PART III.
All the divisions of the earth, taken together in their internal and external connections, in their mutual action and reaction, constitute the unity of the globe, and make apparent that it is a simple organism, designed and created by divine skill, and intended to be the home of a race whose culture should, in the course of centuries, unfold from the most simple beginnings to the most complex and elaborate perfection.
We have already seen that the surface of the earth is naturally divided into three typical features—highland, lowland, and the transition terraces between them. From the vertical and horizontal combination of these result the most of the geographical forms which are the subject of our study. They form what we may, for convenience, call the bas-relief of the globe.
At the creation of the earth every great continental division received (as every other organism has, regarded by itself, and not in relation to the greater whole of which it forms a part) its own special form. Each continent is like itself alone; its characteristics are not shared by any other. Each one was so planned and so formed as to have its own special function in the progress of human culture. This may be seen by reviewing the history ofthe past; this may fairly be suspected yet to be in the future. The individuality of each continent raises it to a place where its characteristics give it an independent character, and a capacity of development of itself, up to a certain point, but never beyond it. The continents are never to be regarded as high, dead masses of land, but as vital and effective instruments, working upon each other ceaselessly, and helping each other to attain the consummation intended in the counsels of the Divine Mind. The unity of the earth, the unity of the continents, the unity of every physical feature of the continents, and the building all up together in a perfect symmetry and mutual adaptation of parts, is the crowning thought of Geographical Science.
The study of first causes has no less clear illustrations in the course of our investigations than elsewhere. It is the task of science to show the nature and mutual relations of all the subjects which fall within the scope of Natural History. The nature of the parts is only understood from a comprehension of the whole; not the reverse, however. That is a most just saying of Plato. The knowledge of the universal cannot proceed from a knowledge of the special. As the part is formed only in view of and on account of the whole, in its study, dissociated from the whole, it becomes a mere unit and independent existence. From understanding the solar system, we might arrive at a knowledge of the motion of the earth; and so, from a knowledge of the earth, we may advance to its continents, their relations, the characteristics of the different natural divisions, their subdivisions, their phenomena, and their living organization, embracing man, animals, and plants.
The external formation of the globe, or what we may callthe configuration of the continents, rests upon two characteristics—the horizontal and vertical dimensions.
1. The horizontal dimensions are designated by the sea-line boundary—the geographical limitation.
2. The vertical dimensions—the physical limitation—are defined by the elevation of terraces and highlands, and they exhibit the greatest diversity of phenomena.
The horizontal dimensions supply most of the material for our elementary compends for political geography, which seldom make much account of vertical dimensions, and which, by no means, penetrate to their real value. They are commonly held to be a side-matter, to be touched lightly upon, or wholly cast aside. But both must be thoroughly studied; for they are mutually dependent, and are never found divorced in nature. In order to understand them in their true relations, we will look at them in their general aspect, discussing first the horizontal extent of the continents, then their vertical elevation, so far as that has not already been treated. After this twofold investigation, the character of each continent and its subdivisions will appear in its true light.
On account of the importance of thoroughly understanding the articulation of great districts, in contradistinction to a mere division, which implies no organic and living correlation of parts, and which gives over to mathematics, political history, and fortuitous circumstances the duty of explaining geographical phenomena, it is instructive to trace the footsteps of our science back to some of the earlier conceptions.
Eratosthenes and Polybius were aware that the south of Europe was a series of peninsulas, the first of the two speaking of the great peninsulas of Spain, Italy, and the Peloponnesus, the latter adding allusions to the smallerGrecian peninsula of Sunium, the Thracian on the Bosporus, and the Tauric Chersonesus, now known as the Crimea. Strabo got a clearer insight into the significance of these forms, (whose meaning Hipparchus had already tried to explain,) by discussing them according to the sea basins which they separate. Thus the Spanish peninsula separates the Gulf of Cadiz, at the Pillars of Hercules, from the Tyrrhene Sea; Italy separates the Sicilian Sea from the Adriatic; the Peloponnesus separates the Adriatic and the Euxine. This view, though apparently simple, was really profound; for it hinted at the great significance of the maritime coast in developing the civilization of those countries. And Strabo goes on to add that Italy, with its southeastern and southwestern extremities, becomes too pointed, (δικόρυφος,) and that the eastern peninsulas of Europe are much more jagged and articulated (ποικίλαι καὶ πολύμερεῖς) than Polybius had conceived them to be. He entered, therefore, upon a more minute subdivision. Strabo had already (ii. 92) called the Peloponnesus “many-parted,” (πολυ σχεδές,) as the Laconian peninsula (Tœnarum) is separated from Malea, the Attic from Sunium, and all southern Europe cannot, therefore, be laid out in six parts. Of the north of Europe, Strabo was not in a position to gain any accurate conception. Toward the end of his second book, where he gives his reason for beginning his description at the West, he uses the awkward but significant phrase “polymorphous formation,” to indicate the superiority which Europe enjoys in its complex articulation over the other continents. The passage in Strabo runs thus: “We begin with Europe, because it is so intricately organized, and is the most favorable for human culture, and has conferred upon the other continents the most of the advantages which its position hassecured for itself. It is habitable almost everywhere; there is but a little portion of its territory too cold to be the home of man, etc. It enjoys an admirable physical conformation, for it is so perfectly harmonized in the mingling of plains and mountains, (ὅλη γάρ διαπεποίκιλται πεδίας τε και ὅρεδιν,) that the city and the country are brought together, and the people educated by equally favorable conditions to habits of great bravery. Europe is, therefore, complete in herself, (ἀμταρκεστάτη ἐστί.)” By this Strabo indicates the independent character of Europe, and its equality with the other continents, despite its smaller size.
Yet for long centuries this insight of that keen observer into one of the most weighty of all the physical conditions of the globe was almost wholly overlooked. At length, however, Humboldt brought it out into new life in its climatological relations, and showed that it is one of the most important considerations to base a study of the distribution of plants and animals upon, as well as for the study of almost all kinds of physical phenomena. In his very instructive paper on the most prominent reasons for the variation in temperature on the globe, published in 1827, he uses the significant expression: “Our Europe is indebted for its mild climate, to its position, and its articulated form.” We have adhered to the same view, and have expanded it in a paper[7]called The Geographical Position and Horizontal Extension of the Continents, as well as in all my lectures.
