permanent rest. Here some part of the passing human flow is caught as in a vessel andheld till it crystallizes into a nation. These are the conspicuous areasof race characterization. The development of the various ethnic andpolitical offspring of the Roman Empire in the naturally defined areasof Italy, the Iberian Peninsula, and France illustrates the process ofnational differentiation which goes on in such secluded locations. 

A marked influence upon this development is generally ascribed to theprotection afforded by such segregated districts. But protection aloneis only a negative force in the life of a people; it leaves them free todevelop in their own way, but does not say what that way shall be. Onthe other hand, the fact that such a district embraces a certain numberof geographic features, and encompasses them by obstructive boundaries, is of immense historical importance; because this restriction leads tothe concentration of the national powers, to the more thoroughutilization of natural advantages, both racial and geographical, andthereby to the growth of an historical individuality. Nothing robs thehistorical process of so much of its greatness or weakens so much itseffects as its dispersion over a wide, boundless area. This was thedisintegrating force which sapped the strength of the French colonies inAmerica. The endless valleys of the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi andthe alluring fur trade tempted them to an expansion that was theirpolitical and economic undoing. Russia's history illustrates the curseof a distant horizon. On the other hand, out of a restrictedgeographical base, with its power to concentrate and intensify thenational forces, grew Rome and Greece, England and Japan, ancient Peruand the Thirteen Colonies of America. 

[Sidenote: Vicinal location. ]

If even the most detached and isolated of these natural locations beexamined, its people will, nevertheless, reveal a transitionalcharacter, intermediate between those of its neighbors, because fromthese it has borrowed both ethnic stock and culture, Great Britain is anisland, but its vicinal location groups it with the North Sea family ofpeople. Even in historic times it has derived ancient Belgian stock, Roman, Anglo-Saxon, Danish and Scandinavian from the long semi-circle ofnearby continental lands, which have likewise contributed so much to thecivilization of the island. Similarly, Japan traces the sources of itspopulation to the north of Asia by way of the island of Sakhalin, to thewest through Korea, and to the Malay district of the south, whence theKuro Siwa has swept stragglers to the shores of Kiu-siu. Like England, Japan also has drawn its civilization from its neighbors, and then, under the isolating influence of its local environment, hasindividualized both race and culture. Here we have the interplay of theforces of natural and vicinal location. 

A people situated between two other peoples form an ethnic and culturallink between the two. The transitional type is as familiar inanthropo-geography as in biology. The only exception is found in theyoung intrusion of a migrating or conquering people, like that of theHungarians and Turks in southeastern Europe, and of the Berger Tuaregsand Fulbes among the negroes of western Sudan; or of a colonizingpeople, like that of the Russians in Mongolian Siberia and of Europeansamong the aborigines of South Africa. Even in these instances raceamalgamation tends to take place along the frontiers, as was the case inLatin America and as occurs to-day in Alaska and northern Canada, wherethe "squaw man" is no rarity. The assimilation of culture, at least in asuperficial sense, may be yet more rapid, especially where hard climaticconditions force the interloper to imitate the life of the native. Theindustrial and commercial Hollander, when transplanted to the drygrasslands of South Africa, became pastoral like the native Kaffirs. TheFrench voyageur of Canada could scarcely be distinguished from theIndian trapper; occupation, food, dress, and spouse were the same. Onlya lighter tint of skin distinguished the half-breed children of theFrenchman. The settlers of the early Trans-Allegheny commonwealths, atleast for a generation or two, showed little outward difference in modeof life from that of the savage community among which they dwelt. [242]

[Sidenote: Vicinal groups of similar or diverse race and culture. ]

The more alike the components of such a vicinal group of people, theeasier, freer and more effective will be the mediating function of thecentral one. Germany has demonstrated this in her long history asintermediary between the nations of southeastern and western Europe. Thepeople of Poland, occupying a portion of the Baltic slope of northernEurope, fended by no natural barriers from their eastern and westernneighbors, long constituted a transition form between the two. Thoughaffiliated with Russia in point of language, the Poles are Occidental intheir religion; and their head-form resembles that of northern Germanyrather than that of Russia. [243] The country belongs to western Europe inthe density of its population (74 to the square kilometer or 190 to thesquare mile), which is quadruple that of remaining European Russia, andalso in its industrial and social development. The partition of Polandamong the three neighboring powers was the final expression of itsintermediate location and character. [244] One part was joined politicallyto the Slav-German western border of Russia, and another to theGerman-Slav border of Germany, while the portion that fell to theAustrian Empire simply extended the northern Slav area of that countryfound in Bohemia, Moravia, and the Slovak border of Hungary. [Map page223. ]

If the intermediate people greatly differs in race or civilization fromboth neighbors, it exercises and receives slight influence. The Mongolsof Central Asia, between China on one side and Persia and India on theother, have been poor vehicles for the exchange of culture between thesetwo great districts. The Hungarians, located between the Roumanians andGermans on the east and west, Slovaks and Croatians on the north andsouth, have helped little to reconcile race differences in the greatempire of the Danube. 

[Sidenote: Thalassic vicinal location. ]

The unifying effect of vicinal location is greatly enhanced if theneighboring people are grouped about an enclosed sea which affords aneasy highway for communication. The integrating force of such a basinwill often overcome the disintegrating force of race antagonisms. TheRoman Empire in the Mediterranean was able to evolve an effectivecentralized government and to spread one culture over the neighboringshores, despite great variety of nationality and language and everydegree of cultural development. A certain similarity of naturalconditions, climatic and otherwise, from the Iberian Peninsula to theborders of the Syrian desert, also aided in the process of amalgamation. 

Where similarity of race already forms a basis for congeniality, suchcircumthalassic groups display the highest degree of interactiveinfluence. These contribute to a further blending of population andunification of culture, by which the whole circle of the enclosing landstends to approach one standard of civilization. This was the history ofthe Baltic coast from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries, whenthe German Hansa distributed the material products of Europe's highestcivilization from Russian Novgorod to Norway. The North Sea group, first under the leadership of Holland, later under England's guidance, became a single community of advancing culture, which was a laterreflection of the early community of race stretching from the Faroe andShetland Islands to the Rhine and the Elbe. This same process has beengoing on for ages about the marginal basins of eastern Asia, the Yellowand Japan Seas. Community of race and culture stamps China, Korea andJapan. A general advance in civilization under the leadership of Japan, the England of the East, now inaugurates the elevation of the wholegroup. 

[Sidenote: Complementary locations. ]

An even closer connection exists between adjoining peoples who areunited by ties of blood and are further made economically dependent uponone another, because of a contrast in the physical conditions and, therefore, in the products of their respective territories. Numerouscoast and inland tribes, pastoral and agricultural tribes are unitedbecause they are mutually necessary. In British Columbia and Alaska thefishing Indians of the seaboard long held a definite commercial relationto the hunting tribes of the interior, selling them the products andwares of the coast, while monopolizing their market for the inland furs. Such was the position of the Ugalentz tribe of Tlingits near the mouthof the Copper River in relation to the up-stream Athapascans; of theKinik tribe at the head of Cook's Inlet in relation to the inlandAtnas, [245] of the Chilcats of Chilkoot Inlet to the mountain Tinnehs. Similarly, the hunting folk of the Kalahari Desert in South Africaattach themselves to influential tribesmen of the adjacent Bechuanagrasslands, in order to exchange the skins of the desert animals forspears, knives, and tobacco. [246] Fertile agricultural lands adjoiningpastoral regions of deserts and steppes have in all times drawn to theirborder markets the mounted plainsmen, bringing the products of theirherds to exchange for grain; and in all times the abundance of theirgreen fields has tempted their ill-fed neighbors to conquest, so thatthe economic bond becomes a preliminary to a political bond and anethnic amalgamation growing out of this strong vicinal location. Theforest lands of Great Russia supplement the grain-bearing Black Landsof Little Russia; the two are united through geographico-economicconditions, which would not permit an independent existence to thesmaller, weaker section of the south, ever open to hostile invasion fromAsia. [247]

[Sidenote: Types of location. ]

Leaving now the ethnic and economic ties which may strengthen thecohesive power of such vicinal grouping, and considering only its purelygeographic aspects, we distinguish the following types:

 I. Central location. Examples: The Magyars in the Danube Valley; the Iroquois Indians on the Mohawk River and the Finger Lakes; Russia from the 10th to the 18th century; Poland from 1000 to its final partition in 1795; Bolivia, Switzerland, and Afghanistan. 

 II. Peripheral location: Ancient Phoenicia; Greek colonies in Asia Minor and southern Italy; the Roman Empire at the accession of Augustus; the Thirteen Colonies in 1750; island and peninsula lands. 

 III. Scattered location: English and French settlements in America prior to 1700; Indians in the United States and the Kaffirs in South Africa; Portuguese holdings in the Orient, and French in India. 

 IV. Location in a related series: Oasis states grouped along desert routes; islands along great marine routes. 

[Sidenote: Continuous and scattered location. ]

All peoples in their geographical distribution tend to follow a socialand political law of gravitation, in accordance with which members ofthe same tribe or race gather around a common center or occupy acontinuous stretch of territory, as compactly as their own economicstatus, and the physical conditions of climate and soil will permit. This is characteristic of all mature and historically significantpeoples who have risen to sedentary life, maintained their hold on agiven territory, and, with increase of population, have widened theirboundaries. The nucleus of such a people may be situated somewhere inthe interior of a continent, and with growing strength it may expand inevery direction; or it may originate on some advantageous inlet of thesea and spread thence up and down the coast, till the people havepossessed themselves of a long-drawn hem of land and used thisperipheral location to intercept the trade between their back countryand the sea. 

These are the two types of continuous location. In contrast to them, adiscontinuous or scattered location characterizes the sparsedistribution of primitive hunting and pastoral tribes; or the shatteredfragments of a conquered people, whose territory has been honeycombed bythe land appropriation of the victors; or a declining, moribund people, who, owing to bad government, poor economic methods, and excessivecompetition in the struggle for existence, have shrunk to mere patches. As a favorable symptom, scattered location regularly marks the healthygrowth of an expanding people, who throw out here and there detachedcenters of settlement far beyond the compact frontier, and fix these asthe goal for the advance of their boundary. It is also a familiarfeature of maritime commercial expansion, which is guided by noterritorial ambition but merely aims to secure widely distributedtrading stations at favorable coast points, in order to make the circleof commerce as ample and resourceful as possible. But this latter formof scattered location is not permanently sound. Back of it lies theshort-sighted policy of the middleman nation, which makes whollyinadequate estimate of the value of land, and is content with anephemeral prosperity. 

[Sidenote: Central versus peripheral location. ]

A broad territorial base and security of possession are the guaranteesof national survival. The geographic conditions which favor one oftenoperate against the other. Peripheral location means a narrow base but aprotected frontier along the sea; central location means opportunity forwidening the territory, but it also means danger. A state embedded inthe heart of a continent has, if strong, every prospect of radialexpansion and the exercise of widespread influence; but if weak, itsvery existence is imperilled, because it is exposed to encroachments onevery side. A central location minus the bulwark of natural boundariesenabled the kingdom of Poland to be devoured piecemeal by its voraciousneighbors. The kingdom of Burgundy, always a state of fluctuatingboundaries and shifting allegiances, fell at last a victim to itscentral location, and saw its name obliterated from the map. Hungary, which, in the year 1000, occupied a restricted inland location on themiddle Danube, by the 14th century broke through the barriers of itsclose-hugging neighbors, and stretched its boundaries from the Adriaticto the Euxine; two hundred years later its territory contracted to afragment before the encroachments of the Turks, but afterwards recoveredin part its old dimensions. Germany has, in common with the littleSudanese state of Wadai, an influential and dangerous position. Acentral location in the Sudan has made Wadai accessible to the richcaravan trade from Tripoli and Barca on the north, from the great markettown of Kano in Sokoto on the west, and from the Nile Valley and Red Seaon the east. But the little state has had to fight for its life againstthe aggressions of its western rival Bornu and its eastern neighborDarfur. And now more formidable enemies menace it in the French, whohave occupied the territory between it and Bornu, and the English, whohave already caught Darfur in the dragnet of the Egyptian Sudan. [248]

[Sidenote: Danger of central location. ]

Germany, crowded in among three powerful neighbors like France, Russia, and Austria, has had no choice about maintaining a strong standing armyand impregnable frontier defenses. The location of the Central Europeanstates between the Baltic and the Balkans has exposed them to all thelimitations and dangers arising from a narrow circle of land neighbors. Moreover, the diversified character of the area, its complex mountainsystems, and diverging river courses have acted as disintegrating forceswhich have prevented the political concentration necessary to repelinterference from without. The Muscovite power, which had its beginningin a modest central location about the sources of the Dwina, Dnieper andVolga, was aided by the physical unity of its unobstructed plains, whichfacilitated political combination. Hence, on every side it burst throughits encompassing neighbors and stretched its boundaries to theuntenanted frontier of the sea. Central location was the undoing of theTransvaal Republic. Its efforts to expand to the Indian Ocean wereblocked by its powerful British rival at every point--at Delagoa Bay in1875 by treaty with Portugal, at Santa Lucia Bay in 1884, and throughSwaziland in 1894. The Orange Free State was maimed in the same waywhen, in 1868, she tried to stretch out an arm through Basutoland to thesea. [249] Here even weak neighbors were effective to curtail the seawardgrowth of these inland states, because they were made the tools of onestrong, rapacious neighbor. A central position teaches always the lessonof vigilance and preparedness for hostilities, as the Boer equipment in1899, the military organization of Germany, and the bristling fortresseson the Swiss Alpine passes prove. 

[Sidenote: Mutual relations between center and periphery. ]

How intimate and necessary are the relations between central andperipheral location is shown by the fact that all states strive tocombine the two. In countries like Norway, France, Spain, Japan, Koreaand Chile, peripheral location predominates, and therefore confers uponthem at once the security and commercial accessibility which result fromcontact with the sea. Other countries, like Russia, Germany andAustro-Hungary, chiefly central in location, have the strategic and eventhe commercial value of their coasts reduced by the long, tortuouscourse which connects them with the open ocean. Therefore, we findRussia planning to make a great port at Ekaterina Harbor on thenorthernmost point of her Lapland coast, where an out-runner from theGulf Stream ensures an ice-free port on the open sea. [250] An admirablecombination of central and peripheral location is seen in the UnitedStates. Here the value of periphery is greatly enhanced by theinteroceanic location of the country; and the danger of entanglementsarising from a marked central location is reduced by the simplicity ofthe political neighborhood. But our country has paid for this securityby an historical aloofness and poverty of influence. Civilized countrieswhich are wholly central in their location are very few, only nine inall. Six of these are mountain or plateau states, like Switzerland andAbyssinia, which have used the fortress character of their land toresist conquest, and have preferred independence to the commercialadvantages to be gained only by affiliation with their peripheralneighbors. 

[Sidenote: Inland and coastward expansion. ]

Central and peripheral location presuppose and supplement one another. One people inhabits the interior of an island or continent whose rim isoccupied by another. The first suffers from exclusion from the sea andtherefore strives to get a strip of coast. The coast people feel thedrawback of their narrow foothold upon the land, want a broader base inorder to exploit fully the advantages of their maritime location, fearthe pressure of their hinterland when the great forces there imprisonedshall begin to move; so they tend to expand inland to strengthenthemselves and weaken the neighbor in their rear. The English coloniesof America, prior to 1763, held a long cordon of coast, hemmed inbetween the Appalachian Mountains and the sea. Despite threats of Frenchencroachments from the interior, they expanded from this narrowperipheral base into the heart of the continent, and after theRevolution reached the Mississippi River and the northern boundary ofthe Spanish Floridas. They now held a central location in relation tothe long Spanish periphery of the Gulf of Mexico. True to the instinctsof that location, they began to throw the weight of their vasthinterland against the weak coastal barrier. This gave way, either toforcible appropriation of territory or diplomacy or war, till the UnitedStates had incorporated in her own territory the peripheral lands of theGulf from Florida Strait to the Rio Grande. [See map page 156. ]

[Sidenote: Russian expansion in Asia. ]

In Asia this same process has been perennial and on a far greater scale. The big arid core of that continent, containing many million squaremiles, has been charged with an expansive force. From the appearance ofthe Aryans in the Indus Valley and the Scythians on the borders ofMacedonia, it has sent out hordes to overwhelm the peripheral lands fromthe Yellow Sea to the Black, and from the Indian Ocean to the WhiteSea. [251] To-day Russia is making history there on the pattern set bygeographic conditions. From her most southerly province in Trans-Caspia, conquered a short twenty-five years ago, she is heading towards theIndian Ocean. The Anglo-Russian convention of August 31st, 1907, yielding to Russia all northern Persia as her sphere of influence, enables her to advance half way to the Persian Gulf, though Britishstatesmen regard it as a check upon her ambition, because England hassecured right to the littoral. But Russia by this great stride towardher goal is working with causes, satisfied to let the effects follow attheir leisure. She has gained the best portion of Persia, comprisingthe six largest cities and the most important lines of communicationradiating from the capital. [252] This country will make a solid base forher further advance to the Persian Gulf; and, when developed by Russianenterprise in railroad building and commerce, it will make a heavyweight bearing down upon the coast. The Muscovite area which is pressingupon England's Persian littoral reaches from Ispahan and Yezd to thefar-away shores of the Arctic Ocean. 

[Sidenote: Periphery as goal of expansion. ]

In the essentially complementary character of interior and periphery arerooted all these coastward and landward movements of expansion. Where anequilibrium seems to have been reached, the peoples who have acceptedeither the one or the other one-sided location have generally for thetime being ceased to grow. Such a location has therefore a passivecharacter. But the surprising elasticity of many nations may start up anunexpected activity which will upset this equilibrium. Where the centrallocation is that of small mountain states, which are handicapped bylimited resources and population, like Nepal and Afghanistan, orovershadowed by far more powerful neighbors, like Switzerland, thepassive character is plain enough. In the case of larger states, likeServia, Abyssinia, and Bolivia, which offer the material andgeographical base for larger populations than they now support, it isoften difficult to say whether progression or retrogression is to betheir fate. As a rule, however, the expulsion of a people from aperipheral point of advantage and their confinement in the interiorgives the sign of national decay, as did Poland's loss of her Balticseaboard. Russia's loss of her Manchurian port and the resignation ofher ambition on the Chinese coasts is at least a serious check. On theother hand, if an inland country enclosed by neighbors succeeds insomewhere getting a maritime outlet, the sign is hopeful. Thecentury-old political slogan of Hungary, "To the sea, Magyars!" hasborne fruit in the Adriatic harbor of Fiume, which is to-day the prideof the nation and in no small degree a basis for its hope of autonomy. The history of Montenegro took on a new phase when from its mountainseclusion it recently secured the short strip of seaboard which it hadwon and lost so often. Such peripheral holdings are the lungs throughwhich states breathe. 

[Sidenote: Reaction between center and periphery. ]

History and the study of race distribution reveal a mass of facts whichrepresent the contrast and reaction between interior and periphery. Themarginal lands of Asia, from northern Japan, where climatic conditionsfirst make historical development possible, around the whole fringe ofislands, peninsulas and border lowlands to the Aegean coast of AsiaMinor, present a picture of culture and progress as compared with thehigh, mountain-rimmed core of the continent, condemned by its remotenessand inaccessibility to eternal retardation. Europe shows the samecontrast, though in less pronounced form. Its ragged periphery, all theway from the Balkan Gibraltar at Constantinople to the far northernprojections of Scandinavia and Finland, shows the value of a seawardoutlook both in culture and climate. Germany beyond the Elbe and Austriabeyond the Danube begin to feel the shadow of the continental massbehind them; and from their eastern borders on through Russia thebenumbing influence of a central location grows, till beyond the Volgathe climatic, economic, social and political conditions of Asia prevail. Africa is all core: contour and relief have combined to reduce itsperiphery to a narrow coastal hem, offering at best a few vantage pointsfor exploitation to the great maritime merchant peoples of the world. Egypt, embedded in an endless stretch of desert like a jewel in itsmatrix, was powerless to shake off the influence of its continentalenvironment. Its location was predominantly central; its culture borethe stamp of isolation and finally of arrested development. Australia, the classic ground of retardation, where only shades of savagery can bedistinguished, offered the natives of its northern coast some faintstimuli in the visits of Malay seamen from the nearby Sunda Islands; butits central tribes, shielded by geographic segregation from externalinfluences, have retained the most primitive customs and beliefs. [253]

Expanding Europe has long been wrestling with Africa, but it can not geta grip, owing to the form of its antagonist; it finds no limb by whichthe giant can be tripped and thrown. Asia presents a wide border ofmarginal lands, some of them like Arabia and India being almostcontinental in their proportions. Since Europe began her career ofmaritime and colonial expansion in the sixteenth and seventeenthcenturies, she has seized upon these peripheral projections as if theywere the handles on a pilot wheel, and by them she has steered thecourse of Asia ever since. These semi-detached outlyers of the continenthave enabled her to stretch a girdle of European influences around thecentral core. Such influences, through the avenues of commerce, railwayconcessions, missionary propaganda, or political dominion, havepermeated the accessible periphery and are slowly spreading thence intothe interior. China and Persia have felt these influences not less thanIndia and Tongking; Japan, which has most effectually preserved itspolitical autonomy, has profited by them most. 

This historical contrast between center and periphery of continentsreappears in smaller land masses, such as peninsulas and islands. Theprinciple holds good regardless of size. The whole fringe of Arabia, from Antioch to Aden and from Mocha to Mascat, has been the scene ofincoming and outgoing activities, has developed live bases of trade, maritime growth, and culture, while the inert, somnolent interior hasdrowsed away its long eventless existence. The rugged, inaccessibleheart of little Sardinia repeats the story of central Arabia in itsaloofness, its impregnability, backwardness, and in the purity of itsrace. Its accessible coast, forming a convenient way-station on themaritime crossroads of the western Mediterranean, has received asuccession of conquerors and an intermittent influx of every ethnicstrain known in the great basin. 

[Sidenote: Periphery of colonization. ]

The story of discovery and colonization, from the days of ancient Greekenterprise in the Mediterranean to the recent German expansion along theGulf of Guinea, shows the appropriation first of the rims of islands andcontinents, and later that of the interior. A difference of race andculture between inland and peripheral inhabitants meets us almosteverywhere in retarded colonial lands. In the Philippines, the wildpeople of Luzon, Mindoro and the Visayas are confined almost entirelyto the interior, while civilized or Christianized Malays occupy thewhole seaboard, except where the rugged Sierra Madre Mountains, frontingthe Pacific in Luzon, harbor a sparse population of primitiveNegritos. [254] For centuries Arabs held the coast of East Africa, wheretheir narrow zone of settlement bordered on that of native blacks, withwhom they traded. Even ancient Greece showed a wide difference in typeof character and culture between the inland and maritime states. TheGreek landsman was courageous and steadfast, but crude, illiterate, unenterprising, showing sterility of imagination and intellect; whilehis brother of the seaboard was active, daring, mercurial, imaginative, open to all the influences of a refining civilization. [255] To-day thedistribution of the Greeks along the rim of the Balkan peninsula andAsia Minor, in contrast to the Turks and Slavs of the interior, isdistinctly a peripheral phenomenon. [256]

The rapid inland advance from the coast of oversea colonists is part ofthat restless activity which is fostered by contact with the sea andsupported by the command of abundant resources conferred by maritimesuperiority. The Anglo-Saxon invasion of England, as later the Englishcolonization of America, seized the rim of the land, and promptly pushedup the rivers in sea-going boats far into the interior. But peripherymay give to central region something more than conquerors and colonists. From its active markets and cosmopolitan exchanges there steadily filterinto the interior culture and commodities, carried by peaceful merchantand missionary, who, however, are often only the harbingers of theconqueror. The accessibility of the periphery tends to raise it inculture, wealth, density of population, and often in politicalimportance, far in advance of the center. 

[Illustration: PHILIPPINE ISLANDS. Distribution of Civilized and WildPeoples]

[Sidenote: Dominant historical side. ]

The maritime periphery of a country receives a variety of overseainfluences, blends and assimilates these to its own culture, Hellenizes, Americanizes or Japanizes them, as the case may be, and then passes themon into the interior. Here no one foreign influence prevails. On theland boundaries the case is different. Each inland frontier has toreckon with a different neighbor and its undiluted influence. Apredominant central location means a succession of such neighbors, onall sides friction which may polish or rub sore. The distinctionbetween a many-sided and a one-sided historical development depends uponthe contact of a people with its neighbors. Consider the multiplicity ofinfluences which have flowed in upon Austria from all sides. But not allsuch influences are similar in kind or in degree. The most powerfulneighbor will chiefly determine on which boundary of a country itsdominant historical processes are to work themselves out in a givenepoch. Therefore, it is of supreme importance to the character of apeopled history on which side this most powerful neighbor is located. Russia had for several centuries such a neighbor in the Tartar hordesalong its southeastern frontier, and therefore its history received anAsiatic stamp; so, too, did that of Austria and Hungary in the longresistance to Turkish invasion. All three states suffered in consequencea retardation of development on their western sides. After the turmoilon the Asiatic frontier had subsided, the great centers of Europeanculture and commerce in Italy, Germany and the Baltic lands began toassert their powers of attraction. The young Roman Republic drew up itsforces to face the threatening power of Carthage in the south, andthereby was forced into rapid maritime development; the Roman Empirefaced north to meet the inroads of the barbarians, and thereby was drawninto inland expansion. All these instances show that a vital historicalturning-point is reached in the development of every country, when thescene of its great historical happenings shifts from one side toanother. 

[Sidenote: The Mediterranean side of Europe. ]

In addition to the aggressive neighbor, there is often a more sustainedforce that may draw the activities of a people toward one or anotherboundary of their territory. This may be the abundance of land andunexploited resources lying on a colonial frontier and attracting theunemployed energies of the people, such as existed till recently in theUnited States, [257] and such as is now transferring the most activescenes of Russian history to far-away Siberia. But a stronger attractionis that of a higher civilization and dominant economic interests. Solong as the known world was confined to the temperate regions of Europe, Asia and Africa, together with the tropical districts of the IndianOcean, the necessities of trade between Orient and Occident and thehistorical prestige of the lands bordering on the Mediterranean placedin this basin the center of gravity of the cultural, commercial andpolitical life of Europe. The continent was dominated by its Asiaticcorner; its every country took on an historical significanceproportionate to its proximity and accessibility to this center. ThePapacy was a Mediterranean power. The Crusades were Mediterranean wars. Athens, Rome, Constantinople, Venice, and Genoa held in turn the focalpositions in this Asiatic-European sea; they were on the sunny side ofthe continent, while Portugal and England lay in shadow. Only thatportion of Britain facing France felt the cultural influences of thesouthern lands. The estuaries of the Mersey and Clyde were marshysolitudes, echoing to the cry of the bittern and the ripple of Celticfishing-boat. 

[Sidenote: Change of historical front. ]

After the year 1492 inaugurated the Atlantic period of history, thewestern front of Europe superseded the Mediterranean side in thehistorical leadership of the continent. The Breton coast of France wakedup, the southern seaboard dozed. The old centers in the Aegean andAdriatic became drowsy corners. The busy traffic of the Mediterraneanwas transferred to the open ocean, where, from Trafalger to Norway, thewestern states of Europe held the choice location on the world's newhighway. Liverpool, Plymouth, Glasgow, Hamburg, Rotterdam, Antwerp, Cherbourg, Lisbon and Cadiz were shifted from shadowy margin toilluminated center, and became the foci of the new activity. Theirs wasa new continental location, maintaining relations of trade andcolonization with two hemispheres. Their neighbors were now found on theAtlantic shores of the Americas and the peripheral lands of Asia. Thesecities became the exponents of the intensity with which their respectivestates exploited the natural advantages of this location. 

The experience of Germany was typical of the change of front. From thetenth to the middle of the sixteenth century, this heir of the old RomanEmpire was drawn toward Italy by every tie of culture, commerce, andpolitical ideal. This concentration of interest in its southern neighbormade it ignore a fact so important as the maritime development of theHanse Towns, wherein lay the real promise of its future, the hope of itscommercial and colonial expansion. The shifting of its historical centerof gravity to the Atlantic seaboard therefore came late, furtherretarded by lack of national unity and national purposes. But thepresent wide circle of Germany's transoceanic commerce incident upon itsrecent industrial development, the phenomenal increase of its merchantmarine, the growth of Hamburg and Bremen, the construction of shipcanals to that short North Sea coast, and the enormous utilization ofDutch ports for German commerce, all point to the attraction of distanteconomic interests, even when meagerly supported by colonialpossessions. 

Location, therefore, while it is the most important single geographicfactor, is at the same time the one most subject to the vicissitudesattending the anthropo-geographical evolution of the earth. Its valuechanges with the transfer of the seats of the higher civilizations fromsub-tropical to temperate lands; from the margin of enclosed sea to thehem of the open ocean; from small, naturally defined territories tolarge, elastic areas; from mere periphery to a combination of peripheryand interior, commanding at once the freedom of the sea and theresources of a wide hinterland. 

[Sidenote: Contrasted historical sides. ]

Even in Europe, however, where the Atlantic leaning of all the states isso marked as to suggest a certain dependence, the strength of thisone-sided attraction is weakened by the complexity and closeness of thevicinal grouping of the several nations. Germany's reliance upon theneighboring grain fields of Russia and Hungary and the leather of thesouthern steppes counteracts somewhat the far-off magnet of America'swheat and cattle. England experienced a radical change of geographicfront with the sailing of the Cabots; but the enormous tonnage enteringand passing from the North Sea and Channel ports for her Europeantrade[258] show the attraction of the nearby Continent. Oftentimes wefind two sides of a country each playing simultaneously a different, yetan equally important historical part, and thus distributing thehistorical activities, while diversifying the historical development ofthe people. The young United States were profoundly influenced as tonational ideals and their eventual territorial career by the free, eagerlife and the untrammeled enterprise of its wilderness frontier beyondthe Alleghenies, while through the Atlantic seaboard it was kept insteadying contact with England and the inherited ideals of the race. Russia is subjected to different influences on its various fronts; it isprogressive, industrial, socialistic on its European side in Poland;expansive and radical in a different way in colonial Siberia; aggressivein the south, bending its energies toward political expansion along theMediterranean and Persian Gulf seaboards. In all such countries there isa constant shifting and readjustment of extra-territorial influences. 

[Sidenote: One-sided historical relations. ]

It is otherwise in states of very simple vicinal grouping, coupled withonly a single country or at best two. Spain, from the time HamilcarBarca made it a colony of ancient Carthage, down to the decline of itsSaracen conquerors, was historically linked with Africa. Freeman callsattention to "the general law by which, in almost all periods ofhistory, either the masters of Spain have borne rule in Africa or themasters of Africa have borne rule in Spain. " The history of such simplylocated countries tends to have a correspondingly one-sided character. Portugal's development has been under the exclusive influence of Spain, except for the oversea stimuli brought to it by the Atlantic. England'slong southern face close to the French coast had for centuries theeffect of interweaving its history with that of its southern neighbor. The conspicuous fact in the foreign history of Japan has been itsintimate connection with Korea above all the other states. [259] Egypt, which projects as an alluvial peninsula into an ocean of desert fromsouthwestern Asia, has seen its history, from the time of the ShepherdKings to that of Napoleon, repeatedly linked with Palestine and Syria. Every Asiatic or European conquest of these two countries has eventuallybeen extended to the valley of the Nile; and Egypt's one great period ofexpansion saw this eastern coast of the Mediterranean as far as theEuphrates united to the dominion of the Pharaohs. Here is a one-sidedgeographical location in an exaggerated form, emphasized by thephysical and political barrenness of the adjacent regions of Africa andthe strategic importance of the isthmian district between theMediterranean and Indian Ocean. 

[Sidenote: Scattered location due to geographic conditions. ]

The forms of vicinal location thus far considered presuppose a compactor continuous distribution, such as characterizes the more fertile andpopulous areas of the earth. Desert regions, whether due to Arctic coldor extreme aridity, distribute their sparse population in small groupsat a few favored points, and thus from physical causes give rise to theanthropo-geographical phenomenon of scattered location. Districts ofintense cold, which sustain life only in contact with marine supplies offood, necessitate an intermittent distribution along the seaboard, withlong, unoccupied stretches between. This is the location we are familiarwith among the Eskimo of Greenland and Alaska, among the Norse and Lappsin the rugged Norwegian province of Finmarken, where over two-thirds ofthe population live by fishing. In the interior districts of thisprovince about Karasjok and Kantokeino, the reindeer Lapps show acorresponding scattered grouping here and there on the inhospitableslopes of the mountains. [260] In that one-half of Switzerland lying abovethe altitude where agriculture is possible, population is sprinkled atwide intervals over the sterile surface of the highlands. 

A somewhat similar scattered location is found in arid deserts, wherepopulation is restricted to the oases dropped here and there at wideintervals amid the waste of sand. But unlike those fragments of humanlife on the frozen outskirts of the habitable world, the oasis statesusually constitute links in a chain of connection across the desertbetween the fertile lands on either side, and therefore form part of aseries, in which the members maintain firm and necessary economicrelations. Every caravan route across the Sahara is dotted by a seriesof larger or smaller tribal settlements. Tripoli, Sokna, Murzuk, Bilmaand Bornu form one such chain; Algiers, El Golea, Twat, the salt minesof Taudeni, Arawan and Timbuctoo, another. Bagdad, Hayil, Boreyda andMecca trace the road of pilgrim and merchant starting from the Moslemland of the Euphrates to the shrine of Mohammed. [261]

[Illustration: DISTRIBUTION OF SETTLEMENT IN THE NORWEGIAN PROVINCE OFFINMARKEN. ]

[Sidenote: Island way station on maritime routes. ]

Not unlike this serial grouping of oasis states along caravan routesthrough the desert are the island way stations that rise out of thewaste of the sea and are connected by the great maritime routes oftrade. Such are the Portuguese Madeiras, Bissagos, and San Thomé on theline between Lisbon and Portuguese Loanda in West Africa; and theirother series of the Madeiras, Cape Verde, and Fernando, whichfacilitated communication with Pernambuco when Brazil was a Portuguesecolony. The classic example of this serial grouping is found in the lineof islands, physical or political, which trace England's artery ofcommunication with India--Gibraltar, Malta, Cyprus, Perim, Aden, Sokotra, and Ceylon, besides her dominant position at Suez. 

[Sidenote: Scattered location of primitive tribes. ]

Quite different from this scattered distribution, due to physicalconditions, in an otherwise uninhabited waste is that wide dispersal ofa people in small detached groups which is the rule in lower stages ofculture, and which bespeaks the necessity of relatively largeterritorial reserves for the uneconomic method of land utilizationcharacteristic of hunting, fishing, pastoral nomadism, and primitiveagriculture. A distribution which claims large areas, without, however, maintaining exclusive possession or complete occupation, indicates amongadvanced peoples an unfinished process, [262] especially unfinishedexpansion, such as marked the early French and English colonies inAmerica and the recent Russian occupation of Siberia. Among primitivepeoples it is the normal condition, belongs to the stage ofcivilization, not to any one land or any one race, though it has beencalled the American form of distribution. 

Not only are villages and encampments widely dispersed, but also thetribal territories. The Tupis were found by the Portuguese explorersalong the coast of eastern Brazil and in the interior from the mouth ofthe La Plata to the lower Amazon, while two distant tribes of the Tupiswere dropped down amid a prevailing Arawak population far away among thefoothills of the Andes in two separate localities on the westernAmazon. [263] [See map page 101. ] The Athapascans, from their greatcompact northern area between Hudson Bay, the Saskatchewan River, andthe Eskimo shores of the Arctic Ocean sent southward a detached offshootcomprising the Navajos, Apaches and Lipans, who were found along the RioGrande from its source almost to its mouth; and several smallerfragments westward who were scattered along the Pacific seaboard fromPuget Sound to northern California. [264] The Cherokees of the southernAppalachians and the Tuscaroras of eastern North Carolina were detachedgroups of the Iroquois, who had their chief seat about the lower GreatLakes and the St. Lawrence. Virginia and North Carolina harbored alsoseveral tribes of Sioux, [265] who were also represented in southernMississippi by the small Biloxi nation, though the chief Sioux area laybetween the Arkansas and Saskatchewan rivers. Similarly the Caddoes ofLouisiana and eastern Texas had one remote offshoot on the Platte Riverand another, the Arikaras, on the upper Missouri near its great bend. [See map page 54. ] But the territory of the Caddoes, in turn, wassprinkled with Choctaws, who belonged properly east of the Mississippi, but who in 1803 were found scattered in fixed villages or wanderinggroups near the Bayou Teche, on the Red River, the Washita, and theArkansas. [266] Their villages were frequently interspersed with others ofthe Biloxi Sioux. 

This fragmentary distribution appears in Africa among people in parallelstages of civilization. Dr. Junker found it as a universal phenomenon inCentral Africa along the watershed between the White Nile and theWelle-Congo. Here the territory of the dominant Zandeh harbored a motleycollection of shattered tribes, remnants of peoples, and intruding orrefugee colonies from neighboring districts. [267] The few weak bondsbetween people and soil characterizing retarded races are insufficientto secure permanent residence in the face of a diminished game supply, as in the case of the Choctaws above cited, or of political disturbanceor oppression, or merely the desire for greater independence, as in thatof so many African tribes. 

[Illustration: DISTRIBUTION OF POPULATION IN THE UNITED STATES IN 1800. ]

[Sidenote: Ethnic islands of expansion. ]

A scattered location results in all stages of civilization when anexpanding or intruding people begins to appropriate the territory of adifferent race. Any long continued infiltration, whether peaceful oraggressive, results in race islands or archipelagoes distributed througha sea of aborigines. Semitic immigration from southern Arabia has inthis way striped and polka-dotted the surface of Hamitic Abyssinia. [268]Groups of pure German stock are to-day scattered through the Baltic andPolish provinces of Russia. [269] [See map page 223. ] In ancient times theadvance guard of Teutonic migration crossed the Rhenish border of Gaul, selected choice sites here and there, after the manner of Ariovistus, and appeared as enclaves in the encompassing Gallic population. Whilethe Anahuac plateau of Mexico formed the center of the Aztec or Nahuatlgroup of Indians, outlying colonies of this stock occurred among theMaya people of the Tehuantepec region, and in Guatemala andNicaragua. [270]

Such detached fragments or rather spores of settlement characterize allyoung geographical boundaries, where ethnic and political frontiers arestill in the making. The early French, English, Dutch, and Swedishsettlements in America took the form of archipelagoes in a surroundingsea of Indian-owned forest land; and in 1800, beyond the frontier ofcontinuous settlement in the United States long slender peninsulas andremote outlying islands of white occupation indicated American advanceat the cost of the native. Similarly the Portuguese, at the end of thesixteenth century, seized and fortified detached points along the coastof East Africa at Sofala, Malindi, Mombassa, Kilwa, Lamu, Zanzibar andBarava, which served as way stations for Portuguese ships bound forIndia, and were outposts of expansion from their Moçambiqueterritory. [271] The snow-muffled forests of northern Siberia have theirsolitudes broken at wide intervals by Russian villages, located onlyalong the streams for fishing, gold-washing and trading with the native. These lonely clearings are outposts of the broad band of Muscovitesettlement which stretches across southern Siberia from the UralMountains to the Angara River. [272] [See map page 103. ]

[Sidenote: Political islands of expansion. ]

The most exaggerated example of scattered political location existingto-day is found in the bizarre arrangement of European holdings on thewest coast of Africa between the Senegal and Congo rivers. Here in eachcase a handful of governing whites is dropped down in the midst of adark-skinned population in several districts along the coast. The sixdetached seaboard colonies of the French run back in the interior into acommon French-owned hinterland formed by the Sahara and western Sudan, which since 1894 link the Guinea Coast colonies with French Algeria andTunis; but the various British holdings have no territorial cohesion atany point, nor have the Spanish or Portuguese or German. The scatteredlocation of these different European possessions is for the most partthe expression of a young colonizing activity, developed in the pastfifty years, and signalized by the vigorous intrusion of the French andGermans into the field. To the anthropo-geographer the map of westernAfrica presents the picture of a political situation wholly immature, even embryonic. The history of similar scattered outposts of politicalexpansion in America, India and South Africa teaches us to look forextensive consolidation. 

[Sidenote: Ethnic islands of survival. ]

Race islands occur also when a land is so inundated by a tide ofinvasion or continuous colonization that the original inhabitantssurvive only as detached remnants, where protecting natural conditions, such as forests, jungles, mountains or swamps, provide an asylum, orwhere a sterile soil or rugged plateau has failed to attract thecupidity of the conqueror. The dismembered race, especially one in alower status of civilization, can be recognized as such islands ofsurvival by their divided distribution in less favored localities, intowhich they have fled, and in which seldom can they increase andrecombine to recover their lost heritage. In Central Africa, between thewatersheds of the Nile, Congo and Zambesi, there is scarcely a largenative state that does not shelter in its forests scattered groups ofdwarf hunter folk variously known as Watwa, Batwa, and Akka. [273] Theyserve the agricultural tribes as auxiliaries in war, and trade with themin meat and ivory, but also rob their banana groves and manioc patches. The local dispersion of these pygmies in small isolated groups amongstronger peoples points to them as survivals of a once wide-spreadaboriginal race, another branch of which, as Schweinfurth suggested, isprobably found in the dwarfed Bushmen and Hottentots of SouthAfrica. [274] [See map page 105. ]

Similar in distribution and in mode of life are the aborigines of thePhilippines, the dwarf Negritos, who are still found inhabiting theforests in various localities. They are dispersed through eightprovinces of Luzon and in several other islands, generally in theinterior, whither they have been driven by the invading Malays. [275] [Seemap page 147. ] But the Negritos crop out again in the mountain interiorof Formosa and Borneo, in the eastern peninsula of Celebes, and invarious islands of the Malay Archipelago as far east as Ceram andFlores, amid a prevailing Malay stock. Toward the west they come to thesurface in the central highland of Malacca, in the Nicobar and AndamanIslands, and in several mountain and jungle districts of India. Hereagain is the typical geographic distribution of a moribund aboriginalrace, whose shrivelled patches merely dot the surface of their once wideterritory. [276] The aboriginal Kolarian tribes of India are found underthe names of Bhils, Kols and Santals scattered about in the fastnessesof the Central Indian jungles, the Vindhyan Range, and in the RajputanaDesert, within the area covered by Indo-Aryan occupation. [277] [See mappage 103. ]

[Sidenote: Discontinuous distribution. ]

Such broad, intermittent dispersal is the anthropological prototype ofthe "discontinuous distribution" of biologists. By this they mean thatcertain types of plants and animals occur in widely separated regions, without the presence of any living representatives in the intermediatearea. But they point to the rock records to show that the type onceoccupied the whole territory, till extensive elimination occurred, owingto changes in climatic or geologic conditions or to sharpenedcompetition in the struggle for existence, with the result that the typesurvived only in detached localities offering a favorableenvironment. [278] In animal and plant life, the ice invasion of theGlacial Age explains most of these islands of survival; in human life, the invasion of stronger peoples. The Finnish race, which in the ninthcentury covered nearly a third of European Russia, has been shattered bythe blows of Slav expansion into numerous fragments which lie scatteredabout within the old ethnic boundary from the Arctic Ocean to theDon-Volga watershed. [279] The encroachments of the whites upon the redmen of America early resulted in their geographical dispersion. The mapshowing the distribution of population in 1830 reveals large detachedareas of Indian occupancy embedded in the prevailing whiteterritory. [280] The rapid compression of the tribal lands and theintroduction of the reservation system resulted in the presentarrangement of yet smaller and more widely scattered groups. Suchislands of survival tend constantly to contract and diminish in numberwith the growing progress, density, and land hunger of the surroundingrace. The Kaffir islands and the Hottentot "locations" in South Africa, large as they now are, will repeat the history of the American Indianlands, a history of gradual shrinkage and disappearance as territorialentities. 

[Sidenote: Contrasted location. ]

Every land contains in close juxtaposition areas of sharply contrastedcultural, economic and political development, due to the influence ofdiverse natural locations emphasizing lines of ethnic cleavage madeperhaps by some great historical struggle. In mountainous countries theconquered people withdraw to the less accessible heights and leave thefertile valleys to the victorious intruders. The two races are thus heldapart, and the difference in their respective modes of life forced uponthem by contrasted geographic conditions tends still farther for a timeto accentuate their diversity. The contrasted location of the dislodgedAlpine race, surviving in all the mountains and highlands of westernEurope over against the Teutonic victors settled in the plains, [281] hasits parallel in many parts of Asia and Africa; it is almost alwayscoupled with a corresponding contrast in mode of life, which is at leastin part geographically determined. In Algeria, the Arab conquerors, whoform the larger part of the population, are found in the plains wherethey live the life of nomads in their tents; the Berbers, who were theoriginal inhabitants, driven back into the fastnesses of the Atlasranges, form now an industrious, sedentary farmer class, living in stonehouses, raising stock, and tilling their fields as if they were marketgardeners. [282] In the Andean states of South America, the eastern slopesof the Cordilleras, which are densely forested owing to their positionin the course of the trade-winds, harbor wild, nomadic tribes of huntingand fishing Indians who differ in stock and culture from the IncaIndians settled in the drier Andean basins. [283] [See map page 101. ]

[Sidenote: Geographical polarity. ]

Every geographical region of strongly marked character possesses acertain polarity, by reason of which it attracts certain racial oreconomic elements of population, and repels others. The predatory tribesof the desert are constantly reinforced by refugee outlaws from thesettled agricultural communities along its borders. [284] The mountainswhich offer a welcome asylum for the persecuted Waldenses have no lurefor the money-making Jew, who is therefore rarely found there. Thenegroes of the United States are more and more congregating in the GulfStates, making the "Black Belt" blacker. The fertile tidewater plainsof ante-bellum Virginia and Maryland had a rich, aristocratic whitepopulation of slave-holding planters; the mountain backwoods of theAppalachian ranges, whose conditions of soil and relief were ill adaptedfor slave cultivation, had attracted a poorer democratic farmer class, who tilled their small holdings by their own labor and consequentlyentertained little sympathy for the social and economic system of thetidewater country. This is the contrast between mountain and plain whichis as old as humanity. It presented problems to the legislation ofSolon, and caused West Virginia to split off from the mother Stateduring the Civil War. [285]

Each contrasted district has its own polarity; but with this it attractsnot one but many of the disruptive forces which are pent up in everypeople or state. Certain conditions of climate, soil, and tillable areain the Southern States of the Union made slave labor remunerative, whileopposite conditions in the North combined eventually to exclude itthence. Slave labor in the South brought with it in turn a whole trainof social and economic consequences, notably the repulsion of foreignwhite immigration and the development of shiftless or wastefulindustrial methods, which further sharpened the contrast between the twosections. The same contrast occurs in Italian territory between Sicilyand Lombardy. Here location at the two extremities of the peninsula hasinvolved a striking difference in ethnic infusions in the two districts, different historical careers owing to different vicinal grouping, anddissimilar geographic conditions. These effects operating together andattracting other minor elements of divergence, have conspired toemphasize the already strong contrast between northern and southernItaly. 

[Sidenote: Geographical marks of growth. ]

In geographical location can be read the signs of growth or decay. Thereare racial and national areas whose form is indicative of development, expansion, while others show the symptoms of decline. The growing peopleseize all the geographic advantages within their reach, whether lyinginside their boundaries or beyond. In the latter case, they promptlyextend their frontiers to include the object of their desire, as theyoung United States did in the case of the Mississippi River and theGulf coast. European peoples, like the Russians in Asia, all strive toreach the sea; and when they have got there, they proceed to embrace asbig a strip of coast as possible. Therefore the whole colonizationmovement of western and central Europe was in the earlier periodsrestricted to coasts, although not to such an excessive degree as thatof the Phoenicians and Greeks. Their own maritime location hadinstructed them as to the value of seaboards, and at the same time madethis form of expansion the simplest and easiest. 

[Sidenote: Marks of inland expansion. ]

On the other hand, that growing people which finds its coastward advanceblocked, and is therefore restricted to landward expansion, seizes uponevery natural feature that will aid its purpose. It utilizes everyvalley highway and navigable river, as the Russians did in the case ofthe Dnieper, Don, Volga, Kama and Northern Dwina in their radialexpansion from the Muscovite center at Moscow, and as later they usedthe icy streams of Siberia in their progress toward the Pacific; or asthe Americans in their trans-continental advance used the Ohio, Tennessee, the Great Lakes, and the Missouri. They reach out towardevery mountain pass leading to some choice ultramontane highway. Bulgesor projecting angles of their frontier indicate the path they plan tofollow, and always include or aim at some natural feature which willfacilitate their territorial growth. The acquisition of the province ofTicino in 1512 gave the Swiss Confederation a foothold upon LakeMaggiore, perhaps the most important waterway of northern Italy, and thepossession of the Val Leventina, which now carries the St. GotthardRailroad down to the plains of the Po. Every bulge of Russia's Asiaticfrontier, whether in the Trans-Caucasus toward the Mesopotamian basinand the Persian Gulf, or up the Murghab and Tedjend rivers toward thegates of Herat, is directed at some mountain pass and an outlet seawardbeyond. 

If this process of growth bring a people to the borders of a desert, there they halt perhaps for a time, but only, as it were, to take breathfor a stride across the sand to the nearest oasis. The ancientEgyptians advanced by a chain of oases--Siwa, Angila, Sella and Sokna, across the Libyan Desert to the Syrtis Minor. The Russians in the lasttwenty-five years have spread across the arid wastes of Turkestan by wayof the fertile spots of Khiva, Bukhara and Merv to the irrigated slopesof the Hindu Kush and Tian Shan Mountains. The French extended theboundaries of Algiers southward into the desert to include the caravanroutes focusing at the great oases of Twat and Tidekelt, years beforetheir recent appropriation of the western Sahara. 

[Sidenote: Marks of decline. ]

As territorial expansion is the mark of growth, so the sign of declineis the relinquishment of land that is valuable or necessary to apeople's well-being. The gradual retreat of the Tartars and in part alsoof the Kirghis tribes from their best pasture lands along the Volga intothe desert or steppes indicates their decrease of power, just as thewithdrawal of the Indians from their hunting grounds in forest andprairie was the beginning of their decay. Bolivia maimed herself for alltime when in 1884 she relinquished to Chile her one hundred and eightymiles of coast between the Rio Lao and the twenty-fourth parallel. Herrepeated efforts later to recover at least one seaport on the Pacificindicate her own estimate of the loss by which she was limited to aninland location, and deprived of her maritime periphery. [286]

[Sidenote: Interpretation of scattered and marginal location. ]

The habits of a people and the consequent demands which they make upontheir environment must be taken into account in judging whether or not arestricted geographical location is indicative of a retrograde process. The narrow marginal distribution of the Haida, Tlingit, and TsimsheanIndians on the islands and coastal strips of northwestern America meanssimply the selection of sites most congenial to those inveterate fishertribes. The fact that the English in the vicinity of the NewfoundlandBanks settled on a narrow rim of coast in order to exploit thefisheries, while the French peasants penetrated into the interiorforests and farmlands of Canada, was no sign of territorial decline. English and French were both on the forward march, each in their ownway. The scattered peripheral location of the Phoenician tradingstations and later of the Greek colonies on the shores of theMediterranean was the expression of the trading and maritime activity ofthose two peoples. Centuries later a similar distribution of Arab postsalong the coast of East Africa, Madagascar and the western islands ofthe Sunda Archipelago indicated the great commercial expansion of theMohammedan traders of Oman and Yemen. The lack came when thisdistribution, normal as a preliminary form, bore no fruit in theoccupation of wide territorial bases. [See map page 251. ]

[Sidenote: Prevalence of ethnic islands of decline. ]

In general, however, any piecemeal or marginal location of a peoplejustifies the question as to whether it results from encroachment, dismemberment, and consequently national or racial decline. Thisinference as a rule strikes the truth. The abundance of such ethnicislands and reefs--some scarcely distinguishable above the flood of thesurrounding population--is due to the fact that when the area ofdistribution of any life form, whether racial or merely animal, is forany cause reduced, it does not merely contract but breaks up intodetached fragments. These isolated groups often give the impression ofbeing emigrants from the original home who, in some earlier period ofexpansion, had occupied this outlying territory. At the dawn of westernEuropean history, Gaul was the largest and most compact area of Celticspeech. For this reason it has been regarded as the land whence sprangthe Celts of Britain, the Iberian Peninsula, the Alps and northernItaly. Freeman thinks that the Gauls of the Danube and Po valleys weredetachments which had been left behind in the great Celtic migrationtoward the west;[287] but does not consider the possibility of a once farmore extensive Celtic area, which, as a matter of fact, once reachedeastward to the Weser River and the Sudetes Mountains and was laterdismembered. [288] The islands of Celtic speech which now mark the westernflank of Great Britain and Ireland are shrunken fragments of a Celticlinguistic area which, as place-names indicate, once comprised the wholecountry. [289] Similarly, all over Russia Finnic place-names testify tothe former occupation of the country by a people now submerged by theimmigrant Slavs, except where they emerge in ethnic islands in the farnorth and about the elbow of the Volga. [290] [See map page 225. ] Beyondthe compact area of the Melanesian race occupying New Guinea and theislands eastward to the Fiji and Loyalty groups, are found scatteredpatches of negroid folk far to the westward, relegated to the interiorsof islands and peninsulas. The dispersed and fragmentary distribution ofthis negroid stock has suggested that it formed the older and primitiverace of a wide region extending from India to Fiji and possibly evenbeyond. [291]

[Sidenote: Contrast between ethnic islands of growth and decline. ]

Ethnic or political islands of decline can be distinguished from islandsof expansion by various marks. When survivals of an inferior people, they are generally characterized by inaccessible or unfavorablegeographic location. When remnants of former large colonial possessionsof modern civilized nations, they are characterized by good or evenexcellent location, but lack a big compact territory nearby to whichthey stand in the relation of outpost. Such are the Portuguese fragmentson the west coast of India at Goa, Damaon, and Diu Island, and thePortuguese half of the island of Timor with the islet of Kambing in theEast Indies. Such also are the remnants of the French empire in India, founded by the genius of François Dupleix, which are located on theseaboard at Chandarnagar, Carical, Pondicherry, Yanaon and Mahe. Theytell the geographer a far different story from that of the smalldetached French holding of Kwang-chan Bay and Nao-chan Island on thesouthern coast of China, which are outposts of the vigorous Frenchcolony of Tongking. 

The scattered islands of an intrusive people, bent upon conquest orcolonization, are distinguished by a choice of sites favorable to growthand consolidation, and by the rapid extension of their boundaries untilthat consolidation is achieved; while the people themselves give signsof the rapid differentiation incident to adaptation to a newenvironment. 

NOTES TO CHAPTER V

[239] Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu, The Empire of the Tsars, Vol. I. Pp. 98-101. New York. 1893. 

[240] George Adam Smith, Historical Geography of the Holy Land, pp. 5-8, 12, 13, 19-28, 37. New York, 1897. 

[241] W. Z. Ripley, Races of Europe, pp. 272-273. New York, 1899. 

[242] Monette, History of the Valley of the Mississippi, Vol. II, chap. I. 1846. 

[243] W. Z. Ripley, Races of Europe, pp. 336, 334. Map. P. 53. New York, 1899. 

[244] J. Partsch, Central Europe, p. 137. London, 1903. 

[245] Eleventh Census, Report for Alaska, pp. 66, 67, 70. Washington, 1893. 

[246] Livingstone, Travels in South Africa, p. 56. New York, 1858. 

[247] Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu, The Empire of the Tsars, Vol I, pp. 36, 108. New York, 1893. 

[248] Boyd Alexander, From the Niger to the Nile, Vol. II, pp. 127-130, 170. London, 1907. 

[249] James Bryce, Impressions of South Africa, pp. 147, 150, 170-173. New York, 1897. 

[250] Alexander P. Engelhardt, A Russian Province of the North, pp. 135, 140-147, 165, 170. Translated from the Russian. London, 1899. 

[251] For full and able discussion, see H. J. Mackinder, TheGeographical Pivot of History, in the _Geographical Journal_, April, 1904. London. 

[252] The Anglo-Russian Agreement, with map, in _The Independent_, October, 10, 1907. 

[253] Spencer and Gillen, The Northern Tribes of Central Australia, p. Xii. London, 1904. 

[254] Census of the Philippine Islands, Vol. I, p. 526; Vol II, pp. 34-35, 50-52 and map. Washington, 1903. 

[255] Grote, History of Greece, Vol. II, pp. 225-226. New York, 1859. 

[256] W. Z. Ripley, The Races of Europe, pp. 402-410, map. New York, 1899. 

[257] Frederick J. Turner, The Significance of the Frontier in AmericanHistory, in the _Annual Report of the American Historical Association_for 1893, pp. 199-227. Washington, 1894. 

[258] Hugh R. Mill, International Geography, pp. 150-152. New York, 1902. 

[259] W. E. Griffis, The Mikado's Empire, Vol. I, pp. 75, 83. New York, 1903. Henry Dyer, Dai Nippon, pp. 59, 69. New York, 1904. 

[260] Norway, Official Publication, pp. 4, 83, 99, and map. Christiania, 1900. 

[261] D. G. Hogarth, The Nearer East, pp. 221-224, map. London, 1902. 

[262] Heinrich von Treitschke, _Politik_, Vol. I, p. 224. Leipzig, 1897. 

[263] Helmolt, History of the World, Vol. I, pp. 189-191. New York, 1902-1906. 

[264] Eleventh Census, _Report on the Indians_, pp. 36-37. Washington, 1894. 

[265] John Fiske, Old Virginia and her Neighbors, Vol. II, p. 299. Boston, 1897. 

[266] Eleventh Census, _Report on the Indians_, pp. 30-31. Washington, 1894. 

[267] Dr. William Junker, Travels in Africa, 1882-1886, pp. 30, 31, 34, 37, 44, 50-54, 64, 94-95, 140, 145-148. London, 1892. 

[268] Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. III, pp. 193-195. London, 1896-1898. 

[269] Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu, Empire of the Tsars, Vol. I, pp. 124-129. Hew York, 1893. 

[270] D. G. Brinton, The American Race, p. 266. Philadelphia, 1901. 

[271] Helmolt, History of the World, Vol. III, pp. 484, 485. New York, 1902-06. 

[272] Nordenskiold, The Voyage of the Vega, p. 291. New York, 1882. 

[273] H. M. Stanley, Through the Dark Continent, Vol. II, pp. 100-103, 218. In Darkest Africa, Vol. I, pp. 208, 261, 374-375; Vol. II, pp. 40-44. 

[274] Georg Schweinfurth, The Heart of Africa, Vol. II, chap. XI, 3rdedition, London. 

[275] Census of the Philippine Islands, Vol. I, pp. 411, 436, 532, 533. Washington, 1903. 

[276] Quatrefages, The Pygmies, pp. 24-51. New York, 1895. 

[277] Sir T. H. Holdich, India, pp. 202-203, map. London, 1905. 

[278] Darwin, Origin of Species, Vol. II, chap. XII. New York, 1895. 

[279] Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu, The Empire of the Tsars, Vol. I, pp. 66-70, maps facing pp. 64 and 80. New York, 1893. 

[280] Eleventh Census of the United States, _Report on Population_, PartI, map p. 23. Washington, 1894. 

[281] W. Z. Ripley, Races of Europe, Chapters 7, 8, 11. New York, 1899. 

[282] H. R. Mill, International Geography, p. 910. New York, 1902. 

[283] _Ibid. _, pp. 832, 836. 

[284] Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. III, pp. 175, 257. London, 1896-1898. 

[285] E. C. Semple, American History and its Geographic Conditions, pp. 280-287. Boston, 1903. 

[286] C. E. Akers, History of South America, 1854-1894, pp. 501-502, 556-562. New York, 1904. 

[287] E. A. Freeman, Historical Geography of Europe, p. 14. London, 1882. 

[288] Helmolt, History of the World, Vol. VI, pp. 125-132, map. NewYork, 1902-1906. Ripley, Races of Europe, pp. 274, 297, 308, 472-473. New York, 1899. 

[289] H. J. Mackinder, Britain and the British Seas, pp. 183-191. London, 1904. 

[290] W. Z. Ripley, Races of Europe, pp. 26, 353, 361-365. Map. New York, 1899. 

[291] Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. I, 214-218. London, 1896-1898. 

CHAPTER VI

GEOGRAPHICAL AREA

[Sidenote: The size of the earth. ]

Every consideration of geographical area must take as its starting pointthe 199, 000, 000 square miles (510, 000, 000 square kilometers) of theearth's surface. Though some 8, 000, 000 square miles (21, 000, 000 squarekilometers) about the poles remain unexplored, and only the twenty-eightper cent. Of the total constituting the land area is the actual habitatof man, still the earth as a whole is his planet. Its surface fixes thelimits of his possible dwelling place, the range of his voyages andmigrations, the distribution of animals and plants on which he mustdepend. These conditions he has shared with all forms of life from theamoeba to the civilized nation. The earth's superficial area is theprimal and immutable condition of earth-born, earth-bound man; it is thecommon soil whence is sprung our common humanity. Nations belong tocountries and races to continents, but humanity belongs to the wholeworld. Naught but the united forces of the whole earth could haveproduced this single species of a single genus which we call Man. 

[Sidenote: Relation of area to life. ]

The relation of life to the earth's area is a fundamental question ofbio-geography. The amount of that area available for terrestrial life, the proportion of land and water, the reduction or enlargement of theavailable surface by the operation of great cosmic forces, all enterinto this problem, which changes from one geologic period to another. The present limited plant life of the Arctic regions is the impoverishedsuccessor of a vegetation abundant enough at the eighty-third parallelto produce coal. That was in the Genial Period, when the northernhemisphere with its broad land-masses presented a far larger area forthe support of life than to-day. Then the Glacial Period spread anice-sheet from the North Pole to approximately the fiftieth parallel, forced back life to the lower latitudes, and confined the bio-sphere tothe smaller land-masses of the southern hemisphere and a girdle north ofthe equator. The sum total of life on the globe was greatly reduced atthe height of glaciation, and since the retreat of the ice has probablynever regained the abundance of the Middle Tertiary; so that our periodis probably one of relative impoverishment and faulty adjustment bothof life to life and of life to physical environment. [292] The continent ofNorth America contained a small vital area during the Later CretaceousPeriod, when a notable encroachment of the sea submerged the Atlanticcoastal plain, large sections of the Pacific coast, the Great Plains, Texas and the adjacent Gulf plain up the Mississippi Valley to the mouthof the Ohio. [293]

The task of estimating the area supporting terrestrial life which theearth presented at any given time is an important one, not only becausethe amount of life depends upon this area, but because every increase ofavailable area tends to multiply conditions favorable to variation. Darwin shows that largeness of area, more than anything else, affordsthe best conditions for rapid and improved variation through naturalselection; because a large area supports a larger number of individualsin whom chance variations, advantageous in the struggle for existence, appear oftener than in a small group. This position is maintained alsoby the most recent evolutionists. [294]

On purely geographical grounds, also, a large area stimulatesdifferentiation by presenting a greater diversity of natural conditions, each of which tends to produce its appropriate species or variety. [295]Consider the different environments found in a vast and varied continentlike Eurasia, which extends from the equator far beyond the ArcticCircle, as compared with a small land-mass like Australia, relativelymonotonous in its geographic conditions; and observe how much fartherevolution has progressed in the one than in the other, in point ofanimal forms, races and civilization. If we hold with Moritz Wagner andothers that isolation in naturally defined regions, alternating withperiods of migration, offers the necessary condition for the rapidevolution of type forms, and thus go farther than Darwin, who regardsisolation merely as a fortunate contributory circumstance, we find thatfor the evolution of mankind it is large areas like Eurasia which affordthe greatest number and variety of these naturally segregated habitats, and at the same time the best opportunity for vast historical movements. 

[Sidenote: The struggle for space. ]

Evolution needs room but finds the earth's surface limited. Everywhereold and new forms of life live side by side in deadly competition; butthe later improved variety multiplies and spreads at the cost of lessfavored types. The struggle for existence means a struggle for space. [296]This is true of man and the lower animals. A superior people, invadingthe territory of its weaker savage neighbors, robs them of their land, forces them back into corners too small for their support, and continuesto encroach even upon this meager possession, till the weaker finallyloses the last remnant of its domain, is literally crowded off theearth, becomes extinct as the Tasmanians and so many Indian tribes havedone. [297] The superiority of such expansionists consists primarily intheir greater ability to appropriate, thoroughly utilize and populate aterritory. Hence this is the faculty by which they hasten the extinctionof the weaker; and since this superiority is peculiar to the higherstages of civilization, the higher stages inevitably supplant the lower. 

[Sidenote: Area an index of social and political development. ]

The successive stages of social development--savage, pastoral nomadic, agricultural, and industrial--represent increasing density ofpopulation, increasing numerical strength of the social group, andfinally increasing geographical area, resulting in a vastly enlargedsocial group or state. Increase in the population of a given land isaccompanied by a decrease in the share which each individual can claimas his own. This progressive readjustment to a smaller proportion ofland brings in its train the evolution of all economic and socialprocesses, reacting again favorably on density of population andresulting eventually in the greatly increased social group and enlargedterritory of the modern civilized state. Hence we may lay down the rulethat change in areal relations, both of the individual to his decreasingquota of land, and of the state to its increasing quota of the earth'ssurface is an important index of social and political evolution. Therefore the rise and decline not only of peoples but of wholecivilizations have depended upon their relations to area. Thereforeproblems of area, such as the expansion of a small territory, theeconomic and political mastery of a large one, dominate all history. 

[Sidenote: The Oikoumene. ]

Humanity's area of distribution and historical movement call theOikoumene. It forms a girdle around the earth between the two polarregions, and embraces the Tropics, the Temperate Zones, and a part ofthe North Frigid, in all, five-sixths of the earth's surface. This areaof distribution is unusually large. Few other living species so nearlypermeate the whole vital area, and many of these have reached their wideexpansion only in the company of man. Only about 49, 000, 000 square miles(125, 000, 000 square kilometers) of the Oikoumene is land and thereforeconstitutes properly the habitat of man. But just as we cannotunderstand a nation from the study of its own country alone, but musttake into consideration the wider area of its spreading activities, sowe cannot understand mankind without including in his world not only hishabitat but also the vastly larger sphere of his activities, which isalmost identical with the earth itself. The most progressive peoplesto-day find their scientific, economic, religious and politicalinterests embracing the earth. 

[Sidenote: Unity of the human species in the relation to the earth. ]

Mankind has in common with all other forms of life the tendency towardexpansion. The more adaptable and mobile an organism is, the wider thedistribution which it attains and the greater the rapidity with which itdisplaces its weaker kin. In the most favored cases it embraces thewhole vital area of the earth, leaving no space free for the developmentof diversity of forms, and itself showing everywhere only superficialdistinctions. Mankind has achieved such wide distribution. Before hispersistent intrusions and his mobility, the earth has no longer anyreally segregated districts where a strongly divergent type of the mananimal might develop. Hence mankind shows only superficial distinctionsof hair, color, head-form and stature between its different groups. Ithas got beyond the point of forming species, and is restricted to theslighter variations of races. Even these are few in comparison with thearea of the earth's surface, and their list tends to decrease. TheGuanches and Tasmanians have vanished, the Australians are on the roadto extinction; and when they shall have disappeared, there will be onevariety the less in humanity. So the process of assimilation advances, here by the simple elimination of weaker divergent types of men, thereby amalgamation and absorption into the stock of the stronger. 

This unity of the human species has been achieved in spite of the factthat, owing to the three-fold predominance of the water surface of theglobe, the land surface appears as detached fragments which rise asislands from the surrounding ocean. Among these fragments we have everygradation in size, from the continuous continental mass ofEurasia-Africa with its 31, 000, 000 square miles, the Americas with15, 000, 000, Australia with nearly 3, 000, 000, Madagascar with 230, 000, and New Zealand with 104, 000, down to Guam with its 199 square miles, Ascension with 58, Tristan da Cunha with 45, and the rocky Islet ofHelgoland with its scant 150 acres. All these down to the smallestconstitute separate vital districts. 

[Sidenote: Isolation and differentiation. ]

Small, naturally defined areas, whether their boundaries are drawn bymountains, sea, or by both, always harbor small but markedly individualpeoples, as also peculiar or endemic animal forms, whose differentiationvaries with the degree of isolation. Such peoples can be found over andover again in islands, peninsulas, confined mountain valleys, ordesert-rimmed oases. The cause lies in the barriers to expansion and toaccessions of population from without which confront such peoples onevery side. Broad, uniform continental areas, on the other hand, wherenature has erected no such obstacles are the habitats of wide-spreadpeoples, monotonous in type. The long stretch of coastal lowlandsencircling the Arctic Ocean and running back into the wide plains ofNorth America and Eurasia show a remarkable uniformity of animal andplant forms[298] and a striking similarity of race through the Lapps, theSamoyedes of northern Russia, the various Mongolian tribes of ArcticSiberia to Bering Strait, and the Eskimo, that curiously transitionalrace, formerly classified as Mongolian and more recently as a divergentIndian stock; for the Eskimos are similar to the Siberians in stature, features, coloring, mode of life, in everything but head-form, thougheven the cephalic indices approach on the opposite shores of BeringSea. [299] Where geography draws no dividing line, ethnology finds itdifficult to do so. Where the continental land-masses converge is foundsimilarity or even identity of race, easy gradations from one type toanother; where they diverge most widely in the peninsular extremities ofSouth America, South Africa and Australia, they show the greatestdissimilarity in their native races, and a corresponding diversity intheir animal life. [300] Geographical proximity combined with accessibilityresults in similarity of human and animal occupants, while acorresponding dissimilarity is the attendant of remoteness or ofsegregation. Therefore, despite the distribution of mankind over thetotal habitable area of the earth, his penetration into its detachedregions and hidden corners has maintained such variations as still existin the human family. 

[Sidenote: Monotonous race type of small area. ]

If the distribution of the several races be examined in the light ofthis conclusion, it becomes apparent that the races who have succeededin appropriating only limited portions of the earth's surface, thougheach may be a marked variant of the human family, are characterized byfew inner diversities, either of physical features or culture. Theirsubdivisions feel only in a slight degree the differentiating effects ofgeographic remoteness, which in a small area operates with weakenedforce; and they enjoy few of those diversities of environment whichstimulate variation. They form close and distinct ethnic unities alsobecause their scant numbers restrict the appearance of variations. Thehabitat of the negro race in Africa south of the Sahara, relativelysmall, limited in its zonal location almost wholly to the Tropics, poorly diversified both in relief and contour, has produced only aretarded and monotonous social development based upon tropicalagriculture or a low type of pastoral life. The still smaller, stillless varied habitat of the Australian race, again tropical orsub-tropical in location, has produced over its whole extent only onegrade of civilization and that the lowest, one physical, mental andmoral type. [301]

[Sidenote: Wide race distribution and inner diversities. ]

The Mongoloid area of distribution, on the other hand, is so large thatit necessarily includes a great range of climates and variety ofgeographic conditions. [Maps pages 103 and 225. ] Representatives of thisrace, reflecting their diversified habitats, show many ethnicdifferentiations. They reveal also every stage and phase of culturaldevelopment from the industrialism of Japan, with its artistic andliterary concomitants, to the savage economy and retarded intellectuallife of the Chukches fisher tribes or the Giljak hunters of Sakhalin. The white race, identified primarily with Europe, that choice anddiversified continent, comprised also a large area of southwestern Asiaand the northern third of Africa. It thus extended from the ArcticCircle well within the Tropics. Its area included every variety ofgeographic condition and originally every degree of culturaldevelopment; but the rapid expansion in recent centuries of the mostadvanced peoples of this race has made them the apostles of civilizationto the whole world. It has also given them, through the occupation ofAustralia and the Americas, the widest distribution and the most variedhabitats. As agents of the modern historical movement, however, they aresubjected to all its assimilating effects, which tend to counteract thediversities born of geographic segregation, and to raise all branches ofthe white race to one superior cosmopolitan type. On the other hand, thevast international division of labor and specialization of production, geographically based and entailed by advancing economic development, besides the differences of traditions and ideals reaching far back intoan historic past and rooted in the land, will serve to maintain manysubtle inner differences between even the most progressive nations. 

[Sidenote: Area and language. ]

Hence the wide area which Darwin found to be most favorable toimproved variation and rapid evolution in animals, operates to thesame end in human development, and its influence becomes a law ofanthropo-geography. It permeates the higher aspects of life. The wide, varied area occupied by the Germanic tribes of Europe permitted theevolution of the many dialects which finally made the richness ofmodern German speech. English has gained in vocabulary and idiom withevery expansion of its area. New territories mean to a people newpursuits, new relations, new wants; and all these become reflected intheir speech. Languages, like peoples, cease to grow with nationalstagnation. [302] To such stagnation movement or expansion is thesurest antidote. America will in time make its contribution to theEnglish tongue. The rich crop of slang that springs up on the frontieris not wholly to be deplored. The crudeness and vigor of cowboy speechare marks of youth: they are also promises of growth. Language can notlive by dictionary alone. It tends to form new variants with everychange of habitat. The French of the Canadian _habitant_ has absorbedIndian and English words, and adapted old terms to new uses;[303] butit is otherwise a survival of seventeenth century French. Boer speechin South Africa shows the same thing--absorption of new Kaffir andEnglish words, coupled with marks of retardation due to isolation. Religion in the same way gains by wide dispersal. Christianity is onething in St. Petersburg, another among the Copts of Cairo, another inRome, another in London, and yet another in Boston. Buddhism takes ona different color in Ceylon, Tibet, China and Japan. In religion as inother phases of human development, differentiation must mean eventualenrichment, a larger content of the religious idea, to which eachfaith makes its contribution. 

[Sidenote: Large area a guarantee of racial or national permanence. ]

The larger the area occupied by a race or people, other geographicconditions being equal, the surer the guarantee of their permanence, andthe less the chance of their repression or annihilation. A broadgeographic base means generally abundant command of the resources oflife and growth. Though for a growing people of wide possessions, likethe Russians, the significance of the land may not be obvious, itbecomes apparent enough in national decline and decay; for these even intheir incipiency betray themselves in a loss of territory. A peoplewhich, voluntarily or otherwise, renounces its hold upon its land is onthe downward path. Nothing else could show so plainly the nationalvitality of Japan as her tenacious purpose to get back Port Arthur takenfrom her by the Shimonoseki treaty in 1895. A people may decrease innumbers without serious consequences if it still retains its land; forherein lies its resources by which it may again hope to grow. Therecurring loss of millions of lives in China from the wide-sweepingfloods of the Hoangho is a passing episode, forgotten as soon as themighty stream is re-embanked and the flooded plains reclaimed. TheCivil War in the United States involved a temporary diminution ofpopulation and check to progress, but no lasting national weaknessbecause no loss of territory. But the expulsion of the American Indiansfrom their well-stocked hunting grounds in the Mississippi Valley andAtlantic plain to more restricted and barren lands in the far West, andthe withdrawal of the Australian natives from the fertile coasts to thedesert interior have meant racial renunciation of the sources of life. 

Hence a people who are conquered and dislodged from their territory, aswere the ancient Britons by the Saxons, the Slavs from the land betweenthe Elbe and the Niemen by the mediæval Germans, and the Kaffirs inSouth Africa by the Dutch and English, the Ainos from Hondo by theJapanese, and the whole original Alpine race by the later coming Teutonsfrom the fertile valleys and plains into the more barren highlands ofwestern Europe, have little or no chance of regaining their own. Whenconquest results not in dislodgement, but only in the subjection of anundisturbed native population to a new ruling class, the vanquishedretain their hold, only slightly impaired, perhaps, upon theirstrength-giving fields, recover themselves, and sooner or later conquertheir conquerors either by absorption or revolution. This was thehistory of ancient Egypt with its Shepherd Kings, of England with itsNorman lords, of Mexico and Peru with their Spanish victors. 

[Sidenote: Weakness of small states. ]

A large area throws around all the life forms which it supports theprotection of its mere distances, which facilitate defense incompetition with other forms, render attack difficult, and afford roomfor retreat under pursuit. On the other hand, the small area is easilycompassed by the invaders, and its inhabitants soon brought to bay. Since there is a general correspondence between size of area and numberof inhabitants, where physical conditions and economic development aresimilar, a small area involves a further handicap of numerical weaknessof population. Greece has always suffered from the small size of thepeninsula and the further political dismemberment entailed by itsgeographic subdivisions. Despite superior civilization and nationalheroism, it has fallen a victim to almost every invader. Belgium, Holland, Switzerland exist as distinct nations only on sufferance. Finland's history since 1900 shows that the day for the nationalexistence of small peoples is passing. [304] The fragmentary politicalgeography of the Danube basin gives the geographer the impression of anartist's crayon studies of details, destined later to be incorporated ina finished picture. Their small areas promise short-lived autonomy. Therecent absorption of Bosnia and Herzegovina by Austria indicates thedestiny of these Danubian states as fixed by the law of increasingterritorial aggregates. 

What is true of states is true also of peoples. The extinction of theretarded "provisional peoples" of the earth progresses more rapidly insmall groups than in large, and in small islands more quickly than incontinental areas. Of the twenty-one Indian stocks or families whichhave died out in the United States, fifteen belonged to the small bandsonce found in the Pacific coast states, and four more were similarfragments found on the lower Mississippi and its bayous. [305] [See mappage 54. ] The native Gaunches of Teneriffe Island disappeared long ago. The last Tasmanian died in 1876. New Zealand, whose area is four timesthat of Tasmania, and therefore gives some respite before theencroachments of the whites, still harbors 47, 835 Maoris, or little overone-third the native population of the island in 1840. [306] But thesecompete for the land with nearly one million English colonists, and inthe limited area of the islands they will eventually find no place ofretreat before the relentless white advance. 

To the Australians, on the other hand, much inferior to the Maoris, thelarger area of their continent affords extensive deserts and steppesinto which the natives have withdrawn and whither the whites do not careto follow. Hence mere area, robbed of every other favorable geographicalcircumstance, has contributed to the survival of the 230, 000 natives inAustralia. Similarly the Arawaks were early wiped out on the island ofCuba and the Caribs on San Domingo and the smaller Antilles by thetruculent methods of the Spanish conquerors, while both stocks surviveon the continent of South America. Even the truculent methods of theSpanish conquerors could make little impression upon the relativelymassive populations of Mexico and Peru, whose survival and latter-dayrecovery of independence can be ascribed largely though not solely totheir ample territorial base. So the vast area of the United States andCanada has afforded a hinterland of asylum to the retreating Indians, whose moribund condition, especially in the United States, is betrayedby their scattered distribution in small, unfavorable localities. On theother hand, the vast extent of Arctic and sub-Arctic Canada, combinedwith the adverse climatic conditions of the region, will guarantee thenorthern Indians a longer survival. In Tierra del Fuego, theencroachments of sheep-farmers and gold-miners from Patagonia twentyyears ago, by fencing off the land and killing off the wild guanaco, threatened the existence of this animal and of the Onas natives of theisland. These, soon brought to bay in that natural enclosure, attackedthe farmers, whose reprisals between 1890 and 1900 reduced the number ofthe Onas from 2, 000 to 800 souls. [307]

[Sidenote: Contrast of large and small areas in bio-geography. ]

The same law holds good in bio-geography; here, too, area gives strengthand a small territorial foothold means weakness. The native flora andfauna of New Zealand seem involved in the same process of extinction asthe native race. The Maoris themselves have observed this fact andapplied the principle to their own obvious fate. They have seen hardyimported English grasses offering deadly competition to the indigenousvegetation; the Norway rat, entering by European ships, extirpating thenative variety; the European house fly, purposely imported anddistributed to destroy the noxious indigenous species. [308] The sameunequal combat between imported plants and animals, equipped by thefierce Iliads of continental areas, and the local flora and fauna hastaken place on the little island of St. Helena, to the threateneddestruction of the native forms. [309]

The preponderant migration of animals from the northern to the southernhemisphere is attributed by Darwin to the greater extent of land in thenorth, whereby the northern types have existed in greater numbers andhave been so perfected through natural selection and competition, thatthey have surpassed the southern forms in dominating power and thereforehave encroached successfully. [310] Also the races and nations of thenorthern continents have seriously invaded the southern land-masses andare still expanding. It is the largest continent, Eurasia, which hasbeen the chief center of dispersal. 

[Sidenote: Political domination of large areas. ]

The Temperate Zone of North America will always harbor a more powerfulpeople than the corresponding zone of South America, because the lattercontinent begins to contract and tapers off to a point where the otherat the northern Tropic begins to spread out. Therefore North Americapossesses more abundantly all the advantages accruing to a continentfrom a location in the Temperate Zone. The wide basis of the North Slavsin Russia and Siberia has given them a natural leadership in the wholeSlav family, just as the broad unbroken area of ever expanding Prussiagave that state the ascendency in the German Empire over thegeographically partitioned and politically dismembered surface ofsouthern Germany. English domination of the United Kingdom is based notonly upon race, location, geographical features and resources, but alsoon the larger size of England. So in the United States, abolitioniststatesmen adopted the most effective means of fighting slavery when theylimited its area by law, while permitting free states to go onmultiplying in the new territory of the vast Northwest. 

In a peninsula political ascendency often falls to the broad baseconnecting it with the continent, because this part alone has the areato support a large population, and moreover commands a large hinterland, whence it continually draws new and invigorating blood. The geographicalbasis of the Aryan and later the Mongol supremacy in India was the widezone of lowlands between the Indus and the Brahmaputra. [See map page103. ] The only ancient Greek state ever able to dominate the BalkanPeninsula was non-Hellenic Macedonia, after it had extended itsboundaries to the Euxine and the Adriatic. To-day a much larger area inthis same peninsular base harbors the widespread southern Slavs, whonumerically and economically far outweigh Albanians and Greeks, and whocould with ease achieve political domination over the small Turkishminority, were it not for the European fear of a Slavic Bosporus, andits union with Russia. The Cisalpine Gauls of the wide Po basinrepeatedly threatened the existence of the smaller but more civilizedEtruscan and Latin tribes. The latter, maturing their civilization underthe concentrating influences of a limited area, at last dominated thelarger Celtic district to the north. But in the nineteenth century thisdistrict took the lead in the movement for a United Italy, and nowexercises the strong influence in Italian affairs which belongs to it byreason of its superior area, location, and more vigorous race. [See mapof Italy's population, Chap. XVI. ]

The broad territorial base of the Anglo-Saxon race, Slavs, Germans andChinese promises a long ethnic life, whereas the narrow foothold, of theDanes, Dutch, Greeks, and the Turks in Europe carries with it thepersistent risk of conquest and absorption by a larger neighbor. Such afate repeatedly threatens these people, but has thus far been wardedoff, now by the protection of an isolating environment, now by thediplomatic intervention of some not disinterested power. The scatteredfragments of Osman stock in European Turkey, which constitute only aboutten per cent. Of the total population, and are almost lost in thesurrounding mass of Slavs and Greeks, provide a poor guarantee for theduration of the race and their empire on European soil. On the otherhand, the Osmani who are compactly spread over the whole interior ofAsia Minor have a better prospect of national survival. 

[Sidenote: Area and literature. ]

An important factor in the preservation of national consciousness andthe spread of national influence is always a national language andliterature. This principle is recognized by the government of the Czarin its Russification of Finland, [311] Poland, and the German centers inthe Baltic provinces, when it substitutes Russian for the local languagein education, law courts and all public offices, and restricts thepublication of local literature. The survival of a language and itsliterature is intimately connected with area and the population whichthat area can support. The extinction of small, weak peoples has itscounterpart in the gradual elimination of dialects and languages havingrestricted territorial sway, whose fate is foreshadowed by the unequalcompetition of their literatures with those of numerically strongerpeoples. An author writing in a language like the Danish, intelligibleto only a small public, can expect only small returns for his labor ineither influence, fame, or fortune. The return may be so small that itis prohibitive. Hence we find the Danish Hans Christian Andersen and theNorwegian Ibsen writing in German, as do also many Scandinavianscientists. Georg Brandes abandons his native Danish and seeks a largerpublic by making English the language of his books. The incentive tofollow a literary career, especially if it includes making a living, isrelatively weak among a people of only two or three millions, but gainsenormously among large and cultivated peoples, like the seventy millionGerman-speaking folk of Europe, or the one hundred and thirty millionsof English speech scattered over the world. The common literature whichrepresents the response to this incentive forms a bond of union amongthe various branches of these peoples, and may be eventually productiveof political results. 

[Sidenote: Small geographic base of primitive societies. ]

Growth has been the law of human societies since the birth of man'sgregarious instinct. It has manifested itself in the formation of everlarger social groups, appropriating ever larger areas. It has registereditself geographically in the protrusion of ethnic boundaries, economically in more intensive utilization of the land, socially inincreasing density of population, and politically in the formation ofever larger national territorial aggregates. The lowest stages ofculture reveal small tribes, growing very slowly or at times not at all, disseminated over areas small in themselves but large for the number oftheir inhabitants, hence sparsely populated. The size of these primitiveholdings depends upon the natural food supply yielded by the region. They assume wide dimensions but support groups of only a few families onthe chill rocky coasts of Tierra del Fuego or the sterile plains ofcentral Australia; and they contract to smaller areas dotted with fairlypopulous villages in the fertile districts of the middle Congo orbordering the rich coast fishing grounds of southern Alaska and BritishColumbia. But always land is abundant, and is drawn upon in wideningcircles when the food supply becomes inadequate or precarious. 

[Sidenote: Influence of small confined areas. ]

Where nature presents barriers to far-ranging food-quests, man is forcedto advance from the natural to the artificial basis of subsistence; heleaves the chase for the sedentary life of agriculture. Extensiveactivities are replaced by intensive ones, wide dispersal of tribalenergies by concentration. The extensive forests and grassy plains ofthe Americas supported abundant animal life and therefore affordedconditions for the long survival of the hunting tribes; nature put nopressure upon man to coerce him to progress, except in the smallmountain-walled valleys of Peru and Mexico, and in the restricteddistricts of isthmian Central America. Here game was soon exhausted. Agriculture became an increasing source of subsistence and was forced bylimited area out of its migratory or _essartage_ stage of developmentinto the sedentary. As fields become fixed in such enclosed areas, so dothe cultivators. Here first population becomes relatively dense, andthereby necessitates more elaborate social and political organization inorder to prevent inner friction. 

The geographically enclosed district has the further advantage that itsinhabitants soon come to know it out to its boundaries, understand itspossibilities, exploit to the utmost its resources, and because of thecloseness of their relationship to it and to each other come to developa conscious national spirit. The population, since it cannot easilyspread beyond the nature-set limits, increases in density. The membersof the compact society react constantly upon one another and exchangethe elements of civilization. Thus the small territory is characterizedby the early maturity of a highly individualized civilization, whichthen, with inherent power of expansion, proceeds to overleap its narrowborders and conquer for itself a wide sphere of influence. Hand in handwith this process goes political concentration, which aids thesubsequent expansion. Therefore islands, oases, slender coastal stripsand mountain valleys repeatedly show us small peoples who, in theirseclusion, have developed a tribal or national consciousness akin inits intensity to clan feeling. This national feeling is conspicuous inthe English, Japanese, Swiss and Dutch, as it was in the ancientcity-states of Greece. The accompanying civilization, once brought tomaturity in its narrow breeding place, spreads under favorablegeographic conditions over a much larger space, which the accumulatedrace energy takes for its field of activity. The flower which thus earlyblooms may soon fade and decay; nevertheless the geographically evolvednational consciousness persists and retains a certain power of renewal. This has been demonstrated in the Italians and modern Greeks, in theDanes and the Icelanders. In the Jews it has resisted exile from theirnative land, complete political dissolution, and dispersal over thehabitable world. Long and often as Italy had to submit to foreigndominion, the idea of the national unity of the peninsula was neverlost. 

[Sidenote: The process of territorial growth. ]

In vast unobstructed territories, on the other hand, the evil of wide, sparse dispersal is checked only by natural increase of population andthe impinging of one growing people upon another, which restricts theterritory of either. When the boundary waste between the small scatteredtribal groups has been occupied, encroachment from the side of thestronger follows; then comes war, incorporation of territory, amalgamation of race and coalescence, or the extinction of the weaker. The larger people, commanding its larger area, expands numerically andterritorially, and continues to throw out wider frontiers, till it meetsinsurmountable natural obstacles or the confines of a people strong asitself. After a pause, during which the existing area is outgrown andpopulation begins to press harder upon the limits of subsistence, theweight of a nation is thrown against the barrier, be it physical orpolitical. In consequence, the old boundaries are enlarged, either bysuccessful encroachment upon a neighbor, or, in case of defeat, byincorporation in the antagonist's territory. But even defeat bringsparticipation in a larger geographic base, wider coöperation, a greatersum total of common national interests, and especially the protection ofthe larger social group. The Transvaal and the Orange Free State findcompensation for the loss of independence by their incorporation in theBritish Empire, even if gradual absorption be the destiny of the Boerstock. 

[Sidenote: Area and growth. ]

Of adjacent areas equally advanced in civilization and in density ofpopulation but of unequal size, the larger must dominate because itspeople have the resistance and aggressive force inherent in the largermass. This is the explanation of the absorption of so many colonies andconquerors by the native races, when no great cultural abyss or raceantagonism separates the two. The long rule of the Scandinavians in theHebrides ended in their absorption by the local Gaelic stock, simplybecause their settlements were too small and the number of their womentoo few. The lowlands on the eastern coasts of Scotland accommodatedlarger bands of Norse, who even to-day can be distinguished from theneighboring Scotch of the Highlands; but on the rugged western coast, where only small and widely separated deltas at the heads of the fiordsoffered a narrow foothold to the invaders, their scattered ethnicislands were soon inundated by the contiguous population. [312] TheTeutonic elements, both English and Norwegian, which for centuriesfiltered into Ireland, have been swallowed up in the native Celticstock, except where religious antagonisms served to keep the two apart. So the dominant Anglo-Saxon population of England was a solvent for theNorman French, and the densely packed humanity of China for their Manchuconquerors. 

On the other hand, extensive areas, like early North America andAustralia, sparsely inhabited by small scattered groups who have only anattenuated connection with their soil and therefore only a feeble holdupon their land, cannot compete with small areas, if these have thedense and evenly distributed population which ensures a firm tenure ofthe land. Small, geographically confined areas foster this compact andsystematic occupation on the part of their inhabitants, since they putbarriers in the way of precipitate and disintegrating expansion; andthis characteristic compensates in some degree and for a period at leastfor the weakness otherwise inherent in the narrow territorial base. 

[Sidenote: Historical advance from small to large areas. ]

Every race, people, and state has had the history of progress from asmall to a large area. All have been small in their youth. The bit ofland covered by Roma Quadrata has given language, customs, laws, culture, and a faint strain of Latin blood to nations now occupying halfa million square miles of Europe. The Arab inundation, which flooded thevast domain of the Caliphs, traced back to that spring of ethnic andreligious energy which welled up in the arid plain of Mecca and theArabian oases. The world-wide maritime expansion of the English-speakingpeople had its starting point in the lowlands of the Elbe. The makers ofempire in northern China were cradled in the small highland valley ofthe Wei River. The little principality of Moscow was the nucleus of theRussian Empire. 

Penetration into a people's remote past comes always upon some limitedspot which has nurtured the young nation, and reveals the fact thatterritorial expansion is the incontestible feature of their history. This advance from small to large characterizes their political area, thescope of their trade relations, their spheres of activity, the size oftheir known world, and finally the sway of their religions. Everyreligion in its early stages of development bears the stamp of a narroworigin, traceable to the circumscribed habitat of the primitive socialgroup, or back of that to the small circle of lands constituting theknown world whence it sprang. First it is tribal, and makes adistinction between my God and thy God; but even when it has expanded toembody a universal system, it still retains vestigial forms of itsnarrow past. Jerusalem, Mecca and Rome remain the sacred goal ofpilgrimages, while the vaster import of a monotheistic faith and thehigher ethical teaching of the brotherhood of man have encircled theworld. 

When religion, language and race have spread, in their wake comes thegrowing state. Everywhere the political area tends gradually to embracethe whole linguistic area of which it forms a part, and finally the yetlarger race area. Only the diplomacy of united Europe has availed toprevent France from absorbing French-speaking Belgium, or Russia fromincorporating into her domain that vast Slav region extending from theDrave and Danube almost to the Gulf of Corinth, now parcelled out amongseven different states, but bound to the Muscovite empire by ties ofrelated speech, by race and religion. The detachment of the variousDanubian principalities from the uncongenial dominion of the Turks, though a dismemberment of a large political territory and a seemingbackward step, can be regarded only as a leisurely preliminary for a newterritorial alignment. History's movements are unhurried; the backwardstep may prepare for the longer leap forward. It is impossible to resistthe conclusion that the vigorous, reorganized German Empire will one daytry to incorporate the Germanic areas found in Austria, Switzerland andHolland. 

[Sidenote: Gradations in area and in development. ]

Throughout the life of any people, from its foetal period in some smalllocality to its well rounded adult era marked by the occupation andorganization of a wide national territory, gradations in area markgradations of development. And this is true whether we consider thecompass of their commercial exchanges, the scope of their maritimeventures, the extent of their linguistic area, the measure of theirterritorial ambitions, or the range of their intellectual interests andhuman sympathies. From land to ethics, the rule holds good. Peoples inthe lower stages of civilization have contracted spacial ideas, desireand need at a given time only a limited territory, though they maychange that territory often; they think in small linear terms, have asmall horizon, a small circle of contact with others, a small range ofinfluence, only tribal sympathies; they have an exaggerated conceptionof their own size and importance, because their basis of comparison isfatally limited. With a mature, widespread people like the English orFrench, all this is different; they have made the earth their own, sofar as possible. 

Just because of this universal tendency towards the occupation of everlarger areas and the formation of vaster political aggregates, in makinga sociological or political estimate of different peoples, we shouldnever lose sight of the fact that all racial and nationalcharacteristics which operate towards the absorption of more land andimpel to political expansion are of fundamental value. A ship of statemanned by such a crew has its sails set to catch the winds of the world. 

[Sidenote: Preliminaries to ethnic and political expansion. ]

Territorial expansion is always preceded by an extension of the circleof influence which a people exerts through its traders, its deep-seafishermen, its picturesque marauders and more respectable missionaries, and earlier still by a widening of its mere geographical horizon throughfortuitous or systematic exploration. The Northmen visited the coasts ofBritain and France first as pirates, then as settlers. Norman and Bretonfishermen were drawing in their nets on the Grand Bank of Newfoundlandthirty years before Cartier sailed up the St. Lawrence. Japanese fishingboats preceded Japanese colonists to the coasts of Yezo. Trading fleetswere the forerunners of the Greek colonies along the Black Sea andMediterranean, and of Phoenician settlements in North Africa, Sicily andSpain. It was in the wake of trapper and fur trader that English andAmerican pioneer advanced across our continent to the Pacific; just asin French Canada Jesuit priest and voyageur opened the way for thesettler. Religious propaganda was yoked with greed of conquest in thecampaigns of Cortez and Pizarro. Modern statesmen pushing a policy ofexpansion are alive to the diplomatic possibilities of missionariesendangered or their property destroyed. They find a still better assetto be realized on territorially in enterprising capitalists settledamong a weaker people, by whom their property is threatened orovertaxed, or their trade interfered with. The British acquisition ofHongkong in 1842 followed a war with China to prevent the exclusion ofthe English opium trade from the Celestial Empire. The annexation of theTransvaal resulted from the expansion of English capitalists to the Randmines, much as the advance of the United States flag to the HawaiianIslands followed American sugar planters thither. American capital inthe Caribbean states of South America has repeatedly tried to embroilthose countries with the United States government; and its increasingpresence in Cuba is undoubtedly ominous for the independence of theisland, because with capital go men and influence. 

When the foreign investor is not a corporation but a government, theexpanding commercial influence looks still more surely to tangiblepolitical results; because such national enterprises have at bottom apolitical motive, however much overlaid by an economic exterior. Whenthe British government secured a working majority of the Suez Canalstock, it sealed the fate of Egypt to become ultimately a province ofthe British Empire. Russian railroads in Manchuria were thewell-selected tool for the Russification and final annexation of theprovince. The weight of American national enterprise in the Panama CanalZone sufficed to split off from the Colombian federation a peripheralstate, whose detachment is obviously a preliminary for eventualincorporation into United States domain. The efforts of the Germangovernment to secure from the Sultan of Turkey railroad concessionsthrough Asia Minor for German capitalists has aroused jealousy infinancial and political circles in St. Petersburg, and prompted a demandfrom the Russian Foreign Office upon Turkey for the privilege ofconstructing railroads through eastern Asia Minor. [313]

[Sidenote: Significance of sphere of activity or influence. ]

Beyond the home of a people lies its sphere of influence or activities, which in the last analysis may be taken as a protest against thenarrowness of the domestic habitat. It represents the larger area whichthe people wants and which in course of time it might advantageouslyoccupy or annex. It embodies the effort to embrace more varied andgenerous natural conditions, whereby the struggle for subsistence may bemade less hard. Finally, it is an expression of the law that for peoplesand races the struggle for existence is at bottom a struggle for space. Geography sees various forms of the historical movement as the strugglefor space in which humanity has forever been engaged. In this strugglethe stronger peoples have absorbed ever larger portions of the earth'ssurface. Hence, through continual subjection to new conditions here orthere and to a greater sum total of various conditions, they gain inpower by improved variation, as well as numerically by the enlargementof their geographic base. The Anglo-Saxon branch of the Teutonic stockhas, by its phenomenal increase, overspread sections of wholecontinents, drawn from their varied soils nourishment for its finestefflorescence, and thereby has far out-grown the Germanic branch bywhich, at the start, it was overshadowed. The fact that the BritishEmpire comprises 28, 615, 000 square kilometers or exactly one-fifth ofthe total land area of the earth, and that the Russian Empire containsover one-seventh, are full of encouragement for Anglo-Saxon and Slav, but contain a warning to the other peoples of the world. 

[Sidenote: Nature of expansion in new and old countries. ]

The large area which misleads a primitive folk into excessive dispersionand the dissipation of their tribal powers, offers to an advancedpeople, who in some circumscribed habitat have learned the value ofland, the freest conditions for their development. A wide, unobstructedterritory, occupied by a sparse population of wandering tribes capableof little resistance to conquest or encroachment, affords the mostfavorable conditions to an intruding superior race. Such conditions theChinese found in Mongolia and Manchuria, the Russians in Siberia, andEuropean colonists in the Americas, Australia and Africa. Almostunlimited space and undeveloped resources met their land hunger andtheir commercial ambition. Their numerical growth was rapid, both by thenatural increase reflecting an abundant food supply, and by accessionsfrom the home countries. Expansion advanced by strides. In contrast tothis care-free, easy development in a new land, growth in old countrieslike Europe and the more civilized parts of Asia means a slow protrusionof the frontier, made at the cost of blood; it means either theabsorption of the native people, because there are no unoccupied cornersinto which they can be driven, or the imposition upon them of anunwelcome rule exercised by alien officials. Witness the advance of theRussians into Poland and Finland, of the Germans into Poland andAlsace-Lorraine, of the Japanese into Korea, and of the English intocrowded India. 

The rapid unfolding of the geographical horizon in a young landcommunicates to an expanding people new springs of mobility, new motivesfor movement out and beyond the old confines, new goals holding out newand undreamt of benefits. Life becomes fresh, young, hopeful. Old checksto natural increase of population are removed. Emigrant bands beat outnew trails radiating from the old home. They go on individual initiativeor state-directed enterprises; but no matter which, the manifold lifein the far-away periphery reacts upon the center to vivify andrejuvenate it. 

[Sidenote: Relation of ethnic to political expansion. ]

The laws of the territorial growth of peoples and of states are ingeneral the same. The main differences between the two lies in the factthat ethnic expansion, since it depends upon natural increase, is slow, steady, and among civilized peoples is subject to slight fluctuations;while the frontiers of a state, after a long period of permanence, cansuddenly be advanced by conquest far beyond the ethnic boundaries, often, however, only to be as quickly lost again. Therefore theimportant law may be laid down, that the more closely the territorialgrowth of a state keeps pace with that of its people, and the morenearly the political area coincides with the ethnic, the greater is thestrength and stability of the state. This is the explanation of thevigor and permanence of the early English colonies in America. The slowwestward protrusion of their frontier of continuous settlement withinthe boundaries of the Allegheny Mountains formed a marked contrast tothe wide sweep of French voyageur camp and lonely trading-station in theCanadian forests, and even more to the handful of priests and soldierswho for three centuries kept an unsteady hold upon the Spanish empire inthe Western Hemisphere. The political advance of the United Statesacross the continent from the Alleghenies to the Mississippi, thence tothe Rocky Mountains, and thence to the Pacific was always preceded bybands of enterprising settlers, who planted themselves beyond thefrontier and beckoned to the flag to follow. The great empires ofantiquity were enlarged mechanically by conquest and annexation. Theywere mosaics, not growths. The cohesive power of a common ethnic bondwas lacking; so was the modern substitute for this to be found in closeeconomic interdependence maintained by improved methods ofcommunication. Hence these empires soon broke up again along lines ofold geographic and ethnic cleavage. For Rome, the cementing power of theMediterranean and the fairly unified civilization which this enclosedsea had been evolving since the dawn of Cretan and Phoenician trade, compensated in part for the lack of common speech and national idealsthroughout the political domain. But the Empire proved in the end to bemerely a mosaic, easily broken. 

[Sidenote: Relation of people and state to political boundary. ]

The second point of difference between the expansion of peoples and ofstates lies in their respective relation to the political frontier. Thisconfines the state like a stockade, fixing the territorial limits of itsadministrative functions; but for the subjects of the state it is animaginary line, powerless to check the range of their activities, exceptwhen a military or tariff war is going on. The state boundary, if itcoincides with a strong natural barrier, may for decades or evencenturies succeed in confining a growing people, if these, byintelligent economy, increase the productivity of the soil whose areathey are unable to extend. Yet the time comes even for these when theymust break through the barriers and secure more land, either by foreignconquest or colonization. The classic example of the confinement of apeople within its political boundaries is the long isolation of Japanfrom 1624 to 1854. The pent-up forces there accumulated, in a populationwhich had doubled itself in the interval and which by hard schooling wasmade receptive to every improved economic method, manifest themselves inthe insistent demand for more land which has permeated all the recentpolicy of Japan. But the history of Japan is exceptional. The rule isthat the growing people slowly but continually overflow their politicalboundary, which then advances to cover the successive flood plains ofthe national inundation, or yet farther to anticipate the next rise. This has been the history of Germany in its progress eastward across theElbe, the Oder, the Vistula and the Niemen. The dream of a greaterempire embraces all the German-speaking people from Switzerland, Tyroland Steiermark to those outlying groups in the Baltic provinces ofRussia and the related offshoot in Holland. [314] [See map page 223. ]

Though political boundaries, especially where they coincide with naturalbarriers, may restrict the territorial growth of a people, on the otherhand, political expansion is always a stimulus to racial expansion, because it opens up more land and makes the conditions of life easierfor an increasing people, by relieving congestion in the older areas. More than this, it materially aids while guiding and focusing theout-going streams of population. Thus it keeps them concentrated for thereinforcement of the nation in the form of colonies, and tends to reducethe political evil of indiscriminate emigration, by which the streamsare dissipated and diverted to strengthen other nations. Witness theactive internal colonization practiced by Germany in her Polishterritory, [315] by Russia in Siberia, in an effort to make the ethnicboundary hurry after and overtake the political frontier. 

[Sidenote: Expansion of civilization. ]

Just as the development of a people and state is marked by advance fromsmall to ever larger areas, so is that of a civilization. It mayoriginate in a small district; but more mobile than humanity itself, itdoes not remain confined to one spot, but passes on from individual toindividual and from people to people. Greece served only as a garden inwhich the flowers of Oriental and Egyptian civilization were temporarilytransplanted. As soon as they were modified and adapted to their newconditions, their seed spread over all Europe. The narrow area ofancient Greece, which caused the early dissemination of its people overthe Mediterranean basin, and thereby weakened the political force of thecountry at home, was an important factor in the wide distribution of itsculture. Commerce, colonization and war are vehicles of civilization, where favorable geographic conditions open the way for trade in the wakeof the victorious army. The imposition of Roman dominion meanteverywhere the gift of Roman civilization. The Crusaders brought backfrom Syria more than their scars and their trophies. Every Europeanfactory in China, every Hudson Bay Company post in the wilds of northernCanada, every Arab settlement in savage Africa is surrounded by a sphereof trade; and this in turn is enclosed in a wider sphere of influencethrough which its civilization, though much diluted, has filtered. Thehigher the civilization, the wider the area which it masters. Themanifold activities of a civilized people demand a large sphere ofinfluence, and include, furthermore, improved means of communicationwhich enable it to control such a sphere. 

Even a relatively low civilization may spread over a vast area ifcarried by a highly mobile people. Mohammedanism, which embodies acultural system as well as a religion, found its vehicles of dispersalin the pastoral nomads occupying the arid land of northern Africa andwestern Asia, and thus spread from the Senegal River to ChineseTurkestan. It was carried by the maritime Arabs of Oman and Yemen toMalacca and Sumatra, where it was communicated to the seafaring Malays. These island folk, who approximate the most highly civilized peoples intheir nautical efficiency, distributed the meager elements of Mohammedancivilization over the Malay Archipelago. [See map of the Religions ofthe Eastern Hemisphere, in chapter XIV. ]

[Sidenote: Cultural advantages of large political area. ]

The larger the area which a civilized nation occupies, the more numerousare its points of contact with other peoples, and the less likely isthere to be a premature crystallization of its civilization fromisolation. Extension of area on a large scale means eventually extensionof the seaboard and access to those multiform international relationswhich the ocean highway confers. The world wide expansion of the BritishEmpire has given it at every outward step wider oceanic contact andeventually a cosmopolitan civilization. The same thing is true of theother great colonial empires of history, whether Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch or French; and even of the great continental empires, like Russiaand the United States. The Russian advance across Siberia, like theAmerican advance across the Rockies, meant access to the Pacific, and amodification of its civilization on those remote shores. 

A large area means varied vicinal locations and hence differentiation ofcivilization, at least along the frontier. How rapidly the vivifyinginfluences of this contact will penetrate into the bulk of the interiordepends upon size, location as scattered or compact, and generalgeographic conditions like navigable rivers or mountains, whichfacilitate or bar intercourse with that interior. The Russian Empire haseleven different nations, speaking even more different languages, on itswestern and southern frontiers. Its long line of Asiatic contact willinevitably give to the European civilization transplanted hither inRussian colonies a new and perhaps not unfruitful development. TheSiberian citizen of future centuries may compare favorably with hisbrother in Moscow. Japan, even while impressing its civilization uponthe reluctant Koreans, will see itself modified by the contact and itsculture differentiated by the transplanting; but the content of Japanesecivilization will be increased by every new variant thus formed. 

[Sidenote: Politico-economic advantages. ]

The larger the area brought under one political control, the less thehandicap of internal friction and the greater its economic independence. Vast territory has enabled the United States to maintain with advantagea protective tariff, chiefly because the free trade within its ownborders was extensive. The natural law of the territorial growth ofstates and peoples means an extension of the areas in which peace andcoöperation are preserved, a relative reduction of frontiers and of themilitary forces necessary to defend them, [316] diminution in the sumtotal of conflicts, and a wider removal of the border battle fields. Inplace of the continual warfare between petty tribes which prevailed inNorth America four hundred years ago, we have to-day the peacefulcompetition of the three great nations which have divided the continentamong them. The political unification of the Mediterranean basin underthe Roman Empire restricted wars to the remote land frontiers. Theforeign wars of Russia, China, and the United States in the past centuryhave been almost wholly confined to the outskirts of their big domains, merely scratching the rim and leaving the great interior sound andundisturbed. Russia's immense area is the military ally on which she canmost surely count. The long road to Moscow converted Napoleon's victoryinto a defeat; and the resistless advance of the Japanese from PortArthur to the Sungari River led only to a peace robbed of the chieffruits of victory. The numerous wars of the British Empire have beenlimited to this or that corner, and have scarcely affected theprosperity of the great remainder, so that their costs have been readilyborne and their wounds rapidly healed. 

[Sidenote: Political area and the national horizon. ]

The territorial expansion of peoples and states is attended by anevolution of their spacial conceptions and ideals. Primitive peoples, accustomed to dismemberment in small tribal groups, bear all the marksof territorial contraction. Their geographical horizon is usually fixedby the radius of a few days' march. Inter-tribal trade and intercoursereach only rudimentary development, under the prevailing conditions ofmutual antagonism and isolation, and hence contribute little to theexpansion of the horizon. Knowing only their little world, suchprimitive groups overestimate the size and importance of their ownterritory, and are incapable of controlling an extensive area. This isthe testimony of all travellers who have observed native African states. Though the race or stock distribution may be wide, like that of theAthapascan and Algonquin Indians, and their war paths long, like thecampaigns of the Iroquois against the Cherokees of the Tennessee River, yet the unit of tribal territory permanently occupied is never large. 

[Sidenote: National estimates of area. ]

Small naturally defined regions, which take the lead in historicaldevelopment because they counteract the primitive tendency towardsexcessive dispersal, are in danger of teaching too well their lesson ofconcentration. In course of time geographic enclosure begins to betrayits limitations. The extent of a people's territory influences theirestimate of area _per se_, determines how far land shall be made thebasis of their national purposes, fixes the territorial scale of theirconquests and their political expansion. This is a conspicuouspsychological effect of a narrow local environment. A people embeddedfor centuries in a small district measure area with a short yardstick. The ancient Greeks devised a philosophic basis for the advantages of thesmall state, which is extolled in the writings of Plato andAristotle. [317] Aristotle wanted it small enough, "to be comprehended atone glance of the statesman's eye. " Plato's ideal democracy, by rigidlaws limiting the procreative period of women and men and providing forthe death of children born out of this period or out of wedlock, restricted its free citizens to 5, 040 heads of families, [318] all livingwithin reach of the agora, and all able to judge from personal knowledgeof a candidate's fitness for office. This condition was possible onlyin dwarf commonwealths like the city-states of the Hellenic world. Thefailure of the Greeks to build up a political structure on a territorialscale commensurate with their cultural achievements and with the widesphere of their cultural influence can be ascribed chiefly to theirinability to discard the contracted territorial ideas engendered bygeographic and political dismemberment. The little Judean plateau, whichgave birth to a universal religion, clung with provincial bigotry to thenarrow tribal creed and repudiated the larger faith of Christ, whichfound its appropriate field in Mediterranean Europe. 

[Sidenote: Estimates of area in small maritime states. ]

Maritime peoples of small geographic base have a characteristic methodof expansion which reflects their low valuation of area. Their limitedamount of arable soil necessitates reliance upon foreign sources ofsupply, which are secured by commerce. Hence they found trading stationsor towns among alien peoples on distant coasts, selecting points likecapes or inshore islets which can be easily defended and which at thesame time command inland or maritime routes of trade. The primegeographic consideration is location, natural and vicinal. The area ofthe trading settlement is kept as small as possible to answer itsimmediate purpose, because it can be more easily defended. [319] Such werethe colonies of the ancient Phoenicians and Greeks in the Mediterranean, of the Medieval Arabs and the Portuguese on the east coast of Africa andin India. This method reached its ultimate expression in point of smallarea, seclusion, and local autonomy, perhaps, in the Hanse factories inNorway and Russia. [320] But all these widespread nuclei of expansionremained barren of permanent national result, because they were designedfor a commercial end, and ignored the larger national mission and surereconomic base found in acquisition of territory. Hence they wereshort-lived, succumbing to attack or abandoned on the failure of localresources, which were ruthlessly exploited. 

[Sidenote: Limitations of small territorial conceptions. ]

That precocious development characteristic of small naturally definedareas shows its inherent weakness in the tendency to accept the enclosedarea as a nature-made standard of national territory. The earlier astate fixes its frontier without allowance for growth, the earlier comesthe cessation of its development. Therefore the geographical nurseriesof civilization were infected with germs of decay. Such was the historyof Egypt, of Yemen, of Greece, Crete, and Phoenicia. These are theregions which, as Carl Ritter says, have given the whole fruit of theirexistence to the world for its future use, have conferred upon the worldthe trust which they once held, afterward to recede, as it were, fromview. [321] They were great in the past, and now they belong to thoseimmortal dead whose greatness has been incorporated in the world'slife--"the choir invisible" of the nations. 

[Sidenote: Evolution of territorial policies. ]

The advance from a small, self-dependent community to interdependentrelations with other peoples, then to ethnic expansion or union ofgroups to form a state or empire is a great turning point in anyhistory. Thereby the clan or tribe discards the old paralyzing seclusionof the primitive society and the narrow habitat, and joins that march ofethnic, political and cultural progress which has covered larger andlarger areas, and by increase of common purpose has cemented togetherever greater aggregates. 

Nothing is more significant in the history of the English in Americathan the rapid evolution of their spacial ideals, their abandonment ofthe small territorial conception brought with them from the mothercountry and embodied, for example, in that munificent land grant, fiftyby a hundred miles in extent, of the first Virginia charter in 1606, andtheir progress to schemes of continental expansion. Every accession ofterritory to the Thirteen Colonies and to the Republic gave an impulseto growth. Expansion kept pace with opportunity. Only in small andisolated New England did the contracted provincial point of viewpersist. It manifested itself in a narrow policy of concentration andcurtailment, which acquiesced in the occlusion of the Mississippi Riverto the Trans-Allegheny settlements by Spain in 1787, and which lateropposed the purchase of the Louisiana territory[322] and the acquisitionof the Philippines. 

All peoples who have achieved wide expansion have developed in theprocess vast territorial policies. This is true of the pastoral nomadswho in different epochs have inundated Europe, northern Africa and theperipheral lands of Asia, and of the great colonial nations who in a fewdecades have brought continents under their dominion. In nomadic hordesit is based upon habitual mobility and the possession of herds, whichare at once incentive and means for extending the geographical horizon;but it suffers from the evanescent character of nomadic politicalorganization, and the tendency toward dismemberment bred in all pastorallife by dispersal over scattered grazing grounds. Hence the empires setup by nomad conquerors like the Saracens and Tartars soon fall apart. 

[Sidenote: Colonial expansion. ]

Among highly civilized agricultural and industrial peoples, on the otherhand, a vast territorial policy is at once cause and effect of nationalgrowth; it is at once an innate tendency and a conscious purposetenaciously followed. It makes use of trade and diplomacy, of scientificinvention and technical improvement, to achieve its aims. It becomes anaccepted mark of political vigor and an ideal even among peoples whohave failed to enlarge their narrow base. The model of Russian expansionon the Pacific was quickly followed by awakened Japan, stirred out ofher insular complacence by the threat of Muscovite encroachment. Germanyand Italy, each strengthened and enlarged as to national outlook byrecent political unification, have elbowed their way into the crowdedcolonial field. The French, though not expansionists as individuals, have an excellent capacity for collective action when directed bygovernment. The officials whom Louis XIV sent to Canada in theseventeenth century executed large schemes of empire reflecting thedilation of French frontiers in Europe. These ideals of expansion seemto have been communicated by the power of example, or the threat ofdanger in them, to the English colonists in Virginia and Pennsylvania, and later to Washington and Jefferson. 

[Sidenote: The mind of colonials. ]

The best type of colonial expansion is found among the English-speakingpeople of America, Australia and South Africa. Their spacial ideas arebuilt on a big scale. Distances do not daunt them. The man who couldconceive a Cape-to-Cairo railroad, with all the schemes of territorialaggrandizement therein implied, had a mind that took continents for itsunits of measure; and he found a fitting monument in a province ofimperial proportions whereon was inscribed his name. Bryce tells us thatin South Africa the social circle of "the best people" includesPretoria, Johannesburg, Kimberley, Bloemfontein and Cape Town--a socialcircle with a diameter of a thousand miles![323]

The spirit of our western frontier, so long as there was a frontier, wasthe spirit of movement, of the conquest of space. It found itsexpression in the history of the Wilderness Road and the Oregon Trail. When the center of population in the United States still lingered on theshore of Chesapeake Bay, and the frontier of continuous settlement hadnot advanced beyond the present western boundary of Virginia andPennsylvania, the spacious mind of Thomas Jefferson foresaw theMississippi Valley as the inevitable and necessary possession of theAmerican people, and looked upon the trade of the far-off Columbia Riveras a natural feeder of the Mississippi commerce. [324]

Emerson's statement that the vast size of the United States is reflectedin the big views of its people applies not only to political policy, which in the Monroe Doctrine for the first time in history has embraceda hemisphere; nor is it confined to the big scale of their economicprocesses. Emerson had in mind rather their whole conception of nationalmission and national life, especially their legislation, [325] for whichhe anticipated larger and more Catholic aims than obtain in Europe, hampered as it is by countless political and linguistic boundaries andbarred thereby from any far-reaching unity of purpose and action. 

Canada, British South Africa, Australia and the United States, thoughwidely separated, have in common a certain wide outlook upon life, acontinental element in the national mind, bred in their people by theirgenerous territories. The American recognizes his kinship of mind withthese colonial Englishmen as something over and above mere kinship ofrace. It consists in their deep-seated common democracy, the democracyborn in men who till fields and clear forests, not as plowmen andwood-cutters, but as makers of nations. It consists in identicalinterests and points of view in regard to identical problems growing outof the occupation and development of new and almost boundlessterritories. Race questions, paucity of labor, highways and railroads, immigration, combinations of capital, excessive land holdings, andillegal appropriation of land on a large scale, are problems that meetthem all. The monopolistic policy of the United States in regard toAmerican soil as embodied in the Monroe Doctrine, and the expectationlurking in the mental background of every American that his country mayeventually embrace the northern continent, find their echo inAustralia's plans for wider empire in the Pacific. The Commonwealth ofAustralia has succeeded in getting into its own hands the administrationof British New Guinea (90, 500 square miles. ) It has also secured fromthe imperial government the unusual privilege of settling the relationsbetween itself and the islands of the Pacific, because it regards thePacific question as the one question of foreign policy in which itsinterests are profoundly involved. In the same way the British in SouthAfrica, sparsely scattered though they are, feel an imperative need offurther expansion, if their far-reaching schemes of commerce and empireare to be realized. 

[Sidenote: Colonials as road builders. ]

The effort to annihilate space by improved means of communication hasabsorbed the best intellects and energies of expanding peoples. Theancient Roman, like the Incas of Peru, built highways over every part ofthe empire, undaunted by natural obstacles like the Alps and Andes. Modern expansionists are railroad builders. Witness the long list ofstrategic lines, constructed or subsidized by various governments duringthe past half century--the Union Pacific, Central Pacific, CanadianPacific, Trans-Siberian, Cairo-Khartoum, Cape Town-Zambesi, and now theproposed Trans-Saharan road, designed to unite the Mediterranean andGuinea colonies of French Africa. The equipment of the American roads, with their heavy rails, giant locomotives, and enormous freight cars, reveals adaptation to a commerce that covers long distances betweenstrongly differentiated areas of production, and that reflects the vastenterprises of this continental country. The same story comes out in theocean vessels which serve the trade of the Great Lakes, and in the acresof coal barges in a single fleet which are towed down the Ohio andMississippi by one mammoth steel tug. 

[Sidenote: Practical bent of colonials. ]

The abundant natural resources awaiting development in such big newcountries give to the mind of the people an essentially practical bent. The rewards of labor are so great that the stimulus to effort isirresistible. Economic questions take precedence of all others, dividepolitical parties, and consume a large portion of national legislation;while purely political questions sink into the background. Civilizationtakes on a material stamp, becomes that "dollar civilization" which isthe scorn of the placid, paralyzed Oriental or the old world European. The genius of colonials is essentially practical. Impatience ofobstacles, short cuts aiming at quick returns, wastefulness of land, offorests, of fuel, of everything but labor, have long characterizedAmerican activities. The problem of an inadequate labor supply attendedthe sudden accession of territory opened for European occupation by thediscovery of America, and caused a sudden recrudescence of slavery, which as an industrial system had long been outgrown by Europe. It hasalso given immense stimulus to invention, and to the formation of laborunions, which in the newest colonial fields, like Australia and NewZealand, have dominated the government and given a Utopian stamp tolegislation. 

Yet underlying and permeating this materialism is a youthful idealism. Transplanted to conditions of greater opportunity, the race becomesrejuvenated, abandons outgrown customs and outworn standards, experiences an enlargement of vision and of hope, gathers courage andenergy equal to its task, manages somehow to hitch its wagon to a star. 

NOTES TO CHAPTER VI

[292] Chamberlain and Salisbury, Geology, Vol. III, pp. 483-485. NewYork, 1906. 

[293] _Ibid. _, p. 137 and map p. 138. 

[294] Darwin, Origin of Species, Vol. I, chap. IV, pp. 124-132; Vol. II, chap; XII, p. 134. New York, 1895. H. W. Conn, The Method of Evolution, p. 54. London and New York, 1900. 

[295] _Ibid. _, pp. 194-197, 226-227, 239-242, 342-350. 

[296] Ratzel, _Der Lebensraum, eine bio-geographische Studie_, p. 51. Tubingen, 1901. 

[297] D. G, Brinton, Races and Peoples, pp. 271, 293-295. Philadelphia, 1901. 

[298] A. Heilprin, Geographical Distribution of Animals, pp. 57-61. London, 1894. 

[299] W. Z. Ripley, Races of Europe, p. 39, maps pp. 43, 78. New York, 1899. 

[300] Darwin, Origin of Species, Vol. II, chap. XII, pp. 130-131. NewYork, 1895. 

