COMPARATIVE GEOGRAPHY.PART I.THE SURFACE OF THE EARTH CONSIDERED IN ITS MOST GENERAL RELATIONS.
The measurements of, and investigations into the figure of the earth, have led, as already stated in the introduction, to no absolutely certain conclusion; yet they have made it certain that the earth is, in a general sense, a spheroid. There are many discrepancies, as were then stated, from the perfectly spheroidal shape; still it is in this sense a spheroid, that the polar diameter is not of the same length with the equatorial diameter.
The globular form of the earth, using that word in a loose sense, has been established with certainty since Newton’s time. The experience of circumnavigators, the uniform shield-shape of the shadow of the earth during eclipses of the moon, are witnesses to this. The gradual emerging and disappearance of objects, such as ships on the sea, in coming and going, caravans on the desert, of mountains as they are approached, establish the fact. These proofs are so well known that we but touch on them and pass to what is not so obvious.
As soon as the fact was established that the earth was a subordinate member of a system, it was brought into analogy with other planets, and their uniformly spherical shape was considered another valid reason for attributing the same to our globe. The discovery of the rotation of the earth on its axis was still another argument in the same direction. Mathematical measurements and observations of the pendulum, taken at different stations, have confirmed the same result.
To measure a spherical body, it is only necessary to take the length of a degree in one of its great circles, and to multiply its length by 360, the number of degrees. The method of measuring a degree on the earth’s surface is by taking two stars, just one degree apart, dropping, by astronomical and mathematical means, vertical lines upon the earth from them and measuring the distances apart of the points where those lines impinge upon the globe. This can be done with perfect accuracy. Such investigations show that the degrees are not all of equal length, as they would be were the earth a perfect sphere. Nearer the poles they are longer, nearer the equator they are shorter. The curvature of the earth is therefore greater as you approach the equatorial line, and less as you recede from it. In general terms, then, the earth is an oblate spheroid, as it would be a prolate spheroid were the lengths of its diameters reversed. By the most accurate measurements, those of the astronomer Bessel, if the equatorial diameter were divided into 289 equal parts, the polar diameter would measure 288 of them, being ¹⁄₂₈₉ shorter.
To this must be added what was said in the introduction, that the surprising accuracy of modern instruments and modern investigations, applied to meridian circles and parallels of latitude, have determined the fact that thespheroid is not a perfect one, (just as so often in nature the ideal is rather striven after than attained,) but an irregular polyhedron of an indeterminate number of sides. Still for all practical purposes, these minute inquiries have no value, and it is enough to treat of the earth as a perfect globe, so far, at least, as map-drawing is concerned. The deviation from a perfectly spherical shape is so inconsiderable that in an artificial globe of eighteen inches diameter it would hardly amount to the thickness of a sheet of paper; still, small as this is represented on a miniature scale, it has, doubtless, great importance on the great scale of a world like this, both in affecting somewhat the perturbation of other heavenly bodies which depend on the earth, as well as the perturbations in the earth’s own motion. Besides this, which is really not a small point in consideration of the possible results which the minutest perturbation of one little planet may have on the universe, there is one other, more appreciable in its results, the probable influence of this spheroidal, or rather polyhedrons form, in producing the unequal division of land and water upon the surface of the earth. The apparent want of any principle or reason for this inequality has long perplexed geographers, and there seems to be no more satisfactory solution than the one to which I have just alluded. In the course of future investigations into the yet undetermined exact mathematical form of the earth, the law which controls the division into land and water will be more thoroughly understood. Unquestionably the position of the great oceans depends upon their distance from the center of the globe, and although the present proportion of land and water seems fortuitous, undoubtedly it has a uniformly acting, and a thoroughly appreciable law.
What may in the largest and most general sense be called the superficies of the earth, is threefold in character, and yet one in function; consisting of a highly elastic body, the atmosphere, water, and the solid ground. These three forms are variously proportioned; the more elastic is universal, the fluid form is more restricted, and the solid one prevails still less. The more dense the body, the nearer it is found to the center of the earth. The lightest of all floats over the entire periphery of the globe like a graceful mantle of cloud. Man, and in fact all organisms, live by contact with all three of these forms. The investigation of the elements, and phenomena of the air,regarded in themselves, is the province of meteorology. The mercury-column is the true language of the atmosphere, and tells us in distinct tones of all the changes there. Mineralogy and geology make us acquainted with all the qualities and all the elements of the soil, not in their relation to man, but regarded in themselves. Geography deals with the conflict of all these bodies, their relations to each other, their mutual action and reaction. Meteorology gives occasion for the study of climate, and for the observation of the phenomena of the lower strata of the atmosphere,—the fall of rain and snow, for example. Geology and mineralogy give rise to the study of plains and mountain formations, as well as of volcanic phenomena, affecting the surface of the earth as they do in earthquakes, upheavals of whole districts, and the opening of hot springs. Thus, geography has it own province clearly defined, and uses all this and studies it in relation to the organic world, and to man foremost of all.
The most highly elastic covering of the earth is unbroken,the other two are sundered, and each only occupies a part of the surface. Formerly, in most ancient times, the water seems to have covered the entire earth. The study of this is, however, within the domain of geology. We have to do only with the historic period which followed. We have to look at the earth in its present relations, and as the home of man. Now, the portions covered with water are, by far, the largest part of the surface; a little less than three-fourths are water, a little more than one-fourth land. The whole water-mass is composed largely of the oceans, which, in one sense, constitute a continent of their own: in looking at them as we do now, we are not to regard them as ceasing at the outlines of the great land-masses, but as penetrating these as far as to the springs which feed the rivers; for the world of waters, embracing springs, brooks, rivers, lakes, seas, and oceans, is one, and but one.
The water is, in some respects, a form between the other two; its peculiarities, weight, density, freedom of movement, and changeableness of form, are a mean between the opposing extremes of air and the ground. Water can pass to a more fluid or a more solid state; it can become vapor or ice. The measurement of the depth of the world of waters has lately been so clearly connected with the needs of civilization, that geographers have made many exceedingly accurate investigations. Formerly, this was much neglected; up to Captain Cook’s time 1500 feet was the greatest depth ascertained; in the course of the Arctic discoveries 7000 feet limited the plummet’s descent; Captain Ross sounded, near St. Helena, to a depth of 30,000 feet; and Captain Denhorn, in the South Atlantic, reached a point 46,000 feet from the surface—about twice the height of the loftiest mountains. And not single pointsalone, but entire ocean districts have been traversed; the temperature of these great depths has been studied, the currents, the density, in fact all the features which must be known preliminarily to the laying of great lines of submarine telegraphs, such, for example, as that proposed between North America and Europe.