We proceed from the more simple to the more complex forms, and begin, therefore, with Africa, which has the most uniform contour of all the continents.
Africa, the true South of the earth, is distinguished from all the other great divisions of the earth by its almost insular form and its unbroken outline. It is separated from Asia merely by the Isthmus of Suez, scarcely 70 miles wide. But it is of altogether more virgin a nature than Asia, and has been encroached upon by scarcely any foreign influence. Africa is a unit in itself; the most exclusive of continents, its periphery is almost a perfect ellipse. With the exception of the single Gulf of Guinea on the west side, the continent is a true oval. Its linear dimensions are almost equal in length and breadth. It extends about 35° on each side of the equator, and is about 70° of longitude in width. The length and breadth are both about 5000 miles.
The periphery of its coast is the most simple and unbroken in the world. A single glance at the map is sufficient to show this. Nowhere are there the deep arms of the sea and the sinuous shores of other continents. The Gulf of Guinea is all. The entire length of its coast-line is but 16,000 or 17,000 miles, not much more than the circumference of a circle whose diameter is 5000 miles. Its coast-line, proportioned to its area, being the shortest on the globe, gives Africa the least contact with the ocean of all the continents, and subjects it to the least amount of oceanic influences.
Thus all individualization of the various phases of life—vegetable, animal, and human—is denied to this continent,whose extremities, on account of the equality of its dimensions, lie equally far removed from the central point. The similar size and configuration of the two lobes north and south of the equator create no strong contrasts, and give rise merely to tropical and sub-tropical conditions. All the phenomena of this great division, the real South of the earth, in which all the culminations of the tropical world are found, are therefore more uniform than in any other part of the world. The characteristics of race remain in their primitive condition, and have made no progress with the lapse of time: this region seems to be kept as the refuge of a yet undeveloped future. Only general, never individual and special development in the world of plants, animals, nor man, appear upon this stationary soil; the palm, the camel, and their natural companions appear in equal numbers in the northern, southern, eastern, and western extremities; the negro is almost exclusively the only inhabitant of the continent. There is no striking individuality apparent in the culture, stature, organization, nor popular characteristics of its various parts. Even a common foundation language gives rise to mere dialectical differences. A mere sporadic coast-culture gives rise to mere exceptions here and there, and these are generally the result, not of inward progress, but of imported foreign conditions.
Asia, the Orient, is wholly unlike Africa. On three sides it is entirely sea-girt—the south, the east, and the north; on the west only partly, about 1400 miles. On the west, too, it is connected with Africa, but not in a way to insure any necessary relations between the two continents. But with Europe it stands in the most intimate connection, forming a single body with it, of which Europe is really but a great western peninsula. Europe,the Occident of the Old World, is therefore for less widely severed from its Orient than from its real South or Africa. The history of Asia and that of Europe are woven with a twisted strand; they form a single thread, and their populations are far more closely connected in physical and spiritual organizations than are the people of Asia and Africa.
Asia, instead of being a simple oval, approaches the trapezoidal form, and consequently enters into a new set of relations resulting from its configuration. With the deeply-penetrating gulfs and bays and seas which sink into its trunk, the prominent peninsulas are in direct correspondence, marking in an especial manner the eastern and southern coast, but not lacking on the northern and western. These peninsulas are to be regarded as the limbs of a great central continental trunk. The eastern ones are the Tchooktchee foreland, the peninsulas of Kamtchatka and Corea, and the Chinese foreland. The southern ones are the peninsula of Farther India, including Tonquin, Siam, Malacca, and Birmah; the peninsulas of Hindostan, or Deccan and Arabia. The western limb is the peninsula of Asia Minor or Australia. The northeast of Asia is less articulated; still it has a number of arms pointing southward—the Sea of Kara, the Gulf of Obi and Yenisei, for example. The whole Siberian coast even is far more serrated than that of Africa, where it is an almost unbroken line.
Still, there remains in the interior of Asia a broad and long mass of the continent, which is penetrated by no seas. It is to be regarded as the real trunk, and preponderates immensely over the area of all the confined projections. Asia is, therefore, a trunk with profuse richness of articulation. Africa is a trunk without articulation: a mere compact continental mass.
The immense influence which so complex a coast form has upon all physical phenomena and on all organic life is evident. Far greater results must come from the mutual influence of sea and land than from unbroken land; far more numerous influences upon the climate, and upon plants, animals, and man. Even the changing geological structure of the coast-line must have an effect, when blending with all these other influences, greater than it would have in the interior. Every part of the coast has become different from every other part, with a different hydrographic and climatic character; and the great increase of races of men, and species of plants and animals, was a natural result. While Africa remained limited in all its relations, and destitute of any richness of variety, Asia has always enjoyed an amazing fertility of resources. Instead of the three races or species of man found in Africa—Negro, Berber, and Caffre—many are met in Asia, all different, Tchooktchees, Kamtchadales, Coreans, Chinese, Malays, Bermese, Hindoos, Afghans, Persians, Arabs, and Armenians. And these belong merely to the coast-line.
But the contrast of the great central region to the broken coast is so great and complete, that the advanced culture along the sea-line has not penetrated far into the interior, nor changed the habits of the nomadic tribes which fill Central Asia, and whose representatives we have in the Mongolians, Toorkomans, Kirgheez, Bukharians, Calmucks, etc. Still less could it reach the distant north, to which, with all the splendor which we associate with everything oriental, the civilization of the southern coasts is utterly wanting. To this element of superficial size, the immense and almost insuperable obstacles which Nature has placed so thickly in Asia may be added, and also the immense variety of natural productions whichclimates so different as those of the different parts of the continent exhibit. Extending from the equator to the north frigid zone, Asia affords a home for the most diversified kinds of plants and animals, and shows, too, hardly less variety in its eastern and western extremes than in its northern and southern. The characteristics of the Chinese flora and fauna are very widely different from those of Hither Asia. In the east, we have the sago-tree and the tiger; in the west, the date-palm and the lion. The north gives us moss, the coniferæ, and the reindeer, in contrast with the bread-fruit tree, the sugar-cane, the broad-leaved banana, the elephant, rhinoceros, tapir, and monkey of the south.
The inexhaustibleness of the Asiatic continent is not more visible in all this wealth of productivity than in the abundance as well as the variety of human life. Though Asia has been the mother of the world, and has sent out so many and so eminent races, it has not been to the depletion of the parent country. In race, figure, color, manner of life, nationality, religion, political and social bonds of union, forms of government, culture, language, it is so richly diversified, that no continent, viewed historically, can be compared to it. Asia seems to have been created to send forth its fruitful scions of life to all the other great divisions of the earth.
Europe, the Occident. The smallest of the three continents of the Old World, its superficial contents are the largest in proportion to the amount of coast-line. Only on the east side has it a land frontier; and there it has its widest extent from north to south. Like Asia, it is bordered on three sides by the ocean. Asia seems like a mighty trunk, at whose western extremity the broken and serrated Occident is found, advancing in breadth fromnorth to south, but articulating into arms of various size from east to west, till it loses itself in the peninsulas of the Atlantic coast. The nearer to Asia, the broader is Europe, and the more akin to the Asiatic character; the farther from it, the more minute become its subdivisions, and the more varied its character.
Taken in a general way, the proportion of the truly continental part of Europe to the maritime districts is much less than is the case in Asia. Its contrast with Africa is, of course, yet more striking.
Europe begins at the east, at the foot of the Ural and Caucasus, and at the steppes of West Asia. It does not take, as Asia and Africa do, (which are alike in this,) a trapezoidal or oval form, but in its linear dimensions there is a great difference between its length and breadth. By the diminution of its width, as we go westward, and by the increase of its articulation, the number of its internal relations increases toward the Atlantic. A great falling off in the oriental character which has largely encroached upon Russia, and a constant increase of an independent spirit, is the sure result of natural conditions, and is experienced in all life and in things material as well as intellectual and moral. The configuration here wins a palpable victory over mere quantity, and the exceedingly varied coast gives to all European institutions their distinctive character.
Beginning with a breadth of about 1400 miles at the east, the continent gradually diminishes in width to 1000, 500, and even to 250 miles. Its first narrowing is visible between the Gulf of Riga and the Bay of Odessa; the next is between the Baltic and the Gulf of Trieste; the next, between the Zuider-Zee and the Gulf of Genoa; the next, between the English Channel at Calais and theGulf of Lyons; and the last, between Bayonne and Perpignan.
With almost three times as great a length as breadth, Europe extends for a distance of over 300 miles from the southern part of the Ural chain and from the Caucasus to the extremities of the bold coast of Spain and Portugal, Capes Finistère and St. Vincent. In this way the continent assumes very nearly the form of a right-angled triangle, the right angle lying at the Caspian, the base extending westward to Cape Finistère, the perpendicular running northward along the Ural Mountains to the Vaigats Straits, and the hypothenuse connecting the two extremities. The area embraced within this triangle would be not far from 2,200,000 square miles. Such a triangle, however, is not exact,—it is but an approximation to mathematical precision; but it is clearly enough marked to be traced upon our map, or, as a spherical triangle, upon our globes. All geographical forms have only a more or less remote approach to mathematical exactness, but enough to aid us very much in representing them and showing their relations.
Almost all the greater and really important extremities of the continent lie outside of the triangle above indicated; and this method of treatment only serves to call attention to the great central mass, which would otherwise be in danger of being overlooked, in view of the immense value and influence of the countries on the coast and beyond the triangular line of demarkation. It needs but a glance to see how the projecting shores have marred all the theoretical precision of such a line.
The coast-line shows itself directly subject to almost boundless diversity. Toward the west the independence of each peninsula increases, the more evidently and prominentlyaccording to its distance from Asia. Not articulated on two sides alone, like Asia, the east and south, but on all three of its sides exposed to the ocean, the broken coast-line is universal in Europe,—even toward the colder north, where its peninsulas and adjacent islands almost inclose two seas, the North and the Baltic. The advantage which this gives to Europe over Asia in respect to the development of its more northern regions, is very great and evident.
We will enumerate the leading peninsulas of Europe:
Kola, on the White Sea, between Lake Enara, the Varanger Fiord, and the Bay of Kandalaska, pointing westward.
Scandinavia, embracing Norway and Sweden, with an area of more than 350,000 square miles, a tenth of all Europe, connected with the main land by the isthmus of Finland, but otherwise girded in a great bow by the Atlantic, the North Sea, the Baltic, and the Gulf of Bothnia, and pointing southward.
Jutland or Denmark, beginning at the Elbe and the Trave and running north, embracing about ¹⁄₁₆₀ of Europe, between the North Sea and the Baltic, low and flat.
The subdivided peninsula of Holland, between the Rhine and the Ems, a flat plain, looking to the north.
The peninsula of Normandy and Brittany, between the Seine and the Loire, a rocky granite formation, jutting out into the Atlantic and faced by bold precipices.
Spain and Portugal, embracing about 220,000 square miles, about ¹⁄₁₆ of Europe, rhomboidal in shape, almost insular in position, turned southwesterly, its surface a series of constantly rising terraces.
Italy, embracing ¹⁄₃₅ of Europe, between the Alps and Sicily, and traversed by a mountain range.
Turkey and Greece, or summing it more strictly underone word, the Grecian peninsula, between the Danube and the Morea, a most minutely divided region of plateaus and mountain chains; in truth, the most articulated peninsula in the world, and embracing ¹⁄₁₅ of Europe.
The Crimea, a rhomboidal peninsula, turned to the south—its northern half a flat steppe, its southern a high plateau—the only peninsula of southeastern Europe projecting into the Black Sea.
Every one of these peninsulas differs from every other in shape; every one has a distinct individuality imposed upon it. Within the smallest compass on earth, relatively speaking, there is found around Europe the very largest variety in its articulations. The Grecian peninsula finds its only superior on the northwest of Europe, in the coast of insulated England.
By means of this characteristic separation of so many more or less individualized parts of the continent through the agency of arms of the sea, the coast-line of Europe has been prolonged to an extraordinary length. The areas of the three continents of the Old World are as follows in round numbers: Europe, 3,500,000 square miles; Africa, 11,800,000 square miles; and Asia, 19,300,000 square miles. Although the superficial contents of Africa are three times that of Europe, the length of the coast-line is so far from being equal, that that of Europe is much the greater, being 25,400 miles. The Asiatic coast-line is about one-third longer still, 32,900 miles; but, as the area of Asia is more than five times that of Europe, a great part of the Asiatic coast-line, that on the north, from Nova Zembla to Kamtchatka, must be considered as unimportant in relation to the development of the resources of Asia.