[301] Richard Semon, In the Australian Bush, p. 211. London, 1899. 

[302] J. H. W. Stuckenburg, Sociology, Vol. I, p. 324. New York andLondon, 1903. 

[303] E. G. Semple, The Influences of Geographic Environment on theLower St. Lawrence. Bulletin American Geographical Society, Vol. XXXVI, pp. 464-465. 1904. 

[304] B. Limedorfer, Finland's Plight, _Forum_, Vol. XXXII, pp. 85-93. 

[305] Eleventh Census, Report on the Indians, p. 35. Washington, 1894. 

[306] A. B. Wallace, Australasia, Vol. I, p. 454. London, 1893. 

[307] W. S. Barclay, Life in Terra del Fuego, _The Nineteenth Century_, Vol. 55, p. 97. January, 1904. 

[308] A. E. Wallace, Australasia, Vol. I, pp. 454-455. London, 1893. 

[309] Darwin, Origin of Species, Vol. II, chap. XIII, p. 178. New York, 1895. 

[310] _Ibid. _, Vol. II, chap. XII, p. 167-168. 

[311] Nesbit Bain, Finland and the Tsar, _Fortnightly Review_, Vol. 71, p. 735. E. Limedorfer, Finland's Plight, _Forum_, Vol. 32, pp. 85-93. 

[312] Archibald Geikie, The Scenery of Scotland, pp. 398-399. London, 1887. 

[313] Railways in Asia Minor, _Littell's Living Age_, Vol. 225, p. 196. 

[314] J. Ellis Barker, Modern Germany, pp. 38-66. London, 1907. 

[315] The Polish Danger in Prussia, _Westminster Review_, Vol. 155, p. 375. 

[316] Heinrich von Treitschke, _Politik_, Vol. I, pp. 223-224. Leipzig, 1897. 

[317] Plato, Critias, 112. Aristotle, Politics, Book II, chap. VII; BookIV, chap. IV; Book VII, chap. IV. 

[318] Plato, _De Legibus_, Book V, chaps. 8, 9, 10, 11. 

[319] Roscher, _National-Oekonomik des Handels und Gewerbefleisses_, pp. 180-187. Stuttgart, 1899. 

[320] Blanqui, History of Political Economy, pp. 150-152. New York, 1880. 

[321] Carl Ritter, Comparative Geography, p. 63. New York, 1865. 

[322] E. C. Semple, American History and its Geographic Conditions, pp. 42-43, 109, 110. Boston, 1903. 

[323] James Bryce, Impressions of South Africa, pp. 405-6. New York, 1897. 

[324] P. L. Ford, Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Vol. VIII. Letter toJohn Bacon, April 30, 1803; and Confidential Message to Congress on theExpedition to the Pacific, January 18, 1803. 

[325] Emerson, The Young American, in Nature Addresses and Lectures, pp. 369-371. Centenary Edition, Boston. 

CHAPTER VII

GEOGRAPHICAL BOUNDARIES

[Sidenote: The boundary zone in nature. ]

Nature abhors fixed boundary lines and sudden transitions; all herforces combine against them. Everywhere she keeps her borders melting, wavering, advancing, retreating. If by some cataclysm sharp lines ofdemarcation are drawn, she straightway begins to blur them by creatingintermediate forms, and thus establishes the boundary zone whichcharacterizes the inanimate and animate world. A stratum of limestone orsandstone, when brought into contact with a glowing mass of igneousrock, undergoes various changes due to the penetrating heat of thevolcanic outflow, so that its surface is metamorphosed as far as thatheat reaches. The granite cliff slowly deposits at its base a rock-wasteslope to soften the sudden transition from its perpendicular surface tothe level plain at its feet. The line where a land-born river meets thesea tends to become a sandbar or a delta, created by the river-bornesilt and the wash of the waves, a form intermediate between land andsea, bearing the stamp of each, fluid in its outlines, ever growing bythe persistent accumulation of mud, though ever subject to inundationand destruction by the waters which made it. The alluvial coastal hemsthat edge all shallow seas are such border zones, reflecting in theirflat, low surfaces the dead level of the ocean, in their composition thesolid substance of the land; but in the miniature waves imprinted on thesands and the billows of heaped-up boulders, the master workman of thedeep leaves his mark. [See map page 243. ]

Under examination, even our familiar term coastline proves to be only anabstraction with no corresponding reality in nature. Everywhere, whetheron margin of lake or gulf, the actual phenomenon is a coast zone, alternately covered and abandoned by the waters, varying in width from afew inches to a few miles, according to the slope of the land, the rangeof the tide and the direction of the wind. It has one breadth at theminimum or neap tide, but increases often two or three fold at springtide, when the distance between ebb and flood is at its maximum. At themouth of Cook's Inlet on the southern Alaskan coast, where the range oftides is only eight feet, the zone is comparatively narrow, but widensrapidly towards the head of the inlet, where the tide rises twenty-threefeet above the ebb line, and even to sixty-five feet under the influenceof a heavy southwest storm. On flat coasts we are familiar with the widefrontier of salt marshes, that witness the border warfare of land andsea, alternate invasion and retreat. In low-shored estuaries like thoseof northern Brittany and northwestern Alaska, this amphibian girdle ofthe land expands to a width of four miles, while on precipitous coastsof tideless sea basins it contracts to a few inches. Hence this boundaryzone changes with every impulse of the mobile sea and with every varyingconfiguration of the shore. Movement and external conditions are thefactors in its creation. They make something that is only partially akinto the two contiguous forms. Here on their outer margins land and oceancompromise their physical differences, and this by a law which runsthrough animate and inanimate nature. Wherever one body moves inconstant contact with another, it is subjected to modifying influenceswhich differentiate its periphery from its interior, lend it atransitional character, make of it a penumbra between light and shadow. The modifying process goes on persistently with varying force, andcreates a shifting, changing border zone which, from its nature, cannotbe delimited. For convenience' sake, we adopt the abstraction of aboundary line; but the reality behind this abstraction is the importantthing in anthropo-geography. 

[Sidenote: Gradations in the boundary zone. ]

All so-called boundary lines with which geography has to do have thissame character, --coastlines, river margins, ice or snow lines, limits ofvegetation, boundaries of races or religions or civilizations, frontiersof states. They are all the same, stamped by the eternal flux of nature. Beyond the solid ice-pack which surrounds the North Pole is a widegirdle of almost unbroken drift ice, and beyond this is an irregularconcentric zone of scattered icebergs which varies in breadth withseason, wind and local current; a persistent decrease in continuity fromsolid pack to open sea. The line of perpetual snow on high mountainsadvances or retreats from season to season, from year to year; it dropslow on chilly northern slopes and recedes to higher altitudes on asouthern exposure; sends down long icy tongues in dark gorges, andleaves outlying patches of old snow in shaded spots or beneath acovering of rock waste far below the margin of the snow fields. 

In the struggle for existence in the vegetable world, the tree linepushes as far up the mountain as conditions of climate and soil willpermit. Then comes a season of fiercer storms, intenser cold andinvading ice upon the peaks. Havoc is wrought, and the forest drops backacross a zone of border warfare--for war belongs to borders--leavingbehind it here and there a dwarfed pine or gnarled and twisted juniperwhich has survived the onslaught of the enemy, Now these are stragglersin the retreat, but are destined later in milder years to serve asoutposts in the advance of the forest to recover its lost ground. Herewe have a border scene which is typical in nature--the belt of unbrokenforest, growing thinner and more stunted toward its upper edge, succeeded by a zone of scattered trees, which may form a cluster perhapsin some sheltered gulch where soil has collected and north winds areexcluded, and higher still the whitened skeleton of a tree to show howfar the forest once invaded the domain of the waste. 

[Sidenote: Oscillating boundaries]

The habitable area of the earth everywhere shows its boundaries to beperipheral zones of varying width, now occupied and now deserted, protruding or receding according to external conditions of climate andsoil, and subject to seasonal change. The distribution of human lifebecomes sparser from the temperate regions toward the Arctic Circle, foreshadowing the unpeopled wastes of the ice-fields beyond. The outwardmovement from the Tropics poleward halts where life conditionsdisappear, and there finds its boundary; but as life conditions advanceor retreat with the seasons, so does that boundary. On the west coast ofGreenland the Eskimo village of Etah, at about the seventy-eighthparallel, marks the northern limit of permanent or winter settlement;but in summer the Eskimo, in his kayak, follows the musk-ox and sealmuch farther north and there leaves his igloo to testify to the widerange of his poleward migration. Numerous relics of the Eskimo and theirsummer encampments have been found along Lady Franklin Bay in northernGrinnell Land (81° 50' N. L. ), but in the interior, on the outletstreams of Lake Hazen, explorers have discovered remains of habitationswhich had evidently, in previous ages, been permanently occupied. [326] TheMurman Coast of the Kola Peninsula has in summer a large population ofRussian fishermen and forty or more fishing stations; but when the catchis over at the end of August, and the Arctic winter approaches, thestations are closed, and the three thousand fishermen return to theirpermanent homes on the shores of the White Sea. [327] Farther east alongthis polar fringe of Russia, the little village of Charbarova, locatedon the Jugor Strait, is inhabited in summer by a number of Samoyedes, who pasture their reindeer over on Vaygats Island, and by some Russiansand Finns, who come from the White Sea towns to trade with the Samoyedesand incidentally to hunt and fish. But in the fall, when a new icebridge across the Strait releases the reindeer from their enclosedpasture on the island, the Samoyedes withdraw southward, and themerchants with their wares to Archangel and other points. This has goneon for centuries. [328] On the Briochov Islands at the head of the Yeniseiestuary Nordenskiold found a small group of houses which formed a summerfishing post in 1875, but which was deserted by the end of August. [329]

[Sidenote: Altitude boundary zones. ]

An altitude of about five thousand feet marks the limit of village lifein the Alps; but during the three warm months of the year, the summerpastures at eight thousand feet or more are alive with herds and theirkeepers. The boundary line of human life moves up the mountains in thewake of spring and later hurries down again before the advance ofwinter. The Himalayan and Karakorum ranges show whole villages oftemporary occupation, like the summer trading town of Gartok at 15, 000feet on the caravan route from Leh to Lhassa, or Shahidula (3, 285 metersor 10, 925 feet) on the road between Leh and Yarkand;[330] but the boundaryof permanent habitation lies several thousand feet below. Comparable tothese are the big hotels that serve summer stage-coach travel over theAlps and Rockies, but which are deserted when the first snow closes thepasses. Here a zone of altitude, as in the polar regions a zone oflatitude, marks the limits of the habitable area. 

[Sidenote: "Wallace's Line" a typical boundary zone. ]

The distribution of animals and races shows the limit of their movementsor expansion. Any boundary defining the limits of such movements can notfrom its nature be fixed, and hence can not be a line. It is always azone. Yet "Wallace's Line, " dividing the Oriental from the Australianzoological realm, and running through Macassar Strait southward betweenBali and Lombok, is a generally accepted dictum. The details ofWallace's investigation, however, reveal the fact that this boundary isnot a line, but a zone of considerable and variable width, enclosing theline on either side with a marginal belt of mixed character. ThoughCelebes, lying to the east of Macassar Strait, is included in theAustralian realm, it has lost so large a proportion of Australian typesof animals, and contains so many Oriental types from the west, thatWallace finds it almost impossible to decide on which side of the lineit belongs. [331] The Oriental admixture extends yet farther east over theMoluccas and Timor. Birds of Javan or Oriental origin, to the extent ofthirty genera, have spread eastward well across Wallace's Line; some ofthese stop short at Flores, and some reach even to Timor, [332] whileAustralian cockatoos, in turn, have been seen on the west coast of Balibut not in Java, Heilprin avoids the unscientific term line, because hefinds his zoological realms divided by "transition regions, " which areintermediate in animal types as they are in geographical location. [333]Wallace notes a similar "debatable land" in the Rajputana Desert east ofthe Indus, which is the border district between the Oriental andEthiopian realms. [334]

[Sidenote: Boundaries as limits of movements or expansion. ]

Such boundaries mark the limits of that movement which is common to allanimate things. Every living form spreads until it meets naturalconditions in which it can no longer survive, or until it is checked bythe opposing expansion of some competing form. If there is a changeeither in the life conditions or in the strength of the competing forms, the boundary shifts. In the propitious climate of the Genial Period, plants and animals lived nearer to the North Pole than at present; thenthey fell back before the advance of the ice sheet. The restlesssurface of the ocean denies to man a dwelling place; every century, however, the Dutch are pushing forward their northern boundary byreclamation of land from the sea; but repeatedly they have had to dropback for a time when the water has again overwhelmed their hand-madeterritory. 

[Sidenote: Peoples as barriers. ]

The boundaries of race and state which are subjected to greatestfluctuations are those determined by the resistance of other peoples. The westward sweep of the Slavs prior to eighth century carried thembeyond the Elbe into contact with the Germans; but as these increased innumbers, outgrew their narrow territories and inaugurated acounter-movement eastward, the Slavs began falling back to the Oder, tothe Vistula, and finally to the Niemen. Though the Mohawk Valley openedan easy avenue of expansion westward for the early colonists of NewYork, the advance of settlements up this valley for several decades wenton at only a snail's pace, because of the compact body of Iroquoistribes holding this territory. In the unoccupied land farther southbetween the Cumberland and Ohio rivers the frontier went forward withleaps and bounds, pushed on by the expanding power of the youngRepublic. [See map page 156. ]

Anything which increases the expanding force of a people--theestablishment of a more satisfactory government by which the nationalconsciousness is developed, as in the American and French revolutions, the prosecution of a successful war by which popular energies arereleased from an old restraint, mere increase of population, or animpulse communicated by some hostile and irresistible force behind--allare registered in an advance of the boundary of the people in questionand a corresponding retrusion of their neighbor's frontier. 

[Sidenote: Boundary zone as index of growth or decline. ]

The border district is the periphery of the growing or declining race orstate. It runs the more irregularly, the greater are the variations inthe external conditions as represented by climate, soil, barriers, andnatural openings, according as these facilitate or obstruct advance. When it is contiguous with the border of another state or race, the twoform a zone in which ascendency from one side or the other is beingestablished. The boundary fluctuates, for equilibrium of the contendingforces is established rarely and for only short periods. The moreaggressive people throws out across this debatable zone, along the linesof least resistance or greatest attraction, long streamers ofoccupation; so that the frontier takes on the form of a fringe ofsettlement, whose interstices are occupied by a corresponding fringe ofthe displaced people. Such was its aspect in early colonial America, where population spread up every fertile river valley across a zone ofIndian land; and such it is in northern Russia to-day, where long narrowSlav bands run out from the area of continuous Slav settlement across awide belt of Mongoloid territory to the shores of the White Sea andArctic Ocean. [335] [See maps pages 103 and 225. ]

The border zone is further broadened by the formation of ethnic islandsbeyond the base line of continuous settlement, which then advances moreor less rapidly, if expansion is unchecked, till it coalesces with theseoutposts, just as the forest line on the mountains may reach, underadvantageous conditions, its farthest outlying tree. Such ethnicpeninsulas and islands we see in the early western frontiers of theUnited States from 1790 to 1840, when that frontier was daily movingwestward. [336] [See map page 156. ]

[Sidenote: Breadth of the boundary zone. ]

The breadth of the frontier zone is indicative of the activity of growthon the one side and the corresponding decline on the other, becauseextensive encroachment in the same degree disintegrates the territory ofthe neighbor at whose cost such encroachment is made. A straight, narrowrace boundary, especially if it is nearly coincident with a politicalboundary, points to an equilibrium of forces which means, for the timebeing at least, a cessation of growth. Such boundaries are found in old, thickly populated countries, while the wide, ragged border zone belongsto new, and especially to colonial peoples. In the oldest and mostdensely populated seats of the Germans, where they are found in theRhine Valley, the boundaries of race and empire are straight and simple;but the younger, eastern border, which for centuries has been steadilyadvancing at the cost of the unequally matched Slavs, has the raggedoutline and sparse population of a true colonial frontier. Between twopeoples who have had a long period of growth behind them, theoscillations of the boundary decrease in amplitude, as it were, andfinally approach a state of rest. Each people tends to fill out its areaevenly; every advance in civilization, every increase of population, increases the stability of their tenure, and hence the equilibrium ofthe pressure upon the boundary. Therefore, in such countries, racial, linguistic and cultural boundaries tend to become simpler andstraighter. 

[Sidenote: The broad frontier zone of active expansion. ]

The growth is more apparent, or, in other words, the border zone iswidest and most irregular, where a superior people intrudes upon theterritory of an interior race. Such was the broad zone of thinlyscattered farms and villages amid a prevailing wilderness and hostileIndian tribes which, in 1810 and 1820, surrounded our Trans-Alleghenyarea of continuous settlement in a one to two hundred mile wide girdle. Such has been the wide, mobile frontier of the Russian advance inSiberia and until recently in Manchuria, which aimed to include within adotted line of widely separated railway-guard stations, Cossackbarracks, and penal colonies, the vast territory which later generationswere fully to occupy. Similar, too, is the frontier of the Dutch andEnglish settlements in South Africa, which has been pushed forward intothe Kaffir country--a broad belt of scattered cattle ranches andisolated mining hives, dropped down amid Kaffir hunting and grazinglands. Broader still was that shadowy belt of American occupation whichfor four decades immediately succeeding the purchase of Louisianastretched in the form of isolated fur-stations, lonely trappers' camps, and shifting traders' _rendezvous_ from the Mississippi to the westernslope of the Rockies and the northern watershed of the Missouri, whereit met the corresponding nebulous outskirts of the far-away Canadianstate on the St. Lawrence River. 

The same process with the same geographical character has been going onin the Sahara, as the French since 1890 have been expanding southwardfrom the foot of the Atlas Mountains in Algeria toward Timbuctoo at thecost of the nomad Tuaregs. Territory is first subdued and administeredby the military till it is fully pacified. Then it is handed over to thecivil government. Hence the advancing frontier consists of a militaryzone of administration, with a civil zone behind it, and a weakerwavering zone of exploration and scout work before it. [337] Lord Curzonin his Romanes lecture describes the northwest frontier of India as justsuch a three-ply border. 

[Sidenote: Economic factors in expanding frontiers. ]

The untouched resources of such new countries tempt to the widespreadsuperficial exploitation, which finds its geographical expression in abroad, dilating frontier. Here the man-dust which is to form the futurepolitical planet is thinly disseminated, swept outward by a centrifugalforce. Furthermore, the absence of natural barriers which might blockthis movement, the presence of open plains and river highways tofacilitate it, and the predominance of harsh conditions of climate orsoil rendering necessary a savage, extensive exploitation of the slenderresources, often combine still further to widen the frontier zone. Thiswas the case in French Canada and till recent decades in Siberia, whereintense cold and abundant river highways stimulated the fur trade to thepractical exclusion of all other activities, and substituted for theclosely grouped, sedentary farmers with their growing families thewide-ranging trader with his Indian or Tunguse wife and his half-breedoffspring. Under harsh climatic conditions, the fur trade alone affordedthose large profits which every infant colony must command in order tosurvive; and the fur trade meant a wide frontier zone of scattered postsamid a prevailing wilderness. The French in particular, by thepossession of the St. Lawrence and Mississippi rivers, the greatestsystems in America, were lured into the danger of excessive expansion, attenuated their ethnic element, and failed to raise the economic statusof their wide border district, which could therefore offer only slightresistance to the spread of solid English settlement. [338] Yet morerecently, the chief weakness of the Russians in Siberia andManchuria--apart from the corruption of the national government--was theweakness of a too remote and too sparsely populated frontier, and of apeople whose inner development had not kept pace with their rate ofexpansion. 

[Sidenote: Value of barrier boundaries. ]

Wasteful exploitation of a big territory is easier than the economicaldevelopment of a small district. This is one line of least resistancewhich civilized man as well as savage instinctively follows, and whichexplains the tendency toward excessive expansion characteristic of allprimitive and nascent peoples. For such peoples natural barriers whichset bounds to this expansion are of vastly greater importance than theyare for mature or fully developed peoples. The reason is this: theboundary is only the expression of the outward movement or growth, whichis nourished from the same stock of race energy as is the innerdevelopment. Either carried to an excess weakens or retards the other. If population begins to press upon the limits of subsistence, theacquisition of a new bit of territory obviates the necessity of applyingmore work and more intelligence to the old area, to make it yieldsubsistence for the growing number of mouths; the stimulus to adoptbetter economic methods is lost. Therefore, natural boundaries drawn bymountain, sea and desert, serving as barriers to the easy appropriationof new territory, have for such peoples a far deeper significance thanthe mere determination of their political frontiers by physicalfeatures, or the benefit of protection. 

The land with the most effective geographical boundaries is a naturallydefined region like Korea, Japan, China, Egypt, Italy, Spain, France orGreat Britain--a land characterized not only by exclusion from withoutthrough its encircling barriers, but also by the inclusion within itselfof a certain compact group of geographic conditions, to whose combinedinfluences the inhabitants are subjected and from which they cannotreadily escape. This aspect is far more important than the mereprotection which such boundaries afford. They are not absolutelynecessary for the development of a people, but they give it an earlystart, accelerate the process, and bring the people to an earlymaturity; they stimulate the exploitation of all the local geographicadvantages and resources, the formation of a vivid tribal or nationalconsciousness and purpose, and concentrate the national energies whenthe people is ready to overleap the old barriers. The early developmentof island and peninsula peoples and their attainment of a finishedethnic and political character are commonplaces of history. The storiesof Egypt, Crete and Greece, of Great Britain and Japan, illustrate thestimulus to maturity which emanates from such confining boundaries. Thewall of the Appalachians narrowed the westward horizon of the earlyEnglish colonies in America, guarded them against the excessiveexpansion which was undermining the French dominion in the interior ofthe continent, set a most wholesome limit to their aims, and therebyintensified their utilization of the narrow land between mountains andsea. France, with its limits of growth indicated by the Mediterranean, Pyrenees, Atlantic, Channel, Vosges, Jura and Western Alps, found itsperiod of adolescence shortened and, like Great Britain, early reachedits maturity. Nature itself set the goal of its territorial expansion, and by crystallizing the political ideal of the people, made that goaleasier to reach, just as the dream of "United Italy" realized in 1870had been prefigured in contours drawn by Alpine range and Mediterraneanshore-line. 

[Sidenote: The sea as the absolute boundary]

The area which a race or people occupies is the resultant of theexpansive force within and the obstacles without, either physical orhuman. Insurmountable physical obstacles are met where all lifeconditions disappear, as on the borders of the habitable world, whereman is barred from the unpeopled wastes of polar ice-fields andunsustaining oceans. The frozen rim of arctic lands, the coastline ofthe continents, the outermost arable strip on the confines of thedesert, the barren or ice-capped ridge of high mountain range, are allsuch natural boundaries which set more or less effective limits to themovement of peoples and the territorial growth of states. The sea is theonly absolute boundary, because it alone blocks the continuous, unbrokenexpansion of a people. When the Saxons of the lower Elbe spread to theisland of Britain, a zone of unpeopled sea separated their newsettlements from their native villages on the mainland. Even the mostpronounced land barriers, like the Himalayas and Hindu Kush, have theirpassways and favored spots for short summer habitation, where the peoplefrom the opposite slopes meet and mingle for a season. Sandy wastes arehospitable at times. When the spring rains on the mountains of Abyssiniastart a wave of moisture lapping over the edges of the Nubian desert, it is immediately followed by a tide of Arabs with their camels andherds, who make a wide zone of temporary occupation spread over thenewly created grassland, but who retire in a few weeks before thedesiccating heat of summer. [339]

[Sidenote: Natural boundaries as bases of ethnic and politicalboundaries. ]

Nevertheless, all natural features of the earth's surface which serve tocheck, retard or weaken the expansion of peoples, and therefore holdthem apart, tend to become racial or political boundaries; and allpresent a zone-like character. The wide ice-field of the ScandinavianAlps was an unpeopled waste long before the political boundary was drawnalong it. "It has not in reality been a definite natural _line_ that hasdivided Norway from her neighbour on the east; it has been a _band_ ofdesert land, up to hundreds of miles in width. So utterly desolate andapart from the area of continuous habitation has this been, that thegreater part of it, the district north of Trondhjem, was looked uponeven as recently as the last century as a common district. Only nomadicLapps wandered about in it, sometimes taxed by all three countries. Aparcelling out of this desert common district was not made toward Russiauntil 1826. Toward Sweden it was made in 1751. "[340] In former centuriesthe Bourtanger Moor west of the River Ems used to be a natural desertborderland separating East and West Friesland, despite the similarity ofrace, speech and country on either side of it. It undoubtedlycontributed to the division of Germany and the Netherlands along thepresent frontier line, which has been drawn the length of this moor fora hundred kilometers. [341]

[Sidenote: Primitive waste boundaries. ]

Any geographical feature which, like this, presents a practicallyuninhabitable area, forms a scientific boundary, not only because itholds apart the two neighboring peoples and thereby reduces the contactand friction which might be provocative of hostilities, but also becauseit lends protection against attack. This motive, as also the zonecharacter of all boundaries, comes out conspicuously in the artificialborder wastes surrounding primitive tribes and states in the lowerstatus of civilization. The early German tribes depopulated theirborders in a wide girdle, and in this wilderness permitted no neighborsto reside. The width of this zone indicated the valor and glory of thestate, but was also valued as a means of protection against unexpectedattack. [342] Cæsar learned that between the Suevi and Cherusci tribesdwelling near the Rhine "_silvam esse ibi, infinita magnitudine quaeappelletur Bacenis; hanc longe introrsus pertinere et pro nativo muroobjectam Cheruscos ab Suevis Suevosque ab Cheruscis injuriisincursionibusque prohibere_. "[343] The same device appears among theHuns. When Attila was pressing upon the frontier of the Eastern Empirein 448 A. D. , his envoys sent to Constantinople demanded that the Romansshould not cultivate a belt of territory, a hundred miles wide and threehundred miles long, south of the Danube, but maintain this as aMarch. [344] When King Alfonso I. (751-764 A. D. ) of mountain Asturiasbegan the reconquest of Spain from the Saracens, he adopted the samemethod of holding the foe at arm's length. He seized Old Castile as faras the River Duoro, but the rest of the province south of that stream heconverted into a waste boundary by transporting the Christians thence tothe north side, and driving the Mohammedans yet farther southward. [345]Similarly Xenophon found that the Armenian side of the River Kentrites, which formed the boundary between the Armenian plains and the highlandsof Karduchia, was unpeopled and destitute of villages for a breadth offifteen miles, from fear of the marauding Kurds. [346] In the easternSudan, especially in that wide territory along the Nile-Congo watershedoccupied by the Zandeh, Junker found the frontier wilderness a regularinstitution owing to the exposure of the border districts in theperennial intertribal feuds. [347] The same testimony comes fromBarth, [348] Boyd Alexander, [349] Speke, [350] and other explorers in theSudan and the neighboring parts of equatorial Africa. 

[Sidenote: Border wastes of Indian lands. ]

The vast and fertile region defined by the Ohio and Tennessee rivers, lay as a debatable border between the Algonquin Indians of the northand the Appalachians of the south. Both claimed it, both used it forhunting, but neither dared dwell therein. [351] Similarly the Cherokeeshad no definite understanding with their savage neighbors as to thelimits of their respective territories The effectiveness of their claimto any particular tract of country usually diminished with everyincrease of its distance from their villages. The consequence was that aconsiderable strip of territory between the settlements of two tribes, Cherokees and Creeks for instance, though claimed by both, waspractically considered neutral ground and the common hunting ground ofboth. [352] The Creeks, whose most western villages from 1771 to 1798 werelocated along the Coosa and upper Alabama rivers, [353] were separated by300 miles of wilderness from the Chickasaws to the northwest, and by a150-mile zone from the Choctaws. The most northern Choctaw towns, inturn, lay 160 miles to the south of the Chickasaw nation, whose compactsettlements were located on the watershed between the western sources ofthe Tombigby and the head stream of the Yazoo. [354] The wide interveningzone of forest and canebrake was hunted upon by both nations. [355]

Sometimes the border is preserved as a wilderness by formal agreement. Aclassic example of this case is found in the belt of untenanted land, fifty to ninety kilometers wide, which China and Korea once maintainedas their boundary. No settler from either side was allowed to enter, andall travel across the border had to use a single passway, where threetimes annually a market was held. [356] On the Russo-Mongolian bordersouth of Lake Baikal, the town of Kiakhta, which was established in 1688as an entrepôt of trade between the two countries, is occupied in itsnorthern half by Russian factories and in its southern by theMongolian-Chinese quarters, while between the two is a neutral spacedevoted to commerce. [357]

[Sidenote: Alien intrusions into border wastes. ]

These border wastes do not always remain empty, however, even when theirintegrity is respected by the two neighbors whom they serve to divide;alien races often intrude into their unoccupied reaches. The boundarywilderness between the Sudanese states of Wadai and Dar Fur harborsseveral semi-independent states whose insignificance is a guarantee oftheir safety from conquest. [358] Similarly in the wide border districtbetween the Creeks on the east and the Choctaws on the west were foundtypical small, detached tribes--the Chatots and Thomez of forty hutseach on the Mobile River, the Tensas tribe with a hundred huts on theTensas River, and the Mobilians near the confluence of the Tombigby andAlabama. [359] Along the desolate highland separating Norway and Swedenthe nomadic Lapps, with their reindeer herds, have penetrated southwardto 62° North Latitude, reinforcing the natural barrier by anotherbarrier of alien race. From this point southward, the coniferous forestsbegin and continue the border waste in the form of a zone some sixtymiles wide; this was unoccupied till about 1600, when into it slowlyfiltered an immigration of Finns, whose descendants to-day constitute animportant part of the still thin population along the frontier to theheights back of Christiania. Only thirty miles from the coast does theborder zone between Norway and Sweden, peopled chiefly by intrudingforeign stocks, Lapps and Finns, contract and finally merge into thedenser Scandinavian settlements. [360]

Where the border waste offers favorable conditions of life and theintruding race has reached a higher status of civilization, itmultiplies in this unpeopled tract and soon spreads at the cost of itsless advanced neighbors. The old No Man's Land between the Ohio andTennessee was a line of least resistance for the expanding Colonies, whohere poured in a tide of settlement between the northern and southernIndians, just as later other pioneers filtered into the vague borderterritory of weak tenure between the Choctaws and Creeks, and there onthe Tombigby, Mobile and Tensas rivers, formed the nucleus of the Stateof Alabama. [361]

[Sidenote: Politico-economic significance of the waste boundary. ]

This untenanted hem of territory surrounding so many savage andbarbarous peoples reflects their superficial and unsystematicutilization of their soil, by reason of which the importance of the landitself and the proportion of population to area are greatly reduced. Itis a part of that uneconomic and extravagant use of the land, thatappropriation of wide territories by small tribal groups, whichcharacterizes the lower stages of civilization, as opposed to theexploitation of every square foot for the support of a teeming humanity, which marks the most advanced states. Each stage puts its own valuationupon the land according to the return from it which each expects toget. The low valuation is expressed in the border wilderness, by which athird or even a half of the whole area is wasted; and also in thereadiness with which savages often sell their best territory for a song. 

For the same reason they leave their boundaries undefined; a mile neareror farther, what does it matter? Moreover, their fitful or nomadicoccupation of the land leads to oscillations of the frontiers with everyattack from without and every variation of the tribal strength within. Their unstable states rarely last long enough in a given form or size todevelop fixed boundaries; hence, the vagueness as to the extent oftribal domains among all savage peoples, and the conflicting land claimswhich are the abiding source of war. Owing to these overlappingboundaries--border districts claimed but not occupied--the Americancolonists met with difficulties in their purchase of land from theIndians, often paying twice for the same strip. 

[Sidenote: Common boundary districts. ]

Even civilized peoples may adopt a waste boundary where the motive forprotection is peculiarly strong, as in the half-mile neutral zone oflowland which ties the rock of Gibraltar to Spain. On a sparselypopulated frontier, where the abundance of land reduces its value, theymay throw the boundary into the form of a common district, as in thevast, disputed Oregon country, accepted provisionally as a district ofjoint occupancy between the United States and Canada from 1818 to 1846, or that wide highland border which Norway so long shared with Russia andSweden. In South America, where land is abundant and population sparse, this common boundary belt is not rare. It suggests a device giving thatleeway for expansion desired by all growing states. By the treaty of1866, the frontier between Chile and Bolivia crossed the Atacama desertat 24° South Latitude; but the zone between 23° and 25° was left underthe common jurisdiction of the two states, for exploitation of the guanodeposits and mineral wealth. [362] A common border district on a muchlarger scale is found between Brazil and the eastern frontier of FrenchGuiana. It includes a belt 185 miles (300 kilometers) wide between theOyapok and Arawary rivers, and is left as a neutral district till itsfate is decided by arbitration. [363] All these instances are onlytemporary phases in the evolution of a political frontier from wide, neutral border to the mathematically determined boundary line requiredby modern civilized states. 

[Sidenote: Tariff free zones. ]

Even when the boundary line has been surveyed and the boundary pillarsset up, the frontier is prone to assert its old zonal nature, simplybecause it marks the limits of human movements. Rarely, for instance, does a customs boundary coincide with a political frontier, even in themost advanced states of Europe, except on the coasts. The student ofBaedecker finds a gap of several miles on the same railroad between thecustoms frontier of Germany and France, or France and Italy. Where theborder district is formed by a high and rugged mountain range, thecustom houses recede farther and farther from the common political lineupon the ridge, and drop down the slope to convenient points, leavingbetween them a wide neutral tariff zone, like that in Haute Savoie alongthe massive Mont Blanc Range between France and Italy. 

Allied to this phase, yet differing from it, is the "Zona Libre" or FreeZone, 12 miles broad and 1, 833 miles long, which forms the northern hemof Mexico from the Gulf to the Pacific. Here foreign goods pay only18-1/2 per cent. , formerly only 2-1/2 per cent. , of the usual federalduties. Goods going on into the interior pay the rest of the tariff atthe inner margin of the Zone. This arrangement was adopted in 1858 toestablish some sort of commercial equilibrium between the Mexican townsof the Rio Grande Valley, which were burdened by excessive taxation oninternal trade, and the Texas towns across the river, which at this timeenjoyed a specially low tariff. Consequently prices of food andmanufactured goods were twice or four times as high on the Mexican as onthe American side. The result was persistent smuggling, extensiveemigration from the southern to the northern bank, and the commercialdecline of the frontier states of Mexico, till the Zona Libre adjustedthe commercial discrepancy. [364] Since 1816 a tariff free zone a leaguewide has formed the border of French Savoy along the Canton and Lake ofGeneva, thus uniting this canton by a free passway with the Swissterritory at the upper end of the lake. [365]

[Sidenote: Boundary zones of mingled race elements. ]

When the political boundary has evolved by a system of contraction outof the wide waste zone to the nicely determined line, that line, nevertheless, is always encased, as it were, in a zone of contactwherein are mingled the elements of either side. The zone includes theperipheries of the two contiguous racial or national bodies, and in iteach is modified and assimilated to the other. On its edges it isstrongly marked by the characteristics of the adjacent sides, but itsmedial band shows a mingling of the two in ever-varying proportions; itchanges from day to day and shifts backward and forward, according asone side or the other exercises in it more potent economic, religious, racial, or political influences. 

Its peripheral character comes out strongly in the mingling ofcontiguous ethnic elements found in every frontier district. Here isthat zone of transitional form which we have seen prevails so widely innature. The northern borderland of the United States is in no smalldegree Canadian, and the southern is strongly Mexican. In the Rio Grandecounties of Texas, Mexicans constituted in 1890 from 27 to 55 per cent. Of the total population, and they were distributed in considerablenumbers also in the second tier of counties. A broad band of French andEnglish Canadians overlaps the northern hem of United States territoryfrom Maine to North Dakota. [366] In the New York and New England countiesbordering on the old French province of Quebec, they constitute from 11to 22 per cent. Of the total population, except in two or three westerncounties of Maine which have evidently been mere passways for a tide of_habitants_ moving on to more attractive conditions of life in thecounties just to the south. [367] But even these large figures do notadequately represent the British-American element within our boundaries, because they leave out of account the native-born of Canadian parentswho have been crossing our borders for over a generation. 

[Sidenote: Ethnic border zones in the Alps. ]

If we turn to northern Italy, where a mountain barrier might have beenexpected to segregate the long-headed Mediterranean stock from thebroad-headed Alpine stock, we find as a matter of fact that the ethnictype throughout the Po basin is markedly brachycephalic and becomes morepronounced along the northern boundary in the Alps, till it culminatesin Piedmont along the frontier of France, where it becomes identicalwith the broad-headed Savoyards. [368] More than this, Provençal French isspoken in the Dora Baltea Valley of Piedmont; and along the upper DoraRiparia and in the neighboring valleys of the Chisone and Pellice arethe villages of the refugee Waldenses, who speak an idiom allied to theProvençal. More than this, the whole Piedmontese Italian ischaracterized by its approach to the French, and the idiom of Turinsounds very much like Provençal. [369] To the north there is a similarexchange between Italy and Switzerland with the adjacent Austrianprovince of the Tyrol. In the rugged highlands of the Swiss Grisonsbordering upon Italy, we find a pure Alpine stock, known to the ancientsas the Rhaetians, speaking a degenerate Latin tongue called Romansch, which still persists also under the names of Ladino and Frioulian in theAlpine regions of the Tyrol and Italy. In fact, the map of linguisticboundaries in the Grisons shows the dovetailing of German, Italian, andRomansch in a broad zone. [370] The traveller in the southern Tyrolbecomes accustomed in the natives to the combination of Italiancoloring, German speech, and Alpine head form; whereas, if on reachingItaly he visits the hills back of Vicenza, he finds the Germansettlements of Tredici and Sette Communi, where German customs, folklore, language, and German types of faces still persist, survivalsfrom the days of German infiltration across the Brenner Pass. [371]

[Illustration: SLAV-GERMAN BOUNDARY IN EUROPE. ]

[Sidenote: The Slav-German boundary. ]

Where Slavs and Teutons come together in Central Europe, their raceborder is a zone lying approximately between 14 and 24 degrees EastLongitude; it is crossed by alternate peninsulas of predominant Germansand Austrians from the one side, Czechs and Poles from the other, thewhole spattered over by a sprinkling of the two elements. Rarely, andthen only for short stretches, do political and ethnic boundariescoincide. The northern frontier hem of East Prussia lying between theRiver Niemen and the political line of demarcation is quite as muchLithuanian as German, while German stock dots the whole surface of theBaltic provinces of Russia as far as St. Petersburg, The eastern rim ofthe Kaiser's empire as far south as the Carpathians presents a broadband of the Polish race, averaging about fifty kilometers (30 miles) inwidth, sparsely sprinkled with German settlements; these are foundfarther east also as an ethnic archipelago dotting the wide Slav area ofPoland. The enclosed basin of Bohemia, protected on three sides bymountain walls and readily accessible to the Slav stock at the sourcesof the Vistula, enabled the Czechs to penetrate far westward and theremaintain themselves; but in spite of encompassing mountains, the inneror Bohemian slopes of the Boehmer Wald, Erz, and Sudetes rangesconstitute a broad girdle of almost solid German population. [372] In theAustrian provinces of Moravia and Silesia, which form the southeastwardcontinuation of this Slav-German boundary zone, 60 per cent. Of thepopulation are Czechs, 33 per cent. Are German, and 7 per cent. , foundin the eastern part of Silesia, are Poles. [373]

An ethnic map of the western Muscovite Empire in Europe shows a markedinfiltration into White and Little Russia of West Slavs from Poland, and in the province of Bessarabia alternate areas of Russians andRoumanians. The latter in places form an unbroken ethnic expansionfrom the home kingdom west of the Pruth, extending in solid bands asfar as the Dniester, and throwing out ethnic islands between thisstream and the Bug. 

[Illustration: ETHNOGRAPHICAL MAP OF RUSSIA. MONGOLOID: Kalmucks, Kirghis, Nogai, Tartars, Bashkirs, Voguls, Ostiaks, Samoyedes. ZIRIAN: Mingled Mongoloid and Finnish. ]

[Sidenote: Assimilation of culture in boundary zones. ]

In the northern provinces of Russia, in the broad zone shared by theaboriginal Finns and the later-coming Slavs, Wallace found villages inevery stage of Russification. "In one everything seemed thoroughlyFinnish; the inhabitants had a reddish-olive skin, very high cheekbones, obliquely set eyes, and a peculiar costume; none of the women andvery few of the men could understand Russian and any Russian who visitedthe place was regarded as a foreigner. In the second, there were alreadysome Russian inhabitants; the others had lost something of their purelyFinnish type, many of the men had discarded the old costume and spokeRussian fluently, and a Russian visitor was no longer shunned. In athird, the Finnish type was still further weakened; all the men spokeRussian, and nearly all the women understood it; the old male costumehad entirely disappeared and the old female was rapidly following it;and intermarriage with the Russian population was no longer rare. In afourth, intermarriage had almost completely done its work, and the oldFinnish element could be detected merely in certain peculiarities ofphysiognomy and accent. " This amalgamation extends to theirreligions--prayers wholly pagan devoutly uttered under the shadow of astrange cross, next the Finnish god Yumak sharing honors equally withthe Virgin, finally a Christianity pure in doctrine and outward formsexcept for the survival of old pagan ceremonies in connection with thedead. [374]

At the confluence of the Volga and Kama rivers, this boundary zone ofRussians and Finns meets the borderland of the Asiatic Mongols; and hereis found an intermingling of races, languages, religions, and customsscarcely to be equalled elsewhere. Finns are infused with Tartar as wellas Russian blood, and Russians show Tartar as well as Finnish traits. The Bashkirs, who constitute an ethnic peninsula running from the solidMongolian mass of Asia, show every type of the mongrel. [375] [See mappage 225. ]

[Sidenote: Boundary zones of assimilation in Asia. ]

If we turn to Asia and examine the western race boundary of theexpanding Chinese, we find that a wide belt of mingled ethnic elements, hybrid languages, and antagonistic civilizations marks the transitionfrom Chinese to Mongolian and Tibetan areas. The eastern and southernfrontiers of Mongolia, formerly marked by the Great Wall, are nowdifficult to define, owing to the steady encroachment of theagricultural Chinese on the fertile edges of the plateau, where theyhave converted the best-watered pastures of the Mongols into milletfields and vegetable gardens, leaving for the nomad's herds the moresterile patches between. [376] Every line of least resistance--climatic, industrial, commercial--sees the Chinese widening this transitionalzone. He sprinkles his crops over the "Land of Grass, " invades the tradeof the caravan towns, sets up his fishing station on the great northernbend of the Hoangho in the Ordos country, three hundred miles beyond theWall, to exploit the fishing neglected by the Mongols. [377] Thewell-watered regions of the Nan-Shan ranges has enabled him to drive along, narrow ethnic wedge, represented by the westward projection ofKansu Province between Mongolia and Tibet, into the heart of the CentralPlateau. [See map page 103. ] Here the nomad Si Fan tribes dwell side byside with Chinese farmers, [378] who themselves show a strong infusion ofthe Mongolian and Tibetan blood to the north and south, and whoselanguage is a medley of all three tongues. [379]

[Sidenote: Boundary zones of mountain Tibet. ]

In easternmost Tibet, in the elevated province of Minjak (2, 600 metersor 8, 500 feet), M. Hue found in 1846 a great number of Chinese from theneighboring Sze-Chuan and Yun-nan districts keeping shops and followingthe primary trades and agriculture. The language of the Tibetan nativesshowed the effect of foreign intercourse; it was not the pure speech ofLhassa, but was closely assimilated to the idiom of the neighboring SiFan speech of Sze-Chuan and contained many Chinese expressions. He foundalso a modification of manners, customs, and costumes in this peripheralTibet; the natives showed more of the polish, cunning, and covetousnessof the Chinese, less of the rudeness, frankness, and strong religiousfeeling characteristic of the western plateau man. [380] Just across thepolitical boundary in Chinese territory, the border zone of assimilationshows predominance of the Chinese element with a strong Tibetanadmixture both in race and civilization. [381] Here Tibetan traders withtheir yak caravans are met on the roads or encamped in their tents bythe hundred about the frontier towns, whither they have brought thewool, sheep, horses, hides and medicinal roots of the rough highlandacross that "wild borderland which is neither Chinese nor Tibetan. " TheChinese population consists of hardy mountaineers, who eat millet andmaize instead of rice. The prevailing architecture is Tibetan and thepriests on the highways are the red and yellow lamas from the Buddhistmonasteries of the plateau. "The Country is a cross between China andTibet. "[382]

Even the high wall of the Himalayas does not suffice to prevent similarexchanges of ethnic elements and culture between southern Tibet andnorthern India. Lhassa and Giamda harbor many emigrants from theneighboring Himalayan state of Bhutan, allow them to monopolize themetal industry, in which they excel, and to practise undisturbed theirIndian form of Buddhism. [383] The southern side of this zone oftransition is occupied by a Tibetan stock of people inhabiting theHimalayan frontiers of India and practising the Hindu religion. [384] Inthe hill country of northern Bengal natives are to be seen with theChinese queue hanging below a Hindu turban, or wearing the Hindu castemark on their broad Mongolian faces. With these are mingled genuineTibetans who have come across the border to work in the tea plantationsof this region. [385] [See map page 102. ]

[Sidenote: Relation of ethnic and cultural assimilation. ]

The assimilation of culture within a boundary zone is in some respectsthe result of race amalgamation, as, for instance, in costume, religion, manners and language; but in economic points it is often the result ofidentical geographic influences to which both races are alike subjected. For example, scarcity of food on the arid plateau of Central Asia makesthe Chinese of western Kansu eat butter and curds as freely as do thepastoral Mongols, though such a diet is obnoxious to the purelyagricultural Chinese of the lowlands. [386] The English pioneer in theTrans-Allegheny wilderness shared with the Indians an environment oftrackless forests and savage neighbors; he was forced to discard for atime many essentials of civilization, both material and moral. Despite aminimum of race intermixture, the men of the Cumberland and Kentuckysettlements became assimilated to the life of the red man; they borrowedhis scalping knife and tomahawk, adopted his method of ambush andextermination in war; like him they lived in great part by the chase, dressed in furs and buckskin, and wore the noiseless moccasin. Here themere fact of geographical location on a remote frontier, and of almostcomplete isolation from the centers of English life on the Atlanticslope, and the further fact of persistent contact with a lower status ofcivilization, resulted in a temporary return to primitive methods ofexistence, till the settlements secured an increase of populationadequate for higher industrial development and for defence. 

A race boundary involves almost inevitably a cultural boundary, often, too, a linguistic and religionary, occasionally a political boundary. The last three are subject to wide fluctuation, frequently oversteppingall barriers of race and contrasted civilizations. Though one oftenaccompanies another, it is necessary to distinguish the different kindsof boundaries and to estimate their relative importance in the historyof a people or state. We may lay down the rule that the greater, morepermanent, and deep-seated the contrasts on the two sides of a border, the greater is its significance; and that, on this basis, boundariesrank in importance, with few exceptions, in the following order: racial, cultural, linguistic, and political. The less marked the contrasts, ingeneral, the more rapid and complete the process of assimilation in thebelt of borderland. 

[Sidenote: The boundary zone in political expansion. ]

The significance of the border zone of assimilation for politicalexpansion lies in the fact that it prepares the way for the advance ofthe state boundary from either side; in it the sharp edge of racial andcultural antagonism is removed, or for this antagonism a new affinitymay be substituted. The zone of American settlement, industry, andcommerce which in 1836 projected beyond the political boundary of theSabine River over the eastern part of Mexican Texas facilitated thelater incorporation of the State into the Union, just as a few yearsearlier the Baton Rouge District of Spanish West Florida had gravitatedto the United States by reason of the predominant American elementthere, and thus extended the boundary of Louisiana to the Pearl River. When the political boundary of Siberia was fixed at the Amur River, theMuscovite government began extending the border zone of assimilation farto the south of that stream by the systematic Russification ofManchuria, with a view to its ultimate annexation. Schleswig-Holsteinand Alsace-Lorraine, by reason of their large German population, havebeen readily incorporated into the German Empire. Only in Lorraine has aconsiderable French element retarded the process. The considerablesprinkling of Germans over the Baltic provinces of Russia and Polandwest of the Vistula, and a certain Teutonic stamp of civilization whichthese districts have received, would greatly facilitate the eastwardextension of the German Empire; while their common religions, bothProtestant and Roman Catholic, would help obliterate the old politicalfissure. Thus the borderland of a country, so markedly differentiatedfrom its interior, performs a certain historical function, and becomes, as it were, an organ of the living, growing race or state. 

[Sidenote: Tendency toward defection along political frontiers. ]

Location on a frontier involves remoteness from the center of national, cultural, and political activities; these reach their greatest intensityin the core of the nation and exercise only an attenuated influence onthe far-away borders, unless excellent means of communication keep up acirculation of men, commodities, and ideas between center and periphery. For the frontier, therefore, the centripetal force is weakened; thecentrifugal is strengthened often by the attraction of some neighboringstate or tribe, which has established bonds of marriage, trade, andfriendly intercourse with the outlying community. Moreover, the mereinfusion of foreign blood, customs, and ideas, especially a foreignreligion, which is characteristic of a border zone, invades the nationalsolidarity. Hence we find that a tendency to political defectionconstantly manifests itself along the periphery. A long reach weakensthe arm of authority, especially where serious geographical barriersintervene; hence border uprisings are usually successful, at least for atime. When accomplished, they involve that shrinkage of the frontierswhich we have found to be the unmistakable symptom of national decline. 

This defection shows itself most promptly in conquered border tribes ofdifferent blood, who lack the bond of ethnic affinity, and whoseremoteness emboldens them to throw off the political yoke. The decay ofthe Roman Empire, after its last display of energy under Trajan, wasregistered in the revolt of its peripheral districts beyond theEuphrates, Danube, and Rhine, as also in the rapid Teutonization ofeastern Gaul, which here prepared the way for the assertion ofindependence. The border satraps of the ancient Persian Empire wereconstantly revolting, as the history of Asia Minor shows. Aragon, OldCastile, and Portugal were the first kingdoms in the Iberian Peninsulato throw off Saracen dominion. Mountain ranges and weary stretches ofdesert roads enabled the rebellions in Chinese Turkestan and the borderdistricts of Sungaria in 1863 to be maintained for several years. [387]

[Sidenote: Centrifugal forces on the frontier. ]

A feeble grasp upon remote peripheral possessions is often furtherweakened by the resistance of an immigrant population from beyond theboundary, which brings with it new ideas of government. This was thegeographical history of the Texan revolt. A location on the far northernoutskirts of Mexican territory, some twelve hundred miles from thecapital, rendered impossible intelligent government control, theenforcement of the laws, and prompt defence against the Indians. Remoteness weakened the political cohesion. More than this, the Americanethnic boundary lapped far over eastern Texas, forming that border zoneof two-fold race which we have come to know. This alien stock, antagonistic to the national ideals emanating from the City of Mexico, dominant over the native population by reason of its intelligence, energy, and wealth, ruptured the feeble political bond and asserted theindependence of Texas. Quite similar was the history of the "IndependentState of Acre, " which in 1899 grew up just within the Bolivian frontierunder the leadership of Brazilian caoutchouc gatherers, resisted thecollection of taxes by the Bolivian government, and four years latersecured annexation to Brazil. [388]

Even when no alien elements are present to weaken the race bond, ifnatural barriers intervene to obstruct and retard communications betweencenter and periphery, the frontier community is likely to develop thespirit of defection, especially if its local geographic, and hencesocial, conditions are markedly different from those of the governingcenter. This is the explanation of that demand for independent statehoodwhich was rife in our Trans-Allegheny settlements from 1785 to 1795, andof that separatist movement which advocated political alliance witheither the British colonies to the north or the Spanish to the west, because these were nearer and offered easier access to the sea. Afrontier location and an intervening mountain barrier were importantfactors in the Whisky Rebellion in western Pennsylvania, just as similarconditions later suggested the secession of the Pacific States from theUnion. Disaffection from the government was manifested by the Trek Boersof early South Africa, "especially by those who dwelt in the outlyingdistricts where the Government had exerted and could exert littlecontrol. " In 1795 the people of Graaf-Reinet, a frontier settlement ofthat time, revolted against the Dutch South African Company and set up aminiature republic. [389]

[Sidenote: The spirit of colonial frontiers. ]

The spirit of the colonial frontier is the spirit of freedom, the spiritof men who have traveled far, who are surcharged with energy, enterpriseand self-reliance, often with impatience of restraint. A severe processof elimination culls out for the frontier a population strikinglydifferentiated from the citizens of the old inhabited centers. Thenremoteness of location and abundance of opportunity proceed to emphasizethe qualities which have squeezed through the sieve of natural andsocial selection. This is the type bred upon our own frontier, which, West beyond West, has crossed the continent from the backwoods of theAllegheny Mountains to the Pacific. The Siberian frontier develops muchthe same type on the eastern edge of the Russian Empire. Here armyofficers find a compensation for their rough surrounding in the escapefrom the excessive bureaucracy of the capitals. Here is to be noted theindependence, self-reliance and self-respect characteristic of othercolonial frontiers. The Russian of the Asiatic border is proud to callhimself a Siberian: he is already differentiated in his ownconsciousness. The force of Moscow tradition and discipline is faintwhen it reaches him, it has traveled so far. Even the elaborateobservances of the orthodox Greek Church tend to become simplified onthe frontier. The question naturally arises whether in the RussianEmpire, as in the United States, the political periphery will in time, react upon the center, infuse it with the spirit of progress andyouth. [390]

[Sidenote: Free border states as political survivals. ]

When to a border situation is added a geographic location affordingconditions of long-established isolation, this tendency to maintainpolitical autonomy becomes very pronounced. This is the explanation ofso many frontier mountain states that have retained complete or partialindependence, such as Nepal, Bhutan, the Asturias, which successfullywithstood Saracen attack, and Montenegro, which has repelled alikeVenetian, Servian, and Turkish dominion. Europe especially has numerousexamples of these unabsorbed border states, whose independencerepresents the equilibrium of the conflicting political attractionsabout them. But all these smallest fragments of political territory haveeither some commercial or semi-political union with one or another oftheir neighbors. The little independent principality of Liechtenstein, wedged in between Switzerland and the Tyrol, is included in the customsunion of Austro-Hungary. The small, independent duchy of Luxemburg, which has been attached in turn to all the great states which have grownup along its borders, is included in the _Zollverein_ of Germany. Therepublic of Andorra, far up in a lofty valley of the Pyrenees, which hasmaintained its freedom for a thousand years, acknowledges certain rightsof suzerainty exercised by France and the Spanish bishopric ofUrgel. [391]

[Sidenote: Guardians of the marches. ]

Oftentimes a state gains by recognizing this freedom-loving spirit ofthe frontier, and by turning it to account for national defence along anexposed boundary. In consequence of the long wars between Scotland andEngland, to the Scotch barons having estates near the Border were giventhe Wardenships of the Marches, offices of great power and dignity; andtheir clans, accustomed only to the imperfect military organizationdemanded by the irregular but persistent hostilities of the time andplace, developed a lawless spirit. Prohibited from agriculture by theirexposed location, they left their fields waste, and lived by pillage andcattle-lifting from their English and even their Scotch neighbors. Thevalor of these southern clans, these "reivers of the Border, " was thebulwark of Scotland against the English, but their mutinous spiritresisted the authority of the king and led them often to erectsemi-independent principalities. [392]

[Sidenote: Border nomads as frontier police. ]

China has fringed her western boundaries with quasi-independent tribeswhose autonomy is assured and whose love of freedom is a guarantee ofguerilla warfare against any invader from Central Asia. The Mantzetribes in the mountain borders of Sze-Chuan province have their ownrulers and customs, and only pay tribute to China. [393] The highlands ofKansu are sprinkled with such independent tribes. Sometimes a definitebargain is entered into--a self-governing military organization and ayearly sum of money in return for defence of the frontier. The Mongoltribes of the Charkar country or "Borderland" just outside the GreatWall northwest of Pekin constitute a paid army of the Emperor to guardthe frontier against the Khalkhas of northern Mongolia, the tribe ofGenghis Khan. [394] Similarly, semi-independent military communities forcenturies made a continuous line of barriers against the raids of thesteppe nomads along the southern and southeastern frontiers of Russia, from the Dnieper to the Ural rivers. There were the "Free Cossacks, "located on the debatable ground between the fortified frontier of theagricultural steppe and marauding Crimean Tartars. Nominally subjects ofthe Czar, they obeyed him when it suited them, and on provocation rosein open revolt. The Cossacks of the Dnieper, who to the middle of theseventeenth century formed Poland's border defence against Tartarinvasion, were jealous of any interference with their freedom. They lenttheir services on occasions to the Sultan of Turkey, and even to theCrimean Khan; and finally, in 1681, attached themselves and theirterritory to Russia. [395] Here speaks that spirit of defection which isthe natural product of the remoteness and independence of frontier life. The Russians also attached to themselves the Kalmucks located betweenthe lower Volga and Don, and used them as a frontier defence againsttheir Tartar and Kirghis neighbors. [396] In this case, as in that of theCossacks and the Charkars of eastern Mongolia, we have a large body ofmen living in the same arid grassland, leading the same pastoral life, and carrying on the same kind of warfare as the nomadic marauders whosepillaging, cattle-lifting raids they aim to suppress. The imperialorders to the Charkars limit them strictly to the life of herdmen, withthe purpose of maintaining their mobility and military efficiency. So inolden times, for the Don Cossacks agriculture was prohibited on pain ofdeath, lest they should lose their taste for the live-stock booty of apunitive raid. A still earlier instance of this utilization of bordernomads is found in the first century after Christ, when the Romans madethe Arabian tribe of Beni Jafre, dwelling on the frontier of Syria, thewarders of the eastern marches of the Empire. [397]

[Sidenote: Lawless citizens deported to frontiers. ]

The advancing frontier of an expanding people often carries them into asparsely settled country where the unruly members of society can withadvantage be utilized as colonists. After centralized and civilizedRussia began to encroach with the plow upon the pastures of the steppeCossacks, and finally suppressed these military republics, the moreturbulent and obstinate remnants of them she colonized along the Kubanand Terek rivers, to serve as bulwarks against the incursions of theCaucasus tribes and as the vanguard of the advance southward. [398]

This is one principle underlying the transportation of criminals to thefrontier. They serve to hold the new country. There these waste elementsof civilization are converted into a useful by-product. They may be onlypolitical radicals or religious dissenters: if so, so much the bettercolonial material. The Russian government formerly transported therebellious sect of the Molokans or Unitarians to the outskirts of theEmpire, where the danger of contagion was reduced. Hence they are to befound to-day scattered in the Volga province of Samara, on the border ofthe Kirghis steppe, in the Crimea, the Caucasus, and Siberia, stillfaithful and still persecuted. [399] Since 1709 the Russian advance intoSiberia has planted its milestones in settlements formed of prisoners ofwar, political exiles, and worse offenders. [400] Penal colonists locatedon the shores of Kamchatka helped build and man the crazy boats whichset out for Alaska at the end of the eighteenth century. China settlesits thieves and cheats among the villages of its own border provinces ofShensi[401] and Kansu; but its worst criminals it transports far away tothe Hi country on the western frontier of the Empire, where they havedoubtless contributed to the spirit of revolt that has there manifesteditself. [402]

[Sidenote: Drift of lawless elements to the frontiers. ]

The abundance of opportunity and lack of competition in a new frontiercommunity, its remoteness from the center of authority, and itsimperfect civil government serve to attract thither the vicious, as wellas the sturdy and enterprising. The society of the early Trans-Alleghenyfrontier included both elements. The lawless who drifted to the borderformed gangs of horse thieves, highwaymen, and murderers, who calledforth from the others the summary methods of lynch law. [403] NorthCarolina, which in its early history formed the southern frontier ofVirginia, swarmed with ruffians who had fled thither to escapeimprisonment or hanging, and whose general attitude was to resist allregular authority and especially to pay no taxes. [404] Similarly, thatwide belt of mountain forest which forms the waste boundary betweenKorea and Manchuria is the resort of bandits, who have harried bothsides of the border ever since this neutral district was established inthe thirteenth century. [405] The frontier communities of the RussianCossacks in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were regularasylums for runaway serfs and peasants who were fleeing from taxation;their hetmans were repeatedly fugitive criminals. The eastern border ofRussia formed by the Volga basin in 1775 was described as "an asylum formalcontents and vagabonds of all kinds, ruined nobles, disfrocked monks, military deserters, fugitive serfs, highwaymen, and Volgapirates"--disorderly elements which contributed greatly to theinsurrection led by the Ural Cossacks in that year. [406] "The DebatableLand, " a tract between the Esk and Sark rivers, formerly claimed by bothEngland and Scotland, was long the haunt of thieves, outlaws andvagabonds, as indeed was the whole Border, subject as it was to theregular jurisdiction of neither side. [407]

[Sidenote: Asylums beyond the border. ]

Just beyond the political boundary, where police authority comes to anend and where pursuit is cut short or retarded, the fleeing criminalfinds his natural asylum. Hence all border districts tend to harborundesirable refugees from the other side. Deserters and outlaws fromChina proper sprinkle the eastern districts of Mongolia. [408] Maraudingbands of Apaches and Sioux, after successful depredations on Americanranches, for years fled across the line into Mexico and Canada beforethe hammering hoof-beats of Texas Ranger and United States cavalry, until a treaty with Mexico in 1882, authorizing such armed pursuit tocross the boundary, cut off at least one asylum. [409] Our countryexchanges other undesirable citizens with its northern and southernneighbors in cases where no extradition treaty provides for theirreturn; and the borders of the individual states are crossed andrecrossed by shifty gentlemen seeking to dodge the arm of the law. Thefact that so many State boundaries fall in the Southern Appalachians, where illicit distilling and feud murders provide most of the cases onthe docket, has materially retarded the suppression of these crimes byincreasing the difficulty both of apprehending the offender and ofsubpoenaing the reluctant witness. 

[Sidenote: Border refugees and ethnic mingling. ]

Dissatisfied, oppressed, or persecuted members of a political communityare prone to seek an asylum across the nearest border, where happier orfreer conditions of life are promised. There they contribute to thatmixture of race which characterizes every boundary zone, though as anembittered people they may also help to emphasize any existing politicalor religious antagonism. The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685was followed by an exodus of Huguenots from France to the Protestantstates of Switzerland, the Palatinate of the Rhine, and Holland, as alsoacross the Channel into southern England; just as in recent years theSlav borderland of eastern Germany has received a large immigration ofPolish Jews from Russia. When the Polish king in 1571 executed theleader of the Dnieper Cossacks, thousands of these bold borderers lefttheir country and joined the community of the Don; and in 1722 after theDnieper community had been crushed by Peter the Great, a similar exodustook place across the southern boundary into the Crimea, whereby theTartar horde was strengthened, just as a few years before, during anunsuccessful revolt of the Don Cossacks, some two thousand of themalcontents crossed the southern frontier to the Kuban River inCircassia. [410] The establishment of American independence in 1783 saw anexodus of loyalists from the United States into the contiguous districtsof Ontario, New Brunswick, and Spanish Florida, Five years laterdiscontent with the Federal Government for its dilatory opposition tothe occlusion of the Mississippi and the lure of commercial bettermentsent many citizens of the early Trans-Allegheny commonwealths to theSpanish side of the Mississippi, [411] while the Natchez District on theeast bank of the river contained a sprinkling of French who had becomedissatisfied with Spanish rule in Louisiana and changed their domicile. 

These are some of the movements of individuals and groups whichcontribute to the blending of races along every frontier, and make ofthe boundary a variable zone, as opposed to the rigid artificial line interms of which we speak. 

NOTES TO CHAPTER VII

[326] A. W. Greely, Report of the Lady Franklin Bay Expedition, Vol. I, pp. 28-33, 236. Misc. Doc. No. 393. Washington, 1888. 

[327] A. P. Engelhardt, A Russian Province of the North, pp. 123-130. Translated from the Russian. London, 1899. 

[328] Nordenskiold, Voyage of the Vega, pp. 60-62. New York, 1882. 

[329] _Ibid. _, pp. 146, 161. 

[330] Col. F. E. Younghusband, The Heart of a Continent, pp. 194-199. London, 1904. 

[331] A. R. Wallace, Geographical Distribution of Animals, Vol. I, pp. 387-389, 426-431, 436-438. London, 1876. 

[332] _Ibid. _, 409, 424. 

[333] A. Heilprin, Geographical Distribution of Animals, pp. 105-108. London, 1894. 

[334] A. R. Wallace, Geographical Distribution of Animals, Vol. I, pp. 313, 321-322. London, 1876. 

[335] Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu, The Empire of the Tsars, Vol. I, ethnographical map. New York, 1893. 

[336] Eleventh Census of the United States, _Population_, Part I. , mapson pp. Xviii-xxiii. 

[337] L. March Phillipps, In the Desert, pp. 64-68, 77. London, 1905. 

[338] Fully treated in E. C. Semple, American History and Its GeographicConditions, pp. 22-31. Boston, 1903. 

[339] Sir S. W. Baker, The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia, pp. 88, 128-129, 135. Hartford, 1868. 

[340] Norway, Official Publication for the Paris Exhibition, pp. 3-4 andmap. Christiania, 1900. 

[341] J. Partsch, Central Europe, p. 297. London, 1903. 

[342] Cæsar, _Bello Gallico_, Book IV, chap. 3 and Book VI, chap. 23. 

[343] _Ibid. _, Book VI, chap. 10. 

[344] T. Hodgkin, Italy and Her Invaders, Vol. II, p. 56, Note I. Oxford, 1892. 

[345] Helmolt, History of the World, Vol. IV, p. 510. New York, 1902-1906. 

[346] Grote, History of Greece, Vol. IX, chap. 70, pp. 99, 115. NewYork, 1859. 

[347] Dr. Wilhelm Junker, Travels in Africa, pp. 18, 45, 79, 87, 115, 117, 138, 191, 192, 200, 308, 312, 325, 332. Translated from the German. London, 1892. 

[348] H. Barth, Human Society in North Central Africa, _Journal RoyalGeographical Society_, Vol. XXX, pp. 123-124. London, 1860. 

[349] Boyd Alexander, From the Niger to the Nile, Vol. II, pp. 163-164. London, 1907. 

[350] John H. Speke, Discovery of the Sources of the Nile, pp. 74, 89, 91, 94, 95, 173, 176-177, 197. New York, 1868. 

[351] Theodore Roosevelt, The Winning of the West, Vol. I, pp. 50, 70, 135. New York, 1895. 

[352] C. C. Royce, The Cherokee Nations of Indians, p. 140. _FifthAnnual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology_. Washington, 1884. 

[353] Albert J. Pickett, History of Alabama, pp. 79-89, 113-115, 1851. Reprint, Birmingham, 1900. James Adair, History of the American Indians, p. 257. London, 1775. 

[354] _Ibid. _, pp. 252-3, 282. 

[355] Albert J. Pickett, History of Alabama, pp. 133-135. 1851. Reprint, Birmingham, 1900. 

[356] Archibald Little, The Far East, p. 249. Oxford, 1905. 

[357] M. Huc, Travels in Tartary, Thibet and China, 1844-1846, Vol. I, p. 74. Translated from the French. Reprint, Chicago, 1898. 

[358] Nachtigal, _Sahara und Sudan_, Vol. I, pp. 102, 448; Vol. III, pp. 203-205, 314. Leipzig, 1889. Boyd Alexander, From the Niger to the Nile, Vol. II, p. 170. London, 1907. 

[359] Albert J. Pickett, History of Alabama, pp. 118-119. 1851. Reprint, Birmingham, 1900. 

[360] Norway, Official Publication for the Paris Exhibition, pp. 5, 83-84. Christiania, 1900. 

[361] Albert J. Pickett, History of Alabama, pp. 416, 417, 461, 467. 1857. Reprint, Birmingham, 1900. 

[362] C. E. Akers, History of South America, 1854-1904, p. 435. NewYork, 1904. 

[363] H. R. Mill, International Geography, p. 883. New York, 1902. 

[364] Matias Romero, Mexico and the United States, pp. 433-441. NewYork, 1898. 

[365] E. Hertslet, The Map of Europe by Treaty, 1814-1875, Vol. I, pp. 422, 425, 426; Vol. II, p. 1430. 

[366] Eleventh Census of the United States, _Population_, Part I. , mapNo. 10 and p. Cxliii. 

[367] _Ibid. _ Based on comparison of Tables 15 and 33 for the Statesmentioned. 

[368] W. Z. Ripley, Races of Europe, pp. 250-253. New York, 1899. 

[369] W. Deecke, Italy, pp. 325, 347, 349. Translated from the German. London, 1904. 

[370] Sydow-Wagner, _Methodischer Schul-Atlas, Völker undSprachenkarten_, No. 13. Gotha, 1905. W. Z. Ripley, Races of Europe, pp. 282-284. New York, 1899. 

[371] _Ibid. _, pp. 255-257. W. Deecke, Italy, p. 357. London, 1904. 

[372] Sydow-Wagner, _Methodischer Schul-Atlas, Völker undSprachenkarten_ No, 13. Gotha, 1905. 

[373] Hugh R. Mill, International Geography, p. 309. New York, 1902. 

[374] D. M. Wallace, Russia, pp. 151-155. New York, 1904. 

[375] W. Z. Ripley, Races of Europe, p. 362. New York, 1899. 

[376] Archibald Little, The Far East. Map p. 8 and pp. 171-172. Oxford, 1905. M. Huc, Travels in Tartary, Thibet and China, 1844-1846. Vol. I, pp. 2-4, 21, 197-201, 284. Reprint, Chicago, 1898. 

[377] _Ibid. _, Vol. I, pp. 166-170. 

[378] _Ibid. _, Vol II, p. 23. 

[379] _Ibid. _, Vol. I, 312-313. 

[380] _Ibid. _, Vol. II, pp. 319-322, 327. 

[381] M. Huc, Journey through the Chinese Empire, Vol. I, p. 36. NewYork, 1871. 

[382] Isabella Bird Bishop, The Yangtze Valley and Beyond, Vol. II, pp. 70-71, 88, 91, 92, 104-109, 113, 117, 133, 134, 155, 194, 195. London, 1900. 

[383] M. Huc, Travels in Tartary, Thibet and China, 1844-1846, Vol. II, pp. 155-156, 264. Reprint, Chicago, 1898. 

[384] C. A. Sherring, Western Tibet and the British Borderland, pp. 60, 65-73, 205, 347-358. London, 1906. Statistical Atlas of India, pp. 61-62, maps. Calcutta, 1895. _Imperial Gazetteer of India_, Vol. I, p. 295-296. Oxford, 1907. 

[385] Eliza E. Scidmore, Winter India, pp. 106-108. New York, 1903. 

[386] M. Huc, Travels in Tartary, Thibet, and China, 1844-1846, Vol. I, pp. 312-313. Reprint, Chicago, 1898. 

[387] Alexis Krausse, Russia in Asia, pp. 174-175. New York, 1899. 

[388] Charles E. Akers, History of South America, 1854-1904, p. 562. NewYork, 1904. 

[389] James Bryce, Impressions of South Africa, pp. 108-109. New York, 1897. 

[390] O. P. Crosby, Tibet and Turkestan, pp. 15-20. 

[391] H. R. Mill, International Geography, p. 378. New York, 1902. H. Spencer, A Visit to Andorra, _Fortnightly Review_, Vol. 67, pp. 44-60. 1897. 

[392] Wm. Robertson, History of Scotland, pp. 19-20. New York, 1831. TheScotch Borderers, _Littell's Living Age_, Vol 40, p. 180. 

[393] Isabella Bird Bishop, The Yangtze Valley and Beyond, Vol. II, pp. 209-210. London, 1900. 

[394] M. Huc, Travels in Tartary, Thibet and China, 1844-1846, Vol. I, pp. 41, 42, 97. Reprint, Chicago, 1898. 

[395] D. M. Wallace, Russia, pp. 352-356. New York, 1904. Article onCossacks in Encyclopedia Britannica. 

[396] Pallas, Travels in Southern Russia, Vol. I, pp. 126-129; 442; Vol. II, pp. 330-331. London, 1812. 

[397] G. Adam Smith, Historical Geography of the Holy Land, p. 9. NewYork, 1897. 

[398] D. M. Wallace, Russia, p. 358. New York, 1904. Walter K. Kelly, History of Russia, Vol. II, pp. 394-395. London, 1881. 

[399] D. M. Wallace, Russia, p. 298. New York, 1904. 

[400] Alexis Krausse, Russia in Asia, pp. 43, 53. New York, 1899. 

[401] Francis H. Nichol, Through Hidden Shensi, pp. 139-140. New York, 1902. 

[402] M. Hue, Travels in Tartary, Thibet and China, 1844-1846, Vol. I, p. 23. Reprint, Chicago, 1898. 

[403] Theodore Roosevelt, The Winning of the West, Vol. I, pp. 130-132. New York, 1895. 

[404] John Fiske, Old Virginia and Her Neighbors, Vol. II, pp. 311, 315-321. Boston, 1897. 

[405] Archibald Little, The Far East, p. 249. Oxford, 1905. 

[406] Alfred Rambaud, History of Russia, Vol. II, pp. 45, 199-200. Boston, 1886. 

[407] Malcolm Lang, History of Scotland, Vol. I, pp. 42-43. London, 1800. The Scotch Borderland, _Gentleman's Magazine_, Vol. CCLX, p. 191. 1886. 

[408] Friedrich Ratel, History of Mankind, Vol. III, p. 175, London, 1896. 

[409] A. B. Hart, Foundations of American Foreign Policy, pp. 81-82. NewYork, 1901. 

[410] Alfred Rambaud, History of Russia, Vol. II, pp. 45, 50. Boston, 1886. 

[411] Justin Winsor, The Westward Movement, p. 366. Boston, 1899. 

CHAPTER VIII

COAST PEOPLES

[Sidenote: The coast a zone of transition. ]

Of all geographical boundaries, the most important is that between landand sea. The coast, in its physical nature, is a zone of transitionbetween these two dominant forms of the earth's surface; it bears themark of their contending forces, varying in its width with everystronger onslaught of the unresting sea, and with every degree ofpassive resistance made by granite or sandy shore. So too in ananthropo-geographical sense, it is a zone of transition. Now thelife-supporting forces of the land are weak in it, and it becomes merelythe rim of the sea; for its inhabitants the sea means food, clothes, shelter, fuel, commerce, highway, and opportunity. Now the coast isdominated by the exuberant forces of a productive soil, so that theocean beyond is only a turbulent waste and a long-drawn barrier: thecoast is the hem of the land. Neither influence can wholly exclude theother in this amphibian belt, for the coast remains the intermediarybetween the habitable expanse of the land and the international highwayof the sea. The break of the waves and the dash of the spray draw theline beyond which human dwellings cannot spread; for these the shore isthe outermost limit, as for ages also in the long infancy of the races, before the invention of boat and sail, it drew the absolute boundary tohuman expansion. In historical order, its first effect has been that ofa barrier, and for the majority of peoples this it has remained; butwith the development of navigation and the spread of human activitiesfrom the land over sea to other countries, it became the gateway both ofland and sea--at once the outlet for exploration, colonization, andtrade, and the open door through which a continent or island receivescontributions of men or races or ideas from transoceanic shores. Barrierand threshold: these are the _rôles_ which coasts have always played inhistory. To-day we see them side by side. But in spite of the immenseproportions assumed by transmarine intercourse, the fact remains thatthe greater part of the coasts of the earth are for their inhabitantsonly a barrier and not an outlet, or at best only a base for timorousventures seaward that rarely lose sight of the shore. 

[Illustration: GERMAN NORTH SEA COAST. ]

[Sidenote: Width of coastal zones. ]

As intermediary belt between land and sea, the coast becomes a peculiarhabitat which leaves its mark upon its people. We speak of coast strips, coastal plains, "tidewater country, " coast cities; of coast tribes, coast peoples, maritime colonies; and each word brings up a picture of aland or race or settlement permeated by the influences of the sea. Theold term of "coastline" has no application to such an intermediary belt, for it is a zone of measurable width; and this width varies with therelief of the land, the articulation of the coast according as it isuniform or complex, with the successive stages of civilization and thedevelopment of navigation among the people who inhabit it. 

Along highly articulated coasts, showing the interpenetration of sea andland in a broad band of capes and islands separated by tidal channelsand inlets, or on shores deeply incised by river estuaries, or on lowshelving beaches which screen brackish lagoons and salt marshes behindsand reefs and dune ramparts, and which thus form an indeterminateboundary of alternate land and water, the zone character of the coast ina physical sense becomes conspicuous. In an anthropological sense thezone character is clearly indicated by the different uses of its innerand outer edge made by man in different localities and in differentperiods of history. 

[Sidenote: The inner edge. ]

The old German maritime cities of the North Sea and the Baltic werelocated on rivers from 6 to 60 miles from the open sea, always on theinner edge of the coastal belt. Though primarily trading towns, linkedtogether once in the sovereign confederacy of the Hanseatic League, theyfixed their sites on the last spurs of firm ground running out into thesoft, yielding alluvium, which was constantly exposed to inundation. Land high enough to be above the ever threatening flood of river andstorm-driven tide on this flat coast, and solid enough to be built upon, could not be found immediately on the sea. The slight elevations ofsandy "geest" or detrital spurs were limited in area and in timeoutgrown. Hence the older part of all these river towns, from Bremen toKönigsberg, rests upon hills, while in every case the newer and lowerpart is built on piles or artificially raised ground on the alluvium. [412]So Utrecht, the Ultrajectum of the Romans, selected for its site a longraised spur running out from the solid ground of older and higher landinto the water-soaked alluvium of the Netherlands. It was the mostimportant town of all this region before the arts of civilization beganthe conquest by dike and ditch of the amphibian coastal belt which nowcomprises one-fourth of the area and holds one-half the population ofthe Netherlands. [413] So ancient London marked the solid ground at theinner edge of the tidal flats and desolate marshes which lined theThames estuary, as the Roman Camulodunum and its successor Colchester onits steep rise or _dun_ overlooked the marshes of the Stour inlet. [414]Farther north about the Wash, which in Roman days extended far inlandover an area of fens and tidal channels, Cambridge on the River Cam, Huntingdon and Stamford on the Nen, and Lincoln on the Witham--all riverseaports--defined the firm inner edge of this wide low coast. In thesame way the landward rim of the tidal waters and salt marshes of theHumber inlet was described by a semicircle of British and Romantowns--Doncaster, Castleford, Todcaster, and York. [415] On the flat orrolling West African coastland, which lines the long shores of the Gulfof Guinea with a band 30 to 100 miles wide, the sandy, swampy tractsimmediately on the sea are often left uninhabited; native population isdistributed most frequently at the limit of deep water, and here at headof ship-navigation the trading towns are found. [416]

[Sidenote: Inner edge as head of sea navigation. ]

While, on low coasts at any rate, the inner edge tends to mark the limitof settlement advancing from the interior, as the head of sea navigationon river and inlet it has also been the goal of immigrant settlers fromoversea lands. The history of modern maritime colonization, especiallyin America, shows that the aim of regular colonists, as opposed to meretraders, has been to penetrate as far as possible into the land whileretaining communication with the sea, and thereby with the mothercountry. The small boats in use till the introduction of steamnavigation fixed this line far inland and gave the coastal zone agreater breadth than it has at present, and a more regular contour. Incolonial America this inner edge coincided with the "fall-line" of theAtlantic rivers, which was indicated by a series of seaport towns; orwith the inland limit of the tides, which on the St. Lawrence fell aboveQuebec, and on the Hudson just below Albany. 

[Sidenote: Shifting of the inner edge. ]

With the recent increase in the size of vessels, two contrary effectsare noticed. In the vast majority of cases, the inner edge, as marked byports, moves seaward into deeper water, and the zone narrows. The dayswhen almost every tobacco plantation in tidewater Virginia had its ownwharf are long since past, and the leaf is now exported by way ofNorfolk and Baltimore. Seville has lost practically all its sea trade toCadiz, Rouen to Havre, and Dordrecht to Rotterdam. In other cases thezone preserves its original width by the creation of secondary ports onor near the outer edge, reserved only for the largest vessels, while theinner harbor, by dredging its channel, improves its communication withthe sea. Thus arises the phenomenon of twin ports like Bremen andBremerhaven, Dantzig and Neufahrwasser, Stettin and Swinemünde, Bordeauxand Pauillac, London and Tilbury. Or the original harbor seeks topreserve its advantage by canalizing the shallow approach by river, lagoon, or bay, as St. Petersburg by the Pantiloff canal through theshallow reaches of Kronstadt Bay; or Königsberg by its ship canal, carried for 25 miles across the Frisches Haff to the Baltic;[417] orNantes by the Loire ship canal, which in 1892 was built to regain forthe old town the West Indian trade recently intercepted by the risingouter port of St. Nazaire, at the mouth of the Loire estuary. [418] Innorthern latitudes, however, the outer ports on enclosed sea basins likethe Baltic become dominant in the winter, when the inner ports areice-bound. Otherwise the outer port sinks with every improvement in thechannel between the inner port and the sea. Hamburg has so constantlydeepened the Elbe passage that its outport of Cuxhaven has had littlechance to rise, and serves only as an emergency harbor; while on theWeser, maritime leadership has oscillated between Bremen andBremerhaven. [419] So the whole German coast and the Russian Baltic haveseen a more or less irregular shifting backward and forward of maritimeimportance between the inner and the outer edges. 

[Sidenote: Artificial extension of inner edge. ]

The width of the coast zone is not only prevented from contracting bydredging and canaling, but it is even increased. By deepening thechannel, the chief port of the St. Lawrence River has been removed fromQuebec 180 miles upstream to Montreal, and that of the Clyde from PortGlasgow 16 miles to Glasgow itself, so that now the largest oceansteamers come to dock where fifty years ago children waded across thestream at ebb tide. Such artificial modifications, however, are rare, for they are made only where peculiarly rich resources or superior linesof communication with the hinterland justify the expenditures; but theyfind their logical conclusion in still farther extensions of seanavigation into the interior by means of ship canals, where previouslyno waterway existed. Instances are found in the Manchester ship canaland the Welland, which, by means of the St. Lawrence and the GreatLakes, makes Chicago accessible to ocean vessels. Though mandistinguishes between sea and inland navigation in his definitions, inhis practice he is bound by no formula and recognizes no fundamentaldifference where rivers, lakes, and canals are deep enough to admit hissea-going craft. 

Such deep landward protrusions of the head of marine navigation atcertain favored points, as opposed to its recent coastward trend in mostinlets and rivers, increase the irregularity of the inner edge of thecoast zone by the marked discrepancy between its maximum and minimumwidth. They are limited, however, to a few highly civilized countries, and to a few points in those countries. But their presence testifies tothe fact that the evolution of the coast zone with the development ofcivilization shows the persistent importance of this inner edge. 

[Sidenote: Outer edge in original settlement. ]

The outer edge finds its greatest significance, which is for the mostpart ephemeral, in the earlier stages of navigation, maritimecolonization, and in some cases of original settlement. But thisimportance persists only on steep coasts furnishing little or no levelground for cultivation and barred from interior hunting or grazing land;on many coral and volcanic islands of the Pacific Ocean whose outer rimhas the most fertile soil and furnishes the most abundant growth of cocopalms, and whose limited area only half suffices to support thepopulation; and in polar and sub-polar districts, where harsh climaticconditions set a low limit to economic development. In all these regionsthe sea must provide most of the food of the inhabitants, who cantherefore never lose contact with its waters. In mountainous Tierra delFuego, whose impenetrably forested slopes rise directly from the sea, with only here and there a scanty stretch of stony beach, the natives ofthe southern and western coasts keep close to the shore. The straits andchannels yield them all their food, and are the highways for all theirrestless, hungry wanderings. [420] The steep slopes and dense forestspreclude travel by land, and force the wretched inhabitants to live asmuch in their canoes as in their huts. The Tlingit and Haida Indians ofthe mountainous coast of southern Alaska locate their villages on somesmooth sheltered beach, with their houses in a single row facing thewater, and the ever-ready canoe drawn up on shore in front. They selecttheir sites with a view to food supply, and to protection in case ofattack. On the treeless shores of Kadiak Island and of the long narrowAlaska Peninsula near by, the Eskimo choose their village location foran accumulation of driftwood, for proximity to their food supply, and alanding-place for their kayaks and bidarkas. Hence they prefer a pointof land or gravel spit extending out into the sea, or a sand reefseparating a salt-water lagoon from the open sea. The Aleutian Islandersregard only accessibility to the shell-fish on the beach and theirpelagic hunting and fishing; and this consideration has influenced theEskimo tribes of the wide Kuskokwin estuary to such an extent, that theyplace their huts only a few feet above ordinary high tide, where theyare constantly exposed to overflow from the sea. [421] Only among thegreat tidal channels of the Yukon delta are they distributed over thewhole wide coastal zone, even to its inner edge. 

The coast Chukches of northeastern Siberia locate their tent villages onthe sand ramparts between the Arctic Ocean and the freshwater lagoonswhich line this low tundra shore. Here they are conveniently situatedfor fishing and hunting marine animals, while protected against thesummer inundations of the Arctic rivers. [422] The whole western side ofGreenland, from far northern Upernivik south to Cape Farewell, showsboth Eskimo and Danish settlements almost without exception onprojecting points of peninsulas or islands, where the stronger effect ofthe warm ocean current, as well as proximity to the food supply, serveto fix their habitations; although the remains of the old Norsesettlements in general are found in sheltered valleys with summervegetation, striking off from the fiords some 20 miles back from theouter coast. [423] Cæsar found that the ancient Veneti, an immigrantpeople of the southern coast of Brittany, built their towns on thepoints of capes and promontories, sites which gave them ready contactwith the sea and protection against attack from the land side, becauseevery rise of the tide submerged the intervening lowlands. [424] Here asterile plateau hinterland drove them for part of their subsistence tothe water, and the continuous intertribal warfare of small primitivestates to the sea-girt asylums of the capes. 

[Sidenote: Outer edge in early navigation. ]

In the early history of navigation and exploration, striking features ofthis outer coast edge, like headlands and capes, became important seamarks. The promontory of Mount Athos, rising 6, 400 feet above the seabetween the Hellespont and the Thessalian coast, and casting its shadowas far as the market-place of Lemnos, was a guiding point for marinersin the whole northern Aegean. [425] For the ancient Greeks Cape Malia waslong the boundary stone to the unknown wastes of the westernMediterranean, just as later the Pillars of Hercules marked the portalsto the _mare tenebrosum_ of the stormy Atlantic. So the SacredPromontory (Cape St. Vincent) of the Iberian Peninsula defined forGreeks and Romans the southwestern limit of the habitable world. [426]Centuries later the Portuguese marked their advance down the west coastof Africa, first by Cape Non, which so long said "No!" to the strugglingmariner, then by Cape Bojador, and finally by Cape Verde. 

In coastwise navigation, minor headlands and inshore islands were pointsto steer by; and in that early maritime colonization, which had chieflya commercial aim, they formed the favorite spots for trading stations. The Phoenicians in their home country fixed their settlements bypreference on small capes, like Sidon and Berytus, or on inshoreislets, like Tyre and Aradus, [427] and for their colonies and tradingstations they chose similar sites, whether on the coast of Sicily, [428]Spain, or Morocco. [429] Carthage was located on a small hill-crowned capeprojecting out into the Bay of Carthage. The two promontories embracingthis inlet were edged with settlements, especially the northern arm, which held Utica and Hippo, [430] the latter on the site of the modernFrench naval station of Bizerta. 

[Illustration: MAP OF ANCIENT PHOENICIAN AND GREEK COLONIES. ]

[Sidenote: Outer edge and piracy. ]

In this early Hellenic world, when Greek sea-power was in its infancy, owing to the fear of piracy, cities were placed a few miles back fromthe coast; but with the partial cessation of this evil, sites on shoreand peninsula were preferred as being more accessible to commerce, [431]and such of the older towns as were in comparatively easy reach of theseaboard established there each its own port. Thus we find the ancienturban pairs of Argos and Nauplia, Troezene and Pogon, Mycenæ andEiones, Corinth commanding its Aegean port of Cenchreæ 8 miles away onthe Saronic Gulf to catch the Asiatic trade, and connected by a walledthoroughfare a mile and a half long with Lechæum, a second harbor onthe Corinthian Gulf which served the Italian commerce. [432] In the samegroup belonged Athens and its Piræus, Megara and Pegæ, Pergamus andElaæ in western Asia Minor. [433] These ancient twin cities may be takento mark the two borders of the coast zone. Like the modern ones which wehave considered above, their historical development has shown an advancefrom the inner toward the outer edge, though owing to different causes. However, the retired location of the Baltic and North Sea towns ofGermany served as a partial protection against the pirates who, in theMiddle Ages, scoured these coasts. [434] Lubeck, originally located nearerthe sea than at present, and frequently demolished by them, was finallyrebuilt farther inland up the Trave River. [435] Later the port ofTravemünde grew up at the mouth of the little estuary. 

[Sidenote: Outer edge in colonization. ]

The early history of maritime colonization shows in general twogeographic phases: first, the appropriation of the islet and headlandoutskirts of the seaboard, and later--it may be much later--an advancetoward the inner edge of the coast, or yet farther into the interior. Progress from the earlier to the maturer phase depends upon the socialand economic development of the colonizers, as reflected in theirvaluation of territorial area. The first phase, the outcome of a lowestimate of the value of land, is best represented by the Phoenician andearliest Greek colonies, whose purposes were chiefly commercial, and whosought merely such readily accessible coastal points as furnished thebest trading stations on the highway of the Mediterranean and theadjacent seas. The earlier Greek colonies, like those of the Triopiumpromontory forming the south-western angle of Asia Minor, Chalcidice, the Thracian Chersonesus, Calchedon, Byzantium, the Pontic Heraclea, andSinope, were situated on peninsulas or headlands, that would afford aconvenient anchor ground; or, like Syracuse and Mitylene, on smallinshore islets, which were soon outgrown, and from which the towns thenspread to the mainland near by. The advantages of such sites lay intheir accessibility to commerce, and in their natural protection againstthe attack of strange or hostile mainland tribes. For a nation ofmerchants, satisfied with the large returns but also with the ephemeralpower of middlemen, these considerations sufficed. While the Phoeniciantrading posts in Africa dotted the outer rim of the coast, the inneredge of the zone was indicated by Libyan or Ethiopian towns, where theinhabitants of the interior bartered their ivory and skins for theproducts of Tyre. [436] So that commercial expansion of the Arabs down theeast coast of Africa in the first and again in the tenth century seizedupon the offshore islands of Zanzibar, Pemba, and Mafia, the smallinshore islets like Mombasa and Lamu, and the whole outer rim of thecoast from the equator southward to the Rovuma River. [437] The Sultan ofZanzibar, heir to this coastal strip, had not expanded it a decade ago, when he had to relinquish the long thread of his continentalpossessions. 

[Sidenote: Inland advance of colonies. ]

But when a people has advanced to a higher conception of colonization asan outlet for national as well as commercial expansion, and when it seesthat the permanent prosperity of both race and trade in the new localitydepends upon the occupation of larger tracts of territory and thedevelopment of local resources as a basis for exchanges, theirsettlements spread from the outer rim of the coasts to its inner edgeand yet beyond, if alluvial plains and river highways are present totempt inland expansion. Such was the history of many later colonies ofthe Greeks[438] and Carthaginians, and especially of most modern colonialmovements, for these have been dominated by a higher estimate of thevalue of land. 

After the long Atlantic journey, the outposts of the American coast werewelcome resting-places to the early European voyagers, but, owing totheir restricted area and therefore limited productivity, they were soonabandoned, or became mere bases for inland expansion. The little islandof Cuttyhunk, off southern Massachusetts, was the site of Gosnold'sabortive attempt at colonization in 1602, like Raleigh's attempt onRoanoke Island in 1585, and the later one of Popham on the easternheadland of Casco Bay. The Pilgrims paused at the extremity of Cape Cod, and again on Clark's Island, before fixing their settlement on PlymouthBay. Monhegan Island, off the Maine coast, was the site of an earlyEnglish trading post, which, however, lasted only from 1623 to 1626;[439]and the same dates fix the beginning and end of a fishing and tradingstation established on Cape Ann, and removed later to Salem harbor. TheSwedes made their first settlement in America on Cape Henlopen, at theentrance of Delaware Bay; but their next, only seven years later, theylocated well up the estuary of the Delaware River. Thus for the moderncolonist the outer edge of the coast is merely the gateway of the land. From it he passes rapidly to the settlement of the interior, whereverfertile soil and abundant resources promise a due return upon his labor. 

[Sidenote: Interpenetration of land and sea. ]

Since it is from the land, as the inhabited portion of the earth'ssurface, that all maritime movements emanate, and to the land that alloversea migrations are directed, the reciprocal relations between landand sea are largely determined by the degree of accessibility existingbetween the two. This depends primarily upon the articulation of aland-mass, whether it presents an unbroken contour like Africa andIndia, or whether, like Europe and Norway, it drops a fringe ofpeninsulas and a shower of islands into the bordering ocean. Meredistance from the sea bars a country from its vivifying contact; everyprotrusion of an ocean artery into the heart of a continent makes thatheart feel the pulse of life on far-off, unseen shores. The Baltic inletwhich makes a seaport of St. Petersburg 800 miles (1, 300 kilometers)back from the western rim of Europe, brings Atlantic civilization tothis half-Asiatic side of the continent. The solid front presented bythe Iberian Peninsula and Africa to the Atlantic has a narrow crack atGibraltar, whence the Mediterranean penetrates inland 2, 300 miles (3, 700kilometers), and converts the western foot of the Caucasus and the rootsof the Lebanon Mountains into a seaboard. By means of the Arabian Sea, the Indian Ocean runs northward 1, 300 miles (2, 200 kilometers) from CapeComorin to meet the Indus delta; and then turns westward 700 milesfarther through the Oman and Persian gulfs to receive the boats from theTigris and Euphrates. Such marine inlets create islands and peninsulas;which are characterized by proximity to the sea on all or many sides;and in the interior of the continents they produce every degree ofnearness, shading off into inaccessible remoteness from the wateryhighway of the deep. 

The success with which such indentations open up the interior of thecontinents depends upon the length of the inlets and the size of theland-mass in question. Africa's huge area and unbroken contour combineto hold the sea at arm's length, Europe's deep-running inlets open thatsmall continent so effectively that Kazan, Russia's most eastern city ofconsiderable size, is only 750 miles (1, 200 kilometers) distant from thenearest White Sea, Baltic, and Azof ports. Asia, the largest of all thecontinents, despite a succession of big indentations that invade itsperiphery from Sinai peninsula to East Cape, has a vast inland areahopelessly far from the surrounding oceans. 

[Sidenote: Ratio of shoreline to area. ]

In order to determine the coast articulation of any country orcontinent, Carl Ritter and his followers divided area by shoreline, thelatter a purely mathematical line representing the total contour length. By this method Europe's ratio is one linear mile of coast to 174 squaremiles of area, Australia's 1:224, Asia's 1:490, and Africa's 1:700. Thismeans that Europe's proportion of coast is three times that of Asia andfour times that of Africa; that a country like Norway, with a shorelineof 12, 000 miles traced in and out along the fiords and around the largerislands, [440] has only 10 square miles of area for every mile ofseaboard, while Germany, with every detail of its littoral included inthe measurement, has only 1, 515 miles of shoreline and a ratio of onemile of coast to every 159 square miles of area. 

The criticism has been made against this method that it compares twounlike measures, square and linear, which moreover increase or decreasein markedly different degrees, according as larger or smaller units areused. But for the purposes of anthropo-geography the method is valid, inasmuch as it shows the amount of area dependent for its marine outlineupon each mile of littoral. A coast, like every other boundary, performsthe important function of intermediary in the intercourse of a land withits neighbors; hence the length of this sea boundary materially affectsthis function. Area and coastline are not dead mathematical quantities, but like organs of one body stand in close reciprocal activity, and canbe understood only in the light of their persistent mutual relations. The division of the area of a land by the length of its coastline yieldsa quotient which to the anthropo-geographer is not a dry figure, but anindex to the possible relations between seaboard and interior. Acomparison of some of these ratios will illustrate this fact. 

Germany's shoreline, traced in contour without including details, measures 787 miles; this is just one-fifth that of Italy and two-fifthsthat of France, so that it is short. But since Germany's area is nearlytwice Italy's and a little larger than that of France, it has 267 squaremiles of territory for every mile of coast, while Italy has only 28square miles, and France 106. Germany has towns that are 434 miles fromthe nearest seaboard, but in Italy the most inland point is only 148miles from the Mediterranean. [441] If we turn now to the United Statesand adopt Mendenhall's estimate of its general or contour coastline as5, 705 miles, we find that our country has 530 square miles of areadependent for its outlet upon each mile of seaboard. This means that ourcoast has a heavy task imposed upon it, and that its commercial andpolitical importance is correspondingly enhanced; that the extension ofour Gulf of Mexico littoral by the purchase of Florida and theannexation of Texas were measures of self-preservation, and that theunbroken contour and mountain-walled face of our Pacific littoral is aserious national handicap. 

[Sidenote: Criticism of this formula. ]

But this method is open to the legitimate and fundamental criticismthat, starting from the conception of a coast as a mere line instead ofa zone, it ignores all those features which belong to every littoral asa strip of the earth's surface--location, geologic structure, relief, area, accessibility to the sea in front and to the land behind, allwhich vary from one part of the world's seaboard to another, and serveto differentiate the human history of every littoral. Moreover, of allparts of the earth's surface, the coast as the hem of the sea and land, combining the characters of each, is most complex. It is the coast as ahuman habitat that primarily concerns anthropo-geography. A carefulanalysis of the multifarious influences modifying one another in thismingled environment of land and water reveals an intricate interplay ofgeographic forces, varying from inland basin to marginal sea, frommarginal sea to open ocean, and changing from one historical period toanother--an interplay so mercurial that it could find only a mostinadequate expression in the rigid mathematical formula of Carl Ritter. 

[Sidenote: Accessibility of coasts from hinterland. ]

As the coast, then, is the border zone between the solid, inhabited landand the mobile, untenanted deep, two important factors in its historyare the accessibility of its back country on the one hand, and theaccessibility of the sea on the other. A littoral population barred fromits hinterland by mountain range or steep plateau escarpment or deserttract feels little influence from the land; level or fertile soil is toolimited in amount to draw inland the growing people, intercourse is toodifficult and infrequent, transportation too slow and costly. Hence theinhabitants of such a coast are forced to look seaward for their racialand commercial expansion, even if a paucity of good harbors limits theaccessibility of the sea; they must lead a somewhat detached andindependent existence, so far as the territory behind them is concerned. Here the coast, as a peripheral organ of the interior, as the outletfor its products, the market for its foreign exchanges, and the mediumfor intercourse with its maritime neighbors, sees its special functionimpaired. But it takes advantage of its isolation and the protection ofa long sea boundary to detach itself politically from its hinterland, asthe histories of Phoenicia, the Aegean coast of Asia Minor, Dalmatia, the republics of Amalfi, Venice, and Genoa, the county of Barcelona, andPortugal abundantly prove. At the same time it profits by its seaboardlocation to utilize the more varied fields of maritime enterprise beforeit, in lieu of the more or less forbidden territory behind it. Theheight and width of the landward barrier, the number and practicabilityof the passways across it, and especially the value of the hinterland'sproducts in relation to their bulk, determine the amount of intercoursebetween that hinterland and its mountain or desert barred littoral. 

[Sidenote: Mountain-barred hinterlands. ]

The interior is most effectively cut off from the periphery, where amountain range or a plateau escarpment traces the inner line of thecoastland, as in the province of Liguria in northern Italy, Dalmatia, the western or Malabar coast of India, most parts of Africa, and longstretches of the Pacific littoral of the Americas. The highland thatbacks the Norwegian coast is crossed by only one railroad, that passingthrough the Trondhjem depression; and this barrier has served to keepNorway's historical connection with Sweden far less intimate than withDenmark. The long inlet of the Adriatic, bringing the sea well into theheart of Southern Europe, has seen nevertheless a relatively smallmaritime development, owing to the wall of mountains that everywhereshuts out the hinterland of its coasts. The greatness of Venice wasintimately connected with the Brenner Pass over the Alps on the onehand, and the trade of the eastern Mediterranean on the other. DespiteAustro-Hungary's crucial interest in the northeast corner of theAdriatic as a maritime outlet for this vast inland empire, and itsherculean efforts at Trieste and Fiume to create harbors and to connectthem by transmontane railroads with the valley of the Danube, themaritime development of this coast is still restricted, and much ofAustria's trade goes out northward by German ports. [442] Farther southalong the Dalmatian and Albanian coasts, the deep and sheltered baysbetween the half-submerged roots of the Dinaric Alps have developed onlylocal importance, because they lack practicable connection with theinterior. This was their history too in early Greek and Roman days, forthey found only scant support in the few caravans that crossed by theRoman road to Dyrrachium to exchange the merchandise of the Aegean forthe products of the Ionian Isles. Spain has always suffered from thefact that her bare, arid, and unproductive tableland almost everywhererises steeply from her fertile and densely populated coasts; andtherefore that the two have been unable to coöperate either for theproduction of a large maritime commerce or for national political unity. Here the diverse conditions of the littoral and the wall of the greatcentral terrace of the country have emphasized that tendency todefection that belongs to every periphery, and therefore necessitated astrong centralized government to consolidate the restive maritimeprovinces with their diverse Galician, Basque, Catalonian, andAndalusian folk into one nation with the Castilians of the plateau. [443]

[Sidenote: Accessible hinterlands. ]

Where mountain systems run out endwise into the sea, the longitudinalvalleys with their drainage streams open natural highways from theinterior to the coast. This structure has made the Atlantic side of theIberian Peninsula far more open than its Mediterranean front, andtherefore contributed to its leadership in maritime affairs since 1450. So from the shores of Thrace to the southern point of the Peloponnesus, all the valleys of Greece open out on the eastern or Asiatic side. Hereevery mountain-flanked bay has had its own small hinterland to drawupon, and every such interior has been accessible to the civilization ofthe Aegean; here was concentrated the maritime and cultural life ofHellas. [444] The northern half of Andean Colombia, by way of the parallelAtrato, Rio Cauco, and Magdalena valleys, has supported the activitiesof its Caribbean littoral, and through these avenues has received suchforeign influences as might penetrate to inland Bogota. In like manner, the mountain-ridged peninsula of Farther India keeps its interior intouch with its leading ports through its intermontane valleys of theIrawadi, Salwin, Menam, and Mekong rivers. 

Low coasts rising by easy gradients to wide plains, like those ofnorthern France, Germany, southern Russia, and the Gulf seaboard of theUnited States, profit by an accessible and extensive hinterland. Occasionally, however, this advantage is curtailed by a politicalboundary reinforced by a high protective tariff, as Holland, Belgium, and East Prussia[445] know to their sorrow. 

These low hems of the land, however, often meet physical obstructions toready communications with the interior in the silted inlets, shallowlagoons, marshes, or mangrove swamps of the littoral itself. Here thelarger drainage streams give access across this amphibian belt to thesolid land behind. Where they flow into a tide-swept bay like the NorthSea or the English Channel, they scour out their beds and preserve theconnection between sea and land;[446] but debouchment into a tidelessbasin like the Caspian or the Gulf of Mexico, even for such mightystreams as the Volga and the Mississippi, sees the slow silting up oftheir mouths and the restriction of their agency in opening up thehinterland. Thus the character of the bordering sea may help todetermine the accessibility of the coast from the land side. 

[Sidenote: Accessibility of coasts from the sea. ]

Its accessibility from the sea depends primarily upon its degree ofarticulation; and this articulation depends upon whether the littoralbelt has suffered elevation or subsidence. When the inshore sea restsupon an uplifted bottom, the contour of the coast is smooth andunbroken, because most of the irregularities of surface have beenoverlaid by a deposit of waste from the land; so it offers no harborexcept here and there a silted river mouth, while it shelves off througha broad amphibian belt of tidal marsh, lagoon, and sand reef to ashallow sea. Such is the coast of New Jersey, most of the Gulf seaboardof the United States and Mexico, the Coromandel coast of India, and thelong, low littoral of Upper Guinea. Such coasts harbor a population offishermen living along the strands of their placid lagoons, [447] andstimulate a timid inshore navigation which sometimes develops toextensive coastwise intercourse, where a network of lagoons and deltaicchannels forms a long inshore passage, as in Upper Guinea, but whichfears the break of the surf outside. [448]

The rivers draining these low uplifted lands are deflected from theirstraight path to the sea by coastwise deposits, and idly trail along formiles just inside the outer beach; or they are split up into numerousoffshoots among the silt beds of a delta, to find their way by shallow, tortuous channels to the ocean, so that they abate their value ashighways between sea and land. The silted mouths of the Nile excludedthe larger vessels even of Augustus Cæsar's time and admitted only theirlighters, [449] just as to-day the lower Rufigi River loses much of itsvalue to German East Africa because of its scant hospitality to vesselscoming from the sea. 

[Sidenote: Embayed coasts. ]

The effect of subsidence, even on a low coastal plain, is to increaseaccessibility from the sea by flooding the previous river valleys andtransforming them into a succession of long shallow inlets, alternatingwith low or hilly tongues of land. Such embayed coasts form our Atlanticseaboard from Delaware Bay, through Chesapeake Bay to Pamlico Sound, theNorth Sea face of England, the funnel-shaped "förden" or firths on theeastern side of Jutland and Schleswig-Holstein, and the ragged sounds or"Bodden" that indent the Baltic shore of Germany from the Bay of Lubeckto the mouth of the Oder River. [450] Although the shallowness of thebordering sea and the sand-bars and sand reefs which characterize allflat coasts here also exclude the largest vessels, such coasts havenevertheless ample contact with both land and sea. They tend to develop, therefore, the activities appropriate to both. A fertile soil andabundant local resources, as in tidewater Maryland and Virginia, makethe land more attractive than the sea; the inhabitants become farmersrather than sailors. On the other hand, an embayed coastland promisinglittle return to the labor of tillage, but with abundant fisheries and asuperior location for maritime trade, is sure to profit by theaccessible sea, and achieve the predominant maritime activity whichcharacterized the mediæval Hanse Towns of northern Germany and colonialNew England. 

[Sidenote: Maritime activity on steep embayed coasts. ]

Subsidence that brings the beat of the surf against the bolder reliefsof the land produces a ragged, indented coast, deep-water inletspenetrating far into the country, hilly or mountainous tongues of landrunning far out into the sea and breaking up into a swarm of islands androcks, whose outer limits indicate approximately the old prediluvialline of shore. [451] Such are the fiord regions of Norway, southernAlaska, British Columbia, Greenland, and southern Chile; the Rias orsubmerged river valley coast of northwestern Spain; and the deeplysunken mountain flank of Dalmatia, whose every lateral valley has becomea bay or a strait between mainland and island. All these coasts arecharacterized by a close succession of inlets, a limited amount of levelcountry for settlement or cultivation, and in their rear a steep slopeimpeding communication with their hinterland. Inaccessibility from theland, a high degree of accessibility from the sea, and a paucity oflocal resources unite to thrust the inhabitants of such coasts out uponthe deep, to make of them fishermen, seamen, and ocean carriers. Thesame result follows where no barrier on the land side exists, but wherea granitic or glaciated soil in the interior discourages agriculture andlandward expansion, as in Brittany, Maine, and Newfoundland. In allthese the land repels and the sea attracts. Brittany furnishes one-fifthof all the sailors in France's merchant marine, [452] and its pelagicfishermen sweep the seas from Newfoundland to Iceland. Three-fifths ofthe maritime activity of the whole Austrian Empire is confined to theragged coast of Dalmatia, which furnishes to-day most of the sailors forthe imperial marine, just as in Roman days it manned the Adriatic fleetof the Cæsars. [453] The Haida, Tsimshean, and Tlingit Indians of theragged western coast of British Columbia and southern Alaska spreadtheir villages on the narrow tide-swept hem of the land, and subsistchiefly by the generosity of the deep. They are poor landsmen, butexcellent boat-makers and seamen, venturing sometimes twenty-five milesout to sea to gather birds' eggs from the outermost fringe of rocks. 

[Sidenote: Contrasted coastal belts. ]

As areas of elevation or subsidence are, as a rule, extensive, itfollows that coasts usually present long stretches of smooth simpleshoreline, or a long succession of alternating inlet and headland. Therefore different littoral belts show marked contrasts in their degreeof accessibility to the sea, and their harbors appear in extensivegroups of one type--fiords, river estuaries, sand or coral reef lagoons, and embayed mountain roots. A sudden change in relief or in geologichistory sees one of these types immediately succeeded by a long-drawngroup of a different type. Such a contrast is found between the Balticand North Sea ports of Denmark and Germany, the eastern and southernseaboards of England, the eastern and western sides of Scotland, and thePacific littoral of North America north and south of Juan de FucaStrait, attended by a contrasted history. 

A common morphological history, marked by mountain uplift, glaciation, and subsidence, has given an historical development similar in not a fewrespects to the fiord coasts of New England, Norway, Iceland, Greenland, the Alaskan "panhandle, " and southern Chile. Large subsidence areas onthe Mediterranean coasts from the Strait of Gibraltar to the Bosporushave in essential features duplicated each other's histories, just asthe low infertile shores of the Baltic from Finland to the Skager Rackhave had much in common in their past development. 

Where, however, a purely local subsidence, as in Kamerun Bay and OldCalabar on the elsewhere low monotonous stretch of the Upper Guineacoast, [454] or a single great river estuary, as in the La Plata and theColumbia, affords a protected anchorage on an otherwise portless shore, such inlets assume increased importance. In the long unbroken reach ofour Pacific seaboard, San Francisco Bay and the Columbia estuary are ofinestimable value; while, by the treaty of 1848 with Mexico, theinternational boundary line was made to bend slightly south of west fromthe mouth of the Gila River to the coast, in order to include in theUnited States territory the excellent harbor of San Diego. The merenicks in the rim of Southwest Africa constituting Walfish Bay and AngraPequena assume considerable value as trading stations and places ofrefuge along that 1, 200-mile reach of inhospitable coast extending fromCape Town north to Great Fish Bay. [455] It is worthy of notice in passingthat, though both of these small inlets lie within the territory ofGerman Southwest Africa, Walfish Bay with 20 miles of coast on eitherside is a British possession, and that two tiny islets which commandsthe entrance to the harbor of Angra Pequena, also belong to GreatBritain. On the uniform coast of East Africa, the single considerableindentation formed by Delagoa Bay assumes immense importance, which, however, is due in part to the mineral wealth of its Transvaalhinterland. From this point northward for 35 degrees of latitude, ariver mouth, like that fixing the site of Beira, or an inshore isletaffording protected harborage, like that of Mombasa, serves as thesingle ocean gateway of a vast territory, and forms the terminus of arailroad--proof of its importance. 

[Sidenote: Evolution of ports. ]

The maritime evolution of all amply embayed coasts, except in Arctic andsub-Arctic regions inimical to all historical development, shows in itshighest stage the gradual elimination of minor ports, and theconcentration of maritime activity in a few favored ones, which have thedeepest and most capacious harbors and the best river, canal, orrailroad connection with the interior. The earlier stages are marked bya multiplicity of ports, showing in general activity nearly similar inamount and in kind. England's merchant marine in the fourteenth centurywas distributed in a large group of small but important ports on thesouthern coast, all which, owing to their favorable location, wereengaged in the French and Flemish trade; and in another group on theeast coast, reaching from Hull to Colchester, which participated in theFlemish, Norwegian, and Baltic trade. [456] Most of these have nowdeclined before the overpowering competition of a few such seaboardmarts as London, Hull, and Southampton. The introduction of steamtrawlers into the fishing fleets has in like manner led to theconcentration of the fishermen in a few large ports with good railroadfacilities, such as Aberdeen and Grimsby, while the fishing villagesthat fringed the whole eastern and southern coasts have been graduallydepopulated. [457] So in colonial days, when New England was little morethan a cordon of settlements along that rock-bound littoral, almostevery inlet had its port actively engaged in coastwise and foreigncommerce in the West Indies and the Guinea Coast, in cod and mackerelfisheries, in whaling and shipbuilding, and this with only slight localvariations. This widespread homogeneity of maritime activity has beensucceeded by strict localization and differentiation, and reduction frommany to few ports. So, for the whole Atlantic seaboard of the UnitedStates, evolution of seaports has been marked by increase of sizeattended by decrease of numbers. 

[Sidenote: Offshore islands. ]

A well dissected coast, giving ample contact with the sea, often failsnevertheless to achieve historical importance, unless outlying islandsare present to ease the transition from inshore to pelagic navigation, and to tempt to wider maritime enterprise. The long sweep of theEuropean coast from northern Norway to Brittany has played out asignificant part of its history in that procession of islands formed byIceland, the Faroes, Shetland, Orkneys, Great Britain, Ireland and theChannel Isles, whether it was the navigator of ancient Armorica steeringhis leather-sailed boat to the shores of Cæsar's Britain, or the modernBreton fisherman pulling in his nets off the coasts of distant Iceland. The dim outline of mountainous Cyprus, seen against a far-away horizonfrom the slopes of Lebanon, beckoned the Phoenician ship-master thitherto trade and to colonize, just as the early Etruscan merchants passedfrom their busy ironworks on the island of Elba over the narrow straitto visible Corsica. [458] It was on the eastern side of Greece, with itsdeep embayments, its valleys opening out to the Aegean, with its 483islands scattered thickly as stars in the sky, and its Milky Way of theCyclades leading to the deep, rich soils of the Asia Minor coast, withits sea-made contact with all the stimulating influences and dangersemanating from the Asiatic littoral, that Hellenic history played itsimpressive drama. Here was developed the spirit of enterprise thatcarried colonies to far western Sicily and Italy, while the western orrear side had a confined succession of local events, scarce worthy thename of history. Neither mountain-walled Epirus nor Corcyra had anHellenic settlement in 735 B. C. , at a date when the eastern Greeks hadreached the Ionian coast of the Aegean and had set up a lonely group ofcolonies even on the Bay of Naples. Turning to America, we find that theAntilles received their population from the only two tribes, first theArawaks and later the Caribs, who ever reached the indented northerncoast of South America between the Isthmus of Panama and the mouth ofthe Orinoco. Here the small islands of the Venezuelan coast, often insight, lured these peoples of river and shore to open-sea navigation, and drew them first to the Windward Isles, then northward step by stepor island by island, to Hayti and Cuba. [459]

[Sidenote: Offshore islands as vestibules of the mainland. ]

In all these instances, offshore islands tempt to expansion and therebyadd to the historical importance of the nearby coast. Frequently, however, they achieve the same result by offering advantageous footholdsto enterprising voyagers from remote lands, and become the medium forinfusing life into hitherto dead coasts. The long monotonous littoral ofEast Africa from Cape Guadafui to the Cape of Good Hope, before theplanting here of Portuguese way-stations on the road to India in thesixteenth century, was destitute of historical significance, except thatstretch opposite the islands of Zanzibar and Pemba, which Arab merchantsin the tenth century appropriated as the basis for their slave and ivorytrade. The East Indies and Ceylon have been so many offshore stationswhence, first through the Portuguese, and later through the Dutch andEnglish, European influences percolated into southeastern Asia. Asia, with its island-strewn shores, has diffused its influences over a broadzone of the western Pacific, and through the agency of its activerestless Malays, even halfway across that ocean. In contrast, thewestern coast of the Americas, a stretch nearly 10, 000 miles from Tierradel Fuego to the Aleutian chain, has seen its aboriginal inhabitantsbarred from seaward expansion by the lack of offshore islands, and itsentrance upon the historical stage delayed till recent times. 

In general it can be said that islandless seas attain a later historicaldevelopment than those whose expanse is rendered less forbidding byhospitable fragments of land. This factor, as well as its locationremote from the old and stimulating civilization of Syria and AsiaMinor, operated to retard the development of the western Mediterraneanlong after the eastern basin had reached its zenith. 

[Sidenote: Previous habitat of coast-dwellers. ]

Coast-dwelling peoples exhibit every degree of intimacy with the water, from the amphibian life of many Malay tribes who love the wash of thewaves beneath their pile-built villages, to the Nama Bushmen who inhabitthe dune-walled coast of Southwest Africa, and know nothing of the sea. In the resulting nautical development the natural talents and habits ofthe people are of immense influence; but these in turn have been largelydetermined by the geographical environment of their previous habitat, whether inland or coastal, and by the duration in time, as well as thedegree and necessity, of their contact with the sea. The Phoenicians, who, according to their traditions as variously interpreted, came to thecoast of Lebanon either from the Persian Gulf or the Red Sea, [460]brought to their favorable maritime location a different endowment fromthat of the land-trading Philistines, who moved up from the south tooccupy the sand-choked shores of Palestine, [461] or from that of theJews, bred to the grasslands of Mesopotamia and the gardens of Judea, who only at rare periods in their history forced their way to thesea. [462] The unindented coast stretching from Cape Carmel south to theNile delta never produced a maritime people and never achieved maritimeimportance, till a race of experienced mariners like the Greeks plantedtheir colonies and built their harbor moles on the shores of Sharon andPhilistia. [463] So on the west face of Africa, from the Senegal southwardalong the whole Guinea Coast to Benguela, all evidences of kinship andtradition among the local tribes point to an origin on the interiorplains and a recent migration seaward, [464] so that no previous schoolingenabled them to exploit the numerous harbors along this littoral, as didlater the sea-bred Portuguese and English. 

[Sidenote: Habitability of coasts as factor in maritime development. ]

Not only the accessibility of the coast from the sea, but also itshabitability enters as a factor into its historical importance. A sandydesert coast, like that of Southwest Africa and much of the Peruvianlittoral, or a sterile mountain face, like that of Lower California, excludes the people of the country from the sea. Saldanha Bay, the onegood natural harbor on the west coast of Cape Colony, is worthless evento the enterprising English, because it has no supply of freshwater. [465] The slowness of the ancient Egyptians to take the short stepforward from river to marine navigation can undoubtedly be traced to thefact that the sour swamps, barren sand-dunes, and pestilential marsheson the seaward side of the Nile delta must have always been sparselypopulated as they are to-day, [466] and that a broad stretch of sandy wasteformed their Red Sea littoral. 

On the other hand, where the hem of the continents is fertile enough tosupport a dense population, a large number of people are brought intocontact with the sea, even where no elaborate articulation lengthens theshoreline. When this teeming humanity of a garden littoral is barredfrom landward expansion by desert or mountain, or by the alreadyovercrowded population of its own hinterland, it wells over the brim ofits home country, no matter how large, and overflows to other landsacross the seas. The congested population of the fertile and indentedcoast of southern China, though not strictly speaking a sea-faringpeople, found an outlet for their redundant humanity and their commercein the tropical Sunda Islands. By the sixth century their trading junkswere doing an active business in the harbors of Java, Sumatra, andMalacca; they had even reached Ceylon and the Persian Gulf, and a littlelater were visiting the great focal market of Aden at the entrance ofthe Red Sea. [467] A strong infusion of Chinese blood improved the Malaystock in the Sunda Islands, and later in North Borneo and certain of thePhilippines, whither their traders and emigrants turned in thefourteenth century, when they found their opportunities curtailed in thearchipelago to the south by the spread of Islam. [468] Now the "yellowperil" threatens the whole circle of these islands from Luzon toSumatra. 

Similarly India, first from its eastern, later from its western coast, sent a stream of traders, Buddhist priests, and colonists to the SundaIslands, and especially to Java, as early as the fifth century of ourera, whence Indian civilization, religion, and elements of the Sanskrittongue spread to Borneo, Sumatra, Bali, Lombok, and even to somesmaller islands among the Molucca group. [469] The Hindus became thedominant commercial nation of the Indian Ocean long before the greatdevelopment of Arabian sea power, and later shared the trade of the EastAfrican coast with the merchants of Oman and Yemen. [470] To-day they forma considerable mercantile class in the ports of Mascat, Aden, Zanzibar, Pemba, and Natal. 

[Sidenote: Geographic conditions for brilliant maritime development. ]

On the coasts of large fertile areas like China and India, however, maritime activity comes not as an early, but as an eventual development, assumes not a dominant, but an incidental historical importance. Thecoastlands appearing early on the maritime stage of history, and playinga brilliant part in the drama of the sea, have been habitable, but theirtillable fields have been limited either in fertility, as in NewEngland, or in amount, as in Greece, or in both respects, as in Norway. But if blessed with advantageous location for international trade andmany or even a few fairly good harbors, such coasts tend to develop widemaritime dominion and colonial expansion. [471]

Great fertility in a narrow coastal belt barred from the interior servesto concentrate and energize the maritime activities of the nation. The20-mile wide plain stretching along the foot of the Lebanon range fromAntioch to Cape Carmel is even now the garden of Syria. [472] In ancientPhoenician days its abundant crops and vines supported luxuriant citiesand a teeming population, which sailed and traded and colonized to theAtlantic outskirts of Europe and Africa. Moreover, their maritimeventures had a wide sweep as early as 1100 B. C. Quite similar to thePhoenician littoral and almost duplicating its history, is the Omanseaboard of eastern Arabia. Here again a fertile coastal plain sprinkledwith its "hundred villages, " edged with a few tolerable harbors, andbacked by a high mountain wall with an expanse of desert beyond, produced a race of bold and skilful navigators, [473] who in the MiddleAges used their location between the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea tomake themselves the dominant maritime power of the Indian ocean. Withthem maritime expansion was typically wide in its sweep and rapid in itsdevelopment. Even before Mohammed's time they had reached India; butunder the energizing influences of Islam, by 758 they had established aflourishing trade with China, for which they set up way stations orstaple-points in Canton and the Sunda Islands. [474] First as voyagers andmerchants, then as colonists, they came, bringing their wares and theirreligion to these distant shores. Marco Polo, visiting Sumatra in 1260, tells us the coast population was "Saracen, " but this was probably morein religion than in blood. [475] Oman ventures, seconded by those ofYemen, reached as far south as east. The trading stations of Madisha andBarawa were established on the Somali coast of East Africa in 908, andKilwa 750 miles further south in 925. In the seventeenth century theOman Arabs dislodged the intruding Portuguese from all this coast beltdown to the present northern boundary of Portuguese East Africa. Even solate as 1850 their capital, Mascat, sent out fine merchantmen that didan extensive carrying trade, and might be seen loading in the ports ofBritish India, in Singapore, Java, and Mauritius. 