The atmosphere, too, is by no means thoroughly known to us. It rises to a height between 85 and 95 miles from the earth, of which man has explored in balloons only about five miles, or the height of the loftiest mountains. At loftier heights than we can live, the bright light of mid-day even fades into a dim kind of twilight, and meteoric masses of iron are seen in full glow, there being oxygen enough even there to support their combustion, and very little resistance to overcome from the density of the atmosphere. Astronomers, Benzenberg in particular, have calculated the distance of the meteors to range from 23 to 100 miles from the earth, and have studied them[2]in respect to the time when they were visible, their locality, and their direction. The limits of the atmosphere must be at that point where the expansive power of air and the attractive influence of the globe neutralize each other. The form of the atmospheric body is therefore, like the earth, spheroidal, but far more oblate than the earth, in consequence of its much greater fluidity. At the poles, the distance is therefore much less from the surface of the earth to the confines of the atmosphere than at the equator.The effect of this upon the refraction of light must be very great.
The investigation of the interior of the earth is more difficult to us than that of the atmosphere even. We cannot say that weknowthoroughly more than we can learn by penetrating ¹⁄₆₀₀₀ part of the distance to the center of the globe. Deeper than that our lowest shafts have not sunk. The coal mines of England penetrate perhaps the farthest below the sea level; for the deep mines in Germany, in the Hartz district, for instance, have their entrance hundreds of feet above it. One coal mine near Durham, England, descends to a depth of about 1584 feet, and reaches a point where the thermometer is 79° Fahrenheit. The deep coal mines of England have, however, one rival, in a shaft at Liege, which is sunk 1800 feet.
The modern Artesian well has gone to still greater depths, in the effort to procure brine for the manufacture of salt, or fresh water for the use of cities. At Rehme, in Porta Westphalica, a point 2160 feet from the surface has been reached, and water brought up at a temperature of 90° Fahrenheit, containing four per cent. of salt. By an ingenious application of mechanics to the process of well boring, doubtless a depth of 5000 feet could be attained. At Mondorf, in Luxemburg, a bore has been made through sandstone and the mineral formations lying beneath it, for a distance of 2700 feet, and water reached at 82° Fahrenheit.
The great upheavals caused by earthquakes and volcanoes disclose still vaster depths. In the eruptions of the latter, immense masses of the inner contents of the earth are thrown out, sometimes enough to form a not insignificant mountain, and to desolate large regions with their debris. As a general thing, the original mineral forms arelost and indistinguishable in the molten mass. Yet not seldom perfect specimens are hurled out, imbedded in lava and cinders; not always minute fragments, sometimes huge blocks, testifying not with any degree of completeness, yet clearly, to a certain extent, of the composition of the region bordering on the great inner sea of molten matter. Yet most of our knowledge upon this subject is hypothetical, and what we know only indicates painfully the great extent of that of which we are entirely ignorant.
The uniform increase of temperature, as we descend into the earth, at the rate of about 24° Fahrenheit for every 100 feet, the heat of some mineral springs, leads to the conclusion that, could we advance to a place about twenty-three miles from the surface, we should attain the limits where all becomes a molten mass. The cold surface, on which we walk in such security, seems, by all analogies, to envelop a liquid caldron which has been seething from the morning of the world. This internal mass is, of course, the source of all volcanic eruptions, and of all the phenomena to which I have alluded above. A distinguished geologist has well said that “light and heat are the two extremes of being: the farther man goes away from the earth’s surface, he encounters light; the farther he recedes inwardly from its surface, he encounters heat.” It is true we are not absolutely certain that the rate of increase is uniform, at the rate of one degree Fahrenheit for every 45 feet; but if it is, we should reach the boiling point of water at less than 10,000 feet from the surface, and the melting point of iron (22° Fahrenheit) a little over 120,000 feet. The relation of this thickness to the entire diameter of the earth is about as 1 to 344, about the ratio of the thickness of an egg-shell to the egg.
The equatorial diameter of the earth, 7925·6 miles, multiplied into the circumference, 24898·8, equals 197,339,590, the number of square miles on the earth’s surface, reckoning as if of a true sphere. The deduction to be made, in consequence of its spheroidal shape, has not yet been estimated with any approach to nicety. The sum indicated above is exact enough to satisfy geographical purposes; enough to lead to the laws of relative rather than to a minute individualization. The proportion even of land to water has not been determined, except with approximate accuracy. It has been commonly stated that two-thirds are water and one-third land; others have computed three-fifths to be water and two-fifths land. The most accurate measurements, those instituted by Humboldt, have left it in this statement, that if the whole be taken as one, the sea occupies ·734, the land ·265, or, reduced and simplified in almost unchanged form, a little more than three-quarters water, a little less than one-quarter land. Of course it is impossible, as yet, to attain to accuracy in these estimates, as our knowledge is imperfect regarding the polar regions; there are about 17,000,000 square miles unexplored.
The ascertaining of superficial areas with exactness is one of the most costly operations undertaken in the interest of science. The first mathematical survey of France, one hundred and fifty years ago, undertaken by Cassini, cost four millions; the second sixteen millions; a third, still more costly, has been made within the present century. Still, it must be said that few countries have expended money in this direction with as much prodigality asFrance. In Turkey, for instance, so little accuracy has been attained, that the survey of that country, undertaken by Beauchamp early in this century, resulted in establishing the Sultan in possession of 17,000 square miles which he had supposed were covered by the Black Sea. The recent surveys of Prussia have rectified similar mistakes, and, in the constantly increasing accuracy, have given hundreds of square miles to the Crown. Many countries, and in truth the most, have never been subjected to a strict mensuration. The jagged coast lines of islands and continents have been so great a barrier, that we have to speak with great uncertainty of the superficial contents which they inclose. The statements of these make no pretense, therefore, to accuracy. We must be content, at present, with the rudest approximation. This accounts for the discrepancy in our geographical compendia; no two of them agree, unless one servilely copies the other. The statistics relating to the superficial contents of continents, and of separate countries, must be taken with a great deal of allowance. The evil cannot be remedied at present; it will be, doubtless, at some future day. The discrepancies which it occasions will be seen, from the fact that the area of Europe has been computed to be between 3,254,800 and 3,870,500 square miles; that of Asia between 16,180,000 and 16,831,600; that of Africa between 11,257,200 and 11,513,600; that of America between 12,140,400 and 15,963,600; that of Australia between 2,756,000 and 3,201,200 square miles.
