For these far northern islands, the moderating effect of an oceanic
climate has been a factor in making them relatively populous, just as it
is on tropical isles by mitigating heat and drought. The prosperity and
populousness of the Bermuda Islands are to be explained largely by the
mild, equable climate which permits the raising of early vegetables and
flowers for English and American markets. Like climatic conditions and a
like industry account for the 2,000 souls living on the inhabited
islands of the Scilly group. Here intensive horticulture supports a
large force of workmen and yields a profit to the lord proprietor. Syros
in the Cyclades fattens on its early spring vegetable trade with Athens
and Constantinople.[947]
In the Mediterranean lands, where drought and excessive heat during the
growing season offer adverse conditions for agriculture, the small
islands, especially those of fertile volcanic soil, show the greatest
productivity and hence marked density of population. Though the rainfall
may be slight, except where a volcanic peak rises to condense moisture,
heavy dews and the thick mists of spring quicken vegetation. This is the
case in Malta, which boasts a population of 2,000 to the square mile,
exclusive of the English garrison.[948] Little Limosa and Pantellaria,
the merest fragments of land out in the mid-channel of the
Mediterranean, have a population of 200 to the square mile.[949] The
Lipari group north of Sicily average nearly 400 on every square mile of
their fertile soil;[950] but this average rises in Salina to 500, and in
Lipari itself, as also in Ponza of the Pontine group, to nearly 1300.
Here fertile volcanic slopes of highly cultivated land lift vineyards,
orchards of figs, and plantations of currants to the sunny air. But
nearby Alicuri, almost uncultivated, has a sparse population of some
five hundred shepherds and fishermen. Panaria and Filicuri are in about
the same plight. Here again we find those sharp island contrasts.
[Sidenote: Relation of density to area.]
The insular region of the Indian Ocean, which is inhabited by peoples
quite different in race and cultural status from those of the
Mediterranean, yet again demonstrates the power of islands to attract,
preserve, multiply and concentrate population. This is especially true
of the smaller islands, which in every case show a density of population
many times that of the neighboring mainland of Africa. Only vast
Madagascar, continental in size, repeats the sparsity of the continent.
An oceanic climate increases the humidity of the islands as compared
with the mainland lying in the same desiccating tradewind belt. Moreover
their small area has enabled them to be permeated by incoming Arab,
English, and French influences, which have raised their status of
civilization and therewith the average density of population. This
culminates in English Mauritius, which shows 540 inhabitants to the
square mile, occupied in the production of sugar, molasses, rum,
vanilla, aloes, and copra. In Zanzibar this density is 220 to the square
mile; in Reunion 230; in Mayotte, the Comores and Seychelles, the
average varies from 100 to 145 to the square mile, though Mahe in the
Seychelles group has one town of 20,000 inhabitants.[951]
In the Malay Archipelago, an oceanic climate and tropical location have
combined to stimulate fertility to the greatest extent; but this local
wealth has been exploited in the highest degree in the smaller islands
having relatively the longest coastline and amplest contact with the
sea. The great continent-like areas of Borneo, New Guinea and Sumatra
show a correspondingly sparse population; Java, smaller than the
smallest of these and coated with mud from its fertilizing volcanoes,
supports 587 inhabitants to the square mile; but this exceptional
average is due to rare local productivity. Java's little neighbors to
the east, Bali and Lombok, each with an area of only about 2100 square
miles, have a density respectively of 338 and 195 to the square mile.
This density rises suddenly in small Amboina (area 264 square miles),
the isle of the famous clove monopoly, to 1000,[952] drops in the other
Moluccas, where Papuan influences are strong, even to 20, but rises
again in the pure Malayan Philippines to 69. In the Philippines a
distinct connection is to be traced between the density of population
and smallness of area. The explanation lies in the attraction of the
coast for the sea-faring Malay race, and the mathematical law of
increase of shoreline with decrease of insular area. Since 65 per cent.
of the whole Philippine population inhabits coastal municipalities, it
is not surprising that the 73 islands from ten to a hundred square miles
in area count 127 inhabitants to the square mile, and those of less than
ten square miles, of which there are nearly a thousand, have a density
of 238.[953]
This same insular density, supported by fertility, fisheries and trade,
appears again in the West Indies, and also the contrast in density
between large and small islands down to a certain limit of
diminutiveness. The Greater Antilles increase in density from Cuba
through smaller Haiti and Jamaica down to little Porto Rico, which
boasts 264 inhabitants to the square mile. In the smaller area of the
Danish Indies and Guadeloupe about this same density (215 and 274)
reappears; but it mounts to 470 in Martinique and to 1160 in
Barbadoes.[954]
[Sidenote: Island resorts.]
Climate advantages often encourage density of population on islands, by
attracting to them visitors who make a local demand for the fruits of
the soil and thereby swell the income of the islands. For instance,
about the densely populated region of the Gulf of Naples, Procida has
14,000 inhabitants on its one and a half square miles of area, while
fertile Ischia and Capri have 1400 to the square mile. Here a rich
volcanic soil, peaks which attract rain by their altitude and visitors
by their beauty, and a mild oceanic climate delightful in winter as in
summer, all contribute to density of population. Sicily, Malta and Corfu
also gain in the same way in winter. The Isle of Man owes some of its
recent increase of population, now 238 to the square mile, to the fact
that it has become the summer playground for the numerous factory
workers of Lancashire in England.
[Sidenote: Density of population affected by focal location for trade.]
Sometimes climatic advantages are reinforced by a favorable focal point,
which brings the profits of trade to supplement those of agriculture.
This factor of distributing and exporting center has undoubtedly
contributed to the prosperity and population of Reunion, Mahe, Mauritius
and Zanzibar, as it did formerly to that of ancient Rhodes and modern
St. Thomas at the angle of the Antilles. Barbadoes, by reason of its
outpost location to the east of the Windward Isles, is the first to
catch incoming vessels from England, and is therefore a focus of
steamship lines and a distributing point for the southern archipelago,
so that we find here the greatest density of any island in the West
Indies.[955] The 9405 inhabitants of Charlotte Amalie on St. Thomas and
the 15,000 of Willemsted on Curaçao give these also a characteristic
insular density. Samos, blessed with good soil, an excellent position on
Aegean maritime routes, and virtual autonomy, supports a population of
300 to the square mile.[956]
Focal location alone can often achieve this density. Syros, one of the
smallest and by nature the most barren of the Cyclades, though well
tilled is the great commercial and shipping center of the Aegean, and
has in Hermupolis with its 17,700 population by far the largest town of
the archipelago.[957] This development has come since Greece achieved
its independence. It reminds us of the distinction and doubtless also
population that belonged to Delos in ancient days. Advantageous
commercial location and density of population characterize Kilwauru and
Singapore at the east and west extremities of the Malay Archipelago. The
Bahrein Islands, which England has acquired in the Persian Gulf, serve
as an emporium of trade with eastern Arabia and have a local wealth in
their pearl fisheries. These facts account for the 68,000 inhabitants
dwelling on their 240 square miles (600 square kilometers) of sterile
surface.[958]
[Sidenote: Overflow of island population to the mainland.]
The concentration of population in these favored spots of land with
inelastic boundaries, and the tendency of that population to increase
under the stimulating, interactive life make the restriction of area
soon felt. For this reason, so many colonies which are started on
inshore islets from motives of protection have to be transferred to the
mainland to insure a food supply. A settlement of Huguenots, made in
1535 on an island in the harbor of Rio Janeiro, found its base too small
for cultivation, but feared the attack of the hostile Indians and
Portuguese on the mainland. After three years of a struggling existence,
it fell a prey to the Portuguese,[959] De Monts' short-lived colony on
an island in the mouth of the St. Croix River in 1604 had an excellent
site for defence, but was cut off by the drifting ice in winter from
mainland supplies of wood, water and game, while no cultivation was
possible in the sandy soil.[960]
Such sites suffice for mere trading posts, but are inadequate for the
larger social group of a real colony. The early Greek colonists, with
their predilection for insular locations, recognized this limitation and
offset it by the occupation of a strip of the nearest mainland,
cultivated and defended by fortified posts, as an adjunct to the support
of the islands. Such a subsidiary coastal hem was called a _Paraea_. The
ancient Greek colonies on the islands of Thasos and Samothrace each
possessed such a Paraea.[961] The Aeolian inhabitants of Tenedos held a
strip of the opposite Troad coast north of Cape Lekton, while those of
Lesbos appropriated the south coast of the Troad.[962] In the same way
Tarentum and Syracuse, begun on inshore islands, soon overflowed on to
the mainland. Sometimes the island site is abandoned altogether and the
colony transferred to the mainland. The ancient Greek colony of Cyrene
had an initial existence on the island of Platea just off the Libyan
coast, but, not flourishing there, was moved after an interval of
several years to the African mainland, where "the sky was perforated" by
the mountains of Barca.[963] De Monts' colony was removed from its
island to Port Royal in Nova Scotia.
[Sidenote: Precocious development of island agriculture.]
Where an island offers in its climate and soil conditions favorable to
agriculture, tillage begins early to assume an intensive, scientific
character, to supply the increasing demand for food. The land, fixed in
the amount of area, must be made elastic in its productivity by the
application of intelligence and industry. Hence in island habitats, an
early development of agriculture, accompanied by a parallel skill in
exploiting the food resources of the sea, is a prevailing feature. In
Oceanica, agriculture is everywhere indigenous, but shows greatest
progress in islands like Tonga and Fiji, where climate and soil are
neither lavish nor niggardly in their gifts, but yield a due return for
the labor of tillage. The Society[964] and Samoan Islands, where nature
has been more prodigal, rank lower in agriculture, though George Forster
found in Tahiti a relatively high degree of cultivation.[965] The small,
rocky, coralline Paumotas rank lower still, but even here plantains,
sugar-cane, sweet potatoes, yams, taro and solanum are raised. The
crowded atolls of the Gilbert group show pains-taking tillage. Here we
find coco-palms with their roots fertilized with powdered pumice, and
taro cultivated in trenches excavated for the purpose and located near
the lagoons, so that the water may percolate through the coral sand to
the thirsty roots.[966] To lonely Easter Isle nature has applied a
relentless lash. At the time of Cook's visit it was woodless and
boatless except for one rickety canoe, and therefore was almost excluded
from the food supplies of the sea. Hence its destitute natives, by means
of careful and often ingenious tillage, made its parched and rocky
slopes support excellent plantations of bananas and sugar-cane.[967]
The islands of Melanesia show generally fenced fields, terrace farming
on mountain sides, irrigation canals, fertilized soils, well trimmed
shade trees and beautiful flower gardens,[968] proof that the
cultivation of the ground has advanced to the aesthetic stage, as it has
in insular Japan. In Tonga the coco-palm plantations are weeded and
manured. Here, after a devastating war, the victorious chief devotes his
attention to the cultivation of the land, which soon assumes a beautiful
and flourishing appearance.[969] In Tongatabu, which is described by the
early visitors as one big garden, Cook found officials appointed to
inspect all produce of the island and to enforce the cultivation of a
certain quota of land by each householder.[970] Here agriculture is a
national concern.
[Sidenote: Melanesian agriculture.]
In the minute land fragments which constitute Micronesia, fishing is
the chief source of subsistence; agriculture, especially for the all
important taro, is limited to the larger islands like the Pelews. In the
vast islands of western Melanesia, agriculture is on the whole less
advanced. New Guinea, where the chase yields support to many villages,
has large sections still a wilderness, though some parts are cultivated
like a garden. In the smaller Melanesian islands, such as New Hebrides,
New Britain and the Solomon group, we find extensive plantations laid
out on irrigated terraces, In New Hebrides and the Banks Islands every
single village has its flowers and aromatic herbs.[971] But it is in
Fiji that native island agriculture seems to culminate. Here a race of
dark, frizzly haired savages, addicted to cannibalism, have in the art
of tillage taken a spurt forward in civilization, till in this respect
they stand abreast of the average European. The German asparagus bed is
not cultivated more carefully than the yam plants of Fiji; these also
are grown in mounds made of soil which has been previously pulverized by
hand. The variety and excellence of their vegetable products are
amazing, and find their reflection in an elaborate national cuisine,
strangely at variance with the otherwise savage life.[972]
West of Melanesia, the Malay Archipelago shows a high average of
tillage. The inhabitants of Java, Madura, Bali, Lombok and Sumbawa are
skilled agriculturists and employ an elaborate system of
irrigation,[973] but the natives of Timor, on the other hand, have made
little progress. In the Philippines a rich and varied agriculture has
been the chief source of wealth since the Spanish conquest early in the
sixteenth century, proving a native aptitude which began to develop long
before.[974]
[Sidenote: Intensive tillage.]
The dense population of the Mediterranean islands is the concomitant of
an advanced agriculture. The connection between elaborate tillage and
scant insular area is indicated in the earliest history of classic
Aegina. The inhabitants of this island were called Myrmidons, Strabo
tells us, because by digging like ants they covered the rocks with earth
to cultivate all the ground; and in order to economize the soil for this
purpose, lived in excavations under ground and abstained from the use
of bricks.[975] To-day, terraced slopes, irrigation, hand-made soils,
hoe and spade tillage, rotation of crops, and a rich variety of field
and garden products characterize the economic history of most
Mediterranean islands, whether Elba, the Lipari, Ponza, Procida, Capri,
Ischia, Pantellaria, Lampedusa,[976] or the Aegean groups. The sterile
rock of Malta has been converted for two-thirds of its area into fertile
gardens, fields and orchards. The upper stratum of rock has been
pulverized and enriched by manure; the surface has been terraced and
walled to protect it against high winds. In consequence, the Maltese
gardens are famous throughout the Mediterranean.[977] In the Cyclades
every patch of tillable ground is cultivated by the industrious
inhabitants. Terraced slopes are green with orchards of various southern
fruits, and between the trees are planted melons and vegetables. Fallow
land and uncultivated hillsides, as well as the limestone islands fit
only for pastures, are used for flocks of sheep and goats.[978]
[Sidenote: Japanese agriculture.]
It is in Japan that agriculture has attained a national and aesthetic
importance reached nowhere else. Of the 150,000 square miles
constituting Japan proper, two-thirds are mountains; large tracts of
lowlands are useless rock wastes, owing to the detritus carried down by
inundating mountain torrents.[979] Hence to-day arable land forms only
15.7 per cent. of the whole area. During the two hundred and fifty years
of exclusion when emigration and foreign trade were forbidden, a large
and growing population had to be supplied from a small insular area,
further restricted by reason of the configuration of the surface. Here
the geographical effects of a small, naturally defined area worked out
to their logical conclusion, Consequently agriculture progressed rapidly
and gave the farmer a rank in the social scale such as he attained
nowhere else.[980] His methods of tillage are much the same as in
overcrowded China, but his national importance and hence his ranking in
society is much higher. In Japan to-day farming absorbs 60 per cent. of
the population. The system of tillage, in many respects primitive, is
yet very thorough, and by means of skilful manuring makes one plot of
ground yield two or three crops per annum.[981] Every inch of arable
land is cultivated in grain, vegetables and fruits. Mountains and hills
are terraced and tilled far up their slopes. Meadows are conspicuously
absent, as are also fallow fields. Land is too valuable to lie idle.
Labor is chiefly manual and is shared by the women and children; mattock
and hoe are more common than the plow.[982] Such elaborate cultivation
and such pressure of population eventuate in small holdings. In Japan
one hectar (2 1-2 acres) is the average farm per family.
[Sidenote: The case of England.]
While Japan's agriculture reflected the small area of an island
environment, and under its influence reached a high development,
England's from the beginning of the fifteenth century declined before
the competition of English commerce, which gained ascendency owing to
the easy accessibility of Great Britain to the markets of Europe. The
ravages of the Black Death in the latter half of the fourteenth century
produced a scarcity of agricultural laborers and hence a prohibitive
increase of wages. To economize labor, the great proprietors resorted to
sheep farming and the raising of wool, which, either in the raw state or
manufactured into cloth, became the basis of English foreign trade. A
distinct deterioration in agriculture followed this reversion to a
pastoral basis of economic life, supplemented by a growing commerce
which absorbed all the enterprise of the country. The steady contraction
of the area under tillage threw out of employment the great mass of
agricultural laborers, made them paupers and vagrants.[983] Hence
England entered the period of maritime discoveries with a redundant
population. This furnished the raw material for her colonies, and made
her territorial expansion assume a solid, permanent character, unknown
to the flimsy trading stations which mark the mere extension of a field
of commerce.
[Sidenote: Emigration and colonization from islands.]
Even when agriculture, fisheries and commerce have done their utmost, in
the various stages of civilization, to increase the food supply, yet
insular populations tend to outgrow the means of subsistence procurable
from their narrow base. Hence islanders, like peninsula peoples, are
prone to emigrate and colonize. This tendency is encouraged by their
mobility, born of their nautical skill and maritime location. King
Minos of Crete, according to Thucydides and Aristotle, colonized the
Cyclades.[984] Greece, from its redundant population, peopled various
Aegean and Ionian islands, which in turn threw off spores of settlements
to other isles and shores. Corcyra, which was colonized from the
Peloponnesus, sent out a daughter colony to Epidamnos on the Illyrian
coast. Andros, one of the Cyclades, as early as 654 B.C., colonized
Acanthus and Stagirus in Chalcidice.[985] Paros, settled first by
Cretans and then by Ionians, at a very early date sent colonies to
Thasos and to Parium on the Propontis, while Samos was a perennial
fountain emitting streams of settlement to Thrace, Cilicia, Crete, Italy
and Sicily. [Map page 251.]
This moving picture of Greek emigration is duplicated in the Malay
Archipelago, especially in the smaller eastern islands. Almost every
Malay tribe has traditions based upon migrations. The southern
Philippines derived the considerable Mohammedan element of their
populations from the Samal Laut, who came from Sumatra and the islands
of the Strait of Malacca.[986] A Malayan strain can be traced through
Polynesia to far-off Easter Isle. Sometimes the emigration is a
voluntary exile from home for a short period and a definite purpose. The
inhabitants of Bouton, Binungku, and the neighboring islets, all of them
located southeast of Celebes, have for the past twenty-five years come
in great numbers to the larger islands of Ceram, Buru, Amboina and
Banda, where they have laid out and carefully cultivated plantations of
maize, tobacco, bananas and coco-palms. Generally only the men come,
work two years, save their profits and then return home. These ambitious
tillers look like savages, are shy as wild things of the woods, and work
naked to the waist.[987]
Polynesia, Melanesia and Micronesia, where every condition of land and
sea tends to develop the migratory spirit, form a region of extensive
colonization.[988] Settlements of one race are scattered among the
island groups of another, making the ethnic boundaries wide penumbras.
In some smaller islands of Melanesia the Polynesian colonists have
exterminated or expelled the original inhabitants, and are found there
now with all their distinctive race characteristics; but in the larger
islands, they have been merged in the resident population, and their
presence is only to be surmised from the existence of Polynesian
customs, such as father-right in New Hebrides and Solomon Island side
by side with the prevailing Melanesian mother-right.[989] In small
islands, like Tongatabu, Samoa and Fiji, emigration becomes habitual, a
gradual spilling over of the redundant population and hence not a
formidable inundation. In all this insular region of the Pacific, the
impulse to emigration is so persistent, that the resulting inter-insular
colonization obliterates sharp distinctions of race; it annuls the
segregation of an island environment, and makes everywhere for
amalgamation and unification, rather than differentiation.[990]
[Sidenote: Modern emigration from islands.]
Among highly civilized peoples, where better economic methods bring
greater density of population and set at the same time a higher standard
of living, emigration from islands is especially marked. Japan has seen
a formidable exodus since an end was put to its long period of
compression. This has taken the form of widespread emigration to various
foreign lands, notably the Hawaiian Islands and the United States, and
also of internal colonization in its recently acquired territory in
Formosa and Korea.[991] The Maltese have spread from their congested
island, and are found to-day as gardeners, sailors and traders along all
the Mediterranean coasts.[992] Majorca and the more barren Cyclades[993]
tell the same story. The men of Capri go in considerable numbers to
South America, but generally return home again. The Icelanders often
pull themselves out of the stagnation of their lonely, ungenerous island
to become thrifty citizens of western Canada.
[Sidenote: Maritime enterprise as outlet.]
Emigration from islands readily throws itself into the channel of
navigation and foreign trade. The northern Sporades, especially Skiathos
and Skopelos, are the home of sailors who can be found over all the
world.[994] In this appetency for a nautical career, small inshore
islets are often distinguished from the nearby mainland. Nearly all the
masculine population of the Frisian Islands were seamen prior to 1807.
In the eighteenth century a third of the Hamburg vessels were commanded
by captains from the little island of Sylte, and a third of the
Greenland fleet of the Netherlands by natives of Föhr.[995]
In England the exodus took the form of trading expeditions and the
foundation of commercial colonies long before the food resources of the
island had been even considerably developed. The accessible sea offered
lines of least resistance, while the monopoly of the land by a
privileged aristocracy and the fiercely defended corn laws made the
limitations of a small area more oppressive. In Ireland, a landless
peasantry in a grainless land, dulled by deprivation of opportunity,
found in emigration an escape from insupportable evils.
[Sidenote: Artificial checks to population.]
While emigration draws off the surplus population, there tend to develop
in islands, as also in barren highlands where population early reaches
the point of saturation, various devices to restrict natural increase.
The evils of congestion are foreseen and guarded against. Abbé Raynal,
writing of islanders in general, remarked as far back as 1795, "It is
among these people that we trace the origin of that multitude of
singular institutions which retards the progress of population.
Anthropophagy, the castration of males, the infibulation of females,
late marriages, the consecration of virginity, the approbation of
celibacy, the punishments exercised against girls who become mothers at
too early an age," he enumerates as such checks. Malthus, in his Essay
on Population, commenting on this statement, notes that the bounds to
the number of inhabitants on islands, especially small ones, are so
narrow and so obvious that no one can ignore them.[996]
The checks to population practiced on islands are either preventive or
positive. The extreme measure to restrict marriage is found among the
wretched Budumas who inhabit the small, marshy islands of Lake Chad.
Tribal custom allows only the chiefs and headmen to have wives. A brass
crescent inserted in the ear of a boy indicates the favored one among a
chief's sons destined to carry on his race. For his brothers this is
made physically impossible; they become big, dull, timid creatures
contributing by their fishing to the support of the thinly populated
villages. The natives of the Shari River delta on the southern shore of
Lake Chad use Buduma as a term of contempt for a man.[997]
[Sidenote: Polyandry.]
In islands, as in unproductive highlands where hunger stalks abroad,
marriage readily takes the form of polyandry. On the Canary Islands, at
the time of their conquest in 1402, polyandry existed in Lancerote and
possibly in Fuerteventura, often assigning one woman to three husbands;
but in the other islands of the group monogamy was strictly
maintained.[998] In Oceanica polygamy, monogamy or polyandry prevails
according to a man's means, the poverty of the islands, and the supply
of women. A plurality of wives is always the privilege of the chiefs and
the wealthy, but all three forms of marriage may be found on the same
island. Scarcity of women gives rise to polyandry in Tahiti,[999] and
consigns one woman to four or five men. In old Hawaii, where there were
four or five men to one woman a kind of incipient polyandry arose by the
addition of a countenanced paramour to the married couple's
establishment.[1000] Robert Louis Stevenson found the same complaisant
arrangement a common one in the Marquesas, where the husband's deputy
was designated by the term of _pikio_ in the native vocabulary.[1001]
Polyandry existed in Easter Isle, among whose stunted and destitute
population the men far exceeded the women, and children were few,
according to reports of the early visitors.[1002] Numerous other
instances make this connection between island habitat, deficiency of
women, need of checking increase, and polyandrous marriages an obvious
one.[1003]
[Sidenote: Infanticide.]
This disproportion of the sexes in Oceanica is due to the murder of
female infants, too early child-bearing, overwork, privation,
licentiousness, and the violence of the men.[1004] The imminence of
famine dictates certain positive checks to population, among which
infanticide and abortion are widespread in Oceanica. In some parts of
the New Hebrides and the Solomon groups it is so habitual, that in some
families all children are killed, and substitutes purchased at
will.[1005] In the well-tilled Fiji Islands, a pregnant girl is strangled
and her seducer slain. The women make a practice of drinking medicated
waters to produce sterility. Failing in this, the majority kill their
children either before or after birth. In the island of Vanua Levu
infanticide reaches from one-half to two-thirds of all children
conceived; here it is reduced to a system and gives employment to
professional murderers of babies, who hover like vultures over every
child-bed. All destroyed after birth are females.[1006] And yet here, as
on many other islands of Melanesia and Polynesia, such offspring as are
spared are treated with foolish fondness and indulgence.[1007] The two
facts are not incompatible.
[Sidenote: Approved by the state.]
Geographic conditions made infanticide a state measure in these crowded
communities. On the small coral atolls, where the food supply was
scantest, it was enforced by law. On Vaitupu, in the Ellice group, only
two children were allowed to a couple; on Nukufelau, only one. Any
violation of this unique sumptuary law was punished by a fine.[1008] On
the congested Gilbert atolls, a woman rarely had more than two children,
never more than three. Abortion, produced by a regular midwife, disposed
of any subsequent offspring. Affection for children was very strong
here, and infanticide of the living was unknown.[1009] In Samoa, also,
Turner found the practice restricted to the period before birth; but in
Tahiti and elsewhere it was enforced by the tribal village authorities
on the born and unborn.[1010] In pre-Christian Hawaii, two-thirds of all
children, and especially girls, were killed by their parents either
before or after birth. The result was a decay of the maternal instinct
and the custom of farming out children to strangers. This contributed to
the excess of infant mortality, the degeneration of morals and the
instability of the family.[1011] So in Japan the pressure of population
led to infanticide and the sale of daughters to a life of ignominy,
which took them out of the child-bearing class.[1012] Nor was either
custom under the ban.
The result is a deterioration of morals, an invasion of the family bond,
and a decay of the finer sentiments therewith connected. Captain Cook in
1770 found in Tahiti _Eareeoie_ or _Arreoys_ societies, which were
free-love associations including in their number "over half of the
better sort of the inhabitants." The children begotten of these
promiscuous unions were smothered at birth. Obscene conversations,
indecent dances and frank unchastity on the part of girls and women were
the attendant evils of these loose morals.[1013] Cook was sure that
"these societies greatly prevent the increase of the superior classes of
people of which they are composed." Malthus reports a similar
association in the Marianne Islands, distinguished by a similar name,
devoted to race suicide.[1014] Everywhere in Oceanica marriage is
unstable, and with few exceptions unchastity prevails. Stevenson thinks
it chiefly accountable for the decline of population in the
islands.[1015] However, in the detailed _taboos_ laid upon women in Fiji,
Marquesas, and other Polynesian islands we have the survival of an early
measure to increase reserve between the sexes, long after regard for
chastity has vanished.[1016]
[Sidenote: Low valuation of human life.]
The constant pressure of population upon the limits of subsistence
throughout Oceanica has occasioned a low valuation of human life. Among
natural peoples the helpless suffer first. The native Hawaiians, though
a good-natured folk, were relentless towards the aged, weak, sick, and
insane. These were frequently stoned to death or allowed to perish of
hunger.[1017] In Fiji, the aged are treated with such contempt, that when
decrepitude or illness threatens them, they beg their children to
strangle them, unless the children anticipate the request.[1018] In Vate
(or Efate) of the New Hebrides, old people are buried alive, and their
passage to another world duly celebrated by a feast.[1019] However, in
the Tonga Islands and in New Zealand, great respect and consideration
are shown the aged as embodying experience.[1020] The harsher custom
recalls an ancient law of Aegean Ceos, which, ordained that all persons
over sixty years of age should be compelled to drink hemlock, in order
that there might be sufficient food for the rest.[1021]
[Sidenote: Cannibalism in islands.]
Many customs of Oceanica can be understood only in the light of the
small value attached to human life in this island world. The
overpopulation which lies back of their colonization explains the human
sacrifices in their religious orgies and funeral rites, as also the
widespread practice of cannibalism. This can be traced in vestigial
forms, or as an occasional or habitual custom from one end of the
Pacific to the other, from the Marquesas to New Guinea and from New
Zealand to Hawaii. All Melanesia is tainted with it, and Micronesia is
not above suspicion. The cause of this extensive practice, Stevenson
attributes to the imminence of famine and the craving for flesh as food
in these small islands, which are destitute of animals except fowls,
dogs and hogs. In times of scarcity cannibalism threatens all; it
strikes from within or without the clan.[1022] Ratzel leans to the same
opinion.[1023] Captain Cook thought the motive of a good full meal of
human flesh was often back of the constant warfare in New Zealand, and
was sometimes the only alternative of death by hunger. Cannibalism was
not habitual in the Tonga Islands, but became conspicuous during periods
of famine.[1024] In far-away Tierra del Fuego, where a peculiarly harsh
climate and the low cultural status of the natives combine to produce a
frightful infant mortality and therefore to repress population,
cannibalism within the clan is indulged in only at the imperious dictate
of mid-winter hunger. The same thing is true in the nearby Chonos
Archipelago.[1025]
These are the darker effects of an island habitat, the vices of its
virtues. That same excessive pressure of population which gives rise to
infanticide also stimulates agriculture, industry and trade; it develops
ingenuity in making the most of local resources, and finally leads to
that widespread emigration and colonization which has made islanders the
great distributors of culture, from Easter Isle to Java and from ancient
Crete to modern England.
NOTES TO CHAPTER XIII
[803] Table of areas of peninsulas and islands, Justus Perthes, _Taschen
Atlas_, p. 9. Gotha, 1905.
[804] H.J. Mackinder, Britain and the British Seas, pp. 105-108. London,
1904.
[805] W. Deecke, Italy, p. 45. London, 1904.
[806] Journey of William de Rubruquis, pp. 187, 204, Hakluyt Society
Publication, London, 1903.
[807] Archibald Little, The Far East, pp. 35, 45. Oxford, 1905.
[808] Strabo, Book X, chap. II, 19.
[809] Ratzel, _Die Erde und das Leben_, Vol. I. pp. 312-313. Leipzig,
1901.
[810] Charles H. Hawes, In the Uttermost East, p. 103. New York, 1904.
[811] W.E. Griffis, The Mikado's Empire, Vol. I, pp. 26-27. New York,
1904.
[812] Darwin, Origin of Species, Vol. II, chap. XIII, p, 178. New York,
1895.
[813] A.R. Wallace, Geographical Distribution of Animals, Vol. II, p.
61. London, 1876.
[814] Darwin, Origin of Species, Vol. II, chap. XIII, p. 183. New York,
1895.
[815] _Ibid._, Vol. II, chap. XIII, pp. 178-180.
[816] A.R. Wallace, Island Life, pp. 331-332, 338-389, 393, 402,
409-410, 449, 456-463. New York, 1893.
[817] _Ibid._, 342, 370-371.
[818] Emerson, English Traits, chap. VI.
[819] Capt. F. Brinkley, Japan, Vol. I, p. 50. Boston and Tokyo, 1901.
[820] W.E. Griffis, The Mikado's Empire, Vol. I, p. 198. New York, 1904.
[821] Arthur M. Knapp, Feudal and Modern Japan, Vol. I, pp. 211, 220,
221. New York, 1900.
[822] Emerson, English Traits, chap. III.
[823] Ronald M. Burrows, The Discoveries in Crete, pp. 134-136, 141,
162, 177. New York, 1907.
[824] _Ibid._, chapters IV and V.
[825] _Ibid._, p. 179. Angelo Mosso, The Palaces of Crete, pp. 46,
54-55, 61-62, 81. London, 1907.
[826] Ronald M. Burrows, The Discoveries in Crete, pp. 64-65, 82, 84,
147-150. New York, 1907. James Baikie, The Sea Kings of Crete, pp.
235-237. London, 1910.
[827] J.B. Bury, History of Greece, pp. 8-10. New York,1909.
[828] R.M. Burrows, The Discoveries in Crete, pp. 36, 44-46, 50-51, 85,
149-150, 179. New York, 1907.
[829] _Ibid._, 136-137.
[830] Private communication from Mrs. Harriet Boyd Hawes.
[831] Recent Discoveries in Crete, _The Chautauquan_, Vol. 43, p. 220.
1906. R.M. Burrows, The Discoveries in Crete, pp. 103, 162. New York,
1907.
[832] Grote, History of Greece, Vol. IV, pp. 244-245. New York, 1857.
[833] Strabo, Book XIV, chap. II, 7-13.
[834] Strabo, Book VII, chap. VI, 16.
[835] A.P. Niblack, Coast Indians of Southern Alaska and Northern
British Columbia, pp. 382-384. House Misc. Doc. 142. Washington. Dr.
George Dawson, The Haidas, _Harper's Monthly_, August, 1882.
[836] Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. I, p. 180. London, 1896-1898.
[837] Article, The National Academy of Sciences, Nation, Vol. LXXX, p.
328. 1905. Capt. James Cook, A Voyage Towards the South Pole, 1772-1775,
Vol. I, p. 284, 288-296. London. 1777. George Forster, Voyage Round the
World, Vol. I, pp. 566-567, 580-581, 586-591. London, 1777.
[838] G. Sergi, The Mediterranean Race, chap. VII. London and New York,
1901. Helmolt, History of the World, Vol. IV, pp. 222-223. New York,
1902-1906.
[839] Charles W. Hawes, The Uttermost East, pp. 113-116. New York,
1904.
[840] William Bright, Early English Church History, pp. 224-234. Oxford.
1897. P. W. Joyce, Social History of Ireland, Vol. I, pp. 320, 389, 390.
London, 1903.
[841] W.H. Dall, Masks and Labrets, p. 137. Third Annual Report of
Bureau of Ethnology, Washington, 1884.
[842] A.P. Niblack, Coast Indians of Southern Alaska and Northern
British Columbia, pp. 236-382. Washington.
[843] H.R. Mill, International Geography, p. 187. New York, 1902.
[844] A.B. Ellis, The West African Islands, p. 202. London, 1885.
History of the Conquest of the Canaries, Introduction, pp. XIII, XVII,
XXXIII, XXXIV. Hakluyt Society, London, 1872.
[845] Henry Gannett, People of the Philippines, Report of the Eighth
International Geographical Congress, Washington, 1904.
[846] H.R. Mill, International Geography, p. 549. New York, 1903.
[847] W. Deecke, Italy, p. 451. London, 1904.
[848] Nelson Annandale, The Faroes and Iceland, p. 14. Oxford, 1905.
[849] J. Partsch, Central Europe, Map, p. 131, and p. 133. London, 1903.
[850] W.Z. Ripley, Races of Europe, pp. 272, 304, 305, 317. New York,
1899.
[851] _Ibid._, p. 303.
[852] _Ibid._, Map, p. 251, and p. 253.
[853] W. Deecke, Italy, p. 451. London, 1904.
[854] Darwin, Origin of Species, Vol. II, chap. XIII, pp. 179, 180, 184.
New York, 1895. A. E. Wallace, Island Life, pp. 284-285, 290-291. London
and New York, 1892.
[855] H.R. Mill, International Geography, p. 554. New York, 1902.
[856] Ratzel, _Die Erde und das Leben_, Vol. I, p. 364. Leipsig, 1901.
[857] Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. I, pp. 454-456. London,
1896-1898. H.R. Mill, International Geography, p. 1018. New York, 1902.
[858] Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. I, p. 456. London, 1896-1898.
[859] Nordenskiold, Voyage of the Vega, pp. 563, 588, 591. New York,
1882.
[860] A.R. Wallace, Malay Archipelago, pp. 368, 380, 381. New York,
1869.
[861] Richard Semon, In the Australian Bush, pp. 277-278. London,1899.
[862] Strabo, Book VIII, chap. VI, 16.
[863] Pliny, _Naturalis Historia_, Book IV, 12.
[864] _Ibid._, Book VI, chap, 32.
[865] Hereford George, Historical Geography of the British Empire, pp.
130-133. London, 1904.
[866] Dietrich Schaefer, _Die Hansestädte und König Waldemar von
Dänemark_, pp. 37-44. Jena, 1879.
[867] Hereford George, Historical Geography of the British Empire, pp.
127-128. London, 1904.
[868] The Danish West Indies, pp. 2767, 2769. Summary of Commerce and
Finance for January, 1902. Washington.
[869] E.A. Freeman, Historical Geography of Europe, pp. 22, 29, 37, 65,
77, 384, 412-415, 419, 426, 465. London, 1882.
[870] _Ibid._, 35, 48, 49, 54-55, 80, 379, 382-385, 409, 411, 556, 557.
E.A. Freeman, Sicily, chaps. I, II. New York and London, 1894.
[871] W. Deecke, Italy, pp. 132, 445. London, 1904. W.Z. Ripley, Races
of Europe, p. 271. New York, 1899.
[872] Elisée Reclus, Europe, Vol. I, p. 320. New York, 1886.
[873] W. Deecke, Italy, pp. 448, 453. London, 1904.
[874] H.R. Mill, International Geography, p. 367. New York, 1902.
[875] David Murray, Story of Japan, p. 156. New York, 1894.
[876] Henry Dyer. Dai Nippon, p. 61. New York, 1904.
[877] E.A. Freeman, Historical Geography of Europe, pp. 55, 245, 252,
257, 258, 264, 556. London, 1882.
[878] Thucydides I, 114; IV, 57-59, 62.
[879] _Ibid._, IV, 120-122.
[880] Aristotle, Politics, Book XI, chaps. 7, 8.
[881] J.T. Bent, The Bahrein Islands in the Persian Gulf, _Proceedings
of the Roy. Geog. Soc_., Vol. XII, p. 1. London, 1890.
[882] W.F. Walker, The Azores, p. 22. London, 1886.
[883] A.B. Ellis, West African Islands, p. 203. London, 1885.
[884] Strabo, Book III, chap. V, 1.
[885] H.J. Mackinder, Britain and the British Seas, pp. 10-12. London,
1904.
[886] W.Z. Ripley, Races of Europe, pp. 301, 311. New York, 1899.
[887] H.B. George, Historical Geography of the British Empire, pp. 100,
103, 104. London, 1904.
[888] J.R. Green, The Making of England, Vol. II, pp. 30, 31, 35.
London, 1904.
[889] James Bryce, Holy Roman Empire, p. 185. London, 1890. George Webbe
Dasent, The Story of Burnt Njal, or Life in Iceland at the End of the
Tenth Century, Vol. I, pp. LII-LXVIII. Edinburgh, 1861.
[890] Dahlmann, _Geschichte van Dänemark_, Vol. II, pp. 265-268.
Hamburg, 1857. James Bryce, Introduction to Helmolt, History of the
World, Vol. I, p. XXII. New York, 1902.
[891] George T. Stokes, Ireland and the Celtic Church, pp. 206-230.
London, 1886.
[892] J.R. Green, History of the English People, Vol. I, pp. 48-49.
[893] Recent Discoveries in Crete, _The Chautauquan_, Vol. XLIII, p.
220. 1906. Angelo Mosso, The Palaces of Crete, p. 325. London, 1907.
[894] Helmolt, History of the World, Vol. II, pp. 496-504 New York
1902-6.
[895] David Murray, Story of Japan, p. 156. New York, 1894. W.E.
Griffis, The Mikado's Empire, Vol. I, pp. 176-181. New York, 1903.
[896] J.R. Green, History of the English People, Vol. I, pp. 30-33. New
York.
[897] Capt. F. Brinkley, Japan, Vol. I, p. 8. Boston and Tokyo, 1901.
[898] Capt. A.T. Mahan, Influence of Sea Power upon History, p. 29. New
York, 1902.
[899] H.J. Mackinder, Britain and the British Seas, pp. 341, 343.
London, 1904.
[900] Ratzel, _Die Erde und das Leben_, Vol. I, p. 362. Leipzig, 1901.
[901] W.E. Griffis, The Mikado's Empire, Vol. I, p. 258. New York,
1903.
[902] W.F. Walker, The Azores, p. 2. London, 1886.
[903] F.W. Wines, Punishment and Reformation, pp. 166-167, 184-188. New
York, 1895.
[904] Tacitus, Annals, Book I, chap. XIII.
[905] _Ibid._, Book IV, chaps. III, XV. Book II, chap. XIX.
[906] W. Deecke, Italy, pp. 270, 410, 413, 448, 450. London, 1904.
[907] Longmans Gazetteer of the World, Article Easter Isle.
[908] Darwin and Fitzroy, Voyage of the Beagle, Vol. II, p. 59. London,
1839.
[909] _Ibid._, Vol. II, pp. 490-492.
[910] A.B. Ellis, West African Islands, pp. 1-3. London, 1885.
[911] Longmans Gazetteer of the World, Andaman and Nicobar.
[912] Darwin and Fitzroy, Voyage of the Beagle, Vol. III, p. 245.
London, 1839.
[913] A.B. Ellis, West African Islands, pp. 72, 73, 241. London, 1885.
[914] Charles H. Hawes, The Uttermost East, p. 345. New York, 1904.
[915] The Dry Tortugas, _Harper's Monthly_, Vol. 37, p. 260. 1868.
[916] A.R. Wallace, Island Life, pp. 332, 371, 410, 457, 460-461, 464.
London, 1892.
[917] _Ibid._, pp. 407, 408, 410, 462.
[918] Census of the Philippine Islands of 1903, Vol. I, p. 456.
Washington, 1905.
[919] Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. III, pp. 446, 449, 451. London,
1896-1898.
[920] W.E. Griffis, The Mikado's Empire, Vol. I, pp. 30-31. New York,
1903.
[921] W.Z. Ripley, Races of Europe, p. 271. New York, 1899.
[922] Hereford George, Historical Geography of the British Empire, pp.
106-107. London, 1904.
[923] Nelson Annandale, The Faroes and Iceland, pp. 19, 20, 33, 37,
64-65, 148, 193-194, 198, 206, 208. Oxford, 1905.
[924] Capt. James Cook, Voyage to the Pacific Ocean, 1776-1780, Vol. II,
pp. 69-70, 75-78. New York, 1796.
[925] Williams and Calvert, Fiji and the Fijians, pp. 5-7, 14, 15. New
York, 1859. Basil Thomson, The Fijians, pp. 23-32. London, 1908.
[926] Mahler, _Siedelungsgebiete und Siedelungslage in Ozeanien_.
Melching _Staatenbildung in Melanesien_, Leipzig, Dissertations, 1897.
[927] H.R. Mill, International Geography, p. 570. New York, 1902.
[928] Aristotle, Politics, Book II, chap. 8.
[929] Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. I, 297-299. London, 1896-1898.
[930] _Ibid._, Vol. I, Map, p. 145, pp. 234, 251.
[931] _Ibid._, Vol. I, pp. 204-214.
[932] Justus Perthes, _Taschen Atlas_, p. 67. Gotha, 1910.
[933] _Ibid._, p. 60.
[934] _Ibid._, p. 37.
[935] _Ibid._, p. 51.
[936] _Ibid._, pp. 37, 67.
[937] Lippincott's New Gazetteer of the World, Madeira and Azores.
[938] R.L. Stevenson, The South Seas, p. 37. New York, 1903.
[939] _Ibid._, p. 222.
[940] J.S. Jenkins, United States Exploring Squadron under Capt. Wilkes,
1838-1842, pp. 401-403. New York, 1855.
[941] Justus Perthes, _Taschen Atlas_, p. 70. Gotha, 1905.
[942] Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. I, pp. 158, 179. London,
1896-1898.
[943] J.S. Jenkins, United States Exploring Squadron under Capt. Wilkes,
1838-1842, p. 462. New York, 1855.
[944] _Ibid._, p. 314.
[945] Nelson Annandale, The Faroes and Iceland, pp. 93-129. Oxford,
1905.
[946] Elisée Reclus, Europe, Vol. IV, p. 344. New York, 1886.
[947] John Murray, Handbook to Greece and the Ionian Isles, p. 329.
London, 1872.
[948] Hereford George, Historical Geography of the British Empire, p.
119. London, 1904.
[949] W. Deecke, Italy, pp. 449-450. London, 1904.
[950] _Ibid._, pp. 447-448, 410-411.
[951] Statistics from Justus Perthes, _Taschen Atlas_, p. 65. Gotha,
1910.
[952] Longmans Gazetteer of the World, Amboina.
[953] Census of the Philippine Islands of 1903. Vol. II, p. 30.
Washington, 1905.
[954] Justus Perthes, _Taschen Atlas_, pp. 75, 77. Gotha, 1910.
[955] Hereford George, Historical Geography of the British Empire, pp.
238-240. London, 1904.
[956] D.G. Hogarth, The Nearer East, pp. 243-244. London, 1902.
[957] Dr. A. Philippson, The Greek Islands of the Aegean, _Scottish
Geographical Magazine_, Vol. XIII, p. 489. 1897.
[958] J.T. Brent, The Bahrein Islands in the Persian Gulf, _Proceedings
of the Roy. Geog. Society_, Vol. XII, pp. 1-19, 1890; and Justus
Perthes, _Taschen Atlas_, p. 55. Gotha, 1910.
[959] Parkman, Pioneers of France in the New World, pp. 26-32. Boston,
1900.
[960] _Ibid._, pp. 253-262.
[961] Thucydides, I, 100, 101. Herodotus, VII, 108, 109.
[962] Grote, History of Greece, Vol. III, pp. 195, 197. New York, 1857.
[963] _Ibid._, Vol. IV, pp. 30-33.
[964] Capt. James Cook, Voyage to the Pacific Ocean, 1776-1780, Vol. II,
pp. 85-86, 88. New York. 1796.
[965] George Forster, Voyage Round the World, Vol. I, p. 274, 280, 281,
285. London, 1777.
[966] J.S. Jenkins, United States Exploring Squadron under Capt. Wilkes,
1838-1842, p. 402. New York, 1855.
[967] George Forster, Voyage Round the World, Vol. I, pp. 571, 578, 587,
595. London, 1777.
[968] R.H. Codrington, The Melanesians, pp. 303-304. Oxford, 1891.
[969] William Mariner, Natives of the Tonga Islands, Vol. II, p. 30.
Edinburgh, 1827.
[970] Capt. James Cook, Voyage to the Pacific Ocean, 1776-1780, Vol. I,
p. 302. New York, 1796.
[971] Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. I, pp. 254-256. London,
1896-1898.
[972] Williams and Calvert, Fiji and the Fijians, pp. 8, 46-49. New
York, 1859. Basil Thomson, The Fijians, p. 339. London, 1908.
[973] H.R. Mill, International Geography, pp. 562, 564, 572. New York,
1902.
[974] Census of the Philippine Islands of 1903, Vol. IV, pp. 1-2.
Washington, 1905.
[975] Strabo, Book VIII, chap. VI, 16.
[976] W. Deecke, Italy, pp. 380, 448-450. London, 1904.
[977] _Ibid._, p. 452.
[978] Dr. A. Philippson, The Greek Islands of the Aegean, _Scottish
Geographical Magazine_, Vol. XIII, pp. 489-490. 1897. John Murray,
Handbook to Greece and the Ionian Isles. London, 1872.
[979] W.E. Griffis, The Mikado's Empire, Vol. I, pp. 17-20. New York,
1904.
[980] Henry Dyer, Dai Nippon, pp. 238-244. New York, 1903. Arthur M.
Knapp, Feudal and Modern Japan, Vol. I, pp. 78, 79, 116, 117. New York,
1900.
[981] Alfred Stead, Japan by the Japanese, p. 413. London, 1904.
[982] Sir Rutherford Alcock, Three Years in Japan, Vol. I, pp. 83, 84,
283-286. New York, 1868.
[983] H.D. Traill, Social England, Vol. II, pp. 243-246, 547-554; Vol.
III, pp. 114-121, 239-241, 253-255, 351-359. London, 1905.
[984] Thucydides, Book I, 4. Aristotle, Politics, Book II, chap. 7, 2.
Herodotus, Book VII, 170.
[985] Thucydides, Book IV, chaps. 84, 88.
[986] Census of the Philippine Islands in 1903, Vol. I, pp. 412-414.
Washington, 1905.
[987] Richard Semon, In the Australian Bush, p. 517. London, 1899.
[988] Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. I, pp. 174-177. London, 1896-98.
[989] _Ibid._, Vol. I, pp. 178-179.
[990] _Ibid._, Vol. I, pp. 157-161, 165.
[991] Henry Dyer, Dai Nippon, pp. 250-257, 266. New York, 1904.
[992] Elisée Reclus, Europe, Vol. I, p. 337. New York, 1886. Hereford
George, Historical Geography of the British Empire, pp. 118-119. London,
1904.
[993] D.G. Hogarth, The Nearer East, p. 244. London, 1902.
[994] Dr. A. Philippson, The Greek Islands of the Aegean, _Scottish
Geographical Magazine_, Vol. XIII, p. 488. 1897.
[995] Jensen, _Die Nordfrieschen Inseln_, p. 133. 1891.
[996] Malthus, Essay on Population, Book I, chap. V, p. 67. London,
1826. This whole chapter on "Checks to Population in the Islands of the
South Seas" is valuable.
[997] Boyd Alexander, From the Niger to the Nile, Vol. II, pp. 108-110.
London, 1907.
[998] History of the Conquest of the Canaries, p. xxxix. Hakluyt
Society, London, 1872.
[999] Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. I, pp. 273, 299-300. London,
1896-98.
[1000] _Ibid._, Vol. I, pp. 270, 274-275. Adolf Marcuse, _Die
Hawaiischen Inseln_, p. 108. Berlin, 1894.
[1001] R.L. Stevenson, The South Seas, pp. 138-139. New York, 1903.
[1002] George Forster, Voyage Round the World, Vol. I, p. 564, 569, 572,
577, 584, 586, 596. London, 1777.
[1003] Westermarck, History of Human Marriage, pp. 116, 441, 462-463,
450-452, 454, 457. London, 1891.
[1004] Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. I, p. 270. London, 1896-1898.
[1005] R.H. Codrington, The Melanesians, p. 229. Oxford, 1891.
[1006] Basil Thomson, The Fijians, pp. 221-227. London, 1908. Williams
and Calvert, Fiji and the Fijians, pp. 132, 142. New York, 1859.
[1007] _Ibid._, p. 130. R.L. Stevenson, The South Seas, pp. 38, 40. New
York, 1903.
[1008] _Ibid._, p. 38.
[1009] J.S. Jenkins, United States Exploring Squadron under Capt.
Wilkes, 1838-1842, pp. 404-405. New York, 1855.
[1010] Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. I, pp. 270, 299. London,
1896-98.
[1011] Adolf Marcuse, _Die Hawaiischen Inseln_, p. 109. Berlin, 1894.
[1012] G.W. Knox, Japanese Life in Town and Country, p. 188. New York,
1905.
[1013] Capt. Cook's Journal, First Voyage Round the World in the
Endeavor, 1768-1771, pp. 95, 96. Edited by W.J.L. Wharton. London, 1893.
[1014] Malthus, Essay on Population, Book I, chap. V.
[1015] R.L. Stevenson, The South Seas, p. 39. New York, 1903.
[1016] _Ibid._, p. 52.
[1017] Adolf Marcuse, _Die Hawaiischen Inseln_, p. 109. Berlin, 1894.
[1018] Williams and Calvert, Fiji and the Fijians, pp. 144-146. New
York, 1859.
[1019] Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. I, p. 330. London, 1896-1898.
[1020] William Mariner, Natives of the Tonga Islands, Vol. II, pp. 95,
134-135. Edinburgh, 1827. Capt. Cook's Journal, First Voyage Round the
World in the Endeavor, 1768-1771, pp. 220-221. Edited by W.J.L. Wharton.
London, 1893.
[1021] Strabo, Book X, chap. V, 6.
[1022] R.L. Stevenson, The South Seas, pp. 98-104. New York, 1903.
[1023] Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. I, pp. 297-299. London,
1896-1898.
[1024] William Mariner, Natives of the Tonga Islands, Vol. II, pp.
108-109. Edinburgh, 1827.
[1025] Darwin and Fitzroy, Voyage of the Beagle, Vol. II, pp. 183,
189-190. London, 1839.
CHAPTER XIV
PLAINS, STEPPES AND DESERTS
[Sidenote: Relief of the sea floor.]
Anthropo-geography has to do primarily with the forms and relief of the
land. The relief of the sea floor influences man only indirectly. It
does this by affecting the forms of the coast, by contributing to the
action of tides in scouring out river estuaries, as on the flat beaches
of Holland and England, by determining conditions for the abundant
littoral life of the sea, the fisheries of the continental shelf which
are factors in the food quest and the distribution of settlements.
Moreover, the ocean floor enters into the problem of laying telegraph
cables, and thereby assumes a certain commercial and political
importance. The name of the Telegraph Plateau of the North Atlantic,
crossed by three cables, points to the relation between these and
submarine relief. So also does the erratic path of the cable from
southwestern Australia to South Africa via Keeling Island and Mauritius.
Submarine reliefs have yet greater significance in their relation to the
distribution of the human race over the whole earth; for what is now a
shallow sea may in geologically recent times have been dry land, on
which primitive man crossed from continent to continent. It is vital to
the theory of the Asiatic origin of the American Indian that in Miocene
times a land bridge spanned the present shallows of Bering Sea. Hence
the slight depth of this basin has the same bio-geographical
significance as that of the British seas, the waters of the Malay
Archipelago, and the Melanesian submarine platform. The impressive fact
about "Wallace's Line" is the depth of the narrow channel which it
follows through Lombok and Macassar Straits and which, in recent
geological times, defined the southeastern shore of Asia. In all these
questions of former land connection, anthropo-geography follows the lead
of bio-geography, whose deductions, based upon the dispersal of
countless plant and animal forms, point to the paths of human
distribution.
[Sidenote: Mean elevations of the continents.]
The mean elevation of the continents above sea level indicates the
average life conditions of their populations as dependent upon relief.
The 1010 meters (3313 feet) of Asia indicate its predominant highland
character. The 330 meters (1080 feet) representing the average height of
Europe, and the 310 meters (1016 feet) of Australia indicate the
preponderance of lowlands. Nevertheless, anthropo-geography rarely lends
itself to a mathematical statement of physical conditions. Such a
statement only obscures the facts. The 660 meters (2164 feet) mean
elevation of Africa indicates a relief higher than Europe, but gives no
hint of the plateau character of the Dark Continent, in which lowlands
and mountains are practically negligible features; while the almost
identical figure (650 meters or 2133 feet) for both North and South
America is the average derived from extensive lowlands in close
juxtaposition to high plateaus capped by lofty mountain ranges. Such
mathematical generalizations indicate the general mass of the
continental upheaval, but not the way this mass is divided into low and
high reliefs.[1026]
The method of anthropo-geography is essentially analytical, and
therefore finds little use for general orometric statements, which may
be valuable to the science of geo-morphology with its radically
different standpoint. For instance, geo-morphology may calculate from
all the dips and gaps in the crest of a mountain range the average
height of its passes, Anthropo-geography, on the other hand,
distinguishes between the various passes according as they open lines of
greater or less resistance to the historical movement across the
mountain barriers. It finds that one deep breach in the mountain wall,
like the Mohawk Depression[1027] and Cumberland Gap in the Appalachian
system,[1028] Truckee Pass in the Sierra Nevada[1029] and the Brenner in
the Alps,[1030] has more far-reaching and persistent historical
consequences than a dozen high-laid passes that only notch the crest.
Pack-trail, road and railroad seek the former, avoid the latter; one
draws from a wide radius, while the other serves a restricted local
need. Therefore anthropo-geography, instead of clumping the passes,
sorts them out, and notes different relations in each.
[Sidenote: Distribution of reliefs.]
In continents and countries the anthropo-geographer looks to see not
what reliefs are present, but how they are distributed; whether
highlands and lowlands appear in unbroken masses as in Asia, or
alternate in close succession as in western Europe; whether the
transition from one to the other is abrupt as in western South America,
or gradual as in the United States. A simple and massive land structure
lends the same trait of the simple and massive to every kind of
historical movement, because it collects the people into large groups
and starts them moving in broad streams, as it were. This fact explains
the historical preponderance of lowland peoples and especially of steppe
nomads over the small, scattered groups inhabiting isolated mountain
valleys. The island of Great Britain illustrates the same principle on a
small scale in the turbid, dismembered history of independent Scotland,
with its Highlanders and Lowlanders, its tribes and clans separated by
mountains, gorges, straits, and fiords,[1031] in contrast to the smoother,
unified course of history in the more uniform England. Carl Ritter
compares the dull uniformity of historical development and relief in
Africa with the variegated assemblage of highlands and lowlands, nations
and peoples, primitive societies and civilized states in the more
stimulating environment of Asia.[1032]
[Sidenote: Homologous relief and homologous histories.]
The chief features of mountain relief reappear on a large scale in the
continents, which are simply big areas of upheaval lifted above sea
level. The continents show therefore homologous regions of lowlands,
uplands, plateaus and mountains, each district sustaining definite
relations to the natural terrace above or below it, and displaying a
history corresponding to that of its counterpart in some distant part of
the world, due to a similarity of relations. This appears first in a
specialization of products in each tier and hence in more or less
economic interdependence, especially where civilization is advanced. The
tendency of conquest to unite such obviously complementary districts is
persistent. Hence the Central Highland of Asia is fringed with low
peripheral lands like Manchuria, China, India and Mesopotamia, into
whose history it has repeatedly entered as a disturbing force. All the
narrow Pacific districts of the Americas from Alaska to Patagonia are
separated by the Cordilleras from the lowlands on the Atlantic face of
the continents; all reveal in their history the common handicap arising
from an overwhelming preponderance of plateau and mountain and a paucity
of lowlands. Colombia, Ecuador and Peru have in the past century been
stretching out their hands eastward to grasp sections of the bordering
Amazon lowlands, where to-day is the world's great field of conflicting
boundary claims. Chile would follow its geographical destiny if it
should supplement its high, serrated surface by the plateaus and
lowlands of Bolivia, as Cyrus the Persian married the Plateau of Iran to
the plains of the Tigris and Euphrates, and Romulus joined the Alban
hills to the alluvial fields of the Tiber.
[Sidenote: Anthropo-geography of lowlands.]
Well-watered lowlands invite expansion, ethnic, commercial and
political. In them the whole range of historical movements meet few
obstacles beyond the waters gathering in their runnels and the forests
nourished in their rich soils. Limited to 200 meters (660 feet)
elevation, lowlands develop no surface features beyond low hills and
undulating swells of land. Uniformity of life conditions, monotony of
climate as of relief, except where grades of latitude intervene to chill
or heat, an absence of natural boundaries, and constant encouragement to
intercourse, are the anthropo-geographic traits of lowlands, as opposed
to the arresting, detaining grasp of mountains and highland valleys.
Small, isolated lowlands, like the mountain-rimmed plains of Greece and
the Aegean coast of Asia Minor, the Nile flood-plain, Portugal, and
Andalusia in Spain, may achieve precocious and short-lived historical
importance, owing to the fertility of their alluvial soils, their
character as naturally defined districts, and their advantageous
maritime location; but while in these restricted lowlands the telling
feature has been their barrier boundaries of desert, mountains and sea,
the vast level plains of the earth have found their distinctive and
lasting historical importance in the fact of their large and unbounded
surface.
Such plains have been both source and recipient of every form of
historical movement. Owing to their prevailing fitness for agriculture,
trade and intercourse, they are favored regions for the final massing of
a sedentary population. The areas of greatest density of population in
the world, harboring 150 or more to the square kilometer (385 to the
square mile), are found in the lowlands of China, the alluvial plains of
India, and similar level stretches in the Neapolitan plain and Po
Valley, the lowlands of France, Germany, Holland, Belgium, England and
Scotland. Such a density is found in upland districts (660 to 2000 feet,
or 200 to 600 meters) bordering agricultural lowlands, only where
industries based upon mineral wealth cause a concentration of
population. [See maps pages 8, 9, 559.]
[Sidenote: Extensive plains unfavorable to early development.]
The level or undulating surface of extensive lowlands is not favorable
to the early development of civilization. Not only do their wide extent
and absence of barriers postpone the transition from nomadism to
sedentary life, but their lack of contrasting environments and
contrasted developments, which supplement and stimulate, puts chains
upon progress. A flat, monotonous relief produces a monotonous
existence, necessarily one-sided, needing a complement in upland or
mountain. To the pioneer settlers in the lowlands of Missouri the Ozark
Plateau was a boon, because its streams furnished water-power for much
needed saw and flour mills. Treeless Egypt even before 2500 B. C.
depended upon the cedars of the Lebanon Mountains for the construction
of its ships; so that the conquest of Lebanon, begun by Thutmose I. and
completed by Thutmose III. in about 1470 B. C., had a sound geographical
basis.[1033] Similarly the exploitation of the copper, malachite, turquoise
and lapis-lazuli of Mount Sinai, minerals not found in the Nile plain,
led the ancient Egyptians into extensive mining operations there before
3000 B. C., and resulted in the establishment of Egyptian political
supremacy in 2900 B. C., as a measure to protect the mines against the
depredations of the neighboring Bedouin tribes.[1034] Lowlands lack the
distinctive advantages of highlands found in diversity of climate,
water-power, generally in more abundant forests and minerals. The latter
are earlier discovered and worked in the tilted strata of mountains and
uplands.
Plain countries suffer particularly from a paucity of varied geographic
conditions and of resulting contrasts in their population. Their
national characters tend to be less richly endowed; their possibilities
for development are blighted or retarded, because even racial
differences are rapidly obliterated in the uniform geographic
environment, A small diversified country like Crete, Great Britain,
Italy, Portugal, Saxony, or Japan, is a geographical _multum in parvo_.
The western half of Europe bears the same stamp, endowing each country
and nation with marked individuality born of partial isolation and a
varied combination of environment. The larger eastern half of the
continent embraced in the plains of Poland and Russia shows monotony in
every aspect of human life. This comes out anthropologically in the
striking similarity of head-form found everywhere north and east of the
Carpathian Mountains, except in the secluded districts of Lithuania and
Crimea, which shelter remnants of distinct races. Over all this vast
territory the range of cephalic variation is only five units or
one-third that in the restricted but diversified territory of western
Europe. Italy, only one-eighteenth the size of European Russia, has a
range of fifteen units, reflecting in the variety of its human types the
diversity of its environment.[1035]
[Sidenote: Conditions for fusion in plains.]
In the plains geography makes for fusion. Russia shows this marked
homogeneity, despite a motley collection of race ingredients which have
entered into the make-up of the Russian people. Without boundary or
barrier, the country has stood wide open to invasion; but the intruders
found no secluded corners where they could entrench themselves and
preserve their national individuality.[1036] They dropped into a vast
melting-pot, which has succeeded in amalgamating the most diverse
elements. The long-drawn Baltic-North Sea plain of Europe shows the same
power to fuse. Here is found a prevailing blond, long-headed stock from
the Gulf of Finland to the Somme River in France.[1037] Yet this natural
boulevard has been a passway for races. Prehistoric evidences show that
the dark, broad-headed Celtic folk once overspread this plain east to
the Weser;[1038] it still tends to trickle down from the southern uplands
into the Baltic lowland, and modify the Teutonic type along its southern
margin throughout Germany.[1039] The Slavs in historic times reached as
far west as the Weser, while the expansion of the Teutons has embraced
the whole maritime plain from Brittany to the Finnish Gulf. Here it is
difficult to draw an ethnic boundary on the basis of physical
differences. The eastern Prussians are Slavonized Teutons, and the
adjacent Poles seem to be Teutonized Slavs, while the purest type of
Letto-Lithuanian at the eastern corner of the Baltic coast approximates
closely to the Anglo-Saxon type which sprang from the western
corner.[1040] A similar amalgamation of races and peoples has taken place
in the lowlands of England and Scotland, while diversity still lingers
in the highlands. In the Lowlands of Scotland, Picts in small numbers,
Britons, Scots from Ireland, Angles, Frisians, Northmen and Danes have
all been blended and assimilated in habits, customs and speech.[1041]
[Sidenote: Retardation due to monotonous environment.]
This uniformity is advantageous to early development in a small plain,
because of the juxtaposition of contrasted environments, but is
stultifying to national life in an immense expanse of monotony like that
of Russia. Here sameness leaves its stamp on everything. Language is
differentiated with only two dialects, that of the Great Russians of the
north and the Little Russians of the southern steppes, who were so long
exposed to Tartar influences. Most other languages of Europe, though
confined to much smaller areas, show far greater diversity.[1042] While
the Russian of Kazan or Archangel can converse readily with the citizen
of Riga or St. Petersburg, Germans from highland Bavaria and Swabia are
scarcely intelligible to Prussian and Mecklenberger. And whereas Germany
a few decades ago could count over a hundred different kinds of national
dress or _Tracht_, Great Russia alone, with six times the area, had only
a single type with perhaps a dozen slight variations. Leroy-Beaulieu
comments upon this eternal sameness. "The cities are all alike; so are
the peasants, in looks, habits, in mode of life. In no country do people
resemble one another more; no other country is so free from political
complexity, those oppositions in type and character, which even yet we
encounter in Italy and Spain, in France and Germany. The nation is made
in the likeness of the country; it shows the same unity, we might say
the same monotony, as the plains on which it dwells."
[Sidenote: Influence of soils in low plains.]
The more flat and featureless a lowland is, the more important become
even the slightest surface irregularities which can draw faint dividing
lines among the population. Here a gentle land-swell, river, lake,
forest, or water-soaked moor serves as boundary. Especially apparent is
the differentiating influence of difference of soils. Gravel and
alluvium, sand and clay, chalk and more recent marine sediments,
emphasize small geographical differences throughout the North German
lowland and its extension through Belgium and Holland; here various
soils differentiate the distribution of population. In the Netherlands
we find the Frisian element of the Dutch people inhabiting chiefly the
clay soils and low fens of the west and northwest, the Saxon in the
diluvial tracts of the east, and the Frankish in the river clays and
diluvium of the south. All the types have maintained their differences
of dialect, styles of houses, racial character, dress and custom.[1043]
The only distinctive region in the great western lowland of France,
which comprises over half of the country, is Brittany, individualized in
its people and history by its peninsula form, its remote western
location, and its infertile soil of primary rocks. Within the
sedimentary trough of the Paris Basin, a slight Cretacean platform like
the meadow land of Perche[1044] (200 to 300 meters elevation) introduces
an area of thin population devoted to horse and cattle raising in close
proximity to the teeming urban life of Paris. The eastern lowland of
England also can be differentiated economically and historically chiefly
according to differences of underlying rocks, Carboniferous, Triassic,
Jurassic, chalk, boulder clays, and alluvium, which also coincide often
with slight variations of relief.[1045] In Russia the contrast between the
glaciated surface of the north and the Black Mould belt of the south
makes the only natural divisions of that vast country, unless we
distinguish also the arid southeastern steppes on the basis of a purely
climatic difference. [See map page 484.]
The broad coastal plain of our South Atlantic States contains only low
reliefs; but it is diversified by several soil belts, which exert a
definite control over the industries of the inhabitants, and thereby
over the distribution of the negro population. In Georgia, for instance,
the rich alluvial soil of the swampy coast is devoted to the culture of
rice and sea-island cotton, and contains over 60 per cent. of negroes in
its population. This belt, which is only 25 miles wide, is succeeded
inland by a broader zone of sandy pine barrens, where the proportion of
negroes drops to only 20 or 30 per cent. of the total. Yet further
inland is another fertile belt, devoted chiefly to the cultivation of
upland cotton and harboring from 35 to over 60 per cent. of negroes in
its population.[1046] Alabama shows a similar stratification of soils and
population from north to south over its level surface. Along the
northern border of the state the cereal belt coincides with the deep
calcareous soil of the Tennessee River Valley, where negroes constitute
from 35 to 60 per cent. of the inhabitants. Next comes the mineral belt,
covering the low foot-hills of the Appalachian Mountains. It contains
the densest population of the state, less than 17 per cent. of which is
negro. South of this is the broad cotton belt of various rich soils,
chiefly deep black loam of the river bottoms, which stretches east and
west across the state and includes over 60 per cent. of negroes in its
population. This is succeeded by the low, coastal timber belt, marked by
a decline in the quality of the soil and the proportion of negro
inhabitants.[1047]
[Sidenote: Value of slight elevations.]
In the dead level of extensive plains even slight elevations are seized
upon for special uses, or acquire peculiar significance. The Kurgans or
burial mounds of the prehistoric inhabitants of Russia, often twenty to
fifty feet high, serve to-day as watch-towers for herdsmen tending their
flocks.[1048] Similarly the Bou-bous, inhabiting the flat grasslands of
the French Congo between the Shari and Ubangui Rivers, use the low
knolls dotted over their country, probably old ant-hills, as lookout
points against raiders.[1049] The sand hills and ridges which border the
southern edges of the North German lowland form districts sharply
contrasted to the swampy, wooded depressions of the old deserted river
valleys just to the north. Early occupied by a German stock, they
furnished the first German colonists to displace the primitive Slav
population surviving in those unattractive, inaccessible regions, as
seen in the Spreewald near Kottbus to-day.
[Sidenote: Plains and political expansion.]
The boundless horizon which is unfavorable to a nascent people endows
them in their belated maturity with the power of mastering large areas.
Political expansion is the dominant characteristic of the peoples of the
plains. Haxthausen observed that handicapped and retarded Russia
commands every geographic condition and national trait necessary for
virile and expansive political power.[1050] Muscovite expansion eastward
across the lowlands of Europe and Asia is paralleled by the rapid
spread of American settlement and dominion across the plains and
prairies of the Mississippi Valley, and Hungarian domination of the wide
Danubian levels from the foot-hills of the Austrian Alps to the far
Carpathian watershed. It was the closely linked lowlands of the Seine
and Loire which formed the core of political expansion and
centralization in France. Nearly the whole northern lowland of Germany
has been gradually absorbed by the kingdom of Prussia, which now
comprises in its territory almost two-thirds of the total area of the
Empire. Prussian statesmen formulated the policy of German unification
and colonial expansion, and to Prussia fell the hereditary headship of
the Empire.
Lowland states tend to stretch out and out to boundaries which depend
more upon the reach of the central authority than upon physical
features. We have seen American settlement and dominion overleap one
natural boundary after another between the Mississippi River and the
Pacific, from 1804 to 1848. Russia in an equally short period has pushed
forward its Asiatic frontier at a dozen points, despite all barriers of
desert and mountain. Argentina, blessed with extensive plains, fertile
soil and temperate climate, which have served to augment its population
both by natural increase and steady immigration (one-fourth of its
population is foreign), has expanded across the Rio Negro over the
grasslands of the Patagonian plain, and thereby enlarged its area by
259,620 square miles since 1881. The statesman of the plains is a
nature-made imperialist; he nurses wide territorial policies and draws
his frontiers for the future. To him a "far-flung battle line" is
significant only as a means to secure a far-flung boundary line.
[Sidenote: Arid plains.]
From these low, accessible plains of adequate rainfall, which at first
encourage primitive nomadism but finally make it yield to sedentary life
and to dense populations spreading their farms and cities farther and
farther over the unresisting surface of the land, we turn to those
boundless arid steppes and deserts which Nature has made forever the
homes of restless, rootless peoples. Here quiescence is impossible, the
_Völkerwanderung_ is habitual, migration is permanent. The only change
is this eternal restlessness. While the people move, progress stands
still. Everywhere the sun-scorched grasslands and waterless waste have
drawn the dead-line to the advance of indigenous civilization. They
permit no accumulation of productive wealth beyond increasing flocks and
herds, and limit even their growth by the food supply of scanty,
scattered pasturage. The meager rainfall eliminates forests and
therewith a barrier to migrations; it also restricts vegetation to
grasses, sedges and those forms which can survive a prolonged summer
drought and require a short period of growth.
[Illustration: ANNUAL RAINFALL OF THE WORLD.]
[Sidenote: Distribution and extent of arid plains.]
The union of arid plains and steppe vegetation is based upon climate,
and is therefore a widely distributed phenomenon. These plains, whether
high or low, are found in their greatest extent in the dry trade-wind
belts, as in the deserts and steppes of Arabia, Persia, Sudan, the
Sahara, South Africa and Central Australia; and in vast continental
interiors, where the winds arrive robbed of their moisture in passing
intervening highlands, as in the grasslands of our western plains, the
llanos and pampas of South America, and the steppes of Central Asia. But
wherever they occur, whether in Argentina or Russian Turkestan or the
higher plains of Mongolia and Tibet, they present the same general
characteristics of land surface, climate, flora and fauna, and the same
nomadic populations of pastoral or hunting tribes. In them the movