XVI. INFLUENCES OF A MOUNTAIN ENVIRONMENT…

XVI. INFLUENCES OF A MOUNTAIN ENVIRONMENT

[Sidenote: Zones of altitude.]

There are zones of latitude and zones of altitude. To every mountain region both these pertain, resulting in a nice interplay of geographic factors. Every mountain slope from summit to piedmont is, from the anthropo-geographical standpoint, a complex phenomenon. When high enough, it may show a graded series of contrasted complementary locations, closely interdependent grouping of populations and employments, every degree of density from congestion to vacancy, every range of cultural development from industrialism to nomadism. The southern slope of the Monte Rosa Alps, from the glacier cap at 4500 meters to the banks of the Po River, yields within certain limits a zonal epitome of European life from Lapland to the Mediterranean. The long incline from the summit of Mount Everest (8840 meters) in the eastern Himalayas, through Darjeeling down to sea level at Calcutta, comprises in a few miles the climatic and cultural range of Asia from Arctic 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 of crops, areas of specialized production mutually interdependent. It induces a certain balance of urban and lief, rural life, which contributes greatly to the health of the state.[1253] The steep slopes of Dai Nippon, fertile only under spade tillage, will forever insure Japan the persistence of a numerous peasantry. For geological and geographical reasons, as from national motives, therefore, Japan will probably never sacrifice its farmer to its industrial class, as England has done. On the other hand, contrasted reliefs on a great territorial scale tend to invade political solidarity. Tidewater and mountain Virginia were poor running-mates for a century before the Civil War, and then the mountain region broke out of harness. Geographical contrasts made the unification of Germany difficult, and yet they have added to the economic and national strength of the Empire. The history of Switzerland shows the high Alpine cantons always maintaining a political tug of war with the cantons of the marginal plain, and always suffering a defeat which was their salvation.

[Sidenote: Relief and climate.]

The chief effect of a varied relief is a varied climate. This changes with altitude in much the same way as with latitude. Heat and absolute humidity diminish, generally speaking, as height increases, while rainfall becomes greater up to a certain level. The effect of ascending and descending currents of air is to diminish the range of temperature on mountain slopes and produce rather an oceanic type of climate. The larger and more uniform a climatic district, the more conspicuously do even slight elevations form climatic islands, like the Harz Mountains in the North German lowlands. A land of monotonous relief has a uniform climate, while a region rich in vertical articulations is rich also in local varieties of climate.[1254] A highland of considerable elevation forms a cold district in the Temperate Zone, a temperate one in the Tropics, and a moist one in a desert or steppe. Especially in arid and torrid 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 India show stratified zones of tropical, temperate, and arctic climate, to which plant, animal and human life conform. The response is conspicuous in the varying density of population in the successive altitude zones. Central Asia shows a threefold cultural stratification of its population, each attended by the appropriate density, according to location in steppe, piedmont and mountain. The steppes have their scattered pastoral nomads; the piedmonts, with their irrigation streams, support sedentary agricultural peoples, concentrated at focal points in commercial and industrial towns; the higher reaches of the mountains are occupied by sparse groups of peasants and shepherds, wringing from upland pasture and scant field a miserable subsistence. The same stratification appears in the Atlas Mountains, intensified on the southern slope by the contrast between the closely populated belt of the piedmont 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 a coastal 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, densely populated by peaceful folk of mingled Bantu and Hamitic blood. At 6000 feet, where forests cease, are found the kraals, cattle, sheep and goats of the semi-nomadic Masai of doubtful Hamitic stock, who raid the coastal lowlands for cattle, and purchase all their vegetable food from the tillage belt.[1255] [See maps page 105 and 487.]

This stratification assumes marked variations in the different geographical zones. In Greenland life is restricted to the piedmont coastal belt; above this rises the desert waste of the ice fields. Norway shows a tide-washed piedmont, containing a large majority of the population; above this, a steep slope sparsely inhabited; and higher still, a wild plateau summit occupied in summer only by grazing herds or migrant reindeer Lapps. Farther south the Alps show successive tiers of rural economy, again with their appropriate density of settlement. On their lower slope is found the vineyard belt, a region of highly intensive tillage, large returns upon labor, and hence of closely distributed settlement. Above that is the zone of field agriculture, less productive and less thickly peopled. Higher still is the wide zone of hay farming and stock-raising, supporting a sparse, semi-nomadic population and characterized by villages which diminish with the altitude and cease beyond 2000 meters. On Aetna, located in the tropical Mediterranean, three girdles of altitude have long been recognized,--the girdle of agriculture, the forest belt, and the desert summit. But the tourist who ascends Aetna, passes from the coast through a zone of orange and lemon groves, which are protected by temporary matting roofs against occasional frosts; then through vineyards and olive orchards which rise to 800 meters; then through a belt of summer crops rising to 1550 meters, and varied between 1400 and 1850 meters elevation by stretches of chestnut groves, whose green expanse is broken here and there by the huts of the forest guards, the highest tenants of the mountain. From these lonely dwellings down to the sea, density of population increases regularly to a maximum of over 385 to the square mile (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 the other hand, concentration of population and its concomitant cultural development begin to appear above the 2000 meter line. Here are the chief seats of population. Mexico has three recognized altitude zones, the cold, the temperate and the hot, corresponding to plateau, high slopes and coastal piedmont up to 1000 meters or 3300 feet; but the first two contain nine-tenths of the people. While the plateau has in some sections a population dense as that of France, the lowlands are sparsely peopled by wild Indians and lumbermen. Ecuador has three-fourths of its population crowded into the plateau basins (mean elevation 8000 feet or 2500 meters), enclosed by the ranges of the Andes. Peru presents a similar distribution, with a comparatively dense population on a plateau reaching to 11,000 feet (3500 meters) or more, though its coastal belt, being healthful, dry, and fairly well supplied with irrigation streams from the Andes, is better developed than any other similar district in tropical America.[1256] In Bolivia, 72 per cent of the total population live at an altitude of 6000 to 14,000 feet, while five out of the nine most densely peopled provinces lie at elevations over 11,000 feet.[1257] [See map page 9.]

From Mexico to central Chile, the heavy rains from the trade-winds clothe the slopes with dense forests, except on the lee side of the high Andean wall of Peru and Chile, and reduce much of the piedmont to malarial swamp and jungle. The discouragement to primitive tillage found in the unequal fight with a tropical forest, the dryer, more bracing and healthful climate of the high intermontane basins, their favorable conditions for agriculture by irrigation, and their naturally defined location stimulating to early cultural development, all combined to concentrate the population of prehistoric America upon the high valleys and plateaus. In historic times these centers have persisted, because the civilized or semi-civilized districts could be best exploited by the Spanish conquerors and especially because they yielded rich mineral wealth. Furthermore, the white population which has subsequently invaded tropical America has to a predominant degree reinforced the native plateau populations, while the imported negroes and mulattoes have sought the more congenial climatic conditions found in the hot lowlands.

[Sidenote: Increasing density with motive of protection.]

The relativity of geographical advantages in different historical periods warns us against assuming in all times a sparsity of population in mountains, even when the adjoining lowlands offer many attractions of climate and soil. In ages of incessant warfare, when the motive of safety has strongly influenced distribution of population, protected mountain sites have attracted settlement from the exposed plains, and thus increased the relative density of population on the steep slopes. The corrugated plateau of Armenia and Kurdistan, located on the uneasy political frontier of Russia, Persia and Asiatic Turkey, exposed for centuries to nomadic invasion from the east, shows a sparser population on its broad intermontane plains than on the surrounding ranges. Security makes the latter the choicer places of residence. Hence they are held by the overbearing and marauding Kurds, late-comers into the land, while the older and numerically weaker Armenians cower down on the lower levels.[1258] Here is an inversion of the usual order. The militantly stronger intruders, with no taste for agriculture, have seized the safer and commanding position on the hills, descending in winter with their cattle and horses to pasture and prey upon field and granary of the valley 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 general economic and social progress, multiply when we go into the history of primitive or ancient peoples. The Cherokee Indians of the Southern Appalachians, surrounded by powerful neighbors in the Chickasaws, Creeks and the encroaching whites of the seaboard colonies, attacked by war parties of Shawnees and Iroquois from the north, located the bulk of their nation in the mountains. The Overhill and Middle towns, numbering together thirty-three and situated wholly in the mountains, comprised four-fifths of their fighting force in 1775, while the nine towns distributed in the flat lands of Georgia and South Carolina were small and unimportant. The Indians themselves distinguished these two divisions of their country, the one as Otarre or mountainous, and the others as Ayrate or low.[1259] Similarly in ancient Gaul the three strongest tribes, the Sequani, Aedui, and Arverni, all had a large mountain nucleus. The Sequani held the Jura range with part of the Saone Valley; the Aedui held the northeast corner of the Central Plateau and some lands on the Saone, while the Arverni inhabited the western and central portion of the same highland. In a period of constant tribal migrations and war, the occupants of these high, protected locations were better able to defend themselves, and they maintained an adequate food supply by holding some of the adjoining lowland. Archaeologists generally agree that in central and southern Italy settlement first took place in the mountains, gradually extending thence down into the plains. The superiority of the upland climate, the more abundant rainfall, the greater security against attack offered by mountain sites, and the excellent soil for agriculture resulting from the geological make-up of the Apennines, all combined to draw thither primitive and later settlement.[1260] [See map page 559.] Similarly in Britain of the Bronze Age, 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 indestructible terraces on their slopes the evidences of a vanished race and an outgrown social order.[1261]

[Sidenote: Geographic conditions affecting density of mountain population.]

The advance of civilization, which brought the ancient pirate-ridden city from the inner edge of the coastal zone down to the wave-washed strand, also drew the hill town down to the plain, and the mountain population from their inaccessible strongholds to the more accessible and productive valleys. These facts contain a hint. The future investigation of archaeological remains in high mountain districts may reveal at considerable elevations the oldest and hence lowest strata of prehistoric development, strata which, in the more attractive valleys, have been obliterated or overlaid by later invasions of peoples and cultures. Ignoring this temporary attraction of population to protected mountain locations in ages of persistent warfare, we find that a comparison of many countries reveals a decreasing food supply and decreasing density of population, with every increase of height above a certain altitude, except in favored mining regions and in some tropical lands, where better climatic conditions and freedom from malaria distribute settlements far above the steaming and forest-choked lowlands. The density of population in mountains is influenced also by the composition of the soil, which affects its fertility; by the grade and exposure of the slopes, which determine the ease and success of tillage; by the proximity of the highlands to teeming centers of lowland population, and by the general economic development of the people.

In Great Britain, the sparsest population is found in the sterile highland moors of Scotland, where the county of Sutherland has only 11 inhabitants to the square mile, Inverness only 20.[1262] These figures reveal also the remoteness of a far northern location. In the southern half of the island the sparsest populations are found in the Welsh county of Radnor, with 49 to the square mile, and in English Westmoreland with 85, both of them mountain regions, but reflecting in their larger figures their close proximity to the teeming industrial centers of South Wales and Lancashire respectively. In France the most thinly settled departements are Basses-Alpes with 43 to the square mile and Hautes-Alpes with 50, which again owe even these figures in part to their situation on the margin of the densely populated valley of the middle Rhone. [See map page 559.] Norway, almost wholly a mountain country, averages only 18 souls to the square mile. Less than a thousand square miles of its territory are under cultivation, and these are distributed in small deltas at the heads of the fiords, in low strips here and there along its western coasts, or in the openings of its mountain valleys to the southeast. Here too is massed the larger part of its 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, together with the resulting enormous emigration, have combined to keep down Norway's population.

[Sidenote: Sparsity of population in the Alps.]

If we turn to Switzerland, a country poor in the resources of its land but rich in the resourcefulness of its people, we find a high average density, 218 to the square mile; but this is due to the surprising industrial development of the marginal plains, which show in the Canton of Geneva 1356 to the square mile, and in Canton Zurich 705, while the rugged upland of Graubuenden (Grisons) shows only 38 to the square mile, Uri only 48, and Wallis (Valais) only 59. How limited is the food supply of the country is evident from the fact that only 2400 square miles, or fifteen per cent. of its area, can be ranked as arable land, fit for garden, orchard or grain field, while a larger proportion, or twenty-eight per cent. is made wholly useless by watercourses, glaciers, rock and detritus. One half of the entire country lies above the region where agriculture is possible. In the Cantons of Uri and Valais, more than half the area is absolutely unproductive, scarcely less in the Grisons, and a third even in sunny Ticino.[1263] The three strictly Alpine provinces of Austria, Tyrol, Salzburg and Carinthia, reproduce approximately these geographic conditions. Nearly half of their area is uninhabited, and only one-seventh consists of arable land. In consequence they support only 75 inhabitants to the square mile, while just outside the mountains, in the piedmont or Alpine foreland, this density is doubled.[1264] Many tracts of the Carpathians, especially about the sources of the Theiss and Pruth and the wooded mountain borders of Transylvania, 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 per cent. of its area, and is forced to leave 59 per cent. in forest reserves.[1266]

[Sidenote: Terrace agriculture.]

These figures tell of the hard conditions of life characteristic of most mountain regions. Population under normal circumstances settles in the narrow valleys between the ranges and along the borders of their drainage stream. Soon, however, the food supply becomes inadequate for the growing numbers, so that artificial means have to be employed to expand the area of arable land. The soil on the mountain slopes is so thin that it yields only a scanty return to the labor of tillage. Moreover, under the operations of ploughing and harrowing, it is exposed to the danger of washing; so that after a few croppings the underlying rock of the mountain side may be laid bare, and all that was valuable in the quondam field deposited in the valley as silt or swept away to enrich the distant delta of the nearest trunk river.

To obviate this difficulty and to secure the desired increase of arable land, mountain peoples the world over have resorted to terrace agriculture. This means hand-made fields. Parallel walls, one above the other, are constructed on horizontal lines across the face of the steep slopes, and the intervals between are filled with earth, carried thither in baskets on the peasants' backs. The soil must be constantly renewed and enriched by manure in the same way, and the masonry of the retaining walls kept in repair. Whenever possible these costly terraced fields are located by preference on southward facing slopes, where the tilt of the land makes the fields catch the rays of the sun almost at right angles and thus counteracts the chill of the higher altitude, while the mountain behind protects the growing crops from cold northern winds. Good arable land, being limited in amount, commands a high price; and especially do choice terraced fields in vine-growing countries, since they make the best vineyards. Such fields in Switzerland will bring from $300 to $2,000 an acre, and are estimated to produce annually two bottles of wine for every square foot.[1267]

[Sidenote: Geographical distribution.]

Terrace agriculture, rare in new countries, in the more densely populated Old World is widely distributed in mountainous areas. In Germany, where it is nearly identical with the culture of the vine, it is found along the steep slopes overlooking the valley of the Moselle and the Rhine; also in the Vosges Mountains, the Black Forest and the Swabian Jura, to the limited altitude in which the vine will flourish in these northern regions. In the Alps it is widespread, and not confined to the culture of the vine. The traveler passing along the upper Rhone through the sunny Canton of Valais follows these terraced fields almost as far as Fiesch (altitude 3458 feet), beyond which agriculture proper becomes more and more restricted on account of the elevation, and passes rapidly into the mere hay-making of a pastoral community. Between Leak and Sierre, not only the mountain sides, but also the steep gravel hills constituting the old terminal moraine deposited by the receding Rhone glacier across the valley floor, are terraced to their very tops.

Terrace cultivation prevails in the mountains of Italy; it is utilized not only for the vine, but for olives, maize, oats, hemp, rye and flax. On the gentler declivities of the Apennines, the terraced walls are wider apart and lower than on the steep slopes of the Ligurian Apennines and along the Riviera of the Maritime Alps, where the mountains rise abruptly from the margin of the sea.[1268] Careful and laborious terrace cultivation has produced in Italy a class of superior gardeners. The Genoese are famous for their skill in this sort of culture. The men from the Apennine plateau of the Abruzzi readily find positions in the lowlands as expert gardeners.[1269]

[Sidenote: Terrace culture of the Saracens.]