[Sidenote: Soil of coastlands as factor. ]

Brittany's active part in the maritime history of France is due not onlyto its ragged contour, its inshore and offshore islands, its forwardlocation on the Atlantic which brought it near to the fisheries ofNewfoundland and the trade of the West Indies, but also to the fact thatthe "Golden Belt, " which, with but few interruptions, forms a band offertility along the coast, has supported a denser population than thesterile granitic soils of the interior, [476] while the sea near by variedand enriched the diet of the inhabitants by its abundance of fish, andin its limy seaweed yielded a valuable fertilizer for their gardens. [477]The small but countless alluvial deposits at the fiord heads in Norway, aided by the products of the sea, are able to support a considerablenumber of people. Hence the narrow coastal rim of that country showsalways a density of population double or quadruple that of the nextdensity belt toward the mountainous interior, and contains seventeen outof Norway's nineteen towns having more than 5, 000 inhabitants. [478] It isthis relative fertility of the coastal regions, as opposed to thesterile interior, that has brought so large a part of Norway's peoplein contact with the Atlantic and helped give them a prominent place inmaritime history. 

[Sidenote: Barren coast of fertile hinterland. ]

Occasionally an infertile and sparsely inhabited littoral bordering alimited zone of singular productivity, especially if favorably locatedfor international trade, will develop marked maritime activity, both intrade and commercial colonization. Such was Arabian Yemen, the home ofthe ancient Sabæans on the Red Sea, stretching from the Straits ofBab-el-Mandeb north-westward for 500 miles. Here a mountain range, rising to 10, 000 feet and bordering the plateau desert of centralArabia, condenses the vapors of the summer monsoon and creates along-drawn oasis, where terraced coffee gardens and orchards blossom inthe irrigated soil; but the arid coastal strip at its feet, harboring asparse population only along its tricking streams, developed a series ofconsiderable ports as outlets for the abundant products and crowdedpopulation of the highlands. [479] A location on the busy sea lane leadingfrom the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean, near the meeting place ofthree continents, made the merchants of the Yemen coast, like the OmanArabs to the north, middlemen in the trade of Europe with eastern Africaand India. [480] Therefore, even in the second century these Sabæans hadtheir trading stations scattered along the east coast of Africa as farsouth as Zanzibar. [481] In 1502 Vasco da Gama found Arabs, either ofOman or Yemen, yet farther south in Sofala, the port for the ivory andgold trade. Some of them he employed as pilots to steer his course toIndia. [482]

History makes one fact very plain: a people who dwell by the sea, andto whom nature applies some lash to drive them out upon the deep, command opportunity for practically unlimited expansion. In this waysmall and apparently ill-favored strips of the earth's surface havebecome the seats of wide maritime supremacy and colonial empire. Thescattered but extensive seaboard possession of little Venice and Genoain the latter centuries of the Middle Ages are paralleled in moderntimes by the large oversea dominions of the English and Dutch. 

Seaward expansions of peoples are always of great moment and generallyof vast extent, whether they are the coastward movements of inlandpeoples to get a foothold upon the great oceanic highway of trade andcivilization, as has been the case with the Russians notably since theearly eighteenth century, and with numerous interior tribes of WestAfrica since the opening of the slave trade; or whether they representthe more rapid and extensive coastwise and oversea expansions ofmaritime nations like the English, Dutch, and Portuguese. In eitherevent they give rise to widespread displacements of peoples and abizarre arrangement of race elements along the coast. When these twocontrary movements meet, the shock of battle follows, as the recenthistory of the Russians and Japanese in Manchuria and Korea illustrates, the wars of Swedes and Russians for the possession of the eastern Balticlittoral, and the numerous minor conflicts that have occurred in UpperGuinea between European commercial powers and the would-be tradingtribes of the bordering hinterland. 

[Sidenote: Ethnic contrast between coast and interior peoples. ]

A coast region is a peculiar habitat, inasmuch as it is more or lessdominated by the sea. It is exposed to inundation by tidal wave and tooccupation by immigrant fleets. It may be the base for out-goingmaritime enterprise or the goal of some oversea movement, the dispenseror the recipient of colonists. The contrast between coast-dwellers andthe nearby inland people which exists so widely can be traced not onlyto a difference of environment, but often to a fundamental difference ofrace or tribe caused by immigration to accessible shores. The Greeks, crowded in their narrow peninsula of limited fertility, wove an Hellenicborder on the skirts of the Black Sea and eastern Mediterranean lands, just as the Carthaginians added a fringe of aliens to North Africa, where the Punic people of the coast presented a marked contrast to theBerbers of the interior. [See map page 251. ]

An ethnographical map of Russia to-day shows a narrow but almostcontinuous rim of Germans stretching from the River Niemen north throughthe Baltic coast of Courland, Livland, and Esthland, as far as Revel;and again, a similar band of Swedes along the seaboard of Finland, froma point east of Helsingfors on the south around to Uleaborg on thenorth, [483] dating from the time when Finland was a political dependencyof Sweden, and influenced by the fact that the frozen Gulf of Bothniaevery winter makes a bridge of ice between the two shores. [See map page225. ]

[Sidenote: Ethnic contrasts in the Pacific islands. ]

Everywhere in the Melanesian archipelago, where Papuans and Malays dwellside by side, the latter as the new-comers are always found inpossession of the coast, while the darker aborigines have withdrawn intothe interior. So in the Philippines, the aboriginal Negritos, pure ormore often mixed with Malayan blood, as in the Mangyan tribe of centralMindoro, are found crowded back into the interior by the successiveinvasions of Malays who have encircled the coasts. [See map page 147. ]The Zamboanga peninsula of Mindanao has an inland pagan population ofprimitive Malayan race called Subanon, who have been displaced from thelittoral by the seafaring Samal Moros, Mohammedanized Malays from theeast shores of Sumatra and the adjacent islands, who spread northwardabout 1300 under the energizing impulse of their new religion. [484] Evenat so late a date as the arrival of Magellan, the Subanon seem to havestill occupied some points of the coast, [485] just as the savage Ainos ofthe Island of Yezo touched the sea about Sapporo only forty years ago, though they are now surrounded by a seaboard rim of Japanese. [486]

[Sidenote: Ethnic contrasts in the Americas. ]

If we turn to South America, we find that warlike Tupi, at the time ofthe discovery, occupied the whole Brazilian coast from the southerntropic north to eastern Guiana, while the highlands of eastern Brazilimmediately in their rear were populated by tribes of Ges, who had beendisplaced by the coastwise expansion of the Tupi canoemen. [487] [See mappage 101. ] And to-day this same belt of coastland has been appropriatedby a foreign population of Europeans and Negroes, while the vastinterior of Brazil shows a predominance of native Indian stocks, onlybroken here and there by a lonely _enclave_ of Portuguese settlement. The early English and French territories in America presented this samecontrast of coast and inland people--the colonists planting themselveson the hem of the continent to preserve maritime connection with thehome countries, the aborigines forced back beyond reach of the tide. 

Wherever an energetic seafaring people with marked commercial orcolonizing bent make a highway of the deep, they give rise to thisdistinction of coast and inland people on whatever shores they touch. The expanding Angles and Saxons did it in the North Sea and the Channel, where they stretched their _litus Saxonicum_ faintly along the coast ofthe continent to the apex of Brittany, and firmly along the hem ofEngland from Southampton Water to the Firth of Forth;[488] the sea-bredScandinavians did it farther north in the Teutonic fringe of settlementswhich they placed on the shores of Celtic Scotland and Ireland. [489]

[Sidenote: Older ethnic stock in coastlands. ]

As a rule it is the new-comers who hold the coast, but occasionally thecoast-dwellers represent the older ethnic stock. In the Balkan Peninsulato-day the descendants of the ancient Hellenes are, with few exceptions, confined to the coast. The reason is to be found in the fact that theSlavs and other northern races who have intruded by successive invasionsfrom the plains of southern Russia are primarily inland peoples, andtherefore have occupied the core of the peninsula, forcing the originalGreek population before them to the edge of the sea. [490] This is thesame anthropo-geographical process which makes so many peninsulas thelast halting-place of a dislodged earlier race. But the Greeks who linethe northern and western shores of Asiatic Turkey are such only inlanguage and religion, because their prevailing broad head-form showsthem to be Turks and Armenians in race stock. [491]

Sometimes the distinction of race between coast and interior isobliterated so far as language and civilization are concerned, butsurvives less conspicuously in head-form and pigmentation. The outermostfringe of the Norwegian coast, from the extreme south to the latitude ofTrondhjem in the north, is occupied by a broad-headed, round-faced, rather dark people of only medium height, who show decided affinitieswith the Alpine race of Central Europe, and who present a markedcontrast to the tall narrow-headed blondes of pure Teutonic type, constituting the prevailing population from the inner edge of the coasteastward into Sweden. This brachycephalic, un-Germanic stock of theNorwegian seaboard seems to represent the last stand made by that oncewide-spread Alpine race, which here has been shoved along to the rockycapes and islands of the outer edge by a later Teutonic immigrationcoming from Sweden. [492] So the largest continuous area of Negrito stockin the Philippines is found in the Sierra Madre mountains defining theeastern coast of northern Luzon. [493] Facing the neighborless wastes ofthe Pacific, whence no new settler could come, turned away from thesources of Malay immigration to the southwest, its location made it aretreat, rather than a gateway to incoming races. [See map page 147. ]

[Sidenote: Ethnic amalgamations in coastlands. ]

Where an immigrant population from oversea lands occupies the coastalhem of a country, rarely do they preserve the purity of their race. Coming at first with marauding or trading intent, they bring no womenwith them, but institute their trading stations or colonies by marriagewith the women of the country. The ethnic character of the resultantpopulation depends upon the proportion of the two constituent elements, the nearness or remoteness of their previous kinship, and the degree ofinnate race antagonism. The ancient Greek elements which crossed theAegean from different sections of the peninsula to colonize the Ioniancoast of Asia Minor mingled with the native Carian, Cretan, Lydian, Pelasgian, and Phoenician populations which they found there. [494] On allthe barbarian shores where the Greeks established themselves, therearose a mixed race--in Celtic Massilia, in Libyan Barca, and in ScythianCrimea--but always a race Hellenized, born interpreters and mercantileagents. [495]

A maritime people, engrossed chiefly with the idea of trade, moves insmall groups and intermittently; hence it modifies the original coastalpopulation less than does a genuine colonizing nation, especially as itprefers the smallest possible territorial base for its operations. TheArab element in the coast population of East Africa is stronglyrepresented, but not so strongly as one might expect after a thousandyears of intercourse, because it was scattered in detached seaboardpoints, only a few of which were really stable. The native population ofZanzibar and Pemba and the fringe of coast tribes on the mainlandopposite are clearly tinged with Arab blood. These Swahili, as they arecalled, are a highly mixed race, as their negro element has been derivednot only from the local coast peoples, but also from the slaves who forcenturies have been halting here on their seaward journey from theinterior of Africa. [496] [See map page 105. ]

[Sidenote: Multiplicity of race elements on coasts. ]

Coast peoples tend to show something more than the hybridism resultingfrom the mingling of two stocks. So soon as the art of navigationdeveloped beyond its initial phase of mere coastwise travel, and beganto strike out across the deep, all coast peoples bordered upon eachother, and the sea became a common waste boundary between. Unlike a landboundary, which is in general accessible from only two sides and tendsto show, therefore, only two constituent elements in its borderpopulation, a sea boundary is accessible from many directions withalmost equal ease; it therefore draws from many lands, and gives itspopulation a variety of ethnic elements and a cosmopolitan stamp. This, however, is most marked in great seaports, but from them it penetratesinto the surrounding country. The whole southern and eastern coastpopulation of England, from Cornwall to the Wash, received duringElizabeth's reign valuable accessions of industrious Flemings andHuguenots, refugees from Catholic persecution in the Netherlands andFrance. [497] Our North Atlantic States, whose population is more thanhalf (50. 9 per cent. ) made up of aliens and natives born of foreignparents, [498] have drawn these elements from almost the whole circle ofAtlantic shores, from Norway to Argentine and from Argentine toNewfoundland. Even the Southern States, so long unattractive toimmigrants on account of the low status of labor, show a fringe ofvarious foreign elements along the Gulf coast, the deeper tint of whichon the census maps fades off rapidly toward the interior. The samephenomenon appears with Asiatic and Australian elements in our Pacificseaboard states. [499] The cosmopolitan population of New York, with its"Chinatown, " its "Little Italy, " its Russian and Hungarian quarters, hasits counterpart in the mixed population of Mascat, peopled by Hindu, Arabs, Persians, Kurds, Afghans, and Baluchis, settled here for purposesof trade; or in the equally mongrel inhabitants of Aden and Zanzibar, ofMarseilles, Constantinople, Alexandria, Port Said, and otherMediterranean ports. 

[Sidenote: Lingua franca of coasts. ]

The cosmopolitanism and the commercial activity that characterize somany seaboards are reflected in the fact that, with rare exceptions, itis the coast regions of the world that give rise to a _lingua franca_ or_lingua geral_. The original _lingua franca_ arose on the coast of theLevant during the period of Italian commercial supremacy there. Itconsisted of an Italian stock, on which were grafted Greek, Arabic, andTurkish words, and was the regular language of trade for French, Spanish, and Italians. [500] It is still spoken in many Mediterraneanports, especially in Smyrna, and in the early part of the nineteenthcentury was in use from Madagascar to the Philippines. [501] From thecoastal strip of the Zanzibar Arabs, recently transferred to German EastAfrica, the speech of the Swahili has become a means of communicationover a great part of East Africa, from the coast to the Congo and thesources of the Nile. It is a Bantu dialect permeated with Arabic andHindu terms, and sparsely sprinkled even with English and Germanwords. [502] "Pidgin English" (business English) performs the function ofa _lingua franca_ in the ports of China and the Far East. It is a jargonof corrupted English with a slight mixture of Chinese, Malay, andPortuguese words, arranged according to the Chinese idiom. Anothermongrel English does service on the coast of New Guinea. The "NiggerEnglish" of the West African trade is a regular dialect among thenatives of the Sierra Leone coast. Farther east, along the Upper Guinealittoral, the Eboe family of tribes who extend across the Niger deltafrom Lagos to Old Calabar have furnished a language of trade in one oftheir dialects. [503] The Tupi speech of the Brazilian coast Indians, withwhom the explorers first came into contact, became, in the mouth ofPortuguese traders and Jesuit missionaries, the _lingua geral_ or mediumof communication between the whites and the various Indian tribesthroughout Brazil. [504] The Chinook Indians, located on our Pacific coastnorth and south of the Columbia River, have furnished a jargon ofIndian, French, and English words which serves as a language of tradethroughout a long stretch of the northwest Pacific coast, not onlybetween whites and Indians, but also between Indians of differentlinguistic stocks. [505]

[Sidenote: Coast-dwellers as middlemen. ]

The coast is the natural habitat of the middleman. One strip of seaboardproduces a middleman people, and then sends them out to appropriateother littorals, if geographic conditions are favorable; otherwise it iscontent with the transit trade of its own locality. It breedsessentially a race of merchants, shunning varied production, nursingmonopoly by secrecy and every method to crush competition. The profitsof trade attract all the free citizens, and the laboring class is smallor slave. Expansion landward has no attraction in comparison with theseaward expansion of commerce. The result is often a relative dearth oflocal land-grown food stuffs. King Hiram of Tyre, in his letter to KingSolomon, promised to send him trees of cedar and cypress, made intorafts and conveyed to the coast of Philistia, and asked in return forgrain, "which we stand in need of because we inhabit an island. " The paycame in the form of wheat, oil, and wine. But Solomon furnished aconsiderable part of the laborers--30, 000 of them--who were sent, 10, 000at a time, to Mount Lebanon to cut the timber, apparently under thedirection of the more skilful Sidonian foresters. [506] A type of truecoast traders is found in the Duallas of the German Kamerun, at theinner angle of the Gulf of Guinea. Located along the lower course anddelta of the Mungo River where it flows into the Kamerun estuary, theycommand a good route through a mountainous country into the interior. This they guard jealously, excluding all competition, monopolizing thetrade, and imposing a transit duty on all articles going to and from theinterior. They avoid agriculture so far as possible. Their women andslaves produce an inadequate supply of bananas and yams, but cropsneeding much labor are wholly neglected, so that their coasts have areputation for dearness of provisions. [507]

Along the 4, 500 miles of West African coast between the Senegal and theKunene rivers the negro's natural talent for trade has developed specialtribes, who act as intermediaries between the interior and the Europeanstations on the seaboard. Among these we find the Bihenos and Banda ofPortuguese Benguela, who fit out whole caravans for the back country;the Portuguese of Loanda rely on the Ambaquistas and the Mbundamiddlemen. The slave trade particularly brought a sinister and abnormalactivity to these seaboard tribes, [508] just as it did to the East Coasttribes, and stimulated both in the exploitation of their geographicposition as middlemen. [509]

[Sidenote: Monopoly of trade with the hinterland. ]

The Alaskan coast shows the same development. The Kinik Indians at thehead of Cook's Inlet buy skins of land animals from the inlandAthapascans at the sources of the Copper River, and then make a goodprofit by selling them to the American traders of the coast. These sameAthapascans for a long time found a similar body of middlemen in theUgalentz at the mouth of the Copper River, till the Americans thereencouraged the inland hunters to bring their skins to the fur station onthe coast. [510] The Chilcats at the head of Lynn Canal long monopolizedthe fur trade with the Athapascan Indians about Chilkoot Pass; thesethey would meet on the divide and buy their skins, which they wouldcarry to the Hudson Bay Company agents on the coast. They guarded theirmonopoly jealously, and for fifty years were able to exclude all tradersand miners from the passes leading to the Yukon. [511]

The same policy of monopoly and exclusion has been pursued by the Morocoast dwellers of Mindanao in relation to the pagan tribes of theinterior. They buy at low prices the forest and agriculture products ofthe inland Malays, whom they do not permit to approach either rivers orseaboard, for fear they may come into contact with the Chinese merchantsalong the coast. So fiercely is their monopoly guarded by this middlemanrace, that the American Government in the Philippines will be able tobreak it only by military interference. [512]

[Sidenote: Differentiation of coast from inland people. ]

Differences of occupation, of food supply, and of climate often furtheroperate to differentiate the coast from the inland people near by, andto emphasize the ethnic difference which is almost invariably present, either inconspicuously from a slight infusion of alien blood, orplainly as in an immigrant race. Sometimes the contrast is in physique. In Finisterre province of western Brittany, the people along the morefertile coastal strip are on the average an inch taller than theinhabitants of the barren, granitic interior. Their more generous foodsupply, further enriched by the abundant fisheries at their doors, wouldaccount for this increased stature; but this must also be attributed inpart to intermixture of the local Celts with a tall Teutonic stock whichbrushed along these shores, but did not penetrate into the unattractiveinterior. [513] So the negroes of the Guinea Coast, though not immunefrom fevers, are better nourished on the alluvial lowlands near theabundant fish of the lagoons, and hence are often stronger and betterlooking than the plateau interior tribes near by. But here, again, anadvantageous blending of races can not be excluded as a contributingcause. [514] Sometimes the advantage in physique falls to the inlandpeople, especially in tropical countries when a highland interior iscontrasted with a low coast belt. The wild Igorotes, inhabiting themountainous interior of northern Luzon, enjoy a cooler climate than thelowlands, and this has resulted in developing in them a decidedly betterphysique and more industrious habits than are found in the civilizedpeople of the coasts encircling them. [515]

[Sidenote: Early civilization of coasts. ]

Where a coast people is an immigrant stock from some remote overseapoint, it brings to its new home a surplus of energy which was perhapsthe basis of selection in the exodus from the mother country. Such apeople is therefore characterized by greater initiative, enterprise, andendurance than the sedentary population which it left behind or that towhich it comes; and these qualities are often further stimulated by thetransfer to a new environment rich in opportunities. Sea-born in theirorigin, sea-borne in their migration, they cling to the zone oflittoral, because here they find the conditions which they best know howto exploit. Dwelling on the highway of the ocean, living in easyintercourse with distant countries, which would have been far moredifficult of access by land-travel over territories inhabited by hostileraces, exchanging with these both commodities and ideas, food-stuffs andreligions, they become the children of civilization, and theirsun-burned seamen the sturdy apostles of progress. Therefore it may belaid down as a general proposition, that the coasts of a country arethe first part of it to develop, not an indigenous or localcivilization, but a cosmopolitan culture, which later spreads inlandfrom the seaboard. 

[Sidenote: Retarded coastal peoples. ]

Exceptions to this rule are found in barren or inaccessible coasts likethe Pacific littoral of Peru and Mexico, and on shores like those ofCalifornia, western Africa and eastern Luzon, which occupy an adversegeographic location facing a neighborless expanse of ocean and remotefrom the world's earlier foci of civilization. Therefore the descentfrom the equatorial plateau of Africa down to the Atlantic littoralmeans a drop in culture also, because the various elements ofcivilization which for ages have uninterruptedly filtered into Sudanfrom the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, have rarely penetrated to thewestern rim of the highland, and hence never reached the coast. Moreover, this steaming lowland, from the Senegal River to the KamerunMountains, has been a last asylum for dislodged tribes who have beendriven out by expanding peoples of the plateau. They have descended intheir flight upon the original coast dwellers, adding to the generalcondition of political disruption, multiplying the number of small weaktribes, increasing the occasions for intertribal wars, and furtheringthe prevailing degradation. The seaboard lowlands of Sierra Leone, Liberia and the Ivory Coast have all suffered thus In historictimes. [516] All this region was the original home of the low, typical"Guinea Nigger" of the Southern plantation. The coasts of Oregon andCalifornia showed a parallel to this in their fragmentary native tribesof retarded development, whose level of culture, low at best, sankrapidly from the interior toward the seaboard. They seem to have beenintruders from the central highlands, who further deteriorated in theirweakness and isolation after reaching the coast. They bore every mark ofdegradation in their short stature, linguistic and tribal dismemberment, their low morals and culture, which ranked them little above the brutes. In contrast, all the large and superior Indian groups of North Americabelonged to the interior of the continent. [517]

[Sidenote: Cultural contrast of coast and interior. ]

The long, indented coast of the Mediterranean has in all ages up tomodern times presented the contrast of a littoral more advanced incivilization than the inland districts. The only exception was ancientEgypt before Psammeticus began to exploit his mud-choked seaboard. Thiscontrast was apparent, not only wherever Phoenicians or Greeks hadappropriated the remote coast of an alien and retarded people, but evenin near-by Thrace the savage habits of the interior tribes were softenedonly where these dwelt in close proximity to the Ionian colonies alongthe coast, a fact as noticeable in the time of Tacitus as in that ofHerodotus five hundred years before. [518] The ancient philosophers ofGreece were awake to the deep-rooted differences between an inland and amaritime city, especially in respect to receptivity of ideas, activityof intellect, and affinity for culture. [519]

If we turn to the Philippines, we find that 65 per cent. Of theChristian or civilized population of the islands live on or near thecoast; and of the remaining 35 per cent. Dwelling inland, by far thegreater part represents simply the landward extension of the area ofChristian civilization which had Manila Bay for a nucleus. [520]Otherwise, all the interior districts are occupied by wild or pagantribes. Mohammedanism, too, a religion of civilization, rims thesouthernmost islands which face the eastern distributing point of thefaith in Java; it is confined to the coasts, except for its one inlandarea of expansion along the lake and river system of the Rio Grande ofMindanao, which afforded an inland extension of sea navigation for thesmall Moro boat. Even the Fiji Islands show different shades of savagerybetween coasts and interior. [521]

[Sidenote: Progress from thalassic to oceanic coasts. ]

Coasts are areas of out-going and in-coming maritime influences. Thenature and amount of these influences depend upon the sea or ocean whoserim the coast in question helps to form, and the relations of that coastto its other tide-washed shores. Our land-made point of view dominatesus so completely, that we are prone to consider a coast as margin of itsland, and not also as margin of its sea, whence, moreover, it receivesthe most important contributions to its development. The geographiclocation of a coast as part of a thalassic or of an oceanic rim is abasic factor in its history; more potent than local conditions offertility, irregular contour, or accessibility from sea and hinterland. Everything that can be said about the different degrees of historicalimportance attaching to inland seas and open oceans in successive agesapplies equally to the countries and peoples along their shores; andeverything that enhances or diminishes the cultural possibilities of asea--its size, zonal location, its relation to the oceans andcontinents--finds its expression in the life along its coasts. 

The anthropo-geographical evolution which has passed from small to largestates and from small to large seas as fields of maritime activity hasbeen attended by a continuous change in the value of coasts, accordingas these were located on enclosed basins like the Mediterranean, Red, and Baltic; on marginal ones like the China and North seas; or on theopen ocean. In the earlier periods of the world's history, a location ona relatively small enclosed sea gave a maritime horizon wide enough tolure, but not so wide as to intimidate; and by its seclusion led to aconcentration and intensification of historical development, which inmany of its phases left models for subsequent ages to wonder at andimitate. This formative period and formative environment outgrown, historical development was transferred to locations on the open oceans, according to the law of human advance from small to large areas. Thehistorical importance of the Mediterranean and the Baltic shores wastransitory, a prelude to the larger importance of the Atlantic littoralof Europe, just as this in turn was to attain its full significance onlywhen the circumnavigation of Africa and South America linked theAtlantic to the World Ocean. Thus that gradual expansion of thegeographic horizon which has accompanied the progress of history hasseen a slow evolution in the value of seaboard locations, the transferof maritime leadership from small to large basins, from thalassic tooceanic ports, from Lubeck to Hamburg, from Venice to Genoa, as earlierfrom the Piræus to Ostia, and later from England's little _Cinque Ports_to Liverpool and the Clyde. 

[Sidenote: Geographic location of coasts. ]

Though the articulations of a coast determine the ease with whichmaritime influences are communicated to the land, nevertheless historyshows repeated instances where an exceptional location, combined withrestricted area, has raised a poorly indented seaboard to maritime andcultural preeminence. Phoenicia's brilliant history rose superior to thelimitation of indifferent harbors, owing to a position on the Arabianisthmus between the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean at the meetingplace of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Moreover, the advantages of thisparticular location have in various times and in various degrees broughtinto prominence all parts of the Syrian and Egyptian coasts from Antiochto Alexandria. So the whole stretch of coast around the head of theAdriatic, marking the conjunction of a busy sea-route with variousland-routes over the encircling mountains from Central Europe, has seenduring the ages a long succession of thriving maritime cities, in spiteof fast-silting harbors and impeded connection with the hinterland. Herein turn have ruled with maritime sway Spina, Ravenna, Aquileia, [522]Venice, and Trieste. On the other side of the Italian peninsula, thelocation on the northernmost inlet of the western Mediterranean and atthe seaward base of the Ligurian Apennines, just where this range openstwo passes of only 1, 800 feet elevation to the upper Po Valley, made anactive maritime town of Genoa from Strabo's day to the present. In itsincipiency it relied upon one mediocre harbor on an otherwise harborlesscoast, a local supply of timber for its ships, and a road northwardacross the mountains. [523] The maritime ascendency in the Middle Ages ofGenoa, Pisa, Venice, and Barcelona proves that no long indented coast isnecessary, but only one tolerable harbor coupled with an advantageouslocation. 

[Sidenote: Intermediate location between contrasted coasts. ]

Owing to the ease and cheapness of water transportation, a seaboardposition between two other coasts of contrasted products due to adifference either of zonal location or of economic development or ofboth combined, insures commercial exchanges and the inevitableactivities of the middleman. The position of Carthage near the center ofthe Mediterranean enabled her to fatten on the trade between the highlydeveloped eastern basin and the retarded western one. Midway between theteeming industrial towns of medieval Flanders, Holland, and westernGermany, and the new unexploited districts of retarded Russia, Poland, and Scandinavia, lay the long line of the German Hanseatic towns--Kiel, Lubeck, Wiemar, Rostock, Stralsund, Greifswald, Anclam, Stettin, andColberg, the _civitates maritimæ_. For three centuries or more they madethemselves the dominant commercial and maritime power of the Baltic byexchanging Flemish fabrics, German hardware, and Spanish wines for thefurs and wax of Russian forests, tallow and hides from Polish pastures, and crude metals from Swedish mines. [524] So Portugal by itsgeographical location became a staple place where the tropical productsfrom the East Indies were transferred to the vessels of Dutch merchants, and by them distributed to northern Europe. Later New England, by aparallel location, became the middleman in the exchanges of the tropicalproducts of the West Indies, the tobacco of Virginia, and the wheat ofMaryland for the manufactured wares of England and the fish ofNewfoundland. 

[Sidenote: Historical decline of certain coasts. ]

Primitive or early maritime commerce has always been characterized bythe short beat, a succession of middlemen coasts, and a close series ofstaple-places, such as served the early Indian Ocean trade in Oman, Malabar Coast, Ceylon, Coromandel Coast, Malacca, and Java. Therefore, many a littoral admirably situated for middleman trade loses thisadvantage so soon as commerce matures enough to extend the sweep of itsvoyages, and to bring into direct contact the two nations for which thatcoast was intermediary. This is only another aspect of theanthropo-geographic evolution from small to large areas. The decline ofthe Mediterranean coasts followed close upon the discovery of thesea-route to India; nor was their local importance restored by the SuezCanal. Portugal declined when the Dutch, excluded from the Tagus mouthon the union of Portugal with Spain, found their way to the Spice Isles. Ceylon, though still the chief port of call in the Indian Ocean, haslost its preëminence as chief market for all the lands between Africaand China, which it enjoyed in the sixth century, owing to the "longhaul" of modern oceanic commerce. 

[Sidenote: Political factors in this decline. ]

Not only that far-reaching readjustment of maritime ascendency which inthe sixteenth century followed the advance from thalassic to oceanicfields of commerce, but also purely local political events may for atime produce striking changes in the use or importance of coasts. ThePiræus, which had been the heart of ancient Athens, almost wholly lostits value in the checkered political history of the country during theMiddle Ages, when naval power and merchant marine almost vanished; butwith the restoration of Grecian independence in 1832, much of itspristine activity was restored. Up to the beginning of the seventeenthcentury, Japan had exploited her advantageous location and her richlyindented coast to develop a maritime trade which extended from Kamchatkato India; but in 1624 an imperial order withdrew every Japanese vesselfrom the high seas, and for over two hundred years robbed her busylittoral of all its historical significance. The real life of thePacific coast of the United States began only with its incorporationinto the territory of the Republic, but it failed to attain its fullimportance until our acquisition of Alaska, Hawaii, and the Philippines. So the coast of the Persian Gulf has had periods of activity alternatingwith periods of deathlike quiet. Its conquest by the Saracens in theseventh century inaugurated an era of intense maritime enterprise alongits drowsy shores. What new awakening may it experience, if it shouldone day become a Russian littoral!

[Sidenote: Physical causes of decline. ]

Sometimes the decline in historical importance is due to physicalmodifications in the coast itself, especially when, the mud transportedby a great river to the sea is constantly pushing forward the outershoreline. The control of the Adriatic passed in turn from Spina toAdria, Ravenna, Aquileia, Venice, and Trieste, owing to a steady siltingup of the coast. [525] Strabo records that Spina, originally a port, wasin his time 90 stadia, or 10 miles, from the sea. [526] Bruges, once thegreat _entrepôt_ of the Hanseatic League, was originally on an arm ofthe sea, with which it was later connected by canal, and which has beensilted up since 1432, so that its commerce, disturbed too by local wars, was transferred to Antwerp on the Scheldt. [527] Many early Englishports on the coast of Kent and on the old solid rim of the Fenlandmarshes now lie miles inland from the Channel and the Wash. 

A people never utilizes all parts of its coast with equal intensity, orany part with equal intensity in all periods of its development; but, according to the law of differentiation, it gradually concentrates itsenergies in a few favored ports, whose maritime business tends to becomespecialized. Then every extension of the subsidiary territory andintensification of production with advancing civilization increases themass of men and wares passing through these ocean gateways. The shoresof New York, Delaware, and Chesapeake bays are more important to thecountry now than they were in early colonial days, when their backcountry extended only to the watershed of the Appalachian system. OurGulf coast has gained in activity with the South's economic advance fromslave to free labor, and from almost exclusive cotton planting todiversified production combined with industries; and it will come intoits own, in a maritime sense, when the opening of the Panama Canal willdivert from the Atlantic outlets those products of the Mississippi basinwhich will be seeking Trans-Pacific markets. 

[Sidenote: Interplay of geographic factors in coastlands. ]

A careful analysis of the life of coast peoples in relation to all thefactors of their land and sea environment shows that these aremultiform, and that none are negligible; it takes into consideration theextent, fertility, and relief of the littoral, its accessibility fromthe land as well as from the sea, and its location in regard to outlyingislands and to opposite shores, whether near or far; it holds in viewnot only the small articulations that give the littoral ready contactwith the sea, but the relation of the seaboard to the larger continentalarticulations, whether it lies on an outrunning spur of a continentalmass, like the Malacca, Yemen, or Peloponnesian coast, or upon aretiring inlet that brings it far into the heart of a continent, andprovides it with an extensive hinterland; and, finally, it never ignoresthe nature of the bordering sea, which furnishes the school ofseamanship and fixes the scope of maritime enterprise. 

All these various elements of coastal environment are furtherdifferentiated in their use and their influence according to thepurposes of those who come to tenant such tide-washed rims of the land. Pirates seek intricate channels and hidden inlets for their lairs; amerchant people select populous harbors and navigable river mouths;would-be colonists settle upon fertile valleys opening into quiet bays, till their fields, and use their coasts for placid maritime trade withthe mother country; interior peoples, pushed or pushing out to the tidalperiphery of their continent, with no maritime history behind them, build their fishing villages on protected lagoons, and, unless theshadowy form of some outlying island lure them farther, there theytarry, deaf to the siren song of the sea. 

NOTES TO CHAPTER VIII

[412] Rudolph Reinhard, _Die Wichtigsten Deutschen Seehandelstädte_, pp. 24, 25. Stuttgart, 1901. Joseph Partsch, Central Europe, p. 291. London, 1903. 

[413] _Ibid_, p. 301. 

[414] John Richard Green, The Making of England, Vol. I, pp. 51-54;maps, pp. 36 and 54. London, 1904. 

[415] _Ibid_, Vol. I, pp. 12, 63; maps pp. Xxii and 54. 

[416] Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. III, pp. 98, 139. London, 1896-1898. 

[417] Joseph Partsch, Central Europe, pp. 284-288. London, 1903. 

[418] H. B. Mill, International Geography, p. 251. New York, 1902. 

[419] Rudolph Reinhard, _Die Wichtigsten Deutschen Seehandelstädte_, pp. 21-22. Stuttgart, 1901. 

[420] Fitz-Roy and Darwin, Voyage of the Beagle, Vol. II, pp. 140, 178;Vol. III, pp. 231-236. London, 1839. 

[421] Eleventh Census, Population and Resources of Alaska, pp. 166-171. Washington, 1893. 

[422] Nordenskiold, The Voyage of the Vega, pp. 327, 334, 335, 365, 366, 412, 416, 459, 467. New York, 1882. 

[423] G. Frederick Wright, Greenland Icefields, pp. 68-70, 100, 105. NewYork, 1896. For Eskimo of Hudson Bay and Baffin Land, see F. Boas, TheCentral Eskimo, pp. 419, 420, 460-462. _Sixth Annual Report of theBureau of Ethnology_. Washington, 1888. 

[424] _Bella Gallico_, Book III, chap. 12. 

[425] Ernst Curtius, History of Greece, Vol. I, p, 15. New York. 

[426] Strabo's Geography, Book II, chap. V, 4. Book III, chap. I, 4. 

[427] Grote, History of Greece, Vol. III, pp. 266-267. New York, 1857. 

[428] Thucydides, Book VI, 2. 

[429] Grote, History of Greece, Vol. III, p. 273. New York, 1857. 

[430] Strabo's Geography, Book XVII, chap. III, 13, 14. 

[431] Thucydides, Book I, 5, 7, 8. 

[432] Strabo, Book VIII, chap. VI, 2, 4, 13, 14, 22. 

[433] Grote, History of Greece, Vol. III, pp. 4, 191. New York, 1857. 

[434] J. Partsch, Central Europe, p. 291. London, 1903. 

[435] Rudolph Reinhard, _Die Wichtigsten Deutschen Seehandelstädte_, p. 23. Stuttgart, 1901. 

[436] Grote, History of Greece, Vol. III, p. 273. New York, 1857. 

[437] Bunbury, History of Ancient Geography, Vol. II, pp. 452-454, 610. London, 1883. Duarte Barbosa, East Africa and Malabar Coasts in theSixteenth Century, p. 3-16. Hakluyt Society, London, 1866. 

[438] Ernst Curtius, History of Greece, Vol. I, pp. 433-434. New York. 

[439] W. B. Weeden, Economic and Social History of New England, Vol. I, p. 93. Boston, 1899. 

[440] Norway, Official Publication, p. 1. Christiania, 1900. 

[441] Ratzel, _Deutschland_, pp. 150-151. Leipzig, 1898. 

[442] J. Partsch, Central Europe, pp. 227-230. London, 1903. 

[443] Elisée Reclus, The Earth and Its Inhabitants; Europe, Vol. 1, pp. 370-372. New York, 1886. 

[444] Ernst Curtius, History of Greece, Vol. I, pp. 15-20. New York. 

[445] Heinrich von Treitschke, _Politik_, Vol. 1, p. 215. Leipzig, 1897. 

[446] H. J. Mackinder, Britain and the British Seas, pp. 35, 40. London, 1902. 

[447] William Morris Davis, Physical Geography, pp. 115-122. Boston, 1899. 

[448] Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. III, p. 95. London, 1896-1898. 

[449] Strabo, Book XVII, chap. I, 18. Diodorus Siculus, Book I, chap. III, p. 36. London, 1814. 

[450] J. Partsch, Central Europe, pp. 96-98. London, 1903. Ratzel, _Deutschland_, pp. 143-144. Leipzig, 1898. 

[451] For geomorphology of coasts, see William Morris Davis, PhysicalGeography, pp. 112-136, 347-383. Boston, 1899. 

[452] Elisée Reclus, Europe, Vol. II, p, 252. New York, 1886. 

[453] J. Partsch, Central Europe, p. 231. London, 1903. 

[454] G. G. Chisholm, Commercial Geography, pp. 44, 446. London, 1904. 

[455] H. R. Mill, International Geography, p. 1012. New York, 1902. Hereford George, Historical Geography of the British Empire, pp. 278-279. London, 1904. 

[456] J. E. Thorold Rogers, Six Centuries of Work and Wages, pp. 123-124. New York, 1884. 

[457] H. R. Mill, International Geography, p. 148. New York, 1902. 

[458] Diodorus Siculus, Book V, chap. I, p. 304. London, 1814. Strabo, Book V, chap. VI, 6, 7. 

[459] Helmolt, History of the World, Vol. I, pp. 188-189, 193-195. NewYork, 1902-1906. 

[460] Strabo, Book XVI, chap. III, 4, 27. Herodotus, Book I, chap. I;Book VII, chap. 89. J. T. Brent, The Bahrein Islands of the Persian Gulf, Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society, Vol. XII, pp. 13-16. London, 1890. 

[461] George Adam Smith, Historical Geography of the Holy Land, pp. 169-170. New York, 1897. 

[462] _Ibid. _, pp. 179, 185, 286. 

[463] _Ibid. _, pp. 127-131. 

[464] Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. III, pp. 100-102, 132-145. London, 1896-1898. 

[465] H. R. Mill, International Geography, p. 985. New York, 1902. 

[466] D. G. Hogarth, The Nearer East, pp. 84, 166. London, 1902. 

[467] J. Naken, _Die Provinz Kwangtung und ihre Bevölkerung, PetermannsGeographische Mittheilungen_, Vol. 24, pp. 409, 420. 1878. Ferdinand vonRichthofen, _China_, Vol. I, pp. 568-569. Berlin, 1877. Cathay and theWay Thither, Vol. I, p. Lxxviii. Hakluyt Society, London, 1866. 

[468] Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. I, p. 397. London, 1896-1898. Philippine Census, Vol. I, pp. 438, 481-491. Washington, 1905. 

[469] Stanford's Australasia, Vol. II, pp. 103, 121, 126-135, 196. London, 1894. Helmolt, History of the World, Vol. II, p. 547. New York, 1902-1906. 

[470] _Ibid. _, Vol. III, pp. 431, 434. Vol. II, p. 603. 

[471] Roscher, _National-Oekonomik des Handels und Gewerbefleisses_, pp. 78-79, 99-100. Stuttgart, 1899. Capt. A. T. Mahan, Influence of Sea Powerupon History, pp. 26-28. Boston, 1902. 

[472] D. G. Hogarth, The Nearer East, pp. 111-112, 152. London, 1902. 

[473] _Ibid. _, pp. 73-74, 139, 267. 

[474] Cathay and the Way Thither, Vol. I, p. LXXX. Hakluyt Society. London, 1866. Helmolt, History of the World, Vol. II, p. 548. New York, 1902-1906. 

[475] The Book of Ser Marco Polo, edited by Sir Henry Yule, Vol. II, Book III, pp. 284, 288, 303. New York, 1903. 

[476] P. Vidal de la Blache, _Géographie de la France_, pp. 335-337. Paris, 1903. 

[477] Elisée Reclus, Europe, Vol. II, p. 252. New York, 1882. 

[478] Norway, Official Publication, pp. 89-91, map p. 4. Christiania, 1900. 

[479] D. G. Hogarth, The Nearer East, pp. 114, 140, 163-164, 202, 267. London, 1902. 

[480] H. F. Tozer, History of Ancient Geography, pp. 276-280. Cambridge, 1897. Strabo, Book XVI, chap. IV, 2, 19. 

[481] Helmolt, History of the World, Vol. III, p. 433. New York, 1902-1906. 

[482] James Bryce, Impressions of South Africa, pp. 78-82, 99. New York, 1897. 

[483] Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu, The Empire of the Tsars, Vol. I, map p. 80. New York, 1893. 

[484] Census of the Philippine Islands, Vol. I, pp. 412-413, 481, 464, 562. , Washington, 1905. 

[485] _Ibid. _, Vol. I, p. 416. 

[486] Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. III, p. 449. London, 1896-1898. 

[487] P. Ehrenreich, _Die Eintheilung und Verbreitung der VölkerstämmeBrasiliens, Petermanns Mittheilungen_, Vol. 37, pp. 88-89. Gotha, 1891. Helmolt, History of the World, Vol. I, p. 185, map p. 189. New York, 1902-1906. 

[488] John Richard Green, The Making of England, Vol. I, chap. I. London, 1904. 

[489] H. J. Mackinder, Britain and the British Seas, p. 189. London, 1904. W. Z. Ripley, Races of Europe, pp. 312-315, map. New York, 1899. 

[490] D. G. Hogarth, The Nearer East, p. 152. London, 1902. W. Z. Ripley, Races of Europe, pp. 402, 404, map. New York, 1899. 

[491] _Ibid. _, pp. 117, 404-405, 409-419. 

[492] _Ibid. _, pp. 206-208, 210-212. Norway, Official Publication, pp. 80-81. Christiania, 1900. 

[493] Census of the Philippine Islands, Vol. II, p. 52, map p. 50. Washington, 1905. 

[494] Grote, History of Greece, Vol. III, pp. 175-176, 186-189. NewYork, 1857. 

[495] Ernst Curtius, History of Greece, Vol. I, pp. 492-493. New York. 

[496] Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. II, pp. 530-533. London, 1896-1898. 

[497] H. D. Trail, Social England, Vol. III, pp. 367-368. London and NewYork, 1895. 

[498] Twelfth Census, Bulletin No. 103, table 23. Washington, 1902. 

[499] E. C. Semple, American History and Its Geographic Conditions, pp. 314-328. Boston, 1903. 

[500] G. G. Chisholm, Commercial Geography, p. 58. London, 1904. 

[501] Roscher, _National-Oekonomik des Handels und Gewerbefleisses_, p. 85, Note 18. Stuttgart, 1899. 

[502] Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. II, p. 533. London, 1896-1898. 

[503] _Ibid. _, Vol. III, pp. 139, 145. 

[504] H. R. Mill, International Geography, p. 869. New York, 1902. 

[505] D. G. Brinton, The American Race, p. 107. Philadelphia, 1901. H. H. Bancroft, The Native Races, p. 239, footnote p. 274. San Francisco, 1886. 

[506] Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, Book VIII, chap. II, 6, 7, 9. 

[507] J. Scott Keltie, The Partition of Africa, p. 327. London, 1895. Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. III, pp. 121-122. London, 1896-1898. 

[508] _Ibid. _, Vol. III, pp. 121, 132-133. 

[509] _Ibid. _, Vol. II, p. 239. 

[510] Eleventh Census, Report on Alaska, p. 70. Washington, 1893. 

[511] _Ibid. _, p. 156. E. R. Scidmore, Guidebook to Alaska, p. 94. New;York, 1897. 

[512] Census of the Philippine Islands, Vol. I, pp. 556-561, 575, 581-583. Washington, 1905. 

[513] W. Z. Ripley, Races of Europe, pp. 85-86, 99-101, map pp. 151-152. New York, 1899. 

[514] Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. III, pp. 97, 106. New York, 1896-1898. 

[515] Henry Gannett, The Peoples of the Philippines, in Report of theEighth International Geographic Congress, p. 673. Washington, 1904. 

[516] A. H. Keane, Africa, Stanford's Compendium, pp. 372-376, 385-388. London, 1895. Helmolt, History of the World, Vol. III, pp. 402, 456-457, 462. New York, 1902-1906. 

[517] H. H. Bancroft, The Native Races, Vol. I, pp. 440-441; Vol. III, pp. 325, 362. San Francisco, 1886. McGee and Thomas, Prehistoric NorthAmerica, pp. 37-38, 78, 88-89, 95-98. Vol. XIX of History of NorthAmerica. Philadelphia, 1905. 

[518] Grote, History of Greece, Vol. IV, p. 22. New York, 1857. 

[519] _Ibid. _, Vol. II, pp. 225, 226. 

[520] Census of the Philippine Islands, Vol. II, pp. 34, 35. Washington, 1905. 

[521] Williams and Calvert, Fiji and the Fijians, pp. 81-82. New York, 1859. 

[522] Strabo, Book V, chap. I, 7, 8. 

[523] Strabo, Book IV, chap. VI, 1, 2; Book V, chap. I, 11. 

[524] Dietrich Schäfer, _Die Hansestädte und König Waldemar vonDänemark_, pp. 184, 189. Jena, 1879. 

[525] W. Deecke, Italy, pp. 89-91. London, 1904. 

[526] Strabo, Book III, chap. I, 2. 

[527] Roscher, _National-Oekonomik des Handels und Gewerbefleisses_, p. 93, Note 1. Stuttgart, 1899. 

CHAPTER IX

OCEANS AND ENCLOSED SEAS

The water of the earth's surface, viewed from the standpoint ofanthropo-geography, is one, whether it appears as atmospheric moisture, spring, river, lake, brackish lagoon, enclosed sea-basin or open ocean. Its universal circulation, from the falling of the dews to the vastsweep of ocean current, causes this inviolable unity. Variations in thegeographical forms of water are superficial and constantly changing;they pass into one another by almost imperceptible gradations, shifttheir unstable outlines at the bidding of the mobile, restless element. In contrast to the land, which is marked by diversity of geologicstructure and geographic form, the world of water is everywhereapproximately the same, excepting only the difference in the mineralcomposition of sea water as opposed to that of spring and stream. Therefore, whenever man has touched it, it has moulded him in much thesame way, given the same direction to his activities, dictated the useof the same implements and methods of navigation. As maritime trader orcolonist, he has sailed to remote, unknown, yet familiar coasts, andfound himself as much at home as on his native shores. He has built upmaritime empires, the centre of whose dominion, race and commerce, fallssomewhere in the dividing yet uniting sea. 

[Sidenote: The water a factor in man's mobility. ]

Man must be grouped with the air and water as part of the mobileenvelope of the earth's surface. The mobility which maintains the unityof air and water has caused the unity of the human race. Abundantfacilities of dispersal often give animal forms a wide or cosmopolitandistribution. Man, by appropriating the mobile forces in the air andwater to increase his own powers of locomotion, has become acosmopolitan being, and made the human race reflect the unity ofatmosphere and hydrosphere. 

Always the eternal unrest of the moving waters has knocked at the doorof human inertia to arouse the sleeper within; always the flow of streamand the ebb of tide have sooner or later stirred the curiosity of theland-born barbarian about the unseen destination of these marchingwaters. Rivers by the mere force of gravity have carried him to theshores of their common ocean, and placed him on this highway of theworld. Then from his sea-girt home, whether island or continent, he hastimidly or involuntarily followed the track which headland-dotted coast, or ocean current, or monsoon, or trade wind marked out for him acrossthe pathless waters, so that at the gray dawn of history he appears asa cosmopolite, occupying every part of the habitable earth. 

These sporadic oversea wanderings, with intervals of centuries ormilleniums between, opened to his occupancy strange and remote lands, inwhose isolation and new environment he developed fresh variations ofmind, body and cultural achievements, to arm him with new weapons in thestruggle for existence. The sea which brought him bars him for a fewages from his old home, till the tradition of his coming even is lost. Then with higher nautical development, the sea loses its barrier nature;movements of people, and trade recross its surface to unite those whohave been long severed and much differentiated in their mutualremoteness. The ensuing friction and mingling weed out the less fitvariations of each, and combine in the new race the qualities able tofortify a higher type of man. Not only seas and oceans, but alsomountains and deserts serve to isolate the migrant people who once hascrossed them; but wastes of water raise up the most effective barriers. 

[Sidenote: Oceans and seas in universal history. ]

The transformation of the ocean into a highway by the development ofnavigation is a late occurrence in the history of man and is perhaps thehighest phase of his adaptation to environment, because an adaptationwhich has placed at his disposal that vast water area constitutingthree-fourths of the earth's surface from which he had previously beenexcluded. Moreover, it was adaptation to an alien and hostile element, whose violent displays of power recurrently stimulated the humanadjustment between attack and defense. 

Because adaptation to the sea has been vastly more difficult than to theland, commensurate with the harder struggle it has brought greaterintellectual and material rewards. This conquest of the sea is entitledto a peculiarly high place in history, because it has contributed to theunion of the various peoples of the world, has formed a significant partof the history of man, whether that history is economic, social, political or intellectual. Hence history has always staged its mostdramatic acts upon the margin of seas and oceans; here always the plotthickens and gives promise of striking development. Rome of the sevenhills pales before England of the "Seven Seas. "

[Sidenote: The sea in universal history. ]

Universal history loses half its import, remains an aggregate of parts, fails to yield its significance as a whole, if it does not continuallytake into account the unifying factor of the seas. Indeed, no history isentitled to the name of universal unless it includes a record of humanmovements and activities on the ocean, side by side with those on theland. Our school text-books in geography present a deplorable hiatus, because they fail to make a definite study of the oceans over which manexplores and colonizes and trades, as well as the land on which heplants and builds and sleeps. 

The striking fact about the great World Ocean to-day is the manifoldrelations which it has established between the dwellers on its variouscoasts. Marine cables, steamer and sailing routes combine to form anetwork of paths across the vast commons of the deep. Over these thecommercial, political, intellectual, or even purely migrant activitiesof human life move from continent to continent. The distinctive value ofthe sea is that it promotes many-sided relations as opposed to theone-sided relation of the land. France on her eastern frontier comesinto contact with people of kindred stock, living under similarconditions of climate and soil to her own; on her maritime border she isopen to intermittent intercourse with all continents and climes andraces of the world. To this sea border must be ascribed the share thatFrance has taken in the history of North and South America, the WestIndies, North and Equatorial Africa, India, China and the South Seas. Sowe find the great maritime peoples of the world, from the Phoenicians tothe English, each figuring in the history of the world of its day, andhelping weave into a web of universal history the stories of its variousparts. 

[Sidenote: Origin of navigation. ]

Man's normal contact with the sea is registered in his nauticalachievements. The invention of the first primitive means of navigation, suggested by a floating log or bloated body of a dead animal, must havebeen an early achievement, of a great many peoples who lived near thewater, or who in the course of their wanderings found their progressobstructed by rivers; it belongs to a large class of similar discoverieswhich answer urgent and constantly recurring needs. It was, in allprobability, often made and as often lost again, until a growing habitof venturing beyond shore or river bank in search of better fishing, orof using the easy open waterways through the thick tangle of a primevalforest to reach fresh hunting grounds, established it as a permanentacquisition. 

[Sidenote: Primitive forms. ]

The first devices were simply floats or rafts, made of light wood, reeds, or the hollow stems of plants woven together and often buoyed upby the inflated skins of animals. Floats of this character still surviveamong various peoples, especially in poorly timbered lands. The skinrafts which for ages have been the chief means of downstream traffic onthe rivers of Mesopotamia, consist of a square frame-work of interwovenreeds and branches, supported by the inflated skins of sheep andgoats;[528] they are guided by oars and poles down or across the current. These were the primitive means by which Layard transported his wingedbull from the ruins of Nineveh down to the Persian Gulf, and they werethe same which he found on the bas-reliefs of the ancient capital, showing the methods of navigation three thousand years ago. [529] Similarskin rafts serve as ferry boats on the Sutlej, Shajok and other headstreams of the Indus. [530] They reappear in Africa as the only form offerry used by the Moors on the River Morbeya in Morocco; on the Nile, where the inflated skins are supplanted by earthen pots;[531] and on theYo River of semi-arid Sudan, where the platform is made of reeds and isbuoyed up by calabashes fastened beneath. [532]

[Sidenote: Primitive craft in arid lands. ]

In treeless lands, reeds growing on the margins of streams and lakes areutilized for the construction of boats. The Buduma islanders of LakeChad use clumsy skiffs eighteen feet long, made of hollow reeds tiedinto bundles and then lashed together in a way to form a slight cavityon top. [533] In the earliest period of Egyptian history this type of boatwith slight variations was used in the papyrus marshes of the Nile, [534]and it reappears as the ambatch boat which Schweinfurth observed on theupper White Nile. [535] It is in use far away among the Sayads or Fowlers, who inhabit the reed-grown rim of the Sistan Lake in arid Persia. [536] Asthe Peruvian balsa, it has been the regular means of water travel onLake Titicaca since the time of the Incas, and in more primitive form itappears among the Shoshone Indians of the Snake River Valley of Idaho, who used this device in their treeless land to cross the streams, whenthe water was too cold for swimming. [537] Still cruder rafts of reeds, without approach to boat form, were the sole vehicles of navigationamong the backward Indians of San Francisco Bay, and were the prevailingcraft among the coast Indians farther south and about the Gulf of LowerCalifornia. [538] Trees abounded; but these remnant tribes of lowintelligence, probably recent arrivals on the coast from the interior, equipped only with instruments of bone and stone, found the difficultyof working with wood prohibitive. 

The second step in the elaboration of water conveyance was made whenmere flotation was succeeded by various devices to secure displacement. The evolution is obvious. The primitive raftsman of the Mesopotamianrivers wove his willow boughs and osiers into a large, round basketform, covered it with closely sewn skins to render it water-tight, andin it floated with his merchandise down the swift current from Armeniato Babylon. These were the boats which Herodotus saw on theEuphrates, [539] and which survive to-day. [540] According to Pliny, theancient Britons used a similar craft, framed of wicker-work and coveredwith hide, in which they crossed the English and Irish channels to visittheir kinsfolk on the opposite shores. This skin boat or coracle orcurrach still survives on the rivers of Wales and the west coast ofIreland, where it is used by the fishermen and considered the safestcraft for stormy weather. [541] It recalls the "bull-skin boat" used inpioneer days on the rivers of our western plains, and the skiffs servingas passenger ferries to-day on the rivers of eastern Tibet. [542] Itreappears among the Arikara Indians of the upper Missouri, [543] and theSouth American tribes of the Gran Chaco. [544] The first wooden boat wasmade of a tree trunk, hollowed out either by fire or axe. The widegeographical distribution of the dug-out and its survival in isolatedregions of highly civilized lands point it out as one of those necessaryand obvious inventions that must have been made independently invarious parts of the world. 

[Sidenote: Relation of the river to marine navigation. ]

The quieter water of rivers and lakes offered the most favorableconditions for the feeble beginnings of navigation, but the step frominland to marine navigation was not always taken. The Egyptians, who hadwell-constructed river and marine boats, resigned their maritimecommerce to Phoenicians and Greeks, probably, as has been shown, becausethe silted channels and swamps of the outer Nile delta held them atarm's length from the sea. Similarly the equatorial lakes of CentralAfrica have proved fair schools of navigation, where the art has passedthe initial stages of development. The kingdom of Uganda on VictoriaNyanza, at the time of Stanley's visit, could muster a war fleet of 325boats, a hundred of them measuring from fifty to seventy feet in length;the largest were manned by a crew of sixty-four paddlers and could carryas many more fighting men. [545] The long plateau course of the mightyCongo has bred a race of river navigators, issuing from their riparianvillages to attack the traveler in big flotillas of canoes ranging fromfifty to eighty-five feet in length, the largest of them driven throughthe water by eighty paddlers and steered by eight more paddles in thestern. [546] But the Congo and lake boats are barred from the coast by aseries of cataracts, which mark the passage of the drainage streams downthe escarpment of the plateau. 

[Sidenote: Retarded navigation. ]

There are peoples without boats or rafts of any description. Among thisclass are the Central Australians, Bushmen, navigation. Hottentots andKaffirs of arid South Africa, [547] and with few exceptions also theDamaras. Even the coast members of these tribes only wade out into theshallow water on the beach to spear fish. The traveler moving northwardfrom Cape Town through South Africa, across its few scant rivers, goesall the way to Ngami Lake before he sees anything resembling a canoe, and then only a rude dugout. Still greater is the number of people who, though inhabiting well indented coasts, make little use of contact withthe sea. Navigation, unknown to many Australian coast tribes, is limitedto miserable rafts of mangrove branches on the northwest seaboard, andto imperfect bark canoes with short paddles on the south; only in thenorth where Malayan influences are apparent does the hollowed tree-stemwith outrigger appear. [548] This retardation is not due to fear, becausethe South Australian native, like the Fuegian, ventures several milesout to sea in his frail canoe; it is due to that deep-seated inertiawhich characterizes all primitive races, and for which the remote, outlying location of peninsular South America, Southern Africa andAustralia, before the arrival of the Europeans, afforded no antidote inthe form of stimulating contact with other peoples. But the Irish, whostarted abreast of the other northern Celts in nautical efficiency, whohad advantages of proximity to other shores, and in the early centuriesof their history sailed to the far-away Faroes and even to Iceland, peopled southern Scotland by an oversea emigration, made piraticaldescents upon the English coast, and in turn received colonies of boldScandinavian mariners, suffered an arrested development in navigation, and failed to become a sea-faring folk. 

[Sidenote: Regions of advanced navigation. ]

Turning from these regions of merely rudimentary navigation andinquiring where the highest efficiency in the art was obtained beforethe spread of Mediterranean and European civilization, we find that thisdistinction belongs to the great island world of the Pacific and to theneighboring lands of the Indian Ocean. Sailing vessels and outriggerboats of native design and construction characterize the wholesea-washed area of Indo-Malaysian civilization from Malacca to theoutermost isles of the Pacific. The eastern rim of Asia, also, belongsto this wide domain of nautical efficiency, and the coast Indians ofsouthern Alaska and British Columbia may possibly represent an easternspur of the same, [549] thrown out in very remote times and maintained bythe advantageous geographic conditions of that indented, mountainouscoast. Adjoining this area on the north is the long-drawn Arcticseaboard of the Eskimo, who unaided have developed in their sealskinkayak and bidarka sea-going craft unsurpassed for the purposes of marinehunting and fishing, and who display a fearlessness and endurance bornof long and enforced intimacy with the deep. Driven by the frozendeserts of his home to seek his food chiefly in the water, the Eskimo, nevertheless, finds his access to the sea barred for long months ofwinter by the jagged ice-pack along the shore. 

[Sidenote: Geographic conditions in Polynesia. ]

The highest degree of intimacy is developed in that vast island-strewnstretch of the Pacific constituting Oceanica. [550] Here where a mildclimate enables the boatman race to make a companion of the deep, whereevery landscape is a seascape, where every diplomatic visit or warcampaign, every trading journey or search for new coco-palm plantationmeans a voyage beyond the narrow confines of the home island, theredwells a race whose splendid chest and arm muscles were developed in thegymnasium of the sea; who, living on a paltry 515, 000 square miles(1, 320, 300 square kilometers) of scattered fragments of land, butroaming over an ocean area of twenty-five million square miles, are notmore at home in their palm-wreathed islets than on the encompassingdeep. Migrations, voluntary and involuntary, make up their history. Their trained sense of locality, enabling them to make voyages severalhundred miles from home, has been mentioned by various explorers inPolynesia. The Marshall Islanders set down their geographical knowledgein maps which are fairly correct as to bearings but not as to distances. The Ralick Islanders of this group make charts which include islands, routes and currents. [551] Captain Cook was impressed by the geographicalknowledge of the people of the South Seas. A native Tahitian made forhim a chart containing seventy-four islands, and gave an account ofnearly sixty more. [552] Information and directions supplied by nativeshave aided white explorers to many discoveries in these waters. Quiros, visiting the Duff Islands in 1606, learned the location of Ticopia, oneof the New Hebrides group, three hundred miles away. Not only theexcellent seamanship and the related pelagic fishing of the Polynesiansbear the stamp of their predominant water environment; their mythology, their conception of a future state, the germs of their astronomicalscience, are all born of the sea. 

Though the people living on the uttermost boundaries of this islandworld are 6, 000 miles (or 10, 000 kilometers) apart, and might beexpected to be differentiated by the isolation of their islandhabitats, nevertheless they all have the same fundamentalcharacteristics of physique, language and culture from Guam to EasterIsle, reflecting in their unity the oneness of the encompassing oceanover which they circulate. [553]

[Sidenote: Mediterranean versus Atlantic seamanship. ]

Midway between these semi-aquatic Polynesians and those Arctic tribeswho are forced out upon the deep, to struggle with it rather thanassociate with it, we find the inhabitants of the Mediterranean islandsand peninsulas, who are favored by the mild climate and the tideless, fogless, stormless character of their sea. While such a body of waterinvites intimacy, it does not breed a hardy or bold race of navigators;it is a nursery, scarcely a training school. Therefore, except for thefar-famed Dalmatian sailors, who for centuries have faced the stormssweeping down from the Dinaric Alps over the turbulent surface of theAdriatic, Mediterranean seamanship does not command general confidenceon the high seas. Therefore it is the German, English and Dutchsteamship lines that are to-day the chief ocean carriers from Italianports to East Africa, Asia, Australia, North and South America, despitethe presence of native lines running from Genoa to Buenos Ayres. Montevideo and New York; just as it was the Atlantic states of Europe, and only these and all of these, except Germany, who, trained to ventureout into the fogs and storms and unmarked paths of the _maretenebrosum_, participated in the early voyages to the Americas. Oneafter the other they came--Norwegians, Spaniards, Portuguese, English, French, Dutch, Swedes and Danes. The anthropo-geographical principle isnot invalidated by the fact that Spain and England were guided in theirinitial trans-Atlantic voyages by Italian navigators, like Columbus, Cabot and Amerigo Vespucci. The long maritime experience of Italy andits commercial relations with the Orient, reaching back into ancienttimes, furnished abundant material for the researches and speculationsof such practical theorists; but Italy's location fixed the shores ofthe Mediterranean as her natural horizon, narrowed her vision to itsshorter radius. Her obvious interest in the preservation of the oldroutes to the Orient made her turn a deaf ear to plans aiming to divertEuropean commerce to trans-Atlantic routes. Italy's entrance upon thehigh seas was, therefore, reluctant and late, retarded by the necessityof outgrowing the old circumscribed outlook of the enclosed basin beforeadopting the wider vision of the open ocean. Venice and Genoa werecrippled not only by the discovery of the sea route to India, but alsoby their adherence to old thalassic means and methods of navigationinadequate for the high seas. [554] However, these Mediterranean sea folkare being gradually drawn out of their seclusion, as is proved by theincrease of Italian oceanic lines and the recent installation of anHellenic steamship line between Piræus and New York. 

[Sidenote: Three geographic stages of maritime development. ]

The size of a sea or ocean is a definite factor in its power to attractor repel maritime ventures, especially in the earlier stages of nauticaldevelopment. A broken, indented coast means not only a longer andbroader zone of contact between the inhabitants and the sea; it meansalso the breaking up of the adjacent expanse of water into so manyalcoves, in which fisherman, trader and colonist may become at home, andprepare for maritime ventures farther afield. The enclosed or marginalsea tempts earlier because it can be compassed by coastwise navigation;then by the proximity of its opposite shores and its usual generousequipment with islands, the next step to crosswise navigation isencouraged. For the earliest stages of maritime development, only thesmaller articulations of the coast and the inshore fringe of sea inletscount. This is shown in the primitive voyages of the Greeks, before theyhad ventured into the Euxine or west of the forbidding Cape Malia; andin the "inside passage" navigation of the Indians of southern Alaska, British Columbia, and Chile, who have never stretched their nauticalventures beyond the outermost rocks of their skerry-walled coast. 

[Sidenote: Influence of enclosed seas upon navigation. ]

A second stage is reached when an enclosed basin is at, hand to widenthe maritime horizon, and when this larger field is exploited in all itscommercial, colonial and industrial possibilities, as was done by thePhoenicians and Greeks in the Mediterranean, the Hanse Towns in theBaltic, the Dutch and English in the North Sea. The third and finalstage is reached when the nursery of the inshore estuary or gulf and theelementary school of the enclosed basin are in turn outgrown, and thelarger maritime spirit moves on to the open ocean for its field ofoperation. It is a significant fact that the Norse, bred to the water intheir fiords and channels behind their protecting "skerry-wall, " thentrained in the stormy basins of the North and Irish Seas, were naturallythe first people of Europe to cross the Atlantic, because the Atlanticof their shores, narrowing like all oceans and seas toward the north, assumes almost the character of an enclosed basin. The distance fromNorway to Greenland is only 1, 800 miles, little more than that acrossthe Arabian Sea between Africa and India. We trace, therefore, a certainanalogy between the physical subdivisions of the world of water intoinlet, marginal sea and ocean, and the anthropo-geographical gradationsin maritime development. 

The enclosed or marginal sea seems a necessary condition for the advancebeyond coastwise navigation and the much later step to the open ocean. Continents without them, like Africa, except for its frontage upon theMediterranean and the Red Sea, have shown no native initiative inmaritime enterprise. Africa was further cursed by the mockery of desertcoasts along most of her scant thalassic shores. In the Americas, wefind the native races compassing a wide maritime field only in theArctic, where the fragmentary character of the continent breaks up theocean into Hudson's Bay, Davis Strait, Baffin Bay, Gulf of Boothia, Melville Sound and Bering Sea; and in the American Mediterranean of theCaribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico. The excellent seamanship developed inthe archipelagoes of southern Alaska and Chile remained abortive formaritime expansion, despite a paucity of local resources and the spur ofhunger, owing to the lack of a marginal sea; but in the Caribbean basin, the Arawaks and later the Caribs spread from the southern mainland asfar as Cuba. [555] [See map page 101. ]

[Sidenote: Enclosed seas as areas of ethnic and cultural assimilation. ]

Enclosed or marginal seas were historically the most important sectionsof the ocean prior to 1492. Apart from the widening of the maritimehorizon which they give to their bordering people, each has the furtheradvantage of constituting an area of close vicinal grouping and constantinterchange of cultural achievements, by which the civilization of thewhole basin tends to become elevated and unified. This unificationfrequently extends to race also, owing to the rapidity of maritimeexpansion and the tendency to ethnic amalgamation characteristic of allcoast regions. We recognize an area of Mediterranean civilization fromthe Isthmus of Suez to the Sacred Promontory of Portugal, and in thisarea a long-headed, brunette Mediterranean race, clearly unified as tostock, despite local differentiations of culture, languages and nationsin the various islands, peninsulas and other segregated coastal regionsof this sea. [556] The basin appears therefore as an historical whole; forin it a certain group of peoples concentrated their common efforts, which crossed and criss-crossed from shore to shore. Phoenicia's traderanged westward to the outer coasts of Spain, and later Barcelona'smaritime enterprises reached east to the Levant. Greece's commercial andcolonial relations embraced the Crimea and the mouth of the Rhone, andGenoa's extended east to the Crimea again. The Saracens, on reaching theMediterranean edge of the Arabian peninsula, swept the southern coastsand islands, swung up the western rim of the basin to the foot of thePyrenees, and taught the sluggish Spaniards the art of irrigationpracticed on the garden slopes of Yemen. The ships of the Crusaders fromVenice, Genoa and Marseilles anchored in the ports of MohammedanizedSyria, brought the symbol of the cross back to its birthplace InJerusalem, but carried away with them countless suggestions from thefinished industries of the East. Here was give and take, expansion andcounter-expansion, conquest and expulsion, all together making up agreat sum of reciprocal relations embracing the whole basin, the outcomeof that close geographical connection which every sharply defined seaestablishes between the coasts which it washes. 

[Sidenote: North Sea and Baltic basins. ]

The same thing has come to pass in the North Sea. Originally Celtic onits western or British side, as opposed to its eastern or Germaniccoast, it has been wholly Teutonized on that flank also from the Straitof Dover to the Firth of Tay, and sprinkled with Scandinavian settlersfrom the Firth of Tay northward to Caithness. [557] The eleventh centurysaw this ethnic unification achieved, and the end of the Middle Ageswitnessed the diffusion of the elements of a common civilization throughthe agency of commerce from Bruges to Bergen. The Baltic, originallyTeutonic only on its northern and western shores, has in historicaltimes become almost wholly Teutonic, including even the seaboard ofFinland and much of the coast provinces of Russia. [558] Unification ofcivilization attended this unification of race. In its period ofgreatest historical significance from the twelfth to the seventeenthcentury, the Baltic played the rôle of a northern Mediterranean. [559] Thecountless shuttles of the Hanse ships wove a web of commercialintercourse between its remotest shores. Novgorod and Abö were inconstant communication with Lübeck and Stralsund;[560] and Wisby, on theisland of Gotland at the great crossroads of the Baltic, [561] had thefocal significance of the Piræus in ancient Aegean trade. 

[Sidenote: Bering Sea. ]

If we turn to Asia, we find that even the unfavorable Arctic location ofBering Sea has been unable to rob it entirely of historicalsignificance. This is the one spot where a native American race hastransplanted itself by its natural expansion to Asiatic shores. Thecircular rim and island-dotted surface have guided Eskimo emigrants tothe coast of the Chukchian Peninsula, where they have become partlyassimilated in dress and language to the local Chukches. [562] The sameconditions also facilitated the passage of a few Chukches across BeringStrait to the Alaskan side. At Pak (or Peck) on East Cape and on DiomedIsland, situated in the narrowest part of Bering Strait, are the greatintercontinental markets of the polar tribes. Here American furs havefor many decades been exchanged for the reindeer skins of northernSiberia and Russian goods from far-away Moscow. [563] Only the enclosedcharacter of the sea, reported by the Danish explorer Vitus Bering, tempted the land-bred Russians, who reached the northeastern coast ofSiberia at the middle of the eighteenth century, to launch their leakyboats of unseasoned timber, push across to the American continent, andmake this whole Bering basin a Russian sea;[564] just as a few decadesbefore, when land exploration of Kamchatka had revealed the enclosedcharacter of the Sea of Okhotsk, the Russian pioneers took a straightcourse across the water to their Pacific outpost of Petropavlovsk nearthe southern end of the peninsula. But even before the coming of theSlavs to its shores, the Sea of Okhotsk seems to have been an area ofnative commercial and ethnic intercourse from the Amur River in Siberiain a half circle to the east, through Sakhalin, Yezo, the Kurile Islandsand southern Kamchatka, [565] noticeably where the rim of the basinpresented the scantiest supply of land and where, therefore, its meagerresources had to be eked out by fisheries and trade on the sea. 

[Sidenote: Red Sea basin. ]

On the southwest margin of Asia, the Red Sea, despite its desert shores, has maintained the influence of its intercontinental location and linkedthe neighboring elements of Africa and Asia. Identity of climaticconditions on both sides of this long rift valley has facilitated ethnicexchanges, and made it the center of what Ratzel calls the "Red Seagroup of peoples, " related in race and culture. [566] The great ethnicsolvent here has been Semitic. Under the spur of Islam, the Arabs by1514 had made the Red Sea an Arabian and Mohammedan sea. They had theirtowns or trading stations at Zeila on the African side of the Strait ofBab-el-Mandeb, at Dalaqua, the port of Abyssinia, at Massowa, Suakin, and other towns, so that this coast too was called Arabia Felix. [567]

[Sidenote: Assimilation facilitated by ethnic kinship. ]

Vicinal location about an enclosed basin produces more rapidly aunification of race and culture, when some ethnic relationship andaffinity already exists among the peoples inhabiting its shores. As inthe ancient and medieval Mediterranean, so in the Yellow Sea of Asia, the working of this principle is apparent. The presence along its coastsof divergent but kindred peoples like the Chinese, Koreans and Japanese, allowed these to be easily assimilated to a Yellow Sea race and toabsorb quickly any later infusion, like that of the Tatars and Manchus. China, by reason of its larger area, long-drawn coast, massivepopulation, and early civilization, was the dominant factor in thisbasin; Korea and Japan were its culture colonies-a fact that justifiesthe phrase calling "China the Rome of the Far East. " Historical Japanbegan on the island of Kiu-sui, facing the Yellow Sea. Like Korea, itderived its writing, its fantastic medical notions, its industrialmethods, some features of its government administration, its Buddhismand its religion of Confucius from the people about the lowerHoangho. [568] Three centuries ago Japan had its colony on Korean soil atFusan, the Calais of the East. [569] For purposes of piracy and smugglingJapanese penetrated far up the rivers of China. Korea has kept in touchwith China by an active trade and diplomatic relations through thecenturies. 

But to-day China is going to school to Japan. Since Japan renouncedher policy of seclusion in 1868 along with her antiquated form ofgovernment, and since Korea has been forced out of her hermit life, the potency of vicinal location around this enclosed sea has beensuddenly restored. The enforced opening of the treaty ports of Japan, Korea and China simply prepared the way for this basin to reassert itspower to unite, and to unite now more closely and effectively thanever before, under the law of increasing territorial areas. Thestimulus was first communicated to the basin from without, from thetrading nations of the Occident and that new-born Orient rising fromthe sea on the California shores. Japan has responded most promptlyand most actively to these over-sea stimuli, just as England has, ofall Europe, felt most strongly the reflex influences fromtrans-Atlantic lands. The awakening of this basin has started, therefore, from its seaward rim; its star has risen in the east. It isin the small countries of the world that such stars rise. Thecompressed energies of Japan, stirred by over-sea contact and animproved government at home, have overleaped the old barriers and arefollowing the lines of slight resistance which this land-bound seaaffords. Helped by the bonds of geographical conditions and of race, she has begun to convert China and Korea into her culture colonies. The on-looking world feels that the ultimate welfare of China andKorea can be best nurtured by Japan, which will thus pay its old debtto the Middle Kingdom. 

[Sidenote: Chinese expansion seaward. ]

Despite the fact that China's history has always had a decidedly inlandcharacter, that its political expansion has been landward, that it haspracticed most extensively and successively internal colonization, andthat its policy of exclusion has tended to deaden its outlook toward thePacific, nevertheless China's direct intercourse with the west and itswestward-directed influence have never, in point of significance, beencomparable with that toward the east and south. Here a succession ofmarginal seas offered easy water-paths, dotted with way stations, totheir outermost rim in Japan, the Philippines and remote Australia. About the South China Sea, the Gulf of Siam, the Sulu, Celebes, and JavaSeas, the coastal regions of the outlying islands have for centuriesreceived Chinese goods and culture, and a blend of that obstinatelyassertive Chinese blood. 

The strength of these influences has decreased with every increase ofdistance from the indented coasts and teeming, seafaring population ofSouth China, and with every decrease in race affinity. They have leftonly faint traces on the alien shores of far-away Australia. Thedivergent ethnic stock of the widespread Malay world has been littlesusceptible to these influences, which are therefore weak in the remoterislands, but clearly discernible on the coasts of the Philippines, [570]Borneo, the nearer Sunda Islands, and the peninsula of Malacca, wherethe Chinese have had trading colonies for centuries. [571] But in theeastern half of Farther India, which is grouped with China by land aswell as by sea, and whose race stock is largely if not purely Mongolian, these influences are very marked, so that the whole continental rim ofthe South China Sea, from Formosa to the Isthmus of Malacca, is stronglyassimilated in race and culture. Tongking, exposed to those modifyinginfluences which characterize all land frontiers, as well as tocoastwise intercourse, is in its people and civilization merely atranscript of China. The coast districts and islands of Annam areoccupied by Chinese as far as the hills of Cambodia, and the name ofCochin China points to the origin of its predominant population. One-sixth of the inhabitants of Siam are Chinese, some of whom havefiltered through the northern border; Bangkok, the capital, has a largeChinese quarter. The whole economic life and no small part of theintellectual life of the eastern face of Farther India south toSingapore is centered in the activity of the Chinese. [572]

[Sidenote: Importance of zonal and continental location. ]

The historical significance of an enclosed sea basin depends upon itszonal location and its position in relation to the surrounding lands. Weobserve a steady decrease of historical importance from south to norththrough the connected series of the Yellow, Japan, Okhotsk, Bering Seasand the Arctic basin, miscalled ocean. The far-northern location of theBaltic, with its long winters of ice-bound ports and its glaciatedlands, retarded its inclusion in the field of history, curtailed itsimportant historical period, and reduced the intensity of its historicallife, despite the brave, eager activity of the Hanseatic League. TheMediterranean had the advantage, not only of a more favorable zonalsituation, but of a location at the meeting place of three continentsand on the line of maritime traffic across the eastern hemisphere fromthe Atlantic to the Pacific. 

[Sidenote: Thalassic character of the Indian Ocean. ]

These advantages it shares in some degree with the Indian Ocean, which, as Ratzel justly argues, is not a true ocean, at best only half anocean. North of the equator, where it is narrowed and enclosed like aninland sea, it loses the hydrospheric and atmospheric characteristics ofa genuine ocean. Currents and winds are disorganized by theclose-hugging lands. Here the steady northeast trade wind is replaced bythe alternating air currents of the northeast and southwest monsoons, which at a very early date[573] enabled merchant vessels to break awayfrom their previous slow, coastwise path, and to strike a straightcourse on their voyage between Arabia or the east coast of Africa andIndia. [574] Moreover, this northern half of the Indian Ocean looks like alarger Mediterranean with its southern coast removed. It has the sameeast and west series of peninsulas harboring differentiatednationalities, the same northward running recesses, but all on a largerscale. It has linked together the history of Asia and Africa; and by theRed Sea and Persian Gulf, it has drawn Europe and the Mediterraneaninto its sphere of influence. At the western corner of the Indian Oceana Semitic people, the Arabs of Oman and Yemen, here first developedbrilliant maritime activity, like their Phoenician kinsmen of theLebanon seaboard. Similar geographic conditions in their home lands anda nearly similar intercontinental location combined to make them themiddlemen of three continents. Just as the Phoenicians, by way of theMediterranean, reached and roused slumberous North Africa intohistorical activity and became the medium for the distribution ofEgypt's culture, so these Semites of the Arabian shores knocked at thelong-closed doors of East Africa facing on the Indian basin, and drewthis region into the history of southern Asia. Thus the Africa of theenclosed seas was awakened to some measure of historical life, while theAfrica of the wide Atlantic slept on. 

[Sidenote: The sea route to the Orient. ]

From the dawn of history the northern Indian Ocean was a thoroughfare. Alexander the Great's rediscovery of the old sea route to the Orientsounds like a modern event in relation to the gray ages behind it. Alongthis thoroughfare Indian colonists, traders, and priests carried theelements of Indian civilization to the easternmost Sunda Isles; andOriental wares, sciences and religions moved westward to the margin ofEurope and Africa. The Indian Ocean produced a civilization of its own, with which it colored a vast semi-circle of land reaching from Java toAbyssinia, and more faintly, owing to the wider divergence of race, thefurther stretch from Abyssinia to Mozambique. 

Thus the northern Indian Ocean, owing to its form, its location in theangle between Asia and Africa and the latitude where, round the wholeearth, "the zone of greatest historical density" begins, and especiallyits location just southeast of the Mediterranean as the easternextension of that maritime track of ancient and modern times betweenEurope and China, has been involved in a long series of historicalevents. From the historical standpoint, prior to 1492 it takes a farhigher place than the Atlantic and Pacific, owing to its nature as anenclosed sea. [575] But like all such basins, this northern Indian Oceanattained its zenith of historical importance in early times. In thesixteenth century it suffered a partial eclipse, which passed only withthe opening of the Suez Canal. During this interval, however, thePortuguese. Dutch and English had rounded the Cape of Good Hope andentered this basin on its open or oceanic side. By their tradingstations, which soon traced the outlines of its coasts from Sofala inSouth Africa around to Java, they made this ocean an alcove of theAtlantic, and embodied its events in the Atlantic period of history. Itis this open or oceanic side which differentiates the Indian Oceanphysically, and therefore historically, from a genuine enclosed sea. 

[Sidenote: Limitation of small area in enclosed seas. ]

The limitation of every enclosed or marginal sea lies in its small areaand in the relatively restricted circle of its bordering lands. Onlysmall peninsulas and islands can break its surface, and short stretchesof coast combine to form its shores. It affords, therefore, only limitedterritories as goals for expansion, restricted resources and populationsto furnish the supply and demand of trade. What lands could theMediterranean present to the colonial outlook of the Greeks comparableto the North America of the expanding English or the Brazil of thePortuguese? Yet the Mediterranean as a colonial field had greatadvantages in point of size over the Baltic, which is only one-sixth aslarge (2, 509, 500 and 431, 000 square kilometers respectively), andespecially over the Red Sea and Persian Gulf, whose effective areas weregreatly reduced by the aridity of their surrounding lands. But theprecocious development and early cessation of growth marking allMediterranean national life have given to this basin a variegatedhistory; and in every period and every geographical region of it, fromancient Phoenicia to modern Spain and Italy, the early exhaustion ofresources and dwarfing of political ideals which characterize most smallareas become increasingly conspicuous. The history of Sweden, Denmark, and the Hanse Towns in the Baltic tells the same story, the story of ahothouse plant, forced in germination and growth, then stifled in theclose air. 

[Sidenote: Successive maritime periods in history. ]

Growth demands space. Therefore, the progress of history has beenattended by an advance from smaller to larger marine areas, with aconstant increase in those manifold relations between peoples and landswhich the water is able to establish. Every great epoch of history hashad its own sea, and every succeeding epoch has enlarged its maritimefield. The Greek had the Aegean, the Roman the whole Mediterranean, towhich the Middle Ages made an addition in the North Sea and Baltic. Themodern period has had the Atlantic, and the twentieth century is nowentering upon the final epoch of the World Ocean. The gradual inclusionof this World Ocean in the widened scope of history has been due to theexpansion of European peoples, who, for the past twenty centuries, havebeen the most far-reaching agents in the making of universal history. Owing to the location and structure of their continent, they have alwaysfound the larger outlet in a western sea. In the south the field widenedfrom the Phoenician Sea to the Aegean, then to the Mediterranean, on tothe Atlantic, and across it to its western shores; in the north it movedfrom the quiet Baltic to the tide-swept North Sea and across the NorthAtlantic. Only the South Atlantic brought European ships to the greatworld highway of the South Seas, and gave them the choice of an easternor western route to the Pacific. Every new voyage in the age ofdiscovery expanded the historical horizon; and every improvement in thetechnique of navigation has helped to eliminate distance and reducedintercourse on the World Ocean to the time-scale of the ancientMediterranean. 

It would be a mistake, however, to suppose that the larger oceanichorizon has meant a corresponding increase in the relative content andimportance of history for the known world of each period. Such anintense, concentrated national life as occurred in those littleMediterranean countries in ancient times is not duplicated now, unlesswe find a parallel in Japan's recent career in the Yellow Sea basin. There was something as cosmic in the colonial ventures of the Greeks tothe wind-swept shores of the Crimea or barbarous wilds of Massilia, asin the establishment of English settlements on the brimming rivers ofVirginia or the torrid coast of Malacca. Alexander's conquest of theAsiatic rim of the Mediterranean and Rome's political unification of thebasin had a significance for ancient times comparable with theRussification of northern Asia and the establishment of the BritishEmpire for our day. 

The ocean has always performed one function in the evolution of history;it has provided the outlet for the exercise of redundant nationalpowers. The abundance of opportunity which it presents to thesedisengaged energies depends upon the size, location and other geographicconditions of the bordering lands. These opportunities are limited in anenclosed basin, larger in the oceans, and largest in the northern halvesof the oceans, owing to the widening of all land-masses towards thenorth and the consequent contraction of the oceans and seas in the samelatitudes. 

[Sidenote: Contrasted historical rôles of northern and southernhemispheres. ]

A result of this grouping is the abundance of land in the northernhemisphere, and the vast predominance of water in the southern, byreason of which these two hemispheres have each assumed a distinct rôlein history. The northern hemisphere offers the largest advantages forthe habitation of man, and significantly enough, contains a populationfive times that of the southern hemisphere. The latter, on the otherhand, with its vast, unbroken water areas, has been the great oceanichighway for circum-mundane exploration and trade. This great watergirdle of the South Seas had to be discovered before the spherical formof the earth could be proven. In the wide territory of the northernhemisphere civilization has experienced an uninterrupted development, first in the Old World, because this offered in its large area north ofthe equator the fundamental conditions for rapid evolution; then it wastransplanted with greatest success to North America. The northernhemisphere contains, therefore, "the zone of greatest historicaldensity, " from which the track of the South Seas is inconvenientlyremote. Hence we find in recent decades a reversion to the old east-westpath along the southern rim of Eurasia, now perfected by the Suez Canal, and to be extended in the near future around the world by the union ofthe Pacific with the Caribbean Sea at Panama; so that finally thenorthern hemisphere will have its own circum-mundane waterway, along theline of greatest intercontinental intercourse. 

[Sidenote: Size of the oceans]

The size of the ocean as a whole is so enormous, and yet its varioussubdivisions are so uniform in their physical aspect, that theirdifferences of size produce less conspicuous historical effects thantheir diversity of area would lead one to expect. A voyage across the177, 000 square miles (453, 500 square kilometers) of the Black Sea doesnot differ materially from one across the 979, 000 square miles(2, 509, 500 square kilometers) of the Mediterranean; or a voyage acrossthe 213, 000 square miles (547, 600 square kilometers) of the North Sea, from one across the three-hundredfold larger area of the Pacific. Theocean does not, like the land, wear upon its surface the evidences andeffects of its size; it wraps itself in the same garment of blue wavesor sullen swell, wherever it appears; but the outward cloak of the landvaries from zone to zone. The significant anthropo-geographicalinfluence of the size of the oceans, as opposed to that of the smallerseas, comes from the larger circle of lands which the former open tomaritime enterprise. For primitive navigation, when the sailor creptfrom headland to headland and from island to island, the small enclosedbasin with its close-hugging shores did indeed offer the bestconditions. To-day, only the great tonnage of ocean-going vessels mayreflect in some degree the vast areas they traverse between continentand continent. Coasting craft and ships designed for local traffic inenclosed seas are in general smaller, as in the Baltic, though theenormous commerce of the Great Lakes, which constitute in effect aninland sea, demands immense vessels. 

[Sidenote: Neutrality of the seas, its evolution. ]

The vast size of the oceans has been the basis of their neutrality. Theneutrality of the seas is a recent idea in political history. Theprinciple arose in connection with the oceans, and from them wasextended to the smaller basins, which previously tended to be regardedas private political domains. Their limited area, which enabled them tobe compassed, enabled them also to be appropriated, controlled andpoliced. The Greek excluded the Phoenician from the Aegean and made itan Hellenic sea. Carthage and Tarentum tried to draw the dead line forRoman merchantmen at the Lacinian Cape, the doorway into the IonianSea, and thereby involved themselves in the famous Punic Wars. The wholeMediterranean became a Roman sea, the _mare nostrum_. Pompey's fleet wasable to police it effectively and to exterminate the pirates in a fewmonths, as Cicero tells us in his oration for the Manilian Law. Venice, by the conquest of the Dalmatian pirates in 991 prepared to make herself_dominatrix Adriatici maris_, as she was later called. By the thirteenthcentury she had secured full command of the sea, spoke of it as "theGulf, " in her desire to stamp it as a _mare clausum_, maintained in it apowerful patrol fleet under a _Capitan in Golfo_, whose duty it was topolice the sea for pirates and to seize all ships laden with contrabandgoods. She claimed and enforced the right of search of foreign vessels, and compelled them to discharge two-thirds of their cargo at Venice, which thus became the clearing house of the whole Adriatic. She evenappealed to the Pope for confirmation of her dominion over the sea. [576]Sweden and Denmark strove for a _dominum maris Baltici_; but the HanseTowns of northern Germany secured the maritime supremacy in the basin, kept a toll-gate at its entrance, and levied toll or excluded merchantships at their pleasure, a right which after the fall of the Hanseaticpower was assumed by Denmark and maintained till 1857. "The Narrow Seas"over which England claimed sovereignty from 1299 to 1805, and on whichshe exacted a salute from every foreign vessel, included the North Seaas far as Stadland Cape in Norway, the English Channel, and the Bay ofBiscay down to Cape Finisterre in northern Spain. [577]

At the beginning of the sixteenth century the Indian Ocean was aPortuguese sea. Spain was trying to monopolize the Caribbean and eventhe Pacific Ocean. But the immense areas of these pelagic fields ofenterprise, and the rapid intrusion into them of other colonial powerssoon rendered obsolete in practice the principle of the _mare clausum_, and introduced that of the _mare liberum_. The political theory of thefreedom of the seas seems to have needed vigorous support even towardthe end of the seventeenth century. At this time we find writers likeSalmasius and Hugo Grotius invoking it to combat Portuguese monopoly ofthe Indian Ocean as a _mare clausum_. Grotius in a lengthy dissertationupholds the thesis that "_Jure gentium quibusvis ad quosvis liberamesse navigationem_, " and supports it by an elaborate argument andquotations from the ancient poets, philosophers, orators andhistorians. [578] This principle was not finally acknowledged by Englandas applicable to "The Narrow Seas" till 1805. Now, by internationalagreement, political domain extends only to one marine league from shoreor within cannon range. The rest of the vast water area remains theunobstructed highway of the world. 

NOTES TO CHAPTER IX

[528] S. M. Zwemer, Arabia the Cradle of Islam, p. 135. New York, 1900. 

[529] A. H. Layard, Nineveh and Its Remains, Vol. I, p. 277; Vol. II, 79-81. New York, 1849. 

[530] E. F. Knight, Where Three Empires Meet, pp. 257, 261. London, 1897. 

[531] Col. Lane Fox, Early Modes of Navigation, _Journal ofAnthropological Institute_, Vol. IV, p. 423. 

[532] Boyd Alexander, From the Niger to the Nile, Vol. I, p. 167. London; 1907. 

[533] _Ibid. _, Vol. I, p. 324. 

[534] James H. Breasted, History of Egypt, pp. 89, 91, 97. New York, 1905. Col. Lane Fox, Early Modes of Navigation, _Journal ofAnthropological Institute_, Vol. IV, pp. 414-417. 

[535] G. Schweinfurth, The Heart of Africa, Vol. I, p. 77. London, 1873. 

[536] E. Huntington, The Depression of Sistan in Eastern Persia, _Bulletin of the American Geographical Society_, Vol. 37, No. 5. 1905. 

[537] Schoolcraft, The Indian Tribes of the United States, Vol. I, p. 214. Philadelphia, 1853. 

[538] H. H. Bancroft, The Native Races, Vol. I, pp. 382-383, 408, 564. San Francisco, 1886. D. G. Brinton, The American Race, pp. 110, 112. Philadelphia, 1901. 

[539] Herodotus, Book 1, Chap. 194. 

[540] S. M. Zwemer, Arabia the Cradle of Islam, p. 135. New York, 1900. 

[541] Cotterill and Little, Ships and Sailors, pp. Ix-x, 38, London, 1868. 

[542] M. Hue, Travels in Tartary, Thibet and China in 1846, Vol. II, p. 251. Chicago, 1898. 

[543] Elliott Coues, History of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, Vol. I, p. 159. New York, 1893. 

[544] Col. Lane Fox, Early Modes of Navigation, _Journal ofAnthropological Institute_, Vol. IV, pp. 423-425. 

[545] H. M. Stanley, Through the Dark Continent, Vol. I, pp. 313-314. NewYork, 1879. 

[546] _Ibid. _, Vol. II, pp. 184, 219-220, 270-272, 300. 

[547] Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. II, p. 288. London, 1896-1898. 

[548] _Ibid. _, Vol I, pp. 358-359. Spencer and Gillen, Northern Tribesof Central Australia, pp. 679-680. London, 1904. 

[549] Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. I, pp. 153-154; Vol. II, pp. 91, 100. London, 1896-1898. 

[550] _Ibid. _, Vol. I, pp. 166-170. 

[551] Captain Winkler, Sea Charts Formerly Used in the Marshall Islands, Smithsonian Report for 1899, translated from the _Marine Rundschau_. Berlin, 1898. 

[552] Captain James Cook, Journal of First Voyage Round the World, pp. 70, 105, 119, 221, 230. Edited by W. J. L. Wharton. London, 1893. 

[553] Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. I, pp. 161, 174. London, 1896-1898. 

[554] The Commercial and Fiscal Policy of the Venetian Republic, _Edinburgh Review_, Vol. 200, pp. 352-353. 1904. 

[555] H. Helmolt, History of the World, Vol. I, pp. 188-189, 193-195. New York, 1902-1906. 

[556] G. Sergi, The Mediterranean Race, pp. 29-37. New York, 1901. W. Z. Ripley, Races of Europe, pp. 128-130, 270-273, 387-390, 407, 444, 448. New York, 1899. 

[557] H. J. Mackinder, Britain and the British Seas, pp. 189-190. London, 1904. 

[558] Sydow-Wagner _Schul-Atlas, Völker und Sprachenkarten_, No. 13. Gotha, 1905. A. Leroy-Beaulieu, The Empire of the Tsars, map p. 80. NewYork, 1897. 

[559] Helmolt, History of the World, Vol. VI, pp. 5-17. New York, 1902-1906. 

[560] E. C. Semple, The Development of the Hanse Towns in Relation totheir Geographical Environment, _Bulletin American GeographicalSociety_, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, 1899. 

[561] Helen Zimmern, The Hansa Towns, pp. 24-25, 54-55. New York, 1895. 

[562] Nordenskiold, The Voyage of the Vega, pp. 365, 588, 591. New York, 1882. 

[563] _Ibid. _, pp. 375, 403, 405, 487, 563. 

[564] Agnes Laut, The Vikings of the Pacific, pp. 62-105. New York, 1905. 

[565] Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. III, pp. 446, 449-450. London, 1896-1898. 

[566] _Ibid. _, Vol. III, pp. 180-195. 

[567] Duarte Barbosa, The Coasts of East Africa and Malabar, pp. 17-18. Hakluyt Society Publications. London, 1866. 

[568] Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. III, pp. 443-444. London, 1896-1898. 

[569] Angus Hamilton, Korea, pp. 130-135. New York, 1904. 

[570] Census of the Philippine Islands, Vol. I, pp. 318-320, 478, 481-495. Washington, 1903. 

[571] Hans Helmolt, History of the World, Vol. II, pp. 544-545. NewYork, 1902-1906. 

[572] Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. III, pp. 407-412. London, 1896-1898. 

[573] Pliny, Natural History, Book VI, chap. 26. 

[574] Bunbury, History of Ancient Geography, Vol. II, pp. 351, 417-418, 470, 471. London, 1883. 

[575] For full discussion of Indian Ocean, see Helmolt, History of theWorld, Vol. II, pp. 580-584, 602-610. New York, 1902-1906. DuarteBarbosa, The Coasts of East Africa and Malabar, pp. 26-28, 41-42, 59-60, 67, 75, 79-80, 83, 166, 170, 174, 179, 184, 191-194, Hakluyt Society. London, 1866. 

[576] Pompeo Molmenti, Venice in the Middle Ages, Vol. I, pp. 117, 121-123, 130. Chicago, 1906. The Commercial and Fiscal Policy of theVenetian Republic, _Edinburgh Review_, Vol. 200, pp. 341-344, 347. 1904. 

[577] H. J. Mackinder, Britain and the British Seas, p. 24, note. London, 1904. 

[578] Hugonis Grotii, _Mare Liberum sive de jure quod Batavis competitad Indicana commercia dissertatio_, contained in his _De Jure Belli etPacis. Hagae Comitis_, 1680. 

CHAPTER X

MAN'S RELATION TO THE WATER

Despite the extensive use which man makes of the water highways of theworld, they remain to him highways, places for his passing andrepassing, not for his abiding. Essentially a terrestrial animal, hemakes his sojourn upon the deep only temporary, even when as a fishermanhe is kept upon the sea for months during the long season of the catch, or when, as whaler, year-long voyages are necessitated by theremoteness and expanse of his field of operations. Yet even this rulehas its exceptions. The Moro Bajan are sea gypsies of the southernPhilippines and the Sulu archipelago, of whom Gannett says "their homeis in their boats from the cradle to the grave, and they know no art butthat of fishing. " Subsisting almost exclusively on sea food, they wanderabout from shore to shore, one family to a boat, in little fleets ofhalf a dozen sail; every floating community has its own headman calledthe Captain Bajan, who embodies all their slender politicalorganization. When occasionally they abandon their rude boats for atime, they do not abandon the sea, but raise their huts on piles abovethe water on some shelving beach. Like the ancient lake-dwellers ofSwitzerland and Italy, only in death do they acknowledge their ultimateconnection with the solid land. They never bury their dead at sea, butalways on a particular island, to which the funeral cortege of rudeoutrigged boats moves to the music of the paddle's dip. [579]

[Sidenote: Protection of a water frontier. ]

The margin of river, lake and sea has always attracted the firstsettlements of man because it offered a ready food supply in its animallife and an easy highway for communication. Moreover, a water front madea comparatively safe frontier for the small, isolated communities whichconstituted primitive societies. The motive of protection, dominant inthe savage when selecting sites for his villages, led him to place themon the pear-shaped peninsula formed by a river loop, or on an island inthe stream or off the coast; or to sever his connection with the solidland, whence attack might come, and provide himself with a boundarywaste of water by raising his hut on piles above the surface of lake, river or sheltered seacoast, within easy reach of the shore. In thislocation the occupant of the pile dwelling has found all his needsanswered--fishing grounds beneath and about his hut, fields a fewhundred feet away on shore, easily reached by his dug-out canoe, and aplace of retreat from a land enemy, whether man or wild beast. 

[Sidenote: Ancient pile villages. ]

Such pile dwellings, answering the primary need of protection, have hadwide distribution, especially in the Tropics, and persist into our owntimes among retarded peoples living in small, isolated groups too weakfor effective defence. They were numerous in the lakes of Switzerland[580]and northern Italy down to the first century of our era, and existedlater in slightly modified form in Ireland, Scotland, England andsouthern Wales. [581] In ancient Ireland they were constructed onartificial islands, raised in shallow spots of lakes or morasses bymeans of fascines weighted down with gravel and clay, and moored to thebottom by stakes driven through the mass. Such groups of dwellings werecalled _Crannogs_; they existed in Ireland from the earliest historicalperiod and continued in use down to the time of Queen Elizabeth. In theturbulent twelfth century, the warring lords of the soil adopted them asplaces of refuge and residence. [582] Herodotus describes a pile village ofthe ancient Thracians in Lake Prasias near the Hellespont, built quiteafter the Swiss type, with trap doors in the floor for fishing orthrowing out refuse. Its inhabitants escaped conquest by the Persiansunder King Darius, and avoided the fate of their fellow tribesmen onland, who were subdued and removed as colonists to Asia. [583]

[Sidenote: Present distribution. ]

Among Europeans such pile villages belong to primitive stages ofdevelopment, chiefly to the Stone, Bronze, and early Iron Ages. They arewidely distributed in modern times among retarded peoples, who in thisway seek compensation for their social and economic weakness. In SouthAmerica, the small timid tribe of the native Warraus till quite recentlybuilt their dwellings on platforms over the water in the river networkof the Orinoco delta and along the swamp coast as far as the Essequibo. These pile villages, "_fondata sopra l'acqua come Venezia_, " asVespuccius says, suggested to him the name of Venezuela or little Venicefor this coast. [584] A pile village in Jull Lake, a lacustrine expansionin a tributary of the upper Salwin River, is inhabited by the Inthas, apparently an alien colony in Burma. They have added a detail in theirfloating gardens, rafts covered with soil, on which they raise tomatoes, watermelons and gourds. [585]

In little Lake Mohrya, located near the upper Lualaba River, a southernheadstream of the Congo, Cameron found numerous pile dwellings, whoseowners moved about in dug-out canoes and cultivated fields on land, [586]as did their Swiss confrères of twenty centuries ago. Livingstone, indescending from Lake Nyassa by the Shire River, found in the lakelet ofPamalombe, into which the stream widened, similar water huts inhabitedby a number of Manganja families, who had been driven from their homesby slave raiders. The slender reeds of the papyrus thicket, lining theshore in a broad band, served as piles, number compensating for the lackof strength; the reeds, bent downward and fastened together into a mat, did indeed support their light dwellings, but heaved like thin ice whenthe savages moved from hut to hut. The dense forest of papyrus leftstanding between village and shore effectually screened their retreat, and the abundant fish in the lake provided them with food. [587]

[Sidenote: Malayan pile dwellings. ]

In the vast island world of Indonesia, where constant contact with thesea has bred the amphibian Malay race, we are not surprised to find thatthe typical Malay house is built on piles above the water; and that whenthe coast Malay is driven inland by new-comers of his own stock andforced to abandon his favorite occupations of trade, piracy and fishing, he takes to agriculture but still retains his sea-born architecture andraises his hut on poles above the ground, beyond the reach of an enemy'sspear-thrust. The Moro Samal Laut of the southern Sulu Archipelago avoidthe large volcanic islands of the group, and place their big villagesover the sea on low coral reefs. The sandy beaches of the shore holdtheir coco-palms, whose nuts by their milk eke out the scanty supply ofdrinking water, and whose fronds shade the tombs of the dead. [588] Thesea-faring Malays of the Sunda Islands, in thickly populated points ofthe coast, often dwell in permanently inhabited rafts moored near thepile dwellings. Palembang on the lower swampy course of the River Musihas a floating suburb of this sort. It is called the "Venice ofSumatra, " just as Banjarmasin, a vast complex of pile and raftdwellings, is called the "Venice of Borneo, " and Brunei to the north isthe "Venice of the East. "[589] Both these towns are the chief commercialcenters of their respective islands. The little town of Kilwaru, situated on a sandbank off the eastern end of Ceram, seems to float onthe sea, so completely has it surrounded and enveloped with pile-builthouses the few acres of dry land which form its nucleus. It is a placeof busy traffic, the emporium for commerce between the Malay Archipelagoand New Guinea. [590]

[Sidenote: In Melanesia. ]

Farther east in Melanesia, whose coast regions are more or lesspermeated by Malayan stock and influences, pile dwellings, both overwater and on land form a characteristic feature of the scenery. Thevillage of Sowek in Geelvink Bay, on the northern coast of Dutch NewGuinea, consists of thirty houses raised on piles above the water, connected with each other by tree trunks but having only boat connectionwith the shore. Similar villages are found hovering over the lappingwaves of Humboldt Bay, all of them recalling with surprising fidelitythe prehistoric lake-dwellings of Switzerland. [591] The Papuan part ofPort Moresby, on the southern coast of British New Guinea, covers thewhole water-front of the town with pile dwellings. In the vicinity aresimilar native pile villages, such as Tanobada, Hanuabada, Elevara andHula, the latter consisting of pile dwellings scattered about over thewater in a circuit of several miles and containing about a thousandinhabitants. Here, too, the motive is protection against the attacks ofinland mountain tribes, with whom the coast people are in constantwar. [592]

The Malay fisherman, trader and pirate, with the love of the sea in hisblood, by these pile dwellings combines security from his foe andproximity to his familiar field of activity. The same objects areachieved by white traders on the west coast of Africa by setting uptheir dwellings and warehouses on the old hulks of dismasted vessels, which are anchored for this purpose in the river mouths. They affordsome protection against both fever and hostile native, and at the sametime occupy the natural focus of local trade seeking foreign exchanges. 

[Sidenote: River dwellers in populous lands. ]

When advancing civilization has eliminated the need for this form ofprotection, water-dwellers may survive or reappear in old andrelatively over-populated countries, as we find them universally on therivers of China and less often in Farther India. Here they present thephenomenon of human life overflowing from the land to the streams of thecountry; because these, as highways of commerce, afford a means oflivelihood, even apart from the food supply in their fish, and offer anunclaimed bit of the earth's surface for a floating home. Canton has250, 000 inhabitants living on boats and rafts moored in the river, andfinding occupation in the vast inland navigation of the Empire, or inthe trade which it brings to this port of the Si-kiang. Some of theboats accommodate large families, together with modest poultry farms, crowded together under their low bamboo sheds. Others are handsomewooden residences ornamented with plants, and yet others are pleasureresorts with their professional singing girls. [593] In the lakes andswamp-bordered rivers of southern Shantung, a considerable fishingpopulation is found living in boats, while the land shows fewinhabitants. This population enjoys freedom from taxation andunrestricted use of the rivers and fisheries. To vary their scant andmonotonous diet, they construct floating gardens on rafts of bamboocovered with earth, on which they plant onions and garlic and which theytow behind their boats. They also raise hundreds of ducks, which aretrained to go into the water to feed and return at a signal, [594] thusexpanding the resources of their river life. Bangkok has all itsbusiness district afloat on the Menam River--shops, lumber yards, eating-houses and merchants' dwellings. Even the street vendor's cart isa small boat, paddled in and out among the larger junks. [595]

A far more modern type of river-dwellers is found in the "shanty-boat"people of the western rivers of the United States. They are the gypsiesof our streams, nomads who float downstream with the current, tying upat intervals along the bank of some wooded island or city waterfront, then paying a tug to draw their house-boat upstream. The river furnishesthem with fish for their table and driftwood for their cooking-stove, and above all is the highway for the gratification of their nomadinstincts. There is no question here of trade and overpopulation. 

[Sidenote: Reclamation of land from the sea. ]

Pile dwellings and house-boats are a paltry form of encroachment uponthe water in comparison with that extensive reclamation of river swampsand coastal marshes which in certain parts of the world has so increasedthe area available for human habitation. The water which is a necessityto man may become his enemy unless it is controlled. The alluvium whicha river deposits in its flood-plain, whether in some flat stretch of itsmiddle course or near the retarding level of the sea, attractssettlement because of its fertility and proximity to a natural highway;but it must be protected by dikes against the very element which createdit. Such deposits are most extensive on low coasts at or near theriver's mouth, just where the junction of an inland and oceanic waterwayoffers the best conditions for commerce. Here then is a locationdestined to attract and support a large population, for which place canbe made only by steady encroachment upon the water of both river andsea. Diking is necessitated not only by the demand for more land for thegrowing population, but also by the constant silting up of the drainageoutfalls, which increases the danger of inundation while at the sametime contributing to the upbuilding of the land. Conditions hereinstitute an incessant struggle between man and nature;[596] but therewards of victory are too great to count the cost. The construction ofsea-walls, embankment of rivers, reclamation of marshes, the cutting ofcanals for drains and passways in a water-soaked land, the conversion oflakes into meadow, the rectification of tortuous streams for the greatereconomy of this silt-made soil, all together constitute the greatestgeographical transformation that man has brought about on the earth'ssurface. [597]

[Sidenote: The struggle with the water. ]

Though the North Sea lowland of Europe has suffered from the seriousencroachment of the sea from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century, when the Zuyder Zee, the Dollart and Jade Bay were formed, neverthelessthe counter encroachment of the land upon the water, accomplishedthrough the energy and intelligence of the inhabitants, has more thanmade good the loss. Between the Elbe and Scheldt more than 2, 000 squaremiles (5, 000 square kilometers) have been reclaimed from river and seain the past three hundred years. Holland's success in draining her largeinland waters, like the Haarlem Meer (70 square miles or 180 squarekilometers) and the Lake of Ij, has inspired an attempt to recover 800square miles (2, 050 square kilometers) of fertile soil from the bordersof the Zuyder Zee and reduce that basin to nearly one-third of itspresent size. [598] One-fourth of the Netherlands lies below the averageof high tides, and in 1844 necessitated 9, 000 windmills to pump thewaste water into the drainage canals. [599]

The Netherlands, with all its external features of man's war against thewater, has its smaller counterpart in the 1, 200 square miles ofreclaimed soil about the head of the Wash, which constitute the Fenlandof England. Here too are successive lines of sea-wall, the earliest ofthem attributed to the Romans, straightened and embanked rivers, drainage canals, windmills and steam pumps, dikes serving as roads, lines of willows and low moist pastures dotted with grazing cattle. Nofeature of the Netherlands is omitted. The low southern part ofLincolnshire is even called Holland, and Dutch prisoners from a navalbattle of 1652 were employed there on the work of reclamation, which wasbegun on a large scale about this time. [600] In the medieval period, theincrease of population necessitated measures to improve the drainage andextend the acreage; but there was little co-operation among the landowners, and the maintenance of river dikes and sea-walls was neglected, till a succession of disasters from flooding streams and invading tidesin the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries led to severe measuresagainst defaulters. One culprit was placed alive in a breach which hisown neglect or criminal cutting had caused, and was built in, by way ofeducating the Fenlanders to a sense of common responsibility. [601]

The fight against the water on the coast begins later than that againstrivers and swamps in the interior of the land; it demands greaterenterprise and courage, because it combats two enemies instead of one;but its rewards are correspondingly greater. The Netherlands by theirstruggle have acquired not only territory for an additional halfmillion population, but have secured to themselves a strategic positionin the maritime trade of the world. 

[Sidenote: Mound villages in river flood-plains. ]

The abundant fertility of river flood-plains inevitably attractspopulation and necessitates some kind of artificial protection againstinundation. The most primitive form of this protection is obvious andwidespread, restricted in neither locality nor race. When the floodseason converts the flat plain of the White Nile below Gondokora (7° N. Lat. ) into an extensive marsh, countless hills of the white ant emergeover the waters. During the dry season, the ants build up their hills toabout ten feet, and then live in safety in the upper section during theflood. They greatly surpass in intelligence and constructive ability thehuman occupants of the valley, the low and wretched Kytch tribe of theDinka Negroes, who like the ants are attracted by the natural vegetationof the flood-plain, and who use the ant-hills as refuge stations forthemselves and their cattle during the flood. [602] Elsewhere in Africathe natives are more intelligent, for flood-plain villages built onartificial mounds have existed from the earliest times. Diodorus Siculustells us that those of ancient Egypt, when the Nile was high, lookedlike the Cyclades Islands. [603] Similar ones are constructed by theBarotse tribe on the upper Zambesi. [604] The Niger River, rising in theFoota Jallon and Kong Mountains which form a region of heavy rainfallfrom February to July, inundates a plain of several thousand squaremiles for a distance of 250 miles above Timbuctoo. Here again thevillages of the agricultural Song-hoi duplicate those of Egypt, built onthe same clay mounds, wreathed in the same feathery palms, andcommunicating with one another only by small boats. [605] The same pictureis presented by the Yangtze Kiang plain during the summer overflow--lowartificial hills rising from the expanse of muddy water and topped withtrees and villages, while sampans moored to their base show the means ofcommunication. [606] In the broad flood-plain of the lower MississippiRiver, the chronicles of the De Soto expedition state that the Indianvillages visited stood "on mounds made by art. " The Yazoo River Indians, at the commencement of the eighteenth century, had their cabinsdispersed over the low deltaic land on earthen mounds made by their ownhands. There is also strong evidence that some of the works of theMound-builders in the "bottoms" of the middle and lower Mississippiserved as protected sites for the dwellings of their chiefs. [607]

[Sidenote: Diking of rivers. ]

Such meager provisions against inundation suffice for the sparsepopulation characterizing the lower stages of civilization, but theymust be supplemented for the increasing density of higher stages by theembankment of the stream, to protect also the adjacent fields. Hence theprocess of confining rivers within dikes goes back into gray antiquity. Those of the Po and its tributaries were begun before the politicalhistory of the Lombardy plains commenced. Strabo mentions the canals anddikes of Venetia, whereby a part of the country was drained and renderedtillable. [608] The main Po has been embanked for centuries as far up asCremona, a distance of 600 miles, and the Adige to Verona. [609] But themost gigantic dike system in the world is that of the Hoangho, by whicha territory the size of England is won from the water forcultivation. [610] The cost of protecting the far spread crops against theautumn floods has been a large annual expenditure and unceasingwatchfulness; and this the Chinese have paid for two thousand years, buthave not always purchased immunity. Year by year the Yellow River mountshigher and higher on its silted bed above the surrounding lowlands, increasing the strain on the banks and the area of destruction, when itsfury is uncaged. The flood of 1887 covered an area estimated at 50, 000square miles, wiped out of existence a million people, and left agreater number a prey to famine. [611] So the fertile Chengtu plain of theMin River, supporting four millions of people on its 2, 500 square milesof area, owes its prosperity to the embanking and irrigating works ofthe engineer heroes, Li Ping and his son, who lived before the Christianera. On the temple in their honor in the city of Kuan Hsien is Li Ping'smotto, incised in gold: "Dig the bed deep, keep the banks low. " Fortwenty-one centuries these instructions have been carried out. The stonedikes are kept low to permit a judicious amount of flooding forfertilization, and every year five to six feet of silt are removed fromthe artificial channel of the Min. To this work the whole population ofthe Chengtu plain contributes. [612] [See map page 8. ]

[Sidenote: Social gain by control of the water. ]

In such organized struggles to reduce the domain of the water and extendthat of the dry land, the material gain is not all: more significant byfar is the power to co-operate that is developed in a people by aprolonged war against overwhelming sea or river. A common naturaldanger, constantly and even regularly recurring, necessitates for itsresistance a strong and sustained union, that draws men out of thebarren individualism of a primitive people, and forces them without haltalong the path of civilization. It brings a realizing sense of thesuperiority of common interests over individual preferences, strengthensthe national bond, and encourages voluntary subservience to law. 

This is the social or political gain; but this is not all. The dangeremanating from natural phenomena has its discoverable laws, andtherefore leads to a first empirical study of winds, currents, seasonalrainfall and the whole science of hydraulics. With deep nationalinsight, the Greeks embodied in their mythology the story of Perseus andhis destruction of the sea monster who ravaged the coast, and Hercules'killing of the many-headed serpent who issued from the Lernean Marshesto lay waste the country of Argos. Even so early a writer as Strabostates that yet earlier authorities interpreted Hercules' victory overthe river god of the Achelous as the embankment of that stream and thedraining of its inundated delta tract by the national benefactor. [613] Sothe Chinese, whose land abounds in swamps and devastating rivers, have along list of engineer heroes who embanked and drained for the salvationand benefit of mankind. It is highly probable that the communal workinvolved in the construction of dikes and canals for the control of theHoangho floods cemented the Chinese nationality of that vast lowlandplain, and supplied the cohesive force that developed here at a veryremote period a regularly organized state and an advancing civilization. 

[Sidenote: Control of water as factor in early civilizations of aridlands. ]

The history of Egypt shows a similar effect of the yearly inundation ofthe Nile Valley. Here, as in all rainless countries where irrigationmust be practiced, the water becomes a potent factor of political unionand civilization. Its scarcity necessitates common effort in theconstruction and maintenance of irrigation works, and a central controlto secure fair distribution of the water to the fields of theinhabitants. A stimulus to progress is found in the presence of aproblem, perennial as the yearly threatenings of the Hoangho, whichdemands the application of human intelligence and concerted labor forits solution. Additional arable land for the growing population can besecured only by the wider distribution of the fructifying water; this inturn depends upon corporate effort wisely directed and ably controlled. Every lapse in governmental efficiency means an encroachment of thedesert upon the alluvial fields and finally to the river bank, as to-dayin Mesopotamia. 

The fact that the earliest civilizations have originated in thesub-tropical rainless districts of the world has been ascribed solely tothe regular and abundant returns to tillage under irrigation, as opposedto the uncertain crops under variable meteorological conditions; to theconsequent accumulation of wealth, and the emancipation of man for otherand higher activities, which follows his escape from the agriculturalvicissitudes of an uncertain climate. When Draper says: "Civilizationdepends on climate and agriculture, " and "the civilization of Egyptdepended for its commencement on the sameness and stability of theAfrican climate, " and again, "agriculture is certain in Egypt and thereman first became civilized, "[614] he seizes upon the conspicuous fact ofa stable food supply as the basis of progress, failing to detect thosepotent underlying social effects of the inundations--social andpolitical union to secure the most effective distribution of the Nile'sblessings and to augment by human devices the area accessible to them, the development of an intelligent water economy, which ultimatelyproduced a long series of intellectual achievements. [615]

[Sidenote: Cultural areas in primitive America. ]

This unifying and stimulating national task of utilizing andcontrolling the water was the same task which in various forms promptedthe early civilization of the Hoangho and Yangtze basins, India, Mesopotamia, Persia, Peru, Mexico, and that impressive region ofprehistoric irrigation canals found in the Salt, Gila River, and upperRio Grande valleys. [616] Here the arid plateaus of the Cordillerasbetween the Pueblo district and Central America had no forests in whichgame might be found; so that the Indian hunter had to turn toagriculture and a sedentary life beside his narrow irrigated fields. Here native civilization reached its highest grade in North America. Here desert agriculture achieved something more than a reliable foodsupply. It laid the foundation of the first steady integration ofwandering Indian hordes into a stable, permanently organized society. Elsewhere throughout the North American continent, we see only shiftinggroups of hunter and fisher folk, practising here and there a halfnomadic agriculture to supplement the chase. 

The primitive American civilization that arose among the Pueblo Indiansof New Mexico and Arizona, the only strictly sedentary tribes relyingexclusively on agriculture north of the Mexican plateau, was primarily aresult of the pressure put upon these people by a restricted watersupply. [617] Though chiefly offshoots of the wild Indians of the northernplains, they have been markedly differentiated from their wanderingShoshone and Kiowa kindred by local environment. [618] Scarcity of waterin those arid highlands and paucity of arable land forced them to acarefully organized community life, made them invest their labor inirrigation ditches, terraced gardens and walled orchards, whereby theywere as firmly rooted in their scant but fertile fields as were theircotton plants and melon vines;[619] while the towering mesas protectedtheir homes against marauding Ute, Navajo and Apache. [620] This thread ofa deep underlying connection between civilization and the control ofwater can be traced through all prehistoric America, as well as throughthe earliest cultural achievements in North Africa and Asia. 