According to this, Asia is five times as large as Europe, and almost six times as large as the continent of Australia. Africa is three times as large as Europe. America is four times as large as Europe, and is as large as Africa and Australia combined. Europe would make about one-thirdof Africa, one-quarter of America, one-fifth of Asia. Our present knowledge does not allow us to speak more definitely nor exactly.
Whether we divide the globe into northern and southern or eastern and western hemispheres, their relative amounts of land and water will be different The northern hemisphere contains (speaking approximatively as above) 38,541,600 square miles of land, and 59,619,700 of water; the southern, 12,847,200 of land, and 85,526,100 of water. The eastern hemisphere contains 36,760,800 square miles of land, and 61,401,000 of water; the western, 14,628,000 of land, and 83,533,300 of water.
Besides the division quantitatively, the division in respect to symmetry of shape is entirely irregular. Symmetry, as we usually use the word, consists in the arrangement of parts at equal distances, or two sides at least, from some central point or line. Mineral crystals are regarded in relation to the point where crystallization began; plants are viewed in relation to the stem-axis; animals in relation to the symmetry of the entire structure. A similar law of symmetry is entirely wanting to the globe; its arrangement is altogether unlike this; it is not nearly so perceptible at first glance, yet it is far more profound in design and comprehensive in its relations.
The land is broken up into masses, varying in size, and called, arbitrarily, continents and islands. Strictly speaking, there are but two continents, the old world forming one, the new world the other. Australia may be called the smallest continent or the largest island; it is the connecting link between the forms, and shows at a glance the arbitrary distinction. We might easily go further and callNew Guinea, Borneo, Sumatra, Great Britain, and Java, continents, and, on the other hand, we might designate the old and the new world as islands. There is nothing absolute here but the usage of speech.
The continents and islands lie mainly in the northern hemisphere, (38,341,600 square miles,) scarcely a third part of their superficies (12,847,200 square miles) being in the southern.
The continents are so situated also that the eastern contains by far the largest body of land, (36,760,800 square miles,) the western being only about one-third as large, (13,628,000 square miles.) America, the western, it will be seen, has no first-class island lying near it; it stands isolated.
It is seen by this that the greatest mass of land lies in the northern hemisphere, dividing the earth in one way, and in the eastern dividing it in another; the smallest mass in the southern and the western. In the northeast the watery realm is the most contracted, in the southwest the least. We are thus enabled to speak of the land side of the globe, the land hemisphere, and a water side, the water hemisphere.
The central point of the water hemisphere is at the island of New Zealand. Toward this the points of all the continents are directed. The center of the land hemisphere is in the northwest of Europe, at a point near southeast of England, the northeast of France, and the coast of Holland. The dwellers around the North Sea are the antipodes of the New Zealanders. Great Britain is the country which, as a whole, is the middle point of the continental world. In the oceanic world, the islands lie like scattered dots, insignificant in respect to area, in comparison with the waste of waters which surrounds them, while,on the other hand, the land hemisphere is so solidly compacted, that even the Arctic Ocean becomes merely a broad channel.
Thus arises the first great contrast which we have to study: the first, and next to the great primary distinction between the North and South, the most important. The division into land and water, aside from commerce, must exercise the strongest influence on the distribution of heat and cold, affecting the temperature of all the zones. This influence has been fully noticed and brought before the world by Alexander von Humboldt. It is sufficient to refer to it now as a well-determined fact in physical geography.
The heat equator is a little farther north than the mathematical equator, because the land hemisphere has a greater heat capacity (if we may use an awkward but apt word) than the water hemisphere. All other isothermal lines are modified in their greater or less coincidence with the parallels of latitude as they advance from the heat equator toward the maximum of the land hemisphere, or, in general terms, as they go northward. In the western hemisphere the isothermal lines follow much more exactly the parallels of latitude than in the eastern, which is pre-eminently the land hemisphere. In America the proximity of immense masses of water causes a perceptible reduction of the heat from that of the eastern where the land form prevails. And the heat diminishes more as we advance toward the South Pole, than toward the North, in consequence of the greater deficiency of land in the southern hemisphere; while in Lapland, Greenland, and in Siberia, even within the polar circle itself, men find sustenance and trees live, in the same latitude, at the South Pole, no vegetable life, worth mentioning, is found. The frigidzone and the temperate zone of the southern hemisphere are not coincident with those of the northern. The icebergs which are formed at the South Pole are carried much nearer to the equator than those found at the North Pole.
An important phenomenon, first pointed out by A. von Humboldt and Dove, is closely connected with what has just been said. The Atlantic shores of the old world are warmer than those in the same latitude of the new world. Norway, England, and France are warmer than Labrador and Canada; Spain, Portugal, and Morocco are warmer than Florida; Congo and Benguela are warmer than Brazil, although the countries brought in contrast all lie on the same parallel.
A similar analogy is drawn from the west shore of America: Northern California is warmer than Japan and Corea, which are in the same latitude. It is true, other factors are at work to produce this, such as winds, marine currents, elevations of land, etc., of which more will be said hereafter.
Both of the two great land divisions of the earth, it will thus be seen, have their peculiarities. But there is a great equalizer of their diversities, found in a great coast-belt, of which I must briefly speak. It passes from the Cape of Good Hope northeasterly at an angle of 45°, passing through the Mozambique channel, thence skirting the entire southeastern and eastern coast of Asia, taking in China, Corea, Japan, and South Kamtckatka; thence it turns southward, following the whole western shore of America to Cape Horn. This belt is broken at only two points—a brief break at the north, at Behring’s Straits, and a large one between Cape Horn and the Cape of Good Hope; in other words, at the points nearest to the Northand the South Poles respectively. This coast belt has a relation to the habitable world similar to that held by the temperate zone as a mediator between the torrid and the frigid. It partakes of the character of the sea and the land, and shows the advantages of both. It does not run parallel with the lines of latitude, but crosses them diagonally, in the same direction with the ecliptic, though at a more acute angle. This belt moderates all extremes. Coincident with it are the paths of the sea and land winds, the course of the monsoons, the most fertile shores of the whole globe. It divides the surface of the globe into three great divisions, the two great bodies of water, and the great, and, comparatively speaking, unbroken (for the break at Behring’s Straits is of little importance) land-mass. On the great coast line referred to above is the center of the great natural acclivities of the globe. It is the most varied, the most stimulating, and the most productive in all departments of the vegetable and animal kingdoms. The Atlantic coast belt, which also has great influence on the eastern districts of the new world and the western districts of the old, crosses the great coast belt at almost right angles at the place of its great sundering between Cape Horn and the Cape of Good Hope.
If the contrast between the sea and the land has the effect indicated above on the general development of organic life, it must of course have great effect also on the life and character of man. Man eminently depends upon the conditions amid which his lot is cast. The inhabitant of one of the Pacific islands dwelt in a world whose utmost possibilities to him lay in the adjacent islands within view, and which his canoe could reach in a few hours’ sail. The difference in culture between him and those whose range of observation has been greater, must be immense.The compacted land division of the globe, the solid cluster of continents, must be the source of stimulus and culture, of which the isolated inhabitant of the Pacific islands knew nothing, till commerce had at length linked the world together. Only with the improvements in navigation could civilization reach him. The European had to carry his culture to the New Zealander, his antipode.
The ancients had little suspicion of all this. Yet the contrast between the land world and the water world did not escape Strabo’s keen glances, and he hints at its effects on man. It is glanced at in one passage of his 15th Book. He is speaking of the effect of the moist air of India in contrast with the dry air of Libya, and shows that he appreciates that these are not without their influence on the constitution of the Indian and of the Ethiopian. “Some,” he says, “rightly ascribe it to the sun, that, in the absence of moisture in their air, the rays burn so deeply into the body of the African; the Indian, on the other hand, is not jet black and curly-haired, because, in his country, he enjoys the moisture in the atmosphere.”
Besides the three great forms spoken of above—the compacted land-mass, the great water-mass, and the subordinate water-mass—the position of the continents leads us to another discovery of prime importance.
The question arises, What relation have the continents, taken separately, to the entire mass which they constitute? What relation do they bear to each other? What influence does the proximity of great land forms exercise? What influence their remoteness from each other? Is the arrangement of the continents fortuitous, or adapted togreat ends always held in view by the Creator? Has Nature been left in this to a wild, passionate caprice, or has she been subjected to law, and been compelled to subserve the interests of humanity? And is it not worthy of study, worthy of science, to investigate these things, to master their law, and observe here the workings of the Divine Mind?
In the solar system, we have for a long time minutely studied matters of size and distance, the approach and receding of planets, and observed the effects of all these things with an accuracy which could not be too thorough. In the study of our Earth, this has been neglected, because heretofore those great tracts of land and water have seemed of little mutual influence; because they are fixed forms. Yet they have a greater influence, perhaps, on this very account. Although there is in them no law of gravitation to study, yet there is in them the display of forces no less surprising than those of attraction, and which are to be read in the light, not of mathematics, but in the light of history. It indeed seems self-evident that a grouping of these great forms cannot be without an influence on the progression or retarded development of nations; on the amount of population, the progress of colonization, and the union of States in offensive and defensive alliance. Should a higher Power throw the continents out of their present position and relation to each other, a new history of the world would date from this day.
Here, then, is the primary element of history; the laws of continental arrangement are the starting-point. Mathematics has thrown a network of meridians and parallels over the surface of the globe; but these lines exercise little influence over the course of history. The symmetry and regularity which they suggest do not belong to the earth;the earth is not bounded, like a crystal, by right lines. There is a freer play than that mathematical mark of parallels and meridians suggests; there is an interdependence of the great land districts of the globe that these regular lines do not indicate; a higher law of order, evolving the most perfect results from elements seemingly the most discordant.
The great land-mass of the globe accumulates in size as we advance toward the North Pole. South of 55° S. lat., the continental form disappears, and the tracts discovered of late years in the neighborhood of the South Pole are apparently islands, or rather long ice-coasts, whose continental form is very doubtful. The great land division, embracing both the old and the new worlds, reaches to about 80° N. lat., and the extreme points come even yet nearer to the Pole. The distances of one body from another, as, for instance, from Greenland to Iceland, are very small, in comparison with the immense spaces which divide the southern points of the continent, where the hundreds of miles of separation at the north expand into thousands. Expansion of the land-mass is the law at the north, contraction at the south. The great land formations terminate in wedge-shaped extremities, a fact observed by Lord Bacon, J. R. Forster, and Steffens; America ending at Cape Horn, 55° S. lat., Australia, which may be considered to embrace Tasmania or Van Diemen’s Land, at the southern extremity of the latter, 45°, and Africa, at the Cape of Good Hope, 35° S. lat., respectively. Humboldt gave the name of “PyramidalStructure” to this cone-shaped form of the great land-mass, which, it will be observed, all are directed toward the south. This pyramidal structure contributes very much, unquestionably, to the diminished heat of the southern hemisphere, and has given a great predominance to the population of the northern in comparison with the southern; and not in respect to number alone, but also to mental and moral force of character.
But not the southern extremities alone of the continents exhibit this wedge-like form; it is repeated also in the northern countries of Europe and Asia. In Europe we discover the working of the law in the peninsulas of Spain, Italy, Greece, the Morea, and the Crimea, and also in the great Scandinavian peninsula. The same phenomenon is repeated on a scale far more imposing in Asia, in the great countries of Arabia, India, and Farther India, Corea, and Kamtchatka; also in both halves of America. Exceptions are rare. In Great Britain, the pointed extremity is toward the north, and the greatest breadth at the south; but this is a peculiar case, and has its exceptional causes; and perhaps with reason, for this island has hitherto maintained an individual and exceptional character in the development of modern civilization.
Various explanations have been offered for the almost star-shaped figure which the combined body of great peninsulas assume, radiating, as it were, from the center of the land hemisphere. This is seen very strikingly in looking at a horizontal projection of the northern hemisphere, viewed from the North Pole. There has been evidently the working out of some great design in this, and the forces employed must have been of the first order of magnitude. Clöden attributes it to the rotation of the earth in its plastic, formative-state. Link ascribes it toelectrical forces, generated at the time the earth’s crust was hardening into its present consistency. J. R. Forster finds an explanation in the theory, that formerly great currents, now not existing, passed, or sought to pass, from south to north or northwest. He attributes to these the parallelism of the great gulfs which indent the coast-line of the old world, the uniform abruptness of the shores at the south, and the gradual widening of all the great land-masses as we go north. The Atlantic is a channel cleft by those great currents. Behring’s Straits is a smaller one; but everywhere else the effort was incomplete, and no opening was effected, except in the straits of minor importance, which separate island from island, or from the main land. The fossils discovered by Pallas seemed to favor this theory, but later investigation has showed that they do not.