The Saracens of Spain in the tenth century converted every mountain slope into a succession of green terraces. They built walls of heavy masonry, and brought water, loam, and fertilizing materials from great distances. The slopes of Granada back of Malaga and Almeria were covered with vineyards. Every foot of land susceptible of cultivation was turned to account, every drop of water from the ill-timed winter rains was conserved for the growing season. The application of intelligence and labor to tillage enabled the Hispano-Arab provinces to support a dense population.[1270] These Saracen cultivators had come from the severest training school in all Eurasia. Where the arid tableland of Arabia is buttressed on the southwestern front by high coast ranges (6000 to 10,500 feet or 2000 to 3200 meters) is Yemen, rich in its soil of disintegrated trap rock, adequately watered by the dash of the southwest monsoons against its towering ridges; but practically the whole country is atilt. Consequently the mountains have been terraced from the base often up to 6000 feet. The country presents the aspect of vast agricultural amphitheaters, in which the narrow paths of ancient paving zigzag up and up through successive zones of production. Here is a wide range of fruits--oranges, lemons, figs, dates, bananas and coffee; then apricots, apples, plums, grapes, quinces, peaches, together with grains of various zonal distribution, such as millet, maize, wheat and barley. The terrace walls are from five to eight feet high, but toward the top of the mountains they often increase to fifteen feet. Though laid without mortar, they are kept in perfect repair. Reservoirs filled with water from the two rainy seasons, supply the irrigation channels.[1271] In the narrow valleys of the Nejd plateau in central Arabia and on the mountain slopes of Oman are found the same irrigated gardens and terraced plantations. This laborious tillage underlay the prosperity of the ancient Sabaean monarchy of Yemen, as it explains the population of 35,000 souls who occupy the modern capital of Sanaa, located at an altitude of 7600 feet (2317 meters).[1272]

[Sidenote: In the Himalayas.]

Turning eastward, we find terrace agriculture widely distributed in Himalayan lands. The steep mountain sides of the Vale of Kashmir are cultivated thus to a considerable height. The terraces are irrigated by contour channels constructed along the hillsides, which bring the water for miles from distant snow-fed streams. Their shelf-like fields are green with fruit orchards and almond groves, with vineyards and grain fields.[1273] The terraced slopes about the Himalayan hill-station of Simla (elevation 7100 to 8000 feet) feed the summer population of English, who there take refuge from the deadly heat of the plains. The mountain sections of the native states of Nepal and Bhutan present the view of slopes cut into gigantic stairs, each step a field of waving rice kept saturated by irrigating streams from abundant mountain springs. Farther north, where Himalayas and Hindu Kush meet, terrace agriculture is combined with irrigation in the high Gilgit valleys, and farther still along that mere gash running down from the Pamir dome, called the Hunza Valley. Here live the once lawless robber tribes of the Hunzas and Nagaris, whose conquest cost the British a dangerous and expensive campaign in 1892, but whose extensive terraces of irrigated fields and evidences of skillful tillage gave the whole country an appearance of civilization strangely at variance with the barbarous character of its inhabitants.[1274]

[Sidenote: In Tibet and China.]

North of the outer Himalayan range, near the sources of the Indus and Sutlej rivers in Ladak or Western Tibet, this same form of cultivation has been resorted to by the retarded and isolated Mongolian inhabitants. Here at an altitude of 11,000 feet or more (3354 meters), along mountain ranges of primitive rock yielding only a scant and sterile soil, terraces are laboriously constructed; their surfaces are manured with burnt remains of animal excrements, which must first serve as fuel in this timberless land before they are applied to the ground. In this stronghold of Buddhism almost every lamasery has its terraced fields yielding good crops of grain and fruit.[1275] In the densely populated Sze Chuan province of western China, cultivation has climbed from the fertile basins of the Min and upper Yangtze rivers far up the surrounding mountains, where it is carried on terraces to the foot of vertical cliffs.[1276] Farther north where the mountain province of Shensi occupies the rise of land from the Chinese lowlands to the central highlands of Asia, terraces planted with wheat or other grains cover the mountain slopes.[1277]

[Sidenote: In ancient Peru.]

Terrace tillage is rare in new countries of extensive plains, like the United States and Canada, where the level lands still suffice for the agricultural needs of the people; but in the confined mountain basins and valleys which made up the Inca's territory in ancient Peru, every available natural field was utilized for cultivation, and terraces brought the obstinate mountain sides under the dominion of the Andean peasant. They were constructed, a hundred or more in number, rising 1000 or 1500 feet above the floor of the highland valley, contracting in width as they rose, till the uppermost one was a narrow shelf only two feet broad. These were extended by communal labor year after year, with increase of population, just as to-day in Java and the neighboring islands, and became the property of the Inca. Streams from the higher slopes were conducted in canals and distributed from terrace to terrace, to irrigate and fertilize. These terraces therefore yielded the best crops of potatoes, maize and pulse. The cultivable area was further extended by floating gardens, consisting of rafts covered with earth, which floated on the surface of lakes.[1278] They existed in ancient Mexico also,[1279] and are used to-day in the lakes and streams of Tibet and Kashmir[1280] and the rivers of overcrowded China.

[Sidenote: Terrace agriculture in mountainous islands.]

Mountainous islands, born of volcanic forces or the partial submergence of coastal ranges, have steep surfaces and scant lowlands. Their inhabitants command limited area at best. Driven to agriculture by their isolation, drawn to it by the favorable oceanic climate, such islands develop terrace tillage in its most pronounced form. On the precipitous pitch of Teneriffe, every particle of alluvial soil is collected to make gardens. Long lines of camels, laden with boxes of earth, may be seen coming almost daily into the town of Santa Cruz, bringing soil for the terraces.[1281] This is desperate agriculture. Irrigated terraces scar the steep slopes of many Polynesian islands.[1282] They are highly developed among the Malay Battaks of Sumatra, especially for rice culture.[1283] In Java, Bali and Lombok they reach a perfection hardly equalled elsewhere in the world. In Java they begin at an altitude of 1000 feet, cutting main and branch valleys into amphitheaters, and covering hundreds of square miles.[1284] On the volcanic slopes of Lombok the terrace plots vary from many acres to a few square yards, according to the grade, while a complete system of irrigation uses every brook to water the terraces. Here as in Java the work began at a very early period, when it was probably introduced among the native Malays by Brahmans from India.[1285] Japan, two-thirds of whose area is mountainous, has terraced its steep valley walls often up to 2000 feet or more, and utilized every patch of ground susceptible of tillage.[1286]

[Sidenote: Among mountain savages.]

A mountain environment often occasions a forced development in the form of agriculture among peoples who otherwise still linger in a low stage of barbarism or savagery. The wild, head-hunting Igorots, inhabiting the Cordilleras of north central Luzon, have levelled the face of their mountains into a series of platforms, held by retaining walls from twenty to thirty feet high. On these they cultivate upland rice at an altitude of 5000 feet. The Igorot province of Bontoc contains valleys in which every available foot of land is terraced for rice, and which present artificial landscapes vividly recalling Japan. Labor is the heritage of each inhabitant. Every man, woman and child down to ten years of age shares in the work of providing food.[1287] Africa shows parallel cases. The Angoss people, a savage negro tribe who occupy part of the Murchison Range in northern Nigeria, have mapped out all their sloping land into little terraces, sometimes only a foot or two wide. One of their peaks, 4135 feet high, has its plateau top covered with populous villages, owing to the protection of the site, and every inch of 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 the Marunga negroes, who occupy the steep western face of the rift valley filled by Lake Tanganyika. Here Cameron found the surface not regularly terraced, but retaining walls of loose stones disposed at intervals, which served to hold the soil in place, without greatly altering the natural slope. The scene recalled the terraced heights of Switzerland, and the people working there looked like flies on a wall.[1289] In the semi-arid country of Sudanese Darfur, where only the mountain districts are well watered and thickly populated, small terraces for grain and melons cover all the slopes.[1290]

[Sidenote: Fertilizing]

Mountain agriculture is necessarily laborious. The paucity of arable land precludes the possibility of letting fields lie fallow. These, to prevent exhaustion, must be constantly and abundantly fertilized, all the more as conditions of excessive subaerial denudation found in the steep slope and usual heavy rainfall of mountains, as well as possible glacial scouring of the land in the past, have greatly attenuated the layer of soil called upon to support plant life. The Swiss or Tyrolese farmer cherishes his manure pile as at once source and badge of his wealth. After harvest it is carted or carried in baskets not only to the terraces, but also to the wide alluvial fan that grows his oats and rye, to his meadows and hay fields. Both in Mexico and Peru the soil received a dressing of poudrette. Manuring was most extensive where population was densest, as in the isolated mountain valleys opening out upon the desert coast of Peru. Every kind of organic refuse was utilized, and fish was buried with the kernels of maize as a fertilizer. The deposits of guano found on the headlands and off-shore islands were used from the remotest times. Different guano beds were assigned to the several provinces, and the breeding places of the birds were protected by 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 a marketable 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 the meager limits of subsistence, level land and soil are at a premium. In ancient Peru space was begrudged for the dead.[1293] Cities covered considerable space on the roomy intermontane plateaus; but in the narrow lateral valleys, houses and temples were built on rocks, in order to reserve every fertile spot for agriculture.[1294] The traveler notices the same thing throughout the Alps. Compact villages cling to the mountain sides, leaving the alluvial hem of the stream or level glacial terrace free for the much needed fields. Only in broad longitudinal valleys, like that of Andermatt, do the settlements complacently spread out their skirts, or on wide alluvial fans where transverse valleys debouch upon the plains. The mountaineers of the Crimea construct their houses against the precipices, excavating into their face and building up the front, with stones, and thus reserve the gentler slopes for vineyards and gardens.[1295] In the Kangra, Kumaon, and Garhwal districts of the British Himalayas, the large Indian villages of the plains give place to small hamlets or detached homesteads, scattered here and there wherever occasional patches of soil on a hillside or in a narrow valley offer hope of sustenance. These hamlets or dwellings are located on the sides of the mountains, because level spots which can be irrigated must be reserved 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 principle of land economy reaches a climax. All settlement is on the perpendicular. The abrupt mountain sides are honey-combed with tombs, villages and Buddhist lamaseries in the detached localities where population occurs. A pleasure walk through one of these Tibetan towns means a climb by steep flights of steps hewn out of the rock, varied by a saunter up ladders, where the sheer face of a cliff must be surmounted to reach the houses on a ledge above.[1297] Pictures of these recall forcibly the cliff-dwellings of the Pueblo Indians. Even the important market city of Leh covers the lower slope of the mountain at an altitude of 11,500 feet, and from its height overlooks the cultivated fields in the sandy valley bed below, made fertile by irrigating streams from debouching canons.[1298] The Ladak villages always shun the plains. The desire to economize level arable land does not alone dictate this choice of sites, however; the motive of protection against inundation, when the snows melt and the streams swell, and also, to some degree, against hostile attack, is an additional factor. In the mountainous parts of overcrowded China, again, the food problem is the dominant motive. In the rugged highland province of Shensi, a village of several hundred people covers only a few acres, and rises in closely packed tiers of houses against the mountain side.[1299] In the wilder, half-conquered parts of Sze Chuan the villages crown the lower peaks, cling to the base of the mountains, or are perched on ledges of rock overlooking the gorges. Among the steep cliffs bordering the upper Yangtze, occupied chiefly by the timid, displaced Mantze aborigines, at an altitude of 10,000 feet, small platforms resting on beams projecting from the sheer mountain face support minute houses, whose backs burrow into the cliff behind. The small children are tied to the door post, to keep them from falling into the millet field below. The house is accessible only by bolts driven into the cliff. Above and below is the farm--small patches of tilled soil, often not larger than a bath towel, to which the cultivator lowers himself by a rope.[1300] Here life hovers on the brink of death and despair.

[Sidenote: Mountain pastures and stock-raising.]

Paucity of arable land in mountain regions leads to the utilization of the untillable slopes for stock grazing. This industry is always a valuable ally to mountain agriculture on account of the manure which it yields; but in high altitudes, where the steepness or rockiness of the soil, cold and the brevity of the growing season restrict or eliminate cereal crops, it becomes the dominant occupation of the inhabitants, while agriculture takes a subordinate place, limited to the production of hay and fodder for the winter feeding of the stock. Above the line of tree growth flourish the natural summer pastures up to the border of perpetual snow; and just below lies a zone which, if cleared of its forests, supports a thick carpet of grass and herbage, though too cold to ripen grain.

The high pastures are particularly nourishing. Cows feeding here in the Alps give better milk than the "home" or valley cows, though a smaller quantity. Sheep and goats do equally well, but swine are profitable only as a by-product, to utilize the refuse of the cheese and butter industry. The area of these pastures far exceeds that of arable land in mountain regions. In Switzerland they comprise about 27 per cent. of the total productive area; hay meadows 24 per cent., but fields and gardens only 20 per cent.[1301] In the Austrian province of Salzburg, pastures make up 13.3 per cent., hay meadows 34.5 per cent., and tilled fields only 11.7 per cent. of the total productive area. In the Tyrol the figures are much the same.[1302] Since Norway has over 67 per cent. of its total area in bare mountains, snow fields, bogs and lakes, it is not surprising to find only 7.6 per cent. in pastures, 2.2 per cent. in meadows, and 0.7 per cent. in grain fields; but here the pastures are ten times the arable area.[1303] The season of the summer feeding on the grass lands is short. In the so-called High Alps it frequently lasts only six or seven weeks, in the Grisons at most thirteen weeks[1304] and in 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 hay secured for the winter feeding limits the number of cattle, and the number of the cattle, through their manure, fixes the valley hay supply. Alpine pastures cannot be enlarged, and they may be reduced by accidents of nature, such as landslides, devastating torrents, or advance of ice fields or glaciers. They cannot be improved by capital and labor, and they may deteriorate chemically by exhaustion. The constant export of butter and cheese from Alpine pastures in recent times, without substitution by any fertilizer beyond the local manure, has caused the diminution of phosphoric acid in the soil and hence impoverishment. Canton Glarus has shown a steady decline since 1630 in the number of cows which its mountain pastures can support.[1306] Many other Alpine districts show the same deterioration.

[Sidenote: Mountain herdsman and shepherds.]

The remoteness of these highland pastures from the permanent villages necessitates Sennenwirthschaft, or the maintenance of out-farms and shepherds on the mountains during the grazing season. This involves a semi-nomadic existence for such inhabitants as serve as herdmen. In June, as soon as the high pastures begin to grow green, cattle, sheep and goats ascend step by step in the wake of summer, as she climbs the slope, and they return in autumn to the valleys. There they feed on the stubble of hay and grain fields, till the increasing cold confines them to their low stables. The hut of the Senner or Saeter, as the herdsman is variously called in Switzerland and Norway, consists of a living room and a smaller apartment for making butter and cheese, while against the steep slope is a rude stone shelter for the cattle and goats. The predominance of summer pastures has made cattle-raising a conspicuous part of agriculture in the Alps and in Norway. In many parts of Switzerland, cattle are called "wares" and the word cheese is used as a synonym for food, as we use bread. A Swiss peasant who has a reputation for cheese making is popular with the girls.[1307] Here even Cupid turns dairy expert.

[Sidenote: Communal ownership of mountain pastures.]

Since it is scarcely practicable to divide these highland pastures, they have 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 generally regulated. As a rule, a Swiss villager may keep on the Allmende during the summer as many head of cattle as he is able to stall-feed during the winter. Any in excess of this number must be paid for at a fixed rate to the village or commune treasury.[1312] Hay-sheds and herdsmen's huts mark these districts of temporary occupation near the altitude limits of human life throughout Europe. In Asia, likewise, are to be found small villages, inhabited only in summer by herdsmen tending their flocks. Such is the hamlet of Minemerg, located at an altitude of about 8000 feet at the southern entrance to the Borzil Pass over the Western Himalayas, and Sonamerg (altitude 8650 feet or 2640 meters) just below the Zogi La Pass, both of them surrounded by rich meadows on the northern rim of the Vale of Kashmir.[1313]

The utilization of mountain pastures for stock raising is almost universal. In the arid highlands of Central Asia, it is the essential supplement to the pastoral nomadism of the steppes and deserts, and to the limited sedentary agriculture found along the irrigated piedmont slopes. Here and elsewhere the animal raised varies widely-the llama and vicuna in Peru, which thrive best at 10,000 to 13,000 feet elevation, and multiply rapidly on the ichu or coarse grass which clothes the slopes of the higher Andes up to snow line; sheep, goats, yaks and herds of dzo, a useful hybrid between yak and cow, in the highland districts of Sze Chuan. Here the Mantze mountaineers lock their houses and leave their villages deserted, while they camp with their herds on the high pastures at 10,000 feet or more.[1314] Only economical, ingenious Japan has failed to develop stock raising, though mountains comprise two-thirds of its area. The explanation has often been sought in Buddhism, which inhibits the use of animal food; but this religious rule probably found ready acceptance in Japan, just because the paucity of animal food made its observance easy, for the fish industry of the Empire never suffered from the inhibition. The reason is probably to be sought elsewhere. The native grass of Japan, which relentlessly crowds out 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 chief problem of mountain stock-farmers is to secure feed for the winter support of their animals. This taxes their industry and ingenuity to the utmost. While the herdsmen are away tending their charges on the heights, the rest of the population are kept busy at home, getting fodder for the six or seven months of stall-feeding. This includes the cultivation of hardy crops like oats, rye and barley, which will mature at a great altitude, hay-making and collecting twigs and even leaves for the less fastidious goats. In Switzerland as in Norway the art of mowing has reached its highest pitch. Grass only three inches high is cut thrice yearly. The Norwegian peasant gathers a small hay harvest from the roofs of his house and barns, and from the edges of the highways. In Switzerland not a spear of grass escapes. In places inaccessible to cattle and goats, the peasant gathers hay by the handful with crampons on his feet, generally from the ledges of cliffs. He stacks it in one spot, 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 law permits only one Wildheuer to a family.[1316] In high Alpine cantons this office is the privilege of the poor.[1317] The traveler in Norway frequently sees huge bundles of hay sliding down to the valley on wires stretched from some high point on the precipitous fiord wall. This represents the harvest from isolated spots or from the field of the summer shepherd. In the vicinity of every saeter hut, a plot of ground is fenced in, enriched with the manure gathered during the summer, and utilized to grow fine nourishing grass, which is mown and transported down to the valley farm.[1318] Here economy of vegetative resources reaches its climax.

[Sidenote: Methods of curing hay in mountains.]

In mountain regions of heavy rainfall, thick dew and numerous cloudy days, it becomes a problem to get the hay dried and stored before a drenching shower comes. In many parts of Switzerland, therefore, the peasant on a clear morning cuts a limited amount of grass. This, with the help of his wife and children, he diligently turns and tosses at short intervals all day long, thus subjecting it to a rapid curing process by the action of the wind and the sun, whose rays are doubly effective in the rarefied air of the heights. In the evening the hay is made up into bundles and carried on his back to the barn. In other parts of Switzerland the green hay is hung on horizontal poles arranged against the sunny side of the chalet and under its projecting roof, thus exposed to the heat and protected from the rain till cured. In Norway the same purpose is achieved by setting up in the fields racks supporting long horizontal bars, over which the newly cut grass is hung. There it is exposed to the gentle fanning of the wind and penetrated by the warmth of the sun, in the short intervals when the sky is not overcast; and during a shower it sheds the water immediately, so that a minimum of harm is done. In the mountains of Germany, the hay is stacked on cone-shaped racks made of poles, with lateral projections which support the grass; thus the air can circulate freely inside the hollow cone, which is lifted well above the ground. Elsewhere sharpened stakes provided with cross bars are simply driven into the ground, and on these the hay is draped till cured.

Mountain hay-making leaves nothing to chance; too much depends upon the crop. In fact, at high altitudes it becomes the only crop. Cereal culture drops off with every increase of elevation. Norway has few fields above 1600 feet;[1319] even barley fails to ripen above 2600 feet. In the mountains of Wuertenberg we find pure Graswirthschaft at 3000 feet elevation, with only a small garden patch near the dwelling.[1320] It is interesting to take a tramp up one of the longitudinal or lateral valleys of the Alps, and observe the economic basis of life gradually change from agriculture to hay-making, till in some high-laid Alpine cirque, like Bad Leuk or Barmaz at the head of the Val d'Ilez, one sees only meadows and an occasional potato patch, which impresses the lowlander 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 do much. Work must in some way be made to compensate for an ungenerous Nature. The closely housed existence necessitated by the long severe winters of high altitudes stimulates industries in the home. The winter feeding of the stock involves little labor, so the abundant leisure would otherwise be wasted. Hence it is no accident that we find almost everywhere native mountain industries in a high state of development, and often characterized by an artistic beauty which seems to be the one flower of this barren environment. They are naturally based upon the local raw materials of the mountains, such as wood, metals, clays, and especially the wool of sheep and goats. Moreover, their products are articles of small bulk and large value, adapted to costly mountain transportation. Those of Kashmir are typical-carved wood, artistic metal work in silver and copper, puttoo cloth, carpets and the famous Kashmir shawls.[1321] The stark life of Tibet shows in its industries an unexpected richness and beauty. The men spin and weave wool into puttoo cloth of all grades; some of it is extraordinarily fine in texture and color, and is exported by caravan in considerable quantity to northern China and Mongolia. Pastil sticks, made of aromatic wood and impregnated with musk and gold-dust, are a conspicuous commodity in the trade with Peking. Tibet is rich in metals, especially silver and gold. Even the nomad shepherds of the tablelands know how to purify gold-dust over a fire of argols; hence it is not surprising that the settlements in the irrigated mountain valleys should develop real artists in metallurgy.[1322] The province of Derge, which excels in metal work, produces swords, guns, teapots, bells and seals of extremely artistic design and perfect finish.[1323] The jewelry of Tibet suggests Byzantine work. It includes ear-rings and charm boxes of gold and carved turquoise, and is marked by the same delicate finish. But whether the Tibetan is working in wood, gold, brass, or wool, he uses native designs of real merit, and shows the expert craftsman's hand.[1324] His activities recall 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 and the Jura, wood-carving in the Swiss and Norwegian mountains, bobbin lace in the Erz range and in Alpine Appenzell, and the far more beautiful Italian product of the rugged Abruzzi and the Frioulian Alps. The Slovaks of highland Hungary are expert in wire-drawing,[1325] and the peasant of the central Apennines makes from the gut of his goats the finest violin strings in the world, the so-called Roman strings.[1326] The low Thuringian and Franconian Forests, which harbor denser populations, have by a minute subdivision of labor turned their local resources to the making of dolls, which they supply to the markets of the world. Here too the manufacture of glass articles, porcelains, majolica and terra-cotta flourishes.[1327] Most of these mountain industries merely supplement the scant agricultural resources; they represent the efforts of industrious but hard pressed people to eke out their meager subsistence.

[Sidenote: Overpopulation and emigration.]

The application of steam to industry has converted mountain regions of abundant mineral wealth into centers of production for the markets of the world. But this is the history of only the last century, and of only favored mountain regions. The utilization of waterpower for electricity in factories is transforming the piedmont belts of the Alps and Apennines; but life in the interior of these ranges remains unaltered by the denser population at their base, except for the increased demand for the butter, milk and cheese of the highland pastures. For the world at large, therefore, the obvious and persistent fact of mountain economy is a scanty food supply secured by even the most intelligent and untiring labor, and a fixed tendency to overpopulation. The simplest remedy for this evil is emigration, a fact which Malthus observed.[1328] Hence emigration is an almost universal phenomenon in highland regions. Sometimes it is only seasonal. It takes place in the fall after the field work is over, and is due to the paucity of industries possible in the mountains during the winter. It seems to be a recurrence of that nomadic note in the motif of mountain life--that migration in summer upward to the borders of the snow, in winter downward to the sun-warmed plains. In autumn the Swiss descend from the Jura and Alps in great numbers to cities, seeking positions as servants or pastry-cooks. The Auvergnats leave their home by the thousand in the fall, when snow covers the mountains, to work in the cities as hewers of stone and drawers of water, then return in summer to resume their tasks in field and pasture, bringing back sums of money which noticeably enrich the home districts.[1329]

[Sidenote: Forms of temporary emigration.]

This seasonal emigration often assumes the form of peddling, in order to dispose of small home-made wares. From the Basilicata and Modena Apennines the young men follow the pedler's trade, but the Basilicata village of Viggiano furnishes Italy with many wandering musicians.[1330] The Kabyles of the Atlas Mountains go out in parties of two or three in the fall, and hawk every kind of goods, bringing back from their journey quantities of wool for home weaving.[1331] The emigration may last for several years, but finally the love of home generally calls the mountaineer back to his rugged hills. The Galicians of the Cantabrian Mountains of northern Spain leave their poor country for a time for the richer provinces of Portugal and Spain, where they become porters, water-carriers and scavengers, and are known as boorish, but industrious and honest. The women from the neighboring mountain province of Asturias are the professional wet-nurses of Spain. They are to be seen in every aristocratic household of Madrid, but return to the mountains with their savings when their period of service ends.[1332] In mountainous Basutoland, the Kaffir Switzerland of South Africa, arable land and pastures are utilized as completely as local methods of husbandry permit; and yet the native Kaffirs go in large numbers--28,000 out of a total population of 220,000 in 1895--to work in the mines of Kimberley and the Witwatersrand. They also return in time with their savings.[1333] Similarly the Battaks of the rugged mountain-rimmed plateau of western Sumatra emigrate in increasing numbers to the lowlands, and hire themselves out for a term of years on the Dutch plantations.[1334]

Another interesting and once rather widespread phase of this temporary emigration appears in the mercenary troops formerly drawn from mountain regions. After the Burgundian wars of the fifteenth century, the Swiss became the mercenaries of Europe, and in 1503 were first employed as papal life-guards. They served the kings of France from Louis XL till the tragedy of the Tuileries in 1792; and in that country and elsewhere they made the name "Switzer" a synonym for guard or attendant,[1335] till in 1848 the mercenary system was abolished. The pressure of population at home and the military spirit of the Scotch Highlanders once led the young Gaels to seek their fortunes in military service abroad, as in the army of Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden.[1336] Gurkhas from Himalayan Nepal, an independent state, are employed in considerable numbers in the Indian army to-day, and constitute one of the most reliable divisions of the native troops. In January, 1901, there were 12,797 Gurkhas drawing pay from the Indian government as soldiers, besides 6000 more employed as military police, porters, and in other capacities.[1337] Similarly ancient Arcadia, the mountain core of Peloponnesus, was a constant hive of mercenaries.

[Sidenote: Permanent emigration.]

Often, however, permanent emigration is the result, robbing the mountain population of its most enterprising element, Piedmontese, Bergamese, and Frioulians 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 serious competition for the local French. A proverb says there is no country in the world without sparrows and Bergamese.[1338] Geneva, once the citadel of Calvinism, is to-day a Catholic town, owing to the influx of Catholic laborers from Alpine Savoy. The overflow of the redundant population of this mountain province has given the Swiss canton a character diametrically opposed to its traditions.[1339] The Chinese provinces of Chili and Manchuria have been largely populated by immigrants from the barren mountain peninsula of Shantung; Manchuria has thereby been converted from an alien into a native district.[1340]

Emigration on so large a scale exercises far reaching economic and historical influences. Norse colonization contributed interesting chapters to the history of Europe in the ninth and tenth centuries. Norwegians who have flocked to America have made a deep impress upon our Northwestern States. Switzerland in 1902 and 1903 gave as 9500 of its subjects, a valuable contribution. Scotchmen of Highland birth are scattered over the whole world, carrying with them everywhere their sturdy qualities of character. Even the stay-at-home French lose emigrants from their mountain districts. The people of the Basses-Alps go to Mexico, and the Basques from the French Pyrenees seek Argentine.[1341] The honesty, industry, and frugality of these mountain emigrants make them desirable elements in any colonial population, and insure their success when they seek their fortunes in the uncrowded western world.

The alternative to overpopulation and its remedy emigration is found in preventive checks to increase. These sometimes take the form of restricted or late marriages, as Malthus found to be the case in Norway and Switzerland in 1799,[1342] before the introduction of steam or electric motive power had stimulated the industries of these countries or facilitated emigration thence. The same end is achieved by the widespread religious celibacy which sometimes characterizes mountain communities. In the barren Auvergne Plateau of France, the number of younger sons who become priests is extraordinary. Many daughters become nuns. Celibacy, seconded by extensive emigration, clears the field for the eldest son and the system of primogeniture which the poverty of this rugged highland has established as a fixed institution in the Auvergne.[1343] A careful statistical investigation of the geographical origins of the Catholic priesthood in Europe might throw interesting light on the influences of environment. The harsh conditions of mountain life make the monastery a line of least resistance, while geographical isolation nourishes the religions nature and benumbs the intellectual activities.

It is in the corrugated highland of Tibet, chilled to barrenness by an elevation of 12,000 feet or more (4000 meters), sterile and treeless from aridity, carved by canon-cutting streams into deep gorges offering a modicum of arable soil for irrigation, that monasticism has developed into an effective system to keep down population. Buddhism, with its convents and lamaseries, naturally recommended itself to a country where asceticism was obviously expedient. The world shows nowhere else so large a celibate class. In Tibet, monks are estimated at 175,000 to 500,000 in a total population of three millions. Archibald Little estimates their number at one-third of the total male population.[1344] Derge, which is the most productive district both agriculturally and industrially of eastern Tibet and is also most densely inhabited, counts at least 10,000 lamas in a total population of about 42,000.[1345] Not less than one-sixth of the inhabitants of Ladak are in religious houses as monks and nuns.[1346] Families in Tibet are small, yet each devotes one or more children to convent or monastic life.[1347] In western Tibet, especially about Taklakot in the Himalayan border, one boy in every family is invariably devoted to the priesthood, and one or more daughters must become nuns. But the nun generally resides with her family or lives in some monastery--with unspeakable results.[1348]

[Sidenote: Polyandry.]

The Tibetans seem to be enthusiastic Malthusians, with all the courage of their convictions. Religious celibacy among them is only an adjunct to another equally effective social device for restricting population. This is the institution of polyandry, which crops out in widely distributed mountain regions of limited resources, just as it appears not infrequently in primitive island societies. Its sporadic occurrence in extensive lowlands, as among the Warraus of Guiana and certain tribes of the Orinoco, is extremely rare, as also its occasional appearance among pastoral steppe-dwellers, like the Hottentots and Damaras.[1349] It is often associated with polygamy where wealth exists, and is never the exclusive form of marriage, yet its frequency among mountain peoples is striking. Strabo describes fraternal polyandry as it existed in mountainous Yemen. There among a Semitic people, as to-day in Mongolian Tibet and among the aboriginal Todas of the Nilgiri Hills in peninsular India, the staff of one husband left at the door of the house excluded the others.[1350] In modern times the institution is found throughout Tibet, and in the Himalayan and sub-Himalayan districts adjoining it, as in Ladak, Kunawar, Kumaon, Garhwal, Spiti, Sirmur, among the Miris, Daphlas, Abors and Bhutias occupying the southern slope of the Himalayans eastward from Sikkim, and the Murmese tribes of the Khasia Hills just to the south. The same practice occurs among the Coorgs of the Western Ghats, among the Nairs at the coastal piedmont of this range, among the Todas of the mountain stronghold known as the Nilgiri Hills (peaks 8000 feet or 2630 meters), and it crops out sporadically among 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 of population in rugged countries.[1352] It is generally coupled with other preventive checks. In the Nilgiri Hills, as we found also to be the case on many Polynesian islands, it is closely associated with female infanticide.[1353] The Todas in 1867 showed a proportion of two men to one woman, but later, with the decline of infanticide under British rule, a proportion of 100 men to 75 women, and a resulting modification of the institution of polyandry.[1354] It may well be that the paucity of women suggested this form of marriage, whose expediency as an ally to infanticide in checking population later became apparent. The Todas are a very primitive folk of herdsmen, living on the produce of their buffaloes, averse to agriculture, though not inhibited from it by the nature of their country, therefore prone to seek any escape from that uncongenial employment,[1355] and relying on the protected isolation of their habitat to compensate for the weakness inherent in the small number of the tribe.

Throughout Tibet and Ladak polyandry works hand in hand with the lamaseries in limiting population. The conspicuous fact in Tibetan polyandry is its restriction to the agricultural portion of the population. The pastoral nomads of the country, depending on their yaks, sheep and goats, wandering at will over a very wide, if desolate territory, practice monogamy and polygamy.[1356] The sedentary population, on the other hand, is restricted to tillable lands so small that each farm produces only enough for one family. Subdivision under a divided inheritance would be disastrous to these dwarf estates, especially owing to possible complications growing out of irrigating rights.[1357] Polyandry leaves the estate and the family undivided, and by permitting only one wife to several fraternal husbands restricts the number of children. It does this also in another way by diminishing the fertility of the mothers; for all travelers comment upon the paucity of children in polyandrous families.

Westermarck lays stress upon the fact that polyandry prevails chiefly in sterile countries. He regards it less as a conscious device to check increase of population than a result of the disproportion of males to females in polyandrous communities. The preponderance of male births he attributes to the excessive endogamy bordering on inbreeding which tends to prevail in all isolated mountain valleys; and also, as a possibility, to the undernourished condition of the parents caused by scanty food supplies, which Duesing found to be productive of a high percentage of male births in proportion to female.[1358] The motive of restricting population seems entitled to more weight than Westermarck concedes to it; for he slurs over the fact that in Tibet polyandry gives rise to a large number of superfluous women who fill the nunneries,[1359] while in the Nilgiri Hills redundant females were eliminated by infanticide. The fact seems to be that in the institution of polyandry we have a social and psychological effect of environment, reinforced by a physiological effect.

[Sidenote: Effects of polyandry and polygamy.]

A comparison of social conditions in the adjoining provinces of Baltistan and Ladak, which together comprise the Himalayan valley of the Indus, reveals the character of polyandry as a response to geographic environment. Both provinces are inhabited by a Mongolian stock, but the Ladaki living on the uppermost stretch of the basin near Tibet are Buddhists and polyandrists, while the Baltis farther down the valley are Mussulmen and polygamists. The Baltis, with their plurality of wives and numerous children, are wretchedly poor and live in squalor on the verge of starvation; but as the elevation of their valley ranges only from 4000 to 8500 feet, they are inured to heat, and therefore emigrate in large 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 they reach the lowlands. Cut off from emigration, they curtail population by means of polyandry and lamaseries. Consequently they show signs of prosperity, are well fed, well clothed and comfortably housed.[1360] Baltistan's social condition illustrates in a striking way the power of an idea like an alien creed, assimilated as the result of close vicinal location, to counteract for a time the influences of local geographic conditions.

[Sidenote: Marauding tendencies in mountaineers]

The less civilized mountain peoples, whose tastes or low economic status unfit them for emigration, solve the problem of a deficient food supply by raiding the fields and stores of their richer neighbors. Predatory expeditions fill the history of primitive mountain peoples, and of the ancient occupants of highland regions which are now devoted to honest industry. The ancient Alpine tribes were one and all, from the Mediterranean to the Danube, "poor and addicted to robbery," as Strabo says. He analyzes their condition with nice discrimination. "The greater part [of the Alps], especially the summits of the mountains inhabited by robbers, are barren and unfruitful, both on account of the frost and the ruggedness of the land. Because of the want of food and other necessaries, the mountaineers have sometimes been obliged to spare the inhabitants of the plains, that they might have some people to supply them."[1361] The freebooters usually descended into the lowlands of Italy, Gaul and Helvetia, but the pass peoples lay in wait for their prey on the mountain roads. Strabo described the same marauding habits arising from the same cause among the mountaineers of northern Spain,[1362] the Balkan range,[1363] and the highlands encircling the Mesopotamian plains.[1364]

Hunger is usually the spur. The tribesmen who inhabit the Hunza gorge were notorious robbers till their recent conquest by the British. Despite the most careful terrace tillage, their country was much overpopulated. The supply of grain was so inadequate, that during the summer the people subsisted wholly on fruit, reserving the grain for winter use. Therefore, when early summer opened the passes of the Karakorum and Himalayan ranges, and caravans began to move over the trade route between Kashmir and Yarkand, when the Kirghis nomads from the plains sought the pastures of the Pamir, the Hunza tribesmen found raiding caravans and herds, and pillaging the Gilgit Valley of Baltistan the easiest means of supplementing their slender resources. Hardy mountaineers as they were, and born fighters, they always conducted their forays successfully, and returned to the shelter of their fastnesses, laden with plunder and driving their captive flocks before them. The perpetual menace of these Hunza raids caused large districts in the Gilgit Valley to be abandoned by their inhabitants, and cultivated land to lapse into wilderness,[1365] while the Chilas to the south pillaged the Astor Valley of Baltistan, carrying away crops and cattle, enslaving women and children.[1366]

[Sidenote: Cattle-lifting.]

Marauding propensities are marked among all retarded mountain peoples of modern times. The cattle-lifting clans of the Scotch Highlands, who preyed upon the Lowlands, have their counterpart in the Pathans of the Suleiman and Baluch mountain border who, till curbed by the British power in India, systematically pillaged the plains of the Sind.[1367] The forest Bhils of the Vindhyan and Satpura ranges are scarcely yet married to agriculture; so when in time of drought their crops fail and the game abandons the hill forests to seek water in the lowland jungles, the Bhils cheerfully revert to their ancestral habit of cattle-lifting.[1368]

The Caucasus was long a breeding place for robber tribes who made their forays into the pastures and fields of southern Russia. Robbery was part of the education of every Circassian prince, while one group of the Abassines conferred their chieftainship upon the most successful robber or the man of largest family.[1369] The Kurdish hillmen of the Armenian ranges descend with their herds of horses in winter to the warmer plains, where they exhaust the pastures and subject the Armenian villages to a regular system of blackmail.[1370] The wide grassy plains about Koukou Nor Lake, near the Chinese border of Tibet, attract numerous Mongol nomads with their herds; but these rich pastures are exposed to the depredation of Si Fan brigand tribes, who have their haunts 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 offer prayers for the success of every foray.[1371] Hence, among mountain as among desert peoples, robbery tends to become a virtue; environment dictates their ethical code.

[Sidenote: Historical results of mountain raiding.]

These depredations reflect to a great degree the complementary relation of highlands and lowlands. The plains possess what the mountains lack. This is a fundamental fact of economic geography, and inevitably leads to historical results. The marauding expeditions of mountain peoples first acquire historical importance, either when the raids after long continuance end in the conquest of the lowlands, and thus augment the resources and population of the highland state; or, as is often the case, the raiders call down upon themselves the vengeance of the plainsmen, are subdued, and embodied in the lowland state. The conquest of ancient Assyria and the destruction of Nineveh by the mountain Medes seems to have been a process of this kind. Long before their descent upon Mesopotamia, they were known as the "dangerous Medes," were constantly threatening the Assyrian frontiers and occupying isolated tracts.[1372] The predatory incursions of the Samnites of the Apennines into the fertile fields of Campania eventuated in the conquest of ancient Capua and other cities, and greatly strengthened the Samnite Confederacy. But this encroachment of the mountain tribes upon the plains aroused the cupidity and alarm of the Romans, who in turn bent their energies toward the final subjugation of the Samnites.[1373] Himalayan Nepal, after the unification of its petty Rajah states by the Gurkha conquest between 1768 and 1790, began encroachments and ravages upon the Indian Terai or fertile alluvial lowland at the foot of the mountains; and finally by 1858 had acquired title to a considerable strip of it, which by its rice fields and forests greatly strengthened the geographic and economic base of the highland state.[1374] The Malay Hovas, inhabiting the central plateau of Madagascar, braced to effort by its temperate climate and not over-generous soil, have almost everywhere subdued the better fed but sluggish lowlanders of the coast.[1375] There can be little doubt that the beneficent effects of an invigorating mountain climate, especially in tropical and subtropical latitudes, have helped the hardy, active hill people to make easy conquest of the enervated plainsmen.

[Sidenote: Conquest of mountain regions]

It is more often the case, however, that the scant resources, small number, and divided political condition of the mountain tribes make such conquest impossible. Their depredations provoke reprisals from the stronger states of the plain, who bring the mountain region under subjection, merely to police their frontier. Strabo makes it clear that the Romans, having secured certain passes over the Alps, neglected the conquest of the ranges, till the increase of Roman colonies along the piedmont rim excited the cupidity of the mountaineers. Muscovite dominion was extended over the Caucasus, both in order to check the persistent raids of its tribes into the Russian plains, and to secure control of its passes. The state of Kashmir, guided by a purely local policy, for years tried to conquer the robber tribes on its northwestern frontier, merely to protect its own border provinces. Then the British authorities of the Indian Empire began the same process, but from a radically different motive. They saw the Gilgit and Hunza valleys, like the 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 the end more than the victor. They result in the systematic and intelligent development of the mountain resources, and the maintenance of ampler social and economic relations between highland and lowland through the construction of roads, which must always represent the reach of the governing authority. The conquest of mountain peoples means always expensive and protracted campaigns. The invader has always two enemies to fight, Nature and the armed foe. There is a saying in India that "In Gilgit a small army is annihilated and a large army starves to death." Hunger is king in high altitudes, and comes always to the defense of mountain independence. Moreover, the inaccessibility of such districts, the difficulty of maintaining lines of communication, ignorance of by-paths and trails which forever offer strategic opportunities to the natives or escape at a crisis, all serve to protract the war. The independent spirit of the mountaineer, his endurance of hardships, his mastery of mountain tactics, and his obstinate resistance after repeated defeat, give always a touch of heroism to highland warfare. Consequently, history abounds in examples of unconquered mountain peoples, or of long sustained resistance, like that which for sixty years under the heroic leadership of Kadi Mulah and Shamyl used up the treasure and troops of Russia in the impregnable defiles of the Caucasus. In the end, however, the highland tribes succumb to numbers and the road-making engineer.

[Sidenote: Political dismemberment of mountain peoples.]

Political dismemberment, lack of cohesion due to the presence of physical barriers impeding intercourse, is the inherent weakness of mountain peoples. Political consolidation is never voluntary. It is always forced upon them from without, either by foreign conquest or by the constant menace of such conquest, which compels the mountain clans to combine for common defense of their freedom. The combination thus made is reluctant, loose, easily broken, generally short-lived. It becomes close and permanent only under a constant pressure from without, and then assumes a form allowing to the constituent parts the greatest possible measure of independence. The Swiss canton and commune are the result of a segregating environment; the Swiss Republic is the result of threatened encroachments by the surrounding states. It owed its first genuine federal constitution to Napoleon.

A report on the situation in the Caucasus, addressed to Czar Nicholas in 1829, contains an epitome of the history of mountain peoples. It runs as follows: "The Circassians bar out Russia from the south, and may at their pleasure open or close the passage to the nations of Asia. At present their intestine dissensions, fostered by Russia, hinder them from uniting under one leader; but it must not be forgotten that, according to traditions religiously preserved among them, the sway of their ancestors extended as far as to the Black Sea. * * * The imagination is appalled at the consequence which their union under one leader might have for Russia, which has no other bulwark against their ravages 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, and thereby calling down upon themselves conquest from without; weakened by a contracting territory within the highlands and a shrinking area of plunder without, doomed to eventual defeat by the yet more ominous weakness of political dismemberment.

[Sidenote: Individualism and independence]

Mountain tribes are always like a pack of hounds on the leash, each straining in a different direction. Wall-like barriers, holding them apart for centuries, make them almost incapable of concerted action, and restive under any authority but their own. Clan and tribal societies, feudal and republican rule, always on a small scale, characterize mountain sociology. All these are attended by an exaggerated individualism and its inevitable concomitant, the blood feud. Mountain policy tends to diminish the power of the central authority to the vanishing point, giving individualism full scope. Social and economic retardation, caused by extreme isolation and encouraged by protected location, 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; but in the rugged mountains of Arcadia the principle of physical and political subdivision went farther. Here, for four centuries after the first Olympiad, the population, poorest and rudest of all Greece, was split up into petty hill villages, each independent of the other.[1378] The need of resisting Spartan aggression led for the first time, in 371 B.C., to the formation of a commune Arcadum, a coalescence of all the fractional groups constituting the Arcadian folk;[1379] but even this union, effected only by the masterly manipulation of the Theban Epaminondas, proved short-lived and incomplete. What was true of the Arcadian villages was true of the city states of Greece. The geography of the land instilled into them the principle of political aloofness, except when menaced by foreign conquest. Cooperation is efficient only when it springs from a habit of mind. Greek union against the Persians was very imperfect; and against the Roman, the feeble leagues were wholly ineffective. The influence of this dismembering environment still persists. As ancient Greece was a complex of city states, modern Greece is a complex of separate districts, each of which holds chief place in the minds of its citizens, and unconsciously but steadily operates against 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, based upon clan organization, as among the medieval Scotch, who were not less rebellious toward their own kings than toward the English conquerors.[1381] Feudal rule seems congenial to the mountaineer, whose conservative nature, born of isolation, clings to hereditary chiefs and a long established order. Feudal communities and dwarf republics exist side by side in the northern Caucasus,[1382] attended by that primitive assertion of individual right, the blood feud.[1383] Often the two forms of government are combined, but the feudal element is generally only a dwindling survival from a remote past. The little Republic of Andorra, which for a thousand years has preserved its existence in the protection of a high Pyrenean valley, is a self-governing community, organized strictly along the lines of a Tyrolese or Swiss commune; but the two viguiers or agents, who in some matters outrank the president, are official appointments tracing back to feudal days, when Andorra was a seigneurie of the Comte of Urgel.[1384] Tyrol offers a striking parallel to this. In its local affairs it has in effect a republican form of government, enjoying as high degree of autonomy as any Swiss canton; but the great Brenner route, which could confer both power and wealth on its possessor, made the Tyrol an object of conquest to the feudal nobles of the early Middle Ages. Their hereditary dominion is now vested in the archdukes of Austria, to whom the Tyrolese have shown unfailing fidelity, but from whom they have exacted complete recognition of their rights.[1385]