[Sidenote: Economy of the water: fisheries. ]

The economy of the water is not confined to its artificial distributionover arid fields, but includes also the exploitation of the mineral andanimal resources of the vast world of waters, whether the production ofsalt from the sea, salt lakes and brine springs, the cultivation ofoyster beds, or the whole range of pelagic fisheries. The animal life ofthe water is important to man owing not only to its great abundance, butalso to its distribution over the coldest regions of the globe. Itfurnishes the chief food supply of polar and sub-polar peoples, andtherefore is accountable for the far-northern expansion of the habitableworld. Even the reindeer tribes of Arctic Eurasia could hardly subsistwithout the sea food they get by barter from the fishermen of the coast. Norway, where civilization has achieved its utmost in exploiting thelimited means of subsistence, shows a steady increase from south tonorth in the proportion of the population dependent upon the harvest ofthe deep. Thus the fisheries engross 44 per cent. Of the ruralpopulation in Nordland province, which is bisected by the Arctic Circle;over 50 per cent. In Tromso, and about 70 per cent. In Finmarken. If thetowns also be included, the percentages rise, because here fishinginterests are especially prominent. [621] Proximity to the generous larderof the ocean has determined the selection of village sites, as we haveseen among the coast Indians of British Columbia and southern Alaska, among all the Eskimo, and numerous other peoples of Arctic lands. [Seemap page 153. ]

[Sidenote: Fisheries as factors in maritime expansion. ]

Not only in polar but also in temperate regions, the presence ofabundant fishing grounds draws the people of the nearest coast to theirwholesale exploitation, especially if the land resources are scant. Fisheries then become the starting point or permanent basis of asubsequent wide maritime development, by expanding the geographicalhorizon. It was the search for the purple-yielding _murex_ that firstfamiliarized the Phoenicians with the commercial and colonialpossibilities of the eastern Mediterranean coasts. [622] The royal dye ofthis marine product has through all the ages seemed to color withsumptuous magnificence the sordid dealings of those Tyrian traders, andconstituted them an aristocracy of merchants. The shoals of tunny fish, arriving every spring in the Bosporus, from the north, drew the earlyGreeks and Phoenicians after them into the cold and misty Euxine, andfurnished the original impulse to both these peoples for theestablishment of fishing and trading stations on its uncongenialshores. [623] To the fisheries of the Baltic and especially to the summercatch of the migratory herring, which in vast numbers visited the shoresof Pomerania and southern Sweden to spawn, the Hanse Towns of Germanyowed much of their prosperity. Salt herring, even in the twelfthcentury, was the chief single article of their exchanges with CatholicEurope, which made a strong demand for the fish, owing to the numerousfast days. When, in 1425, by one of those unexplained vagaries of animallife, the herring abandoned the Baltic and selected the North Sea forits summer destination, a new support was given to the wealth of theNetherlands. [624] There is a considerable amount of truth in the sayingthat Amsterdam was built on herrings. New England, with an unproductivesoil at home, but near by in the sea a long line of piscine feedinggrounds in the submarine banks stretching from Cape Cod to Cape Race andbeyond, found her fisheries the starting point and base of her longround of exchanges, a constant factor in her commercial and industrialevolution. [625]

[Sidenote: Fisheries as nurseries of seamen. ]

Fisheries have always been the nurseries of seamen, and hence have beenencouraged and protected by governments as providing an importantelement of national strength. The Newfoundland Banks were the trainingschool which supplied the merchant marine and later the Revolutionarynavy of colonial New England;[626] ever since the establishment of theRepublic, they have been forced into prominence in our internationalnegotiations with the United Kingdom, with the object of securingspecial privileges, because the government has recognized them as afactor in the American navy. The causal connection between fisheries andnaval efficiency was recognized in England in the early years ofElizabeth's reign, by an act aiming to encourage fisheries by theremission of custom duties to native fishermen, by the imposition of ahigh tariff on the importation of foreign fish in foreign vessels, andfinally by a legislative enforcement of fasts to increase the demand forfish, although any belief in the religious efficacy of fasts was franklydisclaimed. Thus an artificial demand for fish was created, with theresult that a report on the success of the Fishery Acts stated that athousand additional men had been attracted to the fishing trade, andwere consequently "ready to serve in Her Majesty's ships. "[627]

The fishing of the North Sea, especially on the Dogger Bank, isparticipated in by all the bordering countries, England, theNetherlands, Germany and Belgium; and is valued equally on account ofthe food supply which it yields and as a school of seamen. [628] ThePomors or "coasters" of Arctic Russia, who dwell along the shores of theWhite Sea and live wholly by fisheries, have all their taxes remittedand receive free wood from the crown forests for the construction oftheir ships, on the condition that they serve on call in the imperialnavy. [629] The history of Japan affords the most striking illustration ofthe power of fisheries alone to maintain maritime efficiency; for whenby the seclusion act of 1624 all merchant vessels were destroyed, themarine restricted to small fishing and coasting vessels, and intercourseconfined to Japan's narrow island world, the fisheries nevertheless keptalive that intimacy with the sea and preserved the nautical efficiencythat was destined to be a decisive factor in the development of awakenedJapan. 

[Sidenote: Anthropo-geographic importance of navigation. ]

The resources of the sea first tempted man to trust himself to itsdangerous surface; but their rewards were slight in comparison with thewealth of experiences and influences to which he fell heir, after helearned to convert the barrier of the untrod waste into a highway forhis sail-borne keel. It is therefore true, as many anthropologistsmaintain, that after the discovery of fire the next most important stepin the progress of the human race was the invention of the boat. Noother has had such far-reaching results. Since water coversthree-fourths of the earth's surface and permits the land-masses to riseonly as islands here and there, it presents to man for his nauticalventures three times the area that he commands for his terrestrialhabitat. On every side, the break of the waves and the swell of thetides block his wanderings, unless he has learned to make the watercarry him to his distant goal. Spacially, therefore, the problem and thetask of navigation is the most widespread and persistent in the historyof mankind. The numerous coaling-stations which England has scatteredover the world are mute witnesses to this spacial supremacy of thewater, to the length of ocean voyages, and the power of the ocean todivide and unite. But had the proportion of land and water beenreversed, the world would have been poorer, deprived of all thesepossibilities of segregation and differentiation, of stimulus toexchange and far-reaching intercourse, and of ingenious inventions whichthe isolating ocean has caused. Without this ramifying barrier betweenthe different branches of the human family, these would have resembledeach other more closely, but at the cost of development. The meremultiplicity of races and sub-races has sharpened the struggle forexistence and endowed the survivors with higher qualities. But it wasnavigation that released primitive man from the seclusion of his ownisland or continent, stimulated and facilitated the intercourse ofpeoples, and enabled the human race to establish itself in everyhabitable part of the world. 

NOTES TO CHAPTER X

[579] Census of the Philippine Islands, Vol. I, pp. 465, 563-567, 573. Washington, 1905. 

[580] Sir John Lubbock, Prehistoric Times, pp. 173-223. New York, 1872. 

[581] Ferdinand Keller, Lake Dwellings, Vol. I, pp. 2-7, 576. London, 1876. English Lake Dwellings, _Westminster Review_, pp. 337-347. 1887. 

[582] P. W. Joyce, A Social History of Ancient Ireland, Vol. II, pp. 65-66. London, 1903. 

[583] Herodotus, V. 16. 

[584] Alexander von Humboldt, Aspects of Nature, pp. 148-149. Translatedby Mrs. Sabine, Philadelphia, 1849. E. F. Im Thurn, Among the Indians ofGuiana, p. 203. London, 1883. 

[585] Sir Thomas Holdich, India, p. 184. London, 1905. 

[586] Verney L. Cameron, Across Africa, pp. 332-334. London, 1885. 

[587] David and Charles Livingstone, Narrative of Expedition to theZambezi, p. 414. New York, 1866. 

[588] Census of the Philippine Islands, Vol. I, pp. 464-466, 565. Washington, 1905. 

[589] Stanford's Australasia, Vol. II, pp. 256-257. London, 1894. 

[590] A. R. Wallace, The Malay Archipelago, pp. 368, 381. New York, 1869. 

[591] Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. I, pp. 262-263, 344. London, 1896-1898. 

[592] Richard Semon, In the Australian Bush, pp. 340-342, 347. London, 1899. 

[593] John L. Stoddard, Lectures, Vol. III, p. 311. Boston, 1903. 

[594] John Barrows, Travels in China, pp. 377-379. Philadelphia, 1805. 

[595] William M. Wood, Fankwei, pp. 169-174. New York, 1859. 

[596] Edmondo de Amicis, Holland and Its People, pp. 4-13. New York, 1890. 

[597] G. P. Marsh, The Earth as Modified by Human Action, chap. IV, pp. 330-352. New York, 1871. 

[598] J. Partsch, Central Europe, pp. 106-108. London, 1903. 

[599] Roscher, _National-Oekonomik des Ackerbaues_, p. 127, Note 1. Stuttgart, 1888. 

[600] Elisée Reclus, Europe, Vol. IV, pp. 222-223. New York, 1886. Miller and Skertchley, The Fenland, Past and Present, pp. 7-9. London, 1878. 

[601] _Ibid. _, pp. 145-147. 

[602] Sir Samuel W. Baker, The Albert Nyanza, Great Basin of the Nile, pp. 49-50. London and Philadelphia, 1866. 

[603] Diodorus Siculus, Book I, chap. III, p. 41. Translated by G. Booth. London, 1814. 

[604] David Livingstone, Missionary Travels in Africa, pp. 234-236, 239, 272. New York, 1858. 

[605] Felix Dubois, Timbuctoo, pp. 51-55, 145. New York, 1896. 

[606] Isabella B. Bishop, The Yangtze Valley and Beyond. , Vol. I, pp. 8, 10, 97. London and New York, 1900. 

[607] Cyrus Thomas, Mound Explorations, pp. 626, 650-653. Twelfth AnnualReport Bureau of Ethnology, Washington, 1894. 

[608] Strabo, Book V, chap. I, 4. 

[609] W. Deecke, Italy, pp. 88-89. London, 1904. 

[610] John Barrows, Travels in China, p. 349. Philadelphia, 1805. 

[611] Meredith Townsend, Asia and Europe, pp. 278-284. New York, 1904. 

[612] Isabella B. Bishop, The Yangtze Valley and Beyond, Vol. II, pp. 72-73 76-81. New York and London, 1900. For the future of landreclamation, see N. S. Shaler, Man and the Earth, chap. V. New York, 1906. 

[613] Strabo, Book X, chap. II, 19. 

[614] John W. Draper, Intellectual Development of Europe, Vol. I, pp. 84-86. New York, 1876. 

[615] Winwood Reade, The Martyrdom of Man, pp. 9-17. Eighth Edition, NewYork. 

[616] Irrigation, Thirteenth Report of the U. S. Geological Survey, PartIII, pp. 133-135. Washington, 1895. J. W. Powell, Twenty-third AnnualReport of the Bureau of Ethnology, pp. XII, XIII. Washington, 1904. Cosmos Mindeleff, Aboriginal Remains in the Verde Valley, Arizona, pp. 187, 192-194, 238-245. Thirteenth Annual Report of Bureau of Ethnology. Washington, 1896. V. Mindeleff, Pueblo Architecture, pp. 80, 216-217. Eighth Annual Report of Bureau of Ethnology. Washington, 1891. F. W. Hodge, Prehistoric Irrigation in Arizona, _American Anthropologist_, July, 1893. 

[617] McGee and Thomas, Prehistoric North America, pp. 105-106, 113, 118, 120-144, 478. Philadelphia, 1905. 

[618] Eleventh Census, Report on the Indians, pp. 49, 161, 415. Washington, 1894. D. G. Brinton, The American Race, pp. 116-117. Philadelphia, 1901. 

[619] _Ibid. _, pp. 161, 181, 182, 188, 191, 193, 198, 410, 441-445. M. C. Stevenson, The Zuni Indians, pp. 351-354. Twenty-third Annual Report ofBureau of Ethnology, Washington, 1904. 

[620] _Ibid. _, pp. 13-14. H. H. Bancroft, The Native Races, Vol. I, pp. 539-547. San Francisco, 1886. 

[621] Norway, Official Publication, pp. 99-100. Christiania, 1900. 

[622] Ernst Curtius, History of Greece, Vol. I, pp. 49-50. New York. 

[623] _Ibid. _, Vol. I, p. 440. 

[624] Dietrich Schaefer, _Die Hansestädte und König Waldemar vonDänemark_, pp. 255-257. Jena, 1879. Helen Zimmern, Story of the HansaTowns, pp. 26-27. New York, 1895. 

[625] W. B. Weeden, Social and Economic History of New England, Vol. I, pp. 17, 18, 90, 91, 128-135, 139. Boston, 1899. 

[626] _Ibid. _, Vol. I, p. 245. 

[627] H. D. Traill, Social England, Vol. III, pp. 363-364, 540. Londonand New York, 1895. 

[628] J. Partsch, Central Europe, p. 311. London, 1903. 

[629] Alexander P. Engelhardt, A Russian Province of the North, pp. 54-71. From the Russian. London, 1899. 

CHAPTER XI

THE ANTHROPO-GEOGRAPHY OF RIVERS

[Sidenote: Rivers as intermediaries between land and sea. ]

To a large view, rivers appear in two aspects. They are either part ofthe general water envelope of the earth, extensions of seas andestuaries back into the up-hill reaches of the land, feeders of theocean, roots which it spreads out over the surface of the continents, not only to gather its nourishment from ultimate sources in spring andglacier, but also to bring down to the coast the land-born products ofthe interior to feed a sea-born commerce; or rivers are one of the landforms, merely water filling valley channels, serving to drain the fieldsand turn the mills of men. In the first aspect their historicalimportance has been both akin and linked to that of the ocean, despitethe freshness and smaller volume of their waters and the unvaryingdirection of their currents. The ocean draws them and their trade to itsvast basin by the force of gravity. It unites with its own the historyof every log-stream in Laurentian or Himalayan forest, as it formerlylinked the beaver-dammed brooks of wintry Canada with the current oftrade following the Gulf Stream to Europe. 

Where sea and river meet, Nature draws no sharp dividing line. Here theindeterminate boundary zone is conspicuous. The fresh water streammerges into brackish estuary, estuary into saltier inlet and inlet intobriny ocean. Closely confined sea basins like the Black and Baltic, located in cool regions of slight evaporation and fed from a largecatchment basin, approach in their reduced salinity the fresh waterlakes and coastal lagoons in which rivers stretch out to rest on theirway to the ocean. The muddy current of the Yangtze Kiang colors theYellow Sea, and warns incoming Chinese junks of the proximity of landmany hours before the low-lying shores can be discerned. [630] Columbus, sailing along the Caribbean coast of South America off the Orinocomouth, found the ocean waters brackish and surmised the presence of alarge river and therefore a large continent on his left. [631]

The transitional form between stream and pelagic inlet found in everyriver mouth is emphasized where strong tidal currents carry the sea farinto these channels of the land. The tides move up the St. LawrenceRiver 430 miles (700 kilometers) or half way between Montreal andQuebec, and up the Amazon 600 miles (1, 000 kilometers). Owing to theirresemblance to pelagic channels, the estuaries of the American riverswith their salty tide were repeatedly mistaken, in the period ofdiscoveries, for the Northwest Passage to the Pacific. Newport in 1608explored the broad sluggish course of the James River in his search fora western ocean. Henry Hudson ascended the Hudson River almost as far asAlbany, before he discovered that this was no maritime pathway, like theBosporus or Dardanelles, leading to an ulterior sea. The long tidalcourse of the St. Lawrence westward into the heart of the continent fedLa Salle's dream of finding here a water route to the Pacific, and fixedhis village of "La Chine" above the rapids at Montreal as a signpostpointing the way to the Indies and Cathay. In the same way a tidal riverat the head of Cook's Inlet on the Alaskan coast was mistaken for aNortheast Passage, not by Captain Cook but by his fellow officers, onhis Pacific voyage of 1776-1780; and it was followed for several daysbefore its character as a river was established. [632]

[Sidenote: Sea navigation merges into river navigation. ]

Rivers have always been the great intermediaries between land and sea, for in the ocean all find their common destination. Until theconstruction of giant steamers in recent years, sea navigation hasalways passed without break into river navigation. Sailing vessels arecarried by the trade wind 600 miles up the Orinoco to San Fernando. Alexander's discovery of the Indus River led by almost inevitablesequence to the rediscovery of the Eastern sea route, which in turn ranfrom India through the Strait of Oman and the Persian Gulf up thenavigable course of the Euphrates to the elbow of the river atThapsacus. Enterprising sea folk have always used rivers as naturalcontinuations of the marine highway into the land. The Humber estuaryand its radiating group of streams led the invading Angles in the sixthcentury into the heart of Britain. [633] The long navigable courses of therivers of France exposed that whole country to the depredations of thepiratical Northmen in the ninth and tenth centuries. Up every river theycame, up the Scheldt into Flanders, the Seine to Paris and the Marne toMeaux; up the Loire to Orleans, the Garonne to Toulouse and the Rhone toValence. [634] So the Atlantic rivers of North America formed the lines ofEuropean exploration and settlement. The St. Lawrence brought the Frenchfrom the ocean into the Great Lakes basin, whose low, swampy watershedthey readily crossed in their light canoes to the tributaries of theMississippi; and scarcely had they reached the "Father of Waters" beforethey were planting the flag of France on the Gulf of Mexico at itsmouth. The Tupi Indians of South America, a genuine water-race, movedfrom their original home on the Paraguay headstream of the La Plata downto its mouth, then expanded northward along the coast of Brazil in theirsmall canoes to the estuary of the Amazon, thence up its southerntributary, the Tapajos, and in smaller numbers up the main stream to thefoot of the Andes, where detached groups of the race are still found. [635]So the migrations of the Carib river tribes led them from their nativeseats in eastern Brazil down the Xingu to the Amazon, thence out to seaand along the northern coast of South America, thence inland once more, up the Orinoco to the foot of the Andes, into the lagoon of Maracaiboand up the Magdalena. Meanwhile their settlements at the mouth of theOrinoco threw off spores of pirate colonies to the adjacent islands andfinally, in the time of Columbus, to Porto Rico and Haiti. [636] [See mappage 101. ]

[Sidenote: Historical importance of seas and oceans influenced by theirdebouching streams. ]

So intimate is this connection between marine and inland waterways, thatthe historical and economic importance of seas and oceans is noticeablyinfluenced by the size of their drainage basins and the navigability oftheir debouching rivers. This is especially true of enclosed seas. Theonly historical importance attached to the Caspian's inland basin isthat inherent in the Volga's mighty stream. The Mediterranean has alwayssuffered from its paucity of long river highways to open for it a widehinterland. This lack checked the spread of its cultural influences andfinally helped to arrest its historical development. If we compare therecord of the Adriatic and the Black seas, the first a sharply walled_cul de sac_, the second a center of long radiating streams, sending outthe Danube to tap the back country of the Adriatic and the Dnieper todraw on that of the Baltic, we find that the smaller sea has had alimited range of influence, a concentrated brilliant history, precociousand short-lived as is that of all limited areas; that the Euxine hasexercised more far-reaching influences, despite a slow and stillunfinished development. The Black Sea rivers in ancient times openedtheir countries to such elements of Hellenic culture as might penetratefrom the Greek trading colonies at their mouths, especially the Greekforms of Christianity. It was the Danube that in the fourth centurycarried Arianism, born of the philosophic niceties of Greek thought, tothe barbarians of southern Germany, and made Unitarians of theBurgundians and Visigoths of southern Gaul. [637] The Dnieper carried thereligion of the Greek Church to the Russian princes at Kief, Smolensk, and Moscow. Owing to the southward course of its great rivers, Russiahas found the crux of her politics in the Black Sea, ever since thetenth century when the barbarians from Kiev first appeared beforeConstantinople. This sea has had for her a higher economic importancethan the Baltic, despite the latter's location near the cultural centerof western Europe. 

[Sidenote: Baltic and White Sea rivers. ]

In other seas, too, rivers play the same part of extending theirtributary areas and therefore enhancing their historical significance. The disadvantages of the Baltic's smaller size and far-northernlocation, as compared with the Mediterranean, were largely compensatedfor by the series of big streams draining into it from the south, andbringing out from a vast hinterland the bulky necessaries of life. Hencethe Hanseatic League of the Middle Ages, which had its origin among thesouthern coast towns of the Baltic from Lubeck to Riga, throve on thecombined trade of sea and river. [638] The mouths of the Scheldt, Rhine, Weser, Elbe and Thames long concentrated in themselves the economic, cultural and historical development of the North Sea basin. So the WhiteSea, despite its sub-polar location, is valuable to Russia for tworeasons; it affords a politically open port, and it receives theNorthern Dwina, which is navigable for river steamers from Archangelsouth to Vologda, a distance of six hundred miles, and carries theexport trade of a large territory. [639] Similarly in recent years, BeringSea has gained unwonted commercial activity because the Yukon Riverserves as a waterway 1, 370 miles long to the Klondike gold fields. 

[Sidenote: Atlantic and Pacific rivers. ]

If we compare the Atlantic and Pacific oceans in respect to theirrivers, we find that the narrow Atlantic has a drainage basin of over19, 000, 000 square miles as opposed to the 8, 660, 000 square miles ofdrainage area commanded by the vastly larger Pacific. The Pacific is forthe most part rimmed by mountains, discharging into the ocean only madtorrents or rapid-broken streams. The Atlantic, bordered by gentlysloping plains of wide extent, receives rivers that for the most partpursue a long and leisurely course to the sea. Therefore, the commercialand cultural influences of the Atlantic extend from the Rockies andAndes almost to the heart of Russia, and by the Nile highway they eveninvade the seclusion of Africa. Through the long reach of its rivers, therefore, the Atlantic commands a land area twice as great as that ofthe Pacific; and by reason of this fundamental geographic advantage, itwill retain the historical preëminence that it so early secured. Thedevelopment of the World Ocean will mean the exploitation of the Pacifictrade from the basis of the Atlantic, the domination of the larger oceanby the historic peoples of the smaller, because these peoples have widerand more accessible lands as the base of their maritime operations. 

[Sidenote: Lack of coast articulations supplied by rivers. ]

The geographic influence of abundant rivers navigable from the sea isclosely akin to that of highly articulated coasts. The effect of theHardanger or Sogne Fiord, admitting ocean steamers a hundred miles intothe interior of Norway, is similar to that of the Elbe and Weserestuaries, which admit the largest vessels sixty miles upstream toHamburg and Bremen. Since river inlets can, to a certain extent, supplythe place of marine inlets, from the standpoint of anthropo-geographictheory and of human practice, a land dissected by navigable rivers canbe grouped with one dissected by arms of the sea. South America andAfrica are alike in the unbroken contour of their coasts, but stronglycontrasted in the character of their rivers. Hence the two continentspresent the extremes of accessibility and inaccessibility. SouthAmerica, most richly endowed of all the continents with navigablestreams, receiving ocean vessels three thousand miles up the Amazon asfar as Tabatinga in Peru, and smaller steamers up the Orinoco to thespurs of the Andes, was known in its main features to explorers fiftyyears after its discovery. Africa, historically the oldest ofcontinents, but cursed with a mesa form which converts nearly everyriver into a plunging torrent on its approach to the sea, kept its vastinterior till the last century wrapped in utmost gloom. China, amplysupplied with smaller littoral indentations but characterized by apaucity of larger inlets, finds compensation in the long navigablecourse of the Yangtze Kiang. This river extends the landward reach ofthe Yellow Sea 630 miles inland to Hanchow, where ocean-going vesselstake on cargoes of tea and silk for Europe and America, [640] and pay forthem in Mexican dollars, the coin of the coast. Hence it is lined withfree ports all the way from Shanghai at its mouth to Ichang, a thousandmiles up its course. [641]

[Sidenote: River highways as basis of commercial preeminence. ]

Navigable rivers opening passages directly from the sea are obviouslynature-made gates and paths into wholly new countries; but theaccessibility with which they endow a land becomes later a permanentfactor in its cultural and economic development, a factor that remainsconstantly though less conspicuously operative when railroads have donetheir utmost to supplant water transportation. The importance of inlandwaterways for local and foreign trade and intercourse has everywherebeen recognized. The peoples who have long maintained preëminence amongthe commercial and maritime nations of the world have owed this in nosmall part to the command of these natural highways, which have servedto give the broad land basis necessary for permanent commercialascendency. This has been the history of England, Holland, France andthe recent record of Germany. The medieval League of the Rhine Citiesflourished by reason of the Rhone-Rhine highway across western Europe. The Hanseatic League, from Bruges all the way east to Russian Novgorod, owed their brilliant commercial career, not only to the favorablemaritime field in the enclosed sea basins in front of them, but also tothe series of long navigable rivers behind them from the Scheldt to theNeva and Volchov. Wherefore we find the League, originally confined tocoast towns, drawing into the federation numerous cities located far upthese rivers, such as Ghent, Cologne, Magdeburg, Breslau, Cracow, Pskofand Novgorod. [642]

[Sidenote: Importance of rivers in large countries. ]

In countries of large area, where commerce and intercourse must covergreat distances, these natural and therefore cheap highways assumeparamount importance, especially in the forest and agricultural stagesof development, when the products of the land are bulky in proportion totheir value. Small countries with deeply indented coasts, like Greece, Norway, Scotland, New England, Chile, and Japan, can forego theadvantage of big river systems; but in Russia, Siberia, China, India, Canada, the United States, Venezuela, Brazil and Argentine, the historyof the country, economic and political, is indissolubly connected withthat of its great rivers. The storm center of the French and Englishwars in America was located on the upper Hudson, because this streamenabled the English colonies to tap the fur trade of the Great Lakes, and because it commanded the Mohawk Valley, the easiest and most obviouspath for expansion into the interior of the continent. The Spanish, otherwise confining their activities in South America to the Caribbeandistrict and the civilized regions of the Andean highlands, establishedsettlements at the mouth of the La Plata River, because this streamafforded an approach from the Atlantic side toward the Potosi mines onthe Bolivian Plateau. The Yangtze Kiang, that great waterway leadingfrom the sea across the breadth of China and the one valuable riveradjunct of maritime trade in the whole Orient, was early appropriated bythe discerning English as the British "sphere of influence. "

[Sidenote: Rivers as highways of expansion. ]

No other equally large area of the earth is so generously equipped bynature for the production and distribution of the articles of commerceas southern Canada and that part of the United States lying east of theRocky Mountains. The simple build of the North American continent, consisting of a broad central trough between distant mountain ranges, and characterized by gentle slopes to the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf ofMexico, has generated great and small rivers with easy-going currents, that everywhere opened up the land to explorer, trader and settler. Therate of expansion from the "Europe-fronting shore" of the continent waseverywhere in direct proportion to the length of the rivers firstappropriated by the colonists. North of Chesapeake Bay the lure tolandward advance was the fur trade. The Atlantic rivers of the coastpre-empted by the English were cut short by the Appalachian wall. Theyopened up only restricted fur fields which were soon exhausted, so thatthe migrant trapper was here early converted into the agriculturalsettler, his shifting camp fire into the hearthstone of the farmhouse. Expansion was slow but solid. The relatively small area renderedaccessible by their streams became compactly filled by the swelling tideof immigrants and the rapid natural increase of population. In sharpcontrast to this development, the long waterway of the St. Lawrence andthe Great Lakes leading to the still vaster river system of theMississippi betrayed the fur-trading French into excessive expansion, and enabled them to appropriate but not to hold a vast extent ofterritory. A hundred years after the arrival of Champlain at Montreal, they were planting their fur stations on Lake Superior and theMississippi, 1, 400 miles (2, 300 kilometers) back from the coast, at atime when the English settlements had advanced little beyond tide-water. And when after 1770 the westward movement swept the backwoodsmen of theEnglish colonies over the Appalachian barrier to the Ohio, Cumberlandand Tennessee, these long westward flowing streams carried them rapidlyon to the Mississippi, communicated the mobility and restlessness oftheir own currents to the eager pioneer, and their capacity to mastergreat distances; so that in forty short years, by 1810, settlements werecreeping up the western tributaries of the Mississippi. The abundantwater communication in the Mississippi Valley, which even for presentlarge river craft contains 15, 410 miles of navigable streams and whichhad therefore a far greater mileage in the day of canoe and flatboat, afforded outlet for bulky, backwoods produce to the sea at New Orleans. When the English acquired Canada in 1763, they straightway fell underthe sway of its harsh climate and long river systems, taking up thelife of the fur trader; they followed the now scarcer pelts from thestreams of Superior westward by Lake Winnipeg and along the path of theSaskatchewan River straight to the foot of the Rockies. 

[Sidenote: Siberian rivers and Russian expansion. ]

Rivers have played the same part in expediting Russian expansion acrossthe wide extent of Siberia. Here again a severe climate necessitatedreliance on furs, the chief natural product of the country, as the basisof trade. These, as the outcome of savage economy, were gathered in fromwide areas which only rivers could open up. Therefore, where theSiberian streams flatten out their upper courses east and west againstthe northern face of the Asiatic plateau, with low watersheds between, the Russian explorer and sable hunter struck their eastward water trailtoward the Pacific. The advance, which under Yermak crossed the UralMountains in 1579, reached the Yenisei River in 1610 and planted therethe town of Turuchansk as a sort of milestone, almost on the ArcticCircle opposite the mouth of the Lower Tunguska, a long easterntributary. Up this they passed to the Lena in 1627, thence to Bering Seaby the Kolima and Anadyr rivers, because these arctic fields yieldedsable, beaver and fox skins in greatest quantity. [643] The Lenaespecially, from its source down to its eastern elbow at Yakutsk, thatgreat rendezvous of Siberian fur traders, was a highway for trapper andCossack tribute-gatherer. [644] From the sources of the Yenisei in LakeBaikal to the navigable course of the Amur was a short step, taken in1658, though the control of the river, which was claimed by China, wasnot secured till two hundred years later. [645] [See map page 103. ]

As the only highways in new countries, rivers constitute lines of leastresistance for colonial peoples encroaching upon the territory ofinferior races. They are therefore the geographic basis of thosestreamers of settlement which we found making a fringe of civilizationacross the boundary zone of savagery or barbarism on the typicalcolonial frontier. Ethnic islands of the expanding people cluster alongthem like iron filings on a magnetized wire. Therefore in all countrieswhere navigable rivers have fixed the lines of expansion, as in theUnited States, the northern part of the Russian Empire, and the easternor colonial border of Germany and Austria, there is a stronganthropo-geographic resemblance in the frontiers of successive decadesor centuries. But in arid or semi-arid regions like South Africa, thewestern plains of North America, the steppes of Russian and ChineseTurkestan, the river highway _motif_ in expansion is lost in a varietyof other geographic and geologic factors, though the water of thestreams still attracts trail and settlement. 

[Sidenote: Determinants of routes in arid or semi-arid lands. ]

A river like the Nile, lower Volga, Irtysh or Indus, rising in highlandsof abundant rainfall but traversing an arid or desert land, acquiresadded importance because it furnishes the sole means of water travel andof irrigation. The Nile has for ages constituted the main line ofintercourse between the Mediterranean and Equatorial Africa. The Tigris, Euphrates, Indus, and the Niger where it makes its great northern bendinto the Sahara near Timbuctoo, [646] attest the value to local fertilityand commerce inherent in these rivers of the deserts and steppes. Suchrivers are always oasis-makers, whether on their way to the sea theyperiodically cover a narrow flood-plain like that of the Nile, or oneninety miles wide, like that of the Niger's inland delta aboveTimbuctoo;[647] or whether they emerge into a silent sea of sand, likethe Murghab of Russian Turkestan, which spreads itself out to water thegardens of Merv. 

Even where such rivers have a volume too scanty to float a raft, theyyet point the highway, because they alone supply water for man and beastacross the desert tract. The Oxus and Sir Daria have from timeimmemorial determined the great trade routes through Turkestan toCentral Asia. The Platte, Arkansas, Cimarron and Canadian rivers fixedthe course of our early western trails across the arid plains to thefoot of the Rockies; and beyond this barrier the California Trailfollowed the long-drawn oasis formed by the Humboldt River across theNevada Desert, the Gila River guided the first American fur-trappingexplorers across the burning deserts of Arizona to the Pacific, and thesuccession of water-holes in the dry bed of the Mohave River gavedirection to the Spanish Trail across the Mohave Desert towards LosAngeles. In the same way, Livingstone's route from the Orange River inSouth Africa to Lake Ngami, under the direction of native guides, ranalong the margin of the Kalahari Desert up the dry bed of the MokokoRiver, which still retained an irregular succession of permanentwells. [648]

[Sidenote: Wadi routes in arid lands. ]

In the trade-wind regions of the world, which are characterized byseasons of intense drought, we find rivers carrying a scant and variableamount of water but an abundance of gravel and sand; they are known indifferent localities as wadis, fiumares and arroyos. Their beds, dry forlong periods of the year, become natural roads, paved with the gravelwhich the stream regularly deposits in the wet season. Local travel inSicily, Italy[649] and other Mediterranean countries uses such naturalroads extensively. Trade routes across the plateau of Judea and Samariafollow the wadis, because these give the best gradient and the bestfooting for the ascent. [650] Wadis also determine the line of caravanroutes across the highlands of the Sahara. In the desert of SouthwestAfrica, the Khiuseb Is the first river north of the Orange to reach theAtlantic through the barrier dunes of the coast. Hence it has drawn toits valley the trade routes from a wide circle of inland points fromOttawe to Windhoek and Rehobeth, and given added importance to theBritish coast of Walfish Bay, into which it debouches. [651] But just to thenorth, the broad dry bed of the Swakop offered a natural wagon routeinto the interior, and has been utilized for the railroad of GermanSouthwest Africa. 

[Sidenote: Increasing historical importance from source to mouth. ]

The historical importance of a river increases from its source towardits mouth. Its head springs, gushing from the ground, and the ramifyingbrooks of its highland course yield a widely distributed water supplyand thereby exercise a strong influence in locating the dwellings ofmen; but they play no part in the great movements and larger activitiesof peoples. Only when minor affluents unite to form the main stream, enlarge it in its lower course by an increasing tribute of water, andextend constantly its tributary area, does a river assume realhistorical importance. It reaches its fullest significance at its mouth, where it joins the world's highway of the ocean. Here are combined thebest geographical advantages--participation in the cosmopolitancivilization characteristic of coastal regions, opportunity for inlandand maritime commerce, and a fertile alluvial soil yielding support fordense populations. The predominant importance of the debouchment stretchof a river is indicated by the presence of such cities as London, Rotterdam, Hamburg, Bremen, Bordeaux, Odessa, Alexandria, Calcutta, Rangoon, Bangkok, Hongkong, Canton, Nanking and Shanghai, Montreal andQuebec, New York, Philadelphia, New Orleans, Buenos Ayres andMontevideo. This debouchment stretch gains in practical value and hencein permanent historical importance if it is swept by a scouring tide, which enables the junction of inland and maritime routes to penetrateinto the land. Even Strabo recognized this value of tidal reaches. [652]Hence in tideless basins like the Baltic and Caribbean, the great riverports have to advance coastward to meet the sea; and the lower course ofeven mighty streams like the Volga and Nile achieve a restrictedimportance. [653]

The control of a river mouth becomes a desideratum or necessity to theupstream people. Otherwise they may be bottled up. Though history showsus countless instances of upstream expansion, nevertheless owing to theease of downstream navigation and this increasing historical importancefrom source to mouth, the direction of a river's flow has oftendetermined the course of commerce and of political expansion. 

[Sidenote: Location at hydrographic centers. ]

The possibility of radial expansion, which we have found to be the chiefadvantage of a central location, is greatly enhanced if that centrallocation coincides with a hydrographic center of low relief. The tenthcentury nucleus of the Russian Empire was found about the low nodalwatershed formed by the Valdai Hills, whence radiated the rivers laterembodied in the Muscovite domain. Here In Novgorod at the head of theVolchov-Ladoga-Neva system, Pskof on the Velikaya, Tver at the head ofthe navigable Volga, Moscow on the Oka, Smolensk on the Dnieper, andVitebsk on the Duna, were gathered the Russians destined to displace theprimitive Finnish population and appropriate the wide plains of easternEurope. Everywhere their conquests, colonization, and commercialrelations have followed the downstream course of their rivers. TheDnieper carried the Rus of Smolensk and Kief to the Euxine, into contactwith the Byzantine world, and brought thence religion, art, andarchitecture for the untutored empire of the north. The influence of theVolga has been irresistible. Down its current Novgorod traders in thetwelfth century sought the commerce of the Caspian and the Orient; andlater the Muscovite princes pushed their conquest of the Tartar hordesfrom Asia. The Northern Dwina, Onega, Mesen and Petchora have carriedlong narrow bands of Slav settlement northward to the Arctic Ocean. [Seemap page 225. ] Medieval Russian trade from Hanseatic Pskof and Novgorod, and later Russian dominion followed the Narva and Neva to the Baltic. "The Dnieper made Russia Byzantine, the Volga made It Asiatic. It wasfor the Neva to make it European. "[654]

In the same way, when the early French explorers and traders of Canadareached the hydrographic center of the continent about Lakes Superiorand Michigan, they quickly crossed the low rim of these basins southwardto the Mississippi, and northward to the Rainy Lake and Winnipeg systemdraining to Hudson Bay. [655] While it took them from 1608 to 1659 and1662 to penetrate upstream from Quebec to this central watershed, onlynine years elapsed from the time (1673) Marquette reached the westwardflowing Wisconsin River to 1682, when La Salle reached the mouth of theMississippi. 

[Sidenote: Effect of current upon trade and expansion. ]

The effect of mere current upon the course of trade and politicalexpansion was conspicuous in the early history of the MississippiValley, before steam navigation began to modify the geographicinfluence of a river's flow. The wide forest-grown barrier of theAppalachian Mountains placed the western pioneers under the geographiccontrol of the western waters. The bulkiness of their field and forestproducts, fitted only for water transportation, and the immense mass ofdownstream commerce called loudly for a maritime outlet and theacquisition from Spain of some port at the Mississippi mouth. For twentyyears the politics of this transmontane country centered about the"Island of New Orleans, " and in 1803 saw its dream realized by theLouisiana Purchase. 

For the western trader, the Mississippi and Ohio were preeminentlydownstream paths. Gravity did the work. Only small boats, laden withfine commodities of small bulk and large value, occasionally made theforty day upstream voyage from New Orleans to Louisville. Flat boats andbarges that were constructed at Pittsburg for the river traffic wereregularly broken up for lumber at downstream points like Louisville andNew Orleans; for the traders returned overland by the old ChickasawTrail to the Cumberland and Ohio River settlements, carrying theirprofits in the form of gold. The same thing happens today, as it alsohappened two thousand years ago, on the Tigris and Euphrates. Thehighlander of Armenia or northern Mesopotamia floats down the current inhis skin boat or on his brushwood raft, to sell his goods and the woodforming the frame-work of his primitive craft in timberless Bagdad andBusra, as formerly in treeless Babylon. He dries out his skins, loadsthem on his shoulders or on a mule brought down for the purpose, andreturns on foot to his highland village. [656] The same preponderance ofdownstream traffic appears to-day in eastern Siberia. Pedlers on theAmur start in the spring from Stretensk, 2025 miles up the river, withtheir wares in barges, and drift down with the current, selling at thevillages _en route_, to the river's mouth at Nikolaievsk. Here theydispose of their remaining stock and also of their barges, the lumber ofwhich is utilized for sidewalks, and they themselves return upstream bysteamer. The grain barges of western Siberia, like the coal barges ofthe Mississippi, even within recent decades, are similarly disposed ofat the journey's end. [657] The tonnage of downstream traffic on the Ohioand Mississippi to-day greatly exceeds that upstream. The fleet of 56coal boats, carrying about 70, 000 tons, which the great towboat Spraguetakes in a single trip from Louisville down to New Orleans, all returnempty. Of the 15, 226, 805 net tons of freight shipped in 1906 on the Ohiosystem, 13, 980, 368 tons of coal, stone, sand and lumber were carried inunrigged craft, fitted chiefly for downstream traffic. [658]

[Sidenote: Importance of mouth to upstream people. ]

Owing to the strong pull exerted by a river's mouth upon all its basin, current, commerce and people alike tend to reach the ocean. For a nationholding the terrestrial course of a stream, the political fate of itstidal course or mouth must always be a matter of great concern. To theearly westerner of the United States, before the acquisition of theLouisiana country, it was of vital importance whether belligerent Franceor more amenable Spain or the Republic itself should own the mouth ofthe Mississippi. Germany, which holds 240 miles (400 kilometers) of thenavigable Danube, [659] can never be indifferent to the politicalownership of its mouth, or to the fact that a great power like Russiahas edged forward, by the acquisition of Bessarabia in 1878, to thenorthern or Kilia debouchment channel. [660] Such interest shows itself insustained efforts either to gain political control of the mouth, or tosecure the neutrality of the stream by having it declared aninternational waterway, and thus partially to deprive the state holdingits mouth of the advantages of its transit location. 

The only satisfactory solution is undivided political ownership. AfterFrance pushed eastward to the Rhine in 1648, she warred for threecenturies to acquire its mouth. Napoleon laid claim to Belgium andHolland on the ground that their soil had been built up by the alluviumof French rivers. Germany's conquest of Schleswig-Holstein in 1864 wassignificant chiefly because it dislodged Denmark from the right bank ofthe lower Elbe, and secured undivided control of this important estuary. The Rhine, which traverses the Empire from north to south andconstitutes its greatest single trade route, gives to Germany a morevital interest in Holland than ever France had. Her most important ironand coal mines and manufacturing industries are located on thiswaterway or its tributaries, the Ruhr, Mosel, Saar and Main. Hence theRhine is the great artery of German trade and outlet for her enormousexports, which chiefly reach the sea through the ports of Belgium andHolland. These two countries therefore fatten on German commerce andreduce German profits. Hence the Empire, by the construction of theEmden-Dortmund canal, aims to divert its trade from Rotterdam andAntwerp to a German port, and possibly thereby put the screw on Hollandto draw her into some kind of a commercial union with Germany. [661]Heinrich von Treitschke, in his "_Politik_, " deplores the fact that themost valuable part of the great German river has fallen into alienhands, and he declares it to be an imperative task of German policy torecover the mouth of that stream, "either by a commercial or politicalunion. " "We need the entrance of Holland into our customs union as weneed our daily bread. "[662]

[Sidenote: Prevention of monopoly of river mouth. ]

When the middle and upper course of a river system are shared by severalnations, their common interest demands that the control of the mouth bedivided, as in the case of the La Plata between Argentine and Uruguay;or held by a small state, like Holland, too weak to force the monopolyof the tidal course. The Treaty of Paris in 1856 extended the territoryof Moldavia at the cost of Russia, to keep the Russian frontier awayfrom the Danube. [663] Her very presence was ominous. The temptation togiant powers to gobble up these exquisite morsels of territory isirresistible. Hence the advisability of neutralizing small statesholding such locations, as in the case of Roumania; and making theirrivers international waterways, as in the case of the Orinoco, [664]Scheldt, Waal, Rhine and Danube. [665] The Yangtze Kiang mouth, wherealready the treaty ports cluster thick, will probably be the first partof China to be declared neutral ground, and as such to be placed underthe protection of the combined commercial powers, [666] as is even nowforeshadowed by the International Conservancy Board of 1910. [667] TheUnited States, by her treaty with Mexico in 1848, secured the right offree navigation on the lower or Mexican course of the Colorado River andthe Gulf of California. The Franco-British convention, which in 1898confirmed the western Sudan to France, also conceded the principle ofmaking the Niger, the sole outlet of this vast and isolated territory, an international waterway, and created two French _enclaves_ in BritishNigeria to serve as river ports. [668]

[Sidenote: Motive for canals in lower course. ]

The mouth of a large river system is the converging point of many linesof inland and maritime navigation. The interests of commerce, especiallyin its earlier periods of development, demand that the contact here ofriver and sea be extensive as possible. Nature suggests the way tofulfill this requirement. The sluggish lowland current of a river, onapproaching sea level, throws out distributaries that reach the coast atvarious points and form a network of channels, which can be deepened andrendered permanent by canalization. In such regions the opportunity forthe improvement and extension of waterways has been utilized from theearliest times. The ancient Egyptians, Chaldeans, East Indians, and theGauls of the lower Po for thousands of years canaled the waters of theirdeltas and coastal lowlands for the combined purpose of irrigation, drainage, and navigation. The great canal system of China, constructedin the seventh century primarily to facilitate Inland intercoursebetween the northern and central sections of the Empire, extends fromthe sea at Hangchow 700 miles northward through the coastal alluvium ofthe Yangtze Kiang, Hoang-ho and Pie-ho to Tientsin, the port of Peking. Only the canal system of the center, important both for the irrigationof the fertile but porous loess and for the transportation of crops, isstill in repair. Here the meshes of the canal network are little morethan half a mile wide; farmers dig canals to their barns and bring intheir produce in barges instead of hay wagons. [669] Holland, where theancient Romans constructed channels in the Rhine delta and where thedebouchment courses of the Rhine, Meuse and Scheldt present a labyrinthof waterways, has to-day 1903 miles (3069 kilometers) of canals, whichtogether with the navigable rivers, have been important geographicfactors in the historical preëminence of Dutch foreign commerce. So onthe lower Mississippi, in the greatest alluvial area of the UnitedStates, the government has expended large sums for the improvement ofthe passes and bayous of the river. The Barataria, Atchafalaya, Terrebonne, Black, Teche and Lafourche bayous have been renderednavigable, and New Orleans has been given canal outlets to the seathrough Lakes Salvador, Pontchartrain and Borgne. 

[Sidenote: Watershed canals. ]

As the dividing channels of the lower course point to the feasibility ofamplifying the connection with the ocean highway, so the spreadingbranches of a river's source, which approach other head waters on a lowdivide, suggest the extension of inland navigation by the union of twosuch drainage systems through canals. Where the rivers of a countryradiate from a relatively low central watershed, as from the CentralPlateau of France and the Valdai Hills of Russia, nature offersconditions for extensive linking of inland waterways. Hence we find acontinuous passway through Russia from the Caspian Sea to the Baltic bythe canal uniting the Volga and Neva rivers; another from the Black Seaup the Dnieper, which by canals finds three different outlets to theBaltic through the Vistula, Niemen and Duna. [670] The Northern Dwina, linked, by canals, with the Neva through Lakes Onega and Ladoga, unitesthe White Sea with the Baltic. [671] Sully, the great minister of HenryIV. Of France, saw that the relief of the country would permit thelinking of the Loire, Seine, Meuse, Saône and Rhine, and theMediterranean with the Garonne. All his plans were carried out by hissuccessors, but he himself, at the end of the sixteenth century, beganthe construction of the Briare Canal between the Loire near Orleans andthe Seine at Fontainebleau. [672] Similarly in the eastern half of theUnited States, the long, low watershed separating the drainage basin ofthe St. Lawrence and Great Lakes from that of the Mississippi and theHudson made feasible the succession of canals completing the "GreatBelt" of inland navigation from St. Lawrence and New York bays to theGulf. Albert Gallatin's famous report of 1808[673] pointed out theadaptation of the three low divides to canal communication; but longbefore this, every line of possible canoe travel by river and portageover swamp or lake-dotted watershed had been used by savages, whiteexplorers and French voyageurs, from Lake Champlain to Lake Winnebago, so that the canal engineer had only to select from the numerous portagepaths already beaten out by the moccasined feet of Indian or fur-trader. 

[Sidenote: Rivers and railroads. ]

The cheapness and ease of river travel have tended to check or delay theconstruction of highroads and railways, where facilities for inlandnavigation have been abundant, and later to regulate railway freightcharges. Conversely, riverless lands have everywhere experienced anexaggerated and precocious railroad development, and have suffered fromits monopoly of transportation. Even canals have in most lands had a farearlier date than paved highroads. This has been true of Spain, France, Holland, and England. [674] In the Hoang-ho Valley of northern China wherewaterways are restricted, owing to the rapid current and shallowness ofthis river, highroads are comparatively common; but they are very rarein central and southern China where navigable rivers and canalsabound. [675] New England, owing to its lack of inland navigation, was thefirst part of the United States to develop a complete system ofturnpikes and later of railroads. On the other hand, the great rivervalleys of America have generally slighted the highroad phase ofcommunication, and slowly passed to that of railroads. The abundance ofnatural waterways in Russia--51, 800 miles including canals--hascontributed to the retardation of railroad construction. [676] The samething is true in the Netherlands, where 4875 miles (7863 kilometers) ofnavigable waterways[677] in an area of only 12, 870 square miles (33, 000square kilometers) have kept the railroads down to a paltry 1818 miles(2931 kilometers); but smaller Belgium, commanding only 1375 miles (3314kilometers) of waterway and stimulated further by a remarkableindustrial and commercial development, has constructed 4228 miles (6819kilometers) of railroad. 

[Sidenote: Relation of rivers to railroads in recent colonial lands. ]

If we compare the countries of Central and South America, whererailroads are still mere adjuncts of river and coastwise routes, a stageof development prevalent in the United States till 1858, we find anunmistakable relation between navigable waterways and railroad mileage. The countries with ample or considerable river communication, likeBrazil, Venezuela, Colombia and Paraguay, are all relatively slow inlaying railroads as compared with Mexico and Argentine, even whenallowance is made for differences of zonal location, economicdevelopment, and degree of European elements in their respectivepopulations. Mexico and Argentine, having each an area only aboutone-fourth that of Brazil but a railroad mileage nearly one-fourthgreater, have been pushed to this development primarily by a common lackof inland navigation. Similarly South Africa, stricken with poverty ofwater communication south of the Zambesi, has constructed 7500 miles ofrailroads[678] in spite of the youth of the country and the sparsity ofits white population. Similar geographic conditions have forced themileage of Australian railways up to twice that of South Africa, in acountry which is still in the pastoral and agricultural stage ofdevelopment, and whose most densely populated province Victoria has onlyfourteen inhabitants to the square mile. In the almost unpeopled wastesof Trans-Caspia, where two decades ago the camel was the only carrier, the Russian railroad has worked a commercial revolution by stimulatingproduction and affording an outlet for the irrigated districts of theencircling mountains. [679] In our own Trans-Missouri country, where thescanty volume of the streams eliminated all but the Missouri itself as adependable waterway, even for the canoe travel of the early westerntrappers, railroads have developed unchecked by the competition of rivertransportation. [680] With no rival nearer than the Straits of Magellanand the Isthmus of Panama for transportation between the Mississippi andthe Pacific coast, they have fixed their own charges on a monopolybasis, and have fought the construction of the Isthmian Canal. 

[Sidenote: Unity of a river system. ]

A river system is a system of communication. It therefore makes a bondof union between the people living among its remoter sources and thosesettled at its mouth. Every such river system forms geographically anunbroken whole. Only where a wild, torrent-filled gorge, like theBrahmaputra's path through the Himalayas, interrupts communicationbetween the upper and lower course, is human life in the two sectionsdivorced. But such cases are rare. Even the River Jhelam, which springswith mad bounds from the lofty Vale of Kashmir through the outer rangeof the Himalayas down to its junction with the Indus, carries quantitiesof small logs to be used as railway sleepers; and though it shatters alarge per cent. Of them, it makes a link between the lumber men of theKashmir forests and British railroad engineers in the treeless plains ofthe Indus. [681]

[Sidenote: The effect of common water supply in arid lands. ]

In arid lands, where the scant and variable streams are useless fornavigation, but invaluable for irrigation, a rival interest in thelimited water supply leads almost inevitably to conflict, and often tothe political union of the peoples holding the upper and lower courses, in order to secure adjustment of their respective claims. The ancientSalassi of the upper Doria Baltea Valley in the Alps drew off all thewater of the stream for washing gold, and thus deprived the agriculturalpeople lower down the valley of the water necessary for irrigation. Theresult was frequent wars between the two tribes. [682] The offensive istaken by the downstream people, whose fields and gardens suffer fromevery extension of tillage or increase of population in the settlementsabove them. Occasionally a formal agreement is a temporary expedient. The River Firenze and other streams watering southern Trans-Caspia havetheir sources in the mountains of northern Persia; hence the Russians, in the boundary convention with Persia of 1881, stipulated that no newsettlement be established along these streams within Persian territory, no extension of land under cultivation beyond the present amount, and noeduction of the water beyond that necessary to irrigate the existingfields. [683] Russia's designs upon Afghanistan aim not only at access toIndia, but also at the control of the upper Murghab River, on whosewater depends the prosperity of the Pendjeh and Merv oases. [684] In suchregions the only logical course is the extension of the politicalfrontier to the watershed, a principle which Russia is applying inwestern Asia, and which California applied in drawing her easternboundary to include even Goose Lake. 

[Sidenote: Union of opposite river banks. ]

Rivers unite. Ancient Rome grew up on both banks of the Tiber, andextended her commercial and political supremacy up and down stream. Bothsides of the Rhine were originally occupied by the Gallic tribes, whosevillages were in some instances bisected by the river. Cæsar found theMenapii, a Belgian people on the lower Rhine, with their fields, farmhouses and villages on both banks. [685] Then the westward advance ofthe Teutonic tribes gradually transformed the Rhine into a German river, from the island of Batavia at its mouth up to the great elbow at thefoot of the Jura Mountains. [686] To the American Indians even the widestrivers were no barriers. Christopher Gist, exploring the Ohio in 1751, found a Shawnee village situated on both sides of the river below themouth of the Scioto, with about a hundred houses on the north bank andforty on the south. [687] The small and unique nation of the MandanIndians were found by Lewis and Clark near the northern bend of theMissouri in 1804, in two groups of villages on opposite sides of theriver. They had previously in 1772 occupied nine villages lower down thestream, two on the east bank and seven on the west. [688] The ConnecticutRiver settlers of early colonial days laid out all their towns straightacross the valley, utilizing the alluvial meadows on both banks fortillage, the terraces for residence sites, and the common river forintercourse. [689]

[Sidenote: Tendency toward ethnic and cultural unity in a river valley. ]

Every river tends to become a common artery feeding all the life of itsbasin, and gradually obliterating ethnic and cultural differences amongthe peoples of its valley. The Nile, with its narrow hem of flood-plainon either bank and barrier sands beyond, has so linked race and historyin Egypt and Nubia, that the two countries cannot be separated. A commonhighway from mountains to sea, a common frontier of trackless deserthave developed here a blended similarity of race, language and culturefrom the delta to Kordofan. The Hamitic race seems to have originated inthe south and migrated northward down the Nile towards the delta. Laterthe whole valley, north and south, received the same Semitic or Arabimmigration, which spread from Cairo to the old Sudanese capital ofSennar, while a strain of negro blood has filtered in from theequatorial black belt and followed the current down to the sea. [690] Theculture of the valley originated in Lower Egypt, and, with that easytransmissibility which characterizes ideas, it moved upstream intoEthiopia, which never evolved a culture of its own. Just as noticeableis the political interplay. The rule of the Pharaohs extended far up theNile, at times to the Third Cataract at 20° N. L. ; and at one periodEthiopian kings extended their sway over Egypt. At another, a large bodyof mutinous Egyptian soldiers abandoned their country and their wives, and emigrated along the one line of slight resistance open to them intoEthiopia, to found there a new state and new families by marriage withnative women, thus contributing to the amalgamation of races in thevalley. 

[Sidenote: Identity of country with river valley. ]

The most pronounced types of the identity of a country with a rivervalley are found where strongly marked geographical boundaries, likedeserts and mountains, emphasize the inner unity of the basins byaccentuating their isolation from without. This is especially the casein high mountain regions; here canton or commune or county coincideswith the river valley. Population hugs the margins of the streams wherealone is soil fit for cultivation, and fairly level land suitable fordwellings. Above are the unoccupied heights, at once barrier andboundary. In the Alps, Salzburg is approximately identical with thevalley of the Salzach, Uri with that of the Reuss, the Valais with theupper Rhone, the Engadine with the upper Inn, Glarus with the Linth, Graubünden or Grisons with the upper Rhine, Valtellina with the Adda. Soin the great upheaved area of the Himalayas, the state of Kashmir wasoriginally the valley of the upper Jhelam River, while Assam, in itscorrect delimitation, is the valley of the Brahmaputra between theHimalayan gorge and the swamps of Bengal. [691]

In mountain regions which are also arid, the identity of a district witha stream basin becomes yet more pronounced, because here population mustgather about the common water supply, must organize to secure its fairdistribution, and cooperate in the construction of irrigation channelsto make the distribution as economical and effective as possible. Thusin Chinese Turkestan, the districts of Yarkand, Kashgar, Aksu andKut-sha are identical with as many mountain tributaries of the Tarim, whose basin in turn comprises almost the whole of Chinese Turkestan. 

[Sidenote: Enclosed river valleys. ]

In all such desert and mountain-rimmed valleys, the central streamattracts to its narrow hem of alluvial soil the majority of thepopulation, determines the course of the main highroad, and is itselfoften the only route through the encompassing barriers. Hence theimportance attached to the river by the inhabitants, an importancereflected in the fact that the river often gives its name to the wholedistrict. To the most ancient Greeks _Aigiptos_ meant the river, whosename was later transferred to the whole land; for the narrow arablestrip which constituted Egypt was "the gift of the Nile. " The Aryans, descending into India through the mountains on its northwest border, gave the name of _Sindhu_, "the flood" or "the ocean, " to the firstgreat river they met. In the mouth of Persians and Greeks the name wascorrupted into Indus, and then applied to the whole country; but itstill survives in its original form in the local designation of the Sindprovince, which comprises the valley of the Indus below the confluenceof the five rivers, which again formed and named the original Punjab. Significantly enough the western political boundary of the Sind extendsinto the barren foothills of Baluchistan only so far as the affluents ofthe Indus render the land arable by irrigation; for the Indus performsfor the great province of the Sind, by annual inundation and perennialirrigation, the same service that the Nile does for Egypt. 

The segregation of such districts, and the concentration of theirinterests and activities along the central streams have tended todevelop in the population an intense but contracted nationalconsciousness, and to lend them a distinctive history. Their riversbecome interwoven with their mythology and religion, are gods to beworshipped or appeased, become goals of pilgrimages, or acquire apeculiar sanctity. The Nile, Ganges, Jamna, Jordan, Tiber and Po aresuch sacred streams, while the Rhine figures in German mythology. 

[Sidenote: Rivers as boundaries of races and peoples. ]

From the uniting power of rivers it follows that they are poorboundaries. Only mountains and seas divide sharply enough to formscientific frontiers. Rivers may serve as political lines of demarcationand therefore fix political frontiers; but they can never take the placeof natural boundaries. A migrating or expanding people tend always tooccupy both slopes of a river valley. They run their boundary of race orlanguage across the axis of their river basin, only under exceptionalcircumstances along the stream itself. The English-French boundary inthe St. Lawrence Valley crosses the river in a broad transitional zoneof mingled people and speech in and above the city of Montreal. TheFrench-German linguistic frontier in Switzerland crosses the upper RhoneValley just above Sierre, but the whole canton of Valais above the elbowof the river at Martigny shows fundamental ethnic unity, indicated byidentity of head form, stature and coloring. [692] Where the Elbe flowsthrough the low plains of North Germany, its whole broad valley isoccupied by a pure Teutonic population--fair, tall, long-headed; a morebrunette type occupies its middle course across the uplands of Saxony, and speaks German like the downstream folk; but its upper course, hemmedin by the Erz and Riesen Mountains, shows the short, dark andbroad-headed people of the Bohemian basin, speaking the Czechlanguage. [693] On the Danube, too, the same thing is true. The upperstream is German in language and predominantly Alpine in race stock downto the Austro-Hungarian boundary; from this point to the Drave mouth itis Hungarian; and from the Drave to the Iron Gate it is Serbo-Croatianon both banks. [694] Lines of ethnic demarcation, therefore, cut the Elbeand Danube transversely, not longitudinally. [See map page 223. ]

The statements of Cæsar and Pliny that the Seine and Marne formed theboundary between the Gauls and Belgians, and the Garonne that betweenthe Gauls and Aquitanians, must be accepted merely as general andpreliminary; for exceptions are noted later in the text. Parisii, forinstance, were represented as holding both banks of the Seine and Marneat their confluence, and the Gallic Bituriges were found on theAquitanian side of the Garonne estuary. 

[Sidenote: Scientific river boundaries. ]

Only under peculiar conditions do rivers become effective as ethnic, tribal or political boundaries. Most often it is some physiographicfeature which makes the stream an obstacle to communication, and lendsit the character of a scientific boundary. The division of the Alpineforeland of southern Germany first into tribal and later into politicalprovinces by the Iller, Lech, Inn, and Salzach can be ascribed in partto the tumultuous course of these streams from the mountains to theDanube, which renders them useless for communication. [695] The lowerDanube forms a well maintained linguistic boundary between theBulgarians and Roumanians, except in the northwest corner of Bulgaria, where the hill country between the Timok River and the Danube hasenticed a small group of Roumanians across to the southern side. Fromthis point down the stream, a long stretch of low marshy bank on thenorthern side, offering village sites only at the few places where theloess terrace of Roumania comes close to the river, exposed tooverflows, strewn with swamps and lakes, and generally unfit forsettlement, has made the Danube an effective barrier. [696] Similarly, thebroad, sluggish Shannon River, which spreads out to lake breadth atclose intervals in its course across the boggy central plain of Ireland, has from the earliest times proved a sufficient barrier to divide theplain into two portions, Connaught and Meath, [697] contrasted in history, in speech and to some extent even in race elements. [698] A differentcause gave the Thames its unique rôle among the larger English rivers asa boundary between counties from source to mouth. London's fortifiedposition at the head of the Thames estuary closed this stream as a lineof invasion to the early Saxons, and forced them to make detours to thenorth and south of the river, which therefore became a tribalboundary. [699]

Where navigation is peculiarly backward, a river may present a barrier. An instructive instance is afforded by the River Yo, which flowseastward through northern Bornu into Lake Chad, and serves at once asboundary and protection to the agricultural tribes of the Kanuriagainst the depredations of the Tibbu robbers living in the Sahara orthe northern grassland. But during the dry season from April to August, when the trickling stream is sucked up by the thirsty land and thirstierair, the Tibbu horsemen sweep down on the unprotected Kanuri and retreatwith their booty across the vanished barrier. The primitive navigationby reed or brushwood rafts, practiced in this almost streamlessdistrict, affords no means of retreat for mounted robbers; so theraiding season opens with the fall of the river. [700]

[Sidenote: Rivers as political boundaries. ]

For political boundaries, which are often adopted with little referenceto race distribution, rivers serve fairly well. They are convenientlines of demarcation and strategic lines of defense, as is proved by themilitary history of the Rhine, Danube, Ebro, Po, and countless otherstreams. On the lower Zambesi Livingstone found the territories of thelesser chiefs defined by the rivulets draining into the main river. Theleader of the Makololo formally adopted the Zambesi as his political andmilitary frontier, though his people spread and settled beyond theriver. [701] Long established political frontiers may become ethnicboundaries, more or less distinct, because of protracted politicalexclusion. To the Romans, the Danube and Rhine as a northeasternfrontier had the value chiefly of established lines in an imperfectlyexplored wilderness, and of strategic positions for the defense of anoft assailed border; but the long maintenance of this political frontierresulted in the partial segregation and hence differentiation of thepeople dwelling on the opposite banks. 

Poor as a scientific boundary, a river is not satisfactory even as aline of demarcation, because of its tendency to shift its bed in everylevel stretch of its course. A political boundary that follows a river, therefore, is often doomed to frequent surveys. The plantations on themeanders of the lower Mississippi are connected now with one, now withthe other of the contiguous states, as the great stream straightens itscourse after the almost annual overflow. [702] The Rio Grande has proved atroublesome and expensive boundary between the United States andMexico. Almost every rise sees it cutting a new channel for itself, nowthrough Texas, now through Mexican territory, occasioning endlesscontroversies as to the ownership of the detached land, and demandingfresh surveys. Recent changes in the lower course of the Helmund betweenNasralabad and the Sistan Swamp, which was adopted in 1872 as theboundary between Afghanistan and Persia, have necessitated a newdemarcation of the frontier; and on this task a commission is at presentengaged. [703] In a like manner Strabo tells us that the River Achelous, forming the boundary between ancient Acarnania and Aetolia in westernHellas, by overflowing its delta region, constantly obliterated theboundaries agreed upon by the two neighbors, and thereby gave rise todisputes that were only settled by force of arms. [704]

[Sidenote: Fluvial settlements and peoples. ]

Rivers tend always to be centers of population, not outskirts orperimeters. They offer advantages that have always attractedsettlement--fertile alluvial soil, a nearby water supply, command of anatural highway for intercourse with neighbors and access to markets. Among civilized peoples fluvial settlements have been the nuclei ofbroad states, passing rapidly through an embryonic development to amaturity in which the old center can still be distinguished by a greaterdensity of population. Only among savages or among civilized people whohave temporarily reverted to primitive conditions in virgin coloniallands, do we find genuine riverine folk, whose existence is closelyrestricted to their bordering streams. The river tribes of the Congooccupy the banks or the larger islands, while the land only three orfour miles back from the stream is held by different tribes with whomthe riverine people trade their fish. The latter are expert fishermenand navigators, and good agriculturists, raising a variety of fruits andvegetables. On the river banks at regular intervals are market greens, neutral ground, whither people come from up and down stream and from theinterior to trade. Their long riparian villages consist of a singlestreet, thirty feet wide and often two miles long, on which face perhapsthree hundred long houses, [705] Fisher and canoe people line the Welle, the great northern tributary of the Congo. [706] The same type appearedin South America in the aboriginal Caribs and Tupis dwelling along thesouthern tributaries of the Amazon and the affluents of the Paraguay. These were distinctly a water race, having achieved a meager developmentonly in navigation, fishing and the cultivation of their alluvialsoil. [707] The ancient mound-builders of America located their villageschiefly, though not exclusively, along the principal watercourses, likethe Mississippi, Illinois, Miami, Wabash, Wisconsin, and Fox, [708] on thevery streams later dotted by the trading posts of the French voyageurs. 

[Sidenote: Riparian villages of French Canada. ]

The presence of the great waterways of Canada and the demand of the furtrade for extensive and easy communication made the early Frenchcolonists as distinctly a riverine people as the savage Congo tribes. Like these, they stretched out their villages in a single line of cabinsand clearings, three or four miles long, facing the river, which was theKing's highway. Such a village was called a _côte_. One côte ran intothe next, for their expansion was always longitudinal, never lateral. These riparian settlements lined the main watercourses of French Canada, especially the St. Lawrence, whose shores from Beaupre, fifteen milesbelow Quebec, up to Montreal at an early date presented the appearanceof a single street. Along the river passed the stately trading ship fromFrance with its cargo of wives and merchandise for the colonists, thepirogue of the _habitant_ farmer carrying his onions and grain to theQuebec market, the birchbark canoe of the adventurous voyageur bringingdown his winter's hunt of furs from the snow-bound forests of theinterior, and the fleet of Jesuit priests bound to some remote inlandmission. 

[Illustration: THE RIPARIAN VILLAGES OF THE LOWER ST. LAWRENCE. ]

On this water thoroughfare every dwelling faced. Hence land on the riverwas at a premium, while that two miles back was to be had for thetaking. The original grants measured generally 766 feet in width and7, 660 in depth inland; but when bequeathed from generation togeneration, they were divided up along lines running back at rightangles to the all important waterway. Hence each _habitant_ farmmeasured its precious river-front by the foot and its depth by the mile, while the cabins were ranged side by side in cosy neighborliness. The_côte_ type of village, though eminently convenient for the Indiantrade, was ill adapted for government and defense against the savages;but the need for the communication supplied by the river was sofundamental, that it nullified all efforts of the authorities toconcentrate the colonists in more compact settlements. Parkman says:"One could have seen almost every house in Canada by paddling a canoe upthe St. Lawrence and Richelieu. "[709] The same type of land-holding canbe traced to-day on the Chaudiere River, where the fences run back fromthe stream like the teeth of a comb. It is reproduced on a larger scalein the long, narrow counties ranged along the lower St. Lawrence, whoseshape points to the old fluvial nuclei of settlement. Similarly theearly Dutch grants on the Hudson gave to the patroons four miles alongthe river and an indefinite extension back from the stream. In the earlyConnecticut River settlements, the same consideration of a share in theriver and its alluvial bottoms distributed the town lots among theinhabitants in long narrow strips running back from the banks. [710]

[Sidenote: Boatmen tribes or castes. ]

In undeveloped countries, where rivers are the chief highways, weoccasionally see the survival of a distinct race of boatmen amid anintruding people of different stock, preserved in their purity by theirpeculiar occupation, which has given them the aloofness of a caste. Inthe Kwang-tung province of southern China are 40, 000 Tanka boat people, who live in boats and pile-dwellings in the Canton River. The Chinese, from whom they are quite distinct, regard them as a remnant of theoriginal population, which was dislodged by their invasion and forced totake refuge on the water. They gradually established intercourse withthe conquerors of the land, but held themselves aloof. They marry onlyamong themselves, have their own customs, and enjoy a practical monopolyof carrying passengers and messages between the steamers and the shoreat Macao, Hongkong and Canton. [711] In the same way, the middle Nigerabove Gao possesses a distinct aquatic people, the Somnos or Bosos, whoearn their living as fishermen and boatmen on the river. They spreadtheir villages along the Niger and its tributaries, and occupy separatequarters in the large towns like Gao and Timbuctoo. They are creaturesof the river rather than of the land, and show great skill and endurancein paddling and poling their narrow dugouts on their long Nigervoyages. [712]

Reference has been made before to the large river population of Chinawho live on boats and rafts, and forward the trade of the vast inlandwaterways. These are people, differentiated not in race, but inoccupation and mode of life, constantly recruited from the congestedpopulation of the land. Allied to them are the trackers or towing crewswhose villages form a distinctive feature of the turbulent upperYangtze, and who are employed, sometimes three hundred at a time, todrag junks up the succession of rapids above Ichang. [713] Similarly thecomplex of navigable waterways centering about Paris, as far back as thereign of Tiberius Cæsar, gave rise to the _Nautae Parisii_ or guild ofmariners, from whom the city of Paris derived its present coat ofarms--a vessel under full sail. These Lutetian boatmen handled the rivertraffic in all the territory drained by the Seine, Marne, and Oise. Later, in the reign of Louis the Fat, they were succeeded by the_Mercatores aquae Parisiaci_, and from them sprang the municipal bodyappointed to regulate the river navigation and commerce. [714]

[Sidenote: River islands as protected sites. ]

The location of the ancient tribe of the Parisii is typical of manyother weak riverine folk who seek in the islands of a river a protectedposition to compensate for their paucity of number. The Parisii, one ofthe smallest of the Gallic tribes, ill-matched against their populousneighbors, took refuge on ten islands and sandbars of the Seine andthere established themselves. [715] Stanley found an island in the Congonear the second cataract of Stanley Falls occupied by five villages ofthe Baswa, who had taken refuge there from the attacks of thebloodthirsty Bakuma. [716] During the Tartar invasions of Russia in thethirteenth and fourteenth centuries, bands of refugees from thesurrounding country gathered for mutual defense on the islands of theDnieper River, and became the nucleus of the Dnieper Cossacks. [717] TheHuron tribe of American Indians, reduced to a mere fragment by repeatedIroquois attacks, fled first to the islands of St. Joseph andMichilimackinac in Lake Huron, and in 1856 to the Isle of Orleans in theSt. Lawrence. But even this location under the guns of their Frenchallies in Quebec failed to protect them, for the St. Lawrence was ahighway for the war fleets of their implacable foe. [718]

[Sidenote: River and lake islands as robber strongholds. ]

A river island not only confers the negative benefit of protection, butaffords a coign of vantage for raids on the surrounding country, beingto some extent proof against punitive attacks. It offers specialfacilities for depredations on parties crossing the river; here thedivided current, losing something of its force, is less of an obstacle, and the island serves as a resting place on the passage. Immunity frompunishment breeds lawlessness. The Ba Toka who, fifty years ago, inhabited the islands in the great southern bend of the Zambesi, utilized their location to lure wandering tribes on to their islands, under the pretext of ferrying them across, and then to rob them, tillSebituane, the great Makololo chief, cleaned out their fastnesses andopened the river for trade. [719] The islands in the wide stretches of theLualaba River in the Babemba country were described to Livingstone asharboring a population of marauders and robbers, who felt themselvessafe from attack. [720] The same unenviable reputation attaches to theBudumas of the Lake Chad islands. A weak, timid, displaced people, theynevertheless lose no chance of raiding the herds of the Sudanese tribesinhabiting the shores of the Lake, and carrying off the stolen cattle ontheir wretched rafts to their island retreats. [721]

[Sidenote: River peninsulas as protected sites. ]

The protection of an island location is almost equalled in thepeninsulas formed by the serpentines or meanders of a river. Hence theseare choice sites for fortress or settlement in primitive communities, where hostilities are always imminent and rivers the sole means ofcommunication. The defensive works of the mound-builders in greatnumbers occupied such river peninsulas. The neck of the loop wasfortified by a single or double line of ditch and earthen wall, constructed from bank to bank of the encircling stream. [722] This wasexactly the location of Vesontio, now Besançon, once the ancientstronghold of the Sequani in eastern Gaul. It was situated in a loop ofthe Dubis, so nearly a circle that its course seems to have been"described by a compass, " Cæsar says, while fortifications across theisthmus made the position of the town almost impregnable. [723] Verona, lying at the exit of the great martial highway of the Brenner Pass, occupies just such a loop of the Adige, as does Capua on the Volturno, and Berne on the Aare. Shrewsbury, in the Middle Ages an importantmilitary point for the preservation of order on the marches of Wales, isalmost encircled by the River Severn, while a castle on the neck of thepeninsula completes the defense on the land side. [724] Graaf Reinett, atone time an exposed frontier settlement of the Dutch in Cape Colony, hada natural moat around it in the Sunday River, which here describesthree-fourths of a circle. 

[Sidenote: River islands as sites of trading posts and colonies. ]

The need of protection felt by all colonists in new countries amidsavage or barbarous people whom encroachment sooner or later makeshostile, leads them if possible to place their first trading posts andsettlements on river islands, especially at the mouth of the streams, where a delta often affords the site required, and where the junction ofocean and river highway offers the best facilities for trade. A riverisland fixed the location of the English settlement at Jamestown inVirginia, the French at Montreal and New Orleans, the Dutch at Manhattanand Van Renssellær Island in the Hudson, the Swedes at Tinicum Islandin the Delaware River a few miles below the mouth of the Schuylkill. [725]St. Louis, located on a delta island of the Senegal River, is one of theoldest European towns in West Africa;[726] and Bathurst, founded in 1618on a similar site at the mouth of the Gambia, has for centuries now beenthe safe outlet for the trade of this stream. [727] Such islandsettlements at river mouths are a phenomenon of the outer edge of everycoastal region; but inland stations for trade or military control alsoseek the protection of an island site. The Russians in the seventeenthcentury secured their downstream conquest of the Amur by a succession ofriver island forts, [728] which recall Colonel Byrd's early frontier poston an island in the Holston River, and George Rogers Clark's militarystockade on Corn Island in the Ohio, which became the nucleus of thelater city of Louisville. 

[Sidenote: Swamps as barriers and boundaries. ]

More effective than rivers in the protection which they afford areswamps. Neither solid land nor navigable water, their sluggish, passivesurface raises an obstacle of pure inertia to the movements of mankind. Hence they form one of those natural boundaries that segregate. Insouthern England, Ronmey Marsh, reinforced by the Wealden Forest, fixedthe western boundary of the ancient Saxon kingdom of Kent by blockingexpansion in that direction, just as the bordering swamps of the Lea andColne rivers formed the eastern and western boundaries ofMiddlesex. [729] The Fenland of the Wash, which extended in Saxon daysfrom the highland about Lincoln south to Cambridge and Newmarket, servedto hem in the Angles of Norfolk and Suffolk on the west, so that theoccupation of the interior was left to later bands who entered by theestuaries of the Humber and Forth. [730] In northern Germany, the lowcross valleys of the Spree, Havel and Netze rivers, bordered by alderswamps, were long a serious obstacle to communication, and thereforebecame boundaries of districts, [731] just as the Bourtanger Moor drewthe dividing line between Holland and Hanover. 

[Sidenote: Swamps as regions of survival. ]

Swamp-bordered regions, as areas of natural isolation, guard and keepintact the people which they hold. Therefore they are regions ofsurvival of race and language. The scattered islets of the Fens ofEngland furnished an asylum to the early British Celts from Teutonicattacks, [732] and later protected them against dominant infusion ofTeutonic blood. Hence to-day in the Fenland and in the district just tothe south we find a darker, shorter people than in the country to theeast or west. [733] Similarly the White Russians, occupying the poor, marshy region of uncertain watershed between the sources of the Duna, Dnieper and Volga, have the purest blood of all the eastern Slavs, though this distinction is coupled with poverty and retardedculture, [734] a combination that anthropo-geography often reveals. Wholly distinct from the Russians and segregated from them by a barrierof swampy forests, we find the Letto-Lithuanians in the Baltic provinceof Courland, speaking the most primitive form of flectional languagesclassed as Aryan. The isolation which preserved their archaic speech, ofall European tongues the nearest to the Sanskrit, made them the lastEuropean people to accept Christianity. [735] The great race of theSlavic Wends, who once occupied all northern Germany between the Vistulaand Elbe, has left only a small and declining remnant of its language inthe swampy forests about the sources of the Spree. [736] [Seeethnographical map, p. 223. ] The band of marshlands stretching throughHolland from the shallow Zuyder Zee east to the German frontier, hasgiven to Friesland and the coast islands of Holland a peculiarisolation, which has favored the development and survival of thepeculiar Friesian dialect, that speech so nearly allied to SaxonEnglish, and has preserved here the purest type of the tall, blondTeuton among the otherwise mixed stock of the Netherlands. [737]

[Sidenote: Swamps as places of refuge. ]

Inaccessible to all except those familiar with their treacherous pathsand labyrinthine channels, swamps have always afforded a refuge forindividuals and peoples; and therefore as places of defense they haveplayed no inconspicuous part in history. What the Dismal Swamp of NorthCarolina and the cypress swamps of Louisiana were to the run-awayslaves, that the Everglades of Florida have been to the defeatedSeminoles. In that half-solid, half-fluid area, penetrable only to thenative Indian who poles his canoe along its tortuous channels of liquidmud, the Seminoles have set up their villages on the scattered hummocksof solid land, and there maintained themselves, a tribe of 350 souls, despite all efforts of the United States government to remove them tothe Indian Territory. The swamps of the Nile delta have been the asylumof Egyptian independence from the time King Amysis took refuge there forfifty years during an invasion of the Ethiopians, [738] to the retreatthither of Amyrtaeus, a prince of Sais, after his unsuccessful revoltagainst the Persian conqueror Artaxerxes I. [739] The Isle of Athelneyamong the marshes of the Parret River afforded a refuge to Alfred theGreat and a band of his followers during the Danish invasion of Wessexin 878, [740] while the Isle of Ely in the Fenland was another point ofsustained resistance to the invaders. It was the Fenland that twohundred years later was the last stronghold of Saxon resistance toWilliam of Normandy. Here on the Isle of Ely the outlawed leaderHereward maintained Saxon independence, till the Conqueror at lastconstructed a long causeway across the marshes to the "Camp ofRefuge. "[741]

[Sidenote: The spirit of the marshes. ]

The spirit of the marshlands is the spirit of freedom. Therefore thesesmall and scarcely habitable portions of the land assume an historicaldignity and generate stirring historical events out of all proportion totheir size and population. Their content is ethical rather thaneconomic. They attract to their fastnesses the vigorous souls protestingagainst conquest or oppression, and then by their natural protectionsustain and nourish the spirit of liberty. It was the water-soakedlowlands of the Rhine that enabled the early Batavians, [742] Ditmarscherand Frieslanders to assert and to maintain their independence, generatedthe love of Independence among the Dutch and helped them defend theirliberty against the Spanish[743] and French. So the Fenland of Englandwas the center of resistance to the despotism of King John, whotherefore fixed his headquarters for the suppression of the revolt atLincoln and his military depôt at Lynn. Later in the conflict of thebarons with Henry III, Simon de Montfort and other disaffected noblesentrenched themselves in the islands of Ely and Axholm, till theProvisions of Oxford in 1267 secured them some degree of constitutionalrights. [744] Four centuries later the same spirit sent many Fenlandersto the support of Cromwell. 

[Sidenote: Economic and political importance of lakes. ]

A river that spreads out into the indeterminate earthform of a marsh isan effective barrier; but one that gathers waters into a natural basinand forms a lake retains the uniting power of a navigable stream andalso, by the extension of its area and elimination of its current, approaches the nature of an enclosed sea. Mountain rivers, characterizedby small volume and turbulent flow, first become navigable when theycheck their impetuosity and gather their store of water in some lakebasin. The whole course of the upper Rhone, from its glacier source onthe slope of Mount Furca to its confluence with the Saône at Lyon, isunfit for navigation, except where it lingers in Lake Geneva. The samething is true of the Reuss in Lake Lucerne, the upper Rhine in LakeConstance, the Aare in Thun and Brienze, and the Linth in Lake Zurich. Hence such torrent-fed lakes assume economic and political importance inmountainous regions, owing to the paucity of navigable waterways. Thelakes of Alpine Switzerland and Italy and of Highland Scotland form somany centers of intercourse and exchange. Even such small bodies ofwater as the Alpine lakes have therefore become goals of expansion, sothat we find the shores of Geneva, Maggiore, Lugano, and Garda, eachshared by two countries. Switzerland, the Austrian Tyrol, and the threeGerman states of Baden, Wurtemberg and Bavaria, have all managed tosecure a frontage upon Lake Constance. Lake Titicaca, lying 12, 661 feet(3854 meters) above sea level but affording a navigable course 136 miles(220 kilometers) long, is an important waterway for Peru and Bolivia. Inthe central Sudan, where aridity reduces the volume of all streams, eventhe variable and indeterminate Lake Chad has been an eagerly soughtobjective for expanding boundaries. Twenty years ago it was dividedamong the native states of Bornu, Bagirmi and Kanem; today it is sharedby British Nigeria, French Sudan, and German Kamerun. The erraticnorthern extension of the German boundary betrays the effort to reachthis goal. 

[Sidenote: Lakes as nuclei of states. ]

The uniting power of lakes manifests itself in the tendency of suchbasins to become the nuclei of states. Attractive to settlement inprimitive times, because of the protected frontier they afford--a motivefinding its most emphatic expression in the pile villages of the earlylake-dwellers--later because of the fertility of their bordering soiland the opportunity for friendly intercourse, they gradually unite theirshores in a mesh of reciprocal relations, which finds its ultimateexpression in political union. It is a significant fact that the SwissConfederation originated in the four forest cantons of Lucerne, Schwyz, Uri and Unterwalden, which are linked together by the jagged basin ofLake Lucerne or the Lake of the Four Forest Cantons, as the Swisssignificantly call it, but are otherwise divided by mountain barriers. So we find that Lake Titicaca was the cradle of the Inca Empire, just asLake Tezcoco was that of the Toltecs in Mexico and an island in LakeChalco later that of the Aztec domain. [745] The most stable of theshort-lived native states of Africa have apparently found an element ofstrength and permanence in a protected lake frontier. Such are the pettykingdoms of Bornu, Bagirmi and Kanem on Lake Chad, and Uganda onVictoria Nyanza. 

Large lakes, which include in their area islands, peninsulas, tides, currents, fiords, inlets, deltas, and dunes, and present everygeographical feature of an enclosed sea, approach the latter too inhistorical importance. Some of the largest, however, have long borne thename of seas. The Caspian, which exceeds the Baltic in area, and theAral, which outranks Lake Michigan, show the closest physicalresemblance to thalassic basins, because of their size, salinity andenclosed drainage systems; but their anthropo-geographical significanceis slight. The very salinity which groups them with the sea points to anarid climate that forever deprives them of the densely populated coastscharacteristic of most enclosed seas, and hence reduces their historicalimportance. Their tributary streams, robbed of their water by irrigationcanals, like "the shorn and parcelled Oxus", renounce their function ofhighways into the interior. To this rule the Volga is a uniqueexception. Finally, cut off from union with the ocean, these salt lakeslose the supreme historical advantage which is maintained by freshwaterlakes, like Ladoga, Nyassa, Maracaibo and the Great Lakes of NorthAmerica, all lying near sea level. 

[Sidenote: Lakes as fresh water seas. ]

Lakes as part of a system of inland waterways may possess commercialimportance surpassing that of many seas. This depends upon theproductivity, accessibility and extent of their hinterland, and this inturn depends upon the size and shape of the inland basin. The chain ofthe five Great Lakes, which together present a coastline of fourthousand miles and a navigable course as long as the Baltic between theSkager Rack and the head of the Gulf of Bothnia, constitutes afreshwater Mediterranean. It has played the part of an enclosed sea inAmerican history and has enabled the Atlantic trade to penetrate 1400miles inland to Chicago and Duluth. Its shores have therefore been acoveted object of territorial expansion. The early Dutch trading postsheaded up the Hudson and Mohawk toward Lake Ontario, as did the Englishsettlements which succeeded them. The French, from their vantage pointat Montreal, threw out a frail casting-net of fur stations and missions, which caught and held all the Lakes for a time. Later the Americanshores were divided among eight of our states. The northern boundariesof Indiana and Illinois were fixed by Congress for the express purposeof giving these commonwealths access to Lake Michigan. Pennsylvania withgreat difficulty succeeded in protruding her northwestern frontier tocover a meager strip of Erie coast, while New York's frontage on thesame lake became during the period of canal and early railroadconstruction, a great factor in her development. 

In 1901, the tonnage of our merchant vessels on the Great Lakes was halfthat of our Pacific, Atlantic and Gulf coasts combined, [746]constituting a freshwater fleet greater than the merchant marine ofeither France or sea-bred Norway. A remote but by no means faint echo ofthis fact is found in the five hundred or more boats, equally availablefor trade or war, which Henry M. Stanley saw the Uganda prince muster onthe shore of Victoria Nyanza Lake. Ocean, sea, bay, estuary, river, swamp, lake: here is Nature's great circle returning upon itself, acircle faintly notched into arcs, but one in itself and one in man'suses. 

NOTES TO CHAPTER XI

[630] Isabella B. Bishop, The Yangtze Valley and Beyond, Vol. I, pp. 26-27. New York and London, 1900. 

[631] Fiske, Discovery of America, Vol. I, p. 492. Boston, 1892. 

[632] Capt. James Cook, Voyage to the Pacific Ocean, 1776-1780, Vol. II, pp. 321-332. New York, 1796. 

[633] John Richard Green, The Making of England, Vol. I, pp. 63-66, 84-86, 95, 96. London, 1904. 

[634] E. Lavisse, _Histoire de France_, Vol. II, Part I, pp. 374-375, 378-379, 381-382, 385-386. Paris, 1903. 

[635] Helmolt, History of the World, Vol. I, pp. 189-191, map. New York, 1902-1906. 

[636] _Ibid. _, Vol. I, pp. 192-194. 

[637] G. W. Kitchen, History of France, Vol. I, pp. 59-60. Oxford, 1892. 

[638] Dietrich Schaeffer, _Die Hansestädte und König Waldemar vonDänemark_, p. 36. Jena, 1879. 

[639] G. G. Chisholm, Commercial Geography, p. 311. London, 1904. 

[640] Capt. A. T. Mahan, The Problem of Asia, pp. 41, 60, 120. New York, 1900. 

[641] Isabella B. Bishop, The Yangtze Valley and Beyond, Vol. I, pp. 97-98. New York and London, 1900. 

[642] E. C. Semple, Development of the Hanse Towns in Relation to theirGeographic Environment, Bulletin Amer. Geog. Soc. , Vol. 31. No. 3. 1899. 

[643] Nordenskiold, Voyage of the Vega, pp. 519-530, 552. New York, 1882. Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu, The Empire of the Tsars, Vol. I, Note pp. 278-281. New York, 1902. 

[644] Agnes Laut, Voyagers of the Northern Ocean, _Harper's Magazine_, January, 1906. 

[645] Alexis Krausse, Russia in Asia, pp. 21-54. New York, 1899. 

[646] Felix Dubois, Timbuctoo, pp. 198-190, 251-257. New York, 1896. 

[647] _Ibid. _, p. 38. 

[648] D. Livingstone, Missionary Travels, pp. 71, 177. New York, 1858. 

[649] W. Deecke, Italy, p. 87. London, 1904. 

[650] G. Adam Smith, Historical Geography of the Holy Land, map facingp. 167; also pp. 287, 327-328. New York, 1897. 

[651] F. M. Stapff, _Karte des unteren Khiusebthal, PetermannsMitteilungen_, p. 202. July, 1885. 

[652] Strabo, Book III, chap. II, 4. 

[653] For full discussion, see Roscher, _National-Oekonomik des Handelsund Gewerbefleisses_. Stuttgart, 1889. 

[654] Rambaud, History of Russia, Vol. I, pp. 24-28. Boston, 1886. 

[655] A. B. Hulbert, Historic Highways of America, Vol. VII, PortagePaths, pp. 182-183, 187-188. Cleveland, 1903. 

[656] Herodotus, Book I, 194. A. H. Layard, Nineveh and Its Remains, Vol. II, pp. 79-81. New York, 1849. 

[657] Charles W. Hawes, The Uttermost East, p. 60. New York, 1904. 

[658] Transportation by Water in 1906, Table 30, p. 181. Report ofDepartment of Commerce and Labor, Washington, 1908. 

[659] G. G. Chisholm, Commercial Geography, p. 277. London, 1904. 

[660] E. A. Freeman, Historical Geography of Europe, p. 466. London. 1882. 

[661] J. Ellis Barker, Modern Germany, pp. 68-85. London, 1907. 

[662] Heinrich von Treitschke, _Politik_, Vol. I, p. 218. Leipzig, 1897. 

[663] E. A. Freeman, Historical Geography of Europe, p. 466. London, 1882. 

[664] G. G. Chisholm, Commercial Geography, p. 511. London, 1904. 

[665] J. Partsch, Central Europe, p. 318. London, 1903. 

[666] Ratzel, _Politische Geographie_, pp. 739-740. Munich, 1903. 

[667] Annual Register for 1901, p. 358. New Series, London and New York, 1902. 

[668] H. R. Mill, International Geography, p. 958. New York, 1902. 

[669] Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. III, p. 473. London, 1896-1898. 

[670] H. R. Mill, International Geography, p. 406. New York, 1902. 

[671] G. G. Chisholm, Commercial Geography, map p. 312. London, 1904. 

[672] Blanqui, History of Political Economy, pp. 273, 277, 296. NewYork, 1880. 

[673] Albert Gallatin, American State Papers, Misc. Doc. , Vol. I, No. 250. Washington, 1834. 

[674] Roscher, _National-Oekonomik des Handels und Gewerbefleisses_, pp. 449, 453-454. Stuttgart, 1889. 

[675] H. R. Mill, International Geography, pp. 530-531. New York, 1902. 

[676] G. G. Chisholm, Commercial Geography, pp. 310, 312. London, 1904. 

[677] J. Partsch, Central Europe, p. 314. London, 1903. 

[678] Statesman's Yearbook for 1907. 

[679] Henry Norman, All the Russias, pp. 254-255, 285-292. New York, 1902. 

[680] E. C. Semple, American History and Its Geographic Conditions, pp. 251-255. Boston, 1903. 

[681] E. F. Knight, Where Three Empires Meet, p. 6. London, 1897. 

[682] Strabo, Book IV, chap. VI, 7. 

[683] Alexis Krausse, Russia in Asia, pp. 361-362. New York, 1899. 

[684] Angus Hamilton, Afghanistan, pp. 137-141. New York and London, 1906. Henry Norman, All the Russias, pp. 276-277. New York, 1902. 

[685] _Bella Gallico_, Book IV, chap. IV. 

[686] _Ibid. _, Book I, chap. XXXI; Book II, chap. III; Book IV, chap. I. 

[687] Journals of Dr. Thomas Walker and Christopher Gist, p. 129. FilsonClub Publications, Louisville, 1898. 

[688] H. R. Schoolcraft, Indian Tribes of the United States, Vol. III, pp. 248-249. Philadelphia, 1853. 

[689] Martha K. Genthe, The Valley Towns of Connecticut, Bull. Of Amer. Geog. Society, Vol. 39, pp. 1-7. New York, 1907. 

[690] Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. III, pp. 181-182, 192. London, 1898. 

[691] H. R. Mill, International Geography, p. 495. New York, 1902. 

[692] W. Z. Ripley, Races of Europe, pp. 284-285. New York, 1899. 

[693] _Ibid. _, Maps pp. 222, 340, 350. 

[694] _Ibid. _, Maps pp. 402, 429. 

[695] J. Partsch, Central Europe, pp. 43, 241. London, 1903. 

[696] _Ibid. _, p. 69. Sydow-Wagner, _Methodischer Schul-Atlas_, comparemaps No. 13 and No. 25. 

[697] Elisée Reclus, Europe, Vol. IV, pp. 380, 389-390. New York, 1882. 

[698] W. Z. Ripley, Races of Europe, p. 318, map. New York, 1899. 

[699] H. J. Mackinder, Britain and the British Seas, pp. 202-203. London, 1904. 

[700] Boyd Alexander, From the Niger to the Nile, Vol. I, pp. 168, 169, 232, 306-307. London, 1907. 

[701] Livingstone, Missionary Travels, pp. 102, 642. New York, 1858. 

[702] See Century Atlas, maps of Mississippi, Louisiana and Arkansas forboundary line of 1850. 

[703] Sir Thomas Holdich, India, p. 57. London, 1905. 

[704] Strabo, Book X, chap. II, 19. 

[705] Henry M. Stanley, Through the Dark Continent, Vol. II, pp. 120-124, 155-158, 168, 169, 173, 176, 177, 182, 266-274, 327. New York, 1879. 

[706] Boyd Alexander, From the Niger to the Nile, Vol. II, pp. 252, 269-270. London, 1907. 

[707] Helmolt, History of the World, Vol. I, pp. 189, 192-194. New York, 1902-1906. 

[708] Cyrus Thomas, Mound Explorations, pp. 526-527, 531, 551. TwelfthAnnual Report of Bureau of Ethnology, Washington, 1894. 

[709] Parkman, The Old Regime in Canada, pp. 292-303. Boston, 1904. E. C. Semple, The Influences of Geographic Environment on the Lower St. Lawrence, Bull. Of Amer. Geog. Society, Vol. 36, pp. 449-466. 1904. 

[710] Martha Krug Genthe, Valley Towns of Connecticut, pp. 10-12, figures V. And VI, Bull. Of Amer. Geog. Society, Vol. 39, 1907. 

[711] J. Nacken, _Die Provinz Kwantung und ihre Bevölkerung, PetermannsMitteilungen_, Vol. 24, p. 421, 1878. W. M. Wood, Fankwei, pp. 276-277. New York, 1859. 

[712] Felix Dubois, Timbuctoo, pp. 19-22, 38. New York, 1896. 

[713] Isabella B. Bishop, The Yangtze Valley and Beyond, Vol. I, pp. 164, 174-175, 179, 182, 189, 215. London and New York, 1900. 

[714] William Walton, Paris, Vol. I, pp. 31-32, 35. Philadelphia, 1899. 

[715] Cæsar, _Bella Gallico_, Book VIII, chaps, 57, 58. 

[716] Henry M. Stanley, Through the Dark Continent, Vol. II, pp. 227-228. New York, 1879. 

[717] Article, Cossack, Encyclopedia Britannica. 

[718] Parkman, The Jesuits in North. America, pp. 292-303, 498-505, 534, 535. Boston, 1904. 

[719] Livingstone, Missionary Travels, pp. 100, 102. New York, 1858. 

[720] Livingstone, Last Journals, Vol. I, p. 359. London, 1874. 

[721] Heinrich Barth, Travels in North and Central Africa, Vol. II, pp. 64, 66, 233. New York, 1857. Boyd Alexander, From the Niger to the Nile, Vol. I, pp. 237, 303-304, 320, 331-336; Vol. II, pp. 54, 56-58, 67-68, 96-99, 104-105. London, 1907. 

[722] J. P. McLean, The Mound Builders, p. 20. Cincinnati, 1904. Squierand Davis, Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley, pp. 6, 9, 10. New York, 1848. 

[723] Cæsar, _Bello Gallico_, Book I, chaps. 38, 39. 

[724] Elisée Reclus, Europe, Vol. IV, pp. 101-102. New York, 1882. 

[725] John Fiske, Dutch and Quaker Colonies in America, Vol. I, p. 241. Boston. 

[726] H. E. Mill, International Geography, p. 956. New York, 1902. 

[727] H. B. George, Historical Geography of the British Empire, pp. 259-260. London, 1904. 

[728] Alexis Krausse, Russia in Asia, pp. 30-33, 50. New York, 1899. 

[729] H. J. Mackinder, Britain and the British Seas, pp. 198-199. London, 1904. 

[730] John Richard Green, The Making of England, Vol. I, pp. 63, 66. London, 1904. 

[731] J. Partsch, Central Europe, p. 102. London, 1903. 

[732] Miller and Skertchley, The Fenland Past and Present, pp. 10, 11, 27-30. London, 1878. 

[733] W. Z. Ripley, Races of Europe, pp. 322-323. Map p. 327. New York, 1899. 

[734] Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu, The Empire of the Tsars, Vol. I, p. 108. New York, 1893. 

[735] _Ibid. _, pp. 104-106. W. Z. Ripley, Races of Europe, pp. 340-342, 352, 365. New York, 1899. 

[736] J. Partsch, Central Europe, p. 135. London, 1903. 

[737] _Ibid. _, p. 133. W. Z. Ripley, Races of Europe, pp. 294-295. NewYork, 1899. 

[738] Herodotus, II, 137, 140. 

[739] Thucydides, I, 110. Brugsch-Bey, History of Egypt, Vol. II, p. 333. London, 1881. 

[740] John Richard Green, History of the English People, Vol. I, chap. III, p. 71. 

[741] Miller and Skertchley, The Fenland Past and Present, pp. 83, 101, 104, 107, 108. London, 1878. 

[742] Tacitus, History of the Germans, Book VI, chap. VI. Motley, Riseof the Dutch Republic, Vol. I, pp. 2-5, 13. New York, 1885. 

[743] J. Partsch, Central Europe, p. 299. London, 1903. 

[744] Miller and Skertchley, The Fenland Past and Present, pp. 113-114. London, 1878. 

[745] Edward John Payne, History of the New World Called America, Vol. I, pp. 327-328, 502-503. Oxford, 1892. Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. II, p. 163. London, 1896-1898. 

[746] U. S. Report of Commission of Navigation, p. 10. Washington, 1901. 

CHAPTER XII

CONTINENTS AND THEIR PENINSULAS

[Sidenote: Insularity of the land-masses. ]

The division of the earth's surface into 28 per cent. Land and 72 percent. Water is an all important fact of physical geography andanthropo-geography. Owing to this proportion, the land-masses, whichalone provide habitats for man, rise as islands out of the three-foldlarger surface of the uninhabitable ocean. Consequently, the humanspecies, like the other forms of terrestrial life, bears a deeplyingrained insular character. Moreover, the water causes differentdegrees of separation between the land-masses, according as it appearsas inlet, strait, sea, an island-strewn or islandless ocean; itdetermines the grouping of the habitable areas and consequently thegeographic basis of the various degrees of ethnic and cultural kinshipbetween the divisions of land. Finally, since the sea is for man only ahighway to some ulterior shore, this geography of the land-masses inrelation to the encompassing waters points the routes and goals of humanwanderings. 

Each fragment of habitable land, large or small, continent or islet, means a corresponding group or detachment of the vast human family. Itssize fixes the area at the service of the group which occupies it. Itslocation, however, may either endow it with a neighborliness like thatsubsisting between Africa and Europe and involving an interwovenhistory; or remoteness like that of South America from Australia, socomplete that even the close net of intercourse thrown by moderncommerce over the whole world has scarcely sufficed to bring them intotouch. Therefore the highly irregular distribution of the land areas, here compactly grouped, there remote, deserves especial attention, sinceit produces far-reaching results. Finally, continents and islands, bytheir zonal situation, their land forms, rainfall, river systems, floraand fauna, produce for man varied life conditions, which in their turnare partially dependent upon the size and grouping of the land-masses. 

[Sidenote: Classification of land-masses according to size andlocation. ]

A comparison of the large and small land-masses of the from thestandpoint of both physical and anthropological geography yields aclassification based upon size and location on the one hand, andhistorical influences on the other. The following table indicates therelation between the two. 

 I. Independent Land-masses. 

 A. _Continents_. Independent by reason of size, which enables them to support a large number of people and afford the conditions for civilization. 

 (a) Insular continents, whose primitive and modern development are marked by remoteness. Australia. 

 (b) Neighboring continents, separated by narrow seas and showing community of historical events. Europe and Africa. Asia and North America around Bering Sea. 

 B. _Islands_. Independent by reason of location. 

 (a) Oceanic islands, characterized by greatest remoteness from continents and other islands, and also by independent or detached history. St. Helena and Iceland. 

 (b) Member of a group of oceanic islands, therefore less independent. Hawaii, Fayal in the Azores, Tongatabu. 

 (c) Large islands, approaching by reason of size the independence of continents and thereby finding compensation for a less independent location. New Guinea, Borneo, Madagascar; in a cultural sense, Great Britain and Japan. 

 II. Dependent Land-masses. 

 (a) Inshore or coast islands, whose history is intimately connected with that of the nearby mainland. Euboea, Long Island, Vancouver, Sakhalin, Ceylon. 

 (b) Neighboring islands, showing less intimate historical relations. Formosa, the Canaries, Ireland in contrast to Great Britain. 

 (c) Islands of enclosed or marginal seas, contained in a circle of lands and exposed to constant intercourse from all sides. Jamaica, Java, Crete, Sicily, Zealand, Gotland, St. Lawrence in Bering Sea. 

 (d) Island groups not to be considered apart from other groups. Samoa, Fiji and Friendly Isles; Philippine, Sulu and Sunda Islands; Greater and Lesser Antilles. 

[Sidenote: Effect of size of land-masses. ]

As the homes of man, these land-masses vary greatly owing to differenceof size. Only the six continents have been large enough to generategreat bodies of people, to produce differentiated branches of the humanfamily, and to maintain them in such numerical force that alienintermixtures were powerless essentially to modify the graduallydeveloping ethnic type. The larger continents are marked by suchdiversity of climate, relief and contour, that they have afforded thevaried environments and the area for the development of several greattypes or sub-types of mankind. Australia has been just large enough toproduce one distinct native race, the result of a very ancient blend ofPapuan and Malayan stocks. But prevailing aridity has cast a mantle ofmonotony over most of the continent, nullifying many local geographicdifferences in highland and lowland, curtailing the available area ofits already restricted surface, and hence checking the differentiationthat results either from the competition of large numbers or from avaried environment. We find Australia characterized above all othercontinents by monotony of culture, mode of life, customs, languages, anda uniform race type from the Murray River to York peninsula. [747] The twincontinents of the Americas developed a race singularly uniform in itsphysical traits, [748] if we leave out of account the markedly divergentEskimos, but displaying a wide range of political, social and economicdevelopments, from the small, unorganized groups of wandering savages, like the desert Shoshones and coast Fuegians, to the large, stableempire of the Incas, with intensive agriculture, public works, a statereligion and an enlightened government. 

Even the largest islands of the world, such as Borneo, New Guinea andMadagascar, show no such independent ethnic development. This is thedistinguishing characteristic of the largest land-masses. Europe, excepton the basis of its size and peninsula form, has no title to the name ofcontinent; certainly not on anthropo-geographical grounds. Itsclassification as a continent arose in the Mediterranean among theGreeks, as a geographical expression of the antagonism betweenthemselves and their Carian, Phoenician and Persian enemies across theAegean; the idea had therefore a political origin, and was formedwithout knowledge of that vast stretch of plains between the Black Seaand the Arctic Ocean, where Asia's climate and races lap over intoEurope, and where to-day we find the Muscovite Empire, in point ofgeographic conditions, its underlying ethnic stock and form ofgovernment, as much Asiatic as European. The real or western Europe, which the Roman Empire gradually added to the narrow Europe of theGreeks, and which is strikingly contrasted to Asia in point of size, relief, contour, climate and races, only served to maintain thedistinction between the two continents in men's minds. But from ageographical standpoint the distinction is an error. It has confused theinterpretation of the history of the Greeks and the development of theRussians. It has brought disorder into the question of the European orAsiatic origin of the Aryan linguistic family, which theanthropo-geographer would assign to the single continent of Eurasia. Theindependent development that falls to the lot of great world islandslike the Americas and Australia is impossible in a peninsular continentlike Europe, large as it is. 

[Sidenote: Independence of location versus independence of size. ]

The independence of a land-mass is based not alone on size: there isalso an independence of location. This, owing to the spherical form ofthe earth, tends to be neutralized by the independence based upon largearea. The larger a land-mass is, the nearer it approaches to others. Eurasia, the largest of all the continents, comes into close proximityand therefore close relations with Africa, North America, and evenAustralia; whereas Australia is at once the smallest and the mostisolated of the continents. The remote oceanic islands of the AtlanticOcean, measuring only a few square miles in area, have a location soindependent of other inhabited lands, that before the period of thegreat discoveries they had never appeared on the horizon of man. 

[Sidenote: The case of Asia. ]

Asia's size and central location to the other continents were formerlytaken as an argument for its correspondingly significant position in thecreation and history of man. Its central location is reflected in thehypothesis of the Asiatic origin of the Indo-European linguistic groupof peoples; and though the theory has been justly called into question, these peoples have undoubtedly been subjected to Asiatic influences. The same thing is true of the native American race, both as to Asiaticorigin and influences; because the approximation of Siberia to Alaska istoo close to exclude human relations between the two continents. TheMalays, too, were probably sprung from the soil of southeastern Asia andspread thence over their close-packed Archipelago. Even the nativeAustralians betray a Malayan and therefore Asiatic element in theircomposition, [749] while the same element can be traced yet more distinctlyin the widely scattered Polynesians and the Hovas of Madagascar. Thisradiation of races seems to reflect Asia's location at the core of theland-masses. Yet the capacity to form such centers of ethnicdistribution is not necessarily limited to the largest continents;history teaches us that small areas which have early achieved arelatively dense population are prone to scatter far their seeds ofnations. 

[Sidenote: Location of hemispheres and ethnic kinship. ]

The continents harbor the most widely different races where they arefarthest apart; where they converge most nearly, they show the closestethnic kinships. The same principle becomes apparent in their plants andanimals. The distribution of the land-masses over the earth isconspicuous for their convergence in the north and divergence in longpeninsular forms toward the south. The contrasted grouping is reflectedin both, the lower animals and the peoples inhabiting these respectivelyvicinal and remote lands. Only where North America and Eurasia stretchout arms to one another around the polar sea do Eastern and WesternHemisphere show a community of mammalian forms. These are all strictlyArctic animals, such as the reindeer, elk, Arctic fox, glutton andermine. [750] This is the Boreal sub-region of the Holoarctic zoologicalrealm, characterized by a very homogeneous and very limited fauna. [751] Incontrast, the portion of the hemispheres lying south of the Tropic ofCancer is divided into four distinct zoological realms, corresponding toCentral and South America, Africa south of Sahara, the two Indianpeninsulas with the adjacent islands, and Australia. [752] But when weconsider the continental extremities projecting beyond the Tropic ofCapricorn, where geographic divergence reaches a climax, we find theirfaunas and floras utterly dissimilar, despite the fact that climate andphysical conditions are very similar. [753] We find also widely divergentraces in the southern sections of Africa, Australia or Tasmania andSouth America, while Arctic Eurasia and America come as near meetingethnically as they do geographically. Here and here only both Easternand Western Hemisphere show a strong affinity of race. The Eskimo, longclassed as Mongoloid, are now regarded as an aberrant variety of theAmerican race, owing to their narrow headform and linguistic affinity;though in Alaska even their headform closely approximates the MongoloidSiberian type. [754] But in stature, color, oblique eyes, broad flat face, and high cheek bones, in his temperament and character, artisticproductions and some aspects of his culture, he groups with the AsiaticHyperboreans across the narrow sixty miles of water forming BeringStrait. [755] In the northern part of the earth's land area, thedistribution of floras, faunas, and races shows interdependence, intercourse; in the southern, separation, isolation. 

[Sidenote: Continental convergence and ethnic kinship. ]

What is true where the hemispheres come together is true also wherecontinents converge. The core of the Old World is found in theMediterranean basin where Europe, Asia and Africa form a close circle oflands and where they are inhabited by the one white Mediterranean race. Contrast their racial unity about this common center with the extremesof ethnic divergence in their remote peripheries, where Teutons, Mongols, Malays and Negroes differ widely from the Mediterranean stockand from each other. Eastern Australia represents the ethnic antipodesof western Asia, in harmony with the great dividing distance betweenthem, but the sides of these continents facing each other across thebridge of the Sunda Islands are sparsely strewn with a common Malayelement. 

[Sidenote: Africa's location. ]

Africa's early development was never helped by the fact that thecontinent lay between Asia and South America. It was subjected to strongand persistent Asiatic Influences, but apparently to no native Americanones. From that far-off trans-Atlantic shore came no signs of life. Africa appears in history as an appendage of Asia, a cultural peninsulaof the larger continent. This was due not only to the Suez Isthmus andthe narrowness of the Red Sea rift, but to its one-sided invasion byAsiatic races and trade from the east, while the western side of thecontinent lay buried in sleep, unstirred by any voice from the silentshores of America. Semitic influences, in successive waves, spread overthe Dark Continent as far as Morocco, the Senegal, Niger, Lake Chad, Nyanza, Tanganyika and Nyassa, and gave it such light as it had beforethe 16th century. Only after the Atlantic gulf was finally crossed didinfluences from the American side of the ocean begin to impinge upon theWest African coast, first in the form of the slave and rum trade, thenin the more humane aspect of the Liberian colony. But with the fulldevelopment of the Atlantic period in history, we see all kinds ofAtlantic influences, though chiefly from the Atlantic states of Europe, penetrating eastward into the heart of Africa, and there meeting othercommercial and political activities pressing inland from the IndianOcean. 

[Sidenote: The Atlantic abyss. ]

The long Atlantic rift between the Eastern and Western Hemispheres, which was such a potent factor in the primitive retardation of Africais, from the standpoint of anthropo-geography, the most importantfeature in the distribution of the land-masses over the globe. Not tillthe discovery of America bridged this abyss did the known world become agirdle round the earth. Except the Norse ventures to the Americancontinent by way of Iceland and Greenland between 1000 and 1347, noaccount of pre-Columbian intercourse between the two shores of theAtlantic has ever been substantiated. Columbus found the opposite landunfamiliar in race as in culture. He described the people as neitherwhites nor blacks, the two ethnic types which he knew on the easternside of the Atlantic abyss. He and his successors found in the Americasonly a Stone Age culture, a stage already outgrown by Europe and Africa. These continents from Lapland to the Hottentot country were using iron. Prior to the voyage of the great Genoese, Europe gave nothing to Americaand received nothing from it, except the Gulf Stream's scanty cargo ofdriftwood stranded on bleak Icelandic shores. The Tertiary land-bridgeacross the North Atlantic between Norway and Greenland may possibly haveguided a pre-Caucasic migration to America and given that continent partof its aboriginal population. [756] However, no trace of any Europeanstock remains. 

[Sidenote: Atlantic islands uninhabited. ]

The collapse of the bridge at the close of the Glacial Epoch left theAtlantic abyss effectually dividing the two hemispheres. Its islands, few and far between, were helpless to maintain intercourse between theopposite shores; this is proven by the fact that all of them fromGreenland to Tristan da Cunha, excepting only the Canaries, wereuninhabited at the time of their discovery. History records when thefirst bold voyagers came upon them in that unmarked waste of waters, andgave them their first occupants. The political upheavals of Norway inKing Harfagr's time (872) sent to the Faroes and Iceland their firstsettlers, though these islands were previously known to the Celts ofIreland. The Norse colonists who went to Greenland in the year 1000 seemto have been the first regular settlers on those inhospitable coasts. They found no native inhabitants, but numerous abandoned dwellings, fragments of boats and stone implements, [757] which doubtless recordedthe intermittent voyages thither of the Eskimo, preliminary to permanentoccupation. The Scandinavians did not encounter natives on the islandtill the 12th century, when Greenland probably received its first Eskimoimmigration. [758]

[Sidenote: Geographical character of the Pacific. ]

While the Atlantic thus formed a long north-and-south rift across theinhabited world at the period of the great discoveries, the Pacific, strewn with islands and land-rimmed at its northern extremity by thepeninsulas of Alaska and eastern Siberia, spread a nebula of populationfrom the dense centers of Asia across to the outskirts of America. Thegeneral Mongoloid character of the American Indians as a race, thestronger Asiatic stamp of the Western Eskimo, the unmistakeable ethnicand cultural affinities of the Northwest Coast tribes both with southernPolynesians and Asiatics, [759] all point to America as the great easternwing of the Mongoloid or Asiatic area, and therefore as the true Orientof the world. 

Geographic conditions have made this possible or even probable. Thewinds and currents of the North Pacific set from Japan straight towardthe American coast. Junks blown out to sea from China or Japan have beencarried by the Kuro Siwo and the prevailing westerlies across thePacific to our continent. There is record of a hundred instances of thisoccurrence. [760]

[Sidenote: Pacific affinities of North American Indians. ]

The broken bridge across Bering Strait formed by East Cape, Cape Princeof Wales and the Diomede Islands between, and further south the naturalcauseway of the Commander and Aleutian Islands leading from thepeninsula of Kamchatka to that of Unalaska, have facilitated intercoursebetween Asia and America. [761] Justin Winsor says, "There is hardly astronger demonstration of such connection between the two continentsthan the physical resemblances of the peoples now living on oppositesides of the Pacific Ocean in these upper latitudes. "[762] Thisresemblance is by no means confined to the Eskimo and Chukches, who haveexchanged colonists across Bering Sea. Recent investigations haverevealed a wider kinship. The population of northern Siberia speaks ingeneral Ural-Altaic languages, but it includes a few scattered tribeswhose singular speech excludes them from this linguistic group, and whohave therefore been placed by ethnologists in a distinct class called"paleasiatics" or "hyperboreans. " This class is composed of the Ostyakand Kot on the Yenisei River, the Gilyak and Ainos at the mouth of theAmur and on the Kurile, Sakhalin and Yezo islands, the Kamchadal andKoryak of Kamchatka, and the Chukches and Yukaghir of extremenortheastern Siberia. As far back as 1850, the eminent philologistRobert Latham noted a marked linguistic agreement, both in structure andverbal affinity, between our Northwest Coast tribes and the peoples ofthe islands and peninsulas fringing northeastern Asia. "Koriak isnotably American, " he said. [763] The recent Jesup Expedition to theNorthwest Coast of America and the nearby coast of Asia investigated theKoryak, to determine whether in the past there had been any connectionbetween the cultures and ethnic types of the Old and New World. Theseinvestigations have proved beyond doubt a kinship of culture, attributable either to a remote common origin or to former contact, longand close, between these isolated Siberian tribes and the Americanaborigines. They show that the Koryak are one of the Asiatic tribesstanding nearest to the northwestern American Indian. [764] [See map page103. ]

[Sidenote: Polynesian affinities. ]

W. H. Dall finds the inhabitants of the Pacific slope of North Americaconspicuously allied with Oceanica in cultural achievements, whoseorigin he therefore assigns to that vast congeries of islands stretchingfrom Asia toward South America in latitude 25° south. These islands, closely clustered as far as the Paumota group, straggle along withwidening spaces between, through Easter Isle, which carries theindestructible memorials of a strange civilization, throughSala-y-Gomez, San Felix, and St. Ambrose almost to the threshold of thePeruvian coast. It is to be noted that these islands lie just outsidethe westward-bearing Equatorial Current and trade-winds, on the marginof the South Pacific anti-cyclonic winds and a southern current whichsets towards the Peruvian coast. [765] A more probable avenue for theintroduction of these Polynesian or Malayan elements of culture is foundin O. T. Mason's theory, that primitive mariners of the southwesternPacific, led into migration by the eternal food quest, may have skirtedthe seaboard of East Asia and Northwest America, passing along agreat-circle route through the succession of marginal seas andarchipelagoes to various ports of entry on the Pacific front of America. Such a route, favored by the prevailing marine currents and winds fromthe southwest, and used repeatedly during long periods of time, mighthave introduced trans-Pacific elements of race and culture into thewestern side of America. [766]

[Sidenote: The real Orient of the World. ]

Moreover, primitive America resembled Oceanica and northern Asia in itsignorance of iron, in its Stone Age civilization, and its retardedsocial and political development. Such affinities as it shows werepredominantly Pacific or trans-Pacific. [767] On its Atlantic side, itstood out in striking contrast to the contemporaneous civilizations andraces in Europe and Africa; this was its unneighbored shore, lying onthe eastern margin of that broad zone of habitation which stretchedhence westward on and on around the world, to the outermost capes ofEurope and Africa. The Atlantic abyss formed the single gap in thisencircling belt of population, to which Columbus at last affixed theclasp. The Atlantic face of the Americas formed therefore the drowsyunstirred Orient of the inhabited world, which westward developedgrowing activity--dreaming a civilization in Mexico and Peru, roused toartistic and maritime achievement in Oceanica and the Malay Archipelago, to permanent state-making and real cultural development in Asia, andattaining the highest civilization at last in western Europe. There wasthe sunset margin of the inhabited world, the area of achievement, theadult Occident, facing across the dividing ocean that infant Orientbeyond. Here the Old World, the full-grown world, had accumulated inColumbus' time the matured forces of a hemisphere; it was searching forsome outlet across the shoreless distances of the Atlantic, waiting forsome call from its voiceless beyond. 

[Sidenote: The Atlantic abyss in historic movements of peoples. ]

This deep, unbridged chasm of the Atlantic, closed only four hundredyears ago, must be taken into account in all investigations of thegeographical distribution of races, whether in prehistoric or historictimes. The influences of those ages when it formed an impassable gulfare still operative in directing the movements of the peoples to-dayinhabiting its shores, because that barrier maintained the continents ofAmerica as a vast territorial reserve, sparsely inhabited by a Stone Agepeople, and affording a fresh field for the superior, accumulatedenergies of Europe. 

[Sidenote: Races and continents. ]

Australia and the double continent of America show each the coincidenceof an ethnic realm with an isolated continent. In contrast, when we cometo the Old World triad of Europe, Asia and Africa, we find three races, to be sure, but races whose geographical distribution ignores theboundaries of the continents. The White race belongs to all three, andfrom time immemorial has made the central basin of the Mediterranean thewhite man's sea. The Mongolian, though primarily at home in Asia, stretches along the coast of the Arctic Ocean to the Atlantic shores ofNorway, and in historical times has penetrated up the Danube to the footof the Alps. Nor was the Negroid stock confined to Africa, though Africahas always been its geographical core. The Indian Peninsula and MalayArchipelago, once peopled by a primitive Negroid race, but now harboringonly remnants of them in the Deccan, Malacca, the Philippines andelsewhere, bridge the distance to the other great Negroid center inMelanesia and the derivative or secondary Negroid area ofAustralia. [768] The Negroid race belongs essentially to the long southernland pendants of the Eastern Hemisphere; and wherever it has bordered onthe lighter northern stocks, it has drawn a typical boundary zone ofmingled tints which never diverges far from the Equator, from theAtlantic shores of the Sudan to Pacific Fiji. [769] [See map page 105. ]

The effort of the old ethnology, as represented by Blumenbach, to make afive-fold division of the races in agreement with the five continentswas a mistake. To distinguish between the continents is one thing and todistinguish between the races is another. Neither bio-geography noranthropo-geography can adopt the continents as geographical provinces, although floras, faunas and races the world over give evidence ofpartial or temporary restriction to a certain continent, whence theyhave overflowed to other lands. A ground-plan for the geographicalclassification of races is to be found, as Tylor says, in the fact thatthey are not found scattered indiscriminately over the earth's surface, but that certain races belong to certain regions, in whose peculiarenvironment they have developed their type, and whence they have spreadto other lands, undergoing modifications from race intermixture andsuccessive changes of environment on the way. [770]

[Sidenote: Contrast of the northern and southern continents. ]

From this general law of race movements it follows that certain groupsof land-masses, favored by location and large area, play a greatimperial rôle, holding other lands as appanages. The Eastern Hemisphere, as we have seen, enjoys this advantage over the Western. Still more theNorthern Hemisphere, blessed with an abundance of land and a predominantTemperate Zone location, is able to lord it over the Southern, soinsular in its poverty of land. The history of the Northern Hemisphereis marked by far-reaching historical influences and wide control; thatof the Southern, by detachment, aloofness and impotence, due to thesmall area and isolation of its land-masses. A subordinate rôle is itsfate. Australia will always follow in the train of Eurasia, whence aloneit has derived its incentives and means of progress. Neither thesouthern half of Africa nor South America has ever in historical timesstruck out a road to advancement unaided by its northern neighbors. Primitive South America developed the only independent civilization thatever blossomed in the Southern Hemisphere, but the Peruvian achievementsin progress were inferior to those of Mexico and Central America. [771]

[Sidenote: Isolation of the southern continents. ]

This subordination of the southern continents is partly due to the factthat they have only one side of contact or neighborhood with any otherland, that is, on the north; yet even here the contact is not close. InAustralia the medium of communication is a long bridge of islands; inAmerica, a winding island chain and a mountainous isthmus; in Africa, abroad zone of desert dividing the Mediterranean or Eurasian from thetropical and Negroid part of the continent. Intercourse was not easy, and produced clear effects only in the case of Africa. Enlightenmentfiltering in here was sadly dimmed as it spread. Moreover it was delayedtill the introduction from Asia of the horse and camel, which were notnative to Africa, and which, as Ratzel points out, alone made possiblethe long journey across the Sahara. The opposite or peninsular sides, running out as great spurs from the compacter land-masses of the north, look southward into vacant wastes of water, find no neighbors in thoseAntarctic seas. Owing to this unfavorable location on the edge ofthings, they were historically dead until four centuries ago, whenoceanic navigation opened up the great sea route of the SouthernHemisphere, and for the first time included them in the world's circleof communication. But even when lifted by the ensuing Europeanizingprocess, they only emphasize the fundamental dependence of the SouthernHemisphere upon the superior geographical endowments of the Northern. 

[Sidenote: Effect of continental structure upon historical development. ]

The build of the land-masses influences fundamentally the movements andhence the development of the races who inhabit them. A simplecontinental structure gives to those movements a few simple features anda wide monotonous distribution which checks differentiation. A manifold, complex build, varied in relief and ragged in contour, breaks up themoving streams of peoples, turns each branch into a different channel, lends it a distinctive character through isolation, finally brings it upin a _cul de sac_ formed by a peninsula or mountain-rimmed basin, wherefurther movement is checked and the process of local individualizationbegins. Therefore great simplicity of continental build may result inhistorical poverty, as in the flat quadrangle of European Russia, thelevel plateau of Africa, and the smooth Atlantic slope of North America, with its neatly trimmed outline. Complexity, abounding in contrastedenvironments, tends to produce a varied wealth of historicaldevelopment. Africa lies on the surface of the ocean, a huge torso of acontinent, headless, memberless, inert. Here is no diversity of outwardform, no contrast of zonal location, no fructifying variety ofgeographic conditions. Humanity has forgotten to grow in its stationarysoil. Only where the Suez Isthmus formed an umbilical cord unitingancient Egypt to the mother continent of Asia was Africa vitalized bythe pulse of another life. European influences penetrated little beyondthe northern coast. 