Link overthrew Forster’s theory, yet the phenomenon is worthy of study. Viewed on a map of the land hemisphere, constructed according to Mercator’s projection, it is a storehouse of interesting observations and studies, and is to be recommended to the student’s careful attention. We must pass over the theories; scholars disagree as to the cause; Pisis ascribes it to a hidden law of geometric construction; Necker, Brewster, and Dana, to magnetism. We must simply accept the facts for the present.
A careful study of the land surface of the globe suggests interesting comparisons with what we know of the heavenly bodies, Jupiter, for example, and our moon. Unquestionably, the entirely different grouping of what seem to be the great features of that luminary must have had an influence on the whole course of history there. We will not enter into speculations regarding this, however,referring the reader rather to the thorough investigations of Beer and Mädler.
The relation which the continents bear to each other arises, primarily, from their position in reference to the cardinal points of the compass. This has been a principle from the earliest times, and the great laws of population may, in their working, be referred to this simple law of grouping.
Asia was known as the Orient, or, in the apt and beautiful German phrase, the Morgenland, or Land of the morning; Europe and the northern rim of Africa, as the Occident, or, in the German, the Abendland, or Land of the evening. In the south lay the torrid regions of the Ethiopians, in the chill north the country of the Hyperboreans. This fourfold division of the earth was for many centuries the only one known; the division into continents being made, according to Herodotus, by the Phenicians. And in very truth, a great principle lay in that rude and primitive division; it was in entire harmony with nature, and, up to the latest times and the opening of a new world, in entire harmony with history also. With Asia, the Orient, is connected indissolubly the development of the ancient world; with Europe, that of the modern. The contrast between these two great divisions is wonderfully analogous to that of morning and evening. The whole culture of the West had its root, its beginnings at the East. The East is not merely the place where the sun begins his daily course; it is the cradle of man, of nations, of dynasties of every sort, in politics, religion, and science. All the old royal houses came into Europefrom the East; they are all “children of the sun,” no less than the princely families of India and Persia. The West merely witnesses the progress of what was begun in the East. From the most ancient times onward through the Middle Ages,—from Homer to Dante’s “Purgatorio,”—the West is associated with the kingdom of the dead, with “Hades,” and the “islands of the blest.” And within these two great divisions of Orient and Occident are comprised smaller ones, adapted to more limited conceptions of the extent of the earth, but growing out of the same root with the larger division. Bactriana and India constituted the Orient to the inhabitants of Western Asia, Syria their Occident; Asia Minor was the Orient of the Greeks, Italy and Sicily their Hesperia; while the Romans called Spain theirs.
Between the Orient and Occident, and yet to the south of both, lay the Libya of the ancients, exposed to the sun’s direct rays. In the very middle of the earth, on both sides of the equator, and not at the South Pole, is the true South. There we must seek the phenomena of the tropical world in their culminations. As high noon, the middle point in the hour, is the consummation of the day, so the torrid climes of the equatorial belt, at the very middle of the earth, afford the extremes of luxuriant growth.
The broad tracts of land at the northern polar regions formed the true physical contrast to the Orient and the Occident, as well as to the great South of central Africa. They lay around the North Pole like a vast shield of earth, unbroken except by the comparatively insignificant seas and gulfs of that region. And even where the water has broken its way and severed those northern lands, a submarine volcanic activity is, even now, constantly at work to restore the break, and bind the coasts together.At about 70° N. lat., all the countries of the north are brought into great nearness, and that parallel is a highway of little else than land crossing the North Cape of Europe, Cape Chelagskoy, in Tchooktchee, at the northeastern extremity of Asia, and touching Cape Bathurst, and the Fury and Heckla Straits of North America. North of this highway and of the Georgian Archipelago begins the great group of circum-polar islands.
The break between Asia and North America, at Behring’s Straits, is but fifty-six miles wide; it is the mere outlet of the Sea of Kamtckatka into the Arctic Ocean. The space between the northeast of America and the northwest of Europe is much greater indeed, but, in comparison with the distance between the southernmost points of the old and the new world, insignificant. The distance from northern Norway to Greenland is but about 940 miles.
It is noteworthy that, at the north of the great continental land-mass, where minor seas and channels break through, great volcanic forces are constantly at work, as hinted at above, to restore the unity. In the Sea of Kamtchatka lie the Aleutian islands, extending more than 950 miles, and forming what has been happily termed a bridge from the old world to the new. It consists of more than a hundred rocks and islands, some of which have been thrown up within the memory of man. In 1806, von Langsdorf and Tilesius witnessed the emergence of one of these, with a cone-shaped center, and about twenty miles in circumference. Grewingk has counted more than fifty volcanoes in activity within the limits of this island chain. The Curile islands, more to the south, form another similar volcanic group, extending from Japan to Kamtchatka. In this range there are known to be at least ten volcanoes, 10,000 feet in height.
The same high degree of volcanic activity must have formerly existed between Europe and America, for the traces of it are still visible. And not the traces alone, but a part of the same activity. And doubtless the shallowness of the waters between those continents hints at the same. More accurate explorations, then, will probably reveal multitudes of mountains, thrown up by these submarine forces, but not far enough to emerge and bear the name of islands. Yet many have emerged—those which fringe the shores of Norway, Scotland, and Ireland; the Orkneys, Shetland, and Hebrides islands; the Färoe group, with their blistered surface, their recesses, and volcanic rocks; Iceland, with its hot springs; and Mount Heckla; Jan Mayen, with its frightful craters, and the eastern coast of Greenland; one island, Sabrina, in the midst of the Azore group; which has had three upheavals within two hundred years, in 1638, 1723, and 1811,—all these plainly indicate the presence of tremendous forces, active in the past as well as in the present.
We thus fix the character of the arctic polar lands to be a close drawing together. Europe has, fortunately for itself, the least share in those inhospitable regions; only her pointed northern shores fringe the shores of the polar sea, leaving the great bulk of the great land-mass of the north to the broad shores of Asia and North America, with their neighboring island groups.