Europe is, therefore, that continent of the Old Worldwhich has relatively, and I might almost say absolutely, received the largest coast-line of any, encompassing a distance of 25,400 miles. That is to say, the coast-line of Europe, extended in a straight line, would pass around the globe and coincide with the equator. To this admirable feature may be added its favorable relation in situation to the various oceanic and wind currents, and its magnificent supply of harbors, the result of its articulated coast, all of which have made Europe the mistress of the seas. Within modern times, the island group of Great Britain and Ireland, the richest in harbors, is to the continent what, in ancient times, the Greek peninsula was, with its wealth of inlets, which gave it the command of the Mediterranean. A rich gift this has been to the smallest of the continents of the Old World, to equalize its condition with others. The providential wisdom which “sets one thing over against another,” is clearly manifest in this. Europe, though in the center of the great continental land-mass, becomes the most maritime of all, the most approachable of all; or, in other words, its countries and its peoples are the most closely connected with the sea of all in the Old World, because they stand in the most unbroken contact with it.
Thus we discover the characteristic type which was impressed on Europe from the very first. Its relation to the world could not be understood by the ancients, as to them half of the earth lay in unbroken darkness. Only by experience, only by the advance of civilization, and by comparison with all the other continents, could this insight be gained. Doubtless many similar relations yet remain unknown and unsuspected, which will some day come to the light. The earth, as a planet, is only a grain of seed-corn sown by the Creator, enriched with powersof unfolding to infinite perfection in the unexplored future. What we now perceive are only the elementary principles—our knowledge only a motley; but even this is not without its uses, and is worthy of patient mastery.
Europe, so broken in its coast, and rifted far toward its center by arms of the sea, has been affected in all its civil and social history to a very great extent. This is the first natural condition of its progress, the true physical basis of the fact that, upon the most limited of the continents, the greatest historical diversity has sprung up. It is not absolute size, but relative, which gives the pre-eminence; not the raw material, the mere mass, but its articulation, its form, which here, as everywhere, gives mind the mastery over matter. As in the animal and vegetable world there is, amid all the diversity of forms, a constant advance from a lower to a higher plane, manifesting itself in the complexity of the organs; so, in the so-called unorganized side of nature, we see the same characteristic as soon as we have grasped the whole mutual system of adaptations. The most general study of the differences between the continents exhibits an analogous harmony and correlation. As the simple, broad-leaved, solid cactus, or bunch-trunked euphorbia, (peculiar to the dry sand steppes of America and Africa,) appear branchless and without foliage,—the lower and undeveloped forms of vegetation,—so, too, the regions to which they are indigenous are the unbroken plains of North America, or the plateaus of still less broken Africa.
The broken coast-line of Asia and Europe is analogous to that higher development which we find in the palm and in the full, round crown of the European fruit-tree, which bears blossoms and fruit as far as the very extremities of the branches. In the animal organization, the articulationof Europe is to be compared with the complex hand of man, so far superior to the prehensile organs of lower creatures, that Buffon saw in that feature alone the manifestation of man’s place among the animal kingdom.
If we look out over the earth, we see that the limbs of the continents, so to speak, the coasts, the peninsulas, and the adjacent islands, are the most favored places of all for civilization to find its true home upon. With the degree of diversity in the structure of a country, the value of its organisms advances. In this respect, Europe may be considered as the branches and foliage of a great tree, whose trunk and root are to be traced to Central Asia, Africa being a stunted side-shoot. Or, to compare the continents to a still higher class of forms, Europe may be called the Face of the Old World, out of which the soul of humanity could look more clearly into the great and promising future.
We repeat it—it is not absolute size, it is not the mass nor the weight of the material, it is the form, in its greater complexity, which determines the fate of nations and decrees the advancement of man. This gift, in its full measure, has been conferred on Europe. In its complex articulation lies still another characteristic of Europe in contradistinction to the other continents.
If in Africa the coast offers no contrast to the interior, and both remain on the same low plane of development, Asia, on the contrary, displays a perfect antagonism between its central regions and its sea-board. The territory of the Mongolians, the Tartars, and Toorkomans has always remained at the very lowest stage of civilization. The sea-board, on the other hand, has witnessed the growth of a number of isolated nations, who, without the help of mutual dependence, have arrived at a considerably highdegree of culture—the Chinese, Malays, Hindoos, Persians, Arabians, Syrians, and Armenians. But their influence could not penetrate to the compact interior, to transform its nature, nor modify its nationalities. Individual progress in nations, however high it may be carried, can never contribute much toward any real penetration of the interior of so vast a region as Central Asia.
Europe shows in its construction and the relations to which it gives rise characteristics exactly opposite. Being far less massive, the proportion of its extremities to the undeveloped interior is much less great than in Asia. From this, it results that the central part does not prove a hinderance to civilization, viewed physically, hydrographically, or historically; it nowhere serves as a barrier, but rather as a mediator, and a means of communication between the extremities. This has given Europe a character exactly opposite to that of Asia: its North and its South are united, its East and its West; they are not like antagonistic poles, but extend to each other friendly hands. In Africa, the greater part of the interior lies absolutely without contact with and relations to the coast. In Asia, there is a much larger portion of the interior equally without connection with the sea-board, and remaining up to this day in its primitive barbarism.
Symmetry of form gains in Europe a clear advantage over mere mass. Europe, the smallest of the continents, was destined to gain precedence over all the rest, Asia included. As Asia, lying within all the zones, colossal in size, and most plentifully enriched with the gifts of nature, was fitted to be the nursery of supply for all other parts of the world without impoverishing itself; so Europe, limited in size and confined to the temperate zone, but most complex in its subdivision, having a great diversity in its oceaninlets, as well as in its hills, valleys, plateaus, and mountains, yet, without great extremes, has been especially fitted for the reception of stranger races, and for the development of their energies and the advance of their culture. The symmetry and harmony of Europe have constituted the true home of all varieties of national character, and have adapted it to their mutual action, and to the transfer of their distinctive character to one another.
Throughout the entire center of Europe there is an intimate connection with the sea-coast and with the extremities, with the least possible disadvantages. This is accomplished by those sinuous river-courses whose analogies are to be found nowhere in the adjacent continents. The very broadest part of Russia even is intersected with large navigable rivers; and the west and center of Europe are not less richly supplied with these lines of communication, whose starting-points lie often close together, as in the case of the Danube, the Rhine, the Po, and the Rhone. How different is this from the hydrographical system of Central Asia, where the sources of the eastern rivers lie thousands of miles removed from those of the western rivers, and where the rivers of the north are separated by almost as great distances from those of the south!
To what nature has given to Europe man has largely added, seeking by means of canals and railways to make the whole continent subject to him and auxiliary to his needs. In this way the interior districts have appropriated to themselves the advantages of the sea-coast, and the distance which it has placed between itself and Asia and Africa has only been increased. Nature first gave Europe its vantage-ground, and man has gone on from that point and doubled the gifts of nature.
Great peninsulas stretch away into both the great inland seas of Europe—that of the North and that of the South; the Danish and Scandinavian peninsulas into the complex, and yet, physically speaking, single body of water, embracing the North Sea, Baltic, and Gulf of Bothnia; Spain, Italy, and the Grecian peninsula extending southward into the Mediterranean. In the latter there is the greatest contrast between the deeply-indented northern shore and the bare, sandy coast of the African side. In just as great contrast is the uniformly unbroken sea-line of northern Siberia, compared with the articulated shore of northern Russia. How entirely different would the development of northern Asia have been, if a Siberian inland sea had penetrated to the very foot of the Altai, as the seas of northern Europe have pierced to the center of the continent! And had the shallow Syrtis cleft northern Africa as far as Lake Tchad, as the Adriatic has done on the opposite coast, Central Africa would not now be a terra incognita.
The northern as well as the southern extremities of Europe, so far as they are projected into inland seas, have received an equal size and equal natural advantages, each of its own kind, so that, conditioned by its own peculiarities, its population have helped it to attain its rightful place, and an individuality independent of continental influences. The abundant resources which each of these extremities enjoys have insured it, in a physical as well as historical view, an independence which has reacted favorably upon the whole continent. What a debt does not Europe owe to the Greeks, Italians, Spaniards, Dutch, Danes, Scandinavians! How entirely different would the whole development of the shores of Europe have been, had they been bold, inaccessible rocks, an unbroken line of coast,like Uralaska, or the smaller Asiatic peninsulas of Kamtchatka and Malacca! And where would the accomplished European stand to-day, in comparison with his black neighbor on the south, were it not for the articulated coast-line of the continent which gives him his home?
And still there remains, out of the inexhaustible richness of nature, one leading feature to be taken into account. To estimate it properly, we must pay attention briefly to the islands of the three continents of the Old World.
Europe, as a continent, is distinguished by its adjacent islands. Following the irregular coast-line of its many extremities, they lie along, in greater or less number, the satellites, so to speak, of the main land. They are scattered almost everywhere, yet not distant from the coast, like Iceland, but within sight of the shore. In character they resemble the adjacent coast, and form a true part of the main land, except in the one fact of separation. Strabo even called Sicily an insular continuation of Italy, and discriminated between islands found in mid-ocean and those found near the coast, calling the former pelagic and the latter littoral islands. These he regarded as having been at some previous period rent from the main land. The coast islands are by no means, like many of the pelagic islands, mere rocky groups, thrown up by volcanic convulsions, or small, desolate, barren ledges. They are very diverse in character: some are fertile single islands, like Sicily, Candia, Bornholm, Rugen, Negropont; some are double islands, like Britain and Ireland, Zealand and Funen, Corsica and Sardinia; some are island groups, like the 3 Balearic islands, the 3 Maltese islands, the 20 Ionian islands, the 67 Orkneys, the 90 Shetlands, the stillmore numerous Hebrides, the Aland group, and that of the Grecian archipelago. They are generally of very large size, in comparison with the continent to which they are adjacent; a characteristic not only very rare in islands, but which must exert great influence. They are to be viewed, therefore, as continuations of Europe, not as lands sundered from the main land; they are to be considered as its sea-ports, and the mediators between Europe and the other continents.
In round numbers, the islands of Europe embrace about 175,000 square miles—a twentieth of the continent.
This amount of insular territory has given Europe a great diversity of relations, and has contributed much to its ethnographical character. Imagine only England and her whole group struck out of existence. What impoverishment it would bring! The Danish peninsula, without the adjacent islands of Funen and Zealand, were a mere tongue of sand. Without Sicily to furnish grain, Rome’s history had been entirely different from what it was. What a change it would have made in the development of Italy and Greece, had the Cyclades and Crete not served as a bridge, over which the civilization of Hither Asia might pass! Yet these islands, with their inhabitants, do not stand in necessary dependence on the contiguous main land; they have often in themselves the conditions of independent growth and prosperity. And yet the geological qualities and general features of islands may agree very closely with those of the land hard by; as is the case with the British, Danish, Italian, and Grecian groups. Southern England is a continuation of northern France, Picardy, and the Netherlands, as the geology of these districts shows. Sicily is a continuation of the volcanic soil of Calabria, and Candia of the Morea.
Hence the possibility, despite the separation of islands from the main land, of a close connection in the habits, manners, and culture of the people, thus separated, depending as they do on a common soil, and having the same industries in common. It would be entirely different in Great Britain, for example, if the south end of England were geologically formed like the north end of Scotland. Instead of harmony there would be repulsion, and that mutual interchange of relations would not exist which has so powerful an influence on the whole course of European history.
The remarkable number of islands on the coast of Europe, and their significance and value, formerly escaped attention; or rather their influence on the development of that continent, in comparison with others, was not made a matter of study.
Africa has never enlarged its domain through the aid of adjacent islands. Poor as it is in all coast indentations, it is just as poor in islands. Only a few insignificant ones, which have no close geological connection with the shore, are found here. The sporadic groups found in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans are almost exclusively the product of subterranean forces, and are entirely unlike the stratified lime and sandstone formations of the coast. There is, therefore, no close connection between the inanimate nature of continent and islands and their respective populations; no physical conditions have imposed upon them a common historical development. Only the Canary Islands, southwest of the Atlas Mountain range, and Madagascar, could be regarded as at all exceptional to this. But the nine Canaries are relatively extremely small, embracing but about 3000 square miles in all; much too small to exercise any important influence, or to harbor a large population.Besides, they are separated from the main land by marine currents, which would prevent any very important reaction, however large the islands in themselves might be. The Cape Verd islands, embracing only about 1750 square miles, stand in yet more unfavorable relations to the main land. So, too, the solitary islands of St. Helena and Ascension, and in the Indian Ocean the scattered groups of the Camara, Amirante, and Seychelle islands, embracing all together but 3300 square miles, and Socotra, about 1750 square miles. Only Madagascar would be large enough to enrich the continent essentially, if it were nearer to the main land. But it is separated from it by the broad and dangerous Mozambique Channel; both, therefore, have remained without mutual relations; their populations are entirely unlike, and there has been no exchange of productions between them. Madagascar is, therefore, only apparently, and by the apparent contiguity of the mass, a neighbor of Africa; but, in reality,i.e.as it relates to the organic unity of all the various parts of the globe, it is far more intimately connected by the system of marine currents to the Malayan Archipelago, southeast of Asia, than to Africa.
Entirely different is it with the island system of Asia. The eastern and southern sides are remarkably characterized by the profuse numbers of islands found there. It might be said, that what Africa lacks in this regard, Asia more than supplies. On the Asiatic coast they appear in such vast numbers that they have been called, in contrast with the Old and New Worlds, the Island World, or Polynesia. They appear under the most varied conditions—in long rows, in massive groups, and here and there singly. They begin with the North Polar islands, and pass southward in unbroken succession past the equator as far as the tropic of Capricorn.
The Aliaska chain connects the northwest coast of America with Kamtchatka; it comprises over 100 islands, and embraces about 7660 square miles.
The Koorile island extends to the south as far as Saghalien and Yesso.
The Japanese chain runs southward as far as Cape Corea, and includes the great island of Niphon with numerous smaller ones, embracing an area of 164,000 square miles.
Then follow:—
The Loo-Choo islands as far as Formosa.
The single island of Formosa, 13,000 square miles.
The coast island of Hainan, 16,450 square miles.
The numerous group of the Philippines, with the adjacent islands, 121,000 square miles.
The greater Sunda group, with its adjoining archipelago, 689,500 square miles. Of these, Borneo embraces 295,600 square miles; Sumatra, 167,700 square miles; Java, 54,600 square miles; and Celebes, 72,600 square miles.
The smaller Sunda group, 29,200 square miles.
The scattered group of the Moluccas, with the Banda and Ternate islands, 7950 square miles.
The great island of New Guinea, 262,800 square miles, which forms the transition of the Australian group.
On the south coast of Deccan, the great island of Ceylon, 25,860 square miles.
These rows and groups of islands, embracing an aggregate of 1,095,000 square miles, form a kind of insular isthmus from the southeastern extremity of Asia to the northwest of Australia, though broken by unnumbered straits. If lines be drawn from Sumatra and from Hainan to Cape York, on the north coast of Australia, anideal isthmus would be formed not unlike that which connects North and South America. If this insular isthmus be further conceived to have been thrown up by volcanic forces, as that of Panama seems to have been, an addition of 1,095,000 square miles has been made in this way to the most productive portions of the world. So great is the accession of territory that it has become the abode of a distinct race—the Malay—which hardly finds a home at all on the Asiatic shore. Asia has received very little advantage from this vast archipelago. Only the southeast coast has been affected by it; the continent, as a whole, has not been reached by its influence. On the contrary, Australia has been largely affected by it in its productive and ethnographical character. Not only was it first discovered through the agency of these islands, but it probably derives its population from them; it has received many of its animals and plants from them—the sugar-cane, the sago palm, the bread-fruit tree, the dog, and the swine.
In Polynesia, which, in point of size, far surpasses the Antilles group north of South America, we have the most dismembered region on the surface of the globe. It is the highest degree of insulation, of individualization, and results from the extreme carrying out of dispersing causes. The space occupied by the greater Sunda group, with its five seas—the China, Java, Molucca, Celebes, and Mindoro—together with the islands adjacent, the whole lying between longitude 110° and 160° east and latitude 10° south and 20° north, a tract 3525 miles long and 2115 miles wide may worthily be compared with the area of Europe. Such a mass of island groups and single isles, belonging not to Asia with any strict right, but in truth a maritime world of itself, having but the slightest connections with theadjacent continent, is not to be compared with the island system of Europe, which is bound to the main land by the closest ties.
Were a similar insular dismemberment the universal principle on which the world is constructed, and were there no continents whatever, there would be an entire want of direct dependence in nations upon each other, and a degree of independence which would be fatal to the best interests of man. Europe would be broken up into a number of great islands, like Borneo, and into countless islets. In the conformation of Europe, however, there is the happiest system of compensations, and the most harmonious play of contrasts to be found in the world. The disadvantages of a too great dividing up into islands, as in Polynesia, and of too compact and unrifted a central mass, as in Africa, are alike shunned. Both extremes could not fail to be injurious to the best interests of the population. The fullness and richness of nature might, perhaps, be increased; but the effects on human life could not fail to be bad. Man’s highest development does not consist with any extreme in the natural world: it is linked to the action and reaction of contrasts. In Polynesia, the district of extreme dismemberment, the Malays are the least homogeneous of any race on the earth. Malays, Battahs, Dakkas, Horasuras, and Papuas are all engaged in destructive war on each other, and are among the most degraded peoples on the globe. In this region there is the greatest diversity in physical nature, but not in the essential characteristics of man. One point of accord ought not to be passed by: there, where the forces of nature, maritime and volcanic, are on the greatest scale known, the warlike passions of man are on a not less consuming scale. In Polynesia there are the rankest vegetation, themost fervid heat, the most costly spices, animals very large and rare; but man attains to no such superiority,—he degenerates in worth and takes a low place. Where the three natural kingdoms attain their perfection, man seems to linger in the rear.
In Africa, where there is perfect uniformity in nature, there is uniformity in man; and the negro stock, though prolific, gives no race of high development to the world. Both extremes are equally unfavorable to the advance of man; he must have, in order to expand and take the place to which his possibilities lead him, a sphere of mutual conditions, to which a compact continent like Africa and Central Asia can lay no claim, and at the same time be free from that extreme individualization characteristic of the islands of Polynesia.
Europe lies between these extremes. Limited in area, diversified in surface, and deeply indented in its coast-line, it has experienced all the advantages which a continent needs for its development, and for that historical greatness which Europe has won for itself. Less striking in natural scenery and comparatively poor in resources, its contrasts in respect mainly to the action of its inland seas and rivers over the main land have conduced to the happiest results. It has become the school for the Old and the New World, taking the vitality and the crude gifts of Asia and turning them into channels where they could issue in new forms for the advancement and the humanizing of the race.
It will be seen, from what has now been said, that, with an area three times less than that of Africa, Europe (including its adjacent islands) has a coast-line twice as extended.Without the islands, it is 25,380 miles in length, or the circumference of the earth. The coast-line of Africa extends 17,860 miles; that of Asia 32,900.
The exceedingly varying areas of the continents may now be passed in very speedy review. Europe is but a fifth as large as Asia. It is somewhat more than a quarter as large as Africa; it is almost of the same size with Australia. In relation to America, it stands between Asia and Africa; it makes about ¹⁄₁₅ of all the continents, and about ¹⁄₂₀ of all the land surface of the globe; but it is not absolute size, but relative, which determines the importance of a continent; and this twentieth part of all the land on the globe has had paramount influence over all the rest within the past few centuries. The ethnographical character of its population has had great weight in securing this result, and other reasons will doubtless be more apparent in the future.
One of the most important features in the study of the relative importance of the continents is the comparative relation of the main trunk, articulation, and island system to each other. The following table presents this relation as it exists in the Old World:—
These are but approximations to the exact mathematical statement; but they serve to indicate comprehensively this important fact. No exact canon now exists for the perfect expression of the relations of the continents to each other, and their physical superiority and inferiority, and its lack is no less felt than it has been in art to express the comparative importance of the organs of the human body in giving a representation of man.
America is broken by the Caribbean Sea into a double continent, both parts being of colossal magnitude, although the southern portion is about 2,000,000 square miles less in area than the northern. North America contains 9,055,146 square miles. South America contains 7,073,875 square miles; and both contain 16,129,021. The connecting link is found in the tapering isthmus of Central America, with its 302,443 square miles of surface.
But closely connected as is the northern part of the continent with the southern, in a physical sense, in real connection, so far as man is concerned, they are widely separated. During the three centuries which have elapsed since the discovery of America, the Spanish and the Americans have thought of breaking the connection—of sundering the isthmus. All communication between North and South America takes place by water, absolutely none by land. Even before the navigation of the historical period, there seems to have been no land road opened along the isthmus. The old race of the Caribs passed in boats from the Appalachian mountain land of North America to South America and the West Indies. The Toltecs and Aztecs—the oldest tribes which wandered southward—seemed to have ended their march on the high plateau of Mexico and the vale of Anahuac. The legends of the Incas give us no tidings of their traversing the isthmus and reaching Peru on foot, and it is probable that they reached that land otherwise. The isthmus seems never to have been a bridge, but always a barrier. The great Antilles group of islands appears to have served far more as a means of communication between North and South America.
In respect of contour, both divisions have an unmistakable analogy, which appears at first view. Both exhibit a triangular form, with the base at the north and the apex at the south. Toward the south, too, rather than toward the west, speaking in general terms, the gradual conquests of man advance, and therefore there cannot be in the New World, as in the Old, a striking contrast between the Orient and the Occident. East and west, in the New World, are less dependent on each other; they have more individuality, but with a great preponderance of importance in the east over the west side, by reason of the more favorable situation in relation to the sea, less sharpness and boldness of physical features, and a more scanty population. The west side of America has by no means kept up with the advance of its eastern side. Nor could the more southern shores of America compete with those on the northeast, and supply an analogy to the occident of the Old World; for North America stands related to Europe by ties of the closest nature, by wind systems, currents, a not dissimilar climate, and is far more nearly connected with it than with South America: nor could the latter derive any real advantage from its opposite neighbor, rude and undeveloped Africa; nor has the Caribbean Sea performed any such service for America as the Mediterranean has for Europe, being twice as large in area and far more unfavorably situated to advance the interests of civilization. It is only within a recent period that the Caribbean has become a valuable auxiliary to the culture of the world.
South America is only a colossal right-angled triangle of land, with very little articulation in its shores. The northwest and the eastern angles are sharply defined, and the southern one is very acute, the continent running outin the shape of a thin wedge. With some modifications, it has the same form with its neighbor Africa, and is just as unvarying in its want of a serrated coast, its sea-line being but 16,000 miles in length, almost the same as that of Africa. Like Africa, too, South America is destitute of peninsulas and adjacent islands; its coast is as unindented as that of Africa and Australia, all three of these continents of the southern hemisphere being in strict conformity. Yet South America is capable of great progress: its conditions are very plastic; it is characterized by the size and number of the great rivers which pass through its very center; its flora and fauna are extremely rich. In the fruitfulness of its soil, its division by mountains, and its water system, it holds great pre-eminence over Africa. An effort to connect its great rivers, and thus to make its immense natural advantages of mutual service, seems to promise a far more prosperous future for South America than can be predicted for Central Africa; yet the native population of the country stand on a very low plane of manhood.
The wedge-shaped plateau of Patagonia is not at all benefited, as previous analysis would lead us to expect, by its long coast and by the nearness of the islands of Terra del Fuego. The fruitful island of Tasmania is far more valuable to Australia than is this island to Patagonia, and even Iceland is a more productive neighbor to Norway. The Terra del Fuego group, embracing a territory of 29,000 square miles, although hard by the South American coast, only injures it instead of blessing it, for it imperils shipping and harbors a population so degraded that they have no wants which can stimulate the rudest civilization. With a precipitous, craggy coast, without trees and without grass, covered only with moss, and belongingstrictly to the polar world, it must give a habitation to the very lowest and most degraded of the human race, isolated from the world, and only casually visited when winds and storms throw mariners upon its shores.
Not every island is to be considered, therefore, as a gain to the adjacent main land. If Terra del Fuego lay at the mouth of the La Plata River, it would have become a valuable auxiliary to Brazil. The worth of an island is relative, not absolute.
The Antilles group is the great insular formation contiguous to Central America. Its area, though comprising 94,700 square miles, is not one-tenth as great as that of the great Sunda group. By situation and physical conditions, it is much more closely connected with North than with South America. The Caribbean Sea is twice as large as the Mediterranean, the one having 801,800 square miles, and the other 1,675,800 square miles. It has been, therefore, more difficult to make the larger tributary to the advance of civilization than the smaller.
North America has entirely taken the palm from South America in the progress of its culture, just as has uniformly been the case with all the continents of the northern hemisphere compared with the southern; and yet the tropical southern continent is far more profusely endowed with the gifts of nature than the temperate northern one. The northern half, on the other hand, enjoys a far greater advantage in its broken coast-line, numerous bays, gulfs, islands, peninsulas, harbors, as well as by reason of its greater want of conformity to a rigid triangular form.
Enlarging, as it does, toward its southern extremity, North America approaches a trapezoidal shape, like Asia, and, as in Asia also, the size of the main body preponderatesgreatly over that of the extremities. Several of these extremities, too, extend toward the east and south, and only a few toward the west. To the North American peninsulas and islands belong the northeasterly island group of Greenland, (which for centuries was considered to be a peninsula, but which, since Parry’s discoveries in 1820, has been known to be a group of independent islands,) Bank’s Land, Boothia Felix, Cockburn, Melville’s Peninsula, Labrador, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Florida, the latter 59,000 square miles in area.
The northeast of North America is everywhere much cut up by inlets of the ocean, larger bays, gulfs, and sounds. This is the main characteristic of the shore of the northern United States and Canada. As all these open toward Europe, the situation of this whole region has been especially adapted to the most speedy advance in civilization. The pride of the American can no more plume itself on an independent progress than can that of the European; to the former, Europe is the Orient from which he receives, in an already advanced stage, what the European receives from Asia, his own Orient.
The less important peninsulas of North America, and the side most destitute of them, are turned toward the northern Pacific. To this region belong the Russian possessions, the desolate wastes of Aliaska, and, farther to the south, the peninsula of Old California, which has begun, within the last ten years, to play an active part in the world’s affairs. But all three of these are capable at present of little independent advance. They must wait till they feel the impulse of the civilization of the older American States, before they take that place to which the newly-organized commercial relations with China and Japan seem to be leading the way.
North America enjoys a great advantage over Europe in the possession of large inland lakes or seas. The prevalence of articulation and of the adjacent islands is not toward the south, but toward the polar and sub-polar regions, (from 40° to 50° N. lat.,) as in Europe. And although many of these islands and peninsulas are as yet but little known, still the progress of discovery has been so rapid within the past few years, that it would seem, by European analogies, that an important history is yet in store for them. For there is a great kinship between these northern regions of America and the Scandinavian and North Russian domains of Europe. And we know well that no degree of cold has ever intimidated civilization from penetrating in the latter to the very confines of the polar world.
As the White Sea, (48,500 square miles in area,) the Baltic, (167,000 square miles,) and the yet greater North Sea, have broken through the northern regions of Europe, so on a far more gigantic scale have the inroads of the ocean rifted and sundered North America. This we have learned in our recent frequent voyages to the Esquimaux regions. Baffin’s Bay, Lancaster Sound, Smith’s Sound, Jones’ Sound, Barrow Strait, Fox’s Channel with its uncounted islands, Hudson’s Bay with its 499,000 square miles of surface, Boothia Gulf, Victoria and Georgia Seas, Wellington’s Channel, Melville Sound, Prince of Wales Straits, and very many other water passages and basins divide those northern districts into a vast mesh of islands and peninsulas. The superficial area of all these tracts is on a colossal scale; even the Greenland group is estimated to include 766,500 square miles. Within the past few years this whole Arctic Sea has been the scene of numerousexpeditions of discovery, some of them on a princely scale.
All this shows that North America is fashioned much more after the analogy of Europe than of South America. The analogy would be much more close, if North America were as favorably affected by climatic conditions as Europe. Both continents are washed at the south as well as at the north by great inland seas, and divided up by them in a manner peculiar to them among all the continents. Of this articulation, America, less favored by climate, has much the larger share. By its admirable harbors, and by the action of the Gulf Stream crossing the Atlantic in two directions, America has been specially fitted to receive the population and civilization of the Old World, and to stand in the closest relations with it. In this, united with the arrangement of its mountain chains and the happy characteristics of its river systems, America bears the palm completely away from Asia. In that continent the colossal rivers of the north have no connection at their sources with the head-waters of the great Chinese, Indian, and West Asiatic rivers. It is entirely different in North America, where the St. Lawrence, Mackenzie, Columbia, Colorado, Mississippi, and Missouri flow from the same region, as from a common center, not separated at their sources by an immense plateau, but forming a single river system, from the mouth of one to that of another, flowing in just the contrary direction. We find, therefore, that there, as in North Europe, civilization has followed the water-courses, and has planted colonies as far north as 70° on the coast of Greenland; while in Asia human habitations cease with 65° N. lat.
America seems to be appointed, by its physical conditions, to plant the banner of human progress at the mostnorthern parts of the globe, and to do for the northern hemisphere what Great Britain, through her colonies in Tasmania and South Australia, with their admirable harbors, is doing for the southern.
Northern Asia seems to have no future indicated for her beyond the sources and upper courses of her great rivers; she seems to depend upon Central Asia and upon Russian Europe for all the scanty culture which she may possess. In its south and east it seems to have within its Chinese and Indian populations the seeds of an independent development, whose results, like those of Arabia, have been transferred to Europe to become improved there, and then to be given to the world. The form of the three great peninsulas, which were the home of Asiatic culture, has been repeated in Europe,—but with how great a difference! The three European peninsulas are not in the tropical zone and near the equator, but are 1400 miles farther north. The two groups—the eastern one in South Asia, the western one in South Europe—each consisting of three peninsulas, are the most valuable auxiliaries the world’s civilization ever had. Through their agency Asia in the torrid zone and Europe in the temperate have become what America and Australia are yet to be to the extreme north and the extreme south. The former were for the past, the latter for the present and the future. South America, and yet much more Africa and Australia, seem to be held in reserve for the need of a home where the civilization of centuries yet to come shall expand into perfection. They now are in their infancy; the day only begins to break in them. Furnished as they have been with the most liberal gifts of nature, they must receive a culture of which we as yet have little conception. In what way this can be done, the history of the past reveals. Theart of navigation has, within the past three centuries, given to islands and to continents a new life, and developed relations unknown till then. The very touch of European civilization has already wakened the world to new life; and the oceans, which were once the most impassable of barriers, have become the closest of bonds to draw the earth together, and to further its progress toward the consummation of all history.
THE END.