Asia, on the other hand, radiating great peninsulas, festooned withislands, supporting the vast corrugations of its highlands and lowlands, its snow-capped mountains and steaming valleys, stretching from theEquator through all the zones to the ice-blocked shores of the Arctic, knowing drought and deluge, tundra waste and teeming jungle, has offeredthe manifold environment and segregated areas for individualizedcivilizations, which have produced such far-reaching historical results. The same fact is true of Europe, and that in an intensified degree. Herea complex development of mountains and highlands built on diverse axes, peninsulas which comprise 27 per cent. And Islands which comprise nearly8 per cent. Of the total area, [772] vast thalassic inlets cleaving thecontinent to the core, have provided an abundance of those naturallydefined regions which serve as cradles of civilization and, reactingupon the continent as a whole, endow it with lasting historicalsignificance. [773] Even Strabo saw this. He begins his description of theinhabited world with Europe, because, as he says, it has such a"polymorphous formation" and is the region most favorable to the mentaland social ennoblement of man. [774]

[Sidenote: Structure of North and South America. ]

In North and South America, great simplicity of continental build gaverise to a corresponding simplicity of native ethnic and culturalcondition. There is only one marked contrast throughout the length ofthis double continent, that between its Atlantic and Pacific slopes. Onthe Atlantic side of the Cordilleras, a vast trough extends through bothland-masses from the Arctic Ocean to Patagonia; this has given tomigration in each a longitudinal direction and therefore constantlytended to nullify the diversities arising from contrasted zonalconditions. On the Pacific side of North America, there has been anunmistakeable migration southward along the accessible coast from Alaskato the Columbia River, and down the great intermontane valleys of thewestern highlands from, the Great Basin to Honduras;[775] while SouthAmerica shows the same meridional movement for 2, 000 miles along thePacific coast and longitudinal valleys of the Andes system. There waslittle encouragement to cut across the grain of the continents. Theeastern range of the Cordilleras drew in general a dividing line betweenthe eastern and western tribes. [776] Though Athapascans from the eastoverstepped it at a few points in North America, the Great Divide hasserved effectually to isolate the two groups from one another and todraw that line of linguistic cleavage which Major Powell has set down inMs map of Indian linguistic stocks. Consequently, Americanists recognizea distinct resemblance among the members of the North Atlantic group ofIndians, as among those of the South Atlantic group; but they note anequally distinct contrast between each of them and its correspondingPacific group. Nor is this contrast superficial; it extends to physicaltraits, temperament and culture, [777] and appears in the use of thevigesimal system of enumeration in primitive Mexico, Central America, among the Tlingits of the Northwest coast and the Eskimo as also amongthe Chukches and Ainus of Asia, while in the Atlantic section of NorthAmerica the decimal system, with one doubtful exception, was alone inuse. [778]

[Sidenote: Cultural superiority of the Pacific slope Indians. ]

To the anthropo-geographer, the significant fact is that all the higherphases of native civilization are confined to the Pacific slope group ofIndians, which includes the Mexican and Isthmian tribes. From theelongated center of advanced culture stretching from the Bolivianhighlands northward to the Anahuac Plateau, the same type shades off byeasy transitions through northern Mexico and the Pueblo country, vanishes among the lower intrusive stocks of Oregon and California, onlyto reappear among the Haidas and Tlingits of British Columbia andAlaska, whose cultural achievements show affinity to those of the Mayasin Yucatan. [779] Dall found certain distinguishing customs orcharacteristics spread north and south along the western slope of thecontinent in a natural geographical line of migration. They includedlabretifery, tattooing the chin of adult women, certain uses of masks, acertain style of conventionalizing natural objects, the use ofconventional signs as hieroglyphics, a peculiar facility in carving woodand stone, a similarity of angular designs on their pottery andbasketry, and of artistic representations connected with their commonreligious or mythological ideas. Many singular forms of carvings and themethod of superimposing figures of animals one upon another in theirtotem poles are found from Alaska to Panama, except in California. Thesedistinguishing features of an incipient culture are found nowhere elsein North America, even sporadically. Dall therefore concludes that "theyhave been impressed upon the American aboriginal world from without, "and on the ground of affinities, attributes their origin toOceanica. [780]

Cyrus Thomas, on the basis of the character and distribution of thearcheological remains in North America, concurs in this opinion. Hefinds that these remains fall into two classes, one east of the RockyMountain watershed and the other west. "When those of the Pacific slopeas a whole are compared with those of the Atlantic slope, there is adissimilarity which marks them as the products of different races or asthe result of different race influences. " He emphasizes the resemblanceof the customs, arts and archeological remains of the west coast tothose of the opposite shores and islands of the Pacific, and notes thelack of any resemblance to those of the Atlantic; and finally leans tothe conclusion that the continent was peopled from two sources, oneincoming stream distributing itself over the Atlantic slope, and theother over the Pacific, the two becoming gradually fused into acomparatively homogeneous race by long continental isolation. Yet thesetwo sources may not necessarily include a trans-Atlantic origin for oneof the contributing streams; ethnic evidence is against such asupposition, because the characteristics of the American race and of thearcheological remains point exclusively to affinity with the people ofthe Pacific. [781] John Edward Payne also reaches the same conclusion, though on other grounds. [782]

[Sidenote: Lack of segregated districts. ]

The one strong segregating feature in primitive America was theCordilleras, which held east and west apart. In the natural pocketsformed by the high intermontane valleys of the Andes and the AnahuacPlateau, and in the constricted isthmian region, the continent affordeda few secluded localities where civilization found favorable conditionsof development. But in general, the paucity of large coastarticulations, and the adverse polar or subpolar location of most ofthese, the situation of the large tropical islands along that barrenAtlantic abyss, and the lack of a broken or varied relief, haveprevented the Americas from developing numerous local centers ofcivilization, which might eventually have lifted the cultural status ofthe continents. [783]

[Sidenote: Coast articulations of continents. ]

It is necessary to distinguish two general classes of continentalarticulations; first, marginal dependences, like the fringe of Europeanpeninsulas and islands, resulting from a deeply serrated contour; andsecond, surface subdivisions of the interior, resulting from differencesof relief or defined often by enclosing mountains or deserts, like theTibetan Plateau, the Basin of Bohemia, the Po River trough, or thesand-rimmed valley of the Nile. The first class is by far the moreimportant, because of the intense historical activity which results fromthe vitalizing contact with the sea. But in considering coastarticulations, anthropo-geography is led astray unless it discriminatesbetween these on the basis of size and location. Without stopping todiscuss the obvious results of a contrasted zonal location, such as thatbetween Labrador and Yucatan, the Kola Peninsula and Spain, it isnecessary to keep in mind always the effect of vicinal location. Anoutlying coastal dependency like Ireland has had its historyimpoverished by excessive isolation, in contrast to the richerdevelopment of England, Jutland, and Zealand in the same latitude, because these have profited from the closer neighborhood of otherperipheral regions. So from ancient times, Greece has had a similaradvantage over the Crimea, the Tunisian Peninsula of North Africa overSpain, the Cotentin Peninsula of France over Brittany, and Kent overCornwall or Caithness in Great Britain. 

[Sidenote: Importance of size in continental articulations. ]

Articulations on a vast scale, like the southern peninsulas of Asia, produce quite different cultural and historical effects from smallphysical sub-divisions, like the fiord promontories and "skerries" ofNorway and southern Alaska, or the finger peninsulas of thePeloponnesus. The significant difference lies in the degree of isolationwhich the two types yield. Large continental dependencies of the Asiaticclass resemble small continents in their power to segregate; whileovergrown capes like ancient Attica and Argolis or the more bulkyPeloponnesus have their exclusiveness tempered by the mediating power ofthe small marine inlets between them. Small articulations, by making acoast accessible, tend to counteract the excessive isolation of a largearticulation. They themselves develop in their people only minor orinner differentiations, which serve to enrich the life of the island orpeninsula as a whole, but do not invade its essential unity. Thecontrast in the history of Hellas and the Peloponnesus was due largelyto their separation from one another; yet neither was able to make ofits people anything but Greeks. Wales and Cornwall show in Englishhistory the same contrast and the same underlying unity. 

[Sidenote: Historical contrast of large and small peninsulas. ]

In discussing continental articulations, therefore, it makes a greatdifference whether we draw our deductions from small projections of thecoast, like Wales, the Peloponnesus, Brittany and the Crimea, whoseareas range from 7442 to 10, 023 square miles (19, 082 to 25, 700 squarekilometers); or the four Mediterranean peninsulas, which range in sizefrom the 58, 110 square miles (149, 000 square kilometers) of theApennine Peninsula to the 197, 600 square miles (506, -600 squarekilometers) of Asia Minor and the 227, 700 square miles (584, 000 squarekilometers) of the Iberian; or the vast continental alcoves of southernAsia, like Farther India with its 650, 000 square miles (1, 667, 000 squarekilometers), Hither India with 814, 320 square miles (2, 088, 000 squarekilometers) and Arabia with 1, 064, 700 square miles (2, 730, 000 squarekilometers). [784] The fact that the large compound peninsula of westernEurope which comprises Spain, Portugal, France, Jutland, Belgium, Holland, Switzerland, Italy and western Germany, and has its base in thestricture between the Adriatic and the Baltic, is about the size ofpeninsular India, suggests how profound may be the difference ingeographic effects between large and small peripheral divisions. Thethree huge extremities which Asia thrusts forward into the Indian Oceanare geographical entities, which in point of size and individualizationrank just below the continents; and in relation to the solid mass ofCentral Asia, they have exhibited in many respects an aloofness andself-sufficiency, that have resulted in an historical divergenceapproximating that of the several continents. India, which has moreproductive territory than Australia and a population not much smallerthan that of Europe, becomes to the administrators of its government"the Continent of India, " as it is regularly termed in the StatisticalAtlas published at Calcutta. Farther India has in the long-drawn pendantof Malacca a sub-peninsula half as large again as Italy. The Deccan hasin Ceylon an insular dependency the size of Tasmania. The whole scale iscontinental. It appears again somewhat diminished, in the largestarticulations of Europe, in Scandinavia, the British Isles, the Iberianand Balkan peninsulas. This continental scale stamps also theanthropo-geography of such large individualized fields. They are bigenough for each to comprise one or even several nations, and isolatedenough to keep their historical processes for long periods at a time toa certain extent detached from those of their respective continents. 

[Sidenote: Peninsular conditions most favorable to historicaldevelopment. ]

The most favorable conditions for historical development obtain wherethe two classes of marginal articulation are combined, and where theyoccur in groups, as we find them in the Mediterranean and the NorthSea-Baltic basin. Here the smaller indentations multiply contact withthe sea, and provide the harbors, bays and breakwaters of capes andpromontories which make the coast accessible. The larger articulations, by their close grouping, break up the sea into the minor thalassicbasins which encourage navigation, and thus insure the exchange of theirrespective cultural achievements. In other words, such conditionspresent the pre-eminent advantages of vicinal location around anenclosed sea. 

The enormous articulations of southern Asia suffer from their paucity ofsmall indentations, all the more because of their vast size andsub-tropical location. The Grecian type of peninsula, with its brokenshoreline, finds here its large-scale homologue only in Farther India, to which the Sunda Islands have played in history the part of a giganticCyclades. The European type of articulation is found only about theYellow-Japan Sea, where the island of Hondo and the peninsulas ofShangtung and Korea reproduce approximately the proportions of GreatBritain, Jutland and Italy respectively. Arabia and India, like theangular shoulder of Africa which protrudes into the Indian Ocean, measure an imposing length of coastline, but this length shrinks incomparison with the vast area of the peninsulas. The contour of apeninsula is like the surface of the brain: in both it is convolutionsthat count. Southern Asia has had lobes enough but too few convolutions. For this reason, the northern Indian Ocean, despite its exceptionallocation as the eastward extension of the Mediterranean route to theOrient, found its development constantly arrested till the advent ofEuropean navigators. 

[Sidenote: Length of coastline. ]

Although the peripheral articulations of a continent differanthropo-geographically according to their size, their zonal and vicinallocation, yet large and small, arctic and tropical, are groupedindiscriminately together in the figures that state the length ofcoastlines. For this reason, statistics of continental coastlines havelittle value. For instance, the fact that Eurasia has 67, 000 miles(108, 000 kilometers) and North America 46, 500 miles (75, 000 kilometers)of contact with the ocean is not illuminating; these figures do notreveal the fact that the former has its greatest coastal length on itstropical and sub-tropical side, while the latter continent has wastedinlets and islands innumerable in the long, bleak stretch fromNewfoundland poleward around to Bering Sea. 

[Sidenote: The continental base of the peninsulas. ]

Peninsulas are accessible from the sea according to the configuration oftheir coasts, but from their hinterland, according to the length andnature of their connection with the same. This determines the degree oftheir isolation from the land-mass. If they hang from the continent by afrayed string, as does the Peloponnesus, Crimea, Malacca, IndianGutjerat, and Nova Scotia, they are segregated from the life of themainland almost as completely as if they were islands. The same effectsfollow where the base of a peninsula is defined by a high mountainbarrier, as in all the Mediterranean peninsulas, in the two Indias, andin Korea; or by a desert like that which scantily links Arabia to Egypt, Syria and Mesopotamia; or by a blur of swamps and lakes such as halfdetaches Scandinavia, Courland, Estland and Finland from Russia. 

Held to their continents by bonds that often fail to bind, subjected bytheir outward-facing peripheral location to every centrifugal force, feeling only slightly the pull of the great central mass behind, peninsulas are often further detached economically and historically bytheir own contrasted local conditions. A sharp transition in geologicalformation and therefore in soil, a difference of climate, rainfall, drainage system, of flora or fauna, serve greatly to emphasize the lackof community of interests with the continental interior, and thereforeproduce an inevitable diversity of historical development. [785] Hence, many peninsulas insulate their people as completely as islands. It ishard to say whether the Pyrenean peninsula or Sicily, Scandinavia orGreat Britain, has held itself more aloof from the political history ofremaining Europe; whether Korea is not more entitled to its name of theHermit Kingdom than island Japan could ever be; whether the Peloponnesusor Euboea was more intimately associated with the radiant life ofancient Hellas. These questions lead to another, namely, whether a highmountain wall like the Pyrenees, or a narrow strait like that of Messinais the more effective geographical boundary. 

[Sidenote: Continental base a zone of transition. ]

Peninsulas not infrequently gain in breadth as they approach thecontinent; here they tend to abate their distinctive character as lobesof the mainland, together with the ethnic and historical marks ofisolation. Here they form a doubtful boundary zone of mingledcontinental and peninsular development. Such peninsulas fall naturally, therefore, into a continental and a peninsular section, and reveal thissegmentation in the differentiated history of the two portions. Thatgreat military geographer Napoleon distinguished the Italy of the Pobasin as _Italie continentale_, and the Apennine section as_Presqu'ile_. Not only is the former broader, but, expanding like a treetrunk near the ground, it sends its roots well back into the massiveinterior of the continent; it is dominated more by the Alps than by theApennines; it contains a lowland and a river of continental proportions, for which there is no space on the long, narrow spur of southern Italy. If its geographical character approximates that of the mainland, so doesits ethnic and historical. The Po basin is a well defined area of racecharacterization, in which influences have made for intermixture. Southof the crest of the Apennines the Italian language in its purity begins, in contrast to the Gallo-Italian of the north. This mountain ridge hasalso held apart the dark, short dolichocephalic stock of theMediterranean race from the fairer, taller, broad-headed Celts, who havemoved down into the Po basin from the Alps, and the Germans andIllyrians who have entered it from the northeast. [786] Northern Italy istherefore allied ethnically, as it has often been united politically, tothe neighboring countries abutting upon the Alps, so that it hasexperienced only in a partial degree that detachment which has stampedthe history of the Apennine section. 

[Sidenote: Historical contrast between base and extremity. ]

The Balkan Peninsula tells much the same story of contrasted geographicconditions and development in its continental and peninsular sections. Greece proper, in ancient as in modern times, reached its northernconfines where the peninsula suddenly widens its base through Macedoniaand Thrace. In this narrow southern section to-day, especially inisolated Peloponnesus, Attica, and the high-walled garden of Thessaly, are found people of the pure, long-headed, Hellenic type, and here theGreek language prevails. [787] But that broad and alien north, longexcluded from the Amphictyonic Council and a stranger to Aegean culturein classical times, is occupied to-day by a congeries of Slavs, who forma southwestern spur of the Slav stock covering eastern Europe. Itspolitical history shows how often it has been made a Danubian orcontinental state, by Alexander of Macedon, by the Romans, Bulgarians, and Ottoman Turks, [788] as it may be some day by Russia; and also howoften its large and compact form has enabled it to dominate the taperingpeninsular section to the south. 

In the same way, the vast Ganges and Indus basins, which constitute thecontinental portion of India, have received various Tibetan, Scythian, Aryan, Pathan, and Mongol-Tartar ingredients from Central Asia; and byreason of the dense populations supported by these fruitful riverplains, it has been able to dominate politically, religiously andculturally the protruding triangle of the Deccan. [See maps pages 8 and102. ] The continental side of Arabia, the Mesopotamian valley which tiesthe peninsula to the highlands of Persia and Armenia, has received intoits Semitic stock constant infiltrations of Turanian and Aryan peoplesfrom the core of Asia. This process has been going on from the ancientElamite and Persian conquests of Mesopotamia down to the Ottomaninvasion and the present periodic visits of Kurdish shepherds to thepastures of the upper Tigris. [789] Here we have the same contrast ofgeographic conditions as in Italy and India, a wide, populous alluvialplain occupying the continental section of the peninsula, and a lessattractive highland or mountainous region in the outlying spur of land. 

[Sidenote: Continental base a scene of invasion and war. ]

These continental sections of peninsulas become therefore stronglymarked as areas of ethnic characterization and differentiated historicaldevelopment. Their threshold location, by reason of which they firstcatch any outward migration from the core of the continent, and theirfertility, which serves as a perennial lure to new comers, whetherpeaceful or warlike, combine to give them intense historical activity. They catch the come and go between their wide hinterland and theprojection of land beyond, the stimulus of new arrivals and fresh blood. But tragedy too is theirs. The Po Valley has been called "the cockpit ofEurope. " Even the little Eider, which marks the base of Jutland, hasbeen the scene of war between Danes and Germans since the tenthcentury. [790] The Indus Valley has again and again felt the shock ofconflict with invading hordes from the central highlands, and witnessedthe establishment of a succession of empires. Peace at the gates of theBalkan Peninsula has never been of long duration, and the postern doorof Korea has been stormed often enough. 

[Sidenote: Peninsular extremities as areas of isolation. ]

In contrast to these continental sections which stand in contact withthe solid land-mass behind, the extremities of the peninsulas are areasof isolation and therefore generally of ethnic unity. They oftenrepresent the last stand of displaced people pressed outward into thesenarrow quarters by expanding races in their rear. The vast triangle ofthe Deccan, which forms the essentially peninsular part of India, isoccupied, except in the more exposed northwest corner, by the Dravidianrace which once occupied all India, and afterward was pushed southwardby the influx of more energetic peoples. [791] Here they have preservedtheir speech and nationality unmixed and live in almost primitivesimplicity. [792] In the peninsular parts of Great Britain, in northernScotland. Wales and Cornwall, we find people of Celtic speech brought tobay on these remote spurs of the land, affiliating little with thevaried folk which occupied the continental side of the island, andresisting conquest to the last. [793] The mountainous peninsula of westernConnaught in Ireland has been the rocky nucleus of the largestCeltic-speaking community in the island. [794] Brittany, with a similarlocation, became the last refuge of Celtic speech on the mainland ofEurope, [795] the seat of resistance to Norman and later to Englishconquest, finally the stronghold of conservatism in the FrenchRevolution. 

[Sidenote: Ethnic unity of peninsulas. ]

The northern wall of the Apennines and the outpost barrier of the Alpshave combined to protect peninsular Italy from extensive ethnicinfusions from the direction of the continent. This portion of thecountry shows therefore, as the anthropological maps attest, a strikinguniformity of race. It has been a melting-pot in which foreign elements, filtering through the breaches of the Apennines or along the southerncoast, have been fused into the general population under the isolatingand cohesive influences of a peninsular environment. [796] The populationof the Iberian Peninsula is even more unified, probably the mosthomogeneous in Europe. Here the long-headed Mediterranean race is foundin the same purity as in island Corsica and Sardinia. [797] Spain's shortline of contact with France and its sharp separation by the unbrokenwall of the Pyrenees robs the peninsula of any distinctly continentalsection, and consequently of any transitional area of race and culture;hence the unity of Spain as opposed to that twofold balanced diversitywhich we find in Italy and India. The Balkan Peninsula, on the otherhand, owing to the great predominance of its continental section and theconfused relief of the country, has not protected its distinctivelypeninsular or Greek section from the southward migrations of Slavs, Albanians, Wallachians, and other continental peoples. [798] It has beenlike a big funnel with a small mouth; the pressure from above has beenvery great. Hellas and even the Peloponnesus have had theirpeninsularity impaired and their race mixed, owing to the predominantcontinental section to the north. 

[Sidenote: Peninsulas as intermediaries. ]

Peninsulas, so far as they project from their continents, are areas ofisolation; but so far as they extend also toward some land beyond, theybecome intermediaries. The isolating and intermediary aspects can betraced in the anthropo-geographical effects of every peninsula, eventhose which, like Brittany and Cornwall, project into the long unchartedwaste of the Atlantic. In the order of historical development, apeninsula first isolates, until in its secluded environment it hasmolded a mature, independent people; then, as that people outgrows itsnarrow territory, the peninsula becomes a favorable base for maritimeexpansion to distant lands, or becomes a natural avenue for numerousreciprocal relations with neighboring lands beyond. Korea was the bridgefor Mongolian migration from continental Asia to the Japan islands, andfor the passage thither of Chinese culture, whether intellectual, esthetic, industrial or religious. [799] It has been the one countryconspicuous in the foreign history of Japan. Conquered by the islandempire in 1592, it paid tribute for nearly three centuries and yieldedto its foreign master the southeastern port of Fusan, the Calais ofKorea. [800] Since the treaty of Portsmouth in 1905 made it subject toJapan, it has become the avenue of Japanese expansion to the mainlandand the unwilling recipient of the modern civilization thrust upon it bythese English of the East. In like manner the Pyrenean peninsula hasalways been the intermediary between Europe and northwest Africa. Itspopulation, as well as its flora and fauna, group with those of thesouthern continent. It has served as transit land between north andsouth for the Carthaginians, Vandals and Saracens; and in modern timesit has maintained its character as a link by the Portuguese occupationof the Tangiers peninsula in the fifteenth century, [801] and the Spanishpossession of Ceuta and various other points along the Moroccan coastfrom the year 709 A. D. To the present. [802]

[Sidenote: Peninsulas of intercontinental location. ]

This rôle of intermediary is inevitably thrust upon all peninsulaswhich, like Spain, Italy, Greece, Asia Minor, Arabia, Farther India, Malacca, Chukchian Siberia, and Alaska, occupy an intercontinentallocation. Arabia especially in its climate, flora, races and historyshows the haul and pull now of Asia, now of Africa. From it Asiaticinfluences have spread over Africa to Morocco and the Niger River on thewest, and to Zanzibar on the south, permeated Abyssinia, and penetratedto the great Equatorial Lakes, whether in the form of that Mecca-bornworship of Allah, or the creeping caravans and slave-gangs of Arabtrader. Of all such intercontinental peninsulas, Florida alone seems tohave had no rôle as an intermediary. Its native ethnic affinities werewholly with its own continent. It has given nothing to South America andreceived nothing thence. The northward expansion of Arawak and Caribtribes from Venezuela in historic times ceased at Cuba and Hayti. TheStraits drew a dividing line. Local conditions in Florida itselfprobably furnish the explanation of this anomaly. Extensive swamps madethe central and southern portion of the peninsula inhospitable tocolonization from either direction, transformed it from a link into abarrier. 

[Sidenote: Atlantic peninsulas of Europe]

Peninsulas which conspicuously lack an intercontinental location mustlong await their intermediary phase of development, but do not escapeit. The Cornish, Breton and Iberian peninsulas were all prominent in thetrans-Atlantic enterprises of Europe from the end of the fifteenthcentury. The first French sailors to reach the new world were Breton andNorman fishermen. Plymouth, as the chief port of the Cornish peninsula, figures prominently in the history of English exploration and settlementin America. It seems scarcely accidental that most of Queen Elizabeth'sgreat sea captains were natives of this district--Sir Francis Drake, SirJohn Hawkins, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, and Sir Walter Raleigh, the latterholding the office of vice-admiral of Cornwall and Devon. It was thepeninsula-like projection of South America about Cape St. Roque, twentydegrees farther east than Labrador, that welcomed the ships of Cabraland Americus Vespucius, and secured to Portugal a foothold in theWestern Hemisphere. 

NOTES TO CHAPTER XII

[747] Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. I, p. 336. London, 1896-1898. 

[748] D. G. Brinton, The American Race, p. 41. Philadelphia, 1901. 

[749] D. G. Brinton, Races and Peoples, pp. 239-240. Philadelphia, 1901. Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. I, p. 336. London, 1896-1898. 

[750] A. E. Wallace, Island Life, p. 14. New York, 1892. 

[751] A. Heilprin, Geographical Distribution of Animals, p. 69, map. 1887. 

[752] _Ibid. _, pp. 78, 82, 90, 100. 

[753] Darwin, Origin of Species, Chap. XII. New York, 1895. A. R. Wallace, Island Life, p. 6. New York, 1892. 

[754] W. Z. Ripley, Races of Europe, Map on p. 43. New York, 1899. 

[755] _Ibid. _, pp. 39, 50, 80. Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. II, pp. 100-110. London, 1896-1898. 

[756] A. H. Keane, Ethnology, pp. 231-232, 362. Cambridge, 1896. 

[757] McGee and Thomas, Prehistoric North America, p. 56, Vol. XIX ofHistory of North America. Philadelphia, 1905. 

[758] Fiske, Discovery of America, Vol. I, p. 224. Boston, 1893. 

[759] For various Asiatic and Oceanic elements, see Franz Boas, TheIndians of British Columbia, _Bull. Of the Amer. Geog. Society_ Vol. 28, p. 229. The Northwest Coast Tribes, Science, Vol. XII, pp. 194-196. Niblack, The Indians of the Northwest Coast, p. 385, Washington. H. H. Bancroft, The Native Races, Vol. I, pp. 177, 178, footnote; pp. 210, 225. San Francisco, 1886. W. Z. Ripley, Races of Europe, map p. 42. NewYork, 1899. 

[760] T. W. Higginson and William Macdonald, History of the UnitedStates, p. 21. New York and London, 1905. 

[761] Edward John Payne, History of the New World Called America, Vol. II, pp. 64-68, 74-77, 305, 388-389. Oxford, 1899. 

[762] Justin Winsor, Narrative and Critical History, Vol. I, p. 60. Boston, 1889. 

[763] Cited by E. J. Payne, History of the New World Called America, Vol. II, p. 292, footnote p. 294. Oxford, 1899. 

[764] Waldemar Jochelson, The Mythology of the Koryak, _The AmericanAnthropologist_, Vol. VI, pp. 415-416, 421-425. 1904. 

[765] W. D. Dall, Masks, Labrets, and Certain Aboriginal Customs, ThirdAnnual Report of Bureau of Ethnology, pp. 46-147. Washington, 1884. 

[766] O. T. Mason, Migration and the Food Quest, pp. 275-292. Washington, 1894. 

[767] McGee and Thomas, Prehistoric North America, pp. 51, 58-82. Philadelphia, 1905. Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. I, pp. 5-7, 145-147, 153-154. London, 1896-1898. 

[768] Ripley, Races of Europe, map p. 42, pp. 43-44. New York, 1899. 

[769] Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. I, p. 7. London, 1896-1898. 

[770] Tylor, Anthropology, pp. 86-87. New York, 1881. 

[771] E. J. Payne, History of the New World Called America, Vol. II, pp. 554-555. Oxford, 1899. 

[772] Justus Perthes, _Taschen Atlas_, p. 17. Gotha, 1905. 

[773] Carl Ritter, Comparative Geography, pp. 188-212. Translated byW. L. Gage, Philadelphia, 1865. N. S. Shaler, Nature and Man in America, pp. 11-18, 151-165. New York, 1896. 

[774] Strabo, Book II, chap. V. 26. 

[775] McGee and Thomas, Prehistoric North America, p. 3, map. Philadelphia, 1905. 

[776] D. G. Brinton, Races and Peoples, pp. 248-249. Philadelphia, 1901. 

[777] D. G. Brinton, The American Race, pp. 58, 103-104. Philadelphia, 1901. McGee and Thomas, Prehistoric North America, p. 86. Philadeladelphia, 1905 Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. I, pp. 5-7, 145-147, 153. 

[778] _Ibid. _, p. 293. E. J. Payne, History of the New World CalledAmerica, Vol. II, p. 315. Oxford, 1899. 

[779] _Ibid. _, Vol. II, pp. 412-417. McGee and Thomas, Prehistoric NorthAmerica, pp. 72-75. Philadelphia, 1905. 

[780] W. H. Dall, Masks, Labrets, and Certain Aboriginal Customs, ThirdAnnual Report of Bureau of Ethnology, pp. 146-147. Washington, 1884. 

[781] Cyrus Thomas, Report of Mound Explorations, pp. 522-523, 722-728. Twelfth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, Washington, 1894. 

[782] E. J. Payne, History of the New World Called America, Vol. II, pp. 382-383. Oxford, 1899. 

[783] N. S. Shaler, Nature and Man in America, pp. 151, 168-173. NewYork, 1891. 

[784] Justus Perthes, _Taschen Atlas_, p. 9. Gotha, 1905. 

[785] Carl Ritter, Comparative Geography, pp. 191-192. Translated by W. L. Gage, Philadelphia, 1865. 

[786] W. Z. Ripley, Races of Europe, pp. 247-258. New York, 1899. 

[787] _Ibid. _, pp. 403-409. 

[788] E. A. Freeman, Historical Geography of Europe, Atlas, Maps, 34, 49. London, 1882. 

[789] For race elements in Mesopotamia, see D. G. Hogarth, The NearerEast, Maps, pp. 173 and 176. London, 1903. 

[790] E. A. Freeman, Historical Geography of Europe, pp. 201-202, 506-508, 535-536, 541. London, 1882. 

[791] Imperial Gazetteer of India, Vol. I, pp. 293-297. Oxford, 1907. 

[792] Sir Thomas Holdich, India, Ethnographical map, p. 201, pp. 202, 213-216. London, 1905. B. H. Baden-Powell, The Indian Village Community, pp. 111, 116, 119, 161. London, 1896. 

[793] W. Z. Ripley, Races of Europe, pp. 312-321. New York, 1899. E. Reclus, Europe, Vol. IV, pp. 73, 83-84. New York, 1882. 

[794] H. J. Mackinder, Britain and the British Seas, Ethnographic map, p. 184, and p. 306. London, 1904. 

[795] W. Z. Ripley, Races of Europe, pp. 22, 23, 150-151. New York, 1899. 

[796] _Ibid. _, pp. 248, 258, 272. 

[797] _Ibid. _, pp. 247, 273. 

[798] _Ibid. _, pp. 403-409, and map. 

[799] F. Brinkley, Japan, Vol. I, pp. 38-42, 70, 75-80, 83-84, 126. Boston and Tokyo, 1901. W. E. Griffis, The Mikado's Empire, Vol. I, pp. 73, 83. New York, 1903. 

[800] Henry Dyer, Dai Nippon, pp. 59, 69. New York, 1904. 

[801] E. A. Freeman, Historical Geography of Europe, p. 558. London, 1882. 

[802] _Ibid. _, pp. 559, 561. Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the RomanEmpire, Vol. V, p. 248. New York, 1858. 

CHAPTER XIII

ISLAND PEOPLES

[Sidenote: Physical relationship between islands and peninsulas. ]

The characteristics which mark peninsulas, namely, ample contact withthe sea, small area as compared with that of the continents, peripherallocation, more or less complete isolation, combined, however, with thefunction of bridge or passway to yet remoter lands, are all accentuatedin islands. A list of the chief peninsulas of the world, as comparedwith the greatest islands, shows a far larger scale of areas for theformer, even if the latter be made to include the vast ice-cappedland-mass of Greenland (2, 170, 000 square kilometers or 846, 000 squaremiles). New Guinea, the largest habitable island, has only one-fourththe area of Arabia, the largest of the peninsulas. [803] Therefore, boththe advantages and disadvantages incident to a restricted area may beexpected to appear in an intensified degree in islands. 

Peninsulas are morphologically transition forms between mainland andislands; by slight geological changes one is converted into the other. Great Britain was a peninsula at the end of the Tertiary period, beforesubsidence and the erosion of Dover Channel combined to sever it fromthe continent. It bears to-day in its flora and fauna the evidence ofits former broad connection with the mainland. [804] In Pliocene times, Sicily and Sardinia were united by a land bridge with the Tunisianprojection of North Africa; and they too, in their animal and plantlife, reveal the old connection with the southern continent. [805]Sometimes man himself for his own purposes converts a peninsula into anisland. Often he constructs a canal, like that at Kiel or Corinth, toremove an isthmian obstruction to navigation; but occasionally hetransforms his peninsula into an island for the sake of greaterprotection. William of Rubruquis tells us that in 1253 he found the neckof the Crimea cut through by a ditch from sea to sea by the nativeComanians, who had taken refuge in the peninsula from the Tartarinvaders, and in this way had sought to make their asylum moresecure. [806]

The reverse process in nature is quite as common. The ShangtungPeninsula rises like a mountainous island from the sea-like level ofalluvial plains about it, suggesting that remote time when the plainswere not yet deposited and an arm of the Yellow Sea covered the spacebetween Shangtung and the highlands of Shansi. [807] The deposition ofsilt, aided often by slight local elevation of the coast, is constantlytying continental islands to the mainland. The Echinades Archipelago offthe southwest coast of ancient Acarnania, opposite the mouth of theAchelous River, Strabo tells us, was formerly farther from shore thanin his time, and was gradually being cemented to the mainland byAchelous silt. Some islets had already been absorbed in the advancingshoreline, and the same fate awaited others. [808] Farther up this westerncoast of Greece, the island of Leukas has been converted into apeninsula by a sickle-shaped sandbar extending across the narrowchannel. [809] Nature is working in its leisurely way to attach Sakhalin tothe Siberian coast. The strong marine current which sets southward fromthe Okhotsk Sea through the Strait of Tartary carries silt from themouth of the heavy laden Amur River, and deposits it in the "narrows" ofthe strait between Capes Luzarev and Pogobi, building up sandbars thatcome dangerously near the surface in mid channel. [810] Here the water isso shallow that occasionally after long prevailing winds, the ground isleft exposed and the island natives can walk over to Asia. [811] The closeproximity of Sakhalin to the mainland and the ice bridge covering thestrait in winter rob the island of much of its insular character andcaused it to pass as a peninsula until 1852. Yet that five-mile widestretch of sea on its western coast determined its selection as thegreat penal station of the Russian Empire. The fact that peninsularIndia accords in so many points of flora, fauna and even primitiveethnic stock with Madagascar and South Africa, indicates its formerisland nature, which has been geographically cloaked by its union withthe continent of Asia. 

[Sidenote: Character of insular flora and fauna. ]

Islands, because of their relatively limited area and their clearlydefined boundaries, are excellent fields for the study of floral, faunal, and ethnic distribution. Small area and isolation cause in thempoverty of animal and plant forms and fewer species than are found in anequal continental area. This is the curse of restricted space which wehave met before. The large island group of New Zealand, with its highlydiversified relief and long zonal stretch, has only a moderate list offlowering plants, in comparison with the numerous species that adornequal areas in South Africa and southwestern Australia. [812] Ascensionpossessed originally less than six flowering plants. The four islands ofthe Greater Antilles form together a considerable area and have allpossible advantages of climate and soil; but there are probably nocontinental areas equally big and equally favored by nature which are sopoor in all the more highly organized groups of animals. [813] Islandstend to lop off the best branches. Darwin found not a single indubitablecase of terrestrial mammals native to islands situated more than threehundred miles from the mainland. [814] The impoverishment extendstherefore to quality as well as quantity, to man as well as to brute. Inthe island continent of Australia, the native mammalia, excepting somebats, a few rodents, and a wild dog, all belong to the primitivemarsupial sub-class; its human life, at the time of the discovery, wasrestricted to one retarded negroid race, showing in every part of theisland a monotonous, early Stone Age development. The sparsely scatteredoceanic islands of the Atlantic, owing to excessive isolation, were all, except the near-lying Canaries, uninhabited at the time of theirdiscovery; and the Canary Islanders showed great retardation as comparedwith their parent stock of northern Africa. [See map page 105. ]

[Sidenote: Endemic forms. ]

Despite this general poverty of species, island life is distinguished bya great proportion of peculiar or endemic forms, and a tendency towarddivergence, which is the effect of isolation and which becomes marked inproportion to the duration and effectiveness of isolation. Isolation, byreducing or preventing the intercrossing which holds the individual trueto the normal type of the species, tends to produce divergences. [815]Hence island life is more or less differentiated from that of thenearest mainland, according to the degree of isolation. Continentalislands, lying near the coast, possess generally a flora and fauna to alarge extent identical with that of the mainland, and show few endemicspecies and genera; whereas remote oceanic islands, which isolation hasclaimed for its own, are marked by intense specialization and a highpercentage of species and even genera found nowhere else. [816] Even anarrow belt of dividing sea suffices to loosen the bonds of kinship. Recent as are the British Isles and near the Continent, they show somebiological diversity from the mainland and from each other. [817]

[Sidenote: Paradoxical influences of island habitats upon man. ]

The influence of an island habitat upon its human occupants resemblesthat upon its flora and fauna, but is less marked. The reason for thisis twofold. The plant and animal life are always the older and thereforehave longer felt the effects of isolation; hence they bear its stamp inan intensified degree. Man, as a later comer, shows closer affinity tohis kin in the great cosmopolitan areas of the continents. More thanthis, by reason of his inventiveness and his increasing skill innavigation, he finds his sea boundary less strictly drawn, and thereforeevades the full influence of his detached environment, though never ablewholly to counteract it. For man in lowest stages of civilization, asfor plants and animals, the isolating influence is supreme; but withhigher development and advancing nautical efficiency, islands assumegreat accessibility because of their location on the common highway ofthe ocean. They become points of departure and destination of maritimenavigation, at once center of dispersal and goal, the breeding place ofexpansive national forces seeking an outlet, and a place of hospitalityfor wanderers passing those shores. Yet all the while, that othertendency of islands to segregate their people, and in this aloofness togive them a peculiar and indelible national stamp, much as itdifferentiates its plant and animal forms, is persistently operative. 

[Sidenote: Conservative and radical tendencies. ]

These two antagonistic influences of an island environment may be seenworking simultaneously in the same people, now one, now the other beingdominant; or a period of undisturbed seclusion or exclusion may suddenlybe followed by one of extensive intercourse, receptivity or expansion. Recall the contrast in the early and later history of the Canaries, Azores, Malta, England, Mauritius and Hawaii, now a lonely, half-inhabited waste, now a busy mart or teeming way-station. Considerthe pronounced insular mind of the globe-trotting Englishman, thedeep-seated local conservatism characterizing that world-colonizingnation, at once the most provincial and cosmopolitan on earth. Emersonsays with truth, "Every one of these islanders is an island himself, safe, tranquil, incommunicable. "[818] Hating innovation, glorifying theirhabitudes, always searching for a precedent to justify and countenanceeach forward step, they have nevertheless led the world's march ofprogress. Scattered by their colonial and commercial enterprises overevery zone, in every clime, subjected to the widest range of modifyingenvironments, they show in their ideals the dominant influence of thehome country. The trail of the Oxford education can be followed over theEmpire, east to New Zealand and west to Vancouver. Highschool studentsof Jamaica take Oxford examinations in botany which are based uponEnglish plant life and ignore the Caribbean flora! School children inCeylon are compelled to study a long and unfamiliar list of errors inEnglish speech current only in the London streets, in order to identifyand correct them on the Oxford papers, distributed with Olympianimpartiality to all parts of the Empire. Such insularity of mind seemsto justify Bernard Shaw's description of Britain as an island whosenatives regard its manners and customs as laws of nature. Yet these arethe people who in the Nile Valley have become masters of irrigation, unsurpassed even by the ancient Egyptians; who, in the snow-wrappedforests of Hudson Bay, are trappers and hunters unequalled by theIndians; who, in the arid grasslands of Australia, pasture their herdslike nomad shepherd or American cowboy, and in the Tropics loll like thenatives, but somehow manage to do a white man's stint of work. 

[Sidenote: The case of Japan. ]

In Japan, isolation has excluded or reduced to controllable measureevery foreign force that might break the continuity of the nationaldevelopment or invade the integrity of the national ideal. Japan hasalways borrowed freely from neighboring Asiatic countries and recentlyfrom the whole world; yet everything in Japan bears the stamp of theindigenous. The introduction of foreign culture into the Empire has beena process of selection and profound modification to accord with thenational ideals and needs. [819] Buddhism, coming from the continent, wasJapanized by being grafted on to the local stock of religious ideas, sothat Japanese Buddhism is strongly differentiated from the continentalforms of that religion. [820] The seventeenth century Catholicism of theJesuits, before it was hospitably received, had to be adapted toJapanese standards of duty and ritual. Modern Japanese converts toChristianity wish themselves to conduct the local missions and teach anational version of the new faith. [821] But all the while, Japanesereligion has experienced no real change of heart. The core of thenational faith is the indigenous Shinto cult, which no later interloperhas been permitted to dislodge or seriously to transform; and this hassurvived, wrapped in the national consciousness, wedded to the nationalpatriotism, lifted above competition. Here is insular conservatism. 

Japan's sudden and complete abandonment of a policy of seclusion whichhad been rigidly maintained for two hundred and fifty years, and herentrance upon a career of widespread intercourse synchronously with oneof territorial expansion and extensive emigration, form one of thoseapparently irreconcilable contradictions constantly springing from theisolation and world-wide accessibility of an island environment; yetunderlying Japan's present receptivity of new ideas and her outwardlyindiscriminate adoption of western civilization is to be detected thedeep primal stamp of the Japanese character, and an instinctivedetermination to preserve the core of that character intact. 

[Sidenote: Islands as nurseries and disseminators of distinctivecivilizations. ]

It is this marked national individuality, developed by isolation andaccompanied often by a precocious civilization, in combination with theopposite fact of the imminent possibility of an expansive unfolding, abrilliant efflorescence followed by a wide dispersal of its seeds ofculture and of empire, which has assigned to islands in all times agreat historical rôle. Rarely do these wholly originate the elements ofcivilization. For that their area is too small. But whatever seed ripenin the wide fields of the continents the islands transplant to their ownforcing houses; there they transform and perfect the flower. Japanborrowed freely from China and Korea, as England did from continentalEurope; but these two island realms have brought Asiatic and Europeancivilization to their highest stage of development. Now the borrowersare making return with generous hand. The islands are reacting upon thecontinents. Japanese ideals are leavening the whole Orient fromManchuria to Ceylon. English civilization is the standard of Europe. "The Russian in his snows is aiming to be English, " says Emerson. "England has inoculated all nations with her civilization, intelligenceand tastes. "[822]

[Sidenote: Ancient Cretan civilization. ]

The recent discoveries in Crete show beyond doubt that the school ofAegean civilization was in that island. Ancient Phoenicia, Argos, evenMycenæ and Tiryns put off their mask of age and appear as rosy boyslearning none too aptly of their great and elderly master. Borrowing theseeds of culture from Asia and Egypt, [823] Crete nursed and tended themthrough the Neolithic and Bronze Age, transformed them completely, muchas scientific tillage has converted the cotton tree into a low shrub. The precocity of this civilization is clear. At early as 3000 B. C. Itincluded an impressive style of architecture and a decorative artnaturalistic and beautiful in treatment as that of modern Japan. [824]From this date till the zenith of its development in 1450 B. C. , Cretebecame a great artistic manufacturing and distributing center for stonecarving, frescoes, pottery, delicate porcelain, metal work, andgems. [825] By 1800 B. C. , seven centuries before Phoenician writing isheard of, the island had matured a linear script out of an earlierpictographic form. [826] This script, partly indigenous, partly borrowedfrom Libya and Egypt, gives Crete the distinction of having invented thefirst system of writing ever practised in Europe. [827]

Yet all this wealth of achievement bore the stamp of the indigenous;nearly every trace of its remote Asiatic or Egyptian origin wasobliterated. Here the isolation of an island environment did thoroughlyits work of differentiation, even on this thalassic isle whichmaintained constant intercourse with Egypt, the Cyclades, the Troad andthe Greek peninsula. [828] Minoan art has a freshness, vivacity, andmodernity that distinguishes it fundamentally from the formal productsof its neighbors. "Many of the favorite subjects, like the crocus andwild goat, are native to the islands.... Even where a motive wasborrowed from Egyptian life, it was treated in a distinctive way, " madetender, dramatic, vital. "In religion, as in art generally, Cretetranslated its loans into indigenous terms, and contributed as much asit received. "[829] The curator of Egyptian antiquities in the New YorkMetropolitan Art Museum examined five hundred illustrations of secondand third millenium antiquities from Gournia and Vasiliki in Crete, madeby Mrs. Harriet Boyd Hawes during her superintendence of the excavationsthere, and pronounced them distinctly un-Egyptian, except one vase, probably an importation. [830] All this was achieved by a small insularsegment of the Mediterranean race, in their Neolithic and Bronze Age, before the advent of those northern conquerors who brought in an Aryanspeech and the gift of iron. It was in Crete, therefore, that Aegeancivilization arose. On this island it had a long and brilliantpre-Hellenic career, and thence it spread to the Greek mainland andother Aegean shores. [831]

[Sidenote: Limitation of small area in insular history. ]

A small cup soon overflows. Islands may not keep; they are forced togive, live by giving. Here lies their historical significance. Theydispense their gifts of culture in levying upon the resources of otherlands. But finally more often than not, the limitation of too small ahome area steps in to arrest the national development, which then fadesand decays. To this rule Great Britain and Japan are notable exceptions, owing partly to the unusual size of their insular territory, partly to ahighly advantageous location. Minoan Crete, in that gray antiquity whenHomeric history was still unborn, gave out of its abundance in art, government, laws and maritime knowledge to the eastern Mediterraneanworld, till the springs of inspiration in its own small land wereexhausted, and its small population was unable to resist the flood ofnorthern invasion. Then the dispenser of gifts had to become analms-taker from the younger, larger, more resourceful Hellenic world. 

The same story of early but short lived preëminence comes from otherAegean islands. Before the rise of Athens, Samos under the great despotPolykrates became "the first of all cities, Hellenic or barbaric, " acenter of Ionian manners, luxury, art, science and culture, the seat ofthe first great thalassocracy or sea-power after that of Cretan Minos, adistributing point for commerce and colonies. [832] Much the same historyand distinction attached to the island of Rhodes long before the firstOlympiad, [833] and to the little island of Aegina. [834] If we turn to thenative races of America, we find that the Haida Indians of the QueenCharlotte Archipelago are markedly superior to their Tlingit andTsimshean kinsmen of the nearby Alaskan and British Columbian coast. Intheir many and varied arts they have freely borrowed from theirneighbors; but they have developed these loans with such marvelous skilland independence that they greatly surpass their early masters, and areaccredited with possessing the creative genius of all this coast. [835]Far away, on the remote southeastern outskirts of the island world ofthe Pacific, a parallel is presented by little Easter Isle. Once it wasdensely populated and completely tilled by a people who had achievedsingular progress in agriculture, religion, masonry, sculpture in stoneand wood carving, even with obsidian tools, and who alone of all thePolynesians had devised a form of hieroglyphical writing. [836] EasterIsle to-day shows only abandoned fields, the silent monuments of its hugestone idols, and the shrunken remnant of a deteriorated people. [837]

[Sidenote: Sources of ethnic stock of islands. ]

Isolation and accessibility are recorded in the ethnic stock of everyisland. Like its flora and fauna, its aboriginal population shows anaffinity to that of the nearest mainland, and this generally inproportion to geographical proximity. The long line of deposit islands, built of the off-scourings of the land, and fringing the German andNetherland coast from Texel to Wangeroog, is inhabited by the sameFrisian folk which occupies the nearby shore. The people of the ChannelIsles, though long subject to England, belong to the Franco-Gallic stockand the _langue d'oïl_ linguistic family of northern France. The nativeCanary Islanders, though giving no evidence of previous communicationwith any continental land at the time of their discovery, could betraced, through their physical features, speech, customs and utensils, to a remote origin in Egypt and the Berber regions of North Africa priorto the Mohammedan conquest. [838] Sakhalin harbors to-day, besides theimmigrant Russians, five different peoples--Ainos, Gilyaks, Orochons, Tunguse, and Yakuts, all of them offshoots of tribes now or formerlyfound on the Siberian mainland a few miles away. [839]

[Sidenote: Ethnic divergence with increased isolation. ]

Where the isolation of the island is more pronounced, owing either to abroader and more dangerous channel, as in the case of Madagascar andFormosa, or to the nautical incapacity of the neighboring coast peoples, as in the case of Tasmania and the Canary Islands, the ethnic influenceof the mainland is weak, and the ethnic divergence of the insularpopulation therefore more marked, even to the point of total differencein race. But this is generally a case of survival of a primitive stockin the protection of an unattractive island offering to a superiorpeople few allurements to conquest, as illustrated by the ethnic historyof the Andaman and Kurile Isles. 

[Sidenote: Differentiation of peoples and civilizations on islands. ]

The sea forms the sharpest and broadest boundary; it makes in the islandwhich it surrounds the conditions for differentiation. Thus while aninsular population is allied in race and civilization to that of thenearest continent, it nevertheless differs from the same more than theseveral sub-groups of its continental kindred differ from each other. Inother words, isolation makes ethnic and cultural divergence more markedon islands than on continents. The English people, despite their closekinship and constant communication with the Teutonic peoples of theEuropean mainland, deviate from them more than any of these Germanicnations deviate from each other. The Celts of Great Britain and Irelandare sharply distinguished from the whole body of continental Celts inphysical features, temperament, and cultural development. In Ireland theprimitive Catholic Church underwent a distinctive development. It wasclosely bound up in the tribal organization of the Irish people, lackedthe system, order and magnificence of the Latinized Church, had itspeculiar tonsure for monks, and its own date for celebrating Easter fornearly three hundred years after the coming of St. Patrick. [840] TheJapanese, in their physical and mental characteristics, as in theirwhole national spirit, are more strikingly differentiated from theChinese than the agricultural Chinese from the nomadic Buriat shepherdsliving east of Lake Baikal, though Chinese and Japanese are located muchnearer together and are in the same stage of civilization. The Eskimo, who form one of the most homogeneous stocks, and display the greatestuniformity in language and cultural achievements of all the nativeAmerican groups, have only one differentiated offshoot, the AleutianIslanders. These, under the protection and isolation of their insularhabitat from a very remote period, have developed to a greater extentthan their Eskimo brethren of the mainland. The difference is evident intheir language, religious ceremonies, and in details of their handiwork, such as embroidery and grass-fiber weaving. [841] The Haidas of the QueenCharlotte Archipelago show such a divergence in physique and culturefrom the related tribes of the mainland, that they have been accreditedwith a distinct origin from the other coast Indians. [842]

[Sidenote: Differentiation of language in islands. ]

The differentiating influence is conspicuous in the speech of islandpeople, which tends to form a distinct language or dialect or, in anarchipelago, a group of dialects. The Channel Isles, along with theirdistinctive breeds of cattle, has each its own variant of the _langued'oïl_. [843] According to Boccaccio's narrative of a Portuguese voyage tothe Canaries in 1341, the natives of one island could not understandthose from another, so different were their languages. The statement wasrepeated by a later authority in 1455 in regard to the inhabitants ofLancerote, Fuerteventura, Gomera and Ferro, who had then beenChristianized. A partial explanation is supplied by the earliervisitors, who found the Canary Guanches with no means of communicationbetween the several islands except by swimming. [844] In the Visayan groupof the Philippines, inhabited exclusively by the civilized Visayantribes except for the Negritos in the mountainous interior, the peopleof Cebu can not understand their brethren in the adjacent islands; inCuyos and Calmanianes, dialects of the Visayan are spoken. [845] [See mappage 147. ]

The differentiation of language from the nearby continental speech maybe due to a higher development, especially on large islands affordingvery advantageous conditions, such as Great Britain and Japan. Japanesespeech has some affinity with the great Altaic linguistic family, but noclose resemblance to any sub-group. [846] It presents marked contrasts tothe Chinese because it has passed beyond the agglutinative stage ofdevelopment, just as English has sloughed off more of its inflectionalforms than the continental Teutonic languages. 

[Sidenote: Archaic forms of speech in islands. ]

More often the difference is due to the survival of archaic forms ofspeech. This is especially the case on very small or remote islands, whose limited area or extreme isolation or both factors in conjunctionpresent conditions for retardation. The speech of the Sardinians has astrong resemblance to the ancient Latin, retains many inflectional formsnow obsolete in the continental Romance languages; but it has also beenenlivened by an infusion of Catalan words, which came in by the bridgeof the Balearic Islands during the centuries of Spanish rule inSardinia. [847] Again, it is in Minorca and Majorca that this Catalanspeech is found in its greatest purity to-day. On its native soil ineastern Spain, especially in Barcelona, it is gradually succumbing tothe official Castilian, and probably in a few centuries will be foundsurviving only in the protected environment of the Balearic Isles. Icelandic and the kindred dialects of the Shetland and Faroe Islands hadtheir origin in the classic Norse of the ninth century, and aredivergent forms of the speech of the Viking explorers. [848] The oldFrisian tongue of Holland, sister speech to Anglo-Saxon, survives to-dayonly in West Friesland beyond the great marshlands, and in thelong-drawn belt of coastal islands from Terschelling through Helgolandto Sylt, as also on the neighboring shores of Schleswig-Holstein. [849]This region of linguistic survival, insulated partially by the marshesor completely by the shallow "Wattenmeer" of this lowland coast, remindsus of the protracted life of the archaic Lithuanian speech within acircle of sea and swamp in Baltic Russia, and the survival of the Celtictongue in peninsular Brittany, Cornwall, Wales, in Ireland, and theHighlands and islands of Scotland. 

[Sidenote: Unification of race in islands. ]

Islanders are always coast dwellers with a limited hinterland. Hencetheir stock may be differentiated from the mainland race in part for thesame reason that all coastal folk in regions of maritime development aredifferentiated from the people of the back country, namely, becausecontact with the sea allows an intermittent influx of various foreignstrains, which are gradually assimilated. This occasional ethnicintercrossing can be proved in greater or less degree of all islandpeople. Here is accessibility operating against the underlying isolationof an island habitat. The English to-day represent a mixture of Celtswith various distinct Teutonic elements, which had already diverged fromone another in their separate habitats--Jutes, Angles, Saxons, Danes, Norse and Norman French. The subsequent detachment of these immigrantstocks by the English Channel and North Sea from their home people, andtheir arrival in necessarily small bands enabled them to be readilyassimilated, a process which was stimulated further by the rapidincrease of population, the intimate interactive life and unification ofculture which characterizes all restricted areas. Hence islands, likepeninsulas, despite ethnic admixtures, tend to show a surprisingunification of race; they hold their people aloof from others and holdthem in a close embrace, shut them off and shut them in, tend to forcethe amalgamation of race, culture and speech. Moreover, their relativelysmall area precludes effective segregation within their own borders, except where a mountainous or jungle district affords a temporary refugefor a displaced and antagonized tribe. Hence there arises apreponderance of the geographic over the ethnic and linguistic factorsin the historical equation. 

The uniformity in cranial type prevailing all over the British Isles isamazing; it is greater than in either Spain or Scandinavia. The cephalicindices range chiefly between 77 and 79, a restricted variation ascompared with the ten points which represents the usual range forCentral Europe, and the thirteen between the extremes of 75 and 88 foundin France and Italy. [850] Japan stands in much the same ethnic relationto Asia as Britain to Europe. She has absorbed Aino, Mongolian, Malayand perhaps Polynesian elements, but by reason of her isolation has beenleft free to digest these at her leisure, so that her population isfairly well assimilated, though evidences of the old mixture can bediscerned. [851] In Corsica and Sardinia a particularly low cephalicindex, dropping in some communes to 73, and a particularly short staturepoint to a rare purity of the Mediterranean race, [852] and indicate themaintenance here of one ethnic type, despite the intermittent intrusionof various less pure stocks from the Italian mainland, Africa, Phoenicia, Arabia, and Spain. The location of the islands off the mainroutes of the basin, their remoteness from shore, and the strong spiritof exclusiveness native to the people, [853] bred doubtless from theirisolation, have combined to reduce the amount of foreign intermixture. 

[Sidenote: Remoter sources of island populations. ]

Islands do notnecessarily derive their population from the land that lies nearest tothem. A comparatively narrow strait may effectively isolate, if theopposite shore is inhabited by a nautically inefficient race; whereas awide stretch of ocean may fail to bar the immigration of a seafaringpeople. Here we find a parallel to the imperfect isolation of oceanicislands for life forms endowed with superior means of dispersal, such asmarine birds, bats and insects. [854] Iceland, though relatively nearGreenland, was nevertheless peopled by far away Scandinavians. Thesebold sailors planted their settlements even in Greenland nearly twocenturies before the Eskimo. England received the numerically dominantelement of its population from across the wide expanse of the North Sea, from the bare but seaman-breeding coasts of Germany, Denmark and Norway, rather than from the nearer shores of Gaul. So the Madeira and CapeVerde Isles had to wait for the coming of the nautical Portuguese tosupply them with a population; and only later, owing to the demand forslave labor, did they draw upon the human stock of nearby Africa, buteven then by means of Portuguese ships. 

[Sidenote: Double sources. ]

Owing to the power of navigation to bridge the intervening spaces ofwater and hence to emphasize the accessibility rather than the isolationof these outlying fragments of land, we often find islands facing two orthree ways, as it were, tenanted on different sides by different races, and this regardless of the width of the intervening seas, where theremote neighbors excel in nautical skill. Formosa is divided between itswild Malay aborigines, found on the eastern, mountainous side of theisland, and Chinese settlers who cultivate the wide alluvial plain onthe western side. [855] Fukien Strait, though only eighty miles wide, sufficed to bar Formosa to the land-loving northern Chinese till 1644, when the island became an asylum for refugees from the Manchu invaders;but long before, the wider stretches of sea to the south and north weremere passways for the sea-faring Malays, who were the first to peoplethe island, and the Japanese who planted considerable colonies on itsnorthern coasts at the beginning of the fifteenth century. [See map page103. ]

In a similar way Madagascar is divided between the Malayan Hovas, whooccupy the eastern and central part of the island, and the AfricanSakalavas who border the western coast. [See map page 105. ] Thisdistribution of the ethnic elements corresponds to that of the insectlife, which is more African on the western side and more Indo-Malayan onthe eastern. [856] Though the population shows every physical type betweenNegro and Malayan, and ethnic diversity still predominates over ethnicunity in this vast island, nevertheless the close intercourse of anisland habitat has even in Madagascar produced unification of language. Malayan speech of an ancient form prevails everywhere, and thoughdiversified into dialects, is everywhere so much alike that allMalagasies can manage to understand one another. [857] The firstinhabitants were probably African; but the wide Mozambique Current (230miles), with its strong southward flow, was a serious barrier to freshaccessions from the mainland, especially as the nautical development ofthe African tribes was always low. Meanwhile, however, successive relaysof sea-bred Malay-Polynesians crossed the broad stretch of the IndianOcean, occupied the island, and finally predominated over the originalNegro stock. [858] Then in historic times came Arabs, Swahilis, and EastIndians to infuse an Asiatic element into the population of the coasts, while Portuguese, English, Dutch, and French set up short-lived colonieson its shores. But despite this intermittent foreign immigration, thefundamental isolation of Madagascar, combined with its large area, enabled it to go its own slow historical gait, with a minimum ofinterference from outside, till France in 1895 began to assume controlof the island. 

[Sidenote: Mixed population of small thalassic isles. ]

Small thalassic islands, at an early date in their history, lose theirethnic unity and present a highly mixed population. The reasons for thisare two. The early maritime development characterizing enclosed seascovers them with a network of marine routes, on which such islands serveas way stations and mid-sea markets for the surrounding shores. Sailorsand traders, colonists and conquerors flock to them from every side. Such a nodal location on commercial routes insures to islands acosmopolitanism of race, as opposed to the ethnic differentiation andunity which follows an outlying or oceanic situation. Here the factor ofmany-sided accessibility predominates over isolation. 

The prevailing small area of such thalassic islands, moreover, involvesa population so small that it is highly susceptible to the effects ofintercrossing. Too restricted to absorb the constant influx of foreignelements, the inhabitants tend to become a highly mixed, polyglot breed. This they continue to be by the constant addition of foreign strains, solong as the islands remain foci of trade or strategic points for thecontrol of the marine highways. Diomede Island in Bering Strait is thegreat market place of the polar tribes. Here Siberian Chukches andAlaskan Eskimos make their exchanges. The Eskimo of St. Lawrence Islandin Bering Sea, from long intercourse, have adopted certain articles ofdress, the boats and part of the vocabulary of the Chukches. [859]Kilwauru, located on a sand-bank at the eastern end of Ceram, on theborder between Malayan and Papuan island districts, is the metropolis ofnative traders in the Far East. Here gather the _praus_ of thesea-faring Bugis bringing manufactured goods from Singapore, and boatsladen with the natural products of New Guinea. [860] The smaller theseisland marts and the wider their circle of trade, the more mixed istheir population. Thursday Isle, an English coaling-station in TorresStrait, is a port of call for all steamers bound from Europe or Chinafor east Australian ports, besides being a center of a big local tradein pearl shell and tripang. Hence its population of 526 souls comprises270 Europeans of various nationalities, including British, Germans, Scandinavians, Danes, Spanish, Portuguese, French and Australians ofEuropean origin, besides 256 South Sea Islanders, Papuans, Africans, Philippines, Chinese and other Asiatics. [861]

[Sidenote: Mixed population of island markets. ]

Antiquity shows the same thing on a smaller scale, which grew, however, with the expansion of the circle of commerce. Ancient Aegina in theSaronic Gulf received inhabitants from Crete, Argos, Epidaurus ineastern Argolis and Athens; it became a central maritime market and itspeople sea-traders, whose goods of a certain small kind became known as"Aegina wares. "[862] Delos at the crossroads of the Aegean was the centerof longer radii. It became the inn for travelers and merchants sailingfrom Asia and Egypt to Italy and Greece, and hence drew to itself thetrade and people of the whole Mediterranean basin. [863] The northwesternIndian Ocean had a similar emporium in the ancient Dioscoridis, (Sokotra) which focused on itself the trade between Arabia and easternAfrica. [864]

Ceylon's location made it in ancient and medieval times the commonmeeting place for Arab traders from the west and Chinese merchants fromthe east; it thus became the Sicily of the semi-enclosed North IndianOcean. To-day its capital Colombo is "the Clapham Junction of the EasternSeas, " where passengers change steamers for China, India and Australia;a port of call for vessels passing from the Straits of Malacca to thePersian Gulf or Mediterranean. Hence Ceylon's solid nucleus ofSinghalese and Tamil population, protected against absorption by thelarge area of the island (25, 365 square miles) is interspersed in thecoastal districts with Arabs, Portuguese, Eurasians dating from the oldPortuguese occupation, and some ten thousand Europeans. [865] The islandof Gotland, located at the crossroads of the Baltic, was early adoptedby the Hanseatic merchants as their maritime base for the exploitationof Swedish, Finnish, and Russian trade. Here were "peoples of diverstongues, " so the old chronicles say, while the archeological finds ofByzantine, Cufic, Roman, Anglo-Saxon and German coins testify to thewide circle of trade whose radii focused at this nodal point of theBaltic. [866]

[Sidenote: Significant location of island way stations. ]

The great importance of such islands has been due solely to theirlocation. Their size and resources are negligible quantities, but theirnatural position as way stations lent them preeminence so long asnavigation held to short "laps, " and was restricted to enclosed seas. Inthe wide expanse of the open ocean, similar sparsely scattered isles, like Ascension, St. Helena, the Canaries and Hawaii, assumed importancein proportion to their scarcity. Though never the centers of rifeintercourse like Delos and Gotland, those lying conspicuously in thetrack of commerce have succeeded in drawing to themselves the typicalpolyglot nodal population. Mauritius, located at the southwesternentrance of the Indian Ocean about equally distant from Aden, Ceylon, Bombay, Singapore and West Australia, and possessing the best harborwithin many hundred miles, has been held successively by Dutch, Frenchand English, and to-day has a dense population of French, English andHindus. [867] A situation at the northeast entrance to the Caribbean Sea, keystone of the vast arch formed by the Greater and Lesser Antilles, made the island of St. Thomas a natural distributing point for thiswhole basin. Facing that much traveled Virgin Passage, and forming thefirst objective of vessels bound from Europe to Panama, it became agreat ship rendezvous, and assumed strategic and commercial importancefrom early times. We find the same political owners here as in Mauritiusand in the same order--Dutch, French and English, though in 1671 theisland was occupied by the Danes, then from 1807 to 1815 by the Englishagain, and finally secured by the Danes. [868] The history of the FalklandIslands is a significant reflection of their location on the southoceanic trade route, where they command the entrance to the MagellanStraits and the passage round the Horn, Here on the outskirts of theworld, where they form the only break in the wide blank surface of theSouth Atlantic, they have been coveted and held in turn by the chiefEuropean powers having colonies in the Orient, --by France, Spain, England, Spain again, England again, by Argentine in 1820, and finallyby England since 1833. Their possession was of especial advantage toGreat Britain, which had no other base in this part of the worldintermediate between England and New Zealand. 

[Sidenote: Thalassic islands as goals of expansion. ]

Islands located in enclosed seas display the transitional character ofborder districts. They are outposts of the surrounding shores, andbecome therefore the first objective of every expanding movement, whether commercial or political, setting out from the adjacent coasts. Such islands are swept by successive waves of conquest or colonization, and they carry in their people and language evidences of the wrack leftbehind on their shores. This has been the history of Aegina, Cyprus, Rhodes, Crete, Malta, Corfu, Sicily and Sardinia. That of Cyprus istypical. It was the first island base for the ancient Tyrian fleets, andhad its Phoenician settlements in 1045 B. C. From that time it was oneof the many prizes in the Mediterranean grab-bag for the surroundingnations. After the decline of Tyre, it was occupied by Greeks, thenpassed in turn to Assyrians, Egyptians, Persians, Romans, Saracens, Byzantines, and in 1191 was seized by the Crusaders. Later it fell toEgypt again; but in 1373 was taken by Genoa, in 1463 by Venice, in 1571by the Turks, and finally in 1878 was consigned to England. [869] Allthese successive occupants have left their mark upon its people, speech, culture and architecture. In the same way Sicily, located at the waistof the Mediterranean, has received the imprint of Greeks, Carthagenians, Romans, Saracens, Normans, Spaniards and Italians. [870] Its architecturalremains bear the stamp of these successive occupants in every degree ofpurity and blending. The Sicilians of to-day are a mixture of all theseintrusive stocks and speak a form of Italian corrupted by the infusionof Arabic words. [871] In 1071 when the Normans laid siege to Palermo, five languages were spoken on the island, --Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Arabicand vulgar Sicilian, evidence enough that it was the meeting ground ofthe nations of Europe, Asia and North Africa. [872] Polyglot Malta to-daytells the same story of successive conquests, the same shuttlecockhistory. [873] Almost every language of Europe is spoken here; but thenative Maltese speech is a corrupt form of Arabic mixed with modernItalian and ancient Phoenician words. [874] The whole island isethnographically a border hybrid of Europe and North Africa. The ChannelIsles are to-day the only spot in Europe where French and English surviveside by side as official and commercial languages. French and Italianmeet on equal terms in Corsica. Chinese, Japanese and Malays havetraded and warred and treated on the debatable land of Formosa. The Aru, Ke, and other small archipelagoes of the Banda Sea link together thepure Malay and the pure Papuan districts, between which they lie. 

From the border character of many islands there follow oftenfar-reaching historical effects. Like all border regions they arenatural battlegrounds. Their historical episodes are small, often slowand insidious in their movement, but large in their final content; forthey are prone to end in a sudden dramatic _denouement_ that draws thestartled gaze of all the neighboring world. It was the destiny of Sicilyto make and unmake the fortunes of ancient Carthage. Ceylon, from thedawn of history, lured traders who enriched and conquerors who oppressedpeninsular India. The advance of Spain to the Canary Isles was thedrowsy prologue to the brilliant drama of American discovery. The islandof Tsushima in the Korean Strait was seized by the forces of Kublai Khanin 1280 as the base of their attack upon Japan;[875] and when in 1857 theRussian bear tried to plant a foot on this island, Japan saw danger inthe movement and ordered him off. [876] Now we find Japan newlyestablished in Sakhalin, the Elliot Islands and Formosa, by means ofwhich and her own archipelago she blankets the coast of Asia fortwenty-two hundred miles. This geographical situation may be productiveof history. 

[Sidenote: Political detachability of islands. ]

Islands are detached areas physically and readily detached politically. Though insularity gives them some measure of protection, theirrelatively small size and consequently small populations make them easyvictims for a conquering sea power, and easy to hold in subjection. Thesecurity of an island habitat against aggression therefore, increaseswith its size, its efficiency in naval warfare, and its degree ofisolation, the last of which factors depends in turn upon its locationas thalassic or oceanic. Islands of enclosed seas, necessarily small andnever far from the close encircling lands, are engulfed by every tide ofconquest emanating from the nearby shores. Oesel and Dago have been heldin succession by every Baltic power, by the Teutonic Orders, Denmark, Sweden and Russia. Gotland has acknowledged allegiance to the HanseaticLeague, to Denmark and Sweden. Sardinia, occupying the center of thewestern Mediterranean, has figured in a varied series of politicalcombinations, --with ancient Carthage, Rome, the Saracens of NorthAfrica, with Sicily, Pisa, Aragon, Piedmont, and finally now with unitedItaly. [877] To the land-bred Teutonic hordes which swept over westernEurope in the early centuries of our era, a narrow strip of sea was someprotection for Sicily, Corsica, Sardinia, Malta and the Balearic Isles. Hence we find these islands slow in succumbing to their non-maritimeconquerors, and readily regained by the energetic Justinian. Later theyfell victim to the sea-wise Saracens, but again gravitated back to theircloser and more natural European connections. 

[Sidenote: Insular weakness due to small area. ]

More often the small area of an island facilitates its retention inbondage, when the large and less isolated continental districts havethrown off an unwelcome yoke. Athens, with her strong navy, found it aneasy task to whip back into the ranks of the Delian Confederacy herrecalcitrant island subjects like Naxos, Samos and Thasos; but hermutinous cities in peninsular Chalcidice and isthmian Megara, incited torevolt and aided by their neighbors, [878] were less at her mercy. Thisprinciple was recognized by Thucydides, [879] and taken advantage of bythe Lacedæmonians during the great war for Spartan supremacy. Englandhas been able to hold Ireland in a vise. Of all her former Frenchterritory, she retains only the Channel Isles. Cuba and Porto Ricoremained in the crushing grasp of Spain sixty-four years after Mexicoand the continental states of Central and South America, by mutual helpand encouragement, had secured independence. The islands found that theisolation which confers protection from outside aggression meant forthem detachment from friendly sources of succor on the mainland. Thedesultory help of filibuster expeditions, easily checked at the port ofdeparture or landing, availed little to supplement the inadequate forcesof rebellion pent up on their relatively small areas. By contrast, Mexico's larger area and population, continually stirred by Americanexample and encouragement, reinforced by American volunteers and even byUnited States army officers, found revolt from 1812 to 1824 acomparatively easy task. 

Cuba suffered from its geographic aloofness. So did little Crete, whichsubmitted to Turkish oppression sixty years after the continental Greekshad made good their claim to freedom. Nor was this the first time thatCretan liberty had suffered from the detachment of an islandenvironment. Aristotle recognized the principle when he wrote: "Thepeople of Crete have hitherto submitted to the rule of the leadingfamilies as _Cosmi_, because the insular situation of Crete cuts off theinterference of strangers or foreigners which might stir up rebellionagainst the unjust or partial government. " And then he adds that thisinsular exclusion of outside incitement long rendered the fidelity ofthe _Perioeci_ or serf-like peasants of Crete a striking contrast to theuneasy spirit of the Spartan Helots, who were constantly stirred torevolt by the free farmers of Argos, Messinia and Arcadia. [880] Thusancient like modern Crete missed those beneficient stimuli whichpenetrate a land frontier, but are cut off by the absolute boundary ofthe sea. 

[Sidenote: Island remains of broken empires. ]

Island fragments of broken empires are found everywhere. They figureconspicuously in that scattered location indicative of declining power. Little St. Pierre and Miquelon are the last geographical evidences ofFrance's former dominion in Canada. The English Bermudas and Bahamaspoint back to the time when Great Britain held the long-drawn oppositecoast. The British, French, Dutch, Danish, as once even Swedish, holdings in the Lesser Antilles are island monuments to lost continentaldomains, as recently were Cuba and Porto Rico to Spain's once vastAmerican empire. Of Portugal's widespread dominion in the Orient thereremain to her only the island fragments of Timor, Kambing, Macao andDiu, besides two coastal points on the western face of peninsular India. All the former continental holdings of the Sultan of Zanzibar have beenabsorbed into the neighboring German and British territories, and onlythe islands of Zanzibar and Pemba remain to him by the temporaryindulgence of his strong neighbors. The Sheik of the Bahrein Islandsoriginally held also the large kingdom of El Hasa on the nearby PersianGulf littoral of Arabia; but he lost this to the Turks in 1840, and nowretains the Bahrein Islands as the residuum of his formerterritories. [881]

[Sidenote: Security of such remnants merely passive. ]

The insular remnants of empires are tolerated, because their small size, when unsupported by important location, usually renders them innocuous;and their geographic isolation removes them from internationalentanglements, unless some far-reaching anthropo-geographic readjustmentlends them a new strategic or commercial importance. The construction ofthe Suez Canal gave England a motive for the acquisition of Cyprus in1878, as a nearer base than Malta for the protection of Port Said, justas the present Panama Canal project led the United States to re-opennegotiations for the purchase of the Danish Isles. One cannot get awayfrom the impression that the law of political detachability will operateagain to make some new distribution of the parti-colored politicalholdings in the Lesser Antilles. The small size of these islands, andtheir thalassic location commanding approaches to a large region of onlypartially developed resources and to the interoceanic passway across it, will pitch them into the dice-box on the occasion of every naval warbetween their sovereign powers. 

The shifting fate of political detachability becomes moderated inislands of the open ocean, because of their remoteness from thecolonizing or conquering movements emanating from the continents. Incontrast to the changing political connections of thalassic isles, consider the calm or monotonous political history of outlying islandslike the Shetland, Faroes, Iceland, Canaries, Madeira, Cape Verde, Azores, St. Helena, Ascension and Hawaii. The Norse colony of Iceland, as a republic, maintained loose connections with its mother country from874 to 1264; then for nearly six centuries it followed the politicalfate of Norway till 1814, when an oversight left it in the hands ofDenmark on the dissolution of the union of Denmark and Norway. TheAzores have known no history except that which came to them fromPortugal; even their discovery goes back to a Saracen navigator who, in1147, sailed from the mouth of the Tagus a thousand miles straight intothe sunset. [882] For two hundred years thereafter extreme isolation keptthem outside the pale of history till their rediscovery by PrinceHenry, the Navigator. 

[Sidenote: Political autonomy of islands based upon area and location. ]

Land-masses, as we have found, are independent by location orindependent by size. Large islands, especially where they occupy anoutskirt location, may long succeed in maintaining an independentnational existence; but to render this permanent, they must supplementtheir area by the acquisition of continental lands, according to the lawof increasing territorial aggregates. Great Britain and Japan, thoughethnically and culturally appendages of the nearby mainland, were largeenough, aided by the dividing sea, to maintain political autonomy. Theyabsorbed all the insular fragments lying about them to extend theirareas, and then each in turn entered upon a career of continentalexpansion. To Japan this movement as a determined policy came late, onlywhen she faced the alternative of absorbing territory or being absorbedby all-devouring Russia. The isolation of Madagascar resulted in onlyslight community of race with Africa, and combined with large area, haskept the island to a great extent distinct from the political history ofAfrica. The impulses which swept the eastern coast of the continentreached the outlying island with abated force. Arab, Portuguese, Dutchand English only scratched its rim. The character of its western coasts, of its vigorous Malayan population, and of the intervening MozambiqueCurrent rendered conquest difficult from the African shore. Its largesize, with the promise of abundant resources, offered a bait toconquest, yet put a barrier in its way. Hence we find that not till1895, when the partition of continental Africa was almost accomplished, did the French conquest of Madagascar occur. 

By contrast, the closely grouped East Indies, long coveted for theirtropical products, suffered a contagion of conquest. The large size ofthese islands, so far from granting them immunity, only enabled theepidemic of Portuguese and Dutch dominion to pass from one to the othermore readily, and that even when the spice and pepper trade languishedfrom a plethora of products. But even here the size of the islands, plus the sub-equatorial climate which bars genuine white colonization, has restricted the effective political dominion of Europeans to thecoasts, and thus favored the survival of the natives undisturbed in theinterior, with all their primitive institutions. The largest islands, like Borneo and Sumatra, have vast inland tracts still unexplored anddevoted to savagery, thus illustrating the contrast between center andperiphery. When Australia, the largest of all the Pacific island group, became an object of European expansion, its temperate and sub-tropicallocation adapted it for white colonization, and the easy task ofconquering its weak and retarded native tribes encouraged itsappropriation; but the natural autonomy which belongs to large area anddetached location asserted itself in the history of British Australia. The island continent is now erected into a confederation of states, enjoying virtual independence. In New Zealand, we find the recentcolonists taking advantage of their isolation to work out undisturbedcertain unique social theories. Here, against a background of arrestedaboriginal development, another race evinces a radical spirit ofprogress; and to these contrasted results equally the detached islandenvironment has contributed its share. 

[Sidenote: Historical effects of island isolation; primitiveretardation. ]

The historical development of island peoples bears always in greater orless degree the stamp of isolation; but this isolation may lead toopposite cultural results. It may mean in one case retardation, inanother accelerated development. Its geographical advantages aredistinctly relative, increasing rapidly with a rising scale ofcivilization. Therefore in an island habitat the race factor may operatewith or against the geographic factor in producing a desirablehistorical result. If the isolation is almost complete, the culturalstatus of the inhabitants low, and therefore their need of stimulationfrom without very great, the lack of it will sink them deeper inbarbarism than their kinsmen on the mainland. The negroes of Africa, taken as a whole, occupy a higher economic and cultural rank than theblack races of Australia and Melanesia; and for this difference onecause at least is to be found in the difference of their habitats. Theknowledge of iron, stock-raising, and many branches of agriculture werecontinental achievements, which belonged to the great eastern land-massand spread from Egypt over Africa even to the Hottentot country; thelack of them among the Australians must be attributed to theirinsularity, which barred them from this knowledge, just as the ignoranceof iron and other metals among the native Canary Islanders[883] can onlybe ascribed to a sea barrier fifty-two miles wide. The scantacquaintance of the Balearic Islanders with iron in Roman days[884]points to insular detachment. The lack of native domesticable animals inthe Pacific archipelagoes illustrates another limitation incident to therestricted fauna of islands, though this particular lack also retardedthe cultural development of primitive North America. 

[Sidenote: Later stimulation of development. ]

On the other hand, people who have already secured the fundamentalelements of civilization find the partial seclusion of an islandenvironment favorable to their further progress, because it permitstheir powers to unfold unhindered, protects them from the friction ofborder quarrels, from the disturbance and desolation of invading armies, to which continental peoples are constantly exposed. But even here theadvantage lies in insulation but not in isolation, [885] in a locationlike that of England or Japan, near enough to a continent to draw thenceculture, commerce and occasional new strains of blood, but detached bysea-girt boundaries broad enough to ward off overwhelming aggressions. Such a location insures enough segregation for protection, but alsoopportunity for universal contact over the vast commons of the sea. 

[Sidenote: Excessive isolation. ]

Excessive isolation may mean impoverishment in purse and progress evenfor an advanced race. Ireland has long suffered from its outskirtlocation. It lies too much in the shadow of England, and has been barredby the larger island from many warming rays of immigration, culture andcommerce that would have vitalized its national existence. The "roundbarrow" men of the Bronze Age, the Romans, and the Normans never carriedthither their respective contributions to civilization. TheScandinavians infused into its population only inconsiderable strains oftheir vigorous northern blood. [886] In consequence the Irish are to-daysubstantially the same race as in Cæsar's time, except for the small, unassimilated group of antagonistic English and Lowland Scotch, bothTeutonic, in Ulster. [887] Barred by Great Britain from direct contactwith the Continent and all its stimulating influences, suffering fromunfavorable conditions of climate and topography, Ireland's politicalevolution progressed at a snail's pace. It tarried in the tribal stagetill after the English conquest, presenting a primitive socialorganization such as existed nowhere in continental Europe. Property wascommunal till the time of the Tudors, and all law was customary. [888]Over-protected by excessive isolation, it failed to learn the salutarylesson of political co-operation and centralization for defense, such asScotland learned from England's aggressions, and England from her closecontinental neighbors. Great Britain, meanwhile, intercepted the bestthat the Continent had to give, both blows and blessings, and found anadvantage in each. The steady prosecution of her continental warsdemanded the gradual erection of a standing army, which weakened thepower of feudalism; and the voting of funds for the conduct of thesesame wars put a whip into the hand of Parliament. 

[Sidenote: The case of Iceland. ]

The history of Iceland illustrates the advantage and subsequently thedrawback of isolation. The energetic spirits who, at the end of theninth century, resented the centralization of political power in Norwayand escaped from the turmoil and oppression of the home country to theremote asylum offered by Iceland, maintained there till 1262 the onlyabsolutely free republic in the world. [889] They had brought with themvarious seeds of culture and progress, which grew and flowered richly inthis peaceful soil. Iceland became the center of brilliant maritime andcolonial achievements, the home of a native literature which surpassedthat of all its contemporaries except Dante's Italy. [890] But after thedecay of the Greenland colonies converted Iceland from a focal into aremote terminal point, and after the progress of the world became basedupon complex and far-reaching commercial relations, the blight ofextreme isolation settled upon the island; peace became stagnation. 

[Sidenote: Protection of an island environment. ]

The concomitant of isolation is protection. Though this protection, ifthe result of extreme isolation, may mean an early cessation ofdevelopment, history shows that in the lower stages of civilization, when the social organism is small and weak, and its germs of progresseasily blighted, islands offer the sheltered environment in whichimported flowers of culture not only survive but improve; in lessprotected fields they deteriorate or disappear. When learning andChristianity had been almost wiped out on the continent of Europe by theravages of barbarian invasion between 450 and 800 A. D. , in Ireland theygrew and flourished. In the seventh and eighth centuries, the highscholarship of the Irish monks and their enthusiastic love of learningfor its own sake drew to their schools students of the noblest rank fromboth England and France. [891] It was from Irish teachers that the Pictsof Scotland and the Angles of northern England received their firstlessons in Christianity. These fixed their mission stations again onislands, on Iona off southwestern Scotland and on Lindisfarne or HolyIsle near the east coast of Northumbria. [892] It was in the protectedenvironment of the medieval Iceland that Scandinavian literature reachedits highest development. 

Insular protection was undoubtedly a factor in the brilliant culturaldevelopment of Crete. The progress of the early civilization from thelate Stone Age through the Bronze Age was continuous; it bears no traceof any strong outside influence or sudden transition, no evidence ofdisturbance like an invasion or conquest by an alien people till 1200 B. C. When the latest stage of Minoan art was crushed by barbarianincursion from the north. [893]

[Sidenote: Factor of protection in Ceylon and Japan. ]

The early history of the Singhalese monarchy in Ceylon from 250 B. C. To416 A. D. , when even the narrow moat of Palk Strait discouraged Tamilinvasions from the mainland, shows the brilliant development possibleunder even a slight degree of protection. [894] However, in the case ofthese Ceylon Aryans, as in that of the Icelandic Norse, we must keep inmind the fact that the bearers of this culture were picked men, as areearly maritime colonists the world over. The sea selects and thenprotects its island folk. But the seclusion of Ceylon was more favorableto progress than the mainland of India, with its incessant political andreligious upheavals. Japan, in contrast to China's long list ofinvasions, shows the peace of an insular location. She never sufferedany overwhelming influx of alien races or any foreign conquest. Thearmada sent by Kublai Khan in 1281 to subdue the islands paralleled theexperience of the famous Spanish fleet three centuries later in Englishwaters. This is the only attempt to invade Japan that recorded historyshows. [895] In the original peopling of the island by Mongolian stock atthe cost of the Aino aborigines, there is evidence of two distinct andperhaps widely separated immigrations from the mainland, one from Koreaand another from more northern Asia. Thus Japan's population containedtwo continental elements, which seem to have held themselves in therelation of governing and governed class, much as Norman and Saxon didin England, while the Ainos lingered in the geographical background ofmountain fastness and outlying islands, as the primitive Celts did inthe British Isles. [896] In the case both of England and Japan, the islandlocation made the occupation by continental races a fitful, piecemealprocess, not an inundation, because only small parties could land fromtime to time. The result was gradual or partial amalgamation of thevarious stocks, but nowhere annihilation. 

[Sidenote: Character of the invaders as factor. ]

But island location was not the sole factor in the equation. Similarityof race and relative parity of civilization between the successiveimmigrants and the original population, as well as the small numbers ofthe Invaders, made the struggle for the ownership of the island notwholly one-sided, and was later favorable to amalgamation in England asin Japan; whereas very small bands of far-coming Spaniards in theCanaries, Cuba, and Porto Rico resulted in the extinction of theoriginal inhabitants, by the process operating now in New Zealand andAustralia. Prior to the arrival of the Europeans in the Antilles, theconquest of these islands by South American Caribs had resulted in raceintermixture. These sea-marauders brought no women with them in theirsmall boats from the distant mainland, so they killed off the men andmarried the Arawak women of the islands. Here again insular locationplus similarity of race and culture produced amalgamation, as opposedto extermination of the vanquished by over-sea invaders. 

While the insular security of a primitive folk like the Tasmanians, Hawaiians and Malagasies is only passive, that of a civilized peoplelike the English and modern Japanese is active, consciously utilized andreinforced. It is therefore more effective, and productive of morevaried political and cultural results. Such people can allow themselvesextensive contact with other nations, because they know it is in theirpower to control or check such contact at will. Japan took refuge in itsmedieval period in a policy of seclusion suggested by its islandhabitat, [897] relying on the passive protection of isolation. England, onthe other hand, from the time of King Alfred, built up a navy to resistinvasion. The effect, after the political unification of Great Britain, was a guarantee of protection against foreign attack, the concentrationof the national defenses in a navy, [898] the elimination of the standingarmy which despotic monarchs might have used to crush the people, theconsequent release of a large working force from military service, andthe application of these to the development of English Industry. [899]

[Sidenote: Islands as places of refuge. ]

Islands, as naturally protected districts, are often sought places ofrefuge by the weak or vanquished, and thus are drawn into the field ofhistorical movement. We find this principle operating also in the animalworld. The fur seals of the North Pacific have fled from the Americancoasts and found an asylum on the Pribiloff Islands of Bering Sea, wheretheir concentration and isolation have enabled them to become wards ofthe United States government, though this result they did not foresee. The last Rhytina or Arctic sea-cow was found on an island in BeringStrait. [900] So the Veneti of Northern Italy in the fifth century soughtan asylum from the desolating Huns and, a century later, from theLombards, in the deposit islands at the head of the Adriatic, and therefound the geographic conditions for a brilliant commercial and culturaldevelopment. Formosa got its first contingent of Chinese settlers in thethirteenth century in refugees seeking a place of safety from KublaiKhan's armies; and its second in 1644 in a Chinese chief and hisfollowers who had refused to submit to the victorious Manchus. In 1637Formosa was an asylum also for Japanese Christians, who escaped thitherfrom the persecutions attending the discovery of Jesuit conspiraciesagainst the government. [901] The Azores, soon after their rediscovery in1431, were colonized largely by Flemish refugees, [902] just as Icelandwas peopled by rebellious Norwegians. To such voluntary exiles thedividing sea gives a peculiar sense of security, this by a psychologicallaw. Hence England owing to its insular location, and also to its freegovernment, has always been an asylum for the oppressed. The large bodyof Huguenot refugees who sought her shores after the revocation of theEdict of Nantes added a valuable element to her population. 

[Sidenote: Convict islands. ]

Islands find their populations enriched by the immigration of thisselect class who refuse to acquiesce in oppression and injustice. Butthe geographic conditions which make islands natural asylums make themalso obvious places of detention for undesirable members of society;these conditions render segregation complete, escape difficult orimpossible, and control easy. Hence we find that almost all the nationsof the world owning islands have utilized them as penal stations. Fromthe gray dawn of history the Isles of the Blessed have been balanced bythe isles of the cursed. The radiant Garden of Hesperides has found itsantithesis in the black hell of Norfolk Isle, peopled by the "doublycondemned" criminals whom not even the depraved convict citizens ofBotany Bay could tolerate. [903] There is scarcely an island of theMediterranean without this sinister vein in its history. Thearchipelagoes of the ancient Aegean were constantly receiving politicalexiles from continental Greece. Augustus Cæsar confined his degeneratedaughter Julia, the wife of Tiberius, on the island of Pandateria, oneof the Ponza group; and banished her paramour, Sempronius Gracchus, toCercina in the Syrtis Minor off the African coast. [904] Other Romanmatrons of high degree but low morals and corrupt officials were exiledto Corsica, Sardinia, Seriphos, Amorgos and other of the Cyclades. [905]To-day Italy has prisons or penal stations in Ischia, the Ponza group, Procida, Nisida, Elba, Pantellaria, Lampedusa, Ustica, and especiallyin the Lipari Isles, where the convicts are employed in mining sulphur, alum and pumice from the volcanic cones. [906]

[Sidenote: Penal colonies on uninhabited islands. ]

In modern times many remote oceanic islands have gotten their first oronly white settlers from this criminal class. Such are the citizens whomChile has sent to Easter Isle twenty-five hundred miles away out in thePacific. [907] The inhabitants of Fernando Noronha, 125 miles off theeastern point of South America, are convicts from Brazil, together withthe warders and troops who guard them. [908] In 1832 Ecuador began to usethe uninhabited Gallapagos Islands, lying 730 miles west of its coast, as a penal settlement. [909] The history of St. Helena is typical. Itsfirst inhabitants were some Portuguese deserters who in punishment weremarooned here from a Portuguese ship with a supply of seed and cattle. They proved industrious and had cultivated a good deal of the land whenfour years later they were removed to Portugal. The next inhabitantswere a few slaves of both sexes who escaped from a slave ship that hadstopped here for wood and water. These multiplied, worked and restoredthe overgrown plantations of their predecessors, till a Portuguesevessel about twenty years later was sent to exterminate them. A fewescaped to the woods, however, and were found there in prosperity in1588. [910] From 1815 till 1821 St. Helena was the prison of Napoleon. 

Many of these penal islands seem chosen with a view to their severe orunhealthy climate, which would forever repel free immigration andtherefore render them useless for any other purpose. This is true of theFrench Isles du Salut off the Guiana coast, of Spanish Fernando Po inthe Gulf of Guinea, of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, notoriouslyunhealthy, which receive the criminals of British India, [911] and ofnumerous others. A bleak climate and unproductive soil have added to thehorror of exile life in Sakhalin, as they overshadowed existence in theFalkland Islands, when these were a penal colony of Spain and later ofArgentine. [912]

[Sidenote: Island prisons for political offenders. ]

In the case of political offenders and incorrigibles, the island prisonis as remote and inaccessible as possible. The classic example isNapoleon's consignment to Elba and subsequently to St. Helena, whenceescape was impossible. Spain has sent its rebellious subjects, evenuniversity professors of independent views, to Fernando Po in the Gulfof Guinea and Teneriffe in the Canaries. [913] Russian politicaloffenders of the most dangerous class are confined first in theSchlüsselberg prison, situated on a small island in Lake Ladoga near theeffluence of the Neva. There they languish in solitary confinement orare transferred to far-off Sakhalin, whose very name is taboo in St. Petersburg. [914] During our Civil War, one of the Dry Tortugas, lying ahundred miles west of the southern point of Florida and at that time themost isolated island belonging to the American government, was used as aprison for dangerous Confederates; and here later three conspirators inthe assassination of President Lincoln were incarcerated. [915] Far awayto the southeast, off the coast of South America, are the Isles duSalut, a French penal station for criminals of the worst class. The Isledu Diable, ominous of name, lies farthest out to sea. This was for fiveyears the prison of Dreyfus. Its other inhabitants are lepers. Isles ofthe cursed indeed!

[Sidenote: Islands as places of survival. ]

What islands have they tend to hold, to segregate, secrete from meddlinghands, preserve untouched and unaltered. Owing to this power to protect, islands show a large percentage of rare archaic forms of animal andplant life. The insular fauna of Australia, Tasmania, New Guinea andMadagascar display a succession of strange, ancestral forms going backto the biological infancy of the world. The Canaries in the Atlantic andCelebes In the Pacific are museums of living antiquities, some of themdating probably from Miocene times. [916] Such survivals are foundelsewhere only in high mountains, whose inaccessible slopes also offerprotection against excessive competition. Hence some of the antiquatedspecies of insular Celebes, Formosa, Japan and Hainon occur again on theAsiatic mainland only in the Himalayas. [917]

For man, too, islands and their sister areas of isolation, mountains, are areas of survivals. The shrinking remnants of that half-dwarfNegrito stock which may have formed the aboriginal population ofsouthern Asia are found to-day only in the mountains of peninsularIndia and in island groups like the Andaman and the Philippines. Buteven in the Philippines, they are confined either to the mountainousinteriors of the larger islands, or to little coastal islets likePolillo, Alabat, Jomalig, and others. [918] [See map page 147. ] Yezo, Sakhalin and the Kurile Isles harbor the last feeble remnants of theAinos, a primitive people who formerly occupied a long stretch of theAsiatic coast south of the Amur mouth. The protected environment ofthese islands has postponed the doom of extinction toward which theAinos are hastening. [919] With insular conservatism they dress, live andseek their food on the sea to-day, just as depicted in Japanese art andliterature at the dawn of history. [920] [See map page 103. ]

[Sidenote: Insular survivals of manners and customs. ]

It is chiefly on islands of harsh climatic conditions, like Sakhalin, orof peculiarly restricted resources and area, like the Andaman, or ofremote, side-tracked location, like Iceland, Sardinia and Cape Breton, that the stamp of the primitive or antiquated is strongest. Even whennot apparent in race stock, owing to the ubiquitous colonization ofmaritime peoples, it marks the language and customs of even theselate-coming occupants, because an island environment asserts always somepower to isolate. This is due not only to the encircling moat of sea, but also to the restricted insular area, too small to attract to itselfthe great currents of human activity which infuse cosmopolitan ideas andinnovations, and too poor to buy the material improvements whichprogress offers. If the tourist in Sicily finds the women of Taormina orGirgenti spinning with a hand spindle, and the express trains movingonly twelve miles an hour, he can take these two facts as the product ofa small, detached area, although this island lies at the crossroads ofthe Mediterranean. Corsica and Sardinia, lying off the main routes oftravel in this basin, are two of the most primitive and isolated spotsof Europe. Here the old wooden plow of Roman days is still in common useas it is in Crete, and feudal institutions of the Middle Ages stillprevail to some extent[921], --a fact which recalls the long survival offeudalism in Japan. The little Isle of Man, almost in sight of theEnglish coast, has retained an old Norse form of government. Heresurvives the primitive custom of orally proclaiming every new law fromthe Tynwald Hill before it can take effect, [922] and the other ancientusage of holding the court of justice on the same hill under the opensky. The Faroe Islands and Iceland are museums of Norse antiquities. Thestamp of isolation and therefore conservatism is most marked in theremoter, northern islands. Surnames are rare in Iceland, and such asexist are mostly of foreign origin. In their place, Christian namesfollowed by the patronymic prevail; but in the Faroes, these patronymicshave in a great many cases become recognized as surnames. So again, while the Faroese women still use a rude spinning-wheel introduced fromScotland in 1671, in Iceland this spinning-wheel was still an innovationin 1800, and even to-day competes with spindles. Hand-querns forgrinding wheat, stone hammers for pounding fish and roots, the woodenweighing-beam of the ancient Northmen, and quaint marriage customs givethe final touch of aloofness and antiquity to life on these remoteislands. [923]

[Sidenote: Effects of small area in islands. ]

As all island life bears more or less the mark of isolation, so itbetrays the narrow area that has served at its base. Though islands showa wide variation in size from the 301, 000 square miles (771, 900 squarekilometers) of New Guinea or the 291, 000 square miles (745, 950 squarekilometers) of Borneo to the private estates like the Scilly Isles, Gardiner and Shelter islands off Long Island, or those small, sea-fencedpastures for sheep and goats near the New England coast and in theAegean, yet small islands predominate; the large ones are very few. Islands comprise a scant seven per cent. Of the total land area of theearth, and their number is very great, --nine hundred, for instance, inthe Philippine group alone. Therefore small area is a conspicuousfeature of islands generally. It produces in island people all thoseeffects which are characteristic of small, naturally defined areas, especially early or precocious social, political and culturaldevelopment. The value of islands in this respect belongs to the youthof the world, as seen in the ancient Mediterranean, or in theadolescence of modern primitive races; it declines as the limitationsrather than the advantages of restricted territory preponderate in laterhistorical development. 

[Sidenote: Political dominion of small islands. ]

This early maturity, combined with the power to expend the concentratednational or tribal forces in any given direction, often results in thedomination of a very small island over a large group. In the SocietyIslands, Cook found little Balabola ruling over Ulietea (Raitea) andOtaha, the former of these alone being over twice the size of Balabola, whose name commanded respect as far as Tahiti. [924] The Fiji Archipelagowas ruled in pre-Christian days by the little islet of Mbau, scarcely amile long, which lies like a pebble beside massive Viti Levu. It was thechief center of political power and its supremacy was owned by nearlyall the group. The next important political center was Rewa, no largerthan Mbau, which had for its subject big Mbengga. [925] In the same way, the Solomon group was ruled by Mongusaie and Simbo, just as tiny NewLauenberg lorded it over the larger islands of the BismarckArchipelago. [926] When the Dutch in 1613 undertook the conquest of thecoveted Spice Isles, they found there two rival sultans seated in thetwo minute islets of Ternate and Tidore off the west coast of Gilolo. Their collective possessions, which the Dutch took, comprised all theMoluccas, the Ke and Banda groups, the whole of northwestern New Guinea, and Mindanao of the Philippines. [927]

It was no unusual thing for classic Aegean isles to control and exploitgoodly stretches of the nearest coast, or to exercise dominion overother islands. Aristotle tells us that Crete's location across thesouthern end of the Aegean Sea confirmed to it by nature the early navalempire of the Hellenic world. Minos conquered some of the islands, colonized others, [928] and, according to the story of Theseus and theMinotaur, laid Athens under tribute; but his suppression of piracy inthese waters and his conspicuous leadership in the art of navigationpoint to a yet more significant supremacy. So insular Venice ruled andexploited large dependencies. The island of Zealand, strategicallylocated at the entrance to the Baltic, has been the heart and head andstrong right arm of the Danish dominion, through all its long history offluctuating boundaries. England's insularity has been the strongestsingle factor in the growth of her vast colonial empire and in themaintenance of its loyal allegiance and solidarity. The widely strewnplantation of her colonies is the result of that teeming island seed-bedat home; while the very smallness of the mother country is the guaranteeof its supremacy over its dependencies, because it is too small eitherto oppress them or to get along without them. Now an Asiatic variant ofEnglish history is promised us by growing Japan. 

[Sidenote: Economic limitations of their small area. ]

Though political supremacy is possible even to an island ofinsignificant size, both the advantages arid the grave disadvantages ofsmall area are constantly asserting themselves. Some developmentspeculiar to large territory are here eliminated at the start. Forinstance, robbery and brigandage, which were so long a scourge inpeninsular Greece, were unheard of on the small Aegean islands. Sheep-raising was at an early date safer in England than on theContinent, because wolves were earlier exterminated there. Bio-geographyshows an increasing impoverishment in the flora and fauna, of smallislands with distance from the mainland. In the Pacific Ocean, thisprogressive impoverishment from west to east has had great influenceupon human life in the islands. In Polynesia, therefore, all influencesof the chase and of pastoral life are wanting, while in Melanesia, withits larger islands and larger number of land animals, hunting stillplays an important part, and is the chief source of subsistence for manyNew Guinea villages. [929] Therefore a corresponding decay of projectileweapons is to be traced west to east, and is conspicuous in those crumbsof land constituting Polynesia and Micronesia. The limit of the bow andarrow includes the northeastern portion of the Philippine group, cutsthrough the Malay Archipelago so as to include the Moluccas and Flores, includes Melanesia as far as Tonga or the Friendly Isles, but excludesMicronesia, Polynesia and Australia, Even in Melanesia, however, bowsand arrows are not universal; they are lacking in peripheral islandslike New Caledonia and New Ireland. [930]

The restriction of trees, also, with the exception of the coco-palm andpandanus, has had its effect upon boat making. This generalimpoverishment is unmistakably reflected in the whole civilization ofthe smaller islands of Polynesia and Micronesia, especially in thePaumota and Pelew groups. In the countless coralline islands which strewthe Pacific, another restricting factor is found in their monotonousgeological formation. Owing to the lack of hard stone, especially offlint, native utensils and weapons have to be fashioned out of wood, bones, shells, and sharks' teeth. [931]

[Sidenote: Poverty of alluvial lowlands in islands. ]

Nor does the geographical limitation end here. Islands haveproportionately a scanter allowance of fertile alluvial lowlands thanhave continents. This follows from their geological history, except inthe case of those low deposit islands built up from the waste of theland. Most islands are summits of submerged mountain ranges, likeCorsica and Sardinia, the Aegean archipelagoes, the Greater Antilles, Vancouver, and the countless fiord groups; or they are single orcomposite volcanic cones, like the Canaries, Azores, Lipari, Kurile, Fiji, Ascension, St. Helena and the Lesser Antilles; or they are acombination of highland subsidence and volcanic out-thrust, like Japan, the Philippines, the long Sunda chain and Iceland. Both geologichistories involve high reliefs, steep slopes, a deep surrounding sea, and hence rarely a shallow continental shelf for the accumulation ofbroad alluvial lowlands. Among the Aegean Isles only Naxos has a floodplain; all the rest have steep coasts, with few sand or gravel beaches, and only small deposit plains at the head of deep and precipitousembayments. Japan's area of arable soil is to-day only 15. 7 per cent. Ofits total surface, even after the gentler slopes of its mountains havebeen terraced up two thousand feet. Some authorities put the figurelower, at 10 and 12 per cent. 

[Sidenote: Dense populations of islands. ]

Yet in spite of limited area and this paucity of local resources, islands constantly surprise us by their relatively dense populations. More often than not they show a density exceeding that of the nearestmainland having the same zonal location, often the same geologicstructure and soil. Along with other small, naturally defined areas, they tend to a closer packing of the population. Yet side by side withthis relative over-population, we find other islands uninhabited ortenanted only by sheep, goats and cattle. 

In the wide Pacific world comprising Australia and Oceanica, islandstake up fifteen per cent. Of the total land area, but they containforty-four per cent. Of the population. [932] The insular empire ofJapan, despite the paucity of its arable soil, has a density ofpopulation nearly twice that of China, nearly three times that of Korea, and exceeding that of any political subdivision of continental Asia; butJapan, in turn, is surpassed in congestion only by Java, with a densityof 587 to the square mile, [933] which almost equals that of Belgium(643) and England (600). Great Britain has a density of population (453to the square mile) only exceeded in continental Europe by that ofBelgium, but surpassed nearly threefold by that of the little ChannelIsles, which amounts to 1254 to the square mile. [934] If the averagedensity of the United Kingdom is greatly diminished in Ireland, just asItaly's is in Sardinia and France's in Corsica, this fact is dueprimarily to a side-tracked or overshadowed location and adversetopography, combined with misgovernment. 

If we compare countries which are partly insular, partly continental, the same truth emerges. The kingdom of Greece has fifteen per cent ofits territory in islands. Here again population reaches its greatestcompactness in Corfu and Zante, which are nearly thrice as thicklyinhabited as the rest of Greece. [935] Similarly the islands whichconstitute so large a part of Denmark have an average density of 269 tothe square mile as opposed to the 112 of Jutland. The figures rise to215 to the square mile in the Danish West Indies, but drop low in thebleak, subarctic insular dependencies of Greenland, Iceland and theFaroes. Portugal's density is tripled in the Madeiras[936] and doubledin the Azores, [937] but drops in the badly placed Cape Verde Island, exposed to tropical heat and the desiccating tradewinds blowing off theSahara. Spain's average rises twenty-five per cent. In the CanaryIslands, which she has colonized, and France's nearly doubles in theFrench West Indies. The British West Indies, also, with the exception ofthe broken coral bank constituting the Bahamas, show a similarsurprising density of population, which in Bermuda and Barbadoessurpasses that of England, and approximates the teeming human life ofthe Channel Isles. 

[Sidenote: Density of population in Polynesia. ]

This general tendency toward a close packing of the population in thesmaller areas of land comes out just as distinctly in islands inhabitedby natural peoples in the lower stages of development. Despite theretarded economic methods peculiar to savagery and barbarism, thePolynesian islands, for instance, often show a density of populationequal to that of Spain and Greece (100 to the square mile) and exceedingthat of European Turkey and Russia. "Over the whole extent of the SouthSea, " says Robert Louis Stevenson, "from one tropic to another, we findtraces of a bygone state of over-population, when the resources of evena tropical soil were taxed, and even the improvident Polynesian trembledfor the future. "[938] He calls the Gilbert atolls "warrens of men. "[939]One of them, Drummond's Island, with, an area of about twenty squaremiles, contained a population of 10, 000 in 1840, and all the atolls weredensely populated. [940] To-day they count 35, 000 inhabitants in lessthan 200 square miles. The neighboring Marshall group has 15, 000 on its158 square miles of area. The Caroline and Pelew archipelagoes show adensity of 69 to the square mile, the Tonga or Friendly group harborabout 60 and the French holdings of Futuma and Wallis (or Uea) thesame. [941] So the Bismarck Archipelago, Solomon, Hawaiian, Samoan andMarianne islands have to-day populations by no means sparse, despite theblight that everywhere follows the contact of superior with primitivepeoples. 

[Sidenote: Various causes of this density. ]

In all these cases, if economic status be taken into account, we have adensity bordering on congestion; but the situation assumes a new aspectif we realize that the crowded inhabitants of small islands often havethe run of the coco plantations and fishing grounds of an entirearchipelago. The smaller, less desirable islands are retained as fishand coco-palm preserves to be visited only periodically. Of a low, cramped, monotonous coral group, often only the largest and mostproductive is inhabited, [942] but that contains a population surprisingin view of the small base, restricted resources and low cultural statusof its inhabitants. The population of the wide-strewn Paumota atollswas estimated as about 10, 000 in 1840. Of these fully one-half lived onAnaa or Chain Island, and one-fourth on Gambier, but they levied on theresources of the other islands for supplies. [943] The Tonga Islands atthe same time were estimated to have 20, 000 inhabitants, about half ofwhom were concentrated on Tongatabu, while Hapai and Varao held about4, 000 each. [944]

[Sidenote: Crowded and vacant islands. ]

This is one of the sharp contrasts in island life, --here density akin tocongestion, there a few miles away a deserted reef or cone rising fromthe sea, tenanted only by sheep or goats or marine birds, its solitudebroken only by the occasional crunching of a boat's keel upon its beach, as some visitant from a neighboring isle comes to shear wool, gathercoco-nuts, catch birds or collect their eggs. All the 500 inhabitants ofthe Westman Isles off the southern coast of Iceland live in one villageon Heimey, and support themselves almost entirely by fishing and fowlingbirds on the wild crags of the archipelago. [945] An oceanic climate, free contact with the Gulf Stream, and remoteness from the widespreadice fields of Iceland give them an advantage over the vast island to thenorth. Only twenty-seven of the ninety islands composing the Orkneygroup are inhabited, and about forty smaller ones afford natural meadowsfor sheep on their old red sandstone soil;[946] but Pomona, the largestOrkney has 17, 000 inhabitants on its 207 square miles of territory or 85to the square mile. The Shetlands tell the same story--29 out of 100islands inhabited, some of the _holms_ or smaller islets serving aspastures for the sturdy ponies and diminutive cattle, and Mainland, thelargest of the group, showing 58 inhabitants to the square mile. This isa density far greater than is reached in the nearby regions of Scotland, where the county of Sutherland can boast only 13 to the square mile, andInvernesshire 20. Here again insularity and contracted area do theirwork of compressing population. 

The causes of this insular density of population are not far to seek. Islands can always rely on the double larder of land and sea. They aremoreover prone to focus in themselves the fishing industry of a largecontinental area, owing to their ample contact with the sea. Shetland isnow the chief seat of the Scotch herring fishery, a fact whichcontributes to its comparatively dense population. The concentration ofthe French export trade of Newfoundland fish in little St. Pierre andMiquelon accounts for the relatively teeming population (70 to thesquare mile) and the wealth of those scraps of islands. So the LofodenIslands of Norway, like Iceland, Newfoundland and Sakhalin, balance agenerous sea against an ungenerous soil, and thus support a populationotherwise impossible. 

[Sidenote: Oceanic climate as factor. ]

For these far northern islands, the moderating effect of an oceanicclimate has been a factor in making them relatively populous, just as itis on tropical isles by mitigating heat and drought. The prosperity andpopulousness of the Bermuda Islands are to be explained largely by themild, equable climate which permits the raising of early vegetables andflowers for English and American markets. Like climatic conditions and alike industry account for the 2, 000 souls living on the inhabitedislands of the Scilly group. Here intensive horticulture supports alarge force of workmen and yields a profit to the lord proprietor. Syrosin the Cyclades fattens on its early spring vegetable trade with Athensand Constantinople. [947]

In the Mediterranean lands, where drought and excessive heat during thegrowing season offer adverse conditions for agriculture, the smallislands, especially those of fertile volcanic soil, show the greatestproductivity and hence marked density of population. Though the rainfallmay be slight, except where a volcanic peak rises to condense moisture, heavy dews and the thick mists of spring quicken vegetation. This is thecase in Malta, which boasts a population of 2, 000 to the square mile, exclusive of the English garrison. [948] Little Limosa and Pantellaria, the merest fragments of land out in the mid-channel of theMediterranean, have a population of 200 to the square mile. [949] TheLipari group north of Sicily average nearly 400 on every square mile oftheir fertile soil;[950] but this average rises in Salina to 500, and inLipari itself, as also in Ponza of the Pontine group, to nearly 1300. Here fertile volcanic slopes of highly cultivated land lift vineyards, orchards of figs, and plantations of currants to the sunny air. Butnearby Alicuri, almost uncultivated, has a sparse population of somefive hundred shepherds and fishermen. Panaria and Filicuri are in aboutthe same plight. Here again we find those sharp island contrasts. 

[Sidenote: Relation of density to area. ]

The insular region of the Indian Ocean, which is inhabited by peoplesquite different in race and cultural status from those of theMediterranean, yet again demonstrates the power of islands to attract, preserve, multiply and concentrate population. This is especially trueof the smaller islands, which in every case show a density of populationmany times that of the neighboring mainland of Africa. Only vastMadagascar, continental in size, repeats the sparsity of the continent. An oceanic climate increases the humidity of the islands as comparedwith the mainland lying in the same desiccating tradewind belt. Moreovertheir small area has enabled them to be permeated by incoming Arab, English, and French influences, which have raised their status ofcivilization and therewith the average density of population. Thisculminates in English Mauritius, which shows 540 inhabitants to thesquare mile, occupied in the production of sugar, molasses, rum, vanilla, aloes, and copra. In Zanzibar this density is 220 to the squaremile; in Reunion 230; in Mayotte, the Comores and Seychelles, theaverage varies from 100 to 145 to the square mile, though Mahe in theSeychelles group has one town of 20, 000 inhabitants. [951]

In the Malay Archipelago, an oceanic climate and tropical location havecombined to stimulate fertility to the greatest extent; but this localwealth has been exploited in the highest degree in the smaller islandshaving relatively the longest coastline and amplest contact with thesea. The great continent-like areas of Borneo, New Guinea and Sumatrashow a correspondingly sparse population; Java, smaller than thesmallest of these and coated with mud from its fertilizing volcanoes, supports 587 inhabitants to the square mile; but this exceptionalaverage is due to rare local productivity. Java's little neighbors tothe east, Bali and Lombok, each with an area of only about 2100 squaremiles, have a density respectively of 338 and 195 to the square mile. This density rises suddenly in small Amboina (area 264 square miles), the isle of the famous clove monopoly, to 1000, [952] drops in the otherMoluccas, where Papuan influences are strong, even to 20, but risesagain in the pure Malayan Philippines to 69. In the Philippines adistinct connection is to be traced between the density of populationand smallness of area. The explanation lies in the attraction of thecoast for the sea-faring Malay race, and the mathematical law ofincrease of shoreline with decrease of insular area. Since 65 per cent. Of the whole Philippine population inhabits coastal municipalities, itis not surprising that the 73 islands from ten to a hundred square milesin area count 127 inhabitants to the square mile, and those of less thanten square miles, of which there are nearly a thousand, have a densityof 238. [953]

This same insular density, supported by fertility, fisheries and trade, appears again in the West Indies, and also the contrast in densitybetween large and small islands down to a certain limit ofdiminutiveness. The Greater Antilles increase in density from Cubathrough smaller Haiti and Jamaica down to little Porto Rico, whichboasts 264 inhabitants to the square mile. In the smaller area of theDanish Indies and Guadeloupe about this same density (215 and 274)reappears; but it mounts to 470 in Martinique and to 1160 inBarbadoes. [954]

[Sidenote: Island resorts. ]

Climate advantages often encourage density of population on islands, byattracting to them visitors who make a local demand for the fruits ofthe soil and thereby swell the income of the islands. For instance, about the densely populated region of the Gulf of Naples, Procida has14, 000 inhabitants on its one and a half square miles of area, whilefertile Ischia and Capri have 1400 to the square mile. Here a richvolcanic soil, peaks which attract rain by their altitude and visitorsby their beauty, and a mild oceanic climate delightful in winter as insummer, all contribute to density of population. Sicily, Malta and Corfualso gain in the same way in winter. The Isle of Man owes some of itsrecent increase of population, now 238 to the square mile, to the factthat it has become the summer playground for the numerous factoryworkers of Lancashire in England. 

[Sidenote: Density of population affected by focal location for trade. ]

Sometimes climatic advantages are reinforced by a favorable focal point, which brings the profits of trade to supplement those of agriculture. This factor of distributing and exporting center has undoubtedlycontributed to the prosperity and population of Reunion, Mahe, Mauritiusand Zanzibar, as it did formerly to that of ancient Rhodes and modernSt. Thomas at the angle of the Antilles. Barbadoes, by reason of itsoutpost location to the east of the Windward Isles, is the first tocatch incoming vessels from England, and is therefore a focus ofsteamship lines and a distributing point for the southern archipelago, so that we find here the greatest density of any island in the WestIndies. [955] The 9405 inhabitants of Charlotte Amalie on St. Thomas andthe 15, 000 of Willemsted on Curaçao give these also a characteristicinsular density. Samos, blessed with good soil, an excellent position onAegean maritime routes, and virtual autonomy, supports a population of300 to the square mile. [956]

Focal location alone can often achieve this density. Syros, one of thesmallest and by nature the most barren of the Cyclades, though welltilled is the great commercial and shipping center of the Aegean, andhas in Hermupolis with its 17, 700 population by far the largest town ofthe archipelago. [957] This development has come since Greece achievedits independence. It reminds us of the distinction and doubtless alsopopulation that belonged to Delos in ancient days. Advantageouscommercial location and density of population characterize Kilwauru andSingapore at the east and west extremities of the Malay Archipelago. TheBahrein Islands, which England has acquired in the Persian Gulf, serveas an emporium of trade with eastern Arabia and have a local wealth intheir pearl fisheries. These facts account for the 68, 000 inhabitantsdwelling on their 240 square miles (600 square kilometers) of sterilesurface. [958]

[Sidenote: Overflow of island population to the mainland. ]

The concentration of population in these favored spots of land withinelastic boundaries, and the tendency of that population to increaseunder the stimulating, interactive life make the restriction of areasoon felt. For this reason, so many colonies which are started oninshore islets from motives of protection have to be transferred to themainland to insure a food supply. A settlement of Huguenots, made in1535 on an island in the harbor of Rio Janeiro, found its base too smallfor cultivation, but feared the attack of the hostile Indians andPortuguese on the mainland. After three years of a struggling existence, it fell a prey to the Portuguese, [959] De Monts' short-lived colony onan island in the mouth of the St. Croix River in 1604 had an excellentsite for defence, but was cut off by the drifting ice in winter frommainland supplies of wood, water and game, while no cultivation waspossible in the sandy soil. [960]

Such sites suffice for mere trading posts, but are inadequate for thelarger social group of a real colony. The early Greek colonists, withtheir predilection for insular locations, recognized this limitation andoffset it by the occupation of a strip of the nearest mainland, cultivated and defended by fortified posts, as an adjunct to the supportof the islands. Such a subsidiary coastal hem was called a _Paraea_. Theancient Greek colonies on the islands of Thasos and Samothrace eachpossessed such a Paraea. [961] The Aeolian inhabitants of Tenedos held astrip of the opposite Troad coast north of Cape Lekton, while those ofLesbos appropriated the south coast of the Troad. [962] In the same wayTarentum and Syracuse, begun on inshore islands, soon overflowed on tothe mainland. Sometimes the island site is abandoned altogether and thecolony transferred to the mainland. The ancient Greek colony of Cyrenehad an initial existence on the island of Platea just off the Libyancoast, but, not flourishing there, was moved after an interval ofseveral years to the African mainland, where "the sky was perforated" bythe mountains of Barca. [963] De Monts' colony was removed from itsisland to Port Royal in Nova Scotia. 

[Sidenote: Precocious development of island agriculture. ]

Where an island offers in its climate and soil conditions favorable toagriculture, tillage begins early to assume an intensive, scientificcharacter, to supply the increasing demand for food. The land, fixed inthe amount of area, must be made elastic in its productivity by theapplication of intelligence and industry. Hence in island habitats, anearly development of agriculture, accompanied by a parallel skill inexploiting the food resources of the sea, is a prevailing feature. InOceanica, agriculture is everywhere indigenous, but shows greatestprogress in islands like Tonga and Fiji, where climate and soil areneither lavish nor niggardly in their gifts, but yield a due return forthe labor of tillage. The Society[964] and Samoan Islands, where naturehas been more prodigal, rank lower in agriculture, though George Forsterfound in Tahiti a relatively high degree of cultivation. [965] The small, rocky, coralline Paumotas rank lower still, but even here plantains, sugar-cane, sweet potatoes, yams, taro and solanum are raised. Thecrowded atolls of the Gilbert group show pains-taking tillage. Here wefind coco-palms with their roots fertilized with powdered pumice, andtaro cultivated in trenches excavated for the purpose and located nearthe lagoons, so that the water may percolate through the coral sand tothe thirsty roots. [966] To lonely Easter Isle nature has applied arelentless lash. At the time of Cook's visit it was woodless andboatless except for one rickety canoe, and therefore was almost excludedfrom the food supplies of the sea. Hence its destitute natives, by meansof careful and often ingenious tillage, made its parched and rockyslopes support excellent plantations of bananas and sugar-cane. [967]

The islands of Melanesia show generally fenced fields, terrace farmingon mountain sides, irrigation canals, fertilized soils, well trimmedshade trees and beautiful flower gardens, [968] proof that thecultivation of the ground has advanced to the aesthetic stage, as it hasin insular Japan. In Tonga the coco-palm plantations are weeded andmanured. Here, after a devastating war, the victorious chief devotes hisattention to the cultivation of the land, which soon assumes a beautifuland flourishing appearance. [969] In Tongatabu, which is described by theearly visitors as one big garden, Cook found officials appointed toinspect all produce of the island and to enforce the cultivation of acertain quota of land by each householder. [970] Here agriculture is anational concern. 