This polar world, as we may call it, in contradistinction to the Orient and the Occident, is not separated from more southerly regions by any great physical line of demarkation. The arctic circle is a mere mathematical line 66½° N. lat.; it has no geographical character whatever. The true polar world reaches in some places far beyond this mathematical barrier, bringing all its characteristicswith it; while, on the other hand, it withdraws, at a few other places, nearer to the Pole. Were the polar world more broken up than it is by inland seas, and separated from the great land-mass by broad channels, it would be far more isolated in its whole character than it is. It is this immediate contiguity of the polar world with the great land-mass which opens it to whatever civilization it may be able to receive. And there is the same unity in the polar world that there is in the tropical world. The same phenomena which appear in one part of it are repeated in every other part. There are, of course, subordinate modifications found, but everything essential, which is discovered in one part, is discovered in every other part. There is no distinction into “new world” and no “old world;” the new world and the old coincide amid the arctic pole.
The characteristic of the polar world, next to this of unbrokenness, is the simplicity, or what might be called the monotony of its productions and all its features; the uniform reproduction of the same plants and animals, as well as of geological forms. Even Lapland, which is the farthest removed from the Pole of all the arctic regions, manifests, in its rounded and polished granite and gneiss and its deep and sharply-defined cuts, the same uniformity. The syenite found at Lake Imandra displays the same characteristics as that found on the islands in the White Sea, and on the shores of Greenland. The tops of the mountains, instead of being green, are all white with the lichen, commonly known as reindeer moss. And as with the geological formations and the vegetable kingdoms, so with the animal kingdom. Elsewhere are found bears, foxes, reindeer, seals, and walruses; the feathered tribes partake of the general monotony of structure, and man notless. The range of his development is extremely limited, and his character little different, whether in northern Asia or northern America.
America forms the real West of the great land-mass, the true Occident of the earth, young as yet, but to receive as its gift the entire culture of the East, and to advance by giant steps to a position of independent influence. Already it has far surpassed Asia in industry and civilization. The old world was the preparation for the new. Almost everything which the new world enjoys and values was the gift of the old. Its most ancient monuments of religion, architecture, and art are closely linked to those of the old world. Hieroglyphics have been found among the Peruvians and the Mexicans. In like manner embalming of princes, the engraving of astronomical data upon rocks, were borrowed from the East.
Thehistoriccharacter of America is more striking in respect to newness than the physical features of the water hemisphere. Buffon supposed that the American continent is of more recent formation than the old world, assigning for his opinion that it is more submerged, because smaller in area, than the eastern land-mass; because, also, the plants which demand moisture are predominant over those which depend on a dry climate; and because the forms of homologous animals—the elephant, rhinoceros, crocodile, turtle, apes, and serpents, for instance—do not attain the same size as in Asia and Africa. But waiving this, we use the name New World, only with significance in its connection with history.
With the discovery of America begins a new period in the history of man and of nations in their civil relations. The enlargement of territory occasioned by it was not greater than the enlargement of the bounds of thought.The old world had been developed earliest, had gone as far as it could go; it had to wait till another great step should be taken before it could go on in its course. The highest progress of the human race, the complete development of its possibilities, was not possible till man should, in his wanderings from east to west, compass the globe, and take possession of it, not for a day, but for all time. The primitive settlements in Mexico, Peru, and Yucatan could not sustain themselves in consequence of their isolation; navigation was in its rudest stages, and it needed to be in its highest before the world should be bound together closely enough to advance in all its parts toward the goal of a perfect civilization. Those primitive colonies perished therefore, as Canaan perished before Israel, and were replaced by others. The reason of this lay in the isolation of the land-masses of the earth. Had America been discovered and made accessible to the old world before the diffusion of the Gospel and the establishment of the Christian Church, it would have been too early, and heathenism might have had its grandest triumph and its loftiest temples in the new world. The way was not open as yet for the high moral development of the race; and the highways of civilization were not made till the most modern times, when all was in readiness for the great advance which we are witnessing now.
The contrast to the great continental hemisphere is found in Australia, a land-mass of no insignificant size, situated at the center, or very nearly at the center of the great oceanic hemisphere, and surrounded by hundreds of groups of islands, generally of quite unimportant magnitude. The name Australia was fitly chosen; it indicates its true relations to the Southern or Austral ocean. As Africa is the true South to the eastern hemisphere, Australia is thetrue South to the great continental land-mass of the whole globe. As the earth has two magnetic north poles, and two north poles of cold, one of the former in Siberia, north of Lake Baikal, and east of Cape Taimura, 110° east of Greenwich; the other in the neighborhood of Melville Island, in North America, 102° west longitude from Greenwich, so there are, in a physical sense, two south poles, (we do not refer to the magnetic ones and the poles of cold,) a continental south pole in Africa, a marine or maritime south pole in Australia.
This country, the largest of islands or the smallest of continents as we may choose to designate it, the most remote of all the great divisions from the center of the land hemisphere, has been the last to feel the pulses of civilization. There, therefore, is to-day the most rapid, the most amazing advancement to be witnessed on the earth; it has crowded centuries into decades, and with its shores adorned even now, in its youth, with states and cities, it cannot longer be called a land left behind in the world’s advance. It has inherited all that was finished in the knowledge and culture of the continental world; what the people of that world have toiled for years to win, becomes at once the birthright of the Australians. It is only an instance of the truth of Humboldt’s remark, that the more full the world is of ideas, the more rapid is its progress—a remark which throws the strongest light upon the connection of geography with history.
While so many a spot in the great continental land-mass was once the home of a high culture, and from being a cradle of arts and sciences has become a deserted waste, the civil and political condition of many people in the remotedistricts on the oceanic side of the globe has advanced with unprecedented rapidity. The course of development has been very different from what it was formerly. Distances, natural influences, natural productions even, yield always to the victorious march of man, and disappear before his tread; or, in other words, the human race is more and more freed from the forces of nature; man is more and more disenthralled from the dominion of the earth which he inhabits. The history of specific districts and of entire continents confirms this.
The first inhabitant of the sandy valley of the Nile was a dweller in a waste, as the nomadic Arab is to-day. But the later and more cultivated Egyptians transformed that waste, through the agency of irrigation and canals, into the most fruitful garden of the world. They not only rose themselves, but raised their own country, hitherto so sterile, into a place of the first importance, and did it by the simplest of means,—the bringing the water and the land into more intimate relations. Through neglect and the tyranny of successive kings, the fruitful valley sank again into its waste condition. The district around Thebes became a desert, the fruitful Mareotis a swamp; similar phenomena occurred in many parts of Europe and Asia.
Another example of man’s subjugation of nature is found in great mountain chains. During the first centuries after Christ, the cultivated south of Europe was separated from the uncultivated Celtic and Teutonic north by a great natural barrier, the unbroken, untraversed Alpine chain, which passed through all central Europe from west to east. At the south lay the rich states of the old world, beyond the Alps was the cold and barren north. But this old formidable barrier has vanished, as the thronged cantons of Switzerland and the crowded villages of the Tyrolyearly bear witness; and they draw thousands of tourists instead of repelling them. What a mighty change! From Provence to Styria run the stately forms of the Alpine chain; but the deep recesses and the lofty highlands are thickly peopled, the forests are thinned, the obstructing rocks removed. No longer a barrier between the north and the south, as it was in the time of Julius and Augustus Cæsar, Switzerland has become a country of stupendous highways. The peaks which were once unapproachable, and around which merely eagles idly flew, are now the passes of Mount Cenis, the Simplon, Saint Gothard, the Splügen, and Saint Bernard; while the snowy heights of Ortler, in eastern Alps, now give place to a public road. Over the Semmering Alp a railway even passes. Just as the wild horse of Toorkistan has given up his freedom and has become the tame and useful servant of civilization, so this Alpine segment of the globe has changed all its relations to the adjacent countries. The influence of the most stupendous natural objects is weakened every year. The physical dimensions may and do remain unchanged, but their influence on life and on history is undermined by those new conditions which operate so powerfully in freeing man from the dominion of nature. The power of man makes him master of the earth, and gives even the key to the subjection of the grandest mountain chains into his hands.
In further illustration of this, take the Ural chain, which was and still is the eastern division line of one continent, and the western barrier of another, but which has become, since the days of Peter the Great, a grand center of labor and commerce, a great avenue of civilization in its return passage from Europe to Asia. And so everywhere, from the wild Caucasus and the Himalayas to the grand Cordillerasof America, the same progress is seen; man becomes more and more the conqueror over nature. And not in mountains alone, but in the great forest regions of central Europe, in the primitive wilderness of North America, and in the marshes of the Netherlands, does man vanquish the forces which once fettered him. The once fearful wastes of Sahara have become the track of caravans; the sterile plains of Australia and California have drawn great colonies to their gold mines; the ice seas at the north have become, through the efforts of Parry, Franklin, and others, the scene of heroic exploits and of grand struggles of man with nature; indeed, the greatest victories of modern civilization have been there, and the playgrounds of polar bears and walruses have witnessed the noblest humanities, and the loftiest courage, and the most disinterested heroism of the age.
The continents and oceans have witnessed still greater transformations. The seas were once the impassable barriers of nations. The birds of the air only traversed the great distances which separated shore from shore. The metallic stores of the earth, the vegetable and animal kingdoms were not transferred to any extent from place to place; the sea brought nothing from lands remotely foreign but drift-sand, cocoa-nuts, floating wood, ice masses, and seaweed, swept by the great currents from shore to shore. But now the seas are no barriers; they do not separate the continents but bind them together, and unite the destinies of nations in the closest manner. The great improvements in ocean navigation have entirely changed the relations of the entire globe. The isolated island of St. Helena, which was for centuries at the very confines of the known world, became, within the second decade of the present century, a prison-house for the great Europeanrobber, and lay guarded under the eye of Europe. The Cape of Good Hope, which was for centuries the limit of Portuguese navigation, has become a mere halting-place for sailing ships and steamers. The voyage from England to China has been narrowed, within one hundred years, from an eight months’ to a four months’ sail. These great changes have been mainly effected by the agency of steam. Steam has transformed the smaller seas into mere bridges, and England and France are securely joined, Marseilles and Algiers; while Prussian Stettin is brought into proximity with Swedish Stockholm and Russian Petersburg. The voyage to America, that remote land, which before the days of Columbus was as inaccessible as the moon, was made by him in seventy days, but is now accomplished in ten. Even Australia cannot be said to be distant; a steamer needs but seventy-five days to reach it, and ten of those are consumed on the Isthmus of Suez. No island now lies beyond the world of commerce. The most active traffic exists between places the most remote. The wool and the wheat of Australia control the price of those commodities in London, and the value of cotton in America fixes that of woven goods and even of bread in Europe.
The great rivers too have been curtailed of their relative importance, and have been shortened by steam sixfold. They can be stemmed too, which is an immense gain, for in the primitive stages of navigation they could only be sailed upon downward, from source to mouth. In 1854, four hundred steamers traversed the Mississippi and its branches, and came into contact with a region one-third as large as Europe. The Indus, Ganges, Irrawaddy, Nile, La Plata, and even the Amazon, the monarch of rivers, which drains a country half as large as Europe,are now more or less open to steam navigation. The great river systems of central Europe too are thoroughly navigated; and Southern Germany, Trebizond, Mayence, Cologne, and London may be grouped as neighbors. The land-locked seas are reduced to insignificance, and their shores are now covered with villages and cities, from the Platten-See of Hungary up to the Caspian and the great lakes of North America.
To sum all up in one word, the mighty influence of Time on the geographical development of the earth is displayed in the clearest manner. But this influence is not the same for all localities on the globe. While there are some people and some places which are left behind, there are others which have made wonderful progress, and have taken and now hold a foremost place. And such a position is that of Europe at the present moment. Europe, the most central of all continents, in relation to the great land-mass of the earth, and also the one most equally removed from the middle point of the great water-mass, touches the whole remaining world at the greatest number of points, and this, in conjunction with her remarkably broken coast-line, so favorable to the purposes of navigation, have given her her place of command, and have assigned to England her evident role of mistress of the seas.
And looking from the present to the past, we see that as some great tribes of men have given the whole fruits of their natural existence to the world for its future use, so some places, and those of no insignificant size sometimes, have conferred upon the world, the trust which they once held, and now recede, as it were, from view. They were great in the past, and the results of their greatness are now incorporated in the world’s life. The earth is one;and through the agency of what we may call either time or history, all its parts are in ceaseless action and reaction on each other. Though some great districts seem now to have no part to play, the element of time draws them into the great cosmos; they once had a great share in the world’s affairs, and the fruits which they brought to completion are merely in other hands. The earth is, therefore, as was stated in the introduction, a unit, an organism of itself: it has its own law of development, its own cosmical life; it can be studied in no one of its parts and at no special epoch of its history. The past and the future, the near and the remote, are all blended in a system of mutual interdependence, and must be looked at together.