Tyrol's neighbor Switzerland illustrates the pure form of commune, canton and republic, which is the logical result of a rugged mountain relief. Here commune and canton are the real units of government. In the federal power at Bern the Swiss peasant takes little interest, often not even knowing the name of the national president. In the highest ranges a canton coincides with a mountain-rimmed valley--Valais with the basin of the upper Rhone, Glarus with the upper Linth, Uri with the Reuss, Graubuenden with the upper Rhine, to which is joined by many pass routes the sparsely peopled Engadine, Ticino with the drainage basin of upper Lake Maggiore, Unterwalden with the southern drainage valleys of Lake Lucerne. Where the mountains are lower, or where passes connect valleys of high levels, cantonal boundaries may overstep geographical barriers. A commune generally consists of the villages strung along a narrow lateral valley, isolated and sufficient unto itself politically. A close parallel to the Alpine commune is found among the Kabyles of the Atlas Mountains. Their political structure is based upon the Jemaa or commune, a small sovereign republic whose independence is fiercely defended. It enjoys complete local autonomy, is governed by an assembly of all the adult male inhabitants, and grants this body the usual functions except the administration of justice, which, characteristically, is replaced by blood feuds as the inalienable right of the individual. Romans, Arabs, Turks and French have in turn exercised over these mountain Berbers only nominal control, except when 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, throwing around them strong protecting arms, enfold them in an embrace which long provides security to them in their weakness. These minute mountain states, therefore, tend to reflect in their size the isolation of their environment, and indirectly the weakness of the surrounding nations. The original Swiss Eidgenossensschaft of the four forest cantons, embedded in the high Alps, braced against a mountain wall, held its own against the feeble feudal states of Austria and Germany. The rugged relief of Graubuenden and the spirit of freedom cradled there enabled its peasants in the Middle Ages to overthrow the feudal lords, and to establish a federal republic. This typical mountain state was a league composed of three other leagues. Each component league consisted of a group of districts, having the power of sovereign states, and consisting in turn of a group of communes, which were quite independent in local affairs. This triune league formed in time an alliance with the Swiss Confederation, but did not become a member of it till the Vienna adjustment of 1815. Similar is the story of the mountain shepherds of Appenzell, who formed a little peasant republic, despite their bishop overlord of St. Gall; and who later during the Reformation, on the ground of religious differences, divided into two yet smaller states.[1387] The relation between size and inaccessibility is most strikingly illustrated in the high Himalayan ranges west of Kashmir and north of the Punjab. Here is the Shinaka district, which includes the Chilas, Darel, Tanger and other valleys branching off from the Indus, and which is inhabited by Dards of Indo-European stock. Each Shinaka valley is a small cantonal republic, and each village of each republic is a commune managing its own affairs by an assembly. One settlement of only twelve houses enjoys complete autonomy. Besides the village assemblies there is a state parliament handling questions of general policy, to which each village sends representatives. One dissentient vote can defeat a measure. The majority cannot control the minority; for if one village of a state disagrees with the others, it is free to carry out its own policy, even in the matter of foreign alliances.[1388] Here is home rule run to seed.

[Sidenote: Slight power of mountain chiefs.]

Small size is sometimes coupled with monarchical rule, degenerating occasionally into despotism among aggressive robber tribes. The inaccessible Hunza Valley is occupied on opposite sides of its deep gorge by two rival states, the Hunzas and the Nagaris, whose combined population amounts to scarcely 25,000 souls. Hostile to each other, they unite only to resist an invading force. While the Hunza Thum is a tyrant, the Nagari ruler has little voice in the government. The Tibeto-Burman hill folk of the eastern Himalayas are divided into clans, and concede a mild authority to a chief who rules a group of clan villages, but only rarely is able to secure power over a larger district. The Khasia Hills of Assam are broken up into twenty-three petty 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 centralized authority. Protection by environment obviates the necessity of protection through combination. The spirit of clan exclusiveness, the absence of a common national sentiment, characterize equally the tribesmen of mountainous Albania, of Persian Luristan,[1390] and highland Kurdistan. Along the rugged upheaved area which forms the western boundary of India from the Khaibar Pass to the sea, British officials have had to negotiate with the native Pathan and Baluch "jirgahs," assemblies of the chief men of the countless clans into which the tribes are divided, as the only visible form of authority tolerated.[1391] Combination must be voluntary and of a type to exact a modicum of submission. These requirements are best answered by the confederation, which may gradually assume a stable and elaborate form among an advanced people like the Swiss; or it may constitute a loose yet effective union, as in the famous Samnite confederacy of the central Apennines; or a temporary league like that of the ancient Arcadians, or the group of confederated sheiks of Bellad el Kobail, the "Country of the Highlanders" in mountainous Yemen, who in 1790 established a republican form of union for defense against their more powerful neighbors.[1392]

[Sidenote: Mountain isolation and differentiation.]

The power of mountains to protect makes them asylums of refuge for displaced peoples. This fact explains the confused ethnology which often characterizes these isolated regions, especially when they lie near or across natural highways of human migration. As a tide of humanity sweeps around or across the mountains, a branch stream turns into a side valley, where it is caught and held. There it remains unaltered, crystallizing in its seclusion, subjected for ages to few modifying influences from without. Its people keep their own language and customs, little affected by a totally different race stock similarly placed in a neighboring alcove of the mountains. Lack of communication engenders an endless multiplication of dialects, as we find them in the Alps, the Caucasus, in Kafirstan of the Hindu Kush and in Nepal. Diversity of speech, itself a product of isolation, reacts upon that political and social 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 shows strong differentiation and marked social individuality from one district to another, and from one valley to the next, despite a prevailing similarity of local geographic conditions. In fact, the very similarity of those conditions, strong in their power to isolate, present the conditions for inevitable variation. A mountain region gets its population from diverse sources, or, which is quite as important, at different times from the same source. For instance, Nepal received contingents of Rajput conquerors, dislodged from the Punjab, in the seventh century, the eleventh, and finally the dominant Gurkhas at the end of the eighteenth. To-day these represent different degrees of amalgamation with the local Tibetan stock of Nepal. They are distinguished from each other by a diversity of languages, and a multiplicity of dialects, while the whole piedmont of the country shows a yet different blend with the Aryan Hindus of the Ganges valley, who have seeped into the Terai and been drawn up, as if by capillary attraction, into the hill valleys of the outer range. The Vindhyan Range and its associated highlands, long before the dawn of Indian history, caught and held in their careful embrace some of the fragile aboriginal tribes like the Kolarian Ho, Santals and Korkus. Centuries later the Dravidian Bhils and Gonds sought refuge here before the advancing Indo-Aryans, and found asylums in the secluded valleys.[1393] Finally those same northern plains whence the Dravidians had come, after the Mohammedan conquest of central India in the sixteenth century, sent flying to the refuge of the hills a large contingent of Hindus of mingled Dravidian and Aryan stocks, but stamped with the culture of the Ganges basin. These occupied the richer valleys and the more accessible plateaus of the highlands, driving the primitive Gonds and Bhils back into the remoter recesses of the mountains.[1394] Dravidians and aboriginal Kolarians survive in their purity in the wilder and more inaccessible regions, but in the lower valleys their upper classes show signs of mixtures with the Rajput invaders, while the lower classes betray little Aryan blood.[1395]

[Sidenote: Diversity of peoples and dialects.]

Afghanistan, of disordered relief, set as a transit region between the plains of Mesopotamia, the Oxus and the Indus, has a confused ethnology in keeping with the tangle of dissected plateaus and mountain systems which constitute its surface. Here we find three distinct branches of the Indo-European race, divided up into various peoples of diverse tongues and subdivided further into countless tribes; and two branches of Mongol-Tartars scattered, as if out of a pepper box, from the Helmund to the Oxus, tossed in among diverse peoples of Iranic and Galcha origin in hopeless confusion. The various Afghan tribes, separated from each other by natural barriers and intervening alien stocks, though similar in physical type, speech, religion and culture, have no sense of unity, no common political aims, while the appalling list of tribes constituting the population of the country[1396] offers little hope of Afghanistan ever developing national cohesion. Kafiristan alone, which lies in the Hindu Kush range for the most part at an altitude of 12,000 feet or more, harbors in its recesses many remnants of primitive peoples, speaking various languages and dialects, strangers alike to any native affinity or political union. It is a mere agglomeration of ethnic fragments, in which the people of one village are often unable to converse with those of the next.[1397] Relief has fashioned the ethnology of the Caucasus in the same way. No other equally small area in the world contains such a variety of peoples and tongues, differing from one another in race, language, and customs so fundamentally as the Caucasus. From the heterogeneous survivals of extremely old ethnic stocks, lodged in 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, has preserved the broad-headed Alpine race, which was perhaps the primitive stock of Central Europe. The great river valleys leading into this massive highland, like the Rhine, Aar, Inn and Adige, show the intrusion of a long-headed race from both north and south; but lofty and remote valleys off the main routes of travel, like the Hither Rhine about Dissentis, the little Stanzerthal of the upper Inn, and the Passierthal of the upper Adige above Meran, show the race preserved in its purity by the isolating environment.[1399] Here each segregated lateral valley becomes an area of marked linguistic and social differentiation; only where it opens into the wider longitudinal valleys are its peculiarities of speech and custom diluted by the intrusive current of another race. Switzerland has received three different streams of language, and broken them up into numerous rivulets of dialect. On its small area of 16,125 square miles (41,346 square kilometers) thirty-five dialects of German are spoken, sixteen of French, eight of Italian and five of Romansch, a primitive and degenerate Latin tongue, surviving from the ancestral days of Roman occupation.[1400] The yet smaller territory of the Tyrol has all these languages except French, whose place is taken by various forms of Slavonic speech, which have entered by the western tributaries of the Danube.[1401]

[Sidenote: Constriction of mountain areas of ethnic survivals.]

Rarely is a polyglot mountain population able to work out its own political salvation, as the Swiss have done. More often political union must be forced upon them from without. Oftener still, when the highlanders are primitive survivals, ill-matched against the superior invaders from the plain, they are doomed to a process of constriction of territory and deterioration of numbers, which proceeds slowly or rapidly according to the inaccessibility of their environment and the energy of the intruders. Deliberate, unenterprising nations, like the Chinese, Turks and Indo-Aryans long tolerate the presence of alien mountain tribes, who remain like enemies brought to bay in their isolated fortresses. The conquerors throw around them at their leisure a cordon of settlement, which, slowly ascending the piedmont, draws closer and closer about the mountaineers. The situation of many mountain tribes reminds one of a besieged stronghold. Russian wars against the Caucasus have rightly been described as protracted sieges. The heroic history of Switzerland in relation to its neighbors has been that of a skillfully conducted defense, both military and diplomatic. The territory of China is dotted over with detached groups of aborigines, who have survived wherever a friendly mountain has offered them an asylum. Variously known as Lolos, Mantze or Miaotse, they have preserved everywhere a semi-independence in pathless mountains, whither Chinese troops do not dare to follow them;[1402] but the more numerous and patient Chinese agriculturalists are in many sections slowly encroaching upon their territories, driving them farther and farther into the recesses of their highlands. The same process goes on in Formosa, where the Chinese have gradually forced the native Malays into mountain fastnesses among the peaks which rise to 14,000 feet (4500 meters). There, split up by internecine feuds into numberless clans and tribes, ignorant of one another's languages, raiding each other's territories and the coastal plains tilled by Chinese colonists, they await their doom, while the piedmont zone between has already given birth to a typical border race of 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 remote islands, they are often museums of social antiquities. Antiquated races and languages abound. The mountaineers of the Southern Appalachians speak to-day an eighteenth century English. Their literature is the ballad poetry of old England and Scotland, handed down from parent to child. Clan feuds settle questions of justice, as in the Caucasus and the Apennines. Religion is orthodox to the last degree, sectarianism is rigid, and Joshua's power over the sun remains in some lonely valleys undiscounted.[1404] These are all the marks of isolation and retardation which appear in similar environments elsewhere. Especially religious dogmas tend to show in mountains a tenacity of life impossible in the plains. The Kafirs, inhabiting the high Hindu Kush Mountains of Badakshan, 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 of the desert-bred Jews from the sensuous agricultural gods of the Canaanites; to conserve and fix it; if need be, to narrow it to a provincial tribal faith, to stamp it with exclusiveness, conservatism, and formalism, as its adherents with bigotry,[1406] for this is always the effect of geographical seclusion. But when all these limitations of Judaism are acknowledged, the fact remains that that segregated mountain environment performed the inestimable service for the world of keeping pure and undefiled the first and last great gift of the desert, a monotheistic faith.

Buddhism, once the official religion of Korea but disestablished three centuries ago, has taken refuge in the Diamond Mountains, far from the main roads; there a dull, moribund form of the faith dozes on in the monasteries and monastic shrines of these secluded highlands.[1407] Driven out of India, Buddhism survives only in the Himalayan border of the country among the local Tibeto-Burman peoples, and in Ceylon, whose mountain city of Kandy is its stronghold. The persecuted Waldenses, a heretic sect who fled in 1178 from the cities of France to the Alps, took refuge in the remote valleys of the Pellice, Chisone, and Augrogne some thirty miles southwest of Turin. There, protected equally against attack and modification, the Waldenses have maintained the old tenets and organization of their religion.[1408]

[Sidenote: Conservatism of mountain peoples.]

The mountain-dweller is essentially conservative. There is little in his environment to stimulate him to change, and little reaches him from the outside world. The "spirit of the times" is generally the spirit of a past time, when it has penetrated to his remote upland. He is strangely indifferent 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 has always known. Hence innovation is distasteful to him. This repugnance to change reaches its clearest expression, perhaps, in the development and preservation of national costumes. Tracht, which is crystallized style in dress, appears nowhere so widespread and so abundantly differentiated as in mountain districts. In Switzerland, every canton has its distinctive costume which has come down from a remote past. The peasants of Norway, of the German and Austrian Alps, of the Basque settlements in the Pyrenees, of mountain-bound Alsace and Bohemia, give local color to the landscape by the picturesqueness of their national dress.

[Sidenote: Mental and moral qualities.]

With this conservatism of the mountaineer is generally coupled suspicion toward strangers, extreme sensitiveness to criticism, superstition, strong religious feeling, and an intense love of home and family. The bitter struggle for existence makes him industrious, frugal, provident; and, when the marauding stage has been outgrown, he is peculiarly honest as a rule. Statistics of crime in mountain regions show few crimes against property though many against person. When the mountain-bred man comes down into the plains, he brings with him therefore certain qualities which make him a formidable competitor in the struggle for existence,--the strong muscles, unjaded nerves, iron purpose, and indifference to luxury bred in him by the hard conditions of his native environment.

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 of Eighth 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 of Bureau 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. Henry Dyer, 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] Elisee 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; and Vol. IV, pp. 88-89. Washington, 1905. Gazetteer of the Philippine Islands, 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. New York, 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 and Gait. Calcutta, 1903.

[1338] Elisee 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 and New 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 British Borderland, 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' Source Book 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 and London, 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, Encyclopaedia 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, Encyclopaedia 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, Encyclopaedia Britannica.

[1402] Archibald Little, The Far East, 131-132. Oxford, 1905. Isabella Bird Bishop, The Yangtze Valley and Beyond, Vol. II, 132-133, 146-147, 166, 174, 207-210. New York and London, 1900. S. Wells Williams, The Middle Kingdom, Vol. I, p. 43, New York, 1904. J. Naken, Die Provinz Kwangtung und ihre Bevoelkerung, 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, Encyclopaedia Britannica.

XVII. THE INFLUENCE OF CLIMATE

[Sidenote: Importance of climatic influences.]

Climate enters fundamentally into all consideration of geographic influences, either by implication or explicitly. It is a factor in most physiological and psychological effects of environment. It underlies the whole significance of zonal location, continental and insular. Large territorial areas are favorable to improved variation in men and animals partly because they comprise a diversity of natural conditions, of which a wide range of climates forms one. This is also one advantage of a varied relief, especially in the Tropics, where all the zones may be compressed into a small area on the slopes of high mountains like the Andes and Kilimanjaro. Climate fixes the boundaries of human habitation in Arctic latitudes and high altitudes by drawing the dead-line to all organic life. It dominates life in steppes and torrid deserts as in sub-polar wastes. It encourages intimacy with the sea in tropical Malays and Polynesians, and like a slave-driver, scourges on the fur-clad Eskimo to reap the harvest of the deep. It is always present in that intricate balance of geographic factors which produces a given historical result, throwing its weight now into one side of the scales, now into the other. It underlies the production, distribution and exchange of commodities derived from the vegetable and animal kingdoms, influences methods of agriculture, and the efficiency of human labor in various industries.[1409] Hence it is a potent factor in the beginning and in the evolution of civilization, so far as this goes hand in hand with economic development.

[Sidenote: Climate in the interplay of geographic factors.]

The foregoing chapters have therefore been indirectly concerned with climate to no small degree, but they have endeavored to treat the subject analytically, showing climate as working with or against or in some combination with other geographic factors. This course was necessary, because climatic influences are so conspicuous and so important that by the older geographers like Montesquieu[1410] and others, they have been erected into a blanket theory, and made to explain a wide range of social and historical phenomena which were properly the effect of other geographic factors.

[Sidenote: Direct and indirect effects of climate.]

For a clear understanding of climatic influences, it is necessary to adhere to the chief characteristics of the atmosphere, such as heat and cold, moisture and aridity, and to consider the effect of zonal location, 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, because the 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 modification are not very numerous, however strong the probability may be. The effect of climate upon plant and animal life is obvious, and immediately raises the assumption that man has been similarly influenced. But there is this difference: in contrast to the helpless dependence upon environment of stationary plants and animals, whose range of movement is strictly determined by conditions of food and temperature, the great mobility of man, combined with his inventiveness, enables him to flee or seek almost any climatic condition, and to emancipate himself from the full tyranny of climatic control by substituting an indirect economic effect for a direct physical effect.

The direct results of climate are various, though some are open to the charge of imperfect proof. Even the relation of nigrescence to tropical heat, which seems to be established by the geographical distribution of negroid races in the Old World, fails to find support from the facts of pigmentation among the American Indians from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego. Nevertheless climate undoubtedly modifies many physiological processes in individuals and peoples,[1411] affects their immunity from certain classes of diseases and their susceptibility to others, influences their temperament, their energy, their capacity for sustained or for merely intermittent effort, and therefore helps determine their efficiency as economic and political agents.

While producing these direct effects, climate also influences man indirectly by controlling the wide range of his life conditions dependent upon the plant and animal life about him. It dictates what crops he may raise, and has it in its power to affect radically the size of his harvest. It decides which flocks and herds are best suited to his environment, and therefore directs his pastoral activities, whether he keeps reindeer, camels, llamas, horses or horned cattle. By interdicting both agriculture and stock-raising, as in Greenland whose ice cap leaves little surface free even for reindeer moss, it condemns the inhabitants forever to the uncertain subsistence of the hunter. Where it encourages the growth of large forests which harbor abundant game and yield abundant fruits, as in the hot, moist equatorial belt and on rainy mountain slopes, it prolongs the hunter stage of development, retards the advance to agriculture. Climate thus helps to influence the rate and the limit of cultural development. It determines in part the local supply of raw material with which man has to work, and hence the majority of his secondary activities, except where these are expended on mineral resources. It decides the character of his food, clothing, and dwelling, and ultimately of his civilization.

[Sidenote: Effect of climate upon relief.]

The very ground under man's feet, moreover, feels the molding hand of climate. In one region a former age of excessive cold has glaciated the surface and scoured off the fertile loam down to the underlying rock, or left 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, which keeps the surface wet and chilled even in the height of summer. In yet other regions, abundant moisture combined with heat covers the ground with a pad of fertile humus, while some hundred miles away drying trade winds parch and crack the steppe vegetation, convert most of its organic substance into gases, and leave only a small residue to enrich the soil. Rain itself modifies the relief of the land, and therefore often decides in a slow, cosmic way what shall be the ultimate destination of its precious store of water. A heavy precipitation on the windward side of a mountain range, by increasing the mechanical force of its drainage streams, makes them bite their way back into the heart of the system and decapitate the rivers on the leeward side, thus diminishing the volume of water left to irrigate the rainless slope. Thus the hydra-headed Amazon has been spreading and multiplying its sources among the Andean valleys, to the detriment of agriculture on the dry Pacific slope; thus the torrents of the Western Ghats, gorged by the monsoon rains from the Indian Ocean, are slowly nipping off the streams of the ill-watered Deccan, [See map page 484.] All these direct and indirect effects of climate may combine to produce ultimate politico-geographical results which manifest themselves in the expansion, power and permanence of states.

[Sidenote: Climate limits the habitable area.]

Climatic conditions limit the habitable area of the earth. This is their most important anthropo-geographic effect. At either pole lurks an invincible foe, with whom expanding humanity must always reckon, and who brooks little encroachment upon his territory. His weapon is the restriction of organic life, without which man cannot exist. The geographical boundaries of organic life, however, are wider than those of human life. The consequence of this climatic control, therefore, is not only a narrowed distribution of the human race, but a concentration which intensifies the struggle for existence, forces the utilization of all the available area, and thereby in every locality stimulates adaptation to environment.

[Sidenote: Adaptability of man to climatic extremes.]

Man ranks among the most adaptable organic beings on the earth. No climate is absolutely intolerable to him. Only the absence of food supply or of all marketable commodities will exclude him from the most inhospitable region. His dwellings are found from sea level up to an altitude of 5000 meters or more, where the air pressure is little over one half that on the coast.[1412] Seventeen per cent. of the towns and cities of Bolivia are located at an elevation above 13,000 feet (4000 meters), while Aullagas occupies a site 15,700 feet or nearly 5000 meters above the sea.[1413] Mineral wealth explains these high Bolivian settlements, just as it draws the Mexican sulphur miners to temporary residence in the crater of Popocatepetl at an altitude of 17,787 feet (5420 meters), from their permanent dwellings a thousand meters below.[1414] The laborers employed in the construction of the Oroya railroad in Peru became rapidly accustomed to work in the rarefied air at an elevation of 4000 to 4800 meters. The trade routes over the Andes and Himalayan ranges often cross passes at similar altitudes; the Karakorum road mounts to 18,548 feet (5,650 meters). Yet these great elevations do not prevent men going their way and doing the day's work, although the unacclimated tenderfoot is liable to attacks of mountain sickness in consequence of the rarefied air.[1415]

Man makes himself at home in any zone. The cold pole of the earth, so far as recorded temperatures show, is the town of Verkhoyansk in northeastern Siberia, whose mean January temperature is 54 F. below zero (-48 Centigrade). Massawa, one of the hottest spots in the furnace of Africa is the capital of the Italian colony of Eritrea. However, extremes both of heat and cold reduce the density of population, the scale and efficiency of economic enterprises. The greatest events of universal history and especially the greatest historical developments belong to the North Temperate Zone. The decisive voyages of discovery emanated thence, though the needs of trade and the steady winds of low latitudes combined to carry them to the Tropics. The coldest lands of the earth are either uninhabited, like Spitzenbergen, or sparsely populated, like northern Siberia. The hottest regions, also, are far from being so densely populated as many temperate countries.[1416] [See maps pages 8, 9, and 612.] The fact that they are for the most part dependencies or former colonial possessions of European powers indicates their retarded economic and political development. The contrast between the Mongol Tunguse, who lead the life of hunters and herders in Arctic Siberia, and the related Manchus, who conquered and rule the temperate lands of China, shows how climates help differentiate various branches of the same ethnic stock; and this contrast only parallels that between the Eskimo and Aztec offshoots of the American Indians, the Norwegian and Italian divisions of the white race.

[Sidenote: Temperature as modified by oceans and winds.]

The zonal location of a country indicates roughly the degree of heat which it receives from the sun. It would do this accurately if variations of relief, prevailing winds and proximity of the oceans did not enter as disturbing factors. Since water heats and cools more slowly than the land, the ocean is a great reservoir of warmth in winter and of cold in summer, and exercises therefore an equalizing effect upon the temperature of the adjacent continents, far as these effects can be carried by the wind. The ocean is also the great source of moisture, and this, too, it distributes over the land through the agency of the wind. Where warm ocean currents, like the Gulf Stream and Kuro Siwa, penetrate into temperate or sub-polar latitudes, or where cool ones, like the Peruvian and Benguela Currents wash the coasts of tropical regions, they enhance the power of the ocean and wind to mitigate the extremes of temperature on land. The warm currents, moreover, loading the air above them with vapor, provide a store of rain to the nearest wind-swept land. Hence both the rainfall and temperature of a given country depend largely upon its neighboring water and air currents, and its accessibility to the rain-bearing winds. If it occupies a marked central position in temperate latitudes, like eastern Russia or the Great Plains of our semi-arid West, it receives limited moisture and suffers the extreme temperatures of a typical continental climate. The same result follows if it holds a distinctly peripheral location, and yet 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 and particularly in the North Temperate Zone, the mean annual temperature is high on the western face of the northern continents, but drops rapidly toward the east.[1417] This is especially true of winter temperatures, which even near the eastern coast show the severity of a continental climate. Sitka and New York, Trondhjem and Peking have the same mean January temperatures, though Peking lies in about the latitude of Madrid, over twenty-three degrees farther south.

Europe's location in the path of the North Atlantic westerlies, swept by winds from a small and narrow ocean which has been super-heated by the powerful Gulf Stream, secures for that continent a more equable climate and milder winters than corresponding latitudes on the western coasts of North America, whose winds from the wide Pacific are not so warm.[1418] Moreover, a coastal rampart of mountains from Alaska to Mexico restricts the beneficial influences of the Pacific climate to a narrow seaboard, excludes them from the vast interior, which by reason of cold or aridity or both must forever renounce great economic or historical significance, unless its mineral resources developed unsuspected importance. In Europe, the absence of mountain barriers across the course of these westerly winds from Norway to central Spain, and the unobstructed avenue offered to them by the Mediterranean Sea during fall and winter, enable all the Atlantic's mitigating influences of warmth and moisture to penetrate inland, and temper the climate of Europe as far east as St. Petersburg and Constantinople. Thus several factors have combined to give the western half of Europe an extraordinarily favorable climate. They have therefore greatly broadened its zone of historical intensity toward the north, pushed it up to the sixtieth parallel, while the corresponding zone in eastern Asia finds its northern limit at the fortieth degree.

[Sidenote: Rainfall.]

Moisture and warmth are essential to all that life upon which human existence depends. Hence temperature and rainfall are together the most important natural assets of a country, because of their influence upon its productivity. The grazing capacity and wheat yield of southern Australia increase almost regularly with every added inch of rainfall.[1419] The map of population for the Empire of India clearly shows that a high degree of density accompanies a high and certain rainfall. Exceptions occur only where hilly or mountainous tracts offer scant arable areas, or where plains and valleys are sparsely populated owing to political troubles or unhealthiness. Nearly three-tenths of the population are found crowded together on the one-tenth of India's level territory which is blessed with a rainfall above the average for the country.[1420] Deserts which yield nothing are purely climatic phenomena. Steppes which facilitate the historical movement, and forests which block it, are products of scant or ample precipitation. The zonal distribution of rainfall, with its maxima in the Tropics and the Temperate Zones, and its minima in the trade-wind belts and polar regions, reinforces and emphasizes the influence of temperature in determining certain great cultural and economic zones.

In equatorial regions, which have an abundant rainfall throughout the year, agriculture is directed toward fruits and roots; only in certain districts can it include cereals, and then only rice and maize. The temperate 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 drier eastern counties.[1421] It thrives, on the other hand, in Manitoba and the Red River region even with a short season of scant rainfall, because this comes in the spring when moisture is most needed.[1422] Most important to man, therefore, is the question how and when the rainfall is distributed, and with what regularity it comes. Monsoon and trade-wind districts labor under the disadvantage of a wet and dry season, and a variability which brings tragic results, since it easily reduces a barely adequate rainfall to disastrous drought. These are the lands where wind and weather lord it over man. If the rains hold off too long, or stop too soon, or withhold even a small portion of their accustomed gift, famine stalks abroad.

[Sidenote: Temperature and zonal location.]

Temperature, the other important element of climate, depends primarily upon zonal location, which has far different historical results from central and peripheral location, continental and insular. It determines the amount of heat received from the sun, though air and ocean currents may redistribute that heat within certain limits, and humidity or aridity modify its effects. Still zonal distinctions remain. The great climatic regions of the earth, like the hot, wet equatorial belt or the warm, dry trade-wind belts or the cool, well-watered temperate zones, constitute, through the medium of their economic products and their climatically imposed methods of production, so many socio-political areas, regardless of ethnic and political boundaries. The Berber nomads of the northern Sahara live much as the Semitic Bedouins of the Syrian desert or the Turkoman stock of arid Turkestan. They have the same tribal government, the same scattered distribution in small groups, the same economic basis of subsistence, though of different races and dominated respectively by France, Turkey and Russia. The history of the tropical Antilles has in both its economic and political features paralleled that of the East Indies since the early 16th century. Temperate South America promises to follow in the historical footsteps of temperate North America, South Africa in those of Europe and temperate Australia.

[Sidenote: Reactions of contrasted zones.]

While people of the same latitude live approximately under the same temperature conditions, those of contrasted zones are subjected to markedly different influences. They develop different degrees of civilization, wealth, economic efficiency, and density of population; hence they give rise to great historical movements in the form of migration, conquest, colonization, and commerce, which, like convection currents, seek to equalize the differences and reach an equilibrium. Nature has fixed the mutual destiny of tropical and temperate zones, for instance, as complementary trade regions. The hot belt produces numerous things that can never grow in colder countries, while a much shorter list of products, coupled, however, with greater industrial efficiency, is restricted to the Temperate Zone. This explains the enormous importance of the East Indian trade for Europe in ancient and medieval times, the value of tropical possessions for commercial countries like England and Holland. It throws light upon the persistence of the tropical plantation system in the Dutch East Indies and republican Mexico, as formerly in the sugar and cotton fields of the Southern States, with its relentless grip upon the throat of national life in hot lands.

[Sidenote: Temperate products from tropical highlands.]

Tropical regions, however, may profit by the fact that their mountains and plateaus permit the cultivation of temperate crops. India during the last century has introduced tea culture extensively on the Assam and Nilgiri Hills, and in the Himalayan valleys up to an altitude of 7000 feet.[1423] Besides this temperate product, it has put large areas into cotton, chiefly in the peninsular plateau of the Deccan, and by means of these two crops has caused a considerable readjustment in world commerce.[1424] Nevertheless, here the infringement of the principle of tropical production in the torrid zone is after all slight. In tropical America, on the other hand, the case is quite different; this region presents 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 to geographical and historical causes running back into the ancient civilizations, as well as the largest proportions of immigrant Europeans. This is true not only of the Cordilleran states from northern Mexico to the borders of Chile, but also of Brazil, whose center of population falls on the plateau behind Rio de Janeiro and Santos. The isolation of these high plateaus excludes them to a serious extent from foreign trade, while their great altitude permits only temperate products, with the exception of sub-tropical coffee, which is their only crop meeting a great demand. The world wants, on the other hand, the long list of lowland tropical exports which torrid America furnishes as yet in inadequate amounts, owing to the lack of an industrious and abundant lowland population. Commerce will eventually experience a readjustment in these localities to the natural basis of tropical production; but how soon or how effectively this change will take place depends upon the question of immigration of foreign tropical peoples, or the more difficult problem of white acclimatization.[1425]

[Sidenote: Isothermal lines in anthropo-geography.]