[Sidenote: Melanesian agriculture. ]

In the minute land fragments which constitute Micronesia, fishing isthe chief source of subsistence; agriculture, especially for the allimportant taro, is limited to the larger islands like the Pelews. In thevast islands of western Melanesia, agriculture is on the whole lessadvanced. New Guinea, where the chase yields support to many villages, has large sections still a wilderness, though some parts are cultivatedlike a garden. In the smaller Melanesian islands, such as New Hebrides, New Britain and the Solomon group, we find extensive plantations laidout on irrigated terraces, In New Hebrides and the Banks Islands everysingle village has its flowers and aromatic herbs. [971] But it is inFiji that native island agriculture seems to culminate. Here a race ofdark, frizzly haired savages, addicted to cannibalism, have in the artof tillage taken a spurt forward in civilization, till in this respectthey stand abreast of the average European. The German asparagus bed isnot cultivated more carefully than the yam plants of Fiji; these alsoare grown in mounds made of soil which has been previously pulverized byhand. The variety and excellence of their vegetable products areamazing, and find their reflection in an elaborate national cuisine, strangely at variance with the otherwise savage life. [972]

West of Melanesia, the Malay Archipelago shows a high average oftillage. The inhabitants of Java, Madura, Bali, Lombok and Sumbawa areskilled agriculturists and employ an elaborate system ofirrigation, [973] but the natives of Timor, on the other hand, have madelittle progress. In the Philippines a rich and varied agriculture hasbeen the chief source of wealth since the Spanish conquest early in thesixteenth century, proving a native aptitude which began to develop longbefore. [974]

[Sidenote: Intensive tillage. ]

The dense population of the Mediterranean islands is the concomitant ofan advanced agriculture. The connection between elaborate tillage andscant insular area is indicated in the earliest history of classicAegina. The inhabitants of this island were called Myrmidons, Strabotells us, because by digging like ants they covered the rocks with earthto cultivate all the ground; and in order to economize the soil for thispurpose, lived in excavations under ground and abstained from the useof bricks. [975] To-day, terraced slopes, irrigation, hand-made soils, hoe and spade tillage, rotation of crops, and a rich variety of fieldand garden products characterize the economic history of mostMediterranean islands, whether Elba, the Lipari, Ponza, Procida, Capri, Ischia, Pantellaria, Lampedusa, [976] or the Aegean groups. The sterilerock of Malta has been converted for two-thirds of its area into fertilegardens, fields and orchards. The upper stratum of rock has beenpulverized and enriched by manure; the surface has been terraced andwalled to protect it against high winds. In consequence, the Maltesegardens are famous throughout the Mediterranean. [977] In the Cycladesevery patch of tillable ground is cultivated by the industriousinhabitants. Terraced slopes are green with orchards of various southernfruits, and between the trees are planted melons and vegetables. Fallowland and uncultivated hillsides, as well as the limestone islands fitonly for pastures, are used for flocks of sheep and goats. [978]

[Sidenote: Japanese agriculture. ]

It is in Japan that agriculture has attained a national and aestheticimportance reached nowhere else. Of the 150, 000 square milesconstituting Japan proper, two-thirds are mountains; large tracts oflowlands are useless rock wastes, owing to the detritus carried down byinundating mountain torrents. [979] Hence to-day arable land forms only15. 7 per cent. Of the whole area. During the two hundred and fifty yearsof exclusion when emigration and foreign trade were forbidden, a largeand growing population had to be supplied from a small insular area, further restricted by reason of the configuration of the surface. Herethe geographical effects of a small, naturally defined area worked outto their logical conclusion, Consequently agriculture progressed rapidlyand gave the farmer a rank in the social scale such as he attainednowhere else. [980] His methods of tillage are much the same as inovercrowded China, but his national importance and hence his ranking insociety is much higher. In Japan to-day farming absorbs 60 per cent. Ofthe population. The system of tillage, in many respects primitive, isyet very thorough, and by means of skilful manuring makes one plot ofground yield two or three crops per annum. [981] Every inch of arableland is cultivated in grain, vegetables and fruits. Mountains and hillsare terraced and tilled far up their slopes. Meadows are conspicuouslyabsent, as are also fallow fields. Land is too valuable to lie idle. Labor is chiefly manual and is shared by the women and children; mattockand hoe are more common than the plow. [982] Such elaborate cultivationand such pressure of population eventuate in small holdings. In Japanone hectar (2 1-2 acres) is the average farm per family. 

[Sidenote: The case of England. ]

While Japan's agriculture reflected the small area of an islandenvironment, and under its influence reached a high development, England's from the beginning of the fifteenth century declined beforethe competition of English commerce, which gained ascendency owing tothe easy accessibility of Great Britain to the markets of Europe. Theravages of the Black Death in the latter half of the fourteenth centuryproduced a scarcity of agricultural laborers and hence a prohibitiveincrease of wages. To economize labor, the great proprietors resorted tosheep farming and the raising of wool, which, either in the raw state ormanufactured into cloth, became the basis of English foreign trade. Adistinct deterioration in agriculture followed this reversion to apastoral basis of economic life, supplemented by a growing commercewhich absorbed all the enterprise of the country. The steady contractionof the area under tillage threw out of employment the great mass ofagricultural laborers, made them paupers and vagrants. [983] HenceEngland entered the period of maritime discoveries with a redundantpopulation. This furnished the raw material for her colonies, and madeher territorial expansion assume a solid, permanent character, unknownto the flimsy trading stations which mark the mere extension of a fieldof commerce. 

[Sidenote: Emigration and colonization from islands. ]

Even when agriculture, fisheries and commerce have done their utmost, inthe various stages of civilization, to increase the food supply, yetinsular populations tend to outgrow the means of subsistence procurablefrom their narrow base. Hence islanders, like peninsula peoples, areprone to emigrate and colonize. This tendency is encouraged by theirmobility, born of their nautical skill and maritime location. KingMinos of Crete, according to Thucydides and Aristotle, colonized theCyclades. [984] Greece, from its redundant population, peopled variousAegean and Ionian islands, which in turn threw off spores of settlementsto other isles and shores. Corcyra, which was colonized from thePeloponnesus, sent out a daughter colony to Epidamnos on the Illyriancoast. Andros, one of the Cyclades, as early as 654 B. C. , colonizedAcanthus and Stagirus in Chalcidice. [985] Paros, settled first byCretans and then by Ionians, at a very early date sent colonies toThasos and to Parium on the Propontis, while Samos was a perennialfountain emitting streams of settlement to Thrace, Cilicia, Crete, Italyand Sicily. [Map page 251. ]

This moving picture of Greek emigration is duplicated in the MalayArchipelago, especially in the smaller eastern islands. Almost everyMalay tribe has traditions based upon migrations. The southernPhilippines derived the considerable Mohammedan element of theirpopulations from the Samal Laut, who came from Sumatra and the islandsof the Strait of Malacca. [986] A Malayan strain can be traced throughPolynesia to far-off Easter Isle. Sometimes the emigration is avoluntary exile from home for a short period and a definite purpose. Theinhabitants of Bouton, Binungku, and the neighboring islets, all of themlocated southeast of Celebes, have for the past twenty-five years comein great numbers to the larger islands of Ceram, Buru, Amboina andBanda, where they have laid out and carefully cultivated plantations ofmaize, tobacco, bananas and coco-palms. Generally only the men come, work two years, save their profits and then return home. These ambitioustillers look like savages, are shy as wild things of the woods, and worknaked to the waist. [987]

Polynesia, Melanesia and Micronesia, where every condition of land andsea tends to develop the migratory spirit, form a region of extensivecolonization. [988] Settlements of one race are scattered among theisland groups of another, making the ethnic boundaries wide penumbras. In some smaller islands of Melanesia the Polynesian colonists haveexterminated or expelled the original inhabitants, and are found therenow with all their distinctive race characteristics; but in the largerislands, they have been merged in the resident population, and theirpresence is only to be surmised from the existence of Polynesiancustoms, such as father-right in New Hebrides and Solomon Island sideby side with the prevailing Melanesian mother-right. [989] In smallislands, like Tongatabu, Samoa and Fiji, emigration becomes habitual, agradual spilling over of the redundant population and hence not aformidable inundation. In all this insular region of the Pacific, theimpulse to emigration is so persistent, that the resulting inter-insularcolonization obliterates sharp distinctions of race; it annuls thesegregation of an island environment, and makes everywhere foramalgamation and unification, rather than differentiation. [990]

[Sidenote: Modern emigration from islands. ]

Among highly civilized peoples, where better economic methods bringgreater density of population and set at the same time a higher standardof living, emigration from islands is especially marked. Japan has seena formidable exodus since an end was put to its long period ofcompression. This has taken the form of widespread emigration to variousforeign lands, notably the Hawaiian Islands and the United States, andalso of internal colonization in its recently acquired territory inFormosa and Korea. [991] The Maltese have spread from their congestedisland, and are found to-day as gardeners, sailors and traders along allthe Mediterranean coasts. [992] Majorca and the more barren Cyclades[993]tell the same story. The men of Capri go in considerable numbers toSouth America, but generally return home again. The Icelanders oftenpull themselves out of the stagnation of their lonely, ungenerous islandto become thrifty citizens of western Canada. 

[Sidenote: Maritime enterprise as outlet. ]

Emigration from islands readily throws itself into the channel ofnavigation and foreign trade. The northern Sporades, especially Skiathosand Skopelos, are the home of sailors who can be found over all theworld. [994] In this appetency for a nautical career, small inshoreislets are often distinguished from the nearby mainland. Nearly all themasculine population of the Frisian Islands were seamen prior to 1807. In the eighteenth century a third of the Hamburg vessels were commandedby captains from the little island of Sylte, and a third of theGreenland fleet of the Netherlands by natives of Föhr. [995]

In England the exodus took the form of trading expeditions and thefoundation of commercial colonies long before the food resources of theisland had been even considerably developed. The accessible sea offeredlines of least resistance, while the monopoly of the land by aprivileged aristocracy and the fiercely defended corn laws made thelimitations of a small area more oppressive. In Ireland, a landlesspeasantry in a grainless land, dulled by deprivation of opportunity, found in emigration an escape from insupportable evils. 

[Sidenote: Artificial checks to population. ]

While emigration draws off the surplus population, there tend to developin islands, as also in barren highlands where population early reachesthe point of saturation, various devices to restrict natural increase. The evils of congestion are foreseen and guarded against. Abbé Raynal, writing of islanders in general, remarked as far back as 1795, "It isamong these people that we trace the origin of that multitude ofsingular institutions which retards the progress of population. Anthropophagy, the castration of males, the infibulation of females, late marriages, the consecration of virginity, the approbation ofcelibacy, the punishments exercised against girls who become mothers attoo early an age, " he enumerates as such checks. Malthus, in his Essayon Population, commenting on this statement, notes that the bounds tothe number of inhabitants on islands, especially small ones, are sonarrow and so obvious that no one can ignore them. [996]

The checks to population practiced on islands are either preventive orpositive. The extreme measure to restrict marriage is found among thewretched Budumas who inhabit the small, marshy islands of Lake Chad. Tribal custom allows only the chiefs and headmen to have wives. A brasscrescent inserted in the ear of a boy indicates the favored one among achief's sons destined to carry on his race. For his brothers this ismade physically impossible; they become big, dull, timid creaturescontributing by their fishing to the support of the thinly populatedvillages. The natives of the Shari River delta on the southern shore ofLake Chad use Buduma as a term of contempt for a man. [997]

[Sidenote: Polyandry. ]

In islands, as in unproductive highlands where hunger stalks abroad, marriage readily takes the form of polyandry. On the Canary Islands, atthe time of their conquest in 1402, polyandry existed in Lancerote andpossibly in Fuerteventura, often assigning one woman to three husbands;but in the other islands of the group monogamy was strictlymaintained. [998] In Oceanica polygamy, monogamy or polyandry prevailsaccording to a man's means, the poverty of the islands, and the supplyof women. A plurality of wives is always the privilege of the chiefs andthe wealthy, but all three forms of marriage may be found on the sameisland. Scarcity of women gives rise to polyandry in Tahiti, [999] andconsigns one woman to four or five men. In old Hawaii, where there werefour or five men to one woman a kind of incipient polyandry arose by theaddition of a countenanced paramour to the married couple'sestablishment. [1000] Robert Louis Stevenson found the same complaisantarrangement a common one in the Marquesas, where the husband's deputywas designated by the term of _pikio_ in the native vocabulary. [1001]Polyandry existed in Easter Isle, among whose stunted and destitutepopulation the men far exceeded the women, and children were few, according to reports of the early visitors. [1002] Numerous otherinstances make this connection between island habitat, deficiency ofwomen, need of checking increase, and polyandrous marriages an obviousone. [1003]

[Sidenote: Infanticide. ]

This disproportion of the sexes in Oceanica is due to the murder offemale infants, too early child-bearing, overwork, privation, licentiousness, and the violence of the men. [1004] The imminence offamine dictates certain positive checks to population, among whichinfanticide and abortion are widespread in Oceanica. In some parts ofthe New Hebrides and the Solomon groups it is so habitual, that in somefamilies all children are killed, and substitutes purchased atwill. [1005] In the well-tilled Fiji Islands, a pregnant girl is strangledand her seducer slain. The women make a practice of drinking medicatedwaters to produce sterility. Failing in this, the majority kill theirchildren either before or after birth. In the island of Vanua Levuinfanticide reaches from one-half to two-thirds of all childrenconceived; here it is reduced to a system and gives employment toprofessional murderers of babies, who hover like vultures over everychild-bed. All destroyed after birth are females. [1006] And yet here, ason many other islands of Melanesia and Polynesia, such offspring as arespared are treated with foolish fondness and indulgence. [1007] The twofacts are not incompatible. 

[Sidenote: Approved by the state. ]

Geographic conditions made infanticide a state measure in these crowdedcommunities. On the small coral atolls, where the food supply wasscantest, it was enforced by law. On Vaitupu, in the Ellice group, onlytwo children were allowed to a couple; on Nukufelau, only one. Anyviolation of this unique sumptuary law was punished by a fine. [1008] Onthe congested Gilbert atolls, a woman rarely had more than two children, never more than three. Abortion, produced by a regular midwife, disposedof any subsequent offspring. Affection for children was very stronghere, and infanticide of the living was unknown. [1009] In Samoa, also, Turner found the practice restricted to the period before birth; but inTahiti and elsewhere it was enforced by the tribal village authoritieson the born and unborn. [1010] In pre-Christian Hawaii, two-thirds of allchildren, and especially girls, were killed by their parents eitherbefore or after birth. The result was a decay of the maternal instinctand the custom of farming out children to strangers. This contributed tothe excess of infant mortality, the degeneration of morals and theinstability of the family. [1011] So in Japan the pressure of populationled to infanticide and the sale of daughters to a life of ignominy, which took them out of the child-bearing class. [1012] Nor was eithercustom under the ban. 

The result is a deterioration of morals, an invasion of the family bond, and a decay of the finer sentiments therewith connected. Captain Cook in1770 found in Tahiti _Eareeoie_ or _Arreoys_ societies, which werefree-love associations including in their number "over half of thebetter sort of the inhabitants. " The children begotten of thesepromiscuous unions were smothered at birth. Obscene conversations, indecent dances and frank unchastity on the part of girls and women werethe attendant evils of these loose morals. [1013] Cook was sure that"these societies greatly prevent the increase of the superior classes ofpeople of which they are composed. " Malthus reports a similarassociation in the Marianne Islands, distinguished by a similar name, devoted to race suicide. [1014] Everywhere in Oceanica marriage isunstable, and with few exceptions unchastity prevails. Stevenson thinksit chiefly accountable for the decline of population in theislands. [1015] However, in the detailed _taboos_ laid upon women in Fiji, Marquesas, and other Polynesian islands we have the survival of an earlymeasure to increase reserve between the sexes, long after regard forchastity has vanished. [1016]

[Sidenote: Low valuation of human life. ]

The constant pressure of population upon the limits of subsistencethroughout Oceanica has occasioned a low valuation of human life. Amongnatural peoples the helpless suffer first. The native Hawaiians, thougha good-natured folk, were relentless towards the aged, weak, sick, andinsane. These were frequently stoned to death or allowed to perish ofhunger. [1017] In Fiji, the aged are treated with such contempt, that whendecrepitude or illness threatens them, they beg their children tostrangle them, unless the children anticipate the request. [1018] In Vate(or Efate) of the New Hebrides, old people are buried alive, and theirpassage to another world duly celebrated by a feast. [1019] However, inthe Tonga Islands and in New Zealand, great respect and considerationare shown the aged as embodying experience. [1020] The harsher customrecalls an ancient law of Aegean Ceos, which, ordained that all personsover sixty years of age should be compelled to drink hemlock, in orderthat there might be sufficient food for the rest. [1021]

[Sidenote: Cannibalism in islands. ]

Many customs of Oceanica can be understood only in the light of thesmall value attached to human life in this island world. Theoverpopulation which lies back of their colonization explains the humansacrifices in their religious orgies and funeral rites, as also thewidespread practice of cannibalism. This can be traced in vestigialforms, or as an occasional or habitual custom from one end of thePacific to the other, from the Marquesas to New Guinea and from NewZealand to Hawaii. All Melanesia is tainted with it, and Micronesia isnot above suspicion. The cause of this extensive practice, Stevensonattributes to the imminence of famine and the craving for flesh as foodin these small islands, which are destitute of animals except fowls, dogs and hogs. In times of scarcity cannibalism threatens all; itstrikes from within or without the clan. [1022] Ratzel leans to the sameopinion. [1023] Captain Cook thought the motive of a good full meal ofhuman flesh was often back of the constant warfare in New Zealand, andwas sometimes the only alternative of death by hunger. Cannibalism wasnot habitual in the Tonga Islands, but became conspicuous during periodsof famine. [1024] In far-away Tierra del Fuego, where a peculiarly harshclimate and the low cultural status of the natives combine to produce afrightful infant mortality and therefore to repress population, cannibalism within the clan is indulged in only at the imperious dictateof mid-winter hunger. The same thing is true in the nearby ChonosArchipelago. [1025]

These are the darker effects of an island habitat, the vices of itsvirtues. That same excessive pressure of population which gives rise toinfanticide also stimulates agriculture, industry and trade; it developsingenuity in making the most of local resources, and finally leads tothat widespread emigration and colonization which has made islanders thegreat distributors of culture, from Easter Isle to Java and from ancientCrete to modern England. 

NOTES TO CHAPTER XIII

[803] Table of areas of peninsulas and islands, Justus Perthes, _TaschenAtlas_, p. 9. Gotha, 1905. 

[804] H. J. Mackinder, Britain and the British Seas, pp. 105-108. London, 1904. 

[805] W. Deecke, Italy, p. 45. London, 1904. 

[806] Journey of William de Rubruquis, pp. 187, 204, Hakluyt SocietyPublication, London, 1903. 

[807] Archibald Little, The Far East, pp. 35, 45. Oxford, 1905. 

[808] Strabo, Book X, chap. II, 19. 

[809] Ratzel, _Die Erde und das Leben_, Vol. I. Pp. 312-313. Leipzig, 1901. 

[810] Charles H. Hawes, In the Uttermost East, p. 103. New York, 1904. 

[811] W. E. Griffis, The Mikado's Empire, Vol. I, pp. 26-27. New York, 1904. 

[812] Darwin, Origin of Species, Vol. II, chap. XIII, p, 178. New York, 1895. 

[813] A. R. Wallace, Geographical Distribution of Animals, Vol. II, p. 61. London, 1876. 

[814] Darwin, Origin of Species, Vol. II, chap. XIII, p. 183. New York, 1895. 

[815] _Ibid. _, Vol. II, chap. XIII, pp. 178-180. 

[816] A. R. Wallace, Island Life, pp. 331-332, 338-389, 393, 402, 409-410, 449, 456-463. New York, 1893. 

[817] _Ibid. _, 342, 370-371. 

[818] Emerson, English Traits, chap. VI. 

[819] Capt. F. Brinkley, Japan, Vol. I, p. 50. Boston and Tokyo, 1901. 

[820] W. E. Griffis, The Mikado's Empire, Vol. I, p. 198. New York, 1904. 

[821] Arthur M. Knapp, Feudal and Modern Japan, Vol. I, pp. 211, 220, 221. New York, 1900. 

[822] Emerson, English Traits, chap. III. 

[823] Ronald M. Burrows, The Discoveries in Crete, pp. 134-136, 141, 162, 177. New York, 1907. 

[824] _Ibid. _, chapters IV and V. 

[825] _Ibid. _, p. 179. Angelo Mosso, The Palaces of Crete, pp. 46, 54-55, 61-62, 81. London, 1907. 

[826] Ronald M. Burrows, The Discoveries in Crete, pp. 64-65, 82, 84, 147-150. New York, 1907. James Baikie, The Sea Kings of Crete, pp. 235-237. London, 1910. 

[827] J. B. Bury, History of Greece, pp. 8-10. New York, 1909. 

[828] R. M. Burrows, The Discoveries in Crete, pp. 36, 44-46, 50-51, 85, 149-150, 179. New York, 1907. 

[829] _Ibid. _, 136-137. 

[830] Private communication from Mrs. Harriet Boyd Hawes. 

[831] Recent Discoveries in Crete, _The Chautauquan_, Vol. 43, p. 220. 1906. R. M. Burrows, The Discoveries in Crete, pp. 103, 162. New York, 1907. 

[832] Grote, History of Greece, Vol. IV, pp. 244-245. New York, 1857. 

[833] Strabo, Book XIV, chap. II, 7-13. 

[834] Strabo, Book VII, chap. VI, 16. 

[835] A. P. Niblack, Coast Indians of Southern Alaska and NorthernBritish Columbia, pp. 382-384. House Misc. Doc. 142. Washington. Dr. George Dawson, The Haidas, _Harper's Monthly_, August, 1882. 

[836] Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. I, p. 180. London, 1896-1898. 

[837] Article, The National Academy of Sciences, Nation, Vol. LXXX, p. 328. 1905. Capt. James Cook, A Voyage Towards the South Pole, 1772-1775, Vol. I, p. 284, 288-296. London. 1777. George Forster, Voyage Round theWorld, Vol. I, pp. 566-567, 580-581, 586-591. London, 1777. 

[838] G. Sergi, The Mediterranean Race, chap. VII. London and New York, 1901. Helmolt, History of the World, Vol. IV, pp. 222-223. New York, 1902-1906. 

[839] Charles W. Hawes, The Uttermost East, pp. 113-116. New York, 1904. 

[840] William Bright, Early English Church History, pp. 224-234. Oxford. 1897. P. W. Joyce, Social History of Ireland, Vol. I, pp. 320, 389, 390. London, 1903. 

[841] W. H. Dall, Masks and Labrets, p. 137. Third Annual Report ofBureau of Ethnology, Washington, 1884. 

[842] A. P. Niblack, Coast Indians of Southern Alaska and NorthernBritish Columbia, pp. 236-382. Washington. 

[843] H. R. Mill, International Geography, p. 187. New York, 1902. 

[844] A. B. Ellis, The West African Islands, p. 202. London, 1885. History of the Conquest of the Canaries, Introduction, pp. XIII, XVII, XXXIII, XXXIV. Hakluyt Society, London, 1872. 

[845] Henry Gannett, People of the Philippines, Report of the EighthInternational Geographical Congress, Washington, 1904. 

[846] H. R. Mill, International Geography, p. 549. New York, 1903. 

[847] W. Deecke, Italy, p. 451. London, 1904. 

[848] Nelson Annandale, The Faroes and Iceland, p. 14. Oxford, 1905. 

[849] J. Partsch, Central Europe, Map, p. 131, and p. 133. London, 1903. 

[850] W. Z. Ripley, Races of Europe, pp. 272, 304, 305, 317. New York, 1899. 

[851] _Ibid. _, p. 303. 

[852] _Ibid. _, Map, p. 251, and p. 253. 

[853] W. Deecke, Italy, p. 451. London, 1904. 

[854] Darwin, Origin of Species, Vol. II, chap. XIII, pp. 179, 180, 184. New York, 1895. A. E. Wallace, Island Life, pp. 284-285, 290-291. Londonand New York, 1892. 

[855] H. R. Mill, International Geography, p. 554. New York, 1902. 

[856] Ratzel, _Die Erde und das Leben_, Vol. I, p. 364. Leipsig, 1901. 

[857] Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. I, pp. 454-456. London, 1896-1898. H. R. Mill, International Geography, p. 1018. New York, 1902. 

[858] Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. I, p. 456. London, 1896-1898. 

[859] Nordenskiold, Voyage of the Vega, pp. 563, 588, 591. New York, 1882. 

[860] A. R. Wallace, Malay Archipelago, pp. 368, 380, 381. New York, 1869. 

[861] Richard Semon, In the Australian Bush, pp. 277-278. London, 1899. 

[862] Strabo, Book VIII, chap. VI, 16. 

[863] Pliny, _Naturalis Historia_, Book IV, 12. 

[864] _Ibid. _, Book VI, chap, 32. 

[865] Hereford George, Historical Geography of the British Empire, pp. 130-133. London, 1904. 

[866] Dietrich Schaefer, _Die Hansestädte und König Waldemar vonDänemark_, pp. 37-44. Jena, 1879. 

[867] Hereford George, Historical Geography of the British Empire, pp. 127-128. London, 1904. 

[868] The Danish West Indies, pp. 2767, 2769. Summary of Commerce andFinance for January, 1902. Washington. 

[869] E. A. Freeman, Historical Geography of Europe, pp. 22, 29, 37, 65, 77, 384, 412-415, 419, 426, 465. London, 1882. 

[870] _Ibid. _, 35, 48, 49, 54-55, 80, 379, 382-385, 409, 411, 556, 557. E. A. Freeman, Sicily, chaps. I, II. New York and London, 1894. 

[871] W. Deecke, Italy, pp. 132, 445. London, 1904. W. Z. Ripley, Racesof Europe, p. 271. New York, 1899. 

[872] Elisée Reclus, Europe, Vol. I, p. 320. New York, 1886. 

[873] W. Deecke, Italy, pp. 448, 453. London, 1904. 

[874] H. R. Mill, International Geography, p. 367. New York, 1902. 

[875] David Murray, Story of Japan, p. 156. New York, 1894. 

[876] Henry Dyer. Dai Nippon, p. 61. New York, 1904. 

[877] E. A. Freeman, Historical Geography of Europe, pp. 55, 245, 252, 257, 258, 264, 556. London, 1882. 

[878] Thucydides I, 114; IV, 57-59, 62. 

[879] _Ibid. _, IV, 120-122. 

[880] Aristotle, Politics, Book XI, chaps. 7, 8. 

[881] J. T. Bent, The Bahrein Islands in the Persian Gulf, _Proceedingsof the Roy. Geog. Soc_. , Vol. XII, p. 1. London, 1890. 

[882] W. F. Walker, The Azores, p. 22. London, 1886. 

[883] A. B. Ellis, West African Islands, p. 203. London, 1885. 

[884] Strabo, Book III, chap. V, 1. 

[885] H. J. Mackinder, Britain and the British Seas, pp. 10-12. London, 1904. 

[886] W. Z. Ripley, Races of Europe, pp. 301, 311. New York, 1899. 

[887] H. B. George, Historical Geography of the British Empire, pp. 100, 103, 104. London, 1904. 

[888] J. R. Green, The Making of England, Vol. II, pp. 30, 31, 35. London, 1904. 

[889] James Bryce, Holy Roman Empire, p. 185. London, 1890. George WebbeDasent, The Story of Burnt Njal, or Life in Iceland at the End of theTenth Century, Vol. I, pp. LII-LXVIII. Edinburgh, 1861. 

[890] Dahlmann, _Geschichte van Dänemark_, Vol. II, pp. 265-268. Hamburg, 1857. James Bryce, Introduction to Helmolt, History of theWorld, Vol. I, p. XXII. New York, 1902. 

[891] George T. Stokes, Ireland and the Celtic Church, pp. 206-230. London, 1886. 

[892] J. R. Green, History of the English People, Vol. I, pp. 48-49. 

[893] Recent Discoveries in Crete, _The Chautauquan_, Vol. XLIII, p. 220. 1906. Angelo Mosso, The Palaces of Crete, p. 325. London, 1907. 

[894] Helmolt, History of the World, Vol. II, pp. 496-504 New York1902-6. 

[895] David Murray, Story of Japan, p. 156. New York, 1894. W. E. Griffis, The Mikado's Empire, Vol. I, pp. 176-181. New York, 1903. 

[896] J. R. Green, History of the English People, Vol. I, pp. 30-33. NewYork. 

[897] Capt. F. Brinkley, Japan, Vol. I, p. 8. Boston and Tokyo, 1901. 

[898] Capt. A. T. Mahan, Influence of Sea Power upon History, p. 29. NewYork, 1902. 

[899] H. J. Mackinder, Britain and the British Seas, pp. 341, 343. London, 1904. 

[900] Ratzel, _Die Erde und das Leben_, Vol. I, p. 362. Leipzig, 1901. 

[901] W. E. Griffis, The Mikado's Empire, Vol. I, p. 258. New York, 1903. 

[902] W. F. Walker, The Azores, p. 2. London, 1886. 

[903] F. W. Wines, Punishment and Reformation, pp. 166-167, 184-188. NewYork, 1895. 

[904] Tacitus, Annals, Book I, chap. XIII. 

[905] _Ibid. _, Book IV, chaps. III, XV. Book II, chap. XIX. 

[906] W. Deecke, Italy, pp. 270, 410, 413, 448, 450. London, 1904. 

[907] Longmans Gazetteer of the World, Article Easter Isle. 

[908] Darwin and Fitzroy, Voyage of the Beagle, Vol. II, p. 59. London, 1839. 

[909] _Ibid. _, Vol. II, pp. 490-492. 

[910] A. B. Ellis, West African Islands, pp. 1-3. London, 1885. 

[911] Longmans Gazetteer of the World, Andaman and Nicobar. 

[912] Darwin and Fitzroy, Voyage of the Beagle, Vol. III, p. 245. London, 1839. 

[913] A. B. Ellis, West African Islands, pp. 72, 73, 241. London, 1885. 

[914] Charles H. Hawes, The Uttermost East, p. 345. New York, 1904. 

[915] The Dry Tortugas, _Harper's Monthly_, Vol. 37, p. 260. 1868. 

[916] A. R. Wallace, Island Life, pp. 332, 371, 410, 457, 460-461, 464. London, 1892. 

[917] _Ibid. _, pp. 407, 408, 410, 462. 

[918] Census of the Philippine Islands of 1903, Vol. I, p. 456. Washington, 1905. 

[919] Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. III, pp. 446, 449, 451. London, 1896-1898. 

[920] W. E. Griffis, The Mikado's Empire, Vol. I, pp. 30-31. New York, 1903. 

[921] W. Z. Ripley, Races of Europe, p. 271. New York, 1899. 

[922] Hereford George, Historical Geography of the British Empire, pp. 106-107. London, 1904. 

[923] Nelson Annandale, The Faroes and Iceland, pp. 19, 20, 33, 37, 64-65, 148, 193-194, 198, 206, 208. Oxford, 1905. 

[924] Capt. James Cook, Voyage to the Pacific Ocean, 1776-1780, Vol. II, pp. 69-70, 75-78. New York, 1796. 

[925] Williams and Calvert, Fiji and the Fijians, pp. 5-7, 14, 15. NewYork, 1859. Basil Thomson, The Fijians, pp. 23-32. London, 1908. 

[926] Mahler, _Siedelungsgebiete und Siedelungslage in Ozeanien_. Melching _Staatenbildung in Melanesien_, Leipzig, Dissertations, 1897. 

[927] H. R. Mill, International Geography, p. 570. New York, 1902. 

[928] Aristotle, Politics, Book II, chap. 8. 

[929] Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. I, 297-299. London, 1896-1898. 

[930] _Ibid. _, Vol. I, Map, p. 145, pp. 234, 251. 

[931] _Ibid. _, Vol. I, pp. 204-214. 

[932] Justus Perthes, _Taschen Atlas_, p. 67. Gotha, 1910. 

[933] _Ibid. _, p. 60. 

[934] _Ibid. _, p. 37. 

[935] _Ibid. _, p. 51. 

[936] _Ibid. _, pp. 37, 67. 

[937] Lippincott's New Gazetteer of the World, Madeira and Azores. 

[938] R. L. Stevenson, The South Seas, p. 37. New York, 1903. 

[939] _Ibid. _, p. 222. 

[940] J. S. Jenkins, United States Exploring Squadron under Capt. Wilkes, 1838-1842, pp. 401-403. New York, 1855. 

[941] Justus Perthes, _Taschen Atlas_, p. 70. Gotha, 1905. 

[942] Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. I, pp. 158, 179. London, 1896-1898. 

[943] J. S. Jenkins, United States Exploring Squadron under Capt. Wilkes, 1838-1842, p. 462. New York, 1855. 

[944] _Ibid. _, p. 314. 

[945] Nelson Annandale, The Faroes and Iceland, pp. 93-129. Oxford, 1905. 

[946] Elisée Reclus, Europe, Vol. IV, p. 344. New York, 1886. 

[947] John Murray, Handbook to Greece and the Ionian Isles, p. 329. London, 1872. 

[948] Hereford George, Historical Geography of the British Empire, p. 119. London, 1904. 

[949] W. Deecke, Italy, pp. 449-450. London, 1904. 

[950] _Ibid. _, pp. 447-448, 410-411. 

[951] Statistics from Justus Perthes, _Taschen Atlas_, p. 65. Gotha, 1910. 

[952] Longmans Gazetteer of the World, Amboina. 

[953] Census of the Philippine Islands of 1903. Vol. II, p. 30. Washington, 1905. 

[954] Justus Perthes, _Taschen Atlas_, pp. 75, 77. Gotha, 1910. 

[955] Hereford George, Historical Geography of the British Empire, pp. 238-240. London, 1904. 

[956] D. G. Hogarth, The Nearer East, pp. 243-244. London, 1902. 

[957] Dr. A. Philippson, The Greek Islands of the Aegean, _ScottishGeographical Magazine_, Vol. XIII, p. 489. 1897. 

[958] J. T. Brent, The Bahrein Islands in the Persian Gulf, _Proceedingsof the Roy. Geog. Society_, Vol. XII, pp. 1-19, 1890; and JustusPerthes, _Taschen Atlas_, p. 55. Gotha, 1910. 

[959] Parkman, Pioneers of France in the New World, pp. 26-32. Boston, 1900. 

[960] _Ibid. _, pp. 253-262. 

[961] Thucydides, I, 100, 101. Herodotus, VII, 108, 109. 

[962] Grote, History of Greece, Vol. III, pp. 195, 197. New York, 1857. 

[963] _Ibid. _, Vol. IV, pp. 30-33. 

[964] Capt. James Cook, Voyage to the Pacific Ocean, 1776-1780, Vol. II, pp. 85-86, 88. New York. 1796. 

[965] George Forster, Voyage Round the World, Vol. I, p. 274, 280, 281, 285. London, 1777. 

[966] J. S. Jenkins, United States Exploring Squadron under Capt. Wilkes, 1838-1842, p. 402. New York, 1855. 

[967] George Forster, Voyage Round the World, Vol. I, pp. 571, 578, 587, 595. London, 1777. 

[968] R. H. Codrington, The Melanesians, pp. 303-304. Oxford, 1891. 

[969] William Mariner, Natives of the Tonga Islands, Vol. II, p. 30. Edinburgh, 1827. 

[970] Capt. James Cook, Voyage to the Pacific Ocean, 1776-1780, Vol. I, p. 302. New York, 1796. 

[971] Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. I, pp. 254-256. London, 1896-1898. 

[972] Williams and Calvert, Fiji and the Fijians, pp. 8, 46-49. NewYork, 1859. Basil Thomson, The Fijians, p. 339. London, 1908. 

[973] H. R. Mill, International Geography, pp. 562, 564, 572. New York, 1902. 

[974] Census of the Philippine Islands of 1903, Vol. IV, pp. 1-2. Washington, 1905. 

[975] Strabo, Book VIII, chap. VI, 16. 

[976] W. Deecke, Italy, pp. 380, 448-450. London, 1904. 

[977] _Ibid. _, p. 452. 

[978] Dr. A. Philippson, The Greek Islands of the Aegean, _ScottishGeographical Magazine_, Vol. XIII, pp. 489-490. 1897. John Murray, Handbook to Greece and the Ionian Isles. London, 1872. 

[979] W. E. Griffis, The Mikado's Empire, Vol. I, pp. 17-20. New York, 1904. 

[980] Henry Dyer, Dai Nippon, pp. 238-244. New York, 1903. Arthur M. Knapp, Feudal and Modern Japan, Vol. I, pp. 78, 79, 116, 117. New York, 1900. 

[981] Alfred Stead, Japan by the Japanese, p. 413. London, 1904. 

[982] Sir Rutherford Alcock, Three Years in Japan, Vol. I, pp. 83, 84, 283-286. New York, 1868. 

[983] H. D. Traill, Social England, Vol. II, pp. 243-246, 547-554; Vol. III, pp. 114-121, 239-241, 253-255, 351-359. London, 1905. 

[984] Thucydides, Book I, 4. Aristotle, Politics, Book II, chap. 7, 2. Herodotus, Book VII, 170. 

[985] Thucydides, Book IV, chaps. 84, 88. 

[986] Census of the Philippine Islands in 1903, Vol. I, pp. 412-414. Washington, 1905. 

[987] Richard Semon, In the Australian Bush, p. 517. London, 1899. 

[988] Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. I, pp. 174-177. London, 1896-98. 

[989] _Ibid. _, Vol. I, pp. 178-179. 

[990] _Ibid. _, Vol. I, pp. 157-161, 165. 

[991] Henry Dyer, Dai Nippon, pp. 250-257, 266. New York, 1904. 

[992] Elisée Reclus, Europe, Vol. I, p. 337. New York, 1886. HerefordGeorge, Historical Geography of the British Empire, pp. 118-119. London, 1904. 

[993] D. G. Hogarth, The Nearer East, p. 244. London, 1902. 

[994] Dr. A. Philippson, The Greek Islands of the Aegean, _ScottishGeographical Magazine_, Vol. XIII, p. 488. 1897. 

[995] Jensen, _Die Nordfrieschen Inseln_, p. 133. 1891. 

[996] Malthus, Essay on Population, Book I, chap. V, p. 67. London, 1826. This whole chapter on "Checks to Population in the Islands of theSouth Seas" is valuable. 

[997] Boyd Alexander, From the Niger to the Nile, Vol. II, pp. 108-110. London, 1907. 

[998] History of the Conquest of the Canaries, p. Xxxix. HakluytSociety, London, 1872. 

[999] Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. I, pp. 273, 299-300. London, 1896-98. 

[1000] _Ibid. _, Vol. I, pp. 270, 274-275. Adolf Marcuse, _DieHawaiischen Inseln_, p. 108. Berlin, 1894. 

[1001] R. L. Stevenson, The South Seas, pp. 138-139. New York, 1903. 

[1002] George Forster, Voyage Round the World, Vol. I, p. 564, 569, 572, 577, 584, 586, 596. London, 1777. 

[1003] Westermarck, History of Human Marriage, pp. 116, 441, 462-463, 450-452, 454, 457. London, 1891. 

[1004] Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. I, p. 270. London, 1896-1898. 

[1005] R. H. Codrington, The Melanesians, p. 229. Oxford, 1891. 

[1006] Basil Thomson, The Fijians, pp. 221-227. London, 1908. Williamsand Calvert, Fiji and the Fijians, pp. 132, 142. New York, 1859. 

[1007] _Ibid. _, p. 130. R. L. Stevenson, The South Seas, pp. 38, 40. NewYork, 1903. 

[1008] _Ibid. _, p. 38. 

[1009] J. S. Jenkins, United States Exploring Squadron under Capt. Wilkes, 1838-1842, pp. 404-405. New York, 1855. 

[1010] Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. I, pp. 270, 299. London, 1896-98. 

[1011] Adolf Marcuse, _Die Hawaiischen Inseln_, p. 109. Berlin, 1894. 

[1012] G. W. Knox, Japanese Life in Town and Country, p. 188. New York, 1905. 

[1013] Capt. Cook's Journal, First Voyage Round the World in theEndeavor, 1768-1771, pp. 95, 96. Edited by W. J. L. Wharton. London, 1893. 

[1014] Malthus, Essay on Population, Book I, chap. V. 

[1015] R. L. Stevenson, The South Seas, p. 39. New York, 1903. 

[1016] _Ibid. _, p. 52. 

[1017] Adolf Marcuse, _Die Hawaiischen Inseln_, p. 109. Berlin, 1894. 

[1018] Williams and Calvert, Fiji and the Fijians, pp. 144-146. NewYork, 1859. 

[1019] Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. I, p. 330. London, 1896-1898. 

[1020] William Mariner, Natives of the Tonga Islands, Vol. II, pp. 95, 134-135. Edinburgh, 1827. Capt. Cook's Journal, First Voyage Round theWorld in the Endeavor, 1768-1771, pp. 220-221. Edited by W. J. L. Wharton. London, 1893. 

[1021] Strabo, Book X, chap. V, 6. 

[1022] R. L. Stevenson, The South Seas, pp. 98-104. New York, 1903. 

[1023] Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. I, pp. 297-299. London, 1896-1898. 

[1024] William Mariner, Natives of the Tonga Islands, Vol. II, pp. 108-109. Edinburgh, 1827. 

[1025] Darwin and Fitzroy, Voyage of the Beagle, Vol. II, pp. 183, 189-190. London, 1839. 

CHAPTER XIV

PLAINS, STEPPES AND DESERTS

[Sidenote: Relief of the sea floor. ]

Anthropo-geography has to do primarily with the forms and relief of theland. The relief of the sea floor influences man only indirectly. Itdoes this by affecting the forms of the coast, by contributing to theaction of tides in scouring out river estuaries, as on the flat beachesof Holland and England, by determining conditions for the abundantlittoral life of the sea, the fisheries of the continental shelf whichare factors in the food quest and the distribution of settlements. Moreover, the ocean floor enters into the problem of laying telegraphcables, and thereby assumes a certain commercial and politicalimportance. The name of the Telegraph Plateau of the North Atlantic, crossed by three cables, points to the relation between these andsubmarine relief. So also does the erratic path of the cable fromsouthwestern Australia to South Africa via Keeling Island and Mauritius. 

Submarine reliefs have yet greater significance in their relation to thedistribution of the human race over the whole earth; for what is now ashallow sea may in geologically recent times have been dry land, onwhich primitive man crossed from continent to continent. It is vital tothe theory of the Asiatic origin of the American Indian that in Miocenetimes a land bridge spanned the present shallows of Bering Sea. Hencethe slight depth of this basin has the same bio-geographicalsignificance as that of the British seas, the waters of the MalayArchipelago, and the Melanesian submarine platform. The impressive factabout "Wallace's Line" is the depth of the narrow channel which itfollows through Lombok and Macassar Straits and which, in recentgeological times, defined the southeastern shore of Asia. In all thesequestions of former land connection, anthropo-geography follows the leadof bio-geography, whose deductions, based upon the dispersal ofcountless plant and animal forms, point to the paths of humandistribution. 

[Sidenote: Mean elevations of the continents. ]

The mean elevation of the continents above sea level indicates theaverage life conditions of their populations as dependent upon relief. The 1010 meters (3313 feet) of Asia indicate its predominant highlandcharacter. The 330 meters (1080 feet) representing the average height ofEurope, and the 310 meters (1016 feet) of Australia indicate thepreponderance of lowlands. Nevertheless, anthropo-geography rarely lendsitself to a mathematical statement of physical conditions. Such astatement only obscures the facts. The 660 meters (2164 feet) meanelevation of Africa indicates a relief higher than Europe, but gives nohint of the plateau character of the Dark Continent, in which lowlandsand mountains are practically negligible features; while the almostidentical figure (650 meters or 2133 feet) for both North and SouthAmerica is the average derived from extensive lowlands in closejuxtaposition to high plateaus capped by lofty mountain ranges. Suchmathematical generalizations indicate the general mass of thecontinental upheaval, but not the way this mass is divided into low andhigh reliefs. [1026]

The method of anthropo-geography is essentially analytical, andtherefore finds little use for general orometric statements, which maybe valuable to the science of geo-morphology with its radicallydifferent standpoint. For instance, geo-morphology may calculate fromall the dips and gaps in the crest of a mountain range the averageheight of its passes, Anthropo-geography, on the other hand, distinguishes between the various passes according as they open lines ofgreater or less resistance to the historical movement across themountain barriers. It finds that one deep breach in the mountain wall, like the Mohawk Depression[1027] and Cumberland Gap in the Appalachiansystem, [1028] Truckee Pass in the Sierra Nevada[1029] and the Brenner inthe Alps, [1030] has more far-reaching and persistent historicalconsequences than a dozen high-laid passes that only notch the crest. Pack-trail, road and railroad seek the former, avoid the latter; onedraws from a wide radius, while the other serves a restricted localneed. Therefore anthropo-geography, instead of clumping the passes, sorts them out, and notes different relations in each. 

[Sidenote: Distribution of reliefs. ]

In continents and countries the anthropo-geographer looks to see notwhat reliefs are present, but how they are distributed; whetherhighlands and lowlands appear in unbroken masses as in Asia, oralternate in close succession as in western Europe; whether thetransition from one to the other is abrupt as in western South America, or gradual as in the United States. A simple and massive land structurelends the same trait of the simple and massive to every kind ofhistorical movement, because it collects the people into large groupsand starts them moving in broad streams, as it were. This fact explainsthe historical preponderance of lowland peoples and especially of steppenomads over the small, scattered groups inhabiting isolated mountainvalleys. The island of Great Britain illustrates the same principle on asmall scale in the turbid, dismembered history of independent Scotland, with its Highlanders and Lowlanders, its tribes and clans separated bymountains, gorges, straits, and fiords, [1031] in contrast to the smoother, unified course of history in the more uniform England. Carl Rittercompares the dull uniformity of historical development and relief inAfrica with the variegated assemblage of highlands and lowlands, nationsand peoples, primitive societies and civilized states in the morestimulating environment of Asia. [1032]

[Sidenote: Homologous relief and homologous histories. ]

The chief features of mountain relief reappear on a large scale in thecontinents, which are simply big areas of upheaval lifted above sealevel. The continents show therefore homologous regions of lowlands, uplands, plateaus and mountains, each district sustaining definiterelations to the natural terrace above or below it, and displaying ahistory corresponding to that of its counterpart in some distant part ofthe world, due to a similarity of relations. This appears first in aspecialization of products in each tier and hence in more or lesseconomic interdependence, especially where civilization is advanced. Thetendency of conquest to unite such obviously complementary districts ispersistent. Hence the Central Highland of Asia is fringed with lowperipheral lands like Manchuria, China, India and Mesopotamia, intowhose history it has repeatedly entered as a disturbing force. All thenarrow Pacific districts of the Americas from Alaska to Patagonia areseparated by the Cordilleras from the lowlands on the Atlantic face ofthe continents; all reveal in their history the common handicap arisingfrom an overwhelming preponderance of plateau and mountain and a paucityof lowlands. Colombia, Ecuador and Peru have in the past century beenstretching out their hands eastward to grasp sections of the borderingAmazon lowlands, where to-day is the world's great field of conflictingboundary claims. Chile would follow its geographical destiny if itshould supplement its high, serrated surface by the plateaus andlowlands of Bolivia, as Cyrus the Persian married the Plateau of Iran tothe plains of the Tigris and Euphrates, and Romulus joined the Albanhills to the alluvial fields of the Tiber. 

[Sidenote: Anthropo-geography of lowlands. ]

Well-watered lowlands invite expansion, ethnic, commercial andpolitical. In them the whole range of historical movements meet fewobstacles beyond the waters gathering in their runnels and the forestsnourished in their rich soils. Limited to 200 meters (660 feet)elevation, lowlands develop no surface features beyond low hills andundulating swells of land. Uniformity of life conditions, monotony ofclimate as of relief, except where grades of latitude intervene to chillor heat, an absence of natural boundaries, and constant encouragement tointercourse, are the anthropo-geographic traits of lowlands, as opposedto the arresting, detaining grasp of mountains and highland valleys. Small, isolated lowlands, like the mountain-rimmed plains of Greece andthe Aegean coast of Asia Minor, the Nile flood-plain, Portugal, andAndalusia in Spain, may achieve precocious and short-lived historicalimportance, owing to the fertility of their alluvial soils, theircharacter as naturally defined districts, and their advantageousmaritime location; but while in these restricted lowlands the tellingfeature has been their barrier boundaries of desert, mountains and sea, the vast level plains of the earth have found their distinctive andlasting historical importance in the fact of their large and unboundedsurface. 

Such plains have been both source and recipient of every form ofhistorical movement. Owing to their prevailing fitness for agriculture, trade and intercourse, they are favored regions for the final massing ofa sedentary population. The areas of greatest density of population inthe world, harboring 150 or more to the square kilometer (385 to thesquare mile), are found in the lowlands of China, the alluvial plains ofIndia, and similar level stretches in the Neapolitan plain and PoValley, the lowlands of France, Germany, Holland, Belgium, England andScotland. Such a density is found in upland districts (660 to 2000 feet, or 200 to 600 meters) bordering agricultural lowlands, only whereindustries based upon mineral wealth cause a concentration ofpopulation. [See maps pages 8, 9, 559. ]

[Sidenote: Extensive plains unfavorable to early development. ]

The level or undulating surface of extensive lowlands is not favorableto the early development of civilization. Not only do their wide extentand absence of barriers postpone the transition from nomadism tosedentary life, but their lack of contrasting environments andcontrasted developments, which supplement and stimulate, puts chainsupon progress. A flat, monotonous relief produces a monotonousexistence, necessarily one-sided, needing a complement in upland ormountain. To the pioneer settlers in the lowlands of Missouri the OzarkPlateau was a boon, because its streams furnished water-power for muchneeded saw and flour mills. Treeless Egypt even before 2500 B. C. Depended upon the cedars of the Lebanon Mountains for the constructionof its ships; so that the conquest of Lebanon, begun by Thutmose I. Andcompleted by Thutmose III. In about 1470 B. C. , had a sound geographicalbasis. [1033] Similarly the exploitation of the copper, malachite, turquoiseand lapis-lazuli of Mount Sinai, minerals not found in the Nile plain, led the ancient Egyptians into extensive mining operations there before3000 B. C. , and resulted in the establishment of Egyptian politicalsupremacy in 2900 B. C. , as a measure to protect the mines against thedepredations of the neighboring Bedouin tribes. [1034] Lowlands lack thedistinctive advantages of highlands found in diversity of climate, water-power, generally in more abundant forests and minerals. The latterare earlier discovered and worked in the tilted strata of mountains anduplands. 

Plain countries suffer particularly from a paucity of varied geographicconditions and of resulting contrasts in their population. Theirnational characters tend to be less richly endowed; their possibilitiesfor development are blighted or retarded, because even racialdifferences are rapidly obliterated in the uniform geographicenvironment, A small diversified country like Crete, Great Britain, Italy, Portugal, Saxony, or Japan, is a geographical _multum in parvo_. The western half of Europe bears the same stamp, endowing each countryand nation with marked individuality born of partial isolation and avaried combination of environment. The larger eastern half of thecontinent embraced in the plains of Poland and Russia shows monotony inevery aspect of human life. This comes out anthropologically in thestriking similarity of head-form found everywhere north and east of theCarpathian Mountains, except in the secluded districts of Lithuania andCrimea, which shelter remnants of distinct races. Over all this vastterritory the range of cephalic variation is only five units orone-third that in the restricted but diversified territory of westernEurope. Italy, only one-eighteenth the size of European Russia, has arange of fifteen units, reflecting in the variety of its human types thediversity of its environment. [1035]

[Sidenote: Conditions for fusion in plains. ]

In the plains geography makes for fusion. Russia shows this markedhomogeneity, despite a motley collection of race ingredients which haveentered into the make-up of the Russian people. Without boundary orbarrier, the country has stood wide open to invasion; but the intrudersfound no secluded corners where they could entrench themselves andpreserve their national individuality. [1036] They dropped into a vastmelting-pot, which has succeeded in amalgamating the most diverseelements. The long-drawn Baltic-North Sea plain of Europe shows the samepower to fuse. Here is found a prevailing blond, long-headed stock fromthe Gulf of Finland to the Somme River in France. [1037] Yet this naturalboulevard has been a passway for races. Prehistoric evidences show thatthe dark, broad-headed Celtic folk once overspread this plain east tothe Weser;[1038] it still tends to trickle down from the southern uplandsinto the Baltic lowland, and modify the Teutonic type along its southernmargin throughout Germany. [1039] The Slavs in historic times reached asfar west as the Weser, while the expansion of the Teutons has embracedthe whole maritime plain from Brittany to the Finnish Gulf. Here it isdifficult to draw an ethnic boundary on the basis of physicaldifferences. The eastern Prussians are Slavonized Teutons, and theadjacent Poles seem to be Teutonized Slavs, while the purest type ofLetto-Lithuanian at the eastern corner of the Baltic coast approximatesclosely to the Anglo-Saxon type which sprang from the westerncorner. [1040] A similar amalgamation of races and peoples has taken placein the lowlands of England and Scotland, while diversity still lingersin the highlands. In the Lowlands of Scotland, Picts in small numbers, Britons, Scots from Ireland, Angles, Frisians, Northmen and Danes haveall been blended and assimilated in habits, customs and speech. [1041]

[Sidenote: Retardation due to monotonous environment. ]

This uniformity is advantageous to early development in a small plain, because of the juxtaposition of contrasted environments, but isstultifying to national life in an immense expanse of monotony like thatof Russia. Here sameness leaves its stamp on everything. Language isdifferentiated with only two dialects, that of the Great Russians of thenorth and the Little Russians of the southern steppes, who were so longexposed to Tartar influences. Most other languages of Europe, thoughconfined to much smaller areas, show far greater diversity. [1042] Whilethe Russian of Kazan or Archangel can converse readily with the citizenof Riga or St. Petersburg, Germans from highland Bavaria and Swabia arescarcely intelligible to Prussian and Mecklenberger. And whereas Germanya few decades ago could count over a hundred different kinds of nationaldress or _Tracht_, Great Russia alone, with six times the area, had onlya single type with perhaps a dozen slight variations. Leroy-Beaulieucomments upon this eternal sameness. "The cities are all alike; so arethe peasants, in looks, habits, in mode of life. In no country do peopleresemble one another more; no other country is so free from politicalcomplexity, those oppositions in type and character, which even yet weencounter in Italy and Spain, in France and Germany. The nation is madein the likeness of the country; it shows the same unity, we might saythe same monotony, as the plains on which it dwells. "

[Sidenote: Influence of soils in low plains. ]

The more flat and featureless a lowland is, the more important becomeeven the slightest surface irregularities which can draw faint dividinglines among the population. Here a gentle land-swell, river, lake, forest, or water-soaked moor serves as boundary. Especially apparent isthe differentiating influence of difference of soils. Gravel andalluvium, sand and clay, chalk and more recent marine sediments, emphasize small geographical differences throughout the North Germanlowland and its extension through Belgium and Holland; here varioussoils differentiate the distribution of population. In the Netherlandswe find the Frisian element of the Dutch people inhabiting chiefly theclay soils and low fens of the west and northwest, the Saxon in thediluvial tracts of the east, and the Frankish in the river clays anddiluvium of the south. All the types have maintained their differencesof dialect, styles of houses, racial character, dress and custom. [1043]The only distinctive region in the great western lowland of France, which comprises over half of the country, is Brittany, individualized inits people and history by its peninsula form, its remote westernlocation, and its infertile soil of primary rocks. Within thesedimentary trough of the Paris Basin, a slight Cretacean platform likethe meadow land of Perche[1044] (200 to 300 meters elevation) introducesan area of thin population devoted to horse and cattle raising in closeproximity to the teeming urban life of Paris. The eastern lowland ofEngland also can be differentiated economically and historically chieflyaccording to differences of underlying rocks, Carboniferous, Triassic, Jurassic, chalk, boulder clays, and alluvium, which also coincide oftenwith slight variations of relief. [1045] In Russia the contrast between theglaciated surface of the north and the Black Mould belt of the southmakes the only natural divisions of that vast country, unless wedistinguish also the arid southeastern steppes on the basis of a purelyclimatic difference. [See map page 484. ]

The broad coastal plain of our South Atlantic States contains only lowreliefs; but it is diversified by several soil belts, which exert adefinite control over the industries of the inhabitants, and therebyover the distribution of the negro population. In Georgia, for instance, the rich alluvial soil of the swampy coast is devoted to the culture ofrice and sea-island cotton, and contains over 60 per cent. Of negroes inits population. This belt, which is only 25 miles wide, is succeededinland by a broader zone of sandy pine barrens, where the proportion ofnegroes drops to only 20 or 30 per cent. Of the total. Yet furtherinland is another fertile belt, devoted chiefly to the cultivation ofupland cotton and harboring from 35 to over 60 per cent. Of negroes inits population. [1046] Alabama shows a similar stratification of soils andpopulation from north to south over its level surface. Along thenorthern border of the state the cereal belt coincides with the deepcalcareous soil of the Tennessee River Valley, where negroes constitutefrom 35 to 60 per cent. Of the inhabitants. Next comes the mineral belt, covering the low foot-hills of the Appalachian Mountains. It containsthe densest population of the state, less than 17 per cent. Of which isnegro. South of this is the broad cotton belt of various rich soils, chiefly deep black loam of the river bottoms, which stretches east andwest across the state and includes over 60 per cent. Of negroes in itspopulation. This is succeeded by the low, coastal timber belt, marked bya decline in the quality of the soil and the proportion of negroinhabitants. [1047]

[Sidenote: Value of slight elevations. ]

In the dead level of extensive plains even slight elevations are seizedupon for special uses, or acquire peculiar significance. The Kurgans orburial mounds of the prehistoric inhabitants of Russia, often twenty tofifty feet high, serve to-day as watch-towers for herdsmen tending theirflocks. [1048] Similarly the Bou-bous, inhabiting the flat grasslands ofthe French Congo between the Shari and Ubangui Rivers, use the lowknolls dotted over their country, probably old ant-hills, as lookoutpoints against raiders. [1049] The sand hills and ridges which border thesouthern edges of the North German lowland form districts sharplycontrasted to the swampy, wooded depressions of the old deserted rivervalleys just to the north. Early occupied by a German stock, theyfurnished the first German colonists to displace the primitive Slavpopulation surviving in those unattractive, inaccessible regions, asseen in the Spreewald near Kottbus to-day. 

[Sidenote: Plains and political expansion. ]

The boundless horizon which is unfavorable to a nascent people endowsthem in their belated maturity with the power of mastering large areas. Political expansion is the dominant characteristic of the peoples of theplains. Haxthausen observed that handicapped and retarded Russiacommands every geographic condition and national trait necessary forvirile and expansive political power. [1050] Muscovite expansion eastwardacross the lowlands of Europe and Asia is paralleled by the rapidspread of American settlement and dominion across the plains andprairies of the Mississippi Valley, and Hungarian domination of the wideDanubian levels from the foot-hills of the Austrian Alps to the farCarpathian watershed. It was the closely linked lowlands of the Seineand Loire which formed the core of political expansion andcentralization in France. Nearly the whole northern lowland of Germanyhas been gradually absorbed by the kingdom of Prussia, which nowcomprises in its territory almost two-thirds of the total area of theEmpire. Prussian statesmen formulated the policy of German unificationand colonial expansion, and to Prussia fell the hereditary headship ofthe Empire. 

Lowland states tend to stretch out and out to boundaries which dependmore upon the reach of the central authority than upon physicalfeatures. We have seen American settlement and dominion overleap onenatural boundary after another between the Mississippi River and thePacific, from 1804 to 1848. Russia in an equally short period has pushedforward its Asiatic frontier at a dozen points, despite all barriers ofdesert and mountain. Argentina, blessed with extensive plains, fertilesoil and temperate climate, which have served to augment its populationboth by natural increase and steady immigration (one-fourth of itspopulation is foreign), has expanded across the Rio Negro over thegrasslands of the Patagonian plain, and thereby enlarged its area by259, 620 square miles since 1881. The statesman of the plains is anature-made imperialist; he nurses wide territorial policies and drawshis frontiers for the future. To him a "far-flung battle line" issignificant only as a means to secure a far-flung boundary line. 

[Sidenote: Arid plains. ]

From these low, accessible plains of adequate rainfall, which at firstencourage primitive nomadism but finally make it yield to sedentary lifeand to dense populations spreading their farms and cities farther andfarther over the unresisting surface of the land, we turn to thoseboundless arid steppes and deserts which Nature has made forever thehomes of restless, rootless peoples. Here quiescence is impossible, the_Völkerwanderung_ is habitual, migration is permanent. The only changeis this eternal restlessness. While the people move, progress standsstill. Everywhere the sun-scorched grasslands and waterless waste havedrawn the dead-line to the advance of indigenous civilization. Theypermit no accumulation of productive wealth beyond increasing flocks andherds, and limit even their growth by the food supply of scanty, scattered pasturage. The meager rainfall eliminates forests andtherewith a barrier to migrations; it also restricts vegetation tograsses, sedges and those forms which can survive a prolonged summerdrought and require a short period of growth. 

[Illustration: ANNUAL RAINFALL OF THE WORLD. ]

[Sidenote: Distribution and extent of arid plains. ]

The union of arid plains and steppe vegetation is based upon climate, and is therefore a widely distributed phenomenon. These plains, whetherhigh or low, are found in their greatest extent in the dry trade-windbelts, as in the deserts and steppes of Arabia, Persia, Sudan, theSahara, South Africa and Central Australia; and in vast continentalinteriors, where the winds arrive robbed of their moisture in passingintervening highlands, as in the grasslands of our western plains, thellanos and pampas of South America, and the steppes of Central Asia. Butwherever they occur, whether in Argentina or Russian Turkestan or thehigher plains of Mongolia and Tibet, they present the same generalcharacteristics of land surface, climate, flora and fauna, and the samenomadic populations of pastoral or hunting tribes. In them the movementof peoples reaches its culminating point, permanent settlement its nilpoint. Here the hunting savage makes the widest sweep in pursuit ofbuffalo or antelope, and pauses least to till a field; here the pastoralnomad follows his systematic wandering in search of pasturage and hishardly less systematic campaigns of conquest. It is the vast area andwide distribution of these arid plains, combined with the mobility whichthey impose on native human life, that has lent them historicalimportance, and reproduced in all sections of the world that significanthomologous relation of arid and well-watered districts. 

[Sidenote: Pastoral life. ]

The grasslands of the old world developed historical importance onlyafter the domestication of cattle, sheep, goats, asses, horses, camelsand yaks. This step in progress resulted in the evolution of peopleswho renounced the precarious subsistence of the chase and escaped thedrudgery of agriculture, to devote themselves to pastoral life. It waspossible only where domesticable animals were present, and where theintelligence of the native or the peculiar pressure exerted byenvironment suggested the change from a natural to an artificial basisof subsistence. Australia lacked the type of animal. Though NorthAmerica had the reindeer and buffalo, and South America the guanaco, llama and alpaca, only the last two were domesticated in the Andeanhighlands; but as these were restricted to altitudes from 10, 000 to14, 000 feet, where pasturage was limited, stock raising in primitiveSouth America was merely an adjunct to the sedentary agriculture of thehigh intermontane valleys, and never became the basis for pastoralnomadism on the grassy plains. However, when the Spaniards introducedhorses and cattle into South America, the Indians and half-breeds of thellanos and pampas became regular pastoral nomads, known as llaneros andgauchos. They are a race of horsemen, wielding javelin and lasso andbola, living on meat, often on horse-flesh like the ancient Huns, dwelling in leather tents made on a cane framework, like those of themodern Kirghis and medieval Tartars, dressed in cloaks of horsehide sewntogether, and raiding the Argentinian frontier of white settlement forhorses, sheep and cattle, with the true marauding instinct of allnomads. [1051]

[Sidenote: Pastoral nomads of Arctic plains. ]

Aridity is not the only climatic condition condemning a people tonomadic life. Excessive cold, producing the tundra wastes of the farnorth, has the same effect. Therefore, throughout Arctic Eurasia, fromthe Lapp district of Norway to the Inland Chukches of eastern Siberia, we have a succession of Hyperborean peoples pasturing their herds ofreindeer over the moss and lichen tundra, and supplementing their foodsupply with hunting and fishing. The reindeer Chukches once confinedthemselves to their peninsula, so long as the grazing grounds wereunexhausted; but they now range as far west as Yakutsk on the LenaRiver, The Orochones of the Kolima River district in eastern Siberia, who live chiefly by their reindeer, have small herds. A well-to-doperson will have 40 to 100 animals, and the wealthiest only 700, whilethe Chukches with herds of 10, 000 often seek the pasture of the Kolimatundra. [1052] Farther west, the Samoyedes of northern Siberia and Russiaand the Zirians of the Petchora River range with their large herdsnorthward to the Yalmal Peninsula and Vaygats Isle in summer, andsouthward in winter. [See map pages 103, 225. ] Here a herd of fiftyhead, which just suffices for the support of one family of four souls, requires 10 square versts, or 4. 44 square miles of tundra pasturage. [1053]Hence population must forever remain too sparse ever to attainhistorical significance. [See map page 8. ] The Russian Lapps, too, leada semi-nomadic life. Each group has a particular summer and wintersettlement. The winter village is located usually inland in the KolaPeninsula, where the forests lend shelter to the herds, and the summerone near the tundra of the coast, where fishing is accessible. Inwinter, like the nomads of the deserts, they add to their slender incomeby the transport of goods by their reindeer and by service at the poststations. [1054]

[Sidenote: Historical importance of steppe nomads. ]

These nomads of the frozen north, scattered sparsely over the remoteperiphery of the habitable world, have lacked the historical importancewhich in all times has attached to the steppe nomads, owing to theircentral location. The broad belt of deserts and grasslands which crossesthe old world diagonally between 10° and 60° North Latitude from theAtlantic in Africa to the Pacific in Asia, either borders or encompassesthe old domains of culture found in river oases, alluvial lowlands orcoastal plains of the Torrid and Temperate Zones. The restless, mobile, unbound shepherds of the arid lands have never long been contained bythe country which bred them. They have constantly encroached upon theterritory of their better placed neighbors, invading, conquering, appropriating their fields and cities, disturbing but at the same timeacquiring their culture, lording it over the passive agriculturists, andat the same time putting iron into their weaker blood. It is thegeographical contact between arid steppes and moist river valley, between land of poverty and land of plenty, that has made the history ofthe two inseparable. [1055]

[Illustration: CULTURAL REGIONS OF AFRICA AND ARABIA. ]

[Sidenote: Mobility of pastoral nomads. ]

Every aspect of human life in the steppes bears the stamp of mobility. The nomad tolerates no clog upon his movements. His dwelling is the tentof skin or felt as among Kalmucks and Kirghis, or the tent wagon of themodern Boer[1056] and the ancient Scythian as described by Herodotus. [1057]"This device has been contrived by them as the country is fit for it, "he says, --level, grassy, treeless. The temporary settlement of shepherdtribes is the group of tents, or the ancient _carrago_ camp of thenomadic Visigoths, [1058] or the _laager_ of the pastoral Boers, both acircular barricade or corral of wagons. 

[Sidenote: Tendency to trek. ]

Constant movement reduces the impedimenta to a minimum. The Orochones, aTunguse nomadic tribe of eastern Siberia, have no furniture in theirtents, and keep their meager supply of clothing and utensils neatlypacked on sledges, as if to start at a moment's notice. [1059] The onlydesirable form of capital is that which transports itself, namely, flocks and herds. Beyond that, wealth is limited to strictly portableforms, preferably silver, gold and jewels. It was in terms of these, besides their herds, that the riches of Abraham and Lot were rated inthe Bible. That the Israelites when traveling through the wildernessshould have had the gold to make the golden calf accords strictly withthe verisimilitude of pastoral life. [1060] Moreover, that these enslaveddescendants of the Sheik Abraham, with their traditions of pastorallife, should have simply trekked-ruptured the frail ties of recentlyacquired habit which bound them to the Nile soil, is also in keepingwith their inborn nomadic spirit. Similar instances occur among modernpeoples. The Great Trek of the South African Boers in 1836, by whichthey renounced not only their unwelcome allegiance to England, but alsotheir land, [1061] was another exodus in accordance with the instinct of apastoral people. They adopted no strange or difficult course, buttraveled with their families as they were wont in their every day lifeof cattle-tenders, took all their chattels with them, and headed for thethin pastures of the far-reaching veldt. The Russian government has hadto contend with a like fluidity in her Cossack tribes of the steppes, who have been up and off when imperial authority became oppressive. Inthe summer of 1878 West Siberia lost about 9000 Kirghis, who left theprovince Semipalatinsk to seek Mongolia. 

[Sidenote: Seasonal migrations. ]

Environment determines the nomadic habits of the dweller of desert andsteppe. The distribution of pasture and water fixes the scope and therate of his wandering; these in turn depend upon geographic conditionsand vary with the season. The Papago Indians of southern Arizona rangewith their cattle over a territory 100 by 150 miles in extent, andwander across the border into Mexico. When their main water supply, derived from wells or artificial reservoirs near their summer villages, is exhausted, they migrate to the water-holes, springs or streams in thecañons. There the cattle graze out on the plains and return to thecañons to drink. [1062] Every Mongol tribe and clan has its seasonalmigration. In winter the heavier precipitation and fuller streams enablethem to collect in considerable groups in protected valleys; but the drysummer disperses them over the widest area possible, in order to utilizeevery water-hole and grass spot. The hotter regions of the plains areabandoned in summer for highlands, where the short period of warmthyields temporary pastures and where alone water can be found. TheKirghis of Russian Turkestan resort in summer to the slopes and highvalleys of the Altai Mountains, where their auls or tent villages may beseen surrounded by big flocks of sheep, goats, camels, horses andcattle. [1063] The Pamir in the warm months is the gathering place for thenomads of Central Asia. The naked desert of Arabia yields a rare herbageduring the rainy season, when the Bedouin tribes resort to it forpasturage;[1064] but during the succeeding drought they scatter to thehills of Yemen, Syria and Palestine, [1065] or migrate to the valley of theNile and Euphrates. [1066] The Arabs of the northern Sahara, followed bysmall flocks of sheep and goats, vibrate between the summer pastures onthe slopes of the Atlas Mountains and the scant, wiry grass tufts foundin winter on the borders of the desert. [1067] When the equatorial rainsbegin in June, the Arabs of the Atbara River follow them north-westwardinto the Nubian desert, and let their camel herds graze on the delicategrass which the moisture has conjured up from the sandy soil. Thecountry about Cassala, which is flooded during the monsoon rains by therivers from the Abyssinian Mountains, is reserved for the dryseason. [1068] In the same way the Tartar tribes of the Dnieper, Don, Volgaand Ural Rivers in the thirteenth century moved down these rivers inwinter to the sea coast, and in summer up-stream to the hills andmountains. [1069] So for the past hundred years the Boers of the SouthAfrican grasslands have migrated in their tent wagons from the higher tothe lower pastures, according to the season of the year, invading eventhe Karroo Desert after the short summer rains. [1070]

[Sidenote: Marauding expeditions. ]

This systematic movement of nomads within their accepted boundariesleads, on slight provocation, to excursions beyond their own frontiersinto neighboring territories. The growing herd alone necessitates theabsorption of more land, more water-holes, because the grazed pasturesrenew their grass slowly under the prevailing conditions of drought. Anarea sufficient for the support of the tribe is inadequate for thesustenance of the herd, whose increase is a perennial expansive force. Soon the pastures become filled with the feeding flocks, and thenherdsmen and herds spill over into other fields. Often a season ofunusual drought, reducing the existing herbage which is scarcelyadequate at best, gives rise to those irregular, temporary expansionswhich enlarge the geographical horizon of the horde, and eventuate inwidespread conquest. Such incursions, like the seasonal movements ofnomads, result from the helpless dependence of shepherd tribes uponvariations of rainfall. 

The nomad's basis of life is at best precarious. He and want arefamiliar friends. A pest among his herds, diminished pasturage, failingwells, all bring him face to face with famine, and drive him to robberyand pillage. [1071] Marauding tendencies are ingrained in all dwellers ofthe deserts and steppes. [1072] Since the days of Job, the Bedouins ofArabia have been a race of marauders; they have reduced robbery to asystem. Predatory excursions figure conspicuously in the history of allthe tribes. Robber is a title of honor. [1073] Pliny said that the Arabswere equally addicted to theft and trade. They pillaged caravans andheld them for ransom, or gave them safe conduct across the desert for aprice. Formerly the Turkoman tribes of the Trans-Caspian steppes leviedon the bordering districts, notably the northern part of Khorasan, whichbelonged more to the Turkomans, Yomut and Goklan tribes of the adjoiningsteppe than to the resident Persians. The border districts of Herat, Khiva, Merv and Bukhara used to suffer in the same way from the raids ofthe Tekkes, till the Russians checked the evil. [1074] The Tekkes haddepopulated whole districts, invaded Persian towns of considerable size, and carried off countless families into slavery. Both Turkomans andKirghis tribes prior to 1873 raided caravans and carried off thetravelers to the slave markets of Bukhara and Samarkand. [1075] [See mappage 103. ]

Among these tribes no young man commanded respect in his community tillhe had participated in a _baranta_ or cattle-raising. [1076] For centuriesthe nomadic hordes of the Russian steppes systematically pillaged thepeaceful agricultural Slavs, who were threatening to encroach upon theirpasture lands. The sudden, swift descent and swift retreat of themounted marauders with the booty into the pathless grasslands, whitherpursuit was dangerous, their tendency to rob and conquer but never tocolonize, involved Russia in a long struggle, which ceased only with theextension of Muscovite dominion over the steppes. [1077]

[Sidenote: Depredation and conquests of African nomads. ]

All the Saharan tribes are marauders, whether Arabs, Berber Tuaregs, orNegroid Tibbus. The desert has made them so. The Tuaregs are chronicfreebooters; they keep the Sahara and especially the caravan routes inconstant insecurity. They stretch a cordon across these routes fromGhadames and Ghat in the east to the great oases of Insalah and Twat inthe west; and from the oases and hills forming their headquarters theyspread for pasturage and blackmail over the desert. [1078] They exact tollover and over again from a caravan, provide it with a military escort oftheir own tribesmen, and then pillage it on the way. [1079] This has beenthe experience of Barth[1080] and other explorers. Caravans have not beentheir only prey. The agricultural peoples in the Niger flood-plain, thecommerce on the river, and the markets of Timbuctoo long suffered fromthe raids of the Tuaregs of the Sahara. They collected tribute in theform of grain, salt, garments, horses and gold, typical needs of adesert people, imposed tolls on caravans and on merchant fleets passingdown the Niger to Timbuctoo. In 1770 they began to move from the desertand appropriate the fertile plains in the northern part of the NigerValley, and in 1800 they conquered Timbuctoo; but soon they had to yieldto another tribe of pastoral nomads, the Fulbes from the Senegal, who in1813 established a short-lived but well organized empire on the ruins ofthe Tuareg dominion. [1081] [See map page 105. ] The other agriculturalstates of the Sudan have had the same experience. The Tibbus, predatorynomads of the French Sahara just north of Lake Chad and the River Yo, mounted on camels and ponies, cross the shrunken river in the dry seasonand raid Bornu for cattle, carry off women and children to sell asslaves, pillage the weekly markets on the Yo, and plunder caravans ofpilgrims moving eastward to Mecca. [1082] Nowhere can desert nomads and thecivilized peoples of agricultural plains dwell side by side in peace. Raids, encroachments, reprisals, finally conquest from one side or theother is the formula for their history. [See map page 487. ]

[Sidenote: Forms of defense against nomad depredations. ]

The raided territory, if a modern civilized state, organizes its bordercommunities into a native mounted police, as the English have done inBornu, Sokoto and the Egyptian Sudan, and as the Russians did with theirCossack riders along the successive frontiers of Muscovite advance intothe steppes; or it takes into its employ, as we have seen, the nearestnomad tribes to repress or punish every hostile movement beyond. Amongthe ancient states the method was generally different. Since the nomadinvaders came with their flocks and herds, a barrier often sufficed toblock their progress. For this purpose Sesostris built the long wall of1500 stadia from Pelusium to Heliopolis as a barricade against theArabians. [1083] Ancient Carthage constructed a ditch to check thedepredations of the nomads of Numidia. [1084] The early kings of Assyriabuilt a barrier across the plains of the Euphrates above Babylon tosecure their dominion from the incursions of the desert Medes. [1085] Inthe fifth century of our era, the "Red Wall" was constructed near thenorthern frontier of Persia as a bulwark against the Huns. It stretchedfor a hundred and fifty miles from the Caspian Sea at the ancient portof Aboskun eastward to the mountains, and thus enclosed the populousvalley of the Gurgen River. [1086] In remote ages the neck of the CrimeanPeninsula was fortified by a wall against the irruptions of theTauro-Scythians. [1087] The Russians early in their national history usedthe same means of defense against Tartar incursions. One wall was builtfrom Pensa on the Sura River to Simbirsk on the Volga, just south ofKazan; another, further strengthened by a foss and palisades, extendedfrom the fortress of Tsaritzin at the southern elbow of the Volga acrossthe fifty-mile interval to the Don, and was still defended in 1794 bythe Cossacks of the Don against the neighboring Kirghis hordes. [1088] Theclassic example of such fortifications against pastoral nomads, however, is the Great Wall of China. 

[Sidenote: Pastoral life as a training for soldiers. ]

The nomad is economically a herdsman, politically a conqueror, andchronically a fighter. Strife over pasturage and wells meets us in thetypical history of Abraham, Lot and Isaac;[1089] it exists within andwithout the clan. The necessity of guarding the pastures, which are onlyintermittently occupied, involves a persistent military organization. The nation is a quiescent army, the army a mobilized nation. [1090] Itcarries with it a self-transporting commissariat in its flocks andherds. Constant practice in riding, scouting and the use of arms, physical endurance tested by centuries of exertion and hardship, makeevery nomad a soldier. Cavalry and camel corps add to the swiftness andvigor of their onslaught, make their military strategy that of suddenattack and swifter retreat, to be met only by wariness and extrememobility. The ancient Scythians of the lower Danubian steppes were allhorse archers, like the Parthians. "If the Scythians were united, thereis no nation which could compare with them or would be capable ofresisting them; I do not say in Europe, but even in Asia, " saidThucydides. [1091] In this opinion Herodotus concurred. [1092] The nomad'swhole existence breeds courage. The independent, hazardous life of thedesert makes the Arab the bravest of mankind, but the settled, agricultural Arab of Egypt and Mohammedan Spain lost most of hisfighting qualities. [1093]

[Sidenote: Military organization of nomads. ]

The daily life of a nomad horde is a training school for militaryorganization. In the evening the flocks and herds are distributed withsystem around the camp to prevent confusion. The difficult art of a wellordered march, of making and breaking camp, and of foraging is practicedalmost daily in their constant migrations. [1094] The usual order of theBedouin march could scarcely be surpassed by an army. In advance of thecaravan moves a body of armed horsemen, five or seven kilometers ahead;then follows the main body of the tribesmen mounted on horses andcamels, then the female camels, and after these the beasts of burdenwith the women and children. The encampment of tents with the placesfor men, arms and herds is also carefully regulated. More than this, thehorde is organized into companies with their superior and subordinateleaders. [1095] John de Carpini describes Genghis Khan's militaryorganization of his vast Tartar horde by tens, hundreds and thousands, his absolute dominion over his conquered subjects, and prompt absorptionof them into his fighting force, by the compulsory enlistment ofsoldiers out of every freshly subjugated nation. [1096] In the same way theHebrew tribes, when preparing for the conquest of Canaan, adopted fromthe desert Midianites the organization of the horde into tens, hundredsand thousands under judges, who were also military leaders in time ofwar. 

[Sidenote: Capacity for conquest and political consolidation. ]

Thus certain geographic conditions produce directly the habitual andsystematic migration of the nomads, and through this indirectly thatmilitary and political organization which has given the shepherd racesof the earth their great historical mission of political consolidation. Agriculture, though underlying all permanent advance in civilization, ishandicapped by the lack of courage, mobility, enterprise and largepolitical outlook characterizing early tillers of the soil. All thesequalities the nomad possesses. Hence the union of these two elements, imperious pastor superimposed upon peaceful tiller, has made the onlystable governments among savage and semi-civilized races. [1097] Thepolitically invertebrate peoples of dark Africa have secured theback-bone to erect states only from nomad conquerors. The history of theSudan cannot be understood apart from a knowledge of the Sahara and itspeoples. All the Sudanese states were formed by invaders from thenorthern desert, Hamitic or Semitic. [See map page 487. ] The Galla orWahuma herdsmen of East Africa founded and maintained the relativelystable states of Uganda, Kittara, Karague, and Uzinza in the equatorialdistrict; the conquerors remained herders while they lorded it over theagricultural aborigines. [1098] In prehistoric times when the variouspeoples of the Aryan linguistic family were spreading over Europe andsouthern Asia, the superiority of the shepherd races must have beenespecially marked, because in that era only the unobstructed surface ofthe steppes permitted the concentration of men on a vast scale formigration and conquest. Everywhere else regions of broken relief anddense forests harbored small, isolated peoples, to whom both the ideaand the technique of combined movement were foreign. 

[Sidenote: Scope of nomad conquests. ]

The rapidity and wide scope of such conquests is explained largely bythe fact that nomads try to displace only the ruling classes in thesubjugated territory, leaving the mass of the population practicallyundisturbed. Thus they spread themselves thin over a wide area. Howlasting are the results of such conquests depends upon the degree ofsocial evolution attained by the herdsmen. Genghis Khan and Tamerlane, after the manner of overlords, organized their conquered nations, butleft them under the control of local princes, [1099] while their tributegatherers annually swept the country like typical nomad marauders. TheTurks are still only encamped in Europe. They too make taxationdespoliation. And though their dominion has produced no assimilationbetween victor and vanquished, it has given political consolidation to alarge area occupied by varied peoples. The Hyksos conquest of Egyptfound the Nile Valley divided into several petty principalities under anominal king. The nomad conquerors possessed political capacity and gaveto Egypt a strong, centralized government, which laid the basis for thepower and glory of the Eighteenth Dynasty. The Tartars in 1279 A. D. Andthe Manchus in 1664 conquered China, extended its boundaries, governedthe country as a ruling class, and left the established order of thingsundisturbed. The Saracen conquest of North Africa and Spain showed for atime organization and a permanence due to the advanced cultural statusof the sedentary Arabs drawn into the movement by religious enthusiasm. The environment of Spain tended to conserve the knowledge ofagriculture, industry, architecture, and science which they brought inand which might have cemented Spaniard and Moor, had it not been for theintense religious antagonism existing between the two races. 

The history of nomad conquerors shows that they become weakened by theenervating climate and the effeminating luxury of the moist and fertilelowlands. They lose eventually their warlike spirit, like the Fellatahor Fulbe founders of the Sudanese states, [1100] and are either displacedfrom their insecure thrones by other conquerors sprung from the samenomad-breeding steppe, as the Aryan princes of India by the MongolEmperor, and the Saracen invaders of Mesopotamia by the victoriousTurkomans; or they are expelled in time by their conquered subjects, asthe Tartars were from Russia, the Moors from Spain, and the Turks fromthe Danube Valley. 

[Sidenote: Centralization versus decentralization in nomadism. ]

Nomad hordes unite for concerted action to resist encroachment upontheir pastures, or for marauding expeditions, or for widespreadconquest; but such unions are from their nature temporary, though acareer of conquest may be sustained for decades. The geographicallydetermined mobility which facilitates such concentration favors alsodispersal, decentralization. This is the paradox in nomadism. Geographicconditions in arid lands necessitate sparse distribution of populationand of herds. Pastoral life requires large spaces and small socialgroups. When Abraham and Lot went to Canaan from Egypt, "the land wasnot able to bear them that they might dwell together, for theirsubstance was great. " Strife for the pasturage ensued between theirrespective herdsmen, so the two sheiks separated, Lot taking the plainsof Jordan and Abraham the hill pastures of Hebron. Jacob and Esauseparated for the same reason. The encampment of the Kirghis shepherdsrarely averages over five or six tents, except on the best grazinggrounds at the best season of the year. The flow of spring, well orstream also helps to regulate their size. The groups of Mongol yurts orfelt tents along the piedmont margin of the Gobi vary from four tents toa large encampment, according to water and grass. [1101] Prevalsky mentionsa population of 70 families or 300 souls in the Lob Nor districtdistributed in 11 villages, or less than 28 in each group. [1102] Barthnoticed the smallness of all the oasis towns of the Sahara, even thoseoccupying favorable locations for trade on the caravan routes. [1103]

[Sidenote: Spirit of independence among nomads. ]

The nature-made necessity of scattering in small groups to seekpasturage induces in the nomad a spirit of independence. The Bedouin ispersonally free. The power of the sheik is only nominal, [1104] and dependsmuch upon his personal qualities. The gift of eloquence among theancient Arabs has been attributed to the necessity of persuading apeople to whom restraint was irksome. [1105] Political organization isconspicuously lacking among the Tibbus of the Sahara[1106] and theTurkoman tribes of the Trans-Caspian steppes. "We are a people without ahead, " they say. The title of sheik is an empty one. Custom and usageare their rulers. [1107] Though the temporary union of nomadic tribes formsan effective army, the union is short-lived. Groups form, dissolve andre-form, with little inner cohesion. The Boers in South Africangrasslands showed the same development. The government of the Dutch EastIndia Company in Cape Colony found it difficult to control the wanderingcattlemen of the interior plateau. They loved independence andisolation; their dissociative instincts, bred by the lonely life of thethin-pastured veldt, were overcome only by the necessity of defenseagainst the Bushmen. Then they organized themselves into commandos andsallied out on punitive expeditions, like the Cossack tribes of the Donagainst marauding Tartars. Scattered over wide tracts of pasture land, they were exempt from the control of either Dutch or English authority;but when an energetic administration pursued them into their widespreadranches, they eluded control by trekking. [1108] Here was the independentspirit of the steppe, reinforced by the spirit of the frontier. 

[Sidenote: Resistance to conquest. ]

Though the desert and steppe have bred conquerors, they are the lastparts of the earth's surface to yield to conquest from without. Theuntameable spirit of freedom in the shepherd tribes finds an allyagainst aggression in the trackless sands, meager water and food supplyof their wilderness. Pursuit of the retreating tribesmen is dangerousand often futile. They need only to burn off the pasture and fill up orpollute the water-holes to cripple the transportation and commissariatof the invading army. This is the way the Damaras have fought the Germansubjugation of Southwest Africa. [1109] Moreover, the paucity of economicand political possibilities in deserts and grasslands discouragesconquest. Conquest pays only where it is a police measure to checkdepredations on the bordering agricultural lands, or where such barrenareas are transit lands to a desirable territory beyond. It is chieflythe "Gates of Herat" and the lure of India which have drawn Russiandominion across the scorched plains of Turkestan. France has assumed thebig task of controlling the Sahara to secure a safe passway betweenFrench Tunisia and the rich Niger basin of the French Sudan. The recentBritish-Egyptian expansion southward across the Nubian steppes had forits objective the better watered districts of the upper Nile aboveKhartum. This desert advance is essentially a latter day phenomenon, theoutcome of modern territorial standards; it is attended or secured bythe railroad. To this fact the projected Trans-Saharan line is thestrongest witness. 

Nature everywhere postpones, obstructs, jeopardizes the politicalconquest of arid lands. The unstable, fanatical tribesmen of theEgyptian Sudan, temporarily but effectively united under the Mahdi, madeit necessary for Kitchener to do again in 1898 the work of subjugationwhich Gordon had done thirty years before. The body of the Arabianpeople is still free. The Turkish sovereignty over them to-day isnominal, rather an alliance with a people whom it is dangerous toprovoke and difficult to attack. Only the coast provinces of Hejaz, Yemen and Hasa are subject to Turkey, while the tribes of the interiorand of the southeastern seaboard are wholly independent. [1110] TheTurkoman tribes of Trans-Caspia have been subordinated to Russia largelyby a process of extermination. [1111] China is satisfied with a nominaldominion over the roaming populations of Mongolia and Chinese Turkestan. The French pacification and control of Northwest Africa meets a peculiarproblem, due to the extreme restlessness and restiveness of the dominantArab race. The whole population is unstable as water; a disturbance ormovement in one tribe is soon communicated to the whole mass. [1112]

[Sidenote: Curtailment of nomadism. ]

The steppe or desert policy for the curtailment of nomadism, and thereclamation of both land and people is to encourage or enforcesedentary life. The French, to settle the wandering tribes on the Atlasborder of the Sahara, have opened a vast number of artesian wellsthrough the agency of skillful engineers, and thus created oases inwhich the fecund sands support abundant date-palm groves. [1113] The methodpursued energetically by the Russians is to compress the tribes intoever narrowing limits of territory, taking away their area of plunderand then so restricting their pasture lands, that they are forced to thedrudgery of irrigation and tillage. In this way the Yomuts and Goklansoccupying the Caspian border of Trans-Caspia have been compelled toabandon their old marauding, nomadic life and become to some extentagriculturists. [1114] The method of the Chinese is to push forward thefrontier of agricultural settlement into the grasslands, dislodging theshepherd tribes into poorer pastures. They have thus reclaimed for grainand poppy fields considerable parts of the Ordos country in the greatnorthern bend of the Hoangho, which used to be a nursery for nomadicinvaders. A similar substitution of agriculture for pastoral nomadism ofanother type has in recent decades taken place in the semi-arid plainsof the American West. Sheep-grazing on open range was with difficultydislodged from the San Joaquin Valley of California by expanding farmsin the sixties. More recently "dry farming" and scientific agricultureadapted to semi-arid conditions have "pushed the desert off the map" inKansas, and advanced the frontier of tillage across the previous domainof natural pastures to the western border of the state. 

Pastoral nomadism has been gradually dislodged from Europe, except inthe salt steppes of the Caspian depression, where a vast tract, 300, 000square miles in area and wholly unfit for agriculture, still harbors asparse population of Asiatic Kalmuck and Kirghis hordes, leading thelife of the Asiatic steppes. [1115] In Asia, too, the regions of pastoralnomadism have been curtailed, but in Africa they still maintain for themost part the growing, expanding geographical forms which they onceshowed in Europe, when nomadism prevailed as far as the Alps and theRhine. In Africa shepherd tribes cover not only the natural grasslands, but lap over into many districts destined by nature for agriculture. Hence it is safe to predict that a conspicuous part of the futureeconomic and cultural history of the Dark Continent will consist in therelease of agricultural regions from nomad occupancy and dominion. 

[Sidenote: Supplementary agriculture of pastoral nomads. ]

Though agriculture is regarded with contempt and aversion by pastoralnomads and is resorted to for a livelihood only when they lose theirherds by a pest or robbery, or find their pasture lands seriouslycurtailed, nevertheless nomadism yields such a precarious and monotonoussubsistence that it is not infrequently combined with a primitive, shifting tillage. The Kalmucks of the Russian steppes employ men toharvest hay for the winter feeding. The Nogai Tartars practice a littlehaphazard tillage on the alluvial hem of the steppe streams. [1116] CertainArab tribes living east of the Atbara and Gash Rivers resort with theirherds during the dry season to the fruitful region of Cassala, which isinundated by the drainage streams from Abyssinia, and there theycultivate dourra and other grains. [1117] The Bechuana tribes inhabitingthe rich, streamless grassland of the so-called Kalahari Desert rearsmall herds of goats and cultivate melons and pumpkins; among the otherBechuana tribes on the eastern margin of the desert, the men hunt, herdthe cattle and milk the cows, while the women raise dourra, maize, pumpkins, melons, cucumbers and beans. [1118] [Compare maps pages 105, 487. ]

Such supplementary agriculture usually shifts with the nomad group. Butwhere high mountains border rainless tracts, their piedmont districtsregularly develop permanent cultivation. Here periodic rains or meltingsnows on the ranges fill the drainage streams, whose inundation oftenconverts their alluvial banks into ready-made fields. The reliability ofthe water supply anchors here the winter villages of the nomads, whichbecome centers of a limited agriculture, while the pasture lands beyondthe irrigated strips support his flocks and herds. Where the piedmont ofthe Kuen Lun Mountains draws a zone of vegetation around the southernrim of the Takla Makan Desert, Mongol shepherds raise some wheat, maizeand melons as an adjunct to their cattle and sheep; but their tillage isoften rendered intermittent by the salinity of the irrigatingstreams. [1119] Along the base of the Tian Shan Mountains, the felt yurt ofthe Gobi nomad gives place to Turki houses with wheat and rice fields, and orchards of various fruits; so that the whole piedmont highway fromHami to Yarkand presents an alternation of desert and oasissettlement. [1120] Even the heart of arid Arabia shows fertile oases undercultivation where the lofty Nejd Plateau, with its rain-gathering peaksover five thousand feet high, varies its wide pastures with well tilledvalleys abounding in grain fields and date-palm groves. [1121] Along thewhole Saharan slope of the Atlas piedmont a series of parallel wadisand, farther out in the desert, a zone of artesian wells, sunk to theunderground bed of hidden drainage streams from the same range, formoases which are the seat of permanent agriculture and more or lesssettled populations. The Saharan highlands of Tibesti, whose mountainsrise to 8, 300 feet, condense a little rain and permit the Tibbus toraise some grain and dates in the narrow valleys. [1122]

[Sidenote: Irrigation and horticulture. ]

The few and limited spots where the desert or steppe affords water forcultivation require artificial irrigation, the importation of plants, and careful tillage, to make the limited area support even a smallsocial group. Hence they could have been utilized by man only after hehad made considerable progress in civilization. [1123] Oasis agriculture ispredominantly intensive. Gardens and orchards tend to prevail over fieldtillage. The restricted soil and water must be forced to yield theirutmost. While on the rainy or northern slope of the Atlas in Algiers andTunis farms abound, on the Saharan piedmont are chiefly plantations ofvegetables, orchards and palm groves. [1124] In Fezzan at the oasis ofGhat, Barth found kitchen gardens of considerable extent, large palmgroves, but limited fields of grain, all raised by irrigation; and inthe flat hollow basin forming the oasis of Murzuk, he found also fig andpeach trees, vegetables, besides fields of wheat and barley cultivatedwith much labor. [1125] In northern Fezzan, where the mountains back ofTripoli provide a supply of water, saffron and olive trees are thestaple articles of tillage. The slopes are terraced and irrigated, laidout in orchards of figs, pomegranates, almonds and grapes, while fieldsof wheat and barley border the lower courses of the wadis. [1126] In the"cup oases" or depressions of the Sahara, the village is always built onthe slope, because the alluvial soil in the basin is too precious to beused for house sites. [1127]

[Sidenote: Effect of diminishing water supply. ]

The water supply in deserts and steppes, on which permanent agriculturedepends, is so scant that even a slight diminution causes the area oftillage to shrink. Here a fluctuation of snowfall or rainfall that in amoist region would be negligible, has conspicuous or even tragicresults. English engineers who examined the utilization of the Afghanstreams for irrigation reported that the natives had exploited theirwater supply to the last drop; that irrigation converted the Kabul Riverand the Heri-rud at certain seasons of the year into dry channels. [1128]In the Turkoman steppes it has been observed that expanding tillage, bythe multiplication of irrigation canals, increased the loss of water byevaporation, and hence diminished the supply. Facts like these revealthe narrow margin between food and famine, which makes the uncertainbasis of life for the steppe agriculturist. Even slight desiccationcontracts the volume and shortens the course of interior drainagestreams; therefore it narrows the piedmont zone of vegetation and thehem of tillage along the river banks. The previous frontier of field andgarden is marked by abandoned hamlets and sand-buried cities, like thosewhich border the dry beds of the shrunken Khotan rivers of the Tarimbasin. [1129] The steppe regions in the New World as well as the Old showgreat numbers of these ruins. Barth found them in the northern Sahara, dating from Roman days. [1130] They occur in such numbers in the SyrianDesert, in the Sistan of Persia, in Baluchistan, the Gobi, Takla MakanDesert, Turfan and the Lop Nor basin, that they indicate a marked butirregular desiccation of central and western Asia during the historicalperiod. [1131]

[Sidenote: Scant diet of nomads. ]

If a scant water supply places sedentary agriculture in arid lands uponan insecure basis, it makes the nomad's sources of subsistence even moreprecarious. It keeps him persistently on low rations, while the droughtthat burns his pastures and dries up well and wadi brings him face toface with famine. The daily food of the Bedouin is meal cooked in sourcamel's milk, to which bread and meat are added only when guests arrive. His moderation in eating is so great that one meal of a European wouldsuffice for six Arabs. [1132] The daily food of the shepherdagriculturists on the Kuen Lun margin of the Takla Makan Desert is breadand milk; meat is indulged in only three or four times a month. [1133] TheTartars, even in their days of widest conquest, showed the same habitualfrugality. "Their victuals are all things that may be eaten, for we sawsome of them eat lice. " The flesh of all animals dying a natural deathis used as food; in summer it is sun-dried for winter use, because atthat time the Tartars live exclusively on mare's milk which is thenabundant. A cup or two of milk in the morning suffices till evening, when each man has a little meat. One ram serves as a meal for fifty or ahundred men. Bones are gnawed till they are burnished, "so that no whitof their food may come to naught. " Genghis Khan enacted that neitherblood nor entrails nor any other part of a beast which might be eatenshould be thrown away. [1134] Scarcity of food among the Tibetan andMongolian nomads is reflected in their habit of removing every particleof meat from the bone when eating. [1135] A thin decoction of hot tea, butter and flour is their staple food. Many Turkoman nomads, despiteoutward appearance of wealth, eat only dried fish, and get bread onlyonce a month, while for the poor wheat is prohibited on account of itscost. [1136] The Saharan Tibbus, usually on a starvation diet, eat theskin and powdered bones of their dead animals. [1137]

The privations and hardships of life in the deserts and steppesdiscourage obesity. The Koko-Nor Mongols of the high Tibetan plateau areof slight build, never fat. [1138] The Bedouin's physical ideal of a manis spare, sinewy, energetic and vigorous, "lean-sided and thin, " as theArab poet expresses it. [1139] The nomadic tribesmen throughout theSahara, whether of Hamitic, Semitic or Negro race, show this type, andretain it even after several generations of settlement in the rivervalleys of the Sudan. The Bushmen, who inhabit the Kalahari Desert, havethin wiry forms and are capable of great exertion and privations. [1140]

[Sidenote: Checks to population. ]

Though the conquering propensities of nomadic tribes make large familiesdesirable, in order to increase the military strength of the horde, andthough shepherd folk acquiring new and rich pastures develop patriarchalfamilies, as did the Jews after the conquest of Canaan, nevertheless thelimited water and food supply of desert and grassland, as well as therelatively low-grade economy of pastoral life, impose an iron-boundrestriction upon population, so that as a matter of fact patriarchalfamilies are rare. When natural increase finds no vent in emigration anddispersal, marriage among nomads becomes less fruitful. [1141] Artificiallimitation of population occurs frequently among desert-dwellers. In theLibyan oasis of Farafeah, the inhabitants never exceed eighty males, alimit fixed by a certain Sheik Murzuk. [1142] Poverty of food supplyexplains the small number of children in the typical Turkoman family. Among the Koko-Nor Tibetans, monogamy is the rule, polygamy theexception and confined to the few rich, while families never includemore than two or three children. [1143] According to Burckhardt, threechildren constitute a large family among the Bedouins, much to theregret of the Bedouins themselves. Mohammedans though they are, fewpractice polygamy, while polyandry and female infanticide existed inheathen times. [1144] Desert peoples seem to be naturally monogamous. [1145]

[Sidenote: Trade of nomads. ]

The prevailing poverty, monotony and unreliability of subsistence indesert and steppe, as well as the low industrial status, necessitatetrade with bordering agricultural lands. The Bedouins of Arabia buyflour, barley for horse feed, coffee and clothing, paying for themlargely with butter and male colts. The northern tribes resort everyyear to the confines of Syria, when they are visited by pedlers fromDamascus and Aleppo. [1146] The tribes from Hasa and the Nejd pasture landbring horses, cattle and sheep to the city of Koweit at the head of thePersian Gulf to barter for dates, clothing and firearms; and largeencampments of them are always to be seen near this town. [1147] Arabiaand the Desert of Kedar sold lambs, rams and goats to the markets ofancient Tyre. [1148] The pastoral tribes of ancient Judea in times ofscarcity went to Egypt for grain, which they purchased either with moneyor cattle. The picture of Jacob's sons returning from Egypt to Canaanwith their long lines of asses laden with sacks of corn is typical forpastoral nomads; so is their ultimate settlement, owing to protractedfamine, in the delta land of Goshen. The Kirghis of the Russian andAsiatic steppes barter horses and sheep for cereals, fine articles ofclothing, and coarse wooden utensils in the cities of Bukhara and theborder districts of Russia. Occasionally the land of the nomad yieldsother products than those of the flocks and herds, which enter thereforeinto their trade. Such is the salt of the Sahara, secured at Taudeni andBilma, the gums of the Indus desert, and balm of Gilead from the dryplateau east of Jordan. 

[Sidenote: Pastoral nomads as middlemen. ]

The systematic migrations of nomads, their numerous beasts of burden, and the paucity of desert and steppe products determine pastoral tribesfor the office of middlemen;[1149] and as such they appear in all partsof the world. The contrast of products in arid regions and in thebordering agricultural land, as also in the districts on opposite sidesof these vast barriers, stimulates exchanges. This contrast may rest ona difference of geographic conditions, or of economic development, orboth. The reindeer Chukches of Arctic Siberia take Russian manufacturedwares from the fur stations on the Lena River to trade at the coastmarkets on Bering Sea for Alaskan pelts. The sons of Jacob, pasturingtheir flocks on the Judean plateau, saw "a company of Ishmaelites comefrom Gilead with their camels bearing spicery and balm and myrrh, goingto carry it down to Egypt. "[1150] This caravan of Arabian merchantspurchased Joseph as a slave, a characteristic commodity in desertcommerce from ancient times to the present. The predatory expeditions ofnomads provide them with abundant captives, only few of which can beutilized as slaves in their pastoral economy. In the same way theKirghis manage the caravan trade between Russia and Bukhara, sometimesadding captured travelers to their other wares. In ancient times Nubianshepherd folk acted as migrant middlemen between Egypt and Meroe nearthe junction of the Atbara River and the Nile, as did also the deserttribe of the Nasamones between Carthage and interior Africa. [1151] Fromremote ages an active caravan trade was carried on between theproductive districts of Arabia Felix and the cities of Mesopotamia, Syria and Egypt. Mohammed himself was a caravan leader; in the faithwhich he established religious pilgrimages and commercial ventures wereinextricably united, while to the mercantile spirit it gave a fresh andvigorous impetus. [1152] The caravan trade of the Sahara was firstorganized by Moorish and Arab tribes who dwelt on the northern margin ofthe desert, rearing herds of camels. These they hired to merchants forthe journey between Morocco and Timbuctoo, in return for cereals andclothing. Hence Morocco has been the chief customer of the great deserttown near the Niger, and sends thither numerous caravans from Tendouf(Taredant) Morocco, Fez and Tafilet. Algiers dominates the lessimportant route via the oasis of Twat, and Tripolis that throughGhadames to the busy towns in the Lake Chad basin. [1153]

[Sidenote: Desert markets. ]

If the camel is "the ship of the desert, " the market towns on the marginof the sandy wastes are the ports of the desert. Their bazaars holdeverything that the nomad needs. Their suburbs are a shifting series ofshepherd encampments or extensive caravanseries for merchant and packanimal, like the _abaradion_ of Timbuctoo, which receives annually fromfifty to sixty thousand camels. [1154] Their industries develop partly inresponse to the demand of the desert or trans-desert population. Thefine blades of Damascus reflected the Bedouin's need of the best weapon. Each city has its sphere of desert influence. The province of Nejd inCentral Arabia is commercially subservient to Bagdad, Busrah, Koweit andBahrein. [1155] The bazaars of Samarkand and Tashkent exist largely forthe scattered nomads of Turkestan. Ancient Gaza[1156] and Askelonfattened on the Egyptian trade across the Desert of Shur, as Petra, Bostra and Damascus on the thin but steady streams of nomad productsflowing in from the Syrian Desert. 

[Sidenote: Nomad industries. ]

The abundant leisure of nomadic life encourages the beginning ofindustry, but rarely advances it beyond the household stage, owing tothe thin, family-wise dispersion of population which precludes divisionof labor. Such industry as exists consists chiefly in working up the rawmaterials yielded by the herds. Among the Bedouins, blacksmiths andsaddlers are the only professional artisans; these are regarded withcontempt and are never of Bedouin stock. [1157] In the ancient world, industry reached its zero point in Arabia, and in modern times showsmeager development there. On the other hand the Saharan Arabs developedan hereditary guild of expert well-makers, which seems to date back toremote times, and is held in universal honor. [1158]

[Sidenote: Oriental rugs. ]

It is to the tent-dwellers of the world, however, that we apparently owethe oriental rug. This triumph of the weaver's art seems to haveoriginated among pastoral nomads, who developed it in working up thewool and hair of their sheep, goats and camels; but it early becamelocalized as a specialized industry in the towns and villages ofirrigated districts on the borders of the grazing lands, where thenomads had advanced to sedentary life. Therefore in the period of theCaliphate, from 632 to 1258, we find these brilliant flowers of theloom, blooming like the Persian gardens, in Persian Farsistan, Khusistan, Kirman and Khorasan. We find them spreading the mediæval fameof Shiraz, Tun, Meshed, Amul, Bukhara and Merv. The secret of thispreeminence lay partly in the weaver's inherited aptitude and artisticsense for this textile work, derived from countless generations ofshepherd ancestors; partly in their proximity to the finest rawmaterials, whose quality was equalled nowhere else, because it dependedupon the character of the pasturage, probably also upon the climaticconditions affecting directly the flocks and herds. [1159]

A map showing the geographical distribution of Eastern rug-makingreveals the relation of the industry to semi-arid or saline pastures, and makes the mind revert at once to the blankets of artistic design andcolor, woven by the Navajo Indians of our own rainless Southwest. Rugweaving in the Old World reached its finest development in countrieslike Persia, Turkestan, western Afghanistan, Baluchistan, western Indiaand the plateau portions of Asia Minor, countries where the rainfallvaries from 10 to 20 inches or even less, [See map page 484. ] wherenomadism claims a considerable part of the population, and where theancestry of all traces back to some of the great shepherd races, likeTurkomans and Tartars. These peoples are hereditary specialists in thecare, classification, and preparation of wools. [1160] Weavers of rugsform an industrial class in the cities of Persia and Asia Minor, wherethey obey largely the taste of the outside world in regard to design andcolor;[1161] whereas the nomads, weaving for their own use, adherestrictly to native colors and designs. Their patterns are tribalproperty, each differing from that of the other; and though lessartistic than those of the urban workers, are nevertheless interestingand consistent, while the nomad's intuitive sense of color is fine. [1162]

[Sidenote: Architecture of nomad conquerors. ]

The principles of design and color which these tent-dwellers haddeveloped in their weaving, they applied, after their conquest ofagricultural lands, to stone and produced the mosaic, to architectureand produced the Alhambra and the Taj Mahal. [1163] Whether Saracens ofSpain or Turkoman conquerors of India, they were ornamentists whosecontribution to architecture was decoration. Working in marble, stone, metals or wood, they wrought always in the spirit of color and textiledesign, rather than in the spirit of form. The walls of their mosques, palaces and tombs reproduce the beauty of the rugs once screening thedoors of their felt tents. The gift of color they passed on to the West, first through the Moors of Sicily and Spain, later through Venetiancommerce. Their influence can be seen in the exquisite mosaic decorationin the cloister of Mont Reale of once Saracenic Palermo, and in theDucal Palace and St. Mark's Cathedral of beauty-loving Venice. [1164] Thishas been almost their sole contribution to the art of the world. 

Pastoral nomads can give political union to civilized peoples; they canassimilate and spread ready-made elements of civilization, but tooriginate or develop them they are powerless. Between the art, philosophy and literature of China on the one side, and of the settleddistricts of Persia on the other, lies the cultural sterility of theCentral Asia plateau. Its outpouring hordes have only in part acquiredthe civilization of the superior agricultural peoples whom they haveconquered; from Kazan and Constantinople to Delhi, from Delhi to Pekingthey have added almost nothing to the local culture. 

[Sidenote: Arid lands as areas of arrested development. ]

Deserts and steppes lay an arresting hand on progress. Their tribes donot develop; neither do they grow old. They are the eternal children ofthe world. Genuine nomadic peoples show no alteration in their manners, customs or mode of life from millennium to millennium. The interior ofthe Arabian desert reveals the same social and economic status, [1165]whether we take the descriptions of Moses or Mohammed or Burckhardt ormore recent travelers. The Bedouins of the Nubian steppes adherestrictly to all their ancient customs, and reproduce to-day the pastoralnomadism of Abraham and Jacob. [1166] Genealogies were not more importantto the biblical house of David and stem of Jesse than they are for themodern Kirghis tribesman, who as a little child learns to recite thelist of his ancestors back to the seventh generation. The account whichHerodotus gives of the nomads of the Russian steppes agrees in minutedetails with that of Strabo written five centuries later, [1167] with thatof William de Rubruquis in 1253, and with modern descriptions of Kalmuckand Kirghis life. The Gauchos or Indian pastoral halfbreeds of theArgentine plains were found by Wappäus in 1870 to accord accurately withAvara's description of them at the end of the eighteenth century. [1168]The restless tenants of the grasslands come and go, but their type nevermaterially changes. Their culture is stationary amid persistentmovement. Only when here or there in some small and favored spot theyare forced to make the transition to agriculture, or when they learn bylong and close association with sedentary nations the lesson of drudgeryand progress, do the laws of social and economic development begin tooperate in them. As a rule, they must first escape partly or wholly theenvironment of their pasture lands, either by emigration or by theintrusion into their midst of alien tillers of the soil. 

But while the migrant shepherd originates nothing, he plays anhistorical rôle as a transmitter of civilization. Asiatic nomads havesparsely disseminated the culture of China, Persia, Egypt and Yemen overlarge areas of the world. The Semite shepherds of the Red Sea deserts, through their merchants and conquerors, long gave to the dark Sudan theonly light of civilization which it received, Mohammed, a Bedouin of theIshmaelite tribe, caravan leader on the desert highways between Meccaand Syria, borrowed from Jerusalem the simple tenets of a monotheisticreligion, and spread them through his militant followers over a largepart of Africa and Asia. 

[Sidenote: Mental and moral qualities of nomads. ]

The deserts and grasslands breed in their sons certain qualities andcharacteristics-courage, hardihood, the stiff-necked pride of thefreeman, vigilance, wariness, sense of locality, [1169] keen powers ofobservation stimulated by the monotonous, featureless environment, andthe consequent capacity to grasp every detail. [1170] Though robberyabroad is honorable and marauder a term with which to crown a hero, theft at home is summarily dealt with among most nomads. The property ofthe unlocked tent and the far-ranging herd must be safeguarded. [1171] TheTartars maintained a high standard of honesty among themselves andpunished theft with death. [1172] Wide dispersal in small groups isreflected in the diversity of dialects among desert peoples;[1173] in thepractice of hospitality, whether among Bedouins of the Nejd, Kirghis ofthe Central Asia plateau, [1174] or semi-nomadic Boers of SouthAfrica;[1175] in the persistence of feuds and of the duty of bloodrevenge, which is sanctioned by the Koran. 

Isolation tends to breed among nomads pride of race and a repugnance tointermixture. The ideal of the pastoral Israelites was a pure ethnicstock, protected by stern inhibition of intermarriage with other tribes. Therefore, Moses enjoined upon them the duty of exterminating thepeoples of Canaan whom they dispossessed. [1176] While the urban Arabsshow a medley of breeds, dashed with a strain of negro blood, among thenomad Bedouins, mixture is exceptional and is regarded as adisgrace. [1177] The same thing is true among the nomad Arabs of Algeria, and there it has placed a stumbling block in the way of the Frenchcolonial administration, by preventing the appearance of half-breeds whomight bridge the gap between the colonials and natives. Where pastoralSemites have settled in agricultural lands, intermixture on a wide scalehas followed, as in the Sudan from Niger to Nile; but even here, when atribe or clan has retained a strictly pastoral life in the grassland, and has held itself aloof from the agricultural districts of the Negrovillages, relatively pure survivals are to be found, as among the Cowor Bush Fulani of Bornu. [1178] On the other hand, the Hausa, a migranttrading folk of mingled Arab and Negro blood, spread northward along thetrans-Saharan caravan route to the oasis of Air before the fourteenthcentury, and there have infused into the local Berber stock a strongNegro strain. [1179] Among the nomads of Central Asia, one wave of racemovement has so often followed and overtaken another, that it hasproduced a confused blending of breeds. The mixtures are so numerousthat pure types are exceptional, [1180] and the exclusiveness of thedesert Semites disappears. 

[Sidenote: Religion of pastoral nomads. ]

Though all these desert-born characteristics and customs have a certaininterest for the sociologist, they possess only minor importance incomparison with the religious spirit of pastoral nomads, which is alwaysfraught with far-reaching historical results. The evidence of historyshows us that there is such a thing as a desert-born genius forreligion. Huc and Gabin testify to the deeper religious feeling of theBuddhist nomads of the Central Asia plateaus, as compared with thelowland Chinese. The three great monotheistic religions of the world areclosely connected in their origin and development with the deserts ofSyria and Arabia. The area of Mohammedism embraces the steppe zone ofthe Old World[1181] from Senegambia and Zanzibar in Africa to the Indus, Tarim and the upper Obi, together with some well watered lands on itsmargins. It comprises in this territory a variety of races--Negroes, Hamites, Semites, Iranians, Indo-Aryans, and a long list of Mongoloidtribes. Here is a psychological effect of environment. The dry, pure airstimulates the faculties of the desert-dweller, but the featureless, monotonous surroundings furnish them with little to work upon. The mind, finding scant material for sustained logical deduction, falls back uponcontemplation. Intellectual activity is therefore restricted, narrow, unproductive; while the imagination is unfettered but also unfed. Firstand last, these shepherd folk receive from the immense monotony of theirenvironment the impression of unity. [1182] Therefore all of them, uponoutgrowing their primitive fetish and nature worship, gravitateinevitably into monotheism. Their religion is in accord with their wholemental make-up; it is a growth, a natural efflorescence. Therefore itis strong. Its tenets form the warp of all their intellectual fabrics, permeate their meager science and philosophy, animate their moreglorious poetry. It has moreover the fanaticism and intolerancecharacterizing men of few ideas and restricted outlook upon life. Therewith is bound up a spirit of propaganda. The victories of the Jewsin Palestine, Syria and Philistia were the victories of Jehovah; theconquests of Saladin were the conquests of Allah; and the domain of theCaliphate was the dominion of Islam. 

[Illustration: DISTRIBUTION OF RELIGIONS IN THE OLD WORLD (World mapshowing distribution of Christians, Mohammedans, Brahmans, Buddhists, and Heathen). ]

[Sidenote: Fanaticism as a force in nomad expansion. ]

The desert everywhere, sooner or later, drives out its brood, ejects itspeople and their ideas, like those exploding seed-pods which at a touchcast their seed abroad. The religious fanaticism of the shepherd tribesgives that touch; herein lies its historical importance. Mohammedism, fierce and militant, conduced to those upheavals of migration andconquest which since the seventh century have so often transformed thepolitical geography of the Old World. The vast empire of the Caliphate, from its starting point in Arabia, spread in eighty years from the OxusRiver to the Atlantic Ocean. [1183] The rapid rise and spread between 1745and 1803 of the Wahaby clan and sect, the Puritans of Islam, whichresulted for a time in their political and religious domination of muchof Arabia from their home in the Nejd, recalls the stormy conquests ofMohammed's followers. Islam is to-day a persistent source of ferment inAlgeria, the Sahara, and the Sudan, On the other hand. Buddhism servesto cement together the diverse nomadic tribes of the Central Asiaplateaus, and keep them in spiritual subjection to the Grand Lama ofLhassa. The Chinese government makes political use of this fact bydominating the Lama and employing him as a tool to secure quiet on itslong frontier of contact with its restless Mongol neighbors. Moreoverthe religion of Buddha has restrained the warlike spirit of the nomads, and by its institution of celibacy has helped keep down population belowthe boiling-point. [Compare maps pages 484 and 513. ]

[Sidenote: The faith of the desert. ]

The faith of the desert tends to be stern, simple and austere. Theindulgence which Mohammed promised his followers in Paradise was only areflex of the deprivation under which they habitually suffered in thescant pastures of Arabia. The lavish beauty of the Heavenly Cityepitomized the ideals and dreams of the desert-stamped Jew. The active, simple, uncramped life of the grasslands seems essential to thepreservation of the best virtues of the desert-bred. These disappearlargely in sedentary life. The Bedouin rots when he takes root. Citylife contaminates, degrades him. His virile qualities and his religionboth lose their best when he leaves the desert. Contact with the citiesof Philistia and the fertile plains of the Canaanites, with theirsensual agricultural gods, demoralized the Israelites. [1184] The prophetswere always calling them back to the sterner code of morals and thepurer faith of their days of wandering. Jeremiah in despair holds up tothem as a standard of life the national injunction of the pastoralRechabites, "Neither shall ye build house nor sow corn nor plantvineyard, but all your days ye shall dwell in tents. "[1185] The ascent incivilization made havoc with Hebrew morals and religion, because ethicsand religion are the finest and latest flower of each cultural stage. Transition shows the breaking down of one code before the establishmentof another. 

Judaism has always suffered from its narrow local base. Even whentransplanted to various parts of the earth, it has remained a distinctlytribal religion. Intense conservatism in doctrine and ceremonial itstill bears as the heritage of its desert birth. Islam too shows thelimitations of its original environment. It embodies a powerful appealto the peoples of arid lands, and among these it has spread and survivesas an active principle. But it belongs to an arrested economic andsocial development, lacks the germs of moral evolution whichChristianity, born in the old stronghold of Hebraic monotheism, butimpregnated by all the cosmopolitan influences of the Mediterraneanbasin and the _Imperium Romanum_, amply possesses. 

NOTES TO CHAPTER XIV

[1026] Figures taken from Albrecht Penck, _Morphologie derErdoberfläche_, Vol. I, p. 151. Stuttgart, 1894. 

[1027] A. P. Brigham, Geographic Influences in American History, Chap. IV. Boston, 1903. 

[1028] E. C. Semple, American History and Its Geographic Conditions, pp. 65-69, 230, 288, 385. Boston, 1903. 

[1029] _Ibid. _, pp. 218, 221, 393. 

[1030] H. R. Mill, International Geography, p. 127. New York, 1902. 

[1031] Henry Buckle, History of Civilization in England, Vol. II, pp. 126-136. New York, 1871. 

[1032] Carl Ritter, Comparative Geography, pp. 191-192, 201. Philadelphia, 1865. 

[1033] J. H. Breasted, History of Egypt, pp. 142, 144, 261-265, 293-302, 513-517. New York, 1905. 

[1034] _Ibid. _, 6, 48, 93, 114, 119, 127, 134, 136, 163, 164, 182, 190, 191, 507. 

[1035] W. Z. Ripley, Races of Europe, pp. 340-343, map. New York, 1899. 

[1036] Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu, The Empire of the Tsars, Vol. I, pp. 57-60. New York, 1893. 

[1037] W. Z. Ripley, Races of Europe, Maps, pp. 53 and 66. New York, 1899. 

[1038] Hans Helmolt, History of the World, Vol. VI, p. 130, map ofancient distribution of Germans and Celts. New York, 1907. 

[1039] W. Z. Ripley, Races of Europe, pp. 216-218. New York, 1899. 

[1040] _Ibid. _, 344-347, 356, 365. 

[1041] Elisée Reclus, Europe, Vol. IV, pp. 309-310. New York, 1882. 

[1042] Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu, Empire of the Tsars, Vol. I, p. 107. NewYork, 1893. 

[1043] H. R. Mill, International Geography, pp. 220-222. New York, 1902. 

[1044] Vidal-Lablache, _Atlas Général_, Maps pp. 63, 64, 93. Paris, 1909. 

[1045] H. R. Mill, International Geography, 174, 177-182. New York, 1902. 

[1046] Twelfth Census, Bulletin of Agriculture No. 181, p. 2, comparedwith Eleventh Census, Statistics of Population, map of negrodistribution, p. XCVII. Washington, 1895. 

[1047] Twelfth Census, Bulletin of Agriculture, No. 155, p. 2. Washington, 1902. 

[1048] W. Z. Ripley, Races of Europe, p. 353. New York, 1899. 

[1049] Boyd Alexander, From the Niger to the Nile, Vol. II, p. 238. London, 1907. 

[1050] Haxthausen, _Studien_, Vol. I, p. 309. _Die ländliche VerfassungRusslands_, pp. 3, 7. Leipzig, 1866. 

[1051] Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. II, pp. 79-83. London, 1896-1898. J. Wappäus, _Handbuch der Geographie und Statistik desehemaligen spanischen Mittel- und Sud-Amerika_, pp. 978-980, 1019. Leipzig, 1863-1870. 

[1052] Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. II, pp. 206-208. London, 1896-1898. 

[1053] Nordenskiold, Voyage of the Vega, pp. 60, 156, 452. New York, 1882. Alexander P. Engelhardt, A Russian Province of the North, pp. 291-295. London, 1899. 

[1054] _Ibid. _, pp. 83, 88-91. 

[1055] Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. III, pp. 166-167. London. 1896-1898. 

[1056] James Bryce, Impressions of South Africa, p. 107. New York, 1897. 

[1057] Herodotus, Melpomene, 19, 46. 

[1058] Thomas Hodgkin, Italy and Her Invaders, Vol. I, p. 262. Oxford, 1892. 

[1059] Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. II, p. 220. London, 1896-1898. 

[1060] Genesis, XIII, 2, 5. 

[1061] James Bryce, Impressions of South Africa, p. 474. New York, 1897. 

[1062] Eleventh Census, Indian Report, pp. 143-144. Washington, 1894. 

[1063] Sven Hedin, Central Asia and Tibet, Vol. I, pp. 18-20. London andNew York, 1903. 