This is shown clearly in the past of Asia, and the present of Europe and some parts of the new world, while the history of all central Africa seems to lie wholly in the future. Heretofore it has enjoyed no progress excepting along its northern rim. The middle portion of the old world has outlived its primitive ethnographical impulse, and sunk back into a state of slumberous inaction. Asia, to call this region by its recognized name, has projected its own life from the center to the circumference; by this I mean, that while it seems to be exhausted of its old vigor, other countries inherited its power. The population of Asia is much less than it was in the time of Alexander the Great, much less than during the Mohammedan and Mongolian conquests, when all the habitable parts of that immense continent were bound together by highways of commerce and travel. On the other hand, the coasts are now of much more value and significance than they were in ancient times, and navigation has dotted her sea outline with splendid and populous cities. These seem, by reason of the facilities which steam affords, to be brought near toEurope; while the natives who inhabit central Asia are not only widely separated from the civilized world, but are divided up and set against each other by religious and political enmities of the most bitter kind. This is displayed in its fullest force by the comparative inapproachability of the great mountain chains, the Ural, the Taurus, and the Caucasus, and yet more by the unchanged barbarism of the central tribes, the hostile political relations, lacking all of the amenities and mutual dependencies of European policy, and the deadly antagonism of Mohammedanism and Christianity. This last is the curse which the natives of the earth have brought upon themselves. It is the clashing of religious faiths which has put the extinguisher on Asiatic progress, annihilated her enterprise, and set her in her present isolation. Still this barrier is not absolutely settled and for all time, but already it shows that it is capable of some modification. The politico-religious system of the Chinese is rending under our eyes; the old bonds which Mohammedanism once laid on Asia are now sensibly relaxed. The great highways of travel through the country of the Euphrates and Tigris and the extended archæological investigations of modern times have operated mediatorially between Europe and Asia; while steam navigation on the Danube has brought Turkey, a hitherto undissolved Asiatic element in European life, into closer relations with the great powers of the West. The great missionary enterprise, too, of modern times, has been laboring to remould the ideas of the Asiatic nations, while navigation has operated on the material and more appreciable interests of commerce and industry.
There are no possible limits to be assigned to the perfectibility of the globe as the abode of man; no possiblebounds to his enterprise. The construction of a canal through the Isthmus of Panama would bring the eastern coast of Asia seven thousand miles nearer than it is now to the Atlantic shores of America and Europe. By saving the mere doubling of Cape Horn, one-third of the periphery of the globe would be annihilated, so far as the labor and expense of navigation are concerned. North America would nearly double its resources when its Atlantic and Pacific coasts stand in close connection and interdependence. The projected canal at Suez would exercise an unbounded influence over Asia in binding it anew to Europe. The building of highways through the passes of the Ural, the Caucasus, and Himalayas is yet to be accomplished; and only now are great roads constructing over the Rocky Mountains, welding North America together. The construction of railways on the high plateaus of central Africa will transform that vast undeveloped district, so rich in resources for the future. The changes which art is yet to effect on our globe are beyond all possible computation, and it might be said, beyond any possible exaggeration.
We turn away from these glances into the future to look upon the past, the long ages when men lived in rudeness and ignorance, having no art, and knowing nothing beyond the little tract where they were born, and to which they remained chained. There was no binding of shore to shore, and of continent to continent, through the mediatorial agency of seas and oceans. And this gave to the continents a far greater individuality than they have now, and a much higher degree of apparent influence than now when we cannot view them excepting as parts of the great complex which forms the world. The wanderings of the old nomadic races, the enlarging of the domains of culture, the transfer of the natural productions of all climes, aswell as the traditional ideas of all lands, proceeded from the central portions of the ancient world toward the extremities. The manner of this progress, following as it does the order of history, displays more clearly than almost anything else the close dependence of all national development upon geographical conditions, and their indissoluble connection. Without this connection the order of historical events would have been completely changed. In no instance has there been self-evolved progress in the North, East, South, or West; it uniformly began at the geographical center, at the point of conflict between the Orient, the Occident, and the tropical South.
Western Asia, northern Africa, and southeastern Europe were the homes of the earliest culture, and it is to them that all other parts of the world owe the light which they enjoy, though they may have received it at second or third hand. The territory of which I speak extended from the highlands of India to Italy, and from the Nile to the Don, including the valleys of the Euphrates and the Gihon. This broad and fertile reach of territory has been the fruitful mother of the world’s present thought and culture. Nor must we overlook the fact that, despite what was said above, regarding the oceans as the greatest barriers to the spread of civilization, that smaller seas aided it, for the very country of which I speak was intersected by five important seas, and to them it is under immeasurable obligations for its development. This Asiatic-Africo-European belt has exercised the greatest influence on all the course of human affairs, on all colonization, on the differing of races and languages, and the arts of war and of peace, over the habitable world. This territory lies as the background of all the events of history, and has given to every one its distinctive character and its appropriateplace. Nor can we in the future dispense with the element involved in this, of historical occurrences yet to come dependent on past geographical conditions, although this will be far less marked than it has been in the past. It demands and will demand a far larger measure of investigation and thought than it has yet received. Whatever independent progress the New World and Australia may seem to be making, and whatever interest they may awaken in the minds of students, not even they can be looked at without regard to their relations to the ancient historical lands, the source of all the inherited culture which they are enjoying in their vigorous youth. India, Egypt, Palestine, Greece, and other countries still stand out as the formative lands of all modern history, and we cannot study the present without studying them. They are to the student what Plutarch’s Lives are to the biographer, the imperishable and unequaled models which gain new luster as time rolls on. It is therefore not without reason that ancient geography ought to be subjected to a more systematic treatment than the geography of the Middle Ages. The latter, though not unworthy of a large place, had no relations of special importance to the whole world, to the study of the physical conditions of the most imposing objects of nature, to the connection as cause and effect of events past, present, and to come.
From these foundation principles, we advance to a more full study of the configuration of the surface of the globe, for which we are now in a measure prepared.