Despite some purely climatological objections, anthropo-geography finds the division of climatic zones according to certain isothermal lines of mean annual temperature the most expedient one for its purpose. The hot zone may be taken as the belt north and south of the equator enclosed between the annual isotherms of 20 deg. C. (68 deg. F.) These hold a course generally far outside the two tropics, and in the northern continents frequently reach the thirty-fifth parallel. The temperate climatic zones extend from the annual isotherm of 20 deg. C. to that of 0 deg. C. (32 deg. F.), which bears little relation to the polar circles forming the limits of the solar Temperate Zone. The north temperate climatic zone has been further sub-divided along the annual isotherm of 5 deg. C. (41 deg. F.), distinguishing thus the warmer southern belt, which forms preeminently the zone of greatest historical intensity. The areas beyond the annual isotherms of 0 deg.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 is a dominant factor in its human, animal, and plant life. A map of the mean annual isotherms of the earth is therefore eloquent of the relation between historical development and this one phase of climate. Where the lines run far apart, they enclose extensive areas of similar temperature; and where they approach, they group together regions of contrasted temperatures. The compression of climatic differences into a small area enlivens and accentuates the process of historical development. It produces the same sort of effect as the proximity of contrasted reliefs. Nowhere else in the world do the tropical and frigid climatic areas, as defined on the north and south by the annual isothermal lines of 20 deg.C. and 0 deg.C. respectively, lie so near together as in Labrador and northern Florida. Separated here by only twenty degrees of latitude, on the opposite side of the Atlantic they diverge so sharply as to include the whole western face of Europe, from Hammerfest and the North Cape down to the Canary Islands and the crest of the Atlas Mountains in Africa, a stretch of forty-two degrees of latitude. This approximation of contrasted climatic districts in North America was an immense force in stimulating the early economic development of the Thirteen Colonies, and in maturing them to the point of political autonomy. It gave New England commerce command of a nearby tropical trade in the West Indies, of sub-tropical products in the southern colonies, in close proximity to all the contrasted products of a cold climate--dense northern forests for naval stores and lumber, and an inexhaustible supply of fish from polar currents, which met a strong demand in Europe and the Antilles. The sudden southward drop of the 0 deg.C. annual isothermal line toward the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes brought the northwestern fur trade to the back gate of New York, where it opened on the Mohawk and upper Hudson, and brought prosperity to the young colony. Even to-day the center of collection for the Canadian fur fields is Quebec, located at 47 deg. north latitude, while the corresponding point of concentration in Europe for the furs of Russia and Siberia is Nizhni-Novgorod, which lies ten degrees farther north.[1426]

[Sidenote: Effect of slight climatic differences.]

This compression of the isotherms emphasizes the differences of national characters produced in part by dissimilar climatic conditions. Contrasts in temperament, manner of life, and point of view, like that between the New Englander and Virginian, Chilean and Bolivian in the Americas, Breton and Provencal in France, Castilian and Andalusian in Spain, Gurkha and Bengali in India, seem to bleach out when they are located far apart, owing to many grades of transition between; but they become striking, stimulating, productive of important economic and political results, when close juxtaposition enables them to react sharply one upon the other. In effecting these nice differentiations of local types, climate is nearly always one of the factors at work, emphasizing perhaps an existing ethnic difference. Even the slight variations of temperature to be found in the same zone or the same climatic region produce distinct results, especially where they are harnessed, as is usually the case, with some other geographic condition of relief, area or soil, pulling in the same direction. Mexico, Peru, Italy, Switzerland, Greece and Asia Minor, with its high plateau interior and its contrasted Euxine and Aegean coasts, represent each a complex of climatic 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 natural and artificial selection in the distribution of peoples. This effect is conspicuous in the distribution of immigrants in all colonial lands like Africa, South America and in every part of the United States.[1427] The warm, moist air of the Gulf and South Atlantic States is attracting back to the congenial habitat of the "black belt" the negroes of the North, where, moreover, their numbers are being further depleted by a harsh climate, which finds in them a large proportion of the unfit. The presence of a big negro laboring class in the South, itself primarily a result of climate, has long served to exclude foreign immigration, which sought therefore the unoccupied lands and the congenial climate of the more bracing North. Hence it is both a direct and indirect effect of climate that the North shows a large proportion of aliens, and the white population of the South an almost unadulterated English stock.

[Sidenote: Climate and race temperament.]

The influence of climate upon race temperament, both as a direct and indirect effect, can not be doubted, despite an occasional exception, like the cheery, genial Eskimos, who seem to carry in their sunny natures an antidote to the cold and poverty of their environment. In general 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. The southerners 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 equatorial belt degenerate into grave racial faults. If, as many ethnologists maintain, the blond Teutons of the north are a bleached out branch of the brunette Mediterranean race, this contrast in temperament is due to climate. A comparison of northern and southern peoples of the same race and within the same Temperate Zone reveals numerous small differences of nature and character, which can be traced back directly or indirectly to climatic 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 the southerner, he has to pay more for his indulgences, so he is economical in expenditures. With the southerner it is "easy come, easy go." He therefore suffers more frequently in a crisis. The low cost of living keeps down his wages, so that as a laborer he is poorly paid. This fact, together with his improvidence, tends to swell the proletariat in warm countries of the Temperate Zone; and though here it does not produce the distressing impression of a proletariat in Dublin or Liverpool or Boston, it is always degrading. It levels society and economic status downward, while in the cooler countries of the Temperate Zone, the process is upward. The laborer of the north, owing to his providence and larger profits, which render small economies possible, is constantly recruited 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 and brain. It gives an autumn tinge to life. Among the folk of warmer lands eternal spring holds sway. National life and temperament have the buoyancy and thoughtlessness of childhood, its charm and its weakness. These distinctions and contrasts meet us everywhere. The southern Chinese, and especially the Cantonese, is more irresponsible and hot-blooded than the Celestial of the north, though the bitter struggle for existence in the over-crowded Kwangtung province has made him quite as industrious; but on his holidays he takes his pleasure in singing, gambling, and various forms of dissipation. The southern Russian is described 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 the southern wheat lands owes his happy disposition to the easy conditions of life in the fertile Ukraine, as opposed to the fiercer struggle for subsistence in the glaciated lake and forest belt of the north. Similar distinctions of climate and national temperament exist in the two sections of Germany. The contrast between the energetic, enterprising, self-contained Saxon of the Baltic lowland and the genial, spontaneous Bavarian or Swabian is conspicuous, though the only geographical advantage possessed by the latter is a warmer temperature attended by a sunnier sky. He contains in his blood a considerable infusion of the Alpine stock and is therefore racially differentiated from the northern Teuton,[1428] but this hardly accounts for the difference of temperament, because the same Alpine stock is plodding, earnest and rather stolid on the northern slope of the Alps, but in the warm air and sunshine of the southern slope, it abates these qualities and conforms more nearly to the Italian type of character. The North Italian, however, presents a striking contrast to the indolent, irresponsible, improvident citizens of Naples, Calabria and Sicily, who belong to the contrasted Mediterranean race, and have been longer subjected to the relaxing effects of sub-tropical heat.

[Sidenote: Complexity of the geographic problem.]

Where the climatic difference is small, it is nevertheless often conspicuous enough to eclipse other concomitant factors which are at work, and hence to encourage the formation of some easy blanket theory of climatic influences. But just because the difference is slight, all attending geographic and ethnic circumstances ought to be scrutinized, to insure a correct statement of the geographical equation. The contrast between the light-hearted, gracious peasants of warm, sunny Andalusia and the reserved, almost morose inhabitants of cool and cloudy Asturias is the effect not only of climate but of the easy life in a fertile river plain, opposed to the bitter struggle for existence in the rough Cantabrian Mountains. Moreover, a strong infusion of Alpine blood has given this group of Spanish mountaineers the patience and seriousness which characterizes the race in other parts of continental Europe.[1429] The conditions which have differentiated Scotch from English have been climate, relief, location, geologic composition of the soil, and ethnic composition of the two peoples. The divergent development of Northerners and Southerners in America arose from contrasts in climate, soil and area. It was not only the enervating heat and moisture of the Southern States, but also the large extent of their fertile area which necessitated slave labor, introduced the plantation system, and resulted in 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 in Russia. Siberia, Central Asia or immense tracts of Africa, the differences of temperature which prick and stimulate national endeavor in small climatic districts here lose much of their force. Their effects flatten out into insignificance, overwhelmed by the encounter with too large a territory. All the southern continents are handicapped by the monotony of their zonal location. The map of annual isotherms shows Africa quite enclosed between the two torrid lines of 20 deg. Centigrade, except for a narrow sub-tropical belt along the Barbary coast in the north, and in the south an equally narrow littoral extending east and north from the Cape of Good Hope. At first glance, the large area of South Africa lying on the temperate side of the Tropic of Capricorn raises hopes for a rich economic, social and cultural development here; but these are dashed by an examination of the isotherms. Excessive heat lays its retarding touch upon everything, while a prevailing aridity (rainfall less than 10 inches or 25 centimeters), except on the narrow windward slope of the eastern mountains, gives the last touch of climatic monotony. The coastal belt of Cape Colony and Natal raise tropical and sub-tropical products[1431] like all the rest of the continent, while the semi-arid interior is committed with little variations to pastoral life. [See maps pages 484 and 487.] Climatic monotony, operating alone, would have condemned South Africa to poverty of development, and will unquestionably always avail to impoverish its national life. South African history has been made by its mines and by its location on the original water route to India; the first have dominated its economic development, and the latter has largely determined its ethnic elements--English, Dutch, and French Huguenots, while the magnet of the mines has drawn other nationalities and especially a large Jewish contingent into the urban centers of the Rand.[1432] In the background is the native Kaffir and Hottentot stocks, whose blood filters into the lower classes of the white population. The diversity of these ethnic elements may compensate in part for the monotony of climatic conditions, which promise to check differentiation. However, climatic control is here peculiarly despotic. We see how it has converted the urban merchants of Holland and the skillful Huguenot artisan of France into the crude pastoral Boer of the Transvaal.

In contrast to South Africa, temperate South America has an immense advantage in its large area lying outside the 20 deg.C. isotherm, and in the wide range of mean temperatures (from 20 deg.C. to 5 deg.C.) found between the Tropic of Capricorn and Tierra del Fuego. Climate and relief have combined to make the mouth of the La Plata River the site of the largest city of the southern hemisphere. Buenos Ayres, with a population of over a million, reflects its large temperate hinterland.

[Sidenote: The effects of Arctic cold.]

Frigid zones and the Tropics alike suffer from monotony, of Arctic the one of cold and the other of heat. The Arctic climatic belt, extending from the isotherm of 0 deg.C. (32 deg.F.) to the pole, includes inhabited districts where the mean annual temperature is less than -15 deg.C. (or 5 deg.F.), as at the Greenland village of Etah on Smith's Sound and the Siberian town of Verkhoyansk. Here the ground is covered with, ice or snow most of the year, and permanently frozen below the surface. Animal and plant life are reduced to a minimum on the land, so that man, with every poleward advance of his thin-strung settlements, is forced more and more to rely on the sea for his food. Hence he places his villages on narrow strips of coast, as do the Norse of Finmarken, the Eskimo and the Tunguse inhabiting the Arctic rim of Asia. Products of marine animals make the basis of his domestic economy. Farther inland, which means farther south, all tribes live by hunting and fishing. The Eurasian Hyperboreans find additional subsistence in their reindeer herds, 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, close vicinal location around an enclosed sea has produced some degree of blood relationship. But whatever their origins, the harsh conditions of their life have imposed upon them all a similar civilization. All population is sparse and more or less nomadic, since agriculture alone roots settlement. They have the same food, the same clothing, the same types of summer and winter dwellings, whether it is the earth hut of the Eskimo or of the coast Lapp, the Siberian Yukagirs of the Kolima River, or the Samoyedes of northeastern Russia.[1433] The spur of necessity has aroused their ingenuity to a degree found nowhere in the drowsy Tropics of Africa. Dread of cold led the Yakuts of the Lena Valley to glaze the windows of their huts with slabs of ice, which are better nonconductors of heat and cold, and can be made more perfectly air-tight than glass. Hence these windows have been adopted by Russian colonists. The Eskimo devised the oil lamp, an invention found nowhere else in primitive America, and fishing tackle so perfect that white men coming to fish in Arctic waters found it superior to their own.

Owing to the inexorable restriction of their natural resources, contact with European commerce has impoverished the Hyperborean natives. It has caused the rapid and ruthless exploitation of their meager resources, which means eventual starvation. So long as the Ostyaks, before the coming of the Russians, were sole masters of the vast forests of the Obi Valley, they commanded a supply of fish and fur animals which sufficed for their sparse population. But the greed of the Russian fish dealers and fur traders, and the devastating work of the lumbermen have made double war upon Ostyak sources of subsistence.[1434] The appearance of the white man in Alaskan waters was the signal for the indiscriminate killing of seal and other marine animals, till the Eskimo's supply of food and furs has been seriously invaded, from Greenland to the outermost Aleutian Islands. In all this wide territory, climatic conditions forbid any substitute for the original products, except the domesticated reindeer on the tundra of the mainland; but this would necessitate the transformation of the Eskimo from a hunting to a pastoral 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, no direct physiological effect can be positively ascribed to intense cold. It lays no bodily handicap on health and energy, as does the excessive heat of the Tropics. The coldest regions where tillage is possible are tolerable places of residence, because their winters are intensely dry. That of central Siberia, which is drier than the driest desert, makes tent life comfortable in the coldest season, provided the tenter be clad in furs. The low temperatures of the Canadian Northwest for the same reason have not repelled settlers even from the Southern States. Negroes, however, meet a climatic barrier in America at the isotherm of 5 deg. Centigrade (41 deg. F.). They are found in New England and Nova Scotia, generally with a large admixture of white blood; but there and farther north where the climate is moist as well as cold, they show a fatal tendency to pulmonary diseases.

[Sidenote: The small amount of tropical emigration]

The acclimatization of tropical people in temperate regions will never be a question of widespread importance. The negroes were involuntary immigrants to America, under conditions that can never recur. Their concentration in the "black belt," where they find the heat and moisture in which they thrive, and their climatically conditioned exclusion from the more northern states are matters of local significance. Economic and social retardation have kept the hot belt relatively underpopulated. The density map shows much the largest part of it with a population less than 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 more to the square mile before emigration begins. The would-be exiles then have a wide choice of new homes in other tropical lands, where they find congenial climate and phases of economic development into which they will fit. East Indian coolies are found in Cape Colony, Natal, Zanzibar, Trinidad, and British Guiana, where they constitute 38 per cent. of the population.

[Sidenote: Effects of tropical climate.]

The redundant population of crowded western and southern Europe also seek these sparsely inhabited Tropics, but they come heavily handicapped by the necessity of acclimatization. They leave their homes from Trondhjem and Stockholm in the north to the Mediterranean in the south, where the mean annual temperatures vary from 5 deg. to 17 deg. C, (41 deg. to 63 deg. F.), to seek the Torrid Zone which averages 25 deg. C. or 77 deg. F. over most of its territory. The effects of a tropical climate are due to intense heat, to its long duration without the respite conferred by a bracing winter season, and its combination with the high degree of humidity prevailing over most of the Torrid Zone. These are conditions advantageous to plant life, but hardly favorable to human development. They produce certain derangements in the physiological functions of heart, liver, kidneys and organs of reproduction. Bodily temperature rises, while susceptibility to disease and rate of mortality show an increase ominous for white colonization. The general effect is intense enervation; this starts a craving for stimulants and induces habits of alcoholism which are accountable for many bodily ills usually attributed to direct climatic influences. Transfer to the Tropics tends to relax the mental and moral fiber, induces indolence, self-indulgences and various excesses which lower the physical tone.[1435] The social control of public opinion in the new environment is weak, while temptation, due to both climatic and social causes, is peculiarly strong. The presence of an inferior, more or less servile native population, relaxes both conscience and physical energy just when both need a tonic. The result is general enervation, deterioration both as economic and political agents.

[Sidenote: Historical significance of deterioration]

This is the effect of climate which has had the most far-reaching and persistent historical consequences. Our study of the historical movements of peoples in the northern hemisphere revealed a steady influx from colder into tropical and sub-tropical lands, followed always by enervation and loss of national efficiency, due partly to the debilitating heat of the new habitat, partly to its easier conditions of living, whether the intruders came as conquerors and appropriated the fat of the land, or as immigrant colonists who dropped into slack methods of agriculture, because rain and sun and soil made their reluctant labor scarcely necessary. Everywhere in the Tropics the enervating effects of heat, moisture, and abundance make not only the natives averse to steady work, but start the energetic European immigrant down the same easy descent to Avernus. Passing over the deterioration of the Aryans in India, the Persians in Mesopotamia, and the Vandals in Africa, we find that modern instances show the transformation to be very rapid. The French who since 1715 have occupied the islands of Reunion and Mauritius have lost much of their thrift and energy, though their new homes lie just within the southern tropic, and are blessed with an oceanic climate. Yet the volunteer troops sent by Reunion to aid in the recent subjugation of the Hovas in Madagascar proved to be utterly useless.[1436] The Spaniards who come to-day to Mexico have great energy, born of their former hard conditions of life in Spain. But their children are reared in a country whose mean annual temperature, even on the plateau, exceeds that of Spain by 10 deg.C. (or 18 deg.F.), a difference equal to that between Mobile and New York, or Madrid and Christiania. Hence they are less energetic and vigorous, while the third generation are typical Mexicans in their easy-going way of life.[1437] The Germans who recently have colonized southern Brazil in great numbers show a similar deterioration under similar increase of mean annual temperature, combined with somewhat greater humidity, which intensifies the debilitating effects of the heat. An investigation made in 1900 by the International Harvester Company of America revealed the fact that the German farmer in the State of Santa Catharina rarely cultivated over one acre of grain.[1438] Much of the iron in the blood and conscience of the New England missionary stock which went to Hawaii two generations ago has been dissolved out by the warm rain and balmy air of the islands.

[Sidenote: The problem of acclimatization.]

In all these instances the white race has been successfully transplanted. It has domiciled itself on the borders of the Tropics and has propagated its kind, though it has abated some of the vigorous qualities which characterized it in its temperate fatherland. In the real Tropics like India, Cochin China, the Malay Archipelago, and Central Africa, the whole perplexing and urgent problem of European colonization turns on the difficulty or impossibility of acclimatization; and this in turn affects the whole economic, ethnic and political destiny of present colonial holdings. If acclimatization is impossible, the alternative is an imported ruling class, constantly invalided and as constantly renewed, aided by a similar commercial body acting as superintendents of labor; the whole machine of government and economic exploitation is supported by a permanent servile native population, doing the preeminently tropical work of agriculture, which is so fatal to the white man in a torrid climate. This means that the conquering white race of the Temperate Zone is to be excluded by adverse climatic conditions from the productive but undeveloped Tropics, unless it consents to hybridization, like the Spaniards and Portuguese of tropical America. In that national struggle for existence which is a struggle for space, it means an added advantage for the Mediterranean peoples, that they are more tolerant of a torrid climate than the blond Teutons, whose disability in this regard is pronounced; it means that the aptitude of the Chinese for a wide range of climatic accommodation, from the Arctic circle to the equator, lends color to "the yellow peril."

[Sidenote: Historical importance of the temperate zones.]

In contrast to the monotonous extremes of climate in the hot and cold zones, temperate lands are characterized by the intermediate degrees of annual temperature and marked seasonal diversity which are so favorable to human development. In Arctic lands labor is paralyzed by cold as it is by heat in the enervating and overproductive Tropics. In one, the growing season is too short and ill-favored; in the other, too long to stimulate man to sustained industry. Hence the Temperate Zones, whose climate avoids both these extremes and abounds in contrasts, whose summers are productive enough to supply food for the winter, and whose winters give both motive and energy for the summer's work, are richer in cultural possibilities and hence in historical importance.

[Sidenote: Effects of contrasted seasons.]

The advantage of the Temperate Zone is not only its moderate and adequate allowance of heat, but its contrast of seasons. Beyond the range of a vertical sun, grades of temperature change rapidly from latitude to latitude and from summer to winter. The seasons bring variety of activities, which sharply react upon one another. Manufactures were in their origin chiefly winter industries, as they still are in small isolated communities. The modern factory system flourishes best in cooler parts of the Temperate Zone, where the agricultural demands of the summer, spreading over a shorter period, leave a longer time for winter work, and where that once long winter of the Glacial Period, by the scouring action of the ice cap, has reduced the fertile area of the northern fields. The factory system is also favored, as Heinrich von Treitschke maintains, by the predominance of cool or cold weather, which facilitates the concentration of numerous workmen in large buildings, and renders possible long labor hours the year round,[1439]--conditions unthinkable in a warm climate. The iron and steel industries which have grown up about Birmingham, Alabama, find that the long hot summers and mild winters reduce the efficiency of their 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 with summer and winter crops, whether field work is possible at all, and how long it is interrupted by excessive cold. Buckle maintains that climate not only enervates or invigorates man, but affects also the constancy of his work and his capacity for sustained labor throughout the year. He considers "that no people living in a very northern latitude have ever possessed that steady and unflinching industry for which the inhabitants of temperate regions are remarkable" and assigns as a reason "that the severity of the weather, and, at some seasons, the deficiency of light, render it impossible for the people to continue their usual out-of-door employments." The result of this he finds to be desultory habits of work, which help to make the national character fitful and capricious. He cites in illustration of his principle the people of the Scandinavian and Iberian peninsulas, whom he finds marked "by a certain instability and fickleness of character," owing to the fact that in Norway and Sweden agricultural labor experiences long interruptions, due to the severity of the winter and the shortness of the days; in Spain and Portugal owing to the heat and drought of summer.[1440] The extreme continental climate of northern of Russia with its violent contrast of the seasons, its severe and protracted winters, enables Leroy-Beaulieu to make a safer application of this principle to the empire of the Czars, which, unlike Scandinavia, feels no ameliorating effect from the mild Atlantic winds and commands no alternative industries like dairy farming, fisheries, and maritime trade.[1441] Hence Leroy-Beaulieu attributes the unsystematic, desultory habits of work prevailing among the northern peasants to the long intermission of labor in winter, and to the alternation of a short period of intense activity with a long period of enforced idleness. He finds them resembling southern peoples in their capacity for sudden spurts of energy rather than sustained effort, thinks them benumbed by the sloth of the far north, which is not unlike the sloth of the south.[1442]

The dominant continental and central location of Russia enables its climatic extremes to operate with little check. The peripheral location of Scandinavia in the path of the Atlantic winds modifies its climate to a mild oceanic type, and its dominant maritime situation gives its people the manifold resources of a typical coast land. Hence Buckle's estimate of national character in the Scandinavian Peninsula has little basis as to fact or cause. Irregularity of agricultural labor does not mean here cessation of all labor, and hence does not produce the far-reaching effect ascribed to it. Only about one-third of the Norwegian population is engaged in agriculture. The restriction of its arable and meadow land to 3 per cent. of the whole territory, and the fact that a large proportion of the people are employed in shipping and the fisheries,[1443] are due to several geographic factors besides climate. 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 or from only one phase of its influence. The duration and intensity of the seasons affects not only the manner of work, but the whole mode of life of a people. On the Yukon, in Iceland, and the high mountain valleys of the Alps, winter puts a check not only upon out-of-door labor, but upon all public or community life. Intercourse stops or is greatly restricted. The outside world drops away. In Iceland, the law courts are in session only in summer when the roads by sea and land are open. In the Kentucky mountains the district schools close before Christmas, when the roads become impassable from rain and snow; the summer is the gala time for funeral services, for only then can the preacher or "circuit-rider" reach the graves made in the winter. Therefore the funerals in one community accumulate, so to speak, and finally, when leisure comes after the August harvest, they make the occasion for important social gatherings. Much of the influence of winter lies in its power to isolate.

It is the economic effects of such periods of enforced idleness which are most obvious, both in their power to restrict national wealth and keep down density of population. When long, they limit subsistence to the products of a short growing season, except where local mining adds considerable sources of revenue. In the Russian government of Yaroslaf, located on the northernmost bend of the Volga within the agricultural belt, and containing the chief inland wheat market of the Empire, the field labor of four months must support the population for the remaining eight months of the year. The half of Russia included in the cold forest zone of the north maintains meagerly a sparse population, and can hope for an increase of the same only by the encouragement of Industrial pursuits. Here the long winter leisure has created the handicrafts on which so many villages rely, and which in turn have given rise to peddling,[1444] as we have seen it do in high mountain regions where altitude intensifies and prolongs the winter season. Agricultural and industrial 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 in the governments of Vladimir, Moscow, and St. Petersburg, cease beyond the sixtieth parallel, which defines the northern limit of the agricultural 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 the attachment of the peasants to the soil in 1593. This measure was resorted to at a time when the Muscovite dominion from its center in Great Russia had recently been extended at the expense of the Tartars, and had thus embraced fertile southern lands, which tempted the northern peasant away from his unfruitful fields.[1446] This attraction, coupled with the free and hopeful life of the frontier, met the migrant instinct bred in the peasant by the wide plains and far horizon of Russia, so that the north threatened to be left without cultivators. Later, the harsh climatic conditions of the north were advanced as an argument against the abolition of serfdom, on the ground that this system alone secured to the landed proprietor a steady labor supply, and guaranteed to the peasant his maintenance during the long, idle winter.

The duration and severity of the cold season has put a drag upon the wheel of enterprise in Canada, as opposed to the warmer United States. The prairies of the Canadian Northwest, whose fertile soil should early have attracted settlement, were a closed land till railroads could pour into it every summer from the warmer south and east a seasonal tide of laborers. These follow the harvest as it advances from point to point, and then withdraw in autumn either to the lumber camps of eastern Canada, Minnesota and Wisconsin, or to seek other forms of out-door labor in the more southern states, thus lifting from the Canadian farmer the burden of their winter support.

In the lower latitudes of the Temperate Zones, where the growing season is long and the dormant period correspondingly short and mild, we find agriculture based upon clearly distinguished winter and summer crops, as in the northern Punjab (30 deg. to 34 deg. N. L.);[1447] or producing a quick succession of valuable crops, where the fertility of the soil can be maintained by manures or irrigating streams, as in many of the warmer Southern States and in Spain[1448] respectively. In Argentine, where tillage is extensive, land abundant, and population sparse, where, in fact, "skimp farming" is the rule, the shrewd cultivator takes advantage of the long growing season to stretch out his period of sowing and reaping, and thus tills a larger area. The International Harvester Company of America, investigating the reason for the small number of reaping machines employed in Argentine in proportion to the area under cultivation, found that the simple climatic condition of a long growing season enabled one reaper to serve about twice the acreage usual in the United States, because it could work twice as long.[1449]

[Sidenote: Zones of culture.]

Over and beyond slight local variations of climate and season within the same zone, which contribute their quota to economic and historical results, it is the fundamental differences between the hot, cold and temperate climatic zones that produce the most conspicuous and abiding effects. These broad belts, each with its characteristic climatic conditions and appropriate civilization, form so many girdles of culture around the earth. They have their dominant features of heat and cold, variously combined with moisture and aridity, which give a certain zonal stamp 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 population has made them almost a negligible factor in history. [Compare maps pages 8, 9, and 612.] The discoveries and settlements of the Northmen in Greenland remained a barren historical event, though the vikings' ships reached a new hemisphere. Iceland is the only land in this sub-arctic region which ever figured upon the stage of history; and its role was essentially passive. Such prominence as it acquired was due to its island nature and its situation in a swirl of the Gulf Stream, which ameliorates the worst climatic effects of its far northern location, and brings it just within the upper limit of the temperate belt. The wide sub-arctic lowlands of Russia and Siberia, which, from the Ural Mountains to the lower Amur River, stretch the cold zone well below the sixtieth parallel, have at times in the last three centuries and especially in the past decade thrown their great mass into the scale of eastern Asiatic history. This has been possible because the hot summer characteristic of continental climates forces the July isotherm of 20 deg.C. northward over the vast heated surface of Asia nearly to the sixtieth parallel, well within the borders of Siberia. It gives that belt the short but warm growing season with protracted hours of sunshine which is so favorable to cereals, lending to Omsk, Tomsk, Vitimsk and all the stretch of Russian settlements in Siberia, an admirable summer climate like that of the Canadian Northwest.[1450]

[Sidenote: The cradle of civilization.]

The North Temperate Zone is preeminently the culture zone of the earth. It is the seat of the most important, most steadily progressive civilizations, and the source of all the cultural stimuli which have given an upward start to civilization in other zones during the past three centuries. It contains the Mediterranean basin, which was the pulsing heart of ancient history, and all the modern historically important regions of Europe, Asia, Africa, and America. The temperate belt of the southern hemisphere also is following its lead, since European civilization has been transplanted to other parts of the world. This is the zone which least suffers from the drawbacks of climatic monotony or extremes, and best combines, especially in the northern hemisphere, the wide range of annual and seasonal variety so favorable to economic and cultural development, with the incalculable advantage of large land area.

Man grew in the temperate zone, was born in the Tropics. There, in his primitive, pre-civilized state, he lived in a moist, warm, uniform climate which supplied abundantly his simple wants, put no strain upon his feeble intellect and will. That first crude human product of Nature's Pliocene workshop turned out in the steaming lowland of Java, and now known to us as the Pithecanthropus erectus, found about him the climatic conditions generally conceded to have been necessary for man in his helpless, futile infancy. Where man has remained in the Tropics, with few exceptions he has suffered arrested development. His nursery has kept him a child. Though his initial progress depended upon the gifts which Nature put into his hands, his later evolution depended far more upon the powers which she developed within him. These have no limit, so far as our experience shows; but their growth is painful, reluctant. Therefore they develop only where Nature subjects man to compulsion, forces him to earn his daily bread, and thereby something more than bread. This compulsion is found in less luxurious but more salutary geographic conditions than the Tropics afford, in an environment that exacts a tribute of labor and invention in return for the boon of life, but offers a reward certain and generous enough to insure the accumulation of wealth which marks the beginning of civilization.[1451]

Most of the ancient civilizations originated just within the mild but drier margin of the Temperate Zone, where the cooler air of a short winter acted like a tonic upon the energies relaxed by the lethargic atmosphere of the hot and humid Tropics; where congenial warmth encouraged vegetation, but where the irrigation necessary to secure abundant and regular crops called forth inventiveness, cooeperation, and social organization, and gave to the people their first baptism of redemption from savagery to barbarism. Native civilizations of limited development have arisen in the Tropics, but only where, as in Yemen, Mexico and Peru, a high, cool, semi-arid plateau, a restricted area of fertile soil, and a protected location alternately coddled and spurred the nascent people.

As the Tropics have been the cradle of humanity, the Temperate Zone has been the cradle and school of civilization. Here Nature has given much by withholding much. Here man found his birthright, the privilege of the struggle.

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. New York, 1903.

[1413] Isaiah Bowman, Distribution of Population in Bolivia, Bulletin of 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. New York, 1903.

[1416] G.G. Chisholm, Commercial Geography, p. 23. London, 1904.

[1417] Julius Hann, Handbook of Climatology, Part I, pp. 171-173. New York, 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 Tropical Plateaus 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 African Islands, pp. 172-175. London, 1901.

[1437] Matthias Romero, Mexico and the United States, Vol. I, p. 79. New York, 1898.

[1438] From a personal interview with the supervising agent for South America.

[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. New York, 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.