[1064] J. L. Burckhardt, Notes on the Bedouins and Wahabys, Vol. I, pp. 32-33. London, 1831. 

[1065] George Adam Smith, Historical Geography of the Holy Land, pp. 8-10. New York, 1897. 

[1066] Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. V, pp. 78-79. New York, 1858. 

[1067] L. March Phillipps, In the Desert, p. 95. London, 1905. 

[1068] Sir Samuel W. Baker, The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia, pp. 88, 128, 129, 135. Hartford, 1868. 

[1069] Journey of John de Carpini and William de Rubruquis in 1253, pp. 8, 217. Hakluyt Society, London, 1903. 

[1070] James Bryce, Impressions of South Africa, pp. 107, 421. New York, 1897. 

[1071] Wilhelm Roscher, _National-Oekonomik des Ackerbaues_, p. 44. Stuttgart, 1888. 

[1072] A full discussion in Malthus, Principles of Population, Book I, chap. 7. 

[1073] J. L. Burckhardt, Notes on the Bedouins and Wahabys, Vol. I, pp. 133-144, 157-160. London, 1831. S. M. Zwemer, Arabia, The Cradle ofIslam, 155-157. New York, 1900. 

[1074] Vambery, _Reise in Mittelasien_, pp. 285, 289-297. Leipzig, 1873. 

[1075] Alexis Krausse, Russia in Asia, pp. 127-129. New York, 1899. 

[1076] Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. III, pp. 174-175. London, 1896-1898. 

[1077] Wallace, Russia, pp. 340-342. New York, 1904. 

[1078] L. March Phillipps, In the Desert, pp. 17, 63-66. London, 1905. 

[1079] Felix Dubois, Timbuctoo, pp. 256, 324-325. Translated from theFrench, New York, 1896. 

[1080] Heinrich Barth, Travels in North and Central Africa, Vol. I, pp. 287-288, 293, 305. New York, 1857. 

[1081] Felix Dubois, Timbuctoo, pp. 133-134, 203, 206-207, 229, 232, 239-245. New York, 1896. 

[1082] Boyd Alexander, From the Niger to the Nile, Vol. II, pp. 1-2, 6, 16-18, 80. London, 1907. 

[1083] Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman. Empire, Vol. V, p. 87. NewYork, 1858. 

[1084] Pliny, _Historia Naturalis_, V, 3. 

[1085] Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. II, p. 495. New York, 1858. 

[1086] Ellsworth Huntington, The Pulse of Asia, p. 340. Boston, 1907. 

[1087] Pallas, Travels in the Southern Provinces of Russia in 1793-1794, Vol. II, p. 4. London, 1812. 

[1088] _Ibid. _, Vol. I, pp. 94, 256. 

[1089] Genesis, XIII, 7-8; XXI, 25-30; XXVI, 15-22. 

[1090] Herbert Spencer, Principles of Sociology, Vol. I, p. 545. NewYork, 1887. 

[1091] Thucydides, Book II, 96. 

[1092] Herodotus, IV, 46. 

[1093] Meredith Townsend, Asia and Europe, Chapter on Arab Courage. NewYork, 1904. 

[1094] Wilhelm Roscher, _National-Oekonomik des Ackerbaues_, p. 44. Stuttgart, 1888. 

[1095] J. L. Burckhardt, Notes on the Bedouins and Wahabys, Vol. I, pp. 35-36. London, 1831. 

[1096] John de Plano Carpini, Journey to the Northeast, pp. 114-117, 120-125. Hakluyt Society, London, 1904. 

[1097] Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. I, p. 28. London, 1896-1898. 

[1098] J. H. Speke, Discovery of the Source of the Nile, pp. 241-244. NewYork, 1868. 

[1099] Journey of William de Rubruquis, pp. 18-27, Hakluyt Society, London, 1900. 

[1100] Jerome Dowd, The Negro Races, Vol. I, pp. 225-232. New York, 1907. 

[1101] Sir Francis Younghusband, The Heart of a Continent, pp. 85-98. London, 1904. 

[1102] Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. I, p. 170. London, 1896-1898. 

[1103] Heinrich Barth, Travels in North and Central Africa, Vol. I, pp. 148, 152, 204, 210, 303. New York, 1857. 

[1104] J. L. Burckhardt, Notes on the Bedouins and Wahabys, Vol. I, pp. 115-119, 284-286, 296-300. London, 1831. 

[1105] Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. V, pp. 85-87. New York, 1857. 

[1106] Jerome Dowd, The Negro Races, Vol. I, pp. 234-235. New York, 1907. 

[1107] Vambery, _Reise in Mittel Asien_, pp. 288-290. Leipzig, 1873. 

[1108] James Bryce, Impressions of South Africa, pp. 108, 128, 129, 155, 199, 452-453. New York, 1897. 

[1109] For vivid description of desert defensive warfare, see GustavFrensen, Peter Moore's Journey to Southwest Africa. Translated from theGerman, 1908. Based upon interviews with hundreds of returning Germansoldiers from the Damara campaign. 

[1110] H. B. Mill, International Geography, p. 454. New York, 1902. 

[1111] Henry Norman, All the Russias, p. 273. New York, 1902. 

[1112] L. March Phillipps, In the Desert, pp. 54-56. London, 1905. 

[1113] _Ibid. _, pp. 181-164. 

[1114] Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. III, p. 177. London, 1896-1898. 

[1115] Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu, The Empire of the Tsars, Vol. I, pp. 29-30. New York, 1893. 

[1116] Pallas, Travels through the Southern Provinces of Russia, Vol. I, pp. 532-533. London, 1812. 

[1117] Sir S. W. Baker, Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia, p. 88. Hartford, 1868. 

[1118] David Livingstone, Missionary Travels, pp. 53-56, 169. New York, 1858. 

[1119] Sven Hedin, Central Asia and Tibet, Vol. I, pp. 96, 136, 359, NewYork and London, 1903. Ellsworth Huntington, The Pulse of Asia, pp. 193, 202, 212, 213. Boston, 1907. 

[1120] Sir Francis Younghusband, The Heart of a Continent, pp. 103, 104, 107, 112-116, 120, 125-128, 137, 138, 143. London, 1904. 

[1121] S. W. Zwemer, Arabia the Cradle of Islam, pp. 147, 151. New York, 1900. D. G. Hogarth, The Nearer East, pp. 185, 195. 265. London, 1902. 

[1122] Nachtigal, _Sahara und Sudan_, Vol. I, pp. 214-218, 267-269. Berlin, 1879. 

[1123] Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. III, p. 168. London, 1896-1898. 

[1124] H. R. Mill, International Geography, pp. 906, 914. New York, 1902. 

[1125] H. Barth, Travels in North and Central Africa, Vol. I, pp. 152, 207, 210, 211. New York, 1857. 

[1126] _Ibid. _, 41-44, 52, 61-64, 67, 76, 93, 95, 99, 103, 105. 

[1127] L. March Phillipps, In the Desert, p. 174. London, 1905. 

[1128] Sir Thomas Holdich, India, pp. 91-93. London, 1905. 

[1129] M. A. Stein, The Sand-Buried Ruins of Khotan, pp. 275-324, 354-408. London, 1903. 

[1130] H. Barth, Travels in North and Central Africa, Vol. I, chap. III. New York, 1857. 

[1131] Ellsworth Huntington, The Pulse of Asia, pp. 160-190, 209, 304, 309-310, 315, 367. Boston, 1907. 

[1132] J. L. Burckhardt, Notes on the Bedouins and Wahabys, Vol. I, pp. 57-64, 238-242. London, 1831. 

[1133] E. Huntington, The Pulse of Asia, pp. 137-138. Boston, 1907. 

[1134] John de Plano Carpini, Journey to the Northeast, pp. 109-111, 120. Hakluyt Society, London, 1904. Journey of William de Rubruquis, pp. 191-193, 203, 224. Hakluyt Society, London, 1903. 

[1135] W. W. Rockhill, The Land of the Lamas, p. 80. New York, 1891. 

[1136] Vambery, _Reise in Mittel Asien_, p. 295. Leipzig, 1873. 

[1137] Nachtigal, _Sahara und Sudan_, Vol. I, pp. 257, 268. Berlin, 1879. 

[1138] E. Huntington, The Pulse of Asia, p. 74. Boston, 1907. 

[1139] L. March Phillipps, In the Desert, pp. 198-201. London, 1905. 

[1140] D. Livingstone, Travels and Researches in South Africa, p. 55. New York, 1859. 

[1141] W. Roscher, _Grundlagen der Nationalökonomik_, Book VI, chap. II, p. 244. Stuttgart, 1886. 

[1142] Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. III, p. 170. London, 1896-98. 

[1143] W. W. Rockhill, Land of the Lamas, p. 80. New York, 1891. 

[1144] J. L. Burckhardt, Notes on the Bedouins and Wahabys, Vol. I, pp. 106, 187. London, 1831. S. M. Zwemer, Arabia the Cradle of Islam, pp. 162, 268. New York, 1900. 

[1145] Westermarck, History of Human Marriage, p. 429, notes 2 and 5, p. 440, note 2, p. 507. London, 1891. 

[1146] J. L. Burckhardt, Notes on the Bedouins and Wahabys, Vol. I, pp. 47, 48, 70, 71, 191-192, 239. London, 1831. 

[1147] S. M. Zwemer, Arabia the Cradle of Islam, p. 128. New York, 1900. 

[1148] Ezekiel, Chap. XXVII, 21. 

[1149] For economic principle, see W. Roscher, _Handel undGewerbefleiss_, pp. 141-147. Stuttgart, 1899. 

[1150] Genesis, Chap. XXXVII, 25-28, 36. 

[1151] W. Roscher, _National-Oekonomik des Ackerbaues_, p. 39, Note 11. Stuttgart, 1888. 

[1152] S. P. Scott, History of the Moorish Empire in Europe, Vol. III, p. 616. Philadelphia, 1904. 

[1153] Felix Dubois, Timbuctoo, pp. 251-252. New York, 1896. 

[1154] _Ibid. _, pp. 257-264. 

[1155] S. M. Zwemer, Arabia the Cradle of Islam, p. 151. New York, 1900. 

[1156] George Adam Smith, Historical Geography of the Holy Land, pp. 182-184. New York, 1897. 

[1157] J. L. Burckhardt, Notes on the Bedouins and Wahabys, Vol. I, p. 65. London, 1831. 

[1158] L. March Phillipps, In the Desert, pp. 130-134. London, 1903. 

[1159] F. R. Martin, A History of Oriental Carpets before 1800, pp. 9, 29, 69 et seq. , 101, 121. Vienna, 1908. G. LeStrange, Land of theEastern Caliphates, pp. 37, 293-294, 353, 363, 471. Cambridge, 1905. 

[1160] J. K. Mumford, Oriental Rugs, pp. 23-40, 100-111. New York, 1895. 

[1161] D. G. Hogarth, The Nearer East, pp. 197-198. London, 1902. 

[1162] J. K. Mumford, Oriental Rugs, p. 61. New York, 1895. 

[1163] J. Ferguson, History of Architecture, Vol. II, pp. 277-278, 499, 500. New York. J. Ferguson, History of Indian and Eastern Architecture, Vol. II, pp. 210-214. New York, 1891. 

[1164] Wilhelm Bode, _Vorderasiatische Knüpfteppiche_, pp. 3-4. Leipzig. 

[1165] Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. V, p. 78. NewYork, 1858. 

[1166] Sir S. W. Baker, Exploration of the Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia, pp. 148-152. Hartford, 1868. 

[1167] Strabo, Book VII, chap. III, 7, 17; chap. IV, 6. Book XI, chap. II, 1, 2, 3. 

[1168] J. Wappäus, _Handbuch der Geographie und Statistik des chemaligenspanischen Mittel- und Sud-Amerika_, p. 1019. Leipzig, 1863-1870. 

[1169] Sir F. Younghusband, The Heart of a Continent, pp. 72, 74. London, 1904. Alfred Kirchoff, Man and Earth, pp. 58-71. London. 

[1170] J. L. Burckhardt, Notes on the Bedouins and Wahabys, Vol. I, pp. 374-377. London, 1831. L. March Phillipps, In the Desert, pp. 98-100. London, 1905. 

[1171] Exodus, Chap. XXII, 1-4, 23. 

[1172] John de Plano Carpini, Journey to the Northeast in 1246, pp. 110, 111, 113. Hakluyt Society, London, 1904. 

[1173] Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. V, p. 89. NewYork, 1858. H. Barth, Travels in North and Central Africa, Vol. I, p. 144. New York, 1857. 

[1174] E. Huntington, The Pulse of Asia, pp. 121-123. Boston, 1907. 

[1175] James Bryce, Impressions of South Africa, p. 422. New York, 1897. 

[1176] Deuteronomy, VII, 1-3. 

[1177] Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. III, p. 184. London, 1896-1898. 

[1178] Boyd Alexander, From the Niger to the Nile, Vol. I, pp. 190-197. London, 1907. 

[1179] H. Barth, Travels in North and Central Africa, Vol. I, pp. 202, 277-281. New York, 1857. 

[1180] Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. III, p. 173. London, 1896-1898. 

[1181] _Ibid. _, Vol. III, Chapter on Islam, pp. 195-204. 

[1182] George Adam Smith, Historical Geography of the Holy Land, pp. 28-30. New York, 1897. L. March Phillipps, In the Desert, pp. 101-105. London, 1905. 

[1183] E. A. Freeman, Historical Geography of Europe, pp. 114-116. London, 1882. 

[1184] George Adam Smith, Historical Geography of the Holy Land, pp. 88-90. New York, 1897. 

[1185] Jeremiah, Chap. XXXV, 6-14. 

CHAPTER XV

MOUNTAIN BARRIERS AND THEIR PASSES

[Sidenote: Man as part of the mobile envelope of the earth. ]

The important characteristic of plains is their power to facilitate everyphase of historical movement; that of mountains is their power toretard, arrest, or deflect it. Man, as part of the mobile envelope ofthe earth, like air and water feels always the pull of gravity. Fromthis he can never fully emancipate himself. By an output of energy hemay climb the steepest slope, but with every upward step the ascentbecomes more difficult, owing to the diminution of warmth and air andthe increasing tax upon the heart. [1186] Maintenance of life in highaltitudes is always a struggle. The decrease of food resources fromlower to higher levels makes the passage of a mountain system an ordealfor every migrating people or marching army that has to live off thecountry which it traverses. Mountains therefore repel population bytheir inaccessibility and also by their harsh conditions of life, whilethe lowlands attract it, both in migration and settlement. Historicalmovement, when forced into the upheaved areas of the earth, avoids theridges and peaks, seeks the valleys and passes, where communication withthe lowlands is easiest. 

[Sidenote: Inaccessibility of mountains. ]

High massive mountain systems present the most effective barriers whichman meets on the land surface of the earth. To the spread of populationthey offer a resistance which long serves to exclude settlers. Thedifficulty of making roads up steep, rocky slopes and through theforests usually covering their rain-drenched sides, is deterrent enough;but in addition to this, general infertility, paucity of arable land, harsh climatic conditions, and the practical lack of communication withthe outside world offer scant basis for subsistence. Hence, as a rule, only when pressure of population in the lowlands becomes too great underprevailing economic methods, do clearings and cabins begin to creep upthe slopes. Mountains are always regions of late occupation. Even in theStone Age, we find the long-headed race of Mediterranean stock, whooriginally populated Europe, distributed over the continent close up tothe foot of the high Alps, but not in the mountains themselves, and onlyscantily represented in the Auvergne Plateau of France. The inhospitablehighlands of Switzerland, the German Alps, and the Auvergne receivedtheir first population later when the Alpine race began to occupywestern Europe. [1187] The _Mittelgebirge_ of Germany were not settled tillthe Middle Ages. In the United States, the flood of population hadspread westward by 1840 to the ninety-fifth meridian and the north-southcourse of the Missouri River; but out of this sea of settlement theAdirondack Mountains, a few scattered spots in the Appalachians, and theOzark Highlands rose as so many islands of uninhabited wilderness, andthey remain to-day areas of sparser population. In 1800, the "barespots" in the eastern mountains were more pronounced. [See map page156. ] Great stretches of the Rocky Mountains, of the LaurentianHighlands of Canada, like smaller patches in the Scandinavian and SwissAlps, are practically uninhabited. 

[Sidenote: Mountains as transit regions. ]

Mountain regions, like deserts and seas, become mere transit districts, which man traverses as quickly as possible. Hence they often lie asgreat inert areas in the midst of active historical lands, and firstappear upon the historical stage in minor rôles, when they are wanted bythe plains people as a passway to desirable regions beyond. Then, as arule, only their transit routes are secured, while the less accessibleregions are ignored. Cæsar makes no mention of the Alps, except to statethat he has crossed them, until some of the mountain tribes try to blockthe passage of Roman merchants or armies; then they become importantenough to be conquered. It was not till after the Cimbri in 102 B. C. Invaded Italy by the Brenner route, that the Romans realized the valueof Rhaetia (Tyrol) as a thoroughfare from Italy to Germany, and beganits conquest in 36 B. C. This was the same value which the Tyrol so longhad for the old German Empire and later for Austria, --merely to secureconnection with the Po Valley. The need of land communication with theRhone Valley led the Romans to attack the Salyes, who inhabited theMaritime Alps, and after eighty years of war to force from them theconcession of a narrow transit strip, twelve stadia or one and a halfmiles wide, for the purpose of making a road to Massilia. [1188] Thenecessity of controlling such transit lands has drawn British India intothe occupation of mountain Baluchistan, Kashmir and Sikkim, just as ithas caused the highlands of Afghanistan to figure actively in theexpansion policy of both India and Russia. The conquest of such transitlands has always been attended by road building, from the constructionof the Roman highway through the Brenner Pass to the modern Russianmilitary road through the Pass of Dariel across the Caucasus, and theyet more recent Indian railroad to Darjeeling, with the highwayextension beyond to the Tibetan frontier through Himalayan Sikkim. 

Such mountain regions attain independent historical importance whentheir population increases enough to form the nucleus of a state, and toacquire additional territory about the highland base either by conquestor voluntary union, while they utilize their naturally protectedlocation and their power to grant safe transit to their allies, as meansto secure their political autonomy. Therefore to mountain regions sooften falls the rôle of buffer states. Such were medieval Burgundy andmodern Savoy, which occupied part of the same territory, Navarre whichin the late Middle Ages controlled the important passway around thewestern end of the Pyrenees, and Switzerland which commands the passesof the central Alps. The position of such mountain states is, however, always fraught with danger, owing to the weakness inherent in theirsmall area and yet smaller allowance of productive soil, to theirdiverse ethnic elements, and the forces working against politicalconsolidation in their deeply dissected surface. Political solidarityhas a hard, slow birth in the mountains. 

[Sidenote: Transition forms of relief between highlands and lowlands. ]

In view of the barrier character of mountains, a fact of immenseimportance to the distribution of man and his activities is the rarityof abrupt, ungraded forms of relief on the earth's surface. Thephysiographic cause lies in the elasticity of the earth's crust and theleveling effect of weathering and denudation. Everywhere mountains areworn down and rounded off, while valleys broaden and fill up to shallowtrough outlines. Transition forms of relief abound. Human intercoursemeets therefore few absolute barriers on the land; but these few revealthe obstacles to historical movement in perpendicular reliefs. Themile-high walls of the Grand Cañon of the Colorado are an insuperableobstacle to intercourse for a stretch of three hundred miles. Theglacier-crowned ridge of the Bernese Alps is crossed by no wagon roadbetween the Grimsel Pass and the upper Rhone highway around theirwestern end, a distance of 100 kilometers (62 miles). The Pennine Alpshave no pass between the Great St. Bernard and the Simplon, a distanceof 90 kilometers (54 miles). 

[Sidenote: Importance of transition slopes. ]

Gentle transition slopes or terrace lands facilitate almost everywhereaccess to the lowest, most habitable and therefore, from the humanstandpoint, most important section of mountains. They combine the easeof intercourse characteristic of plains with many advantages of themountains, and especially in warm climates they unite in a narrow zoneboth tropical and temperate vegetation. The human value of thesetransition slopes holds equally of single hills, massive mountainsystems, and continental reliefs. The earth as a whole owes much of itshabitability to these gently graded slopes. Continents and countries inwhich they are meagerly developed suffer from difficulty of intercourse, retarded development and poverty of the choicest habitable areas. Thisis one disadvantage of South Africa, emphasized farther by a poorcoastline. The Pacific face of Australia would gain vastly in historicalimportance, if the drop from the highlands to the ocean were stretchedout into a broad slope, like that which links our Atlantic coastal plainwith the Appalachian highlands. There each river valley shows threecharacteristic anthropo-geographical sub-divisions--the active seaportsand tide-water tillage of its lower course, the contrasted agricultureof its hilly course, the upland farms, waterpower industries and minesof its headstream valleys, each landscape giving its populationdistinctive characteristics. The same natural features, with the sameeffect upon human activities and population, appear in the long seawardslopes of France, Germany and northern Italy. 

[Sidenote: Piedmont belts as boundary zones. ]

At the base of the mountains themselves, where the bold relief begins, is always a piedmont zone of hilly surface but gentler grade, at whoseinner or upland edge every phase of the historical movement receives amarked check. Here is a typical geographical boundary, physical andhuman. It shifts slightly in different periods, according to the growingdensity of population in the plains below and improved technique inindustry and road-making. It is often both an ethnic and culturalboundary, because at the rim of the mountains the geologic and economiccharacter of the country changes. [1189] The expanding peoples of the plainsspread over the piedmont so far as it offers familiar and comparativelyfavorable geographic conditions, scatter their settlements along thebase of the mountains, and here fix their political frontier for a time, though later they may advance it to the crest of the ridge, in order tosecure a more scientific boundary. The civilized population of the broadIndus Valley spread westward up the western highlands, only so far asthe shelving slopes of the clay and conglomerate foothills, whichconstitute the piedmont of the Suleiman and Kirthar Mountains, affordedconditions for their crops. Thus from the Arabian Sea for 600 milesnorth to the Gomal River, the political frontier of India was defined bythe line of relief dividing the limestone mountains from the alluvialplain, the marauding Baluch and Afghan hill tribes from the patientfarmers of the Sind. [1190] This line remained the border of India frompre-British days till the recent annexation of Baluchistan. 

These piedmont boundaries are most clearly defined in point of race andcivilization, where superior peoples from the lowlands are foundexpanding at the cost of retarded mountain folk. Romans and Rhaetiansonce met along a line skirting the foot of the eastern Alps, as Russiansto-day along the base of the Caucasus adjoin the territories of theheterogeneous tribes occupying that mountain area. [1191] [See map page225. ] The plains-loving Magyars of Hungary have pushed up to the rim ofmountainous Siebenburgen or Transylvania from Arad on the Maros River toSziget on the upper Theiss, while the highland region has a predominantRoumanian population. A clearly defined linguistic and cultural boundaryof Indo-Aryan speech and religion, both Hindu and Mohammedan, followsthe piedmont edges of the Brahmaputra Valley, and separates the lowlandinhabitants from the pagans of Tibeto-Burman speech occupying theHimalayan slope to the north and the Khasia Mountains to the south. Thehighland race is Mongoloid, while the Bengali of an Aryan, Dravidian andMongoloid blend fill the river plain. [1192] Such piedmont boundary linestend to blur into bands or zones of ethnic intermixture and culturalassimilation. The western Himalayan foothills show the blend ofMongoloid and Aryan stocks, where the vigorous Rajputs of the plainshave encroached upon the mountaineer's land. [1193] Of almost every mountainfolk it can be assumed that they once occupied their highlands to theoutermost rim of the piedmont, and retired to the inner rim of thisintermediary slope only under compulsion from without. 

[Sidenote: Density of population in piedmont belts. ]

The piedmont boundary also divides two areas of contrasted density ofpopulation. Mountain regions are, as a rule, more sparsely settled thanplains. The piedmont is normally a transition region in this respect;but where high mountains rise as climatic islands of adequate watersupply out of desert and steppes, they concentrate on their lower slopesall the sedentary population, making their piedmonts zones of greatestdensity. Low mountains in arid regions become centers of population;here their barrier nature vanishes. In the Sudanese state of Darfur, theMarra Mountains are the district best watered and most thicklypopulated. Nowhere higher than 6000 feet (1850 meters), they affordrunning water at 4000 feet elevation and water pools in the sandy bedsof their wadis at 3200 feet. Below this, water disappears from thesurface, and can be found only in wells whose depth and scarcityincrease with distance from the central mountains. [1194] The neighboringkingdom of Wadai shows similar conditions and effects. [1195] In the heartof Australia, where utter desert reigns, the Macdonnell Ranges form thenucleus of the northern area occupied by the Arunta tribe of natives;farther north the Murchison Range, usually abounding in water-holes, isthe center and stronghold of the Warramunga tribe. [1196]

Mineral wealth or waterpower in the mountains serves to collect an urbanand industrial population along their rim, as we see it about the baseof the Erz Mountains in Saxony, the Riesen range in Silesia, thecoal-bearing Pennine Mountains of northwestern England, and thehighlands of southern Wales, all which piedmont zones show a density ofover 150 to the square kilometer (385 to the square mile). Hence theoriginal Swiss Confederation, which included only the mountain cantonsof Schwyz, Uri and Unterwalden, was greatly strengthened by theaccession of the piedmont cantons of Lucerne, Zurich, Zug and Bern inthe early fourteenth century, as later by St. Gall, Aargau and Geneva. These marginal cantons to-day show a density of population exceeding385 to the square mile, and rising to 1356 in the canton of Geneva. 

[Sidenote: Piedmont towns and roads. ]

Piedmont belts tend strongly towards urban development, even where ruralsettlement is sparse. Sparsity of population and paucity of towns withinthe mountains cause main of traffic to keep outside the highlands, butclose enough to their base to tap their trade at every valley outlet. Onthe alluvial fans or plains of these valley outlets, where mountain andpiedmont road intersect, towns grow up. Some of them develop intocities, when they command transverse routes of communication quiteacross the highlands. The ancient _Via Aemilia_ traced the northern baseof the Apennines from Ariminum on the Adriatic to Dertona at the foot ofthe Ligurian range back of Genoa, and connected a long line of Romancolonies. The modern railroad follows almost exactly the course of theold Roman road, [1197] while a transverse line southward across theApennines, following an ancient highway over the Poretta Pass to theArno Valley, has maintained the old preëminence of Bologna. A line oftowns, connected by highways or railroads, according to the economicdevelopment of the section, defines the bases of the Pyrenees, Alps, Jura, Apennines, Harz, Vosges, Elburz and numerous other ranges. Alongthe Elburz piedmont runs the imperial road of Persia from Tabriz throughTeheran to Meshed. In arid regions these piedmont roads are an unfailingfeature, but their towns shrink to rural settlements, except at thejunction of transmontane routes. 

[Sidenote: Piedmont termini of transmontane routes. ]

Piedmont cities draw their support from plain, mountain and transmontaneregion, relying chiefly on the fertile soil of the level country to feedtheir large populations. Sometimes they hug the foot of the mountains, as Bologna, Verona, Bergamo, Zurich, Denver and Pittsburg do; sometimes, like Milan, Turin, and Munich, they drop down into the plain, but keepthe mountains in sight. They flourish in proportion to their localresources, in which mineral wealth is particularly important, and to thenumber and practicability of their transmontane connections. Hence theyoften receive their stamp from the mountains behind them as well as fromthe bordering plain. The St. Gotthard route is flanked by Lucerne on thenorth and Milan on the south. The Brenner has its urban outlets atMunich and Verona. Narbonne and Barcelona form the termini of the routeover the eastern Pyrenees; Toulouse commands the less used centralpasses, and Bayonne the western. Tiflis is situated in the greatmountain trough connecting the Black Sea and the Caspian; but over theCaucasus by the Pass of Dariel come the influences which make it aRussian town. Peshawar, situated in the mountain angle of the Punjab, depends more upon the Khaibar Pass and its connections thereby withCentral Asia than upon the plains of the Indus; its population, inappearance and composition nearly as much Central Asiatic as Indian, isengaged in traffic between the Punjab and the whole trans-Hindu Kushcountry. [1198]

Where a mountain system describes a semi-circular course, its transitroutes tend to converge on the inner side, and at their foci fix thesites of busy commercial centers. Turin draws on a long series of Alpineand Apennine routes from the Pass of Giovi (1548 feet or 472 meters)leading up from Genoa on the south, to the Great St. Bernard on thenorth. Milan gets immense support from the St. Gotthard and Simplonrailroads over the Alps, besides wagon routes over several minor passes. Kulm, Balkh and Kunduz in the piedmont of northern Afghanistan are fedby twenty or more passes over the Hindu Kush and Pamir. Bukhara is theremoter focus of all these routes, and also of the valley highways ofthe western Tian Shan. It therefore occupies a location which would makeit one of the great emporiums of the world, were it not for the expanseof desert to the west and the scantiness of its local water supply, which is tapped farther upstream for the irrigation of Samarkand. In itsbazaars are found drugs, dyes and teas from India; wool, skins and driedfruit from Afghanistan; woven goods, arms, and books from Persia; andRussian wares imported by rail and caravan. English goods, whichformerly came in by the Kabul route from India, have been excluded sinceRussia established a protectorate over the province of Bukhara. Acrossthe highlands to the east, the cities of Kashgar and Yarkand, situatedin that piedmont zone of vegetation where mountain and desert meet, areenclosed by a vast amphitheater formed by the Tian Shan, the PamirHighlands, and the Karakorum range. Stieler's atlas marks no less thansix trade routes over the passes of these mountains from Kashgar to theheadstreams of the Sir-daria and Oxus, and six from Yarkand to the Oxusand Indus. Kashgar is a meeting ground of many nationalities. To itsbazaars come traders from China, India, Afghanistan, Bukhara, andRussian Turkestan. [1199] The Russian railway up the Sir-daria to Andizhanbrings European goods within relatively easy reach of the Terek DavanPass, and makes serious competition for English wares entering by themore difficult Karakorum Pass from India. [1200]

[Sidenote: Cities of coastal piedmonts. ]

Where mountains drop off into a desert, as these Central Asiatic rangesdo, their piedmont cities are confined to a narrow zone betweenmountains and arid waste. Bordering two transit regions of scantpopulation and through travel, they become natural outfitting points, centers of exchange rather than production. Where mountains drop offinto the sea and the piedmont therefore becomes a coastal belt, again itborders two transit regions; but here the ports of the desert arereplaced by maritime ports, which command the world thoroughfare of theocean. They therefore tend to concentrate population and commercewherever a good harbor coincides with the outlet of a transmontaneroute, as in Genoa and Bombay. 

[Sidenote: Piedmonts as colonial or backwoods frontiers. ]

Since mountains are inhospitable to every phase of the historicalmovement, they long remain regions of retardation. Hence to theirbordering plains they sustain the relation of young undeveloped lands, so that life in their piedmont belts tends to show for a long time allthe characteristics of a new colonial frontier. The rim of the SouthernAppalachians abundantly illustrates this principle even to-day. Duringthe westward expansion of the American people from 1830 to 1850, theeastern rim of the Rocky Mountains was dotted with trading posts likethat of the Missouri Fur Company at the forks of the Missouri River, Forts Laramie and Platte on the North Fork of the Platte, Vrain's Fortand Fort Lancaster on the South Fork, Bent's Fort at the mountain exitof the Arkansas River, and Barclay's in the high Mora Valley of theupper Canadian. These posts gathered in the rich pelts which formed theone product of this highland area susceptible of bearing the cost oftransportation to the far away Missouri River. Though they developedinto way-stations on the overland trails, when the movement ofpopulation to California and Oregon in the forties and fifties made theRocky Mountains a typical highland transit region, yet they longremained frontier posts. [1201] Later the abundant water supply of thispiedmont district, as compared with the arid plains below, and themineral wealth of the mountains concentrated here an agricultural andindustrial population. 

In Sze Chuan province of western China, the piedmont of a vast highlandhinterland shows a similar development. Here the towns of Matang, Sungpan, Kuan Hsien, and even the capital Chengtu, situated in the highMin Valley at the foot of the mountains walling them in on the west, areemporiums for trade with the Tibetans, who bring hither furs, hides andwool from their plateau pastures, and musk from the musk deer on theKoko Nor plains. [1202] Just to the north, Sian (Singan), capital of thehighland province of Shensi, concentrates the fur trade of a largemountain wilderness to the west. Several blocks on the main street forma great fur market for the sale of mink and other skins used to line theofficial robes of mandarins. [1203]

[Sidenote: Mountain carriers. ]

Like seas, deserts, and other geographical transit regions, mountainstoo under primitive conditions develop their professional carriers. These collect in the piedmont, where highway and mule train cease, andwhere the steep track admits only human beasts of burden, trained bytheir environment to be climbers and packers. These mountain carriersare found on the Pacific face of the coast ranges of North and SouthAmerica from the peninsula of Alaska to the Straits of Magellan. Theyare able to pack from 100 to 160 pounds up a steep grade. The ChilkootIndians, men, women and children, did invaluable service on the WhiteHorse and Chilkoot passes during the early days of the Klondike rush. They had devised a well-arranged harness, which enabled them better tocarry their loads. Farther south in British Columbia the piedmont tribeshad once a like importance; there they operated especially from the townof Hope on the lower Frazer River as a distributing center. The Mexicancarrier is so efficient and so cheap that he enters into seriouscompetition with modern schemes to improve transportation, especially asthe rugged relief of this country makes those schemes expensive. [1204] TheIndians of the eastern slope of the Andes pack India rubber, in loads of150 pounds each, from the upper Purus and Madeira rivers up to theAndean plateau at a height of 15, 000 feet, and there transfer theirburdens to mules for transport down to the Peruvian port ofMollendo. [1205]

The retarded mountain peoples on the borders of the Central Asia plateauemploy the same primitive means of transportation. The roads leadingfrom the Sze Chuan province of western China over the mountain ranges toTibet are traversed by long lines of porters, men, women and children, laden with bales of brick tea, [1206] the strongest of them shouldering 350pounds. The Bhutia coolies of Sikkim act as carriers on military andcommercial expeditions on the track across the Himalayas betweenDarjeeling and Shigatze. Colonel Younghusband found that these Bhutias, who were paid by the job, would carry a pack of 250 to 300 pounds, orthree times the usual burden of a Central Asia carrier. Landon cites thecase of a Bhutia lady who was said to have carried a piano on her headfrom the plains up to Darjeeling (7150 feet). [1207] In Nepal, women andgirls, less often men, have long been accustomed to carry travellers andmerchandise over the Himalayan ranges. [1208] In the marginal valleys ofthe Himalayas, like Kashmir and Baltistan, the natives are regularlyimpressed for _begar_ or carrier service on the English military roadsto strategic points on the high mountain frontier of the IndianEmpire. [1209] So the Igorots of the Luzon province of Benguet pack allgoods and supplies from Naguilian in the lowlands up 4000 feet in adistance of 25 miles to their little capital of Baguio; for this servicethey are now paid one peso (46 cents in 1901) a day with food, or tentimes as much as under the Spanish rule. [1210]

[Sidenote: Power of mountain barriers to block or deflect. ]

If the historical movement slackens its pace at the piedmont slope, higher up the mountain it comes to a halt. Only when human invention hasgreatly improved communication across the barrier are its obstacles inpart overcome. The great highland wall stretching across southern Europefrom the Bay of Biscay to the Black Sea long cut off the solid mass ofthe continent from the culture of the Mediterranean lands. Owing tothese mountains Central Europe came late into the foreground of history, not till the Middle Ages. Even the penetrating civilization of Greecereached it only by long detours around the ends of the mountain barrier;by Massilia and the Rhone, by Istria and the Danube, Greek commercetrickled through to the interior of the continent. 

Where mountains fail to check, they deflect the historical movement. Thewall of the Carpathians, bulwark of Central Europe, split the westwardmoving Slav hordes in the 6th century, diverting one southward up theDanube Valley to the Eastern Alps, and turning one northward along theGerman lowlands. [1211] The northward expansion of the Romans, rebuffed bythe high double wall of the Central Alps, was bent to the westward overthe Maritime, Cottine and Savoy Alps, where the barrier offered theshortest and easiest transmontane routes. Hence Germany received theelements of Mediterranean culture indirectly through Gaul, second-handand late. The ancient Helvetians, moving southward from northernSwitzerland into Gaul, took a route skirting the western base of theAlps by the gap at Geneva, and thus threatened Roman Provincia. Cæsar'scampaigns into northern Gaul were given direction by the massive CentralPlateau of France. [1212] The rugged and infertile area of the Catskillslong retarded the westward movement in colonial New York and deflectedit northward through the Mohawk depression, which therefore had its longthin line of settlements when the neighboring Catskills were still a"bare spot. "

[Sidenote: Significance of mountain valleys. ]

In their valleys, mountains lose something of their barrier nature, andapproximate the level of the plains. Here they harbor oases of denserpopulation and easier intercourse. Valleys favor human settlementthrough the milder climate of their lower elevation, the accumulation ofsoil on their floors, their sheltered environment, and their command ofsuch routes of communication as the highlands afford. They are theavenues into and within a mountain system, and therefore radicallyinfluence its history by their direction and location. The CentralPlateau of France, through the valleys of the Alliers and upper Loire, is most accessible from the north; therefore in that direction it hasmaintained its most important historical connections, [1213] from the daysof Cæsar and Vercingetorix. The massive highland region of Transylvania, which opens long accessible valleys westward toward the plains of theTheiss and Danube, has since the eleventh century received thenceHungarian immigration and political dominion. [1214] Its dominant Roumanianpopulation, however, seems to have fled thither from the Tartar-sweptplains to the southeast. 

The anthropo-geography of mountain valleys depends upon the structure ofthe highlands themselves, whether they are fold mountains, whose rangeswall in longitudinal valleys, or dissected plateaus, whose valleys aremostly transverse river channels leading from the hydrographic centerout to the rim of the highlands. Longitudinal valleys are not only long, but also broad as a rule and often show a nearly level floor. [1215] Theytherefore form districts of considerable size, fertility, andindividuality, and play distinct historical rôles in the history oftheir respective highlands. Such are the upper Rhone Valley with itslong line of flourishing towns and villages, the Hither Rhine, the Innof the Tyrol and the Engadine, the fertile trough of the meanderingIsère above Grenoble, [1216] the broad Orontes-Leontes valley between theLebanon and Anti-Lebanon where Kadesh and Baalbec were once the glory ofnorthern Syria. Such is the central trough of the Appalachian Mountains, known as the Great Appalachian Valley, seventy-five miles wide, subdivided into constituent valleys of similar character by parallel, even-crested ridges following the trend of the mountains. These aredrained by broad, leisurely rivers, bordered by fertile farms andsubstantial towns. Transverse valleys, on the other hand, are generallynarrow, with steep slopes rising almost from the river's edge andsupporting only small villages and farms. A comparison of the spacious, smooth-floored valley of Andermatt with the wild Reuss gorge, of thefertile and populous Shenandoah Valley in the Southern Appalachians withthe canon of the Kanawha in the Cumberland Plateau, makes the contraststriking enough. 

[Sidenote: Longitudinal valleys. ]

Longitudinal valleys, by reason of their length and their branchinglateral valleys, are the natural avenues of communication within themountains themselves. They therefore give a dominant direction to suchphases of the historical movement as succeed in passing the outerbarrier. The series of parallel ranges which strike off from the easternend of the Tibetan plateau southward into Farther India have directedalong their valleys the main streams of Mongolian migration andexpansion, heading them toward the river basins of Burma and Indo China, and away from India itself. [1217] While Tibetan elements have during theages slowly welled over the high Himalayan brim and trickled down towardthe Gangetic plain, Burma has been deluged by floods of Mongolianspouring down the runnels of the land. A carriage road follows the axisof the Central Alps from Lake Geneva to Lake Constance by means of theupper Rhone, Andermatt, and upper Rhine valleys, linked by the Furca andOberalp passes. The Roman and Medieval routes northward across theCentral Alps struck the upper Rhine Valley above Coire, (the ancientCuria Rhaetorum); this natural groove gave them a northeastwarddirection, and made them emerge from the mountains directly south ofUlm, which thereby gained great importance. The trade routes fromDamascus and Palmyra which once entered the Orontes-Leontes trough inthe Lebanon system found their Mediterranean termini south near Tyre ornorth near Antioch, and thus contributed to the greatness of thoseancient emporiums. The Great Appalachian Valley used to be a highway forthe Iroquois Indians, when they took the warpath against the Cherokeetribes of Tennessee. Later it gave a distinct southwestward trend topioneer movements of population within the mountains, blending in itscommon channel the Quakers, Germans and Scotch-Irish from Pennsylvania, with the English and Huguenot French of the more southern colonies. Inthe Civil War its fertile fields were swept by marching armies, all theway from Chattanooga to Gettysburg. 

[Sidenote: Passes in mountain barriers. ]

The barrier nature of mountains depends upon their height and structure, whether they are massive, unbroken walls like the Scandinavian Alps andthe Great Smoky range; or, like the Welsh Highlands and the Blue Ridge, are studded with low passes. The Pyrenees, Caucasus and Andes, owing tothe scarcity and great height of their passes, have always been seriousbarriers. The Pyrenees divide Spain from France more sharply than theAlps divide Italy from France; owing to their rampart character, theyform the best and most definite natural boundary in Europe. [1218] Epirusand Aetolia, fenced in by the solid Pindus range, took little part inthe common life of ancient Greece; but the intermittent chains ofThessaly offered a passway between Macedon and Hellas. The Alps have anastonishing number of excellent passes, evenly distributed for the mostpart. These, in conjunction with the great longitudinal valleys of thesystem, offer transit routes from side to side in any direction. TheAppalachian system is some three hundred miles broad and thirteenhundred miles long, but it has many easy gaps among its parallel ranges, so that it offered natural though circuitous highways to the earlywinners of the West. The long line (400 miles) of the Hindu Kush range, high as it is, forms no strong natural boundary to India, because it isriddled with passes at altitudes from 12, 500 to 19, 000 feet. [1219] Theeasternmost group of these passes lead down to Kashmir, and thereforelend this state peculiar importance as guardian of these northernentrances to India. [1220] The Suleiman Mountains along the Indo-Afghanfrontier are an imperfect defence for the same reason. They are indentedby 289 passes capable of being traversed by camels. The mountain borderof Baluchistan contains 75 more, the most important of which focus theirroads upon Kandahar. Hence the importance to British India of Kandaharand Afghanistan. Across this broken northwest barrier have come almostall the floods of invasion and immigration that have contributed theirvaried elements to the mixed population of India. Tradition, epic andhistory tell of Asiatic highlanders ever sweeping down into the warmvalley of the Indus through these passes; Scythians, Aryans, Greeks, Assyrians, Medes, Persians, Turks, Tartars, and Mongols have alltraveled these rocky roads, to rest in the enervating valleys of thepeninsula. [1221]

[Sidenote: Breadth of mountain barriers. ]

Mountains folded into a succession of parallel ranges are greaterobstructions than a single range like the Erz, Black Forest, andVosges, or a narrow, compact system like the Western Alps, which canbe crossed by a single pass. Owing to this simple structure theWestern Alps were traversed by four established routes in the days ofthe Roman Empire. These were: I. The _Via Aurelia_ between theMaritime Alps and the sea, where now runs the Cornice Road. II. The_Mons Matrona_ (Mont Genevre Pass, 6080 feet or 1854 meters[Transcriber's Note: printer's error incorrectly printed askilometers. ]) between the headstream of the Dora Riparia and that ofthe Durance, which was the best highway for armies. III. The LittleSt. Bernard (7075 feet or 2157 meters), from Aosta on the Dora Balteaover to the Isère and down to Lugdunum (Lyons). IV. The Great St. Bernard (8109 feet or 2472 meters) route, which led northward fromAosta over the Pennine Alps to Octodurus at the elbow of the upperRhone, where Martigny now stands. Across the broad double rampart ofthe Central Alps the Roman used chiefly the Brenner route, which by alow saddle unites the deep reëntrant valleys of the Adige and Innrivers, and thus surmounts the barrier by a single pass. However, ashort cut northward over the Chalk Alps by the Fern Pass made closerconnection with Augusta Vindelicorum (Augsburg). The Romans seem tohave been ignorant of the St. Gotthard, which, though high, is thesummit of an unbroken ascent from Lake Maggiore up the valley of theTicino on one side, and from Lake Lucerne up the Reuss on the other. 

Mountains which spread out on a broad base in a series of parallelchains, and through which no long transverse valleys offer readytransit, form serious barriers to every phase of intercourse. The loftyboundary wall of the Pyrenees, a folded mountain system of sharp rangesand difficult passes, has successfully separated Spain from continentalEurope; it has given the Iberian Peninsula, in the course of a longhistory, closer relations with Morocco than with its land neighborFrance. It thus justifies the French saying that "Africa begins at thePyrenees. " The Andalusian fold mountains stretching across southernSpain in a double wall from Trafalgar to Cape Nao, accessible only bynarrow and easily defended passes, enabled the Moors of Granada to holdtheir own for centuries against the Spaniard Christians. The high thinridges of the folded Jura system, poor in soil and sparsely populated, broken by occasional "cluses" or narrow water-gaps admitting the riversfrom one elevated longitudinal valley to another, have always been aserious hindrance to traffic. [1222]

[Sidenote: Circuitous routes through folded mountains. ]

Such mountains can be crossed only by circuitous routes from pass topass, ascending and descending each range of the system. The CentralAlps, grooved by the longitudinal valleys of the upper Rhone, Rhine andInn, make transit travel a series of ups and downs. The northern rangemust be crossed by some minor pass like the Gemmi, (7553 feet) orPanixer (7907 feet) to the longitudinal valleys, and the southern rangeagain by the Simplon (6595 feet), San Bernadino (6768 feet), Splügen(6946 feet) or Septimer (7582 feet) to the Po basin. Across thecorrugated highland of the Hindu Kush, lying between the plains of theIndus and the Oxus, the caravans of western Asia seek the market of thePunjab by a circuitous route through the Hajikhak Pass (12, 188 feet) orfamous Gates of Bamian over the main range of the Hindu Kush, by theUnai Pass over the Paghman Mountains to Kabul at 5740 feet, and then bygorges of the Kabul River and the Khaibar Pass (6825 feet) down toPeshawar. This road presents so many difficulties that caravans fromTurkestan to India prefer another route from Merv up the valley of theHeri-Rud through the western hills of the Hindu Kush to Herat, thencediagonally southeast across Afghanistan to Kandahar, and thence by theBolan Pass down to the Sind. The broad, low series of forested mountainsconsisting of the Vindhyan and Kaimur Hills, reinforced by the Satpura, Kalabet, Gawilgarh ranges, Mahadeo Hills, Maikal Range and Chutia NagpurPlateau as a secondary ridge to the south, forms a double barrieracross the base of peninsular India. It divides the Deccan fromHindustan so effectually that it has sufficed to set limits to any Aryanadvance en masse southward. It kept southern India isolated, andadmitted only later Aryan influences which filtered through the barrier. To people accustomed to treeless plains, these wide belts of woodedhills were barrier enough. Even a few years ago their passes weredreaded by cartmen; most of the carriage of the country was effected bypack-bullocks. Even when roads were cleared through the forests, theywere likely to be rendered impassable by torrential rains. [1223]

[Sidenote: Dominant trans-montane routes. ]

Where a broad, complex mountain system contracts to narrow compass, oris cut by deep reentrant valleys leading up to a single pass, thetransmontane route here made by nature assumes great historicalImportance. The double chain of the mighty Caucasus, from 120 to 150miles wide and 750 miles long, stretches an almost insuperable barrierbetween the Black Sea and the Caspian. But nearly midway between thesetwo seas it is constricted to only 60 miles by a geographical andgeological gulf, which penetrates from the steppes of Russia almost tothe heart of the system. [1224] This gulf forms the high valley of theTerek River, beyond whose headstream lies the Dariel defile (7503 feetor 2379 meters), which continues the natural depression across to theshort southern slope. All the other passes of the Caucasus are 3000meters or more high, lie above snow line and are therefore open only insummer. The Dariel Pass alone is open all the year around. [1225] Here runsthe great military road from Vladicaucas to Tiflis, which the Russianshave built to control their turbulent mountaineer subjects; and here arelocated the Ossetes, the only people among the variegated tribes of thewhole Caucasus who occupy both slopes. All the other tribes andlanguages are confined to one side or the other. [1226] Moreover, theOssetes, occupying an exposed location in their highway habitat, lackthe courage of the other mountaineers, and yielded without resistance tothe Russians. In this respect they resemble the craven-spiritedKashmiri, whose mountain-walled vale forms a passway from Central Asiadown to the Punjab. 

[Sidenote: Brenner route. ]

The Pass of Dariel, owing to its situation in a retarded Brenner cornerof Asia, has never attained the historical importance which attaches tothe deep saddle of the Brenner Pass (4470 feet) in the Central Alps. Uniting the reëntrant valleys of the Inn and Adige rivers only 2760 feetabove the Inn's exit from the mountains upon the Bavarian plateau, itforms a low, continuous line of communication across the Central Alps. The Brenner was the route of the Cimbri invading the Po Valley, andlater of the Roman forces destined for frontier posts of the Empire onthe upper Danube. In the Middle Ages it was the route for the armies ofthe German Emperors who came to make good their claim to Italy. By thisroad came the artists and artisans of the whole north country to learnthe arts and crafts of beauty-loving Venice. From the Roman road-makersto the modern railroad engineer, with the concomitant civilization ofeach, the Brenner has seen the march of human progress. 

[Sidenote: Pass of Belfort. ]

Farther to the west, the wall of highlands stretching across southernEurope is interrupted by a deep groove formed by the mountain-flankedRhone Valley and the Pass of Belfort, or Burgundian Gate, which liesbetween the Vosges and Jura system, and connects the Rhone road with thelong rift valley of the middle Rhine. This pass, broad and low (350meters or 1148 feet) marks the insignificant summit in the greathistoric route of travel between the Mediterranean and the North Sea, from the days of ancient Etruscan merchants to the present. This was theroute of the invading Teuton hordes which the Roman Marius defeated atAquae Sextiae, and later, of the Germans under Ariovistus, whom Cæsardefeated near the present Mühlhausen. Four centuries afterward came theAlamannians, Burgundians and other Teutonic stocks, who infused a tallblond element into the population of the Rhone Valley. [1227] The Pass ofBelfort is the strategic key to Central Europe. Here Napoleon repeatedlyfixed his military base for the invasion of Austria, and hither wasdirected one division of the German army in 1870 for the invasion ofFrance. The gap is traversed to-day by a canal connecting the Doubs andthe Rhine and by a railroad, just as formerly by the tracks of migratingbarbarians. 

[Sidenote: Mohawk route. ]

The natural depression of the Mohawk Valley, only 445 feet (136 meters)above sea level, is the only decided break across the entire width ofthe long Appalachian system. This fact, together with its readyaccessibility from the Hudson on the east and Lake Ontario on the west, lent it importance in the early history of the colonies, as well as inthe later history of New York. It was an easy line of communication withthe Great Lakes, and gave the colonists access to the fur trade of theNorthwest, then in the hands of the French. So when French and Englishfought for supremacy in the New World, the Mohawk and Hudson valleyswere their chief battleground; elsewhere the broad Appalachian barrierheld them apart. Again in the Revolution, control of the Mohawk-Hudsonroute was the objective of the British armies mobilized on the Canadianfrontier, because it alone would enable them to co-operate with theBritish fleet blockading the coast cities of the colonies. In the War of1812, it was along this natural transmontane highway that supplies wereforwarded to the remote frontier, to support Perry's fight for controlof the Great Lakes. The war demonstrated the strategic necessity of aprotected, wholly American line of water communication between theHudson and our western frontier, while the commercial and politicaladvantage was obvious. Hence a decade after the conclusion of the war, this depression was traced by the Erie Canal, through which passed longlines of boats to build up the commercial greatness of New York City. 

[Sidenote: Height in mountain barriers. ]

Other structural features being the same, mountains are barriers also inproportion to their height; for, with few exceptions, the variousanthropo-geographic effects of upheaved areas are intensified withincrease of elevation. Old, worn-down mountains, like the Appalachiansand the Ural, broad as they are, have been less effective obstacles thanthe towering crests of the Alps and Caucasus. The form of the elevationalso counts. Easy slopes and flat or rounded summits make readiertransit regions than high, thin ridges with escarpment-like flanks. Mountains of plateau form, though reaching a great altitude, may berelatively hospitable to the historical movement and even have a regularnomadic population in summer. The central and western Tian Shan systemis in reality a broad, high plateau, divided into a series of smoothlyfloored basins and gently rolling ridges lying at an elevation of 10, 000to 12, 000 feet above the sea. Its pamirs or plains of thick grass, nourished by the relatively heavy precipitation of this high altitude, and forming in summer an island of verdure in the surrounding sea ofsun-scorched waste, attract the pastoral nomads from all the borderingsteppes and deserts. [1228] Thus it is a meeting place for a seasonalpopulation, sparse and evanescent, but its uplifted mass holds asunderthe few sedentary peoples fringing its piedmont. The corrugated dome ofthe Pamir highland, whose valley floors lie at an elevation of 11, 000 to13, 000 feet, draws to its summer pastures Kirghis shepherds from north, east and west; and their flocks in turn attract the raids of themarauding mountaineers occupying the Hunza Valley to the south. ThePamir, high but accessible, was a passway in the tenth century forChinese caravans bound from "Serica" or the "Land of Silk" to the OxusRiver and the Caspian. Here Marco Polo and many travelers after himfound fodder for their pack animals and food for themselves, becausethey could always purchase meat from the visiting shepherds. Thepossibilities of the Pamir as a transit region are apparent to Russia, who in 1886 annexed most of it to the government of Bukhara. 

[Sidenote: Contrasted accessibility of opposite slopes. ]

Mountains are seldom equally accessible from all sides. Rarely does thecrest of a system divide it symmetrically. This means a steep, difficultapproach to the summit from one direction, and a longer, more gradual, and hence easier ascent from the other. It means also in general a widezone of habitation and food supply on the gentler slope, a bettercommissary and transport base whence to make the final ascent, whetherin conquest, trade or ethnic growth. Mountain boundaries are thereforerarely by nature impartial. They do not umpire the great game ofexpansion fairly. They lower the bars to the advancing people on oneside, and hold them relentlessly in place to the other. To the favoredslope they give the strategic advantage of a swift and sudden descentbeyond the summit down the opposite side. The political boundary ofFrance along the watershed of the Vosges Mountains is backed by a long, gradual ascent from the Seine lowland and faces a sharp drop to the riftvalley of the middle Rhine, Its boundary along the crest of the Alpsfrom Mont Blanc to the Mediterranean brings over two-thirds of theupheaved area within the domain of France, and gives to that countrygreat advantages of approach to the Alpine passes at the expense ofItaly. With the exception of the ill-matched conflict between thecivilized Romans and the barbarian Gauls, it is a matter of history thatfrom the days of Hannibal to Napoleon III, the campaigns over the Alpsfrom the north have succeeded, while those from the steep-rimmed PoValley have miscarried. The Brenner route favored alike the Cimbrihordes in 102 B. C. And later the medieval German Emperors invading Italyfrom the upper Danube. The drop from the Brenner Pass to Munich is 2800feet; to Rovereto, an equally distant point on the Italian side, theroad descends 3770 feet. 

[Sidenote: Its ethnic effects. ]

The inequality of slope has ethnic as well as political effects, especially where a latitudinal direction also makes a sharp contrast ofclimate on the two sides of the mountain system. Except in the Romanperiod, the southern face of the Alps has been an enclosing wall to theItalians. The southern cultivator penetrated its high but sunny valleysonly when forced by poverty, while the harsh climate on the longnorthern slope effectively repelled him. On the other hand, Switzerlandhas overstepped the Alpine crest in the province of Ticino and thrustits political boundary in a long wedge down to the lowland of the Ponear Como; and the Alpine race, spilling everywhere over the mountainrim into the inviting Po basin, has given to this lowland population arelatively broad skull, blond coloring and tall figure, sharplycontrasted with the pure Mediterranean race beyond the crest of theApennines. [1229]

The long northward slope of the Alps in Switzerland and Tyrol, and theeasy western grade toward France, have enabled Germanic and Gallicinfluences of various kinds to permeate the mountains. A strong elementof blond, long-headed Germans mingles in the population of the Aar andRhine valleys up to the ice-capped ridge of the Glarner and BerneseAlps, [1230] while the virile German speech has pushed yet farther south tothe insuperable barrier of the Monte Rosa group. The abrupt southwardslope of the Himalayas has repelled ethnic expansion from the riverlowlands of northern India, except in the mountain valleys of the Punjabstreams and Nepal, where the highland offered asylum to the Rajput racewhen dislodged by a later Aryan invasion, or when trying their energiesin expansion and conquest. [1231] The Tibetan people, whose high plateausrise almost flush with the Himalayan passes, have everywhere trickledthrough and given a Mongoloid mountain border to Aryan India, [1232] eventhough their speech has succumbed to the pervasive Aryan language of thepiedmont, and thus confused the real ethnic boundary. [See map page102. ] The retarded and laborious approach of British "influence" up thissteep ascent to Lhassa, as opposed to the long established suzerainty ofthe Chinese Emperor in Tibet, can be attributed in part to thecontrasted accessibility from north and south. 

[Sidenote: Persistence of barrier nature. ]

Mountains influence the life of their inhabitants and their neighborsfundamentally and variously, but always reveal their barrier nature. Forthe occupants of one slope they provide an abundant rainfall, hold upthe clouds, and rob them of their moisture; to the leeward side theyadmit dry winds, and only from the melting snow or the precipitation ontheir summits do they yield a scanty supply of water. The Himalayas areflanked by the teeming population of India and the scattered nomadictribes of Tibet. Mountains often draw equally clear cut lines ofcleavage in temperature. The Scandinavian range concentrates upon Norwaythe warm, soft air of the Atlantic westerlies, while just below thewatershed on the eastern side Sweden feels all the rigor of a sub-Arcticclimate. In history, too, mountains play the same part as barriers. Theyare always a challenge to the energies of man. Their beauty, the charmof the unknown beyond tempts the enterprising spirit; the hardships anddangers of their roads daunt or baffle the mediocre, but by the greatones whose strength is able to dwarf these obstacles is found beyond aprize of victory. Such were Hannibal, Napoleon, Suvaroff, Genghis Khan, and those lesser heroes of the modern work-a-day world who toiled acrossthe Rockies and Sierras in the feverish days of '49, or who faced thesnows of Chilkoot Pass for the frozen gold-fields of the Yukon. 

[Sidenote: Importance of mountain passes. ]

For migrating, warring and trading humanity therefore, the interest ofthe mountains is centered in the passes. These are only dents ordepressions in the great up-lifted crest, or gaps carved out by streams, or deeper breaches in the mountain wall; but they point the easiestpathway to the ultramontane country, and for this reason focus uponthemselves the travel that would cut across the grain of the earth'swrinkled crust. Their influence reaches far. The Brenner, by itsmedieval trade, made the commercial greatness of Augsburg, Ratisbon, Nuremberg, and Leipzig to the north, and promoted the growth of Veniceto the south. The Khaibar Pass and the Gates of Herat in Afghanistanhave for long periods dominated the Asiatic policy of Russia and BritishIndia. The Mohawk depression and Cumberland Gap for decades gavedirection to the streams of population moving westward into theMississippi basin in the early history of the Republic. Where TruckeePass (7017 feet) makes a gash in the high ridge of the Sierra Nevada, the California Trail in 1844 sought the line of least resistance acrossthe barrier mass, and deposited its desert-worn immigrants about theSacramento Valley and San Francisco Bay. There they made a nucleus ofAmerican population in Mexican California, and in 1846 became the centerof American revolt. 

[Sidenote: Persistent influence of passes. ]

Though modern engineering skill, especially when backed by a politicalpolicy, may cause certain passes to gain in historical importance at thecost of others, the rule holds that passes are never quiteinsignificant. Their influence is persistent through the ages. They arenature-made thoroughfares, traversed now by undisciplined hordes ofmigrating barbarians, now by organized armies, now by the woolly flocksand guardian dogs of the nomad shepherd, now by the sumpter mule of theitinerant merchant, now by the wagon-trains of over-mountain settlers, now by the steam engine panting up the steep grade. Nowhere does historyrepeat itself so monotonously, yet so interestingly as in these mountaingates. In the Pass of Roncesvalles, notching the western Pyreneesbetween Pamplona in Spain and St. Etienne in France, fell the army ofCharlemagne surprised and beset by the mountain tribes in 778;[1233]through this breach the Black Prince in 1367 led his troops to thevictory of Navarette; in the Peninsular War a division of Wellington'sarmy in 1813 moved northward up this valley, driving the French beforethem; and by this route Soult advanced southward across the frontier forthe relief of the French forces shut up in Pamplona. The history ofPalestine may be read in epitome in the annals of the Vale of Jezreel, where the highlands of Palestine sink to a natural trough before risingagain to the hill country of Galilee and the mountain range of highLebanon. This was the avenue for war and trade between the Nile andEuphrates, between Africa and Asia. Here the Canaanites expandedeastward from the coast, cutting off northern Israel in Galilee fromSamaria and Judea. Here Gideon turned back the incursions of theMidianites or western Arabs. Here was the open road for Assyrians, Egyptians, for Greek armies under Antiochus, and Roman armies underPompey, Mark Antony, Vespasian and Titus. Hither came the Saracens fromthe east in 634 A. D. To rout the Greek army, and later the Crusadersfrom the west, to secure with castle and fortress this key to the HolyLand. Finally, hither came Napoleon from Egypt in 1799 on his way to theEuphrates. [1234]

[Sidenote: Geographic factors in the historical importance of passes. ]

The historical importance of passes tends to increase with the depth ofthe depression, since the lowest gap in a range relegates the others toonly occasional or local use; and with their rarity, in consequence ofwhich intercourse between opposite slopes is concentrated upon one ortwo defiles. The low dips of the Central American Cordilleras to 262feet (80 meters) at Panama, 151 feet (46 meters) in the Nicaraguanisthmus, and 689 feet (210 meters) at Tehuantepec, present a strikingcontrast both orographically and historically to the South AmericanAndes, where from the equator to the Uspallata or Bermejo Pass (12, 562feet or 3842 meters) back of Valparaiso, a stretch measuring 33 degreesof latitude, the passes all reach or exceed 10, 000 feet or 3000 meters. The southern or Pennine range of the Alps, stretching as a snow-wrappedbarrier from Mont Blanc 90 miles to the central Alpine dome of the St. Gotthard, is notched only by the Great St. Bernard and Simplon passes, which have therefore figured conspicuously in war and trade, since veryearly times. The Pass of Thermopylæ, as the only route southward alongthe flank of the Pindus system, figures in every land invasion of Greecefrom Xerxes to the Greek war of independence. All movements back andforth across the Caucasus wall have been confined to the Pass of Darieland the far lower Pass of Derbent, or _Pylæ Albaniæ_; of the ancients, which lies between the Caspian and the last low spurs of the mountainsas they drop down to the sea. The latter, as the easier of the twopasses, has had a longer and richer history. It alone enabled theancient Persians temporarily to force a wedge of conquest to thenorthern foot of the Caucasus, and it has been in all ages a highway forpeoples entering Persia and Georgia from the north. It has so far beenthe only practicable route for a railway from the Russian steppes to thesouthern base of the Caucasus. While Vladicaucas and Tiflis have directconnection by the military highway over the Pass of Dariel, the railroadbetween these two points makes a detour of 300 miles to the east. 

[Sidenote: Intermarine mountains. ]

Intermarine mountains as a rule offer the easiest passways where theysink to meet the flanking seas. The Pyrenees are crossed by only tworailroads, the Bayonne-Burgos line, along the shore of the Bay ofBiscay, and the Narbonne-Barcelona line, overlooking the Mediterranean. Between these extremities the passes are very high and only two arepracticable for carriages, the Col de la Perche (5280 feet or 1610meters) between the valleys of the Tet and the upper Segre, and the Portde Canfranc (7502 feet or 2288 meters) on the old Roman road fromSaragossa to Oloron. The coastal road around the eastern end of theCheviot Hills has been the great intermediary between England andScotland. It was the avenue for early Teutonic expansion into the ScotchLowlands, the thoroughfare for all those armies which for centuries madeBerwick a chronic battleground. 

For purposes of trade these intermarine mountains are less seriousbarriers, because they can be avoided by an easier and cheaper searoute. Hence on each side of such ranges grow up active ports, likeNarbonne and Barcelona, Bayonne and Bilbao with San Sebastian, on thepiedmont seaboard of the Pyrenees; Petrovsk and Baku on the Caspian rimof the Caucasus, balancing the Crimean ports and Poti with Trebizond onthe Black Sea. Analogous is the position of Genoa and Marseilles inrelation to the Maritime Alps. Such ports are inevitably the object ofattack in time of hostilities. In the Peninsular War almost the firstact of the French was to seize Barcelona, San Sebastian and Bilbao; andthroughout the seven years of the conflict these points were centers ofbattle, blockade and siege. If Russia ever tries to wrench the upperEuphrates Valley from Turkey, Trebizond will repeat the history ofBarcelona in the Peninsular War. 

[Sidenote: Pass roads between regions of contrasted production]

As the world's roads are used primarily for commerce, pass routes rankin importance according to the amount of trade which they forward; andthis in turn is decided by the contrast in the lands which they unite. The passes of the Alps and the Pass of Belfort have been busythoroughfares from the early Middle Ages, because they facilitateexchanges between the tropical Mediterranean and the temperate regionsof Central Europe. Or the contrast may be one of economic and socialdevelopment. The Mohawk depression forwards the grain of theagricultural Northwest in return for the manufactured wares of theAtlantic seaboard. The passes of the Asiatic ranges connect theindustrial and agricultural lowlands of India and China with thehighland pastures of Mongolia, Tibet, Afghanistan and Russian Turkestan. Hence they forward the wool, skins, felts, cloth and carpets of thewandering shepherds in exchange for the food stuffs and industrialproducts of the fertile, crowded lowlands. Where passes open a highwayfor inland countries to the sea, their sphere of influence is greatlyincreased. San Francisco, New York, Marseilles, Genoa, Venice, Beirutand Bombay are seaports which owe their importance in no small degree todominant pass routes into their hinterland. 

[Sidenote: Passes determine trans-montane roads. ]

In plains and lowlands highways may run in any direction expediencysuggests, but in mountain regions the pass points the road. In very highranges there is no appeal from this law; but in lower systems andespecially in old mountains which have been rounded and worn down byages of denudation, economic and social considerations occasionallytranscend orographical conditions in fixing the path of highways. Scarcely less important than pass or gap is the avenue of approach tothe same. This is furnished by lateral or transverse valleys of erosion. The deeper their reentrant angles cut back into the heart of thehighlands, the more they facilitate intercourse and lend historicalimportance to the pass route. The Alpine passes which are approached bya single valley from each side are those crossed by railroadsto-day, --Mont Cenis, Simplon, St. Gotthard and the Brenner. The Alpinechain is trenched on its inner or southern side by a series oftransverse erosion valleys, such as the Dora Baltea, Sesia, Tosa, Ticino, Adda, Adige, and Tagliamento, which carry roads up to the chiefAlpine passes. The coincidence of the Roman and medieval roads over theAlps with the modern railroads is striking, except in the single pointof elevation. Railroads tend to follow lower levels. Modern engineeringskill enables them to tunnel the crest, to cut galleries in theperpendicular walls of gorges, and to embank mountain torrents againstthe spring inundation of the roadbed, where it drops to the valleyfloor. 

[Sidenote: Navigable river approaches to passes. ]

Where gaps are low and the approaching waters are navigable, at leastfor the small craft of early days, they combine to enhance thehistorical importance of their routes. The Mohawk River, navigable forthe canoe of Indian and fur trader, greatly increased travel and trafficthrough the Mohawk depression. The Pass of Belfort is the greatesthistoric gateway of western Europe, chiefly because it unites thechannels of the Rhone, Saône and Rhine. Lake Lucerne brings the moderntourist by boat to the foot of the railroad ascent to the St. GotthardPass, as the long gorge of Lake Maggiore receives him at the southernend. Lake Maggiore is the water outlet also of the Simplon Pass from theupper Rhone, the Lukmanier (6288 feet or 1917 meters) from the HitherRhine, and the San Bernadino (6766 feet or 2063 meters) from the HinterRhine. [1235] This geographical fact explains the motive of Swiss expansionin the fifteenth century in embracing the Italian province of Ticino andthe upper end of Lake Maggiore. A significance like that of the Swissand Italian lakes for the Alpine passes appears emphasized in the SogneFiord of Norway. This carries a marine highway a hundred miles into theland; from its head, roads ascend to the only two dents in the mountainwall south of the wide snowfield of the Jotun Fjeld, and they leadthence by the valleys of Hallingdal and Valders down to the plains ofChristiania. 

[Sidenote: Types of settlements in the valley approaches. ]

Genuine mountain passes have only emergency inhabitants--the monks anddogs of the hospice, the road-keepers in their refuge huts or_cantonière_, or the garrison of a fort guarding these importantthoroughfares. The flanking valleys of approach draw to themselves thehuman life of the mountains. Their upper settlements show a certaincommon physiognomy, born of their relation to the barren transit regionabove, except in those few mountain districts of advanced civilizationwhere railroads have introduced through traffic over the barrier. At thefoot of the final ascent to the pass, where often the carriage road endsand where mule-path or foot-trail begins, is located a settlement thatlives largely by the transmontane travel. It is a place of inns, hostelries, of blacksmith shops, where in the busy season the sound ofhammer and anvil is heard all night; of stables and corrals crowded withpack and draft animals; of storehouses where the traveler can providehimself with food for the journey across the barren, uninhabitedheights. It is the typical outfitting point such as springs up on themargin of any pure transit region, whether mountain or desert. Suchplaces are Andermatt and Airolo, lying at an altitude of 4000 feet ormore on the St. Gotthard road, St. Moritz below the Maloja Pass, Jacanear the Pass de Canfranc over the Pyrenees, Kugiar and Shahidula[1236] atan elevation of 10, 775 feet or 3285 meters on the road up to theKarakorum Pass (18, 548 feet or 5655 meters), which crosses the highestrange of the Himalayas between Leh in the upper Indus Valley andYarkand in Chinese Turkestan. 

[Sidenote: Lower settlements. ]

Farther down the transverse valley the type of settlement changes whereside valleys, leading down from other passes, converge and help build upa distributing center for a considerable highland area. Such a point isChiavenna in northern Italy, located above the head of Lake Como at thejunction of the Mera and Liro valleys, which lead respectively to theSplügen and Maloja passes. It lies at an altitude of 1090 feet (332meters) and has a population of 4000. Such a point is Aosta (1913 feetor 583 meters elevation) in the Dora Baltea Valley, commanding theItalian approaches to the Great St. Bernard Pass, and the less importantCol de Fenêtre leading to the upper Rhone, the Little St. Bernardhighway to the valley of the Isère, and Col de la Seigne path around theMont Blanc range to the valley of the Arve. Aosta was an important placein the Roman period and has to-day a population of about 8000. Kokan, inthe upper Sir-Daria Valley in Russian Turkestan, commands the approachto the passes of the western Tian Shan and the northern Pamir. Itswell-stocked bazaars, containing goods from Russia, Persia and India, testify to its commercial location. 

[Sidenote: Pass cities and their markets. ]

When the highland area is very broad and therefore necessitates longtransit journeys, genuine pass cities develop at high altitudes, andbecome the termini of the transmontane trade. Such is the Leh (11, 280feet or 3439 meters) on the caravan route from Central Asia over theKarakorum Pass down to Kashmir, and such is Srinagar (5252 feet or 1603meters) in Kashmir. To their markets come caravans from ChineseTurkestan, laden with carpets and brick tea, and Tibetan merchants fromLhassa, bringing wool from their highland pastures to exchange for therice and sugar of lowland India. [1237] Leh is conveniently situated abouthalf way between the markets of India and Central Asia. Therefore it isthe terminus for caravans arriving from both regions, and exchange placefor products from north and south. Seldom do caravans from eitherdirection go farther than this point. Here the merchants rest for amonth or two and barter their goods. Tents of every kind, camels, yaks, mules and horses, coolie transports of various races, men of manylanguages and many religions, give to this high-laid town a trulycosmopolitan stamp in the summer time when the passes are open. [1238]Kabul, which lies at an altitude of nearly 6000 feet near the head ofthe Kabul River, is the focus of numerous routes over the Hindu Kush, and dominates all routes converging on the northwest frontier of thePunjab. [1239] It is therefore the military and commercial key to India. Its narrow winding streets are obstructed by the picturesque _kafilas_of Oriental merchants, stocked with both Russian goods from the Oxusdistricts and British goods from India in evidence of its intermediarylocation. [1240]

Occasionally a very high market develops for purely local use. TheIndian Himalayan province of Kumaon contains the market town ofGarbyang, at an elevation of 10, 300 feet or about 3000 meters, on theKali River road leading by the Lipu Lekh Pass (16, 780 feet or 5115meters) over to Tibet. It has grown up as a trade center for the DokpaTibetans, who will not descend below 10, 000 feet because their yak andsheep die at a lower altitude. [1241] Farther east in the Sikkim border, Darjeeling (7150 feet or 2180 meters elevation) is center of the Britishwool trade with Tibet. 

Often the exchange point moves nearer the summit of the pass, dividingthe journey more equally between the two areas of production. Heredevelops the temporary summer market. High up on the route between Lehand Yarkand is Sasar, a place of unroofed enclosures for the deposit ofcotton, silk and other goods left there by the caravans plying back andforth between Leh and Sasar, or Sasar and Yarkand. [1242] Nearly midway onthe much frequented trade route between Leh and Lhassa, at a point15, 100 feet (nearly 500 meters) above sea level, just below the SchakoPass, lies Gartok in western Tibet, in summer a busy market surroundedby a city of tents, and the summer residence of the two Chineseviceroys, who occupy the only two substantial dwellings in the place. Here at the end of August is held a great annual fair, which is attendedby traders from India, Kashmir, Mongolia, Chinese Turkestan, Chinaproper, and Lhassa; but by November the place is deserted. The tradersdisperse, and the few residents of Gartok, together with the viceroys, retire down the Indus Valley to the more sheltered village of Gargunza(14, 140 feet or 4311 meters elevation), which represents the limits ofpermanent settlement in these altitudes. [1243] The Sutlej Valley routefrom the Punjab to Lhassa is capped near its summit at an altitude ofabout 5000 meters by the summer market, of Gyanema, whose numerous typesof tents indicate the various homes of the traders from Lhassa toIndia. [1244]

[Sidenote: Pass peoples. ]

Natural thoroughfares, whether river highways or mountain pass routes, draw to themselves migration, travel, trade and war. They thereforeearly assume historical importance. Hence we find that peoplescontrolling transmontane routes have always been able to exert anhistorical influence out of proportion to their size and strength; andthat in consequence they early become an object of conquest to thepeople of the lowlands, as soon as these desire to control such transitroutes. The power of these pass tribes is often due to the trade whichthey command and which compensates them for the unproductive characterof their country. In the eastern Himalayas the Tomos of the ChumbiValley are intermediaries of trade between Darjeeling and Tibet, In thewestern Himalayas, the Kumaon borderland of northern India, whichcommands some of the best passes, has made its native folk or Bhutiasbold merchants who jealously monopolize the trade over the passes to theTibetan markets. They stretch for a zone of thirty miles south of theboundary from Nepal to Garhwal along the approach to every pass, eachsub-group having its particular trade route. [1245]

[Sidenote: Transit duties. ]

It is always possible for such pass tribes to levy a toll or transitduty on merchandise, or in lieu of this to rob. Cæsar made war upon theVeragri and Seduni, who commanded the northern end of the Great St. Bernard Pass, in order to open up the road over the Alps, which wastraversed by Roman merchants _magno cum periculo magnisque cumportoriis_. [1246] The Salassi, who inhabited the upper Dora Baltea Valleyand hence controlled the Little St. Bernard wagon road leading over toLugdunum or Lyons, regularly plundered or taxed all who attempted tocross their mountains. On one occasion they levied a toll of a drachmper man on a Roman army, and on another plundered the treasure of Cæsarhimself. After a protracted struggle they were crushed by Augustus, whofounded Aosta and garrisoned it with a body of Praetorian cohorts topolice the highway. [1247] The Iapodes in the Julian Alps controlled theMount Ocra or Peartree Pass, which carried the Roman wagon road fromAquileia over the mountains down to the valley of the Laibach and theSave. This strategic position they exploited to the utmost, tillAugustus brought them to subjection as a preliminary to Roman expansionon the Danube. [1248]

Turning to another part of the world, we find that the Afghan tribescommanding the passes of the Suleiman Mountains have long beenaccustomed to impose transit duties upon caravans plying betweenTurkestan and India. The merchants have regularly organized themselvesinto bands of hundreds or even thousands to resist attack or exorbitantexactions. The Afghans have always enforced their right to collect tollsin the Khaibar and Kohat passes, and have thus blackmailed every Indiandynasty for centuries. In 1881 the British government came to terms withthem by paying them an annual sum to keep these roads open. [1249] Just tothe south the Gomal Pass, which carries the main traffic road over theborder mountains between the Punjab and the Afghan city of Ghazni, isheld by the brigand tribe of Waziris, and is a dangerous gauntlet to berun by every armed caravan passing to and from India. [1250] The Ossetes ofthe Caucasus, who occupy the Pass of Dariel and the approaching valleys, regularly preyed upon the traffic moving between Russia and Georgia, till the Muscovite government seized and policed the road. [1251]

[Sidenote: Strategic power of pass states. ]

The strategic importance of pass peoples tends early to assume apolitical aspect. The mountain state learns to exploit this oneadvantage of its ill-favored geographical location. The cradle of theold Savoyard power in the late Middle Ages lay in the Alpine landsbetween Lake Geneva and the western tributaries of the Po River. Thislocation controlling several great mountain routes between France andItaly gave the Savoyard princes their first importance. [1252] The autonomyof Switzerland can be traced not less to the citadel character of thecountry and the native independence of its people, than to theirpolitical exploitation of their strategic position. They profited, moreover, by the wish of their neighbors that such an important transitregion between semi-tropical and temperate Europe should be held by apower too weak to obstruct its routes. The Amir of Kabul, backed by therapacious Afridi tribes of the Suleiman Mountains, has been able to playoff British India against Russia, and thereby to secure from both powersa degree of consideration not usually shown to inferior nations. Similarly in colonial America, the Iroquois of the Mohawk depression, who commanded the passway from the Hudson to the fur fields of theNorthwest and also the avenue of attack upon the New York settlementsfor the French in Canada, were early conciliated by the English and usedby them as allies, first in the French wars and afterward in theRevolution. 

NOTES TO CHAPTER XV

[1186] For physical effects, see Angelo Mosso, Life of Man on the HighAlps. Translated from the Italian. London, 1898. 

[1187] W. Z. Ripley, Races of Europe, pp. 463-465. New York, 1899. 

[1188] Strabo, Book IV, chap. VI, 3. 

[1189] W. Z. Ripley, Races of Europe, pp. 31-32. New York, 1899. 

[1190] Sir Thomas Holdich, India, pp. 32-33. London, 1905. 

[1191] W. Z. Ripley, The Races of Europe, Map p. 439. New York, 1899. 

[1192] Imperial Gazetteer of India, Vol. I, pp. 294-295. Oxford, 1907. Sir Thomas Holdich, India, relief map on p. 171 compared with linguisticmap p. 201. London, 1905. 

[1193] Census of India for 1901, Risley and Gait, Vol. I, Part I, p. 2. Calcutta, 1903. B. H. Baden-Powell, The Indian Village Community, pp. 40, 130, 131. London, 1896. 

[1194] Count Gleichen, The Egyptian Sudan, Vol. I, pp. 184, 185, 190. London, 1905. 

[1195] Gustav Nachtigal, _Sahara und Sudan_, Vol. III, pp. 178, 188-192. Leipzig, 1889. 

[1196] Spencer and Gillen, The Northern Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 6, 13. London, 1904. 

[1197] W. Deecke, Italy, p. 365. London, 1904. 

[1198] Sir Thomas Holdich, India, pp. 295-296. London, 1905. G. W. Steevens, In India, pp. 202-204. New York, 1899. 

[1199] Francis Younghusband, The Heart of a Continent, pp. 138, 140, 145, 272-273. London, 1904. 

[1200] E. Huntington, The Pulse of Asia, p. 87. Boston, 1907. 

[1201] E. C. Semple, American History and Its Geographic Conditions, pp. 184-185. Boston, 1903. 

[1202] Isabella Bird Bishop, The Yangtze Valley and Beyond, Vol. II, pp. 70-72, 88, 91. London, 1900. 

[1203] Francis H. Nichols, Through Hidden Shensi, pp. 170-171. New York, 1902. 

[1204] Otis T. Mason, Primitive Travel and Transportation, pp. 450-454, 474-475. _Smithsonian Report_, Washington, 1896. 

[1205] Col. George E. Church, The Acre Territory and the CaoutchoucRegions of Southwestern Amazonia, _Geog. Jour_. May, 1904. London. 

[1206] M. Huc, Journey through the Chinese Empire, pp. 39-40. New York, 1871. 

[1207] Perceval Landon, The Opening of Tibet, pp. 54-55. New York, 1905. 

[1208] Jean Baptiste Tavernier, Travels in India. Vol. II, p. 264. Translated from the French of 1676. London, 1889. 

[1209] E. F. Knight, Where Three Empires Meet, pp. 231, 274, 276, 286-289. London, 1897. 

[1210] Census of the Philippine Islands, Vol. I, p. 544. Washington, 1905. 

[1211] Joseph Partsch, Central Europe, p. 134. London, 1903. 

[1212] M. S. W. Jefferson, Cæsar and the Central Plateau of France, _Journal of Geog. _, Vol. VI, p. 113. New York, 1897. 

[1213] P. Vidal de la Blache, _Tableau de la Géographie de la France_, p. 276. Paris, 1903. 

[1214] E. A. Freeman, Historical Geography of Europe, Vol. I, p. 450-453. London, 1882. 

[1215] William Morris Davis, Physical Geography, p. 183. Boston, 1899. 

[1216] P. Vidal de la Blache, _Tableau de la Géographie de la France_, p. 260, map p. 261. Paris, 1903. 

[1217] Indian Census for 1901, Risley and Gait, Vol. I, Part I, pp. 1, 2, Calcutta, 1905. 

[1218] Hans Helmolt, History of the World, Vol. IV, p. 479. New York, 1902. 

[1219] Sir Thomas Holdich, India, p. 67, cartogram of Hindu Kushorography. London, 1905. 

[1220] _Ibid. _, pp. 102-104. 

[1221] _Ibid. _, p. 26. 

[1222] J. Partsch, Central Europe, p. 27. London, 1903. 

[1223] B. H. Baden-Powell, The Indian Village Community, pp. 40-45, 111, 116. London, 1896. 

[1224] H. R. Mill, International Geography, pp. 394-395. New York, 1902. 

[1225] Gottfried Merzbacher, _Aus den Hochregionen des Kaukasus_, pp. 73-78. Leipzig, 1901. 

[1226] W. Z. Ripley, The Races of Europe, p. 438. New York, 1899. 

[1227] _Ibid. _, Maps pp. 143, 147, text p. 148. 

[1228] E. Huntington, The Pulse of Asia, pp. 106-109. Boston, 1907. 

[1229] W. Z. Ripley, The Races of Europe, pp. 249-253. New York, 1899. 

[1230] _Ibid. _, p. 282 and cartogram, p. 284. 

[1231] Sir Thomas Holdich, India, p. 201. London, 1905. ImperialGazetteer of India, Vol. I, p. 295. Oxford, 1907. 

[1232] Census of India, 1901, Ethnographic Appendices, Vol. I, p. 60, byH. H. Risley, Calcutta, 1903. C. A. Sherring, Western Tibet and theBritish Borderland, pp. 341-353. London, 1906. 

[1233] B. Lavisse, _Histoire de France_, Vol. II, Part 1, p. 294. Paris, 1903. 

[1234] George Adam Smith, Historical Geography of the Holy Land, pp. 383, 384, 391-400, 407, 409. New York, 1897. 

[1235] Wilhelm Deecke, Italy, pp. 20, 21. London, 1904. 

[1236] Francis Younghusband, The Heart of a Continent, pp. 150, 194, 199. London, 1904. 

[1237] E. F. Knight, Where Three Empires Meet, pp. 12, 88, 157-159, 231. London, 1897. 

[1238] _Ibid. _, pp. 173, 177. 

[1239] Sir Thomas Holdich, India, map p. 85, pp. 86, 89. London, 1905. 

[1240] Vambery, _Reise in Mittelasien, _ pp. 371-375. Leipzig, 1973. 

[1241] C. A. Sherring, Western Tibet and the British Borderland, p. 136. London, 1906. 

[1242] O. P. Crosby, Tibet and Turkestan, pp. 112-116. New York, 1903. 

[1243] Elisée Reclus, Asia, Vol. II, pp. 50-51. C. A. Sherring, WesternTibet and the British Borderland, pp. 146-148, 152, 157, 300-303. London, 1906. 

[1244] _Ibid. _, pp. 326-327. 

[1245] _Ibid. _, pp. 4, 61-64, 310-311. 

[1246] _Bella Gallico, _ Book III, chap. I. 

[1247] Strabo, Book IV, chap. VI, 1, 11. 

[1248] Strabo, Book IV, chap. VI, 10. 

[1249] Sir Thomas Holdich, The Indian Borderland, p. 48. London, 1909. 

[1250] H. R. Mill, International Geography, p. 467. New York, 1902. 

[1251] Pallas, Travels Through the Southern Provinces of Russia, Vol. I, p. 431. London, 1812. 

[1252] E. A. Freeman, Historical Geography of Europe, Vol. I, pp. 286-287. London, 1882. 

CHAPTER XVI

INFLUENCES OF A MOUNTAIN ENVIRONMENT

[Sidenote: Zones of altitude. ]

There are zones of latitude and zones of altitude. To every mountainregion both these pertain, resulting in a nice interplay of geographicfactors. Every mountain slope from summit to piedmont is, from theanthropo-geographical standpoint, a complex phenomenon. When highenough, it may show a graded series of contrasted complementarylocations, closely interdependent grouping of populations andemployments, every degree of density from congestion to vacancy, everyrange of cultural development from industrialism to nomadism. Thesouthern slope of the Monte Rosa Alps, from the glacier cap at 4500meters to the banks of the Po River, yields within certain limits azonal epitome of European life from Lapland to the Mediterranean. Thelong incline from the summit of Mount Everest (8840 meters) in theeastern Himalayas, through Darjeeling down to sea level at Calcutta, comprises in a few miles the climatic and cultural range of Asia fromArctic to Tropic. 

[Sidenote: Politico-economic value of varied relief. ]

For the state, a territory of varied relief is highly beneficial, because it combines manifold forms of economic activity, a wide range ofcrops, areas of specialized production mutually interdependent. Itinduces a certain balance of urban and lief, rural life, whichcontributes greatly to the health of the state. [1253] The steep slopes ofDai Nippon, fertile only under spade tillage, will forever insure Japanthe persistence of a numerous peasantry. For geological and geographicalreasons, as from national motives, therefore, Japan will probably neversacrifice its farmer to its industrial class, as England has done. Onthe other hand, contrasted reliefs on a great territorial scale tend toinvade political solidarity. Tidewater and mountain Virginia were poorrunning-mates for a century before the Civil War, and then the mountainregion broke out of harness. Geographical contrasts made the unificationof Germany difficult, and yet they have added to the economic andnational strength of the Empire. The history of Switzerland shows thehigh Alpine cantons always maintaining a political tug of war with thecantons of the marginal plain, and always suffering a defeat which wastheir salvation. 

[Sidenote: Relief and climate. ]

The chief effect of a varied relief is a varied climate. This changeswith altitude in much the same way as with latitude. Heat and absolutehumidity diminish, generally speaking, as height increases, whilerainfall becomes greater up to a certain level. The effect of ascendingand descending currents of air is to diminish the range of temperatureon mountain slopes and produce rather an oceanic type of climate. Thelarger and more uniform a climatic district, the more conspicuously doeven slight elevations form climatic islands, like the Harz Mountains inthe North German lowlands. A land of monotonous relief has a uniformclimate, while a region rich in vertical articulations is rich also inlocal varieties of climate. [1254] A highland of considerable elevationforms a cold district in the Temperate Zone, a temperate one in theTropics, and a moist one in a desert or steppe. Especially in arid andtorrid belts does the value of elevation for human life increase. 

[Sidenote: Altitude zones of economic and cultural development. ]

The highlands of Mexico, South America and the Himalayan rim of Indiashow stratified zones of tropical, temperate, and arctic climate, towhich plant, animal and human life conform. The response is conspicuousin the varying density of population in the successive altitude zones. Central Asia shows a threefold cultural stratification of itspopulation, each attended by the appropriate density, according tolocation in steppe, piedmont and mountain. The steppes have theirscattered pastoral nomads; the piedmonts, with their irrigation streams, support sedentary agricultural peoples, concentrated at focal points incommercial and industrial towns; the higher reaches of the mountains areoccupied by sparse groups of peasants and shepherds, wringing fromupland pasture and scant field a miserable subsistence. The samestratification appears in the Atlas Mountains, intensified on thesouthern slope by the contrast between the closely populated belt of thepiedmont and the wandering Tuareg tribes of the Sahara on the one hand, and the sparse Berber settlements of the Atlas highlands on the other. The long slope of Mount Kilimanjaro in German East Africa descends to acoastal belt of steppe and desert, inhabited by Swahili cattle-breeders. Its piedmont, from 1000 feet above the plain up to 2400 feet, constitutes a zone of rich irrigated plantations and gardens, denselypopulated by peaceful folk of mingled Bantu and Hamitic blood. At 6000feet, where forests cease, are found the kraals, cattle, sheep and goatsof the semi-nomadic Masai of doubtful Hamitic stock, who raid thecoastal lowlands for cattle, and purchase all their vegetable food fromthe tillage belt. [1255] [See maps page 105 and 487. ]

[Illustration: DENSITY OF POPULATION IN ITALY. ]

This stratification assumes marked variations in the differentgeographical zones. In Greenland life is restricted to the piedmontcoastal belt; above this rises the desert waste of the ice fields. Norway shows a tide-washed piedmont, containing a large majority of thepopulation; above this, a steep slope sparsely inhabited; and higherstill, a wild plateau summit occupied in summer only by grazing herds ormigrant reindeer Lapps. Farther south the Alps show successive tiers ofrural economy, again with their appropriate density of settlement. Ontheir lower slope is found the vineyard belt, a region of highlyintensive tillage, large returns upon labor, and hence of closelydistributed settlement. Above that is the zone of field agriculture, less productive and less thickly peopled. Higher still is the wide zoneof hay farming and stock-raising, supporting a sparse, semi-nomadicpopulation and characterized by villages which diminish with thealtitude and cease beyond 2000 meters. On Aetna, located in the tropicalMediterranean, three girdles of altitude have long been recognized, --thegirdle of agriculture, the forest belt, and the desert summit. But thetourist who ascends Aetna, passes from the coast through a zone oforange and lemon groves, which are protected by temporary matting roofsagainst occasional frosts; then through vineyards and olive orchardswhich rise to 800 meters; then through a belt of summer crops rising to1550 meters, and varied between 1400 and 1850 meters elevation bystretches of chestnut groves, whose green expanse is broken here andthere by the huts of the forest guards, the highest tenants of themountain. From these lonely dwellings down to the sea, density ofpopulation increases regularly to a maximum of over 385 to the squaremile (150 to the square kilometer) near the coast. 

[Sidenote: Altitude and density belts in tropical highlands. ]

In the tropical highlands of Mexico, Central and South America, on theother hand, concentration of population and its concomitant culturaldevelopment begin to appear above the 2000 meter line. Here are thechief seats of population. Mexico has three recognized altitude zones, the cold, the temperate and the hot, corresponding to plateau, highslopes and coastal piedmont up to 1000 meters or 3300 feet; but thefirst two contain nine-tenths of the people. While the plateau has insome sections a population dense as that of France, the lowlands aresparsely peopled by wild Indians and lumbermen. Ecuador hasthree-fourths of its population crowded into the plateau basins (meanelevation 8000 feet or 2500 meters), enclosed by the ranges of theAndes. Peru presents a similar distribution, with a comparatively densepopulation on a plateau reaching to 11, 000 feet (3500 meters) or more, though its coastal belt, being healthful, dry, and fairly well suppliedwith irrigation streams from the Andes, is better developed than anyother similar district in tropical America. [1256] In Bolivia, 72 per centof the total population live at an altitude of 6000 to 14, 000 feet, while five out of the nine most densely peopled provinces lie atelevations over 11, 000 feet. [1257] [See map page 9. ]

From Mexico to central Chile, the heavy rains from the trade-windsclothe the slopes with dense forests, except on the lee side of the highAndean wall of Peru and Chile, and reduce much of the piedmont tomalarial swamp and jungle. The discouragement to primitive tillagefound in the unequal fight with a tropical forest, the dryer, morebracing and healthful climate of the high intermontane basins, theirfavorable conditions for agriculture by irrigation, and their naturallydefined location stimulating to early cultural development, all combinedto concentrate the population of prehistoric America upon the highvalleys and plateaus. In historic times these centers have persisted, because the civilized or semi-civilized districts could be bestexploited by the Spanish conquerors and especially because they yieldedrich mineral wealth. Furthermore, the white population which hassubsequently invaded tropical America has to a predominant degreereinforced the native plateau populations, while the imported negroesand mulattoes have sought the more congenial climatic conditions foundin the hot lowlands. 

[Sidenote: Increasing density with motive of protection. ]

The relativity of geographical advantages in different historicalperiods warns us against assuming in all times a sparsity of populationin mountains, even when the adjoining lowlands offer many attractions ofclimate and soil. In ages of incessant warfare, when the motive ofsafety has strongly influenced distribution of population, protectedmountain sites have attracted settlement from the exposed plains, andthus increased the relative density of population on the steep slopes. The corrugated plateau of Armenia and Kurdistan, located on the uneasypolitical frontier of Russia, Persia and Asiatic Turkey, exposed forcenturies to nomadic invasion from the east, shows a sparser populationon its broad intermontane plains than on the surrounding ranges. Security makes the latter the choicer places of residence. Hence theyare held by the overbearing and marauding Kurds, late-comers into theland, while the older and numerically weaker Armenians cower down on thelower levels. [1258] Here is an inversion of the usual order. The militantlystronger intruders, with no taste for agriculture, have seized the saferand commanding position on the hills, descending in winter with theircattle and horses to pasture and prey upon field and granary of thevalley folk, whose better soil is a questionable advantage. 

[Sidenote: Motive of protection in primitive peoples. ]

Instances of this sort, rare in modern times, because of of generaleconomic and social progress, multiply when we go into the history ofprimitive or ancient peoples. The Cherokee Indians of the SouthernAppalachians, surrounded by powerful neighbors in the Chickasaws, Creeksand the encroaching whites of the seaboard colonies, attacked by warparties of Shawnees and Iroquois from the north, located the bulk oftheir nation in the mountains. The Overhill and Middle towns, numberingtogether thirty-three and situated wholly in the mountains, comprisedfour-fifths of their fighting force in 1775, while the nine townsdistributed in the flat lands of Georgia and South Carolina were smalland unimportant. The Indians themselves distinguished these twodivisions of their country, the one as _Otarre_ or mountainous, and theothers as _Ayrate_ or low. [1259] Similarly in ancient Gaul the threestrongest tribes, the Sequani, Aedui, and Arverni, all had a largemountain nucleus. The Sequani held the Jura range with part of the SaôneValley; the Aedui held the northeast corner of the Central Plateau andsome lands on the Saône, while the Arverni inhabited the western andcentral portion of the same highland. In a period of constant tribalmigrations and war, the occupants of these high, protected locationswere better able to defend themselves, and they maintained an adequatefood supply by holding some of the adjoining lowland. Archaeologistsgenerally agree that in central and southern Italy settlement first tookplace in the mountains, gradually extending thence down into the plains. The superiority of the upland climate, the more abundant rainfall, thegreater security against attack offered by mountain sites, and theexcellent soil for agriculture resulting from the geological make-up ofthe Apennines, all combined to draw thither primitive and latersettlement. [1260] [See map page 559. ] Similarly in Britain of the BronzeAge, before the peoples of Aryan speech began to swarm over the island, the primitive inhabitants, involved in constant clan or tribal warfare, placed their villages on the hills, and left in the indestructibleterraces on their slopes the evidences of a vanished race and anoutgrown social order. [1261]

[Sidenote: Geographic conditions affecting density of mountainpopulation. ]

The advance of civilization, which brought the ancient pirate-riddencity from the inner edge of the coastal zone down to the wave-washedstrand, also drew the hill town down to the plain, and the mountainpopulation from their inaccessible strongholds to the more accessibleand productive valleys. These facts contain a hint. The futureinvestigation of archaeological remains in high mountain districts mayreveal at considerable elevations the oldest and hence lowest strata ofprehistoric development, strata which, in the more attractive valleys, have been obliterated or overlaid by later invasions of peoples andcultures. Ignoring this temporary attraction of population to protectedmountain locations in ages of persistent warfare, we find that acomparison of many countries reveals a decreasing food supply anddecreasing density of population, with every increase of height above acertain altitude, except in favored mining regions and in some tropicallands, where better climatic conditions and freedom from malariadistribute settlements far above the steaming and forest-chokedlowlands. The density of population in mountains is influenced also bythe composition of the soil, which affects its fertility; by the gradeand exposure of the slopes, which determine the ease and success oftillage; by the proximity of the highlands to teeming centers of lowlandpopulation, and by the general economic development of the people. 

In Great Britain, the sparsest population is found in the sterilehighland moors of Scotland, where the county of Sutherland has only 11inhabitants to the square mile, Inverness only 20. [1262] These figuresreveal also the remoteness of a far northern location. In the southernhalf of the island the sparsest populations are found in the Welshcounty of Radnor, with 49 to the square mile, and in EnglishWestmoreland with 85, both of them mountain regions, but reflecting intheir larger figures their close proximity to the teeming industrialcenters of South Wales and Lancashire respectively. In France the mostthinly settled _départements_ are Basses-Alpes with 43 to the squaremile and Hautes-Alpes with 50, which again owe even these figures inpart to their situation on the margin of the densely populated valley ofthe middle Rhone. [See map page 559. ] Norway, almost wholly a mountaincountry, averages only 18 souls to the square mile. Less than a thousandsquare miles of its territory are under cultivation, and these aredistributed in small deltas at the heads of the fiords, in low stripshere and there along its western coasts, or in the openings of itsmountain valleys to the southeast. Here too is massed the larger part ofits inhabitants. A barren granitic soil, unfavorable zonal location, excessive rainfall, paucity of level land, leaving the "upright farm"predominant, and remoteness from any thickly settled areas, togetherwith the resulting enormous emigration, have combined to keep downNorway's population. 

[Sidenote: Sparsity of population in the Alps. ]

If we turn to Switzerland, a country poor in the resources of its landbut rich in the resourcefulness of its people, we find a high averagedensity, 218 to the square mile; but this is due to the surprisingindustrial development of the marginal plains, which show in the Cantonof Geneva 1356 to the square mile, and in Canton Zurich 705, while therugged upland of Graubünden (Grisons) shows only 38 to the square mile, Uri only 48, and Wallis (Valais) only 59. How limited is the food supplyof the country is evident from the fact that only 2400 square miles, orfifteen per cent. Of its area, can be ranked as arable land, fit forgarden, orchard or grain field, while a larger proportion, ortwenty-eight per cent. Is made wholly useless by watercourses, glaciers, rock and detritus. One half of the entire country lies above the regionwhere agriculture is possible. In the Cantons of Uri and Valais, morethan half the area is absolutely unproductive, scarcely less in theGrisons, and a third even in sunny Ticino. [1263] The three strictly Alpineprovinces of Austria, Tyrol, Salzburg and Carinthia, reproduceapproximately these geographic conditions. Nearly half of their area isuninhabited, and only one-seventh consists of arable land. Inconsequence they support only 75 inhabitants to the square mile, whilejust outside the mountains, in the piedmont or Alpine foreland, thisdensity is doubled. [1264] Many tracts of the Carpathians, especially aboutthe sources of the Theiss and Pruth and the wooded mountain borders ofTransylvania, are among the most sparsely inhabited parts of Europe. [1265]Japan, ridged by steep volcanic ranges, drenched by mountain-born rains, strewn with detritus from plunging torrents, can cultivate only 15. 7 percent. Of its area, and is forced to leave 59 per cent. In forestreserves. [1266]

[Sidenote: Terrace agriculture. ]

These figures tell of the hard conditions of life characteristic of mostmountain regions. Population under normal circumstances settles in thenarrow valleys between the ranges and along the borders of theirdrainage stream. Soon, however, the food supply becomes inadequate forthe growing numbers, so that artificial means have to be employed toexpand the area of arable land. The soil on the mountain slopes is sothin that it yields only a scanty return to the labor of tillage. Moreover, under the operations of ploughing and harrowing, it is exposedto the danger of washing; so that after a few croppings the underlyingrock of the mountain side may be laid bare, and all that was valuable inthe quondam field deposited in the valley as silt or swept away toenrich the distant delta of the nearest trunk river. 

To obviate this difficulty and to secure the desired increase of arableland, mountain peoples the world over have resorted to terraceagriculture. This means hand-made fields. Parallel walls, one above theother, are constructed on horizontal lines across the face of the steepslopes, and the intervals between are filled with earth, carried thitherin baskets on the peasants' backs. The soil must be constantly renewedand enriched by manure in the same way, and the masonry of the retainingwalls kept in repair. Whenever possible these costly terraced fields arelocated by preference on southward facing slopes, where the tilt of theland makes the fields catch the rays of the sun almost at right anglesand thus counteracts the chill of the higher altitude, while themountain behind protects the growing crops from cold northern winds. Good arable land, being limited in amount, commands a high price; andespecially do choice terraced fields in vine-growing countries, sincethey make the best vineyards. Such fields in Switzerland will bring from$300 to $2, 000 an acre, and are estimated to produce annually twobottles of wine for every square foot. [1267]

[Sidenote: Geographical distribution. ]

Terrace agriculture, rare in new countries, in the more denselypopulated Old World is widely distributed in mountainous areas. InGermany, where it is nearly identical with the culture of the vine, itis found along the steep slopes overlooking the valley of the Moselleand the Rhine; also in the Vosges Mountains, the Black Forest and theSwabian Jura, to the limited altitude in which the vine will flourish inthese northern regions. In the Alps it is widespread, and not confinedto the culture of the vine. The traveler passing along the upper Rhonethrough the sunny Canton of Valais follows these terraced fields almostas far as Fiesch (altitude 3458 feet), beyond which agriculture properbecomes more and more restricted on account of the elevation, and passesrapidly into the mere hay-making of a pastoral community. Between Leakand Sierre, not only the mountain sides, but also the steep gravel hillsconstituting the old terminal moraine deposited by the receding Rhoneglacier across the valley floor, are terraced to their very tops. 

Terrace cultivation prevails in the mountains of Italy; it is utilizednot only for the vine, but for olives, maize, oats, hemp, rye and flax. On the gentler declivities of the Apennines, the terraced walls arewider apart and lower than on the steep slopes of the Ligurian Apenninesand along the Riviera of the Maritime Alps, where the mountains riseabruptly from the margin of the sea. [1268] Careful and laborious terracecultivation has produced in Italy a class of superior gardeners. TheGenoese are famous for their skill in this sort of culture. The men fromthe Apennine plateau of the Abruzzi readily find positions in thelowlands as expert gardeners. [1269]

[Sidenote: Terrace culture of the Saracens. ]

The Saracens of Spain in the tenth century converted every mountainslope into a succession of green terraces. They built walls of heavymasonry, and brought water, loam, and fertilizing materials from greatdistances. The slopes of Granada back of Malaga and Almeria were coveredwith vineyards. Every foot of land susceptible of cultivation was turnedto account, every drop of water from the ill-timed winter rains wasconserved for the growing season. The application of intelligence andlabor to tillage enabled the Hispano-Arab provinces to support a densepopulation. [1270] These Saracen cultivators had come from the severesttraining school in all Eurasia. Where the arid tableland of Arabia isbuttressed on the southwestern front by high coast ranges (6000 to10, 500 feet or 2000 to 3200 meters) is Yemen, rich in its soil ofdisintegrated trap rock, adequately watered by the dash of the southwestmonsoons against its towering ridges; but practically the whole countryis atilt. Consequently the mountains have been terraced from the baseoften up to 6000 feet. The country presents the aspect of vastagricultural amphitheaters, in which the narrow paths of ancient pavingzigzag up and up through successive zones of production. Here is a widerange of fruits--oranges, lemons, figs, dates, bananas and coffee; thenapricots, apples, plums, grapes, quinces, peaches, together with grainsof various zonal distribution, such as millet, maize, wheat and barley. The terrace walls are from five to eight feet high, but toward the topof the mountains they often increase to fifteen feet. Though laidwithout mortar, they are kept in perfect repair. Reservoirs filled withwater from the two rainy seasons, supply the irrigation channels. [1271] Inthe narrow valleys of the Nejd plateau in central Arabia and on themountain slopes of Oman are found the same irrigated gardens andterraced plantations. This laborious tillage underlay the prosperity ofthe ancient Sabaean monarchy of Yemen, as it explains the population of35, 000 souls who occupy the modern capital of Sanaa, located at analtitude of 7600 feet (2317 meters). [1272]

[Sidenote: In the Himalayas. ]

Turning eastward, we find terrace agriculture widely distributed inHimalayan lands. The steep mountain sides of the Vale of Kashmir arecultivated thus to a considerable height. The terraces are irrigated bycontour channels constructed along the hillsides, which bring the waterfor miles from distant snow-fed streams. Their shelf-like fields aregreen with fruit orchards and almond groves, with vineyards and grainfields. [1273] The terraced slopes about the Himalayan hill-station ofSimla (elevation 7100 to 8000 feet) feed the summer population ofEnglish, who there take refuge from the deadly heat of the plains. Themountain sections of the native states of Nepal and Bhutan present theview of slopes cut into gigantic stairs, each step a field of wavingrice kept saturated by irrigating streams from abundant mountainsprings. Farther north, where Himalayas and Hindu Kush meet, terraceagriculture is combined with irrigation in the high Gilgit valleys, andfarther still along that mere gash running down from the Pamir dome, called the Hunza Valley. Here live the once lawless robber tribes ofthe Hunzas and Nagaris, whose conquest cost the British a dangerous andexpensive campaign in 1892, but whose extensive terraces of irrigatedfields and evidences of skillful tillage gave the whole country anappearance of civilization strangely at variance with the barbarouscharacter of its inhabitants. [1274]

[Sidenote: In Tibet and China. ]

North of the outer Himalayan range, near the sources of the Indus andSutlej rivers in Ladak or Western Tibet, this same form of cultivationhas been resorted to by the retarded and isolated Mongolian inhabitants. Here at an altitude of 11, 000 feet or more (3354 meters), along mountainranges of primitive rock yielding only a scant and sterile soil, terraces are laboriously constructed; their surfaces are manured withburnt remains of animal excrements, which must first serve as fuel inthis timberless land before they are applied to the ground. In thisstronghold of Buddhism almost every lamasery has its terraced fieldsyielding good crops of grain and fruit. [1275] In the densely populated SzeChuan province of western China, cultivation has climbed from thefertile basins of the Min and upper Yangtze rivers far up thesurrounding mountains, where it is carried on terraces to the foot ofvertical cliffs. [1276] Farther north where the mountain province of Shensioccupies the rise of land from the Chinese lowlands to the centralhighlands of Asia, terraces planted with wheat or other grains cover themountain slopes. [1277]

[Sidenote: In ancient Peru. ]

Terrace tillage is rare in new countries of extensive plains, like theUnited States and Canada, where the level lands still suffice for theagricultural needs of the people; but in the confined mountain basinsand valleys which made up the Inca's territory in ancient Peru, everyavailable natural field was utilized for cultivation, and terracesbrought the obstinate mountain sides under the dominion of the Andeanpeasant. They were constructed, a hundred or more in number, rising 1000or 1500 feet above the floor of the highland valley, contracting inwidth as they rose, till the uppermost one was a narrow shelf only twofeet broad. These were extended by communal labor year after year, withincrease of population, just as to-day in Java and the neighboringislands, and became the property of the Inca. Streams from the higherslopes were conducted in canals and distributed from terrace to terrace, to irrigate and fertilize. These terraces therefore yielded the bestcrops of potatoes, maize and pulse. The cultivable area was furtherextended by floating gardens, consisting of rafts covered with earth, which floated on the surface of lakes. [1278] They existed in ancientMexico also, [1279] and are used to-day in the lakes and streams of Tibetand Kashmir[1280] and the rivers of overcrowded China. 

[Sidenote: Terrace agriculture in mountainous islands. ]

Mountainous islands, born of volcanic forces or the partial submergenceof coastal ranges, have steep surfaces and scant lowlands. Theirinhabitants command limited area at best. Driven to agriculture by theirisolation, drawn to it by the favorable oceanic climate, such islandsdevelop terrace tillage in its most pronounced form. On the precipitouspitch of Teneriffe, every particle of alluvial soil is collected to makegardens. Long lines of camels, laden with boxes of earth, may be seencoming almost daily into the town of Santa Cruz, bringing soil for theterraces. [1281] This is desperate agriculture. Irrigated terraces scar thesteep slopes of many Polynesian islands. [1282] They are highly developedamong the Malay Battaks of Sumatra, especially for rice culture. [1283] InJava, Bali and Lombok they reach a perfection hardly equalled elsewherein the world. In Java they begin at an altitude of 1000 feet, cuttingmain and branch valleys into amphitheaters, and covering hundreds ofsquare miles. [1284] On the volcanic slopes of Lombok the terrace plotsvary from many acres to a few square yards, according to the grade, while a complete system of irrigation uses every brook to water theterraces. Here as in Java the work began at a very early period, when itwas probably introduced among the native Malays by Brahmans fromIndia. [1285] Japan, two-thirds of whose area is mountainous, has terracedits steep valley walls often up to 2000 feet or more, and utilized everypatch of ground susceptible of tillage. [1286]

[Sidenote: Among mountain savages. ]

A mountain environment often occasions a forced development in the formof agriculture among peoples who otherwise still linger in a low stageof barbarism or savagery. The wild, head-hunting Igorots, inhabiting theCordilleras of north central Luzon, have levelled the face of theirmountains into a series of platforms, held by retaining walls fromtwenty to thirty feet high. On these they cultivate upland rice at analtitude of 5000 feet. The Igorot province of Bontoc contains valleys inwhich every available foot of land is terraced for rice, and whichpresent artificial landscapes vividly recalling Japan. Labor is theheritage of each inhabitant. Every man, woman and child down to tenyears of age shares in the work of providing food. [1287] Africa showsparallel cases. The Angoss people, a savage negro tribe who occupy partof the Murchison Range in northern Nigeria, have mapped out all theirsloping land into little terraces, sometimes only a foot or two wide. One of their peaks, 4135 feet high, has its plateau top covered withpopulous villages, owing to the protection of the site, and every inchof its slope cut into terraces planted with millet and guinea corn. [1288]A more primitive form of this tillage is found in the country of theMarunga negroes, who occupy the steep western face of the rift valleyfilled by Lake Tanganyika. Here Cameron found the surface not regularlyterraced, but retaining walls of loose stones disposed at intervals, which served to hold the soil in place, without greatly altering thenatural slope. The scene recalled the terraced heights of Switzerland, and the people working there looked like flies on a wall. [1289] In thesemi-arid country of Sudanese Darfur, where only the mountain districtsare well watered and thickly populated, small terraces for grain andmelons cover all the slopes. [1290]

[Sidenote: Fertilizing]

Mountain agriculture is necessarily laborious. The paucity of arableland precludes the possibility of letting fields lie fallow. These, toprevent exhaustion, must be constantly and abundantly fertilized, allthe more as conditions of excessive subaërial denudation found in thesteep slope and usual heavy rainfall of mountains, as well as possibleglacial scouring of the land in the past, have greatly attenuated thelayer of soil called upon to support plant life. The Swiss or Tyrolesefarmer cherishes his manure pile as at once source and badge of hiswealth. After harvest it is carted or carried in baskets not only tothe terraces, but also to the wide alluvial fan that grows his oats andrye, to his meadows and hay fields. Both in Mexico and Peru the soilreceived a dressing of poudrette. Manuring was most extensive wherepopulation was densest, as in the isolated mountain valleys opening outupon the desert coast of Peru. Every kind of organic refuse wasutilized, and fish was buried with the kernels of maize as a fertilizer. The deposits of guano found on the headlands and off-shore islands wereused from the remotest times. Different guano beds were assigned to theseveral provinces, and the breeding places of the birds were protectedby law. [1291] Ashes and decayed wood were employed for the same purpose, or plants were dug into the soil, while human manure was in Mexico amarketable commodity as in China. [1292]

[Sidenote: Economy of level land for houses and villages. ]

In all mountain regions where population has begun to press upon themeager limits of subsistence, level land and soil are at a premium. Inancient Peru space was begrudged for the dead. [1293] Cities coveredconsiderable space on the roomy intermontane plateaus; but in the narrowlateral valleys, houses and temples were built on rocks, in order toreserve every fertile spot for agriculture. [1294] The traveler notices thesame thing throughout the Alps. Compact villages cling to the mountainsides, leaving the alluvial hem of the stream or level glacial terracefree for the much needed fields. Only in broad longitudinal valleys, like that of Andermatt, do the settlements complacently spread out theirskirts, or on wide alluvial fans where transverse valleys debouch uponthe plains. The mountaineers of the Crimea construct their housesagainst the precipices, excavating into their face and building up thefront, with stones, and thus reserve the gentler slopes for vineyardsand gardens. [1295] In the Kangra, Kumaon, and Garhwal districts of theBritish Himalayas, the large Indian villages of the plains give place tosmall hamlets or detached homesteads, scattered here and there whereveroccasional patches of soil on a hillside or in a narrow valley offerhope of sustenance. These hamlets or dwellings are located on the sidesof the mountains, because level spots which can be irrigated must bereserved for rice fields. [1296] The high site is also freer from malaria. 

[Sidenote: Perpendicular villages]

In the high Himalayan province of Ladak or Western Tibet, this principleof land economy reaches a climax. All settlement is on theperpendicular. The abrupt mountain sides are honey-combed with tombs, villages and Buddhist lamaseries in the detached localities wherepopulation occurs. A pleasure walk through one of these Tibetan townsmeans a climb by steep flights of steps hewn out of the rock, varied bya saunter up ladders, where the sheer face of a cliff must be surmountedto reach the houses on a ledge above. [1297] Pictures of these recallforcibly the cliff-dwellings of the Pueblo Indians. Even the importantmarket city of Leh covers the lower slope of the mountain at an altitudeof 11, 500 feet, and from its height overlooks the cultivated fields inthe sandy valley bed below, made fertile by irrigating streams fromdebouching cañons. [1298] The Ladak villages always shun the plains. Thedesire to economize level arable land does not alone dictate this choiceof sites, however; the motive of protection against inundation, when thesnows melt and the streams swell, and also, to some degree, againsthostile attack, is an additional factor. In the mountainous parts ofovercrowded China, again, the food problem is the dominant motive. Inthe rugged highland province of Shensi, a village of several hundredpeople covers only a few acres, and rises in closely packed tiers ofhouses against the mountain side. [1299] In the wilder, half-conqueredparts of Sze Chuan the villages crown the lower peaks, cling to the baseof the mountains, or are perched on ledges of rock overlooking thegorges. Among the steep cliffs bordering the upper Yangtze, occupiedchiefly by the timid, displaced Mantze aborigines, at an altitude of10, 000 feet, small platforms resting on beams projecting from the sheermountain face support minute houses, whose backs burrow into the cliffbehind. The small children are tied to the door post, to keep them fromfalling into the millet field below. The house is accessible only bybolts driven into the cliff. Above and below is the farm--small patchesof tilled soil, often not larger than a bath towel, to which thecultivator lowers himself by a rope. [1300] Here life hovers on the brinkof death and despair. 

[Sidenote: Mountain pastures and stock-raising. ]

Paucity of arable land in mountain regions leads to the utilization ofthe untillable slopes for stock grazing. This industry is always avaluable ally to mountain agriculture on account of the manure which ityields; but in high altitudes, where the steepness or rockiness of thesoil, cold and the brevity of the growing season restrict or eliminatecereal crops, it becomes the dominant occupation of the inhabitants, while agriculture takes a subordinate place, limited to the productionof hay and fodder for the winter feeding of the stock. Above the line oftree growth flourish the natural summer pastures up to the border ofperpetual snow; and just below lies a zone which, if cleared of itsforests, supports a thick carpet of grass and herbage, though too coldto ripen grain. 

The high pastures are particularly nourishing. Cows feeding here in theAlps give better milk than the "home" or valley cows, though a smallerquantity. Sheep and goats do equally well, but swine are profitable onlyas a by-product, to utilize the refuse of the cheese and butterindustry. The area of these pastures far exceeds that of arable land inmountain regions. In Switzerland they comprise about 27 per cent. Of thetotal productive area; hay meadows 24 per cent. , but fields and gardensonly 20 per cent. [1301] In the Austrian province of Salzburg, pasturesmake up 13. 3 per cent. , hay meadows 34. 5 per cent. , and tilled fieldsonly 11. 7 per cent. Of the total productive area. In the Tyrol thefigures are much the same. [1302] Since Norway has over 67 per cent. Of itstotal area in bare mountains, snow fields, bogs and lakes, it is notsurprising to find only 7. 6 per cent. In pastures, 2. 2 per cent. Inmeadows, and 0. 7 per cent. In grain fields; but here the pastures areten times the arable area. [1303] The season of the summer feeding on thegrass lands is short. In the so-called High Alps it frequently lastsonly six or seven weeks, in the Grisons at most thirteen weeks[1304] andin Norway from two to three months. [1305]

High mountain regions, practically restricted to this _Graswirthschaft_, soon reach their maximum of prosperity and population. The amount of haysecured for the winter feeding limits the number of cattle, and thenumber of the cattle, through their manure, fixes the valley hay supply. Alpine pastures cannot be enlarged, and they may be reduced byaccidents of nature, such as landslides, devastating torrents, oradvance of ice fields or glaciers. They cannot be improved by capitaland labor, and they may deteriorate chemically by exhaustion. Theconstant export of butter and cheese from Alpine pastures in recenttimes, without substitution by any fertilizer beyond the local manure, has caused the diminution of phosphoric acid in the soil and henceimpoverishment. Canton Glarus has shown a steady decline since 1630 inthe number of cows which its mountain pastures can support. [1306] Manyother Alpine districts show the same deterioration. 

[Sidenote: Mountain herdsman and shepherds. ]

The remoteness of these highland pastures from the permanent villagesnecessitates _Sennenwirthschaft_, or the maintenance of out-farms andshepherds on the mountains during the grazing season. This involves asemi-nomadic existence for such inhabitants as serve as herdmen. InJune, as soon as the high pastures begin to grow green, cattle, sheepand goats ascend step by step in the wake of summer, as she climbs theslope, and they return in autumn to the valleys. There they feed on thestubble of hay and grain fields, till the increasing cold confines themto their low stables. The hut of the _Senner_ or _Saeter_, as theherdsman is variously called in Switzerland and Norway, consists of aliving room and a smaller apartment for making butter and cheese, whileagainst the steep slope is a rude stone shelter for the cattle andgoats. The predominance of summer pastures has made cattle-raising aconspicuous part of agriculture in the Alps and in Norway. In many partsof Switzerland, cattle are called "wares" and the word cheese is used asa synonym for food, as we use bread. A Swiss peasant who has areputation for cheese making is popular with the girls. [1307] Here evenCupid turns dairy expert. 

[Sidenote: Communal ownership of mountain pastures. ]

Since it is scarcely practicable to divide these highland pastures, theyhave generally remained communal property, whether in Norway, [1308]Switzerland, the Bavarian Alps, the British Himalayan districts, [1309]Nepal and Bhutan, [1310] or Kashmir. [1311] In Europe their use is generallyregulated. As a rule, a Swiss villager may keep on the _Allmende_ duringthe summer as many head of cattle as he is able to stall-feed duringthe winter. Any in excess of this number must be paid for at a fixedrate to the village or commune treasury. [1312] Hay-sheds and herdsmen'shuts mark these districts of temporary occupation near the altitudelimits of human life throughout Europe. In Asia, likewise, are to befound small villages, inhabited only in summer by herdsmen tending theirflocks. Such is the hamlet of Minemerg, located at an altitude of about8000 feet at the southern entrance to the Borzil Pass over the WesternHimalayas, and Sonamerg (altitude 8650 feet or 2640 meters) just belowthe Zogi La Pass, both of them surrounded by rich meadows on thenorthern rim of the Vale of Kashmir. [1313]

The utilization of mountain pastures for stock raising is almostuniversal. In the arid highlands of Central Asia, it is the essentialsupplement to the pastoral nomadism of the steppes and deserts, and tothe limited sedentary agriculture found along the irrigated piedmontslopes. Here and elsewhere the animal raised varies widely-the llama andvicuna in Peru, which thrive best at 10, 000 to 13, 000 feet elevation, and multiply rapidly on the _ichu_ or coarse grass which clothes theslopes of the higher Andes up to snow line; sheep, goats, yaks and herdsof dzo, a useful hybrid between yak and cow, in the highland districtsof Sze Chuan. Here the Mantze mountaineers lock their houses and leavetheir villages deserted, while they camp with their herds on the highpastures at 10, 000 feet or more. [1314] Only economical, ingenious Japanhas failed to develop stock raising, though mountains comprisetwo-thirds of its area. The explanation has often been sought inBuddhism, which inhibits the use of animal food; but this religious ruleprobably found ready acceptance in Japan, just because the paucity ofanimal food made its observance easy, for the fish industry of theEmpire never suffered from the inhibition. The reason is probably to besought elsewhere. The native grass of Japan, which relentlessly crowdsout all imported grazing crops, is a bamboo grass with sharp, hard, serrated edges, and is said to cut the entrails of horses and sheep. [1315]

[Sidenote: Haymaking in high mountains. ]

While the high pastures are ample for the summer feeding, the chiefproblem of mountain stock-farmers is to secure feed for the wintersupport of their animals. This taxes their industry and ingenuity to theutmost. While the herdsmen are away tending their charges on theheights, the rest of the population are kept busy at home, gettingfodder for the six or seven months of stall-feeding. This includes thecultivation of hardy crops like oats, rye and barley, which will matureat a great altitude, hay-making and collecting twigs and even leaves forthe less fastidious goats. In Switzerland as in Norway the art of mowinghas reached its highest pitch. Grass only three inches high is cutthrice yearly. The Norwegian peasant gathers a small hay harvest fromthe roofs of his house and barns, and from the edges of the highways. InSwitzerland not a spear of grass escapes. In places inaccessible tocattle and goats, the peasant gathers hay by the handful with cramponson his feet, generally from the ledges of cliffs. He stacks it in onespot, and brings it down to the valley by sledge in winter. He is the_Wildheuer_ or wild hay gatherer. His life is so dangerous, that the lawpermits only one _Wildheuer_ to a family. [1316] In high Alpine cantonsthis office is the privilege of the poor. [1317] The traveler in Norwayfrequently sees huge bundles of hay sliding down to the valley on wiresstretched from some high point on the precipitous fiord wall. Thisrepresents the harvest from isolated spots or from the field of thesummer shepherd. In the vicinity of every _saeter_ hut, a plot of groundis fenced in, enriched with the manure gathered during the summer, andutilized to grow fine nourishing grass, which is mown and transporteddown to the valley farm. [1318] Here economy of vegetative resourcesreaches its climax. 

[Sidenote: Methods of curing hay in mountains. ]

In mountain regions of heavy rainfall, thick dew and numerous cloudydays, it becomes a problem to get the hay dried and stored before adrenching shower comes. In many parts of Switzerland, therefore, thepeasant on a clear morning cuts a limited amount of grass. This, withthe help of his wife and children, he diligently turns and tosses atshort intervals all day long, thus subjecting it to a rapid curingprocess by the action of the wind and the sun, whose rays are doublyeffective in the rarefied air of the heights. In the evening the hay ismade up into bundles and carried on his back to the barn. In other partsof Switzerland the green hay is hung on horizontal poles arrangedagainst the sunny side of the chalet and under its projecting roof, thusexposed to the heat and protected from the rain till cured. In Norwaythe same purpose is achieved by setting up in the fields rackssupporting long horizontal bars, over which the newly cut grass is hung. There it is exposed to the gentle fanning of the wind and penetrated bythe warmth of the sun, in the short intervals when the sky is notovercast; and during a shower it sheds the water immediately, so that aminimum of harm is done. In the mountains of Germany, the hay is stackedon cone-shaped racks made of poles, with lateral projections whichsupport the grass; thus the air can circulate freely inside the hollowcone, which is lifted well above the ground. Elsewhere sharpened stakesprovided with cross bars are simply driven into the ground, and on thesethe hay is draped till cured. 

Mountain hay-making leaves nothing to chance; too much depends upon thecrop. In fact, at high altitudes it becomes the only crop. Cerealculture drops off with every increase of elevation. Norway has fewfields above 1600 feet;[1319] even barley fails to ripen above 2600 feet. In the mountains of Würtenberg we find pure _Graswirthschaft_ at 3000feet elevation, with only a small garden patch near the dwelling. [1320] Itis interesting to take a tramp up one of the longitudinal or lateralvalleys of the Alps, and observe the economic basis of life graduallychange from agriculture to hay-making, till in some high-laid Alpinecirque, like Bad Leuk or Barmaz at the head of the Val d'Ilez, one seesonly meadows and an occasional potato patch, which impresses thelowlander as a last despairing effort in the struggle for existence. 

[Sidenote: Winter industries of mountain peoples. ]

Where climate and soil do so little for the support of life, man must domuch. Work must in some way be made to compensate for an ungenerousNature. The closely housed existence necessitated by the long severewinters of high altitudes stimulates industries in the home. The winterfeeding of the stock involves little labor, so the abundant leisurewould otherwise be wasted. Hence it is no accident that we find almosteverywhere native mountain industries in a high state of development, and often characterized by an artistic beauty which seems to be the oneflower of this barren environment. They are naturally based upon thelocal raw materials of the mountains, such as wood, metals, clays, andespecially the wool of sheep and goats. Moreover, their products arearticles of small bulk and large value, adapted to costly mountaintransportation. Those of Kashmir are typical-carved wood, artistic metalwork in silver and copper, puttoo cloth, carpets and the famous Kashmirshawls. [1321] The stark life of Tibet shows in its industries anunexpected richness and beauty. The men spin and weave wool into puttoocloth of all grades; some of it is extraordinarily fine in texture andcolor, and is exported by caravan in considerable quantity to northernChina and Mongolia. Pastil sticks, made of aromatic wood and impregnatedwith musk and gold-dust, are a conspicuous commodity in the trade withPeking. Tibet is rich in metals, especially silver and gold. Even thenomad shepherds of the tablelands know how to purify gold-dust over afire of argols; hence it is not surprising that the settlements in theirrigated mountain valleys should develop real artists inmetallurgy. [1322] The province of Dèrgè, which excels in metal work, produces swords, guns, teapots, bells and seals of extremely artisticdesign and perfect finish. [1323] The jewelry of Tibet suggests Byzantinework. It includes ear-rings and charm boxes of gold and carvedturquoise, and is marked by the same delicate finish. But whether theTibetan is working in wood, gold, brass, or wool, he uses native designsof real merit, and shows the expert craftsman's hand. [1324] His activitiesrecall the metal work of the Caucasus and the famous rugs of Daghestan. 

Turning to Europe we find watch and clock making in the Black Forest andthe Jura, wood-carving in the Swiss and Norwegian mountains, bobbin lacein the Erz range and in Alpine Appenzell, and the far more beautifulItalian product of the rugged Abruzzi and the Frioulian Alps. TheSlovaks of highland Hungary are expert in wire-drawing, [1325] and thepeasant of the central Apennines makes from the gut of his goats thefinest violin strings in the world, the so-called Roman strings. [1326] Thelow Thuringian and Franconian Forests, which harbor denser populations, have by a minute subdivision of labor turned their local resources tothe making of dolls, which they supply to the markets of the world. Here too the manufacture of glass articles, porcelains, majolica andterra-cotta flourishes. [1327] Most of these mountain industries merelysupplement the scant agricultural resources; they represent the effortsof industrious but hard pressed people to eke out their meagersubsistence. 

[Sidenote: Overpopulation and emigration. ]

The application of steam to industry has converted mountain regions ofabundant mineral wealth into centers of production for the markets ofthe world. But this is the history of only the last century, and of onlyfavored mountain regions. The utilization of waterpower for electricityin factories is transforming the piedmont belts of the Alps andApennines; but life in the interior of these ranges remains unaltered bythe denser population at their base, except for the increased demand forthe butter, milk and cheese of the highland pastures. For the world atlarge, therefore, the obvious and persistent fact of mountain economy isa scanty food supply secured by even the most intelligent and untiringlabor, and a fixed tendency to overpopulation. The simplest remedy forthis evil is emigration, a fact which Malthus observed. [1328] Henceemigration is an almost universal phenomenon in highland regions. Sometimes it is only seasonal. It takes place in the fall after thefield work is over, and is due to the paucity of industries possible inthe mountains during the winter. It seems to be a recurrence of thatnomadic note in the _motif_ of mountain life--that migration in summerupward to the borders of the snow, in winter downward to the sun-warmedplains. In autumn the Swiss descend from the Jura and Alps in greatnumbers to cities, seeking positions as servants or pastry-cooks. TheAuvergnats leave their home by the thousand in the fall, when snowcovers the mountains, to work in the cities as hewers of stone anddrawers of water, then return in summer to resume their tasks in fieldand pasture, bringing back sums of money which noticeably enrich thehome districts. [1329]

[Sidenote: Forms of temporary emigration. ]

This seasonal emigration often assumes the form of peddling, in order todispose of small home-made wares. From the Basilicata and ModenaApennines the young men follow the pedler's trade, but the Basilicatavillage of Viggiano furnishes Italy with many wandering musicians. [1330]The Kabyles of the Atlas Mountains go out in parties of two or three inthe fall, and hawk every kind of goods, bringing back from their journeyquantities of wool for home weaving. [1331] The emigration may last forseveral years, but finally the love of home generally calls themountaineer back to his rugged hills. The Galicians of the CantabrianMountains of northern Spain leave their poor country for a time for thericher provinces of Portugal and Spain, where they become porters, water-carriers and scavengers, and are known as boorish, but industriousand honest. The women from the neighboring mountain province of Asturiasare the professional wet-nurses of Spain. They are to be seen in everyaristocratic household of Madrid, but return to the mountains with theirsavings when their period of service ends. [1332] In mountainousBasutoland, the Kaffir Switzerland of South Africa, arable land andpastures are utilized as completely as local methods of husbandrypermit; and yet the native Kaffirs go in large numbers--28, 000 out of atotal population of 220, 000 in 1895--to work in the mines of Kimberleyand the Witwatersrand. They also return in time with their savings. [1333]Similarly the Battaks of the rugged mountain-rimmed plateau of westernSumatra emigrate in increasing numbers to the lowlands, and hirethemselves out for a term of years on the Dutch plantations. [1334]

Another interesting and once rather widespread phase of this temporaryemigration appears in the mercenary troops formerly drawn from mountainregions. After the Burgundian wars of the fifteenth century, the Swissbecame the mercenaries of Europe, and in 1503 were first employed aspapal life-guards. They served the kings of France from Louis XL tillthe tragedy of the Tuileries in 1792; and in that country and elsewherethey made the name "Switzer" a synonym for guard or attendant, [1335] tillin 1848 the mercenary system was abolished. The pressure of populationat home and the military spirit of the Scotch Highlanders once led theyoung Gaels to seek their fortunes in military service abroad, as in thearmy of Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden. [1336] Gurkhas from Himalayan Nepal, an independent state, are employed in considerable numbers in the Indianarmy to-day, and constitute one of the most reliable divisions of thenative troops. In January, 1901, there were 12, 797 Gurkhas drawing payfrom the Indian government as soldiers, besides 6000 more employed asmilitary police, porters, and in other capacities. [1337] Similarly ancientArcadia, the mountain core of Peloponnesus, was a constant hive ofmercenaries. 

[Sidenote: Permanent emigration. ]

Often, however, permanent emigration is the result, robbing the mountainpopulation of its most enterprising element, Piedmontese, Bergamese, andFrioulians from the Italian Alps leave their country in large numbers. Many of them find work in Marseilles and other towns of southern France, infusing an Italian strain into the population there and making seriouscompetition for the local French. A proverb says there is no country inthe world without sparrows and Bergamese. [1338] Geneva, once the citadelof Calvinism, is to-day a Catholic town, owing to the influx of Catholiclaborers from Alpine Savoy. The overflow of the redundant population ofthis mountain province has given the Swiss canton a characterdiametrically opposed to its traditions. [1339] The Chinese provinces ofChili and Manchuria have been largely populated by immigrants from thebarren mountain peninsula of Shantung; Manchuria has thereby beenconverted from an alien into a native district. [1340]

Emigration on so large a scale exercises far reaching economic andhistorical influences. Norse colonization contributed interestingchapters to the history of Europe in the ninth and tenth centuries. Norwegians who have flocked to America have made a deep impress upon ourNorthwestern States. Switzerland in 1902 and 1903 gave as 9500 of itssubjects, a valuable contribution. Scotchmen of Highland birth arescattered over the whole world, carrying with them everywhere theirsturdy qualities of character. Even the stay-at-home French loseemigrants from their mountain districts. The people of the Basses-Alpsgo to Mexico, and the Basques from the French Pyrenees seekArgentine. [1341] The honesty, industry, and frugality of these mountainemigrants make them desirable elements in any colonial population, andinsure their success when they seek their fortunes in the uncrowdedwestern world. 

The alternative to overpopulation and its remedy emigration is found inpreventive checks to increase. These sometimes take the form ofrestricted or late marriages, as Malthus found to be the case in Norwayand Switzerland in 1799, [1342] before the introduction of steam orelectric motive power had stimulated the industries of these countriesor facilitated emigration thence. The same end is achieved by thewidespread religious celibacy which sometimes characterizes mountaincommunities. In the barren Auvergne Plateau of France, the number ofyounger sons who become priests is extraordinary. Many daughters becomenuns. Celibacy, seconded by extensive emigration, clears the field forthe eldest son and the system of primogeniture which the poverty of thisrugged highland has established as a fixed institution in theAuvergne. [1343] A careful statistical investigation of the geographicalorigins of the Catholic priesthood in Europe might throw interestinglight on the influences of environment. The harsh conditions of mountainlife make the monastery a line of least resistance, while geographicalisolation nourishes the religions nature and benumbs the intellectualactivities. 

It is in the corrugated highland of Tibet, chilled to barrenness by anelevation of 12, 000 feet or more (4000 meters), sterile and treelessfrom aridity, carved by cañon-cutting streams into deep gorges offeringa modicum of arable soil for irrigation, that monasticism has developedinto an effective system to keep down population. Buddhism, with itsconvents and lamaseries, naturally recommended itself to a country whereasceticism was obviously expedient. The world shows nowhere else solarge a celibate class. In Tibet, monks are estimated at 175, 000 to500, 000 in a total population of three millions. Archibald Littleestimates their number at one-third of the total male population. [1344]Derge, which is the most productive district both agriculturally andindustrially of eastern Tibet and is also most densely inhabited, countsat least 10, 000 lamas in a total population of about 42, 000. [1345] Notless than one-sixth of the inhabitants of Ladak are in religious housesas monks and nuns. [1346] Families in Tibet are small, yet each devotes oneor more children to convent or monastic life. [1347] In western Tibet, especially about Taklakot in the Himalayan border, one boy in everyfamily is invariably devoted to the priesthood, and one or moredaughters must become nuns. But the nun generally resides with herfamily or lives in some monastery--with unspeakable results. [1348]

[Sidenote: Polyandry. ]

The Tibetans seem to be enthusiastic Malthusians, with all the courageof their convictions. Religious celibacy among them is only an adjunctto another equally effective social device for restricting population. This is the institution of polyandry, which crops out in widelydistributed mountain regions of limited resources, just as it appearsnot infrequently in primitive island societies. Its sporadic occurrencein extensive lowlands, as among the Warraus of Guiana and certain tribesof the Orinoco, is extremely rare, as also its occasional appearanceamong pastoral steppe-dwellers, like the Hottentots and Damaras. [1349] Itis often associated with polygamy where wealth exists, and is never theexclusive form of marriage, yet its frequency among mountain peoples isstriking. Strabo describes fraternal polyandry as it existed inmountainous Yemen. There among a Semitic people, as to-day in MongolianTibet and among the aboriginal Todas of the Nilgiri Hills in peninsularIndia, the staff of one husband left at the door of the house excludedthe others. [1350] In modern times the institution is found throughoutTibet, and in the Himalayan and sub-Himalayan districts adjoining it, asin Ladak, Kunawar, Kumaon, Garhwal, Spiti, Sirmur, among the Miris, Daphlas, Abors and Bhutias occupying the southern slope of theHimalayans eastward from Sikkim, and the Murmese tribes of the KhasiaHills just to the south. The same practice occurs among the Coorgs ofthe Western Ghats, among the Nairs at the coastal piedmont of thisrange, among the Todas of the mountain stronghold known as the NilgiriHills (peaks 8000 feet or 2630 meters), and it crops out sporadicallyamong certain mountain Bantu tribes of South Africa. [1351]

[Sidenote: Female infanticide. ]

There seems little doubt that polyandry, as Herbert Spencer maintains, has been adopted as an obvious and easy check upon increase ofpopulation in rugged countries. [1352] It is generally coupled with otherpreventive checks. In the Nilgiri Hills, as we found also to be the caseon many Polynesian islands, it is closely associated with femaleinfanticide. [1353] The Todas in 1867 showed a proportion of two men toone woman, but later, with the decline of infanticide under Britishrule, a proportion of 100 men to 75 women, and a resulting modificationof the institution of polyandry. [1354] It may well be that the paucity ofwomen suggested this form of marriage, whose expediency as an ally toinfanticide in checking population later became apparent. The Todas area very primitive folk of herdsmen, living on the produce of theirbuffaloes, averse to agriculture, though not inhibited from it by thenature of their country, therefore prone to seek any escape from thatuncongenial employment, [1355] and relying on the protected isolation oftheir habitat to compensate for the weakness inherent in the smallnumber of the tribe. 

Throughout Tibet and Ladak polyandry works hand in hand with thelamaseries in limiting population. The conspicuous fact in Tibetanpolyandry is its restriction to the agricultural portion of thepopulation. The pastoral nomads of the country, depending on their yaks, sheep and goats, wandering at will over a very wide, if desolateterritory, practice monogamy and polygamy. [1356] The sedentarypopulation, on the other hand, is restricted to tillable lands so smallthat each farm produces only enough for one family. Subdivision under adivided inheritance would be disastrous to these dwarf estates, especially owing to possible complications growing out of irrigatingrights. [1357] Polyandry leaves the estate and the family undivided, andby permitting only one wife to several fraternal husbands restricts thenumber of children. It does this also in another way by diminishing thefertility of the mothers; for all travelers comment upon the paucity ofchildren in polyandrous families. 

Westermarck lays stress upon the fact that polyandry prevails chiefly insterile countries. He regards it less as a conscious device to checkincrease of population than a result of the disproportion of males tofemales in polyandrous communities. The preponderance of male births heattributes to the excessive endogamy bordering on inbreeding which tendsto prevail in all isolated mountain valleys; and also, as a possibility, to the undernourished condition of the parents caused by scanty foodsupplies, which Düsing found to be productive of a high percentage ofmale births in proportion to female. [1358] The motive of restrictingpopulation seems entitled to more weight than Westermarck concedes toit; for he slurs over the fact that in Tibet polyandry gives rise to alarge number of superfluous women who fill the nunneries, [1359] while inthe Nilgiri Hills redundant females were eliminated by infanticide. Thefact seems to be that in the institution of polyandry we have a socialand psychological effect of environment, reinforced by a physiologicaleffect. 

[Sidenote: Effects of polyandry and polygamy. ]

A comparison of social conditions in the adjoining provinces ofBaltistan and Ladak, which together comprise the Himalayan valley of theIndus, reveals the character of polyandry as a response to geographicenvironment. Both provinces are inhabited by a Mongolian stock, but theLadaki living on the uppermost stretch of the basin near Tibet areBuddhists and polyandrists, while the Baltis farther down the valley areMussulmen and polygamists. The Baltis, with their plurality of wives andnumerous children, are wretchedly poor and live in squalor on the vergeof starvation; but as the elevation of their valley ranges only from4000 to 8500 feet, they are inured to heat, and therefore emigrate inlarge numbers to the neighboring Mohammedan province of the Punjab, where they work as coolies and navvies. The Ladakis, on the other hand, living 9000 to 13, 000 feet above the sea, die of bilious fever when theyreach the lowlands. Cut off from emigration, they curtail population bymeans of polyandry and lamaseries. Consequently they show signs ofprosperity, are well fed, well clothed and comfortably housed. [1360]Baltistan's social condition illustrates in a striking way the power ofan idea like an alien creed, assimilated as the result of close vicinallocation, to counteract for a time the influences of local geographicconditions. 

[Sidenote: Marauding tendencies in mountaineers]

The less civilized mountain peoples, whose tastes or low economic statusunfit them for emigration, solve the problem of a deficient food supplyby raiding the fields and stores of their richer neighbors. Predatoryexpeditions fill the history of primitive mountain peoples, and of theancient occupants of highland regions which are now devoted to honestindustry. The ancient Alpine tribes were one and all, from theMediterranean to the Danube, "poor and addicted to robbery, " as Strabosays. He analyzes their condition with nice discrimination. "The greaterpart [of the Alps], especially the summits of the mountains inhabited byrobbers, are barren and unfruitful, both on account of the frost and theruggedness of the land. Because of the want of food and othernecessaries, the mountaineers have sometimes been obliged to spare theinhabitants of the plains, that they might have some people to supplythem. "[1361] The freebooters usually descended into the lowlands ofItaly, Gaul and Helvetia, but the pass peoples lay in wait for theirprey on the mountain roads. Strabo described the same marauding habitsarising from the same cause among the mountaineers of northernSpain, [1362] the Balkan range, [1363] and the highlands encircling theMesopotamian plains. [1364]

Hunger is usually the spur. The tribesmen who inhabit the Hunza gorgewere notorious robbers till their recent conquest by the British. Despite the most careful terrace tillage, their country was muchoverpopulated. The supply of grain was so inadequate, that during thesummer the people subsisted wholly on fruit, reserving the grain forwinter use. Therefore, when early summer opened the passes of theKarakorum and Himalayan ranges, and caravans began to move over thetrade route between Kashmir and Yarkand, when the Kirghis nomads fromthe plains sought the pastures of the Pamir, the Hunza tribesmen foundraiding caravans and herds, and pillaging the Gilgit Valley of Baltistanthe easiest means of supplementing their slender resources. Hardymountaineers as they were, and born fighters, they always conductedtheir forays successfully, and returned to the shelter of theirfastnesses, laden with plunder and driving their captive flocks beforethem. The perpetual menace of these Hunza raids caused large districtsin the Gilgit Valley to be abandoned by their inhabitants, andcultivated land to lapse into wilderness, [1365] while the Chilas to thesouth pillaged the Astor Valley of Baltistan, carrying away crops andcattle, enslaving women and children. [1366]

[Sidenote: Cattle-lifting. ]

Marauding propensities are marked among all retarded mountain peoples ofmodern times. The cattle-lifting clans of the Scotch Highlands, whopreyed upon the Lowlands, have their counterpart in the Pathans of theSuleiman and Baluch mountain border who, till curbed by the Britishpower in India, systematically pillaged the plains of the Sind. [1367] Theforest Bhils of the Vindhyan and Satpura ranges are scarcely yet marriedto agriculture; so when in time of drought their crops fail and the gameabandons the hill forests to seek water in the lowland jungles, theBhils cheerfully revert to their ancestral habit of cattle-lifting. [1368]

The Caucasus was long a breeding place for robber tribes who made theirforays into the pastures and fields of southern Russia. Robbery was partof the education of every Circassian prince, while one group of theAbassines conferred their chieftainship upon the most successful robberor the man of largest family. [1369] The Kurdish hillmen of the Armenianranges descend with their herds of horses in winter to the warmerplains, where they exhaust the pastures and subject the Armenianvillages to a regular system of blackmail. [1370] The wide grassy plainsabout Koukou Nor Lake, near the Chinese border of Tibet, attractnumerous Mongol nomads with their herds; but these rich pastures areexposed to the depredation of Si Fan brigand tribes, who have theirhaunts in the deep, impenetrable gorges of the neighboring mountains, and carefully guard all the approaches to the same. They are Buddhists, but worship a special Divinity of Brigandage, to whom their lamas offerprayers for the success of every foray. [1371] Hence, among mountain asamong desert peoples, robbery tends to become a virtue; environmentdictates their ethical code. 

[Sidenote: Historical results of mountain raiding. ]

These depredations reflect to a great degree the complementary relationof highlands and lowlands. The plains possess what the mountains lack. This is a fundamental fact of economic geography, and inevitably leadsto historical results. The marauding expeditions of mountain peoplesfirst acquire historical importance, either when the raids after longcontinuance end in the conquest of the lowlands, and thus augment theresources and population of the highland state; or, as is often thecase, the raiders call down upon themselves the vengeance of theplainsmen, are subdued, and embodied in the lowland state. The conquestof ancient Assyria and the destruction of Nineveh by the mountain Medesseems to have been a process of this kind. Long before their descentupon Mesopotamia, they were known as the "dangerous Medes, " wereconstantly threatening the Assyrian frontiers and occupying isolatedtracts. [1372] The predatory incursions of the Samnites of the Apenninesinto the fertile fields of Campania eventuated in the conquest ofancient Capua and other cities, and greatly strengthened the SamniteConfederacy. But this encroachment of the mountain tribes upon theplains aroused the cupidity and alarm of the Romans, who in turn benttheir energies toward the final subjugation of the Samnites. [1373]Himalayan Nepal, after the unification of its petty Rajah states by theGurkha conquest between 1768 and 1790, began encroachments and ravagesupon the Indian Terai or fertile alluvial lowland at the foot of themountains; and finally by 1858 had acquired title to a considerablestrip of it, which by its rice fields and forests greatly strengthenedthe geographic and economic base of the highland state. [1374] The MalayHovas, inhabiting the central plateau of Madagascar, braced to effort byits temperate climate and not over-generous soil, have almost everywheresubdued the better fed but sluggish lowlanders of the coast. [1375] Therecan be little doubt that the beneficent effects of an invigoratingmountain climate, especially in tropical and subtropical latitudes, havehelped the hardy, active hill people to make easy conquest of theenervated plainsmen. 

[Sidenote: Conquest of mountain regions]

It is more often the case, however, that the scant resources, smallnumber, and divided political condition of the mountain tribes make suchconquest impossible. Their depredations provoke reprisals from thestronger states of the plain, who bring the mountain region undersubjection, merely to police their frontier. Strabo makes it clear thatthe Romans, having secured certain passes over the Alps, neglected theconquest of the ranges, till the increase of Roman colonies along thepiedmont rim excited the cupidity of the mountaineers. Muscovitedominion was extended over the Caucasus, both in order to check thepersistent raids of its tribes into the Russian plains, and to securecontrol of its passes. The state of Kashmir, guided by a purely localpolicy, for years tried to conquer the robber tribes on its northwesternfrontier, merely to protect its own border provinces. Then the Britishauthorities of the Indian Empire began the same process, but from aradically different motive. They saw the Gilgit and Hunza valleys, likethe Chitral to the west, as highways through a mountain transit land, whose opposite approaches were held by the Russians. [1376]

Such conquests, whatever be their motive, profit the vanquished in theend more than the victor. They result in the systematic and intelligentdevelopment of the mountain resources, and the maintenance of amplersocial and economic relations between highland and lowland through theconstruction of roads, which must always represent the reach of thegoverning authority. The conquest of mountain peoples means alwaysexpensive and protracted campaigns. The invader has always two enemiesto fight, Nature and the armed foe. There is a saying in India that "InGilgit a small army is annihilated and a large army starves to death. "Hunger is king in high altitudes, and comes always to the defense ofmountain independence. Moreover, the inaccessibility of such districts, the difficulty of maintaining lines of communication, ignorance ofby-paths and trails which forever offer strategic opportunities to thenatives or escape at a crisis, all serve to protract the war. Theindependent spirit of the mountaineer, his endurance of hardships, hismastery of mountain tactics, and his obstinate resistance after repeateddefeat, give always a touch of heroism to highland warfare. Consequently, history abounds in examples of unconquered mountainpeoples, or of long sustained resistance, like that which for sixtyyears under the heroic leadership of Kadi Mulah and Shamyl used up thetreasure and troops of Russia in the impregnable defiles of theCaucasus. In the end, however, the highland tribes succumb to numbersand the road-making engineer. 

[Sidenote: Political dismemberment of mountain peoples. ]

Political dismemberment, lack of cohesion due to the presence ofphysical barriers impeding intercourse, is the inherent weakness ofmountain peoples. Political consolidation is never voluntary. It isalways forced upon them from without, either by foreign conquest or bythe constant menace of such conquest, which compels the mountain clansto combine for common defense of their freedom. The combination thusmade is reluctant, loose, easily broken, generally short-lived. Itbecomes close and permanent only under a constant pressure from without, and then assumes a form allowing to the constituent parts the greatestpossible measure of independence. The Swiss canton and commune are theresult of a segregating environment; the Swiss Republic is the result ofthreatened encroachments by the surrounding states. It owed its firstgenuine federal constitution to Napoleon. 

A report on the situation in the Caucasus, addressed to Czar Nicholas in1829, contains an epitome of the history of mountain peoples. It runs asfollows: "The Circassians bar out Russia from the south, and may attheir pleasure open or close the passage to the nations of Asia. Atpresent their intestine dissensions, fostered by Russia, hinder themfrom uniting under one leader; but it must not be forgotten that, according to traditions religiously preserved among them, the sway oftheir ancestors extended as far as to the Black Sea. * * * Theimagination is appalled at the consequence which their union under oneleader might have for Russia, which has no other bulwark against theirravages than a military line, too extensive to be very strong. "[1377]Here we have the whole story--a mountain people pillaging the lowlands, exercising a dangerous and embarrassing control over the passes, andthereby calling down upon themselves conquest from without; weakened bya contracting territory within the highlands and a shrinking area ofplunder without, doomed to eventual defeat by the yet more ominousweakness of political dismemberment. 

[Sidenote: Individualism and independence]

Mountain tribes are always like a pack of hounds on the leash, eachstraining in a different direction. Wall-like barriers, holding themapart for centuries, make them almost incapable of concerted action, andrestive under any authority but their own. Clan and tribal societies, feudal and republican rule, always on a small scale, characterizemountain sociology. All these are attended by an exaggeratedindividualism and its inevitable concomitant, the blood feud. Mountainpolicy tends to diminish the power of the central authority to thevanishing point, giving individualism full scope. Social and economicretardation, caused by extreme isolation and encouraged by protectedlocation, tend to keep the social body small and loosely organized. Every aspect of environment makes against social integration. 

The broken relief of ancient Greece produced the small city state; butin the rugged mountains of Arcadia the principle of physical andpolitical subdivision went farther. Here, for four centuries after thefirst Olympiad, the population, poorest and rudest of all Greece, wassplit up into petty hill villages, each independent of the other. [1378]The need of resisting Spartan aggression led for the first time, in 371B. C. , to the formation of a _commune Arcadum_, a coalescence of all thefractional groups constituting the Arcadian folk;[1379] but even thisunion, effected only by the masterly manipulation of the ThebanEpaminondas, proved short-lived and incomplete. What was true of theArcadian villages was true of the city states of Greece. The geographyof the land instilled into them the principle of political aloofness, except when menaced by foreign conquest. Cooperation is efficient onlywhen it springs from a habit of mind. Greek union against the Persianswas very imperfect; and against the Roman, the feeble leagues werewholly ineffective. The influence of this dismembering environment stillpersists. As ancient Greece was a complex of city states, modern Greeceis a complex of separate districts, each of which holds chief place inthe minds of its citizens, and unconsciously but steadily operatesagainst the growth of a national spirit in the modern sense. [1380]

[Sidenote: Types of mountain states. ]

A mountain environment encourages political disunion in several forms. Sometimes it favors the survival of a turbulent feudal nobility, basedupon clan organization, as among the medieval Scotch, who were not lessrebellious toward their own kings than toward the Englishconquerors. [1381] Feudal rule seems congenial to the mountaineer, whoseconservative nature, born of isolation, clings to hereditary chiefs anda long established order. Feudal communities and dwarf republics existside by side in the northern Caucasus, [1382] attended by that primitiveassertion of individual right, the blood feud. [1383] Often the two formsof government are combined, but the feudal element is generally only adwindling survival from a remote past. The little Republic of Andorra, which for a thousand years has preserved its existence in the protectionof a high Pyrenean valley, is a self-governing community, organizedstrictly along the lines of a Tyrolese or Swiss commune; but the two_viguiers_ or agents, who in some matters outrank the president, areofficial appointments tracing back to feudal days, when Andorra was aseigneurie of the Comté of Urgel. [1384] Tyrol offers a striking parallelto this. In its local affairs it has in effect a republican form ofgovernment, enjoying as high degree of autonomy as any Swiss canton; butthe great Brenner route, which could confer both power and wealth on itspossessor, made the Tyrol an object of conquest to the feudal nobles ofthe early Middle Ages. Their hereditary dominion is now vested in thearchdukes of Austria, to whom the Tyrolese have shown unfailingfidelity, but from whom they have exacted complete recognition of theirrights. [1385]

Tyrol's neighbor Switzerland illustrates the pure form of commune, canton and republic, which is the logical result of a rugged mountainrelief. Here commune and canton are the real units of government. Inthe federal power at Bern the Swiss peasant takes little interest, often not even knowing the name of the national president. In thehighest ranges a canton coincides with a mountain-rimmedvalley--Valais with the basin of the upper Rhone, Glarus with theupper Linth, Uri with the Reuss, Graubünden with the upper Rhine, towhich is joined by many pass routes the sparsely peopled Engadine, Ticino with the drainage basin of upper Lake Maggiore, Unterwaldenwith the southern drainage valleys of Lake Lucerne. Where themountains are lower, or where passes connect valleys of high levels, cantonal boundaries may overstep geographical barriers. A communegenerally consists of the villages strung along a narrow lateralvalley, isolated and sufficient unto itself politically. A closeparallel to the Alpine commune is found among the Kabyles of the AtlasMountains. Their political structure is based upon the _Jemaa_ orcommune, a small sovereign republic whose independence is fiercelydefended. It enjoys complete local autonomy, is governed by anassembly of all the adult male inhabitants, and grants this body theusual functions except the administration of justice, which, characteristically, is replaced by blood feuds as the inalienableright of the individual. Romans, Arabs, Turks and French have in turnexercised over these mountain Berbers only nominal control, exceptwhen their internal dissensions made them vulnerable. [1386]

[Sidenote: Significance of their small size. ]

The mountains, by the segregating power of their ridges and ranges, first produce these little independent communities, and then, throwingaround them strong protecting arms, enfold them in an embrace which longprovides security to them in their weakness. These minute mountainstates, therefore, tend to reflect in their size the isolation of theirenvironment, and indirectly the weakness of the surrounding nations. Theoriginal Swiss _Eidgenossensschaft_ of the four forest cantons, embeddedin the high Alps, braced against a mountain wall, held its own againstthe feeble feudal states of Austria and Germany. The rugged relief ofGraubünden and the spirit of freedom cradled there enabled its peasantsin the Middle Ages to overthrow the feudal lords, and to establish afederal republic. This typical mountain state was a league composed ofthree other leagues. Each component league consisted of a group ofdistricts, having the power of sovereign states, and consisting in turnof a group of communes, which were quite independent in local affairs. This triune league formed in time an alliance with the SwissConfederation, but did not become a member of it till the Viennaadjustment of 1815. Similar is the story of the mountain shepherds ofAppenzell, who formed a little peasant republic, despite their bishopoverlord of St. Gall; and who later during the Reformation, on theground of religious differences, divided into two yet smallerstates. [1387] The relation between size and inaccessibility is moststrikingly illustrated in the high Himalayan ranges west of Kashmir andnorth of the Punjab. Here is the Shinaka district, which includes theChilas, Darel, Tanger and other valleys branching off from the Indus, and which is inhabited by Dards of Indo-European stock. Each Shinakavalley is a small cantonal republic, and each village of each republicis a commune managing its own affairs by an assembly. One settlement ofonly twelve houses enjoys complete autonomy. Besides the villageassemblies there is a state parliament handling questions of generalpolicy, to which each village sends representatives. One dissentientvote can defeat a measure. The majority cannot control the minority; forif one village of a state disagrees with the others, it is free to carryout its own policy, even in the matter of foreign alliances. [1388] Hereis home rule run to seed. 

[Sidenote: Slight power of mountain chiefs. ]

Small size is sometimes coupled with monarchical rule, degeneratingoccasionally into despotism among aggressive robber tribes. Theinaccessible Hunza Valley is occupied on opposite sides of its deepgorge by two rival states, the Hunzas and the Nagaris, whose combinedpopulation amounts to scarcely 25, 000 souls. Hostile to each other, theyunite only to resist an invading force. While the Hunza Thum is atyrant, the Nagari ruler has little voice in the government. TheTibeto-Burman hill folk of the eastern Himalayas are divided into clans, and concede a mild authority to a chief who rules a group of clanvillages, but only rarely is able to secure power over a largerdistrict. The Khasia Hills of Assam are broken up into twenty-threepetty states, each under its own Rajah or chief, who has, however, little authority beyond the administration of justice. [1389]

Everywhere in mountain regions appears this repugnance to centralizedauthority. Protection by environment obviates the necessity ofprotection through combination. The spirit of clan exclusiveness, theabsence of a common national sentiment, characterize equally thetribesmen of mountainous Albania, of Persian Luristan, [1390] and highlandKurdistan. Along the rugged upheaved area which forms the westernboundary of India from the Khaibar Pass to the sea, British officialshave had to negotiate with the native Pathan and Baluch "jirgahs, "assemblies of the chief men of the countless clans into which the tribesare divided, as the only visible form of authority tolerated. [1391]Combination must be voluntary and of a type to exact a modicum ofsubmission. These requirements are best answered by the confederation, which may gradually assume a stable and elaborate form among anadvanced people like the Swiss; or it may constitute a loose yeteffective union, as in the famous Samnite confederacy of the centralApennines; or a temporary league like that of the ancient Arcadians, orthe group of confederated sheiks of Bellad el Kobail, the "Country ofthe Highlanders" in mountainous Yemen, who in 1790 established arepublican form of union for defense against their more powerfulneighbors. [1392]

[Sidenote: Mountain isolation and differentiation. ]

The power of mountains to protect makes them asylums of refuge fordisplaced peoples. This fact explains the confused ethnology which oftencharacterizes these isolated regions, especially when they lie near oracross natural highways of human migration. As a tide of humanity sweepsaround or across the mountains, a branch stream turns into a sidevalley, where it is caught and held. There it remains unaltered, crystallizing in its seclusion, subjected for ages to few modifyinginfluences from without. Its people keep their own language and customs, little affected by a totally different race stock similarly placed in aneighboring alcove of the mountains. Lack of communication engenders anendless multiplication of dialects, as we find them in the Alps, theCaucasus, in Kafirstan of the Hindu Kush and in Nepal. Diversity ofspeech, itself a product of isolation, reacts upon that political andsocial aloofness of mountain folk, to emphasize and fix it. 

[Sidenote: Survival of primitive races in mountains. ]

From this principle it follows that the same highland region showsstrong differentiation and marked social individuality from one districtto another, and from one valley to the next, despite a prevailingsimilarity of local geographic conditions. In fact, the very similarityof those conditions, strong in their power to isolate, present theconditions for inevitable variation. A mountain region gets itspopulation from diverse sources, or, which is quite as important, atdifferent times from the same source. For instance, Nepal receivedcontingents of Rajput conquerors, dislodged from the Punjab, in theseventh century, the eleventh, and finally the dominant Gurkhas at theend of the eighteenth. To-day these represent different degrees ofamalgamation with the local Tibetan stock of Nepal. They aredistinguished from each other by a diversity of languages, and amultiplicity of dialects, while the whole piedmont of the country showsa yet different blend with the Aryan Hindus of the Ganges valley, whohave seeped into the Terai and been drawn up, as if by capillaryattraction, into the hill valleys of the outer range. The Vindhyan Rangeand its associated highlands, long before the dawn of Indian history, caught and held in their careful embrace some of the fragile aboriginaltribes like the Kolarian Ho, Santals and Korkus. Centuries later theDravidian Bhils and Gonds sought refuge here before the advancingIndo-Aryans, and found asylums in the secluded valleys. [1393] Finallythose same northern plains whence the Dravidians had come, after theMohammedan conquest of central India in the sixteenth century, sentflying to the refuge of the hills a large contingent of Hindus ofmingled Dravidian and Aryan stocks, but stamped with the culture of theGanges basin. These occupied the richer valleys and the more accessibleplateaus of the highlands, driving the primitive Gonds and Bhils backinto the remoter recesses of the mountains. [1394] Dravidians andaboriginal Kolarians survive in their purity in the wilder and moreinaccessible regions, but in the lower valleys their upper classes showsigns of mixtures with the Rajput invaders, while the lower classesbetray little Aryan blood. [1395]

[Sidenote: Diversity of peoples and dialects. ]

Afghanistan, of disordered relief, set as a transit region between theplains of Mesopotamia, the Oxus and the Indus, has a confused ethnologyin keeping with the tangle of dissected plateaus and mountain systemswhich constitute its surface. Here we find three distinct branches ofthe Indo-European race, divided up into various peoples of diversetongues and subdivided further into countless tribes; and two branchesof Mongol-Tartars scattered, as if out of a pepper box, from the Helmundto the Oxus, tossed in among diverse peoples of Iranic and Galcha originin hopeless confusion. The various Afghan tribes, separated from eachother by natural barriers and intervening alien stocks, though similarin physical type, speech, religion and culture, have no sense of unity, no common political aims, while the appalling list of tribesconstituting the population of the country[1396] offers little hope ofAfghanistan ever developing national cohesion. Kafiristan alone, whichlies in the Hindu Kush range for the most part at an altitude of 12, 000feet or more, harbors in its recesses many remnants of primitivepeoples, speaking various languages and dialects, strangers alike to anynative affinity or political union. It is a mere agglomeration of ethnicfragments, in which the people of one village are often unable toconverse with those of the next. [1397] Relief has fashioned the ethnologyof the Caucasus in the same way. No other equally small area in theworld contains such a variety of peoples and tongues, differing from oneanother in race, language, and customs so fundamentally as the Caucasus. From the heterogeneous survivals of extremely old ethnic stocks, lodgedin the high valleys, to the intrusive Russians of the lower piedmont, the Caucasus might be called an ethnographical sample card. [1398]

The rugged configuration of the Alps, from the Rhone to the Danube, haspreserved the broad-headed Alpine race, which was perhaps the primitivestock of Central Europe. The great river valleys leading into thismassive highland, like the Rhine, Aar, Inn and Adige, show the intrusionof a long-headed race from both north and south; but lofty and remotevalleys off the main routes of travel, like the Hither Rhine aboutDissentis, the little Stanzerthal of the upper Inn, and the Passierthalof the upper Adige above Meran, show the race preserved in its purity bythe isolating environment. [1399] Here each segregated lateral valleybecomes an area of marked linguistic and social differentiation; onlywhere it opens into the wider longitudinal valleys are its peculiaritiesof speech and custom diluted by the intrusive current of another race. Switzerland has received three different streams of language, and brokenthem up into numerous rivulets of dialect. On its small area of 16, 125square miles (41, 346 square kilometers) thirty-five dialects of Germanare spoken, sixteen of French, eight of Italian and five of Romansch, aprimitive and degenerate Latin tongue, surviving from the ancestral daysof Roman occupation. [1400] The yet smaller territory of the Tyrol has allthese languages except French, whose place is taken by various forms ofSlavonic speech, which have entered by the western tributaries of theDanube. [1401]

[Sidenote: Constriction of mountain areas of ethnic survivals. ]

Rarely is a polyglot mountain population able to work out its ownpolitical salvation, as the Swiss have done. More often political unionmust be forced upon them from without. Oftener still, when thehighlanders are primitive survivals, ill-matched against the superiorinvaders from the plain, they are doomed to a process of constriction ofterritory and deterioration of numbers, which proceeds slowly or rapidlyaccording to the inaccessibility of their environment and the energy ofthe intruders. Deliberate, unenterprising nations, like the Chinese, Turks and Indo-Aryans long tolerate the presence of alien mountaintribes, who remain like enemies brought to bay in their isolatedfortresses. The conquerors throw around them at their leisure a cordonof settlement, which, slowly ascending the piedmont, draws closer andcloser about the mountaineers. The situation of many mountain tribesreminds one of a besieged stronghold. Russian wars against the Caucasushave rightly been described as protracted sieges. The heroic history ofSwitzerland in relation to its neighbors has been that of a skillfullyconducted defense, both military and diplomatic. The territory of Chinais dotted over with detached groups of aborigines, who have survivedwherever a friendly mountain has offered them an asylum. Variously knownas Lolos, Mantze or Miaotse, they have preserved everywhere asemi-independence in pathless mountains, whither Chinese troops do notdare to follow them;[1402] but the more numerous and patient Chineseagriculturalists are in many sections slowly encroaching upon theirterritories, driving them farther and farther into the recesses of theirhighlands. The same process goes on in Formosa, where the Chinese havegradually forced the native Malays into mountain fastnesses among thepeaks which rise to 14, 000 feet (4500 meters). There, split up byinternecine feuds into numberless clans and tribes, ignorant of oneanother's languages, raiding each other's territories and the coastalplains tilled by Chinese colonists, they await their doom, while thepiedmont zone between has already given birth to a typical border raceof halfbreeds, more Chinese than Malay. [1403]

[Sidenote: Isolation and retardation of mountain regions. ]

"To have and to hold" is the motto of the mountains. Like remoteislands, they are often museums of social antiquities. Antiquated racesand languages abound. The mountaineers of the Southern Appalachiansspeak to-day an eighteenth century English. Their literature is theballad poetry of old England and Scotland, handed down from parent tochild. Clan feuds settle questions of justice, as in the Caucasus andthe Apennines. Religion is orthodox to the last degree, sectarianism isrigid, and Joshua's power over the sun remains in some lonely valleysundiscounted. [1404] These are all the marks of isolation and retardationwhich appear in similar environments elsewhere. Especially religiousdogmas tend to show in mountains a tenacity of life impossible in theplains. The Kafirs, inhabiting the high Hindu Kush Mountains ofBadakshan, and apparently of Pelasgic, early Greek, or Persian origin, have a religion blended of paganism, Zoroastrianism and Brahmanism. [1405]One intruding faith has been unable to dislodge the previous incumbent, so the three have combined. The great historical destiny of the small, barren, isolated Judean plateau was to hold aloof the chaste religion ofthe desert-bred Jews from the sensuous agricultural gods of theCanaanites; to conserve and fix it; if need be, to narrow it to aprovincial tribal faith, to stamp it with exclusiveness, conservatism, and formalism, as its adherents with bigotry, [1406] for this is alwaysthe effect of geographical seclusion. But when all these limitations ofJudaism are acknowledged, the fact remains that that segregated mountainenvironment performed the inestimable service for the world of keepingpure and undefiled the first and last great gift of the desert, amonotheistic faith. 

Buddhism, once the official religion of Korea but disestablished threecenturies ago, has taken refuge in the Diamond Mountains, far from themain roads; there a dull, moribund form of the faith dozes on in themonasteries and monastic shrines of these secluded highlands. [1407]Driven out of India, Buddhism survives only in the Himalayan border ofthe country among the local Tibeto-Burman peoples, and in Ceylon, whosemountain city of Kandy is its stronghold. The persecuted Waldenses, aheretic sect who fled in 1178 from the cities of France to the Alps, took refuge in the remote valleys of the Pellice, Chisone, and Augrognesome thirty miles southwest of Turin. There, protected equally againstattack and modification, the Waldenses have maintained the old tenetsand organization of their religion. [1408]

[Sidenote: Conservatism of mountain peoples. ]

The mountain-dweller is essentially conservative. There is little in hisenvironment to stimulate him to change, and little reaches him from theoutside world. The "spirit of the times" is generally the spirit of apast time, when it has penetrated to his remote upland. He is strangelyindifferent to what goes on in the great outstretched plains below him. What filters in to him from the outside has little suggestion for him, because it does not accord with the established order which he hasalways known. Hence innovation is distasteful to him. This repugnance tochange reaches its clearest expression, perhaps, in the development andpreservation of national costumes. _Tracht, _ which is crystallized stylein dress, appears nowhere so widespread and so abundantly differentiatedas in mountain districts. In Switzerland, every canton has itsdistinctive costume which has come down from a remote past. The peasantsof Norway, of the German and Austrian Alps, of the Basque settlements inthe Pyrenees, of mountain-bound Alsace and Bohemia, give local color tothe landscape by the picturesqueness of their national dress. 

[Sidenote: Mental and moral qualities. ]

With this conservatism of the mountaineer is generally coupled suspiciontoward strangers, extreme sensitiveness to criticism, superstition, strong religious feeling, and an intense love of home and family. Thebitter struggle for existence makes him industrious, frugal, provident;and, when the marauding stage has been outgrown, he is peculiarly honestas a rule. Statistics of crime in mountain regions show few crimesagainst property though many against person. When the mountain-bred mancomes down into the plains, he brings with him therefore certainqualities which make him a formidable competitor in the struggle forexistence, --the strong muscles, unjaded nerves, iron purpose, andindifference to luxury bred in him by the hard conditions of his nativeenvironment. 

NOTES TO CHAPTER XVI

[1253] Heinrich von Treitschke, _Politik, _ Vol. I, p. 218. Leipzig, 1897. 

[1254] For full discussion, see H. R. Mill, International Geography, pp. 79-81. New York, 1902. 

[1255] J. Thomson, Through Masai Land, pp. 78-82, 113-115, 122, 140-141, 163-167, 406-407. London, 1885. 

[1256] J. Russell Smith, Plateaus in Tropical America, in Report ofEighth International Geographical Congress, pp. 829-831. Washington, 1905. 

[1257] Isaiah Bowman, The Distribution of Population in Bolivia, _Bulletin American Geographical Society, _ pp. 74-78, Vol. VII. 1909. 

[1258] D. G. Hogarth, The Nearer East, p. 157. London, 1902. 

[1259] Roosevelt, Winning of the West, Vol. I, pp. 52-56. New York, 1895. C. C. Royce, The Cherokee Nation of Indians, Fifth Annual Report ofBureau of Ethnology, pp. 140-143. Washington, 1887. 

[1260] W. Z. Ripley, The Races of Europe, pp. 253-254. New York, 1899. 

[1261] G. L. Gomme, The Village Community, pp. 72, 75-95. New York, 1890. 

[1262] H. R. Mill, International Geography, pp. 148, 154, 155. New York, 1902. 

[1263] J. Partsch, Central Europe, pp. 204, 207. London, 1903. 

[1264] H. R. Mill, International Geography, p. 304. New York, 1902. 

[1265] J. Partsch, Central Europe, p. 221. London, 1903. 

[1266] Alfred Stead, Japan by the Japanese, p. 425. London, 1904. HenryDyer, Dai Nippon, p. 241. New York, 1904. 

[1267] Boyd Winchester, The Swiss Republic, pp. 307-308. Phila. , 1891. 

[1268] Wilhelm Deecke, Italy, pp. 190, 358-361. London, 1904. 

[1269] Elisée Reclus, Europe, Vol. I, p. 284. New York, 1882. 

[1270] S. P. Scott, History of the Moorish Empire in Spain, Vol. III, pp. 610-613. Philadelphia, 1904. 

[1271] M. Niebuhr, Travels Through Arabia, Vol. I, pp. 290-291, 300. Edinburgh, 1792. S. M. Zwemer, Arabia the Cradle of Islam, pp. 57, 68, 69, 415. New York, 1900. 

[1272] D. G. Hogarth, The Nearer East, pp. 75, 140, 267. London, 1902. 

[1273] E. F. Knight, Where Three Empires Meet, p. 10. London, 1897. 

[1274] _Ibid. _, pp. 312, 460, 463, 468, 475. 

[1275] _Ibid. _, 118, 119, 160, 200. 

[1276] Isabella Bird Bishop, The Yangtze Valley and Beyond, Vol. I, pp. 176, 183, 294; Vol. II, p. 107. New York and London, 1900. 

[1277] F. H. , Nichols, Through Hidden Shensi, pp. 51, 54. New York, 1902. 

[1278] E. J. Payne, History of the New World, Vol. I, pp. 375-378. Oxford, 1892. 

[1279] Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. II, p. 162. London, 1896-1898. 

[1280] E. F. Knight, Where Three Empires Meet, pp. 86-87. London, 1897. 

[1281] A. B. Ellis, West African Islands, p. 248. London, 1885. 

[1282] Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. I, p. 254. London, 1896-1898. 

[1283] _Ibid. _, Vol. I, pp. 426-428. 

[1284] A. E. Wallace, The Malay Archipelago, p. 122. New York, 1869. 

[1285] _Ibid. _, 174. 

[1286] W. E. Griffis, The Mikado's Empire, Vol. I, p. 90. New York, 1903. 

[1287] Census of the Philippine Islands, Vol. I, pp. 458, 541, 543; andVol. IV, pp. 88-89. Washington, 1905. Gazetteer of the PhilippineIslands, photographs, pp. 352-353. Washington, 1902. 

[1288] Boyd Alexander, From the Niger to the Nile, Vol. I, pp. 96-97. London, 1907. 

[1289] V. L. Cameron, Across Africa, p. 221. London, 1885. 

[1290] Count Gleichen, The Egyptian Sudan, Vol. I, p. 190. London, 1905. 

[1291] Prescott, Conquest of Peru, Vol. I, pp. 134-136. New York, 1848. 

[1292] Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. II, p. 176. London, 1896-1898. 

[1293] _Ibid. _, Vol. II, p. 176. 

[1294] E. J. Payne, History of the New World, Vol. I, p. 377. Oxford, 1892. 

[1295] Pallas, Travels Through the Southern Provinces of Russia, Vol. II, p. 346. London, 1812. 

[1296] B. H. Baden-Powell, The Indian Village Community, pp. 57, 58, 61. London, 1896. 

[1297] E. F. Knight, Where Three Empires Meet, pp. 148, 151, 154, 163, 203, 238 _et passim_. London, 1897. 

[1298] _Ibid. _, 70-73. 

[1299] F. H. Nichols, Through Hidden Shensi, p. 52. New York, 1902. 

[1300] Isabella Bird Bishop, The Yangtze Valley and Beyond, Vol. I, pp. 163, 176; Vol. II, pp. 126, 147. New York and London, 1900. 

[1301] Boyd Winchester, The Swiss Republic, p. 307. Philadelphia, 1891. 

[1302] Wilhelm Roscher, _National-oekonomik des Ackerbaues_, p. 656, Note 1. Stuttgart, 1888. 

[1303] Norway, Official Publication, p. 307. Christiania, 1900. 

[1304] Roscher, _National-oekonomik des Ackerbaues_, p. 656, Note 4. Stuttgart, 1888. 

[1305] Norway, Official Publication, p. 325. Christiania, 1900. 

[1306] Roscher, _National-oekonomik des Ackerbaues, _ p. 657, Note 7. Stuttgart, 1888. 

[1307] _Ibid. , _ p. 655, Note 1. 

[1308] Norway, Official Publication, p. 310. Christiania, 1900. 

[1309] B. H. Baden-Powell, The Indian Village Community, pp. 58-59. London, 1896. 

[1310] McCullough, Geographical Dictionary, Article Nepal. J. O. White, Journeys in Bhutan, _Geographical Journal, _ Vol. 35, p. 33. London, 1910. 

[1311] E. F. Knight, Where Three Empires Meet, p. 10. London, 1897. 

[1312] Boyd Winchester, The Swiss Republic, p. 310. Philadelphia, 1891. A. Von Miaskowski, _Die schweizerische Allmend, _ pp. 88-89, 155, 178, 179, 198. _Staats- und socialwissenschaftliche Forschungen, _ Vol. II, No. 4, Leipzig, 1879. 

[1313] E. F. Knight, Where Three Empires Meet, pp. 98, 248, 329. London, 1897. 

[1314] Isabella Bird Bishop, The Yangtze Valley and Beyond, Vol. II, pp. 181, 187, 224. London and New York, 1900. 

[1315] Carter Harrison, A Race with the Sun, p. 63. New York, 1889. 

[1316] Boyd Winchester, The Swiss Republic, pp. 325-327. Phila. 1891. 

[1317] A von Miaskowski, _Die schweizerische Allmend, _ pp. 164-166. _Staats- und socialwissenschaftliche Forschungen, _ Vol. II, No. 4. Leipzig, 1879. 

[1318] Norway, Official Publication, p. 325. Christiania, 1900. 

[1319] _Ibid. , _ p. 59. 

[1320] Roscher, _National-oekonomik des Ackerbaues, _ p. 655, Note 1. Stuttgart, 1888. 

[1321] E. F. Knight, Where Three Empires Meet, pp. 40, 41, 77. London, 1897. 

[1322] M. Hue, Travels in Tartary, Thibet and China in 1846, Vol. II, pp. 151-156. Chicago, 1898. 

[1323] W. W. Rockhill, The Land of the Lamas, p. 228. New York, 1891. 

[1324] Perceval Landon, The Opening of Tibet, pp. 110, 111, 205-206. NewYork, 1905. 

[1325] J. Partsch, Central Europe, pp. 197, 248. London, 1903. 

[1326] Wilhelm Deecke, Italy, p. 220. London, 1904. 

[1327] J. Partsch, Central Europe, pp. 269-270. London, 1903. 

[1328] Malthus, Essay on Population, Book II, chap. V. 

[1329] Cliffe Leslie, Auvergne, _Fortnightly Review, _ p. 741, Vol. XVI. 1874. 

[1330] Wilhelm Deecke, Italy, pp. 243, 409. London, 1904. 

[1331] Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. III, p. 252. London, 1896-1898. 

[1332] L. Higgin, Spanish Life in Town and Country, pp. 27, 29, 292-293. New York, 1902. 

[1333] James Bryce, Impressions of South Africa, p. 350. New York, 1897. 

[1334] Von Bremer, Land of the Battaks, _Geographical Journal, _ Vol. VII, pp. 76-80. London, 1896. 

[1335] B. Winchester, The Swiss Republic, pp. 229-232. Phila. , 1891. 

[1336] James Logan, The Scottish Gael or Celtic Manners, p. 78. Hartford, 1849. 

[1337] Indian Census for 1901, Vol. I, Part I, p. 93, by Risley andGait. Calcutta, 1903. 

[1338] Elisée Reclus, Europe, Vol. I, p. 219. New York, 1882. 

[1339] Heinrich von Treitschke, _Politik_, Vol. I, p, 228. Leipzig, 1897. 

[1340] Archibald Little, The Far East, pp. 47, 167. Oxford, 1905. 

[1341] H. R. Mill, International Geography, p. 243. New York, 1902. 

[1342] Malthus, Essay on Population, Book II, chap. I. 

[1343] Cliffe Leslie, Auvergne, _Fortnightly Review_, Vol. XVI, pp. 741-742. 1874. 

[1344] Oscar P. Crosby, Tibet and Turkestan, pp. 153, 156. London andNew York, 1905. A. Little, The Far East, p. 217. Oxford, 1905. 

[1345] W. W. Rockhill, The Land of the Lamas, p. 227. New York, 1891. 

[1346] E. F. Knight, Where Three Empires Meet, p. 218. London, 1897. 

[1347] W. W. Rockhill, The Land of the Lamas, p. 212. New York, 1891. 

[1348] G. A. Sherring, Western Tibet and the British Borderland, p. 188. London, 1906. 

[1349] Westermarck, History of Human Marriage, pp. 451, 452. London, 1891. 

[1350] Strabo, Book XVI, chap. IV, 25. 

[1351] For authorities, see Westermarck, History of Human Marriage, pp. 452-455. London, 1891. McLennan, Primitive Marriage, pp. 178-179, 184-189. Edinburgh, 1865. G. A. Sherring, Western Tibet and the BritishBorderland, pp. 14, 15, 88-89, 177, 305. London, 1906. 

[1352] Spencer, Principles of Sociology, Vol. 1, pp. 646-649. New York, 1887. 

[1353] W. H. R. Rivers, The Todas, incorporated in W. I. Thomas' SourceBook for Social Origins, pp. 485-486. Chicago, 1909. 

[1354] Westermarck, History of Human Marriage, p. 463. London, 1891. 

[1355] Sir Thomas Holdich, India, pp. 216, 217. London, 1905. 

[1356] W. W. Rockhill, The Land of the Lamas, pp. 211-212. New York, 1891. 

[1357] Oscar P. Crosby, Tibet and Turkestan, pp. 148-151. New York andLondon, 1905. 

[1358] Westermarck, History of Human Marriage, pp. 470-483, 547-548. London, 1891. 

[1359] Perceval Landon, The Opening of Tibet, p. 193. New York, 1905. 

[1360] E. F. Knight, Where Three Empires Meet, pp. 137-141. London, 1897. 

[1361] Strabo, Book IV, chap. VI, 6, 7, 8, 10. 

[1362] _Ibid. _, Book III, chap. III, 5, 7, 8. 

[1363] _Ibid_, Book VII, chap. VI, 1. 

[1364] _Ibid_, Book XI, chap. XII, 4; chap. XIII, 3, 6. 

[1365] E. F. Knight, Where Three Empires Meet, pp. 346-349, 460-464. London, 1897. 

[1366] _Ibid_, 280-282. 

[1367] Sir Thomas Holdich, India, p. 33. London, 1905. 

[1368] _Ibid_, 219-221. 

[1369] Pallas, Travels Through the Southern Provinces of Russia, Vol. I, pp. 386-390, 406-407. London, 1812. 

[1370] D. G. Hogarth, The Nearer East, p. 246-249. London, 1902. 

[1371] M. Hue, Travels in Tartary, Thibet, and China in 1846, Vol. II, pp. 90-93, 100-101, 129-132. Chicago, 1898. 

[1372] Hans Helmolt, History of the World, Vol. III, pp. 131, 133-135. New York and London, 1902-1906. 

[1373] Strabo, Book V, chap. IV, II. 

[1374] Article Nepal, Encyclopædia Britannica. 

[1375] C. Keller, Madagascar, pp. 24-26, 72, 85. London, 1901. 

[1376] E. F. Knight, Where Three Empires Meet, pp. 280, 288-289. London, 1897. 

[1377] Walter K. Kelly, History of Russia, Vol. II, p. 392. London, 1881. 

[1378] Grote, History of Greece, Vol. II, p. 441. New York, 1859. 

[1379] _Ibid. _, Vol. X, pp. 208, 215, 224-225. 

[1380] D. G. Hogarth, The Nearer East, p. 235. London, 1902. 

[1381] Henry Buckle, History of Civilization in England, Vol. II, pp. 125, 136-137. New York, 1871. 

[1382] W. K. Kelly, History of Russia, Vol. II, p. 394. London, 1881. 

[1383] Pallas, Travels Through the Southern Provinces of Russia, Vol. I, pp. 391, 404-405. London, 1812. 

[1384] H. Spencer, A Visit to Andorra, _Fortnightly Review_, Vol. 67, pp. 53-60. 1897. 

[1385] Article Tyrol, Encyclopædia Britannica. 

[1386] Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. III, pp. 253-254. London, 1896-1898. 

[1387] H. J. Mackinder, The Rhine, pp. 27-31, 47-49, 56, 57. London, 1908. 

[1388] E. P. Knight, Where Three Empires Meet, pp. 305-306. London, 1897. 

[1389] B. H. Baden-Powell, The Indian Village Community, pp. 136, 143-146. London, 1896. 

[1390] D. G. Hogarth, The Nearer East, pp. 229-231, 248, 252-253. London, 1902. 

[1391] Sir Thomas Holdich, India, pp. 243-244. London, 1905. 

[1392] Niebuhr, Travels Through Arabia, Vol. II, pp. 50-51. Edinburgh, 1792. 

[1393] B. H. Baden-Powell, The Indian Village Community, pp. 40, 47, 110, 121, 151-154, 159. London, 1896. 

[1394] Captain J. Forsythe, The Highlands of Central India, pp. 10-15, 23-24, 123-125. London, 1889. 

[1395] _Ibid. _, 6, 7, 10-12, 141-147. 

[1396] Angus Hamilton, Afghanistan, pp. 262-268. New York, 1906. 

[1397] Sir Thomas Holdich, India, pp. 98-99. London, 1905. 

[1398] Merzbacher, _Aus den Hochregionen des Kaukasus_, Vol. I, pp. 55-56, 156. Leipzig, 1901. 

[1399] W. Z. Ripley, The Races of Europe, pp. 281-283, 289-290, map p. 285. New York, 1899. 

[1400] _Ibid. _, 282. 

[1401] Article Tyrol, Encyclopædia Britannica. 

[1402] Archibald Little, The Far East, 131-132. Oxford, 1905. IsabellaBird Bishop, The Yangtze Valley and Beyond, Vol. II, 132-133, 146-147, 166, 174, 207-210. New York and London, 1900. S. Wells Williams, TheMiddle Kingdom, Vol. I, p. 43, New York, 1904. J. Naken, _Die ProvinzKwangtung und ihre Bevölkerung, Petermanns Geographische Mittheilungen_, Vol. 24, p. 421. 1878. 

[1403] Archibald Little, The Far East, pp. 307-308. Oxford, 1905. 

[1404] E. C. Semple, The Anglo-Saxons of the Kentucky Mountains, _Geographical Journal_, Vol. XVII, pp. 588-623. London, 1901. 

[1405] Sir Thomas Holdich, The Origin of the Kafir of the Hindu Kush, _Geographical Journal_, Vol. VII, p. 42. London, 1896. 

[1406] George Adam Smith, Historical Geography of the Holy Land, pp. 259-261. New York, 1897. 

[1407] Isabella Bird Bishop, Korea and Her Neighbors, pp. 21, 134-135, 140, 142. New York, 1897. 

[1408] Article Waldenses, Encyclopædia Britannica. 

CHAPTER XVII

THE INFLUENCE OF CLIMATE

[Sidenote: Importance of climatic influences. ]

Climate enters fundamentally into all consideration of geographicinfluences, either by implication or explicitly. It is a factor in mostphysiological and psychological effects of environment. It underlies thewhole significance of zonal location, continental and insular. Largeterritorial areas are favorable to improved variation in men and animalspartly because they comprise a diversity of natural conditions, of whicha wide range of climates forms one. This is also one advantage of avaried relief, especially in the Tropics, where all the zones may becompressed into a small area on the slopes of high mountains like theAndes and Kilimanjaro. Climate fixes the boundaries of human habitationin Arctic latitudes and high altitudes by drawing the dead-line to allorganic life. It dominates life in steppes and torrid deserts as insub-polar wastes. It encourages intimacy with the sea in tropical Malaysand Polynesians, and like a slave-driver, scourges on the fur-cladEskimo to reap the harvest of the deep. It is always present in thatintricate balance of geographic factors which produces a givenhistorical result, throwing its weight now into one side of the scales, now into the other. It underlies the production, distribution andexchange of commodities derived from the vegetable and animal kingdoms, influences methods of agriculture, and the efficiency of human labor invarious industries. [1409] Hence it is a potent factor in the beginning andin the evolution of civilization, so far as this goes hand in hand witheconomic development. 

[Sidenote: Climate in the interplay of geographic factors. ]

The foregoing chapters have therefore been indirectly concerned withclimate to no small degree, but they have endeavored to treat thesubject analytically, showing climate as working with or against or insome combination with other geographic factors. This course wasnecessary, because climatic influences are so conspicuous and soimportant that by the older geographers like Montesquieu[1410] and others, they have been erected into a blanket theory, and made to explain a widerange of social and historical phenomena which were properly the effectof other geographic factors. 

[Sidenote: Direct and indirect effects of climate. ]

For a clear understanding of climatic influences, it is necessary toadhere to the chief characteristics of the atmosphere, such as heat andcold, moisture and aridity, and to consider the effect of zonallocation, winds and relief in the production and distribution of these;also to distinguish between direct and indirect results of climate, temporary and permanent, physiological and psychological ones, becausethe confusion of these various effects breeds far-fetched conclusions. The direct modification of man by climate is partly an _a priori_assumption, because the incontestable evidences of such modificationare not very numerous, however strong the probability may be. Theeffect of climate upon plant and animal life is obvious, and immediatelyraises the assumption that man has been similarly influenced. But thereis this difference: in contrast to the helpless dependence uponenvironment of stationary plants and animals, whose range of movement isstrictly determined by conditions of food and temperature, the greatmobility of man, combined with his inventiveness, enables him to flee orseek almost any climatic condition, and to emancipate himself from thefull tyranny of climatic control by substituting an indirect economiceffect for a direct physical effect. 

The direct results of climate are various, though some are open to thecharge of imperfect proof. Even the relation of nigrescence to tropicalheat, which seems to be established by the geographical distribution ofnegroid races in the Old World, fails to find support from the facts ofpigmentation among the American Indians from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego. Nevertheless climate undoubtedly modifies many physiological processesin individuals and peoples, [1411] affects their immunity from certainclasses of diseases and their susceptibility to others, influences theirtemperament, their energy, their capacity for sustained or for merelyintermittent effort, and therefore helps determine their efficiency aseconomic and political agents. 

While producing these direct effects, climate also influences manindirectly by controlling the wide range of his life conditionsdependent upon the plant and animal life about him. It dictates whatcrops he may raise, and has it in its power to affect radically the sizeof his harvest. It decides which flocks and herds are best suited to hisenvironment, and therefore directs his pastoral activities, whether hekeeps reindeer, camels, llamas, horses or horned cattle. By interdictingboth agriculture and stock-raising, as in Greenland whose ice cap leaveslittle surface free even for reindeer moss, it condemns the inhabitantsforever to the uncertain subsistence of the hunter. Where it encouragesthe growth of large forests which harbor abundant game and yieldabundant fruits, as in the hot, moist equatorial belt and on rainymountain slopes, it prolongs the hunter stage of development, retardsthe advance to agriculture. Climate thus helps to influence the rate andthe limit of cultural development. It determines in part the localsupply of raw material with which man has to work, and hence themajority of his secondary activities, except where these are expended onmineral resources. It decides the character of his food, clothing, anddwelling, and ultimately of his civilization. 

[Sidenote: Effect of climate upon relief. ]

The very ground under man's feet, moreover, feels the molding hand ofclimate. In one region a former age of excessive cold has glaciated thesurface and scoured off the fertile loam down to the underlying rock, orleft the land coated with barren glacial drift or more productive clays. In another, the cold still persists and caps the land with ice and snow, or, as in the tundra, underlays it with a stratum of frozen earth, whichkeeps the surface wet and chilled even in the height of summer. In yetother regions, abundant moisture combined with heat covers the groundwith a pad of fertile humus, while some hundred miles away drying tradewinds parch and crack the steppe vegetation, convert most of its organicsubstance into gases, and leave only a small residue to enrich the soil. Rain itself modifies the relief of the land, and therefore often decidesin a slow, cosmic way what shall be the ultimate destination of itsprecious store of water. A heavy precipitation on the windward side of amountain range, by increasing the mechanical force of its drainagestreams, makes them bite their way back into the heart of the system anddecapitate the rivers on the leeward side, thus diminishing the volumeof water left to irrigate the rainless slope. Thus the hydra-headedAmazon has been spreading and multiplying its sources among the Andeanvalleys, to the detriment of agriculture on the dry Pacific slope; thusthe torrents of the Western Ghats, gorged by the monsoon rains from theIndian Ocean, are slowly nipping off the streams of the ill-wateredDeccan, [See map page 484. ] All these direct and indirect effects ofclimate may combine to produce ultimate politico-geographical resultswhich manifest themselves in the expansion, power and permanence ofstates. 

[Sidenote: Climate limits the habitable area. ]

Climatic conditions limit the habitable area of the earth. This istheir most important anthropo-geographic effect. At either pole lurks aninvincible foe, with whom expanding humanity must always reckon, and whobrooks little encroachment upon his territory. His weapon is therestriction of organic life, without which man cannot exist. Thegeographical boundaries of organic life, however, are wider than thoseof human life. The consequence of this climatic control, therefore, isnot only a narrowed distribution of the human race, but a concentrationwhich intensifies the struggle for existence, forces the utilization ofall the available area, and thereby in every locality stimulatesadaptation to environment. 

[Sidenote: Adaptability of man to climatic extremes. ]

Man ranks among the most adaptable organic beings on the earth. Noclimate is absolutely intolerable to him. Only the absence of foodsupply or of all marketable commodities will exclude him from the mostinhospitable region. His dwellings are found from sea level up to analtitude of 5000 meters or more, where the air pressure is little overone half that on the coast. [1412] Seventeen per cent. Of the towns andcities of Bolivia are located at an elevation above 13, 000 feet (4000meters), while Aullagas occupies a site 15, 700 feet or nearly 5000meters above the sea. [1413] Mineral wealth explains these high Boliviansettlements, just as it draws the Mexican sulphur miners to temporaryresidence in the crater of Popocatepetl at an altitude of 17, 787 feet(5420 meters), from their permanent dwellings a thousand metersbelow. [1414] The laborers employed in the construction of the Oroyarailroad in Peru became rapidly accustomed to work in the rarefied airat an elevation of 4000 to 4800 meters. The trade routes over the Andesand Himalayan ranges often cross passes at similar altitudes; theKarakorum road mounts to 18, 548 feet (5, 650 meters). Yet these greatelevations do not prevent men going their way and doing the day's work, although the unacclimated tenderfoot is liable to attacks of mountainsickness in consequence of the rarefied air. [1415]

Man makes himself at home in any zone. The cold pole of the earth, sofar as recorded temperatures show, is the town of Verkhoyansk innortheastern Siberia, whose mean January temperature is 54 F. Below zero(-48 Centigrade). Massawa, one of the hottest spots in the furnace ofAfrica is the capital of the Italian colony of Eritrea. However, extremes both of heat and cold reduce the density of population, thescale and efficiency of economic enterprises. The greatest events ofuniversal history and especially the greatest historical developmentsbelong to the North Temperate Zone. The decisive voyages of discoveryemanated thence, though the needs of trade and the steady winds of lowlatitudes combined to carry them to the Tropics. The coldest lands ofthe earth are either uninhabited, like Spitzenbergen, or sparselypopulated, like northern Siberia. The hottest regions, also, are farfrom being so densely populated as many temperate countries. [1416] [Seemaps pages 8, 9, and 612. ] The fact that they are for the most partdependencies or former colonial possessions of European powers indicatestheir retarded economic and political development. The contrast betweenthe Mongol Tunguse, who lead the life of hunters and herders in ArcticSiberia, and the related Manchus, who conquered and rule the temperatelands of China, shows how climates help differentiate various branchesof the same ethnic stock; and this contrast only parallels that betweenthe Eskimo and Aztec offshoots of the American Indians, the Norwegianand Italian divisions of the white race. 

[Illustration: MEAN ANNUAL ISOTHERMS AND HEAT BELTS [_Centigrade_]0°C = 32°F. 20°C = 68°F. 30°C = 86°F. ]

[Sidenote: Temperature as modified by oceans and winds. ]

The zonal location of a country indicates roughly the degree of heatwhich it receives from the sun. It would do this accurately ifvariations of relief, prevailing winds and proximity of the oceans didnot enter as disturbing factors. Since water heats and cools more slowlythan the land, the ocean is a great reservoir of warmth in winter and ofcold in summer, and exercises therefore an equalizing effect upon thetemperature of the adjacent continents, far as these effects can becarried by the wind. The ocean is also the great source of moisture, andthis, too, it distributes over the land through the agency of the wind. Where warm ocean currents, like the Gulf Stream and Kuro Siwa, penetrateinto temperate or sub-polar latitudes, or where cool ones, like thePeruvian and Benguela Currents wash the coasts of tropical regions, theyenhance the power of the ocean and wind to mitigate the extremes oftemperature on land. The warm currents, moreover, loading the air abovethem with vapor, provide a store of rain to the nearest wind-sweptland. Hence both the rainfall and temperature of a given country dependlargely upon its neighboring water and air currents, and itsaccessibility to the rain-bearing winds. If it occupies a markedcentral position in temperate latitudes, like eastern Russia or theGreat Plains of our semi-arid West, it receives limited moisture andsuffers the extreme temperatures of a typical continental climate. Thesame result follows if it holds a distinctly peripheral location, andyet lies in the rain-shadow of a mountain barrier, like western Peru, Patagonia and Sweden north of the sixtieth parallel. [See map page 484. ]

[Sidenote: Effect of the westerlies. ]

Owing to the prevalence of westerly winds in the Temperate Zones andparticularly in the North Temperate Zone, the mean annual temperature ishigh on the western face of the northern continents, but drops rapidlytoward the east. [1417] This is especially true of winter temperatures, which even near the eastern coast show the severity of a continentalclimate. Sitka and New York, Trondhjem and Peking have the same meanJanuary temperatures, though Peking lies in about the latitude ofMadrid, over twenty-three degrees farther south. 

Europe's location in the path of the North Atlantic westerlies, swept bywinds from a small and narrow ocean which has been super-heated by thepowerful Gulf Stream, secures for that continent a more equable climateand milder winters than corresponding latitudes on the western coasts ofNorth America, whose winds from the wide Pacific are not so warm. [1418]Moreover, a coastal rampart of mountains from Alaska to Mexico restrictsthe beneficial influences of the Pacific climate to a narrow seaboard, excludes them from the vast interior, which by reason of cold or aridityor both must forever renounce great economic or historical significance, unless its mineral resources developed unsuspected importance. InEurope, the absence of mountain barriers across the course of thesewesterly winds from Norway to central Spain, and the unobstructed avenueoffered to them by the Mediterranean Sea during fall and winter, enableall the Atlantic's mitigating influences of warmth and moisture topenetrate inland, and temper the climate of Europe as far east as St. Petersburg and Constantinople. Thus several factors have combined togive the western half of Europe an extraordinarily favorable climate. They have therefore greatly broadened its zone of historical intensitytoward the north, pushed it up to the sixtieth parallel, while thecorresponding zone in eastern Asia finds its northern limit at thefortieth degree. 

[Sidenote: Rainfall. ]

Moisture and warmth are essential to all that life upon which humanexistence depends. Hence temperature and rainfall are together the mostimportant natural assets of a country, because of their influence uponits productivity. The grazing capacity and wheat yield of southernAustralia increase almost regularly with every added inch ofrainfall. [1419] The map of population for the Empire of India clearlyshows that a high degree of density accompanies a high and certainrainfall. Exceptions occur only where hilly or mountainous tracts offerscant arable areas, or where plains and valleys are sparsely populatedowing to political troubles or unhealthiness. Nearly three-tenths of thepopulation are found crowded together on the one-tenth of India's levelterritory which is blessed with a rainfall above the average for thecountry. [1420] Deserts which yield nothing are purely climatic phenomena. Steppes which facilitate the historical movement, and forests whichblock it, are products of scant or ample precipitation. The zonaldistribution of rainfall, with its maxima in the Tropics and theTemperate Zones, and its minima in the trade-wind belts and polarregions, reinforces and emphasizes the influence of temperature indetermining certain great cultural and economic zones. 

In equatorial regions, which have an abundant rainfall throughout theyear, agriculture is directed toward fruits and roots; only in certaindistricts can it include cereals, and then only rice and maize. Thetemperate grains demand some dry summer weeks for their maturity. Excessive moisture in Ireland has practically excluded wheat-growing, which in England and Scotland also is restricted chiefly to the driereastern counties. [1421] It thrives, on the other hand, in Manitoba and theRed River region even with a short season of scant rainfall, becausethis comes in the spring when moisture is most needed. [1422] Mostimportant to man, therefore, is the question how and when the rainfallis distributed, and with what regularity it comes. Monsoon andtrade-wind districts labor under the disadvantage of a wet and dryseason, and a variability which brings tragic results, since it easilyreduces a barely adequate rainfall to disastrous drought. These are thelands where wind and weather lord it over man. If the rains hold off toolong, or stop too soon, or withhold even a small portion of theiraccustomed gift, famine stalks abroad. 

[Sidenote: Temperature and zonal location. ]

Temperature, the other important element of climate, depends primarilyupon zonal location, which has far different historical results fromcentral and peripheral location, continental and insular. It determinesthe amount of heat received from the sun, though air and ocean currentsmay redistribute that heat within certain limits, and humidity oraridity modify its effects. Still zonal distinctions remain. The greatclimatic regions of the earth, like the hot, wet equatorial belt or thewarm, dry trade-wind belts or the cool, well-watered temperate zones, constitute, through the medium of their economic products and theirclimatically imposed methods of production, so many socio-politicalareas, regardless of ethnic and political boundaries. The Berber nomadsof the northern Sahara live much as the Semitic Bedouins of the Syriandesert or the Turkoman stock of arid Turkestan. They have the sametribal government, the same scattered distribution in small groups, thesame economic basis of subsistence, though of different races anddominated respectively by France, Turkey and Russia. The history of thetropical Antilles has in both its economic and political featuresparalleled that of the East Indies since the early 16th century. Temperate South America promises to follow in the historical footstepsof temperate North America, South Africa in those of Europe andtemperate Australia. 

[Sidenote: Reactions of contrasted zones. ]

While people of the same latitude live approximately under the sametemperature conditions, those of contrasted zones are subjected tomarkedly different influences. They develop different degrees ofcivilization, wealth, economic efficiency, and density of population;hence they give rise to great historical movements in the form ofmigration, conquest, colonization, and commerce, which, like convectioncurrents, seek to equalize the differences and reach an equilibrium. Nature has fixed the mutual destiny of tropical and temperate zones, forinstance, as complementary trade regions. The hot belt produces numerousthings that can never grow in colder countries, while a much shorterlist of products, coupled, however, with greater industrial efficiency, is restricted to the Temperate Zone. This explains the enormousimportance of the East Indian trade for Europe in ancient and medievaltimes, the value of tropical possessions for commercial countries likeEngland and Holland. It throws light upon the persistence of thetropical plantation system in the Dutch East Indies and republicanMexico, as formerly in the sugar and cotton fields of the SouthernStates, with its relentless grip upon the throat of national life in hotlands. 

[Sidenote: Temperate products from tropical highlands. ]

Tropical regions, however, may profit by the fact that their mountainsand plateaus permit the cultivation of temperate crops. India during thelast century has introduced tea culture extensively on the Assam andNilgiri Hills, and in the Himalayan valleys up to an altitude of 7000feet. [1423] Besides this temperate product, it has put large areas intocotton, chiefly in the peninsular plateau of the Deccan, and by means ofthese two crops has caused a considerable readjustment in worldcommerce. [1424] Nevertheless, here the infringement of the principle oftropical production in the torrid zone is after all slight. In tropicalAmerica, on the other hand, the case is quite different; this regionpresents an interesting paradox in relation to its foreign commerce. Here the highlands are the chief seats of population. They contain, moreover, the most industrious and intelligent native stock, due togeographical and historical causes running back into the ancientcivilizations, as well as the largest proportions of immigrantEuropeans. This is true not only of the Cordilleran states from northernMexico to the borders of Chile, but also of Brazil, whose center ofpopulation falls on the plateau behind Rio de Janeiro and Santos. Theisolation of these high plateaus excludes them to a serious extent fromforeign trade, while their great altitude permits only temperateproducts, with the exception of sub-tropical coffee, which is their onlycrop meeting a great demand. The world wants, on the other hand, thelong list of lowland tropical exports which torrid America furnishes asyet in inadequate amounts, owing to the lack of an industrious andabundant lowland population. Commerce will eventually experience areadjustment in these localities to the natural basis of tropicalproduction; but how soon or how effectively this change will take placedepends upon the question of immigration of foreign tropical peoples, orthe more difficult problem of white acclimatization. [1425]

[Sidenote: Isothermal lines in anthropo-geography. ]

Despite some purely climatological objections, anthropo-geography findsthe division of climatic zones according to certain isothermal lines ofmean annual temperature the most expedient one for its purpose. The hotzone may be taken as the belt north and south of the equator enclosedbetween the annual isotherms of 20° C. (68° F. ) These hold a coursegenerally far outside the two tropics, and in the northern continentsfrequently reach the thirty-fifth parallel. The temperate climatic zonesextend from the annual isotherm of 20° C. To that of 0° C. (32° F. ), which bears little relation to the polar circles forming the limits ofthe solar Temperate Zone. The north temperate climatic zone has beenfurther sub-divided along the annual isotherm of 5° C. (41° F. ), distinguishing thus the warmer southern belt, which forms preëminentlythe zone of greatest historical intensity. The areas beyond the annualisotherms of 0°C. Belong to the barren cold zones. [See map page 612. ]

[Sidenote: Historical effect of compressed isotherms. ]

This isothermal division of the climatic zones is abundantly justified, because the duration of a given degree of heat or cold in any region isa dominant factor in its human, animal, and plant life. A map of themean annual isotherms of the earth is therefore eloquent of the relationbetween historical development and this one phase of climate. Where thelines run far apart, they enclose extensive areas of similartemperature; and where they approach, they group together regions ofcontrasted temperatures. The compression of climatic differences into asmall area enlivens and accentuates the process of historicaldevelopment. It produces the same sort of effect as the proximity ofcontrasted reliefs. Nowhere else in the world do the tropical andfrigid climatic areas, as defined on the north and south by the annualisothermal lines of 20°C. And 0°C. Respectively, lie so near together asin Labrador and northern Florida. Separated here by only twenty degreesof latitude, on the opposite side of the Atlantic they diverge sosharply as to include the whole western face of Europe, from Hammerfestand the North Cape down to the Canary Islands and the crest of the AtlasMountains in Africa, a stretch of forty-two degrees of latitude. Thisapproximation of contrasted climatic districts in North America was animmense force in stimulating the early economic development of theThirteen Colonies, and in maturing them to the point of politicalautonomy. It gave New England commerce command of a nearby tropicaltrade in the West Indies, of sub-tropical products in the southerncolonies, in close proximity to all the contrasted products of a coldclimate--dense northern forests for naval stores and lumber, and aninexhaustible supply of fish from polar currents, which met a strongdemand in Europe and the Antilles. The sudden southward drop of the 0°C. Annual isothermal line toward the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakesbrought the northwestern fur trade to the back gate of New York, whereit opened on the Mohawk and upper Hudson, and brought prosperity to theyoung colony. Even to-day the center of collection for the Canadian furfields is Quebec, located at 47° north latitude, while the correspondingpoint of concentration in Europe for the furs of Russia and Siberia isNizhni-Novgorod, which lies ten degrees farther north. [1426]

[Sidenote: Effect of slight climatic differences. ]

This compression of the isotherms emphasizes the differences of nationalcharacters produced in part by dissimilar climatic conditions. Contrastsin temperament, manner of life, and point of view, like that between theNew Englander and Virginian, Chilean and Bolivian in the Americas, Breton and Provençal in France, Castilian and Andalusian in Spain, Gurkha and Bengali in India, seem to bleach out when they are locatedfar apart, owing to many grades of transition between; but they becomestriking, stimulating, productive of important economic and politicalresults, when close juxtaposition enables them to react sharply one uponthe other. In effecting these nice differentiations of local types, climate is nearly always one of the factors at work, emphasizing perhapsan existing ethnic difference. Even the slight variations oftemperature to be found in the same zone or the same climatic regionproduce distinct results, especially where they are harnessed, as isusually the case, with some other geographic condition of relief, areaor soil, pulling in the same direction. Mexico, Peru, Italy, Switzerland, Greece and Asia Minor, with its high plateau interior andits contrasted Euxine and Aegean coasts, represent each a complex ofclimatic differences, which, reinforced by other geographic factors, have made in these regions a polychrome picture of national life. 

[Sidenote: Effect of climate upon distribution of immigration]

Climatic contrasts aid differentiation also by influencing both naturaland artificial selection in the distribution of peoples. This effect isconspicuous in the distribution of immigrants in all colonial lands likeAfrica, South America and in every part of the United States. [1427] Thewarm, moist air of the Gulf and South Atlantic States is attracting backto the congenial habitat of the "black belt" the negroes of the North, where, moreover, their numbers are being further depleted by a harshclimate, which finds in them a large proportion of the unfit. Thepresence of a big negro laboring class in the South, itself primarily aresult of climate, has long served to exclude foreign immigration, whichsought therefore the unoccupied lands and the congenial climate of themore bracing North. Hence it is both a direct and indirect effect ofclimate that the North shows a large proportion of aliens, and the whitepopulation of the South an almost unadulterated English stock. 

[Sidenote: Climate and race temperament. ]

The influence of climate upon race temperament, both as a direct andindirect effect, can not be doubted, despite an occasional exception, like the cheery, genial Eskimos, who seem to carry in their sunnynatures an antidote to the cold and poverty of their environment. Ingeneral a close correspondence obtains between climate and temperament. The northern peoples of Europe are energetic, provident, serious, thoughtful rather than emotional, cautious rather than impulsive. Thesoutherners of the sub-tropical Mediterranean basin are easy-going, improvident except under pressing necessity, gay, emotional, imaginative, all qualities which among the negroes of the equatorialbelt degenerate into grave racial faults. If, as many ethnologistsmaintain, the blond Teutons of the north are a bleached out branch ofthe brunette Mediterranean race, this contrast in temperament is due toclimate. A comparison of northern and southern peoples of the same raceand within the same Temperate Zone reveals numerous small differences ofnature and character, which can be traced back directly or indirectly toclimatic differences, and which mount up to a considerable sum total. The man of the colder habitat is more domestic, stays more in his home. Though he is not necessarily more moderate or continent than thesoutherner, he has to pay more for his indulgences, so he is economicalin expenditures. With the southerner it is "easy come, easy go. " Hetherefore suffers more frequently in a crisis. The low cost of livingkeeps down his wages, so that as a laborer he is poorly paid. This fact, together with his improvidence, tends to swell the proletariat in warmcountries of the Temperate Zone; and though here it does not produce thedistressing impression of a proletariat in Dublin or Liverpool orBoston, it is always degrading. It levels society and economic statusdownward, while in the cooler countries of the Temperate Zone, theprocess is upward. The laborer of the north, owing to his providence andlarger profits, which render small economies possible, is constantlyrecruited into the class of the capitalist. 

[Sidenote: Contrasted temperaments in the same nation. ]

Everywhere a cold climate puts a steadying hand on the human heart andbrain. It gives an autumn tinge to life. Among the folk of warmer landseternal spring holds sway. National life and temperament have thebuoyancy and thoughtlessness of childhood, its charm and its weakness. These distinctions and contrasts meet us everywhere. The southernChinese, and especially the Cantonese, is more irresponsible andhot-blooded than the Celestial of the north, though the bitter strugglefor existence in the over-crowded Kwangtung province has made him quiteas industrious; but on his holidays he takes his pleasure in singing, gambling, and various forms of dissipation. The southern Russian isdescribed as more light-hearted than his kinsman of the bleaker north, though both are touched with the melancholy of the Slav. In this case, however, the question immediately arises, how far the dweller of thesouthern wheat lands owes his happy disposition to the easy conditionsof life in the fertile Ukraine, as opposed to the fiercer struggle forsubsistence in the glaciated lake and forest belt of the north. Similardistinctions of climate and national temperament exist in the twosections of Germany. The contrast between the energetic, enterprising, self-contained Saxon of the Baltic lowland and the genial, spontaneousBavarian or Swabian is conspicuous, though the only geographicaladvantage possessed by the latter is a warmer temperature attended by asunnier sky. He contains in his blood a considerable infusion of theAlpine stock and is therefore racially differentiated from the northernTeuton, [1428] but this hardly accounts for the difference of temperament, because the same Alpine stock is plodding, earnest and rather stolid onthe northern slope of the Alps, but in the warm air and sunshine of thesouthern slope, it abates these qualities and conforms more nearly tothe Italian type of character. The North Italian, however, presents astriking contrast to the indolent, irresponsible, improvident citizensof Naples, Calabria and Sicily, who belong to the contrastedMediterranean race, and have been longer subjected to the relaxingeffects of sub-tropical heat. 

[Sidenote: Complexity of the geographic problem. ]

Where the climatic difference is small, it is nevertheless oftenconspicuous enough to eclipse other concomitant factors which are atwork, and hence to encourage the formation of some easy blanket theoryof climatic influences. But just because the difference is slight, allattending geographic and ethnic circumstances ought to be scrutinized, to insure a correct statement of the geographical equation. The contrastbetween the light-hearted, gracious peasants of warm, sunny Andalusiaand the reserved, almost morose inhabitants of cool and cloudy Asturiasis the effect not only of climate but of the easy life in a fertileriver plain, opposed to the bitter struggle for existence in the roughCantabrian Mountains. Moreover, a strong infusion of Alpine blood hasgiven this group of Spanish mountaineers the patience and seriousnesswhich characterizes the race in other parts of continental Europe. [1429]The conditions which have differentiated Scotch from English have beenclimate, relief, location, geologic composition of the soil, and ethniccomposition of the two peoples. The divergent development of Northernersand Southerners in America arose from contrasts in climate, soil andarea. It was not only the enervating heat and moisture of the SouthernStates, but also the large extent of their fertile area whichnecessitated slave labor, introduced the plantation system, and resultedin the whole aristocratic organization of society in the South. [1430]

[Sidenote: Monotonous climatic conditions. ]

When one type of climate extends monotonously over a vast area, as inRussia. Siberia, Central Asia or immense tracts of Africa, thedifferences of temperature which prick and stimulate national endeavorin small climatic districts here lose much of their force. Their effectsflatten out into insignificance, overwhelmed by the encounter with toolarge a territory. All the southern continents are handicapped by themonotony of their zonal location. The map of annual isotherms showsAfrica quite enclosed between the two torrid lines of 20° Centigrade, except for a narrow sub-tropical belt along the Barbary coast in thenorth, and in the south an equally narrow littoral extending east andnorth from the Cape of Good Hope. At first glance, the large area ofSouth Africa lying on the temperate side of the Tropic of Capricornraises hopes for a rich economic, social and cultural development here;but these are dashed by an examination of the isotherms. Excessive heatlays its retarding touch upon everything, while a prevailing aridity(rainfall less than 10 inches or 25 centimeters), except on the narrowwindward slope of the eastern mountains, gives the last touch ofclimatic monotony. The coastal belt of Cape Colony and Natal raisetropical and sub-tropical products[1431] like all the rest of thecontinent, while the semi-arid interior is committed with littlevariations to pastoral life. [See maps pages 484 and 487. ] Climaticmonotony, operating alone, would have condemned South Africa to povertyof development, and will unquestionably always avail to impoverish itsnational life. South African history has been made by its mines and byits location on the original water route to India; the first havedominated its economic development, and the latter has largelydetermined its ethnic elements--English, Dutch, and French Huguenots, while the magnet of the mines has drawn other nationalities andespecially a large Jewish contingent into the urban centers of theRand. [1432] In the background is the native Kaffir and Hottentot stocks, whose blood filters into the lower classes of the white population. Thediversity of these ethnic elements may compensate in part for themonotony of climatic conditions, which promise to check differentiation. However, climatic control is here peculiarly despotic. We see how it hasconverted the urban merchants of Holland and the skillful Huguenotartisan of France into the crude pastoral Boer of the Transvaal. 

In contrast to South Africa, temperate South America has an immenseadvantage in its large area lying outside the 20°C. Isotherm, and in thewide range of mean temperatures (from 20°C. To 5°C. ) found between theTropic of Capricorn and Tierra del Fuego. Climate and relief havecombined to make the mouth of the La Plata River the site of the largestcity of the southern hemisphere. Buenos Ayres, with a population of overa million, reflects its large temperate hinterland. 

[Sidenote: The effects of Arctic cold. ]

Frigid zones and the Tropics alike suffer from monotony, of Arctic theone of cold and the other of heat. The Arctic climatic belt, extendingfrom the isotherm of 0°C. (32°F. ) to the pole, includes inhabiteddistricts where the mean annual temperature is less than -15°C. (or5°F. ), as at the Greenland village of Etah on Smith's Sound and theSiberian town of Verkhoyansk. Here the ground is covered with, ice orsnow most of the year, and permanently frozen below the surface. Animaland plant life are reduced to a minimum on the land, so that man, withevery poleward advance of his thin-strung settlements, is forced moreand more to rely on the sea for his food. Hence he places his villageson narrow strips of coast, as do the Norse of Finmarken, the Eskimo andthe Tunguse inhabiting the Arctic rim of Asia. Products of marineanimals make the basis of his domestic economy. Farther inland, whichmeans farther south, all tribes live by hunting and fishing. TheEurasian Hyperboreans find additional subsistence in their reindeerherds, which they pasture on the starchy lichen (Cladonia rangiferina)of the tundra. [See maps pages 103, 153. ]

[Sidenote: Similarity of cultural development. ]

Though these Arctic folk are sprung from diverse race stocks, closevicinal location around an enclosed sea has produced some degree ofblood relationship. But whatever their origins, the harsh conditions oftheir life have imposed upon them all a similar civilization. Allpopulation is sparse and more or less nomadic, since agriculture aloneroots settlement. They have the same food, the same clothing, the sametypes of summer and winter dwellings, whether it is the earth hut of theEskimo or of the coast Lapp, the Siberian Yukagirs of the Kolima River, or the Samoyedes of northeastern Russia. [1433] The spur of necessity hasaroused their ingenuity to a degree found nowhere in the drowsy Tropicsof Africa. Dread of cold led the Yakuts of the Lena Valley to glaze thewindows of their huts with slabs of ice, which are better nonconductorsof heat and cold, and can be made more perfectly air-tight than glass. Hence these windows have been adopted by Russian colonists. The Eskimodevised the oil lamp, an invention found nowhere else in primitiveAmerica, and fishing tackle so perfect that white men coming to fish inArctic waters found it superior to their own. 

Owing to the inexorable restriction of their natural resources, contactwith European commerce has impoverished the Hyperborean natives. It hascaused the rapid and ruthless exploitation of their meager resources, which means eventual starvation. So long as the Ostyaks, before thecoming of the Russians, were sole masters of the vast forests of the ObiValley, they commanded a supply of fish and fur animals which sufficedfor their sparse population. But the greed of the Russian fish dealersand fur traders, and the devastating work of the lumbermen have madedouble war upon Ostyak sources of subsistence. [1434] The appearance of thewhite man in Alaskan waters was the signal for the indiscriminatekilling of seal and other marine animals, till the Eskimo's supply offood and furs has been seriously invaded, from Greenland to theoutermost Aleutian Islands. In all this wide territory, climaticconditions forbid any substitute for the original products, except thedomesticated reindeer on the tundra of the mainland; but this wouldnecessitate the transformation of the Eskimo from a hunting to apastoral people. This task the government at Washington has undertaken, but with scant success. 

[Sidenote: Cold and health]

In contrast to the numerous indirect effects of a frigid climate, nodirect physiological effect can be positively ascribed to intense cold. It lays no bodily handicap on health and energy, as does the excessiveheat of the Tropics. The coldest regions where tillage is possible aretolerable places of residence, because their winters are intensely dry. That of central Siberia, which is drier than the driest desert, makestent life comfortable in the coldest season, provided the tenter be cladin furs. The low temperatures of the Canadian Northwest for the samereason have not repelled settlers even from the Southern States. Negroes, however, meet a climatic barrier in America at the isotherm of5° Centigrade (41° F. ). They are found in New England and Nova Scotia, generally with a large admixture of white blood; but there and farthernorth where the climate is moist as well as cold, they show a fataltendency to pulmonary diseases. 

[Sidenote: The small amount of tropical emigration]

The acclimatization of tropical people in temperate regions will neverbe a question of widespread importance. The negroes were involuntaryimmigrants to America, under conditions that can never recur. Theirconcentration in the "black belt, " where they find the heat and moisturein which they thrive, and their climatically conditioned exclusion fromthe more northern states are matters of local significance. Economic andsocial retardation have kept the hot belt relatively underpopulated. Thedensity map shows much the largest part of it with a population lessthan 25 to the square mile. Only the small portion contained in India, southernmost China, and Java shows a density over 125 to the square mile(or 50 to the square kilometer). This density has to rise to 500 or moreto the square mile before emigration begins. The would-be exiles thenhave a wide choice of new homes in other tropical lands, where they findcongenial climate and phases of economic development into which theywill fit. East Indian coolies are found in Cape Colony, Natal, Zanzibar, Trinidad, and British Guiana, where they constitute 38 per cent. Of thepopulation. 

[Sidenote: Effects of tropical climate. ]

The redundant population of crowded western and southern Europe alsoseek these sparsely inhabited Tropics, but they come heavily handicappedby the necessity of acclimatization. They leave their homes fromTrondhjem and Stockholm in the north to the Mediterranean in the south, where the mean annual temperatures vary from 5° to 17° C, (41° to 63°F. ), to seek the Torrid Zone which averages 25° C. Or 77° F. Over mostof its territory. The effects of a tropical climate are due to intenseheat, to its long duration without the respite conferred by a bracingwinter season, and its combination with the high degree of humidityprevailing over most of the Torrid Zone. These are conditionsadvantageous to plant life, but hardly favorable to human development. They produce certain derangements in the physiological functions ofheart, liver, kidneys and organs of reproduction. Bodily temperaturerises, while susceptibility to disease and rate of mortality show anincrease ominous for white colonization. The general effect is intenseenervation; this starts a craving for stimulants and induces habits ofalcoholism which are accountable for many bodily ills usually attributedto direct climatic influences. Transfer to the Tropics tends to relaxthe mental and moral fiber, induces indolence, self-indulgences andvarious excesses which lower the physical tone. [1435] The social controlof public opinion in the new environment is weak, while temptation, dueto both climatic and social causes, is peculiarly strong. The presenceof an inferior, more or less servile native population, relaxes bothconscience and physical energy just when both need a tonic. The resultis general enervation, deterioration both as economic and politicalagents. 

[Sidenote: Historical significance of deterioration]

This is the effect of climate which has had the most far-reaching andpersistent historical consequences. Our study of the historicalmovements of peoples in the northern hemisphere revealed a steady influxfrom colder into tropical and sub-tropical lands, followed always byenervation and loss of national efficiency, due partly to thedebilitating heat of the new habitat, partly to its easier conditions ofliving, whether the intruders came as conquerors and appropriated thefat of the land, or as immigrant colonists who dropped into slackmethods of agriculture, because rain and sun and soil made theirreluctant labor scarcely necessary. Everywhere in the Tropics theenervating effects of heat, moisture, and abundance make not only thenatives averse to steady work, but start the energetic Europeanimmigrant down the same easy descent to Avernus. Passing over thedeterioration of the Aryans in India, the Persians in Mesopotamia, andthe Vandals in Africa, we find that modern instances show thetransformation to be very rapid. The French who since 1715 have occupiedthe islands of Réunion and Mauritius have lost much of their thrift andenergy, though their new homes lie just within the southern tropic, andare blessed with an oceanic climate. Yet the volunteer troops sent byRéunion to aid in the recent subjugation of the Hovas in Madagascarproved to be utterly useless. [1436] The Spaniards who come to-day toMexico have great energy, born of their former hard conditions of lifein Spain. But their children are reared in a country whose mean annualtemperature, even on the plateau, exceeds that of Spain by 10°C. (or18°F. ), a difference equal to that between Mobile and New York, orMadrid and Christiania. Hence they are less energetic and vigorous, while the third generation are typical Mexicans in their easy-going wayof life. [1437] The Germans who recently have colonized southern Brazil ingreat numbers show a similar deterioration under similar increase ofmean annual temperature, combined with somewhat greater humidity, whichintensifies the debilitating effects of the heat. An investigation madein 1900 by the International Harvester Company of America revealed thefact that the German farmer in the State of Santa Catharina rarelycultivated over one acre of grain. [1438] Much of the iron in the blood andconscience of the New England missionary stock which went to Hawaii twogenerations ago has been dissolved out by the warm rain and balmy air ofthe islands. 

[Sidenote: The problem of acclimatization. ]

In all these instances the white race has been successfullytransplanted. It has domiciled itself on the borders of the Tropics andhas propagated its kind, though it has abated some of the vigorousqualities which characterized it in its temperate fatherland. In thereal Tropics like India, Cochin China, the Malay Archipelago, andCentral Africa, the whole perplexing and urgent problem of Europeancolonization turns on the difficulty or impossibility ofacclimatization; and this in turn affects the whole economic, ethnic andpolitical destiny of present colonial holdings. If acclimatization isimpossible, the alternative is an imported ruling class, constantlyinvalided and as constantly renewed, aided by a similar commercial bodyacting as superintendents of labor; the whole machine of government andeconomic exploitation is supported by a permanent servile nativepopulation, doing the preeminently tropical work of agriculture, whichis so fatal to the white man in a torrid climate. This means that theconquering white race of the Temperate Zone is to be excluded by adverseclimatic conditions from the productive but undeveloped Tropics, unlessit consents to hybridization, like the Spaniards and Portuguese oftropical America. In that national struggle for existence which is astruggle for space, it means an added advantage for the Mediterraneanpeoples, that they are more tolerant of a torrid climate than the blondTeutons, whose disability in this regard is pronounced; it means thatthe aptitude of the Chinese for a wide range of climatic accommodation, from the Arctic circle to the equator, lends color to "the yellowperil. "

[Sidenote: Historical importance of the temperate zones. ]

In contrast to the monotonous extremes of climate in the hot and coldzones, temperate lands are characterized by the intermediate degrees ofannual temperature and marked seasonal diversity which are so favorableto human development. In Arctic lands labor is paralyzed by cold as itis by heat in the enervating and overproductive Tropics. In one, thegrowing season is too short and ill-favored; in the other, too long tostimulate man to sustained industry. Hence the Temperate Zones, whoseclimate avoids both these extremes and abounds in contrasts, whosesummers are productive enough to supply food for the winter, and whosewinters give both motive and energy for the summer's work, are richer incultural possibilities and hence in historical importance. 

[Sidenote: Effects of contrasted seasons. ]

The advantage of the Temperate Zone is not only its moderate andadequate allowance of heat, but its contrast of seasons. Beyond therange of a vertical sun, grades of temperature change rapidly fromlatitude to latitude and from summer to winter. The seasons bringvariety of activities, which sharply react upon one another. Manufactures were in their origin chiefly winter industries, as theystill are in small isolated communities. The modern factory systemflourishes best in cooler parts of the Temperate Zone, where theagricultural demands of the summer, spreading over a shorter period, leave a longer time for winter work, and where that once long winter ofthe Glacial Period, by the scouring action of the ice cap, has reducedthe fertile area of the northern fields. The factory system is alsofavored, as Heinrich von Treitschke maintains, by the predominance ofcool or cold weather, which facilitates the concentration of numerousworkmen in large buildings, and renders possible long labor hours theyear round, [1439]--conditions unthinkable in a warm climate. The iron andsteel industries which have grown up about Birmingham, Alabama, findthat the long hot summers and mild winters reduce the efficiency oftheir skilled labor imported from the North. 

[Sidenote: Effects of length of seasons. ]

[Sidenote: Effect of long winters. ]

The length of the seasons is of conspicuous importance. It determines, for instance, whether a given climate permits continuous field work withsummer and winter crops, whether field work is possible at all, and howlong it is interrupted by excessive cold. Buckle maintains that climatenot only enervates or invigorates man, but affects also the constancy ofhis work and his capacity for sustained labor throughout the year. Heconsiders "that no people living in a very northern latitude have everpossessed that steady and unflinching industry for which the inhabitantsof temperate regions are remarkable" and assigns as a reason "that theseverity of the weather, and, at some seasons, the deficiency of light, render it impossible for the people to continue their usual out-of-dooremployments. " The result of this he finds to be desultory habits ofwork, which help to make the national character fitful and capricious. He cites in illustration of his principle the people of the Scandinavianand Iberian peninsulas, whom he finds marked "by a certain instabilityand fickleness of character, " owing to the fact that in Norway andSweden agricultural labor experiences long interruptions, due to theseverity of the winter and the shortness of the days; in Spain andPortugal owing to the heat and drought of summer. [1440] The extremecontinental climate of northern of Russia with its violent contrast ofthe seasons, its severe and protracted winters, enables Leroy-Beaulieuto make a safer application of this principle to the empire of theCzars, which, unlike Scandinavia, feels no ameliorating effect from themild Atlantic winds and commands no alternative industries like dairyfarming, fisheries, and maritime trade. [1441] Hence Leroy-Beaulieuattributes the unsystematic, desultory habits of work prevailing amongthe northern peasants to the long intermission of labor in winter, andto the alternation of a short period of intense activity with a longperiod of enforced idleness. He finds them resembling southern peoplesin their capacity for sudden spurts of energy rather than sustainedeffort, thinks them benumbed by the sloth of the far north, which is notunlike the sloth of the south. [1442]

The dominant continental and central location of Russia enables itsclimatic extremes to operate with little check. The peripheral locationof Scandinavia in the path of the Atlantic winds modifies its climate toa mild oceanic type, and its dominant maritime situation gives itspeople the manifold resources of a typical coast land. Hence Buckle'sestimate of national character in the Scandinavian Peninsula has littlebasis as to fact or cause. Irregularity of agricultural labor does notmean here cessation of all labor, and hence does not produce thefar-reaching effect ascribed to it. Only about one-third of theNorwegian population is engaged in agriculture. The restriction of itsarable and meadow land to 3 per cent. Of the whole territory, and thefact that a large proportion of the people are employed in shipping andthe fisheries, [1443] are due to several geographic factors besidesclimate. The same thing is true of Sweden in a modified degree. 

[Sidenote: Complexity of climatic effects. ]

Caution should be exercised in drawing conclusions from climate alone orfrom only one phase of its influence. The duration and intensity of theseasons affects not only the manner of work, but the whole mode of lifeof a people. On the Yukon, in Iceland, and the high mountain valleys ofthe Alps, winter puts a check not only upon out-of-door labor, but uponall public or community life. Intercourse stops or is greatlyrestricted. The outside world drops away. In Iceland, the law courts arein session only in summer when the roads by sea and land are open. Inthe Kentucky mountains the district schools close before Christmas, whenthe roads become impassable from rain and snow; the summer is the galatime for funeral services, for only then can the preacher or"circuit-rider" reach the graves made in the winter. Therefore thefunerals in one community accumulate, so to speak, and finally, whenleisure comes after the August harvest, they make the occasion forimportant social gatherings. Much of the influence of winter lies in itspower to isolate. 

It is the economic effects of such periods of enforced idleness whichare most obvious, both in their power to restrict national wealth andkeep down density of population. When long, they limit subsistence tothe products of a short growing season, except where local mining addsconsiderable sources of revenue. In the Russian government of Yaroslaf, located on the northernmost bend of the Volga within the agriculturalbelt, and containing the chief inland wheat market of the Empire, thefield labor of four months must support the population for the remainingeight months of the year. The half of Russia included in the cold forestzone of the north maintains meagerly a sparse population, and can hopefor an increase of the same only by the encouragement of Industrialpursuits. Here the long winter leisure has created the handicrafts onwhich so many villages rely, and which in turn have given rise topeddling, [1444] as we have seen it do in high mountain regions wherealtitude intensifies and prolongs the winter season. Agricultural andindustrial life are still undivorced, just as in primitive communities. The resulting population has also the primitive mark of great sparsity, so that modern industry, which depends upon a concentrated labor force, is here inhibited. Hence Russian manufactures, which are so active inthe governments of Vladimir, Moscow, and St. Petersburg, cease beyondthe sixtieth parallel, which defines the northern limit of theagricultural belt and the beginning of the forest and the fur zone. [1445][See maps pages 8 and 612. ]

[Sidenote: Social effects of long winters. ]

The rigorous climate of Russia was undoubtedly one cause for theattachment of the peasants to the soil in 1593. This measure wasresorted to at a time when the Muscovite dominion from its center inGreat Russia had recently been extended at the expense of the Tartars, and had thus embraced fertile southern lands, which tempted the northernpeasant away from his unfruitful fields. [1446] This attraction, coupledwith the free and hopeful life of the frontier, met the migrant instinctbred in the peasant by the wide plains and far horizon of Russia, sothat the north threatened to be left without cultivators. Later, theharsh climatic conditions of the north were advanced as an argumentagainst the abolition of serfdom, on the ground that this system alonesecured to the landed proprietor a steady labor supply, and guaranteedto the peasant his maintenance during the long, idle winter. 

The duration and severity of the cold season has put a drag upon thewheel of enterprise in Canada, as opposed to the warmer United States. The prairies of the Canadian Northwest, whose fertile soil should earlyhave attracted settlement, were a closed land till railroads could pourinto it every summer from the warmer south and east a seasonal tide oflaborers. These follow the harvest as it advances from point to point, and then withdraw in autumn either to the lumber camps of easternCanada, Minnesota and Wisconsin, or to seek other forms of out-doorlabor in the more southern states, thus lifting from the Canadian farmerthe burden of their winter support. 

In the lower latitudes of the Temperate Zones, where the growing seasonis long and the dormant period correspondingly short and mild, we findagriculture based upon clearly distinguished winter and summer crops, asin the northern Punjab (30° to 34° N. L. );[1447] or producing a quicksuccession of valuable crops, where the fertility of the soil can bemaintained by manures or irrigating streams, as in many of the warmerSouthern States and in Spain[1448] respectively. In Argentine, wheretillage is extensive, land abundant, and population sparse, where, infact, "skimp farming" is the rule, the shrewd cultivator takes advantageof the long growing season to stretch out his period of sowing andreaping, and thus tills a larger area. The International HarvesterCompany of America, investigating the reason for the small number ofreaping machines employed in Argentine in proportion to the area undercultivation, found that the simple climatic condition of a long growingseason enabled one reaper to serve about twice the acreage usual in theUnited States, because it could work twice as long. [1449]

[Sidenote: Zones of culture. ]

Over and beyond slight local variations of climate and season within thesame zone, which contribute their quota to economic and historicalresults, it is the fundamental differences between the hot, cold andtemperate climatic zones that produce the most conspicuous and abidingeffects. These broad belts, each with its characteristic climaticconditions and appropriate civilization, form so many girdles of culturearound the earth. They have their dominant features of heat and cold, variously combined with moisture and aridity, which give a certain zonalstamp to human temperature and development. 

The two cold belts have little claim to the name of cultural zones, since their inability to support more than an insignificant populationhas made them almost a negligible factor in history. [Compare maps pages8, 9, and 612. ] The discoveries and settlements of the Northmen inGreenland remained a barren historical event, though the vikings' shipsreached a new hemisphere. Iceland is the only land in this sub-arcticregion which ever figured upon the stage of history; and its rôle wasessentially passive. Such prominence as it acquired was due to itsisland nature and its situation in a swirl of the Gulf Stream, whichameliorates the worst climatic effects of its far northern location, andbrings it just within the upper limit of the temperate belt. The widesub-arctic lowlands of Russia and Siberia, which, from the UralMountains to the lower Amur River, stretch the cold zone well below thesixtieth parallel, have at times in the last three centuries andespecially in the past decade thrown their great mass into the scale ofeastern Asiatic history. This has been possible because the hot summercharacteristic of continental climates forces the July isotherm of 20°C. Northward over the vast heated surface of Asia nearly to the sixtiethparallel, well within the borders of Siberia. It gives that belt theshort but warm growing season with protracted hours of sunshine whichis so favorable to cereals, lending to Omsk, Tomsk, Vitimsk and all thestretch of Russian settlements in Siberia, an admirable summer climatelike that of the Canadian Northwest. [1450]

[Sidenote: The cradle of civilization. ]

The North Temperate Zone is preëminently the culture zone of the earth. It is the seat of the most important, most steadily progressivecivilizations, and the source of all the cultural stimuli which havegiven an upward start to civilization in other zones during the pastthree centuries. It contains the Mediterranean basin, which was thepulsing heart of ancient history, and all the modern historicallyimportant regions of Europe, Asia, Africa, and America. The temperatebelt of the southern hemisphere also is following its lead, sinceEuropean civilization has been transplanted to other parts of the world. This is the zone which least suffers from the drawbacks of climaticmonotony or extremes, and best combines, especially in the northernhemisphere, the wide range of annual and seasonal variety so favorableto economic and cultural development, with the incalculable advantage oflarge land area. 

Man grew in the temperate zone, was born in the Tropics. There, in hisprimitive, pre-civilized state, he lived in a moist, warm, uniformclimate which supplied abundantly his simple wants, put no strain uponhis feeble intellect and will. That first crude human product ofNature's Pliocene workshop turned out in the steaming lowland of Java, and now known to us as the _Pithecanthropus erectus_, found about himthe climatic conditions generally conceded to have been necessary forman in his helpless, futile infancy. Where man has remained in theTropics, with few exceptions he has suffered arrested development. Hisnursery has kept him a child. Though his initial progress depended uponthe gifts which Nature put into his hands, his later evolution dependedfar more upon the powers which she developed within him. These have nolimit, so far as our experience shows; but their growth is painful, reluctant. Therefore they develop only where Nature subjects man tocompulsion, forces him to earn his daily bread, and thereby somethingmore than bread. This compulsion is found in less luxurious but moresalutary geographic conditions than the Tropics afford, in anenvironment that exacts a tribute of labor and invention in return forthe boon of life, but offers a reward certain and generous enough toinsure the accumulation of wealth which marks the beginning ofcivilization. [1451]

Most of the ancient civilizations originated just within the mild butdrier margin of the Temperate Zone, where the cooler air of a shortwinter acted like a tonic upon the energies relaxed by the lethargicatmosphere of the hot and humid Tropics; where congenial warmthencouraged vegetation, but where the irrigation necessary to secureabundant and regular crops called forth inventiveness, coöperation, andsocial organization, and gave to the people their first baptism ofredemption from savagery to barbarism. Native civilizations of limiteddevelopment have arisen in the Tropics, but only where, as in Yemen, Mexico and Peru, a high, cool, semi-arid plateau, a restricted area offertile soil, and a protected location alternately coddled and spurredthe nascent people. 

As the Tropics have been the cradle of humanity, the Temperate Zone hasbeen the cradle and school of civilization. Here Nature has given muchby withholding much. Here man found his birthright, the privilege of thestruggle. 

NOTES TO CHAPTER XVII

[1409] G. G. Chisholm, Commercial Geography, p. 15. London, 1904. 

[1410] Montesquieu, The Spirit of Laws, Vol. I, Book XIV. London, 1906. 

[1411] W. Z. Ripley, Races of Europe, pp. 574-578. New York, 1899. 

[1412] Julius Hann, Handbook of Climatology, Part I, pp. 223-224. NewYork, 1903. 

[1413] Isaiah Bowman, Distribution of Population in Bolivia, _Bulletinof Geographical Society of Philadelphia_, Vol. VII, pp. 40, 41. 

[1414] Ratzel, _Aus Mexico_, p. 415, Note 14. Breslau, 1878. 

[1415] Julius Hann, Handbook of Climatology, Part I, pp. 224-227. NewYork, 1903. 

[1416] G. G. Chisholm, Commercial Geography, p. 23. London, 1904. 

[1417] Julius Hann, Handbook of Climatology, Part I, pp. 171-173. NewYork, 1903. 

[1418] _Ibid_. , pp. 188-189. 

[1419] _Ibid_. , pp. 57-58. 

[1420] Risley and Gait, Census of India for 1901, Vol. I, Part 1, pp. 14-21, map p. 4. Calcutta, 1903. 

[1421] H. J. Mackinder, Britain and the British Seas, pp. 173-174. London, 1904. 

[1422] G. G. Chisholm, Commercial Geography, pp. 65-66. London, 1904. 

[1423] _Ibid_. , 126-128. Holdich, India, p. 259. London, 1905. 

[1424] G. G. Chisholm, Commercial Geography, pp. 114, 382. London, 1904. 

[1425] J. Russell Smith, The Economic Importance of the TropicalPlateaus in America, House Doc. 460, 58-3--53, pp. 829-835. Washington, 1904. 

[1426] G. G. Chisholm, Commercial Geography, p. 160. London, 1904. 

[1427] E. C. Semple, American History and Its Geographic Conditions, Chap. XV. Boston, 1903. 

[1428] W. Z. Ripley, Races of Europe, pp. 215-238. New York, 1899. 

[1429] _Ibid_. , p. 276, Map p. 274. 

[1430] E. C. Semple, American History and Its Geographic Conditions, p. 280-283. Boston, 1903. 

[1431] G. G. Chisholm, Commercial Geography, pp. 434, 436. London, 1904. 

[1432] H. R. Mill, International Geography, p. 1009. New York, 1902. 

[1433] Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. II, pp. 218-225. London, 1896-1898. 

[1434] _Ibid_. , Vol. II, p. 217. 

[1435] W. Z. Ripley, Races of Europe, Chap. XXI. New York, 1899. 

[1436] Dr. C. Keller, Madagascar, Mauritius, and Other East AfricanIslands, pp. 172-175. London, 1901. 

[1437] Matthias Romero, Mexico and the United States, Vol. I, p. 79. NewYork, 1898. 

[1438] From a personal interview with the supervising agent for SouthAmerica. 

[1439] Heinrich von Treitschke, _Politik_, Vol. I, p. 212 et seq. Leipzig, 1897. 

[1440] Henry Buckle, History of Civilization in England, Vol. I, p. 32. New York, 1884. 

[1441] G. G. Chisholm, Commercial Geography, pp. 320-324. London, 1904. 

[1442] Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu, Empire of the Tsars, Vol. I, pp. 6, 139-144. New York, 1893. 

[1443] Norway, Official Publication, p. 308. Christiania, 1900. 

[1444] A. Leroy-Beaulieu, Empire of the Tsars, Vol. I, pp. 19, 142, 327. New York, 1893. 

[1445] G. G. Chisholm, Commercial Geography, pp. 214, 315. London, 1904. 

[1446] A. Leroy-Beaulieu, Empire of the Tsars, Vol. I, pp. 412-413. NewYork, 1893. 

[1447] Holdich, India, pp. 255-257. London, 1905. 

[1448] G. G. Chisholm, Commercial Geography, p. 329. London, 1904. 

[1449] From an interview with the supervising agent for South America. 

[1450] G. G. Chisholm, Commercial Geography, p. 356. London, 1904. 

[1451] Henry Buckle, History of Civilization in England, Vol. I, pp. 31-33. New York, 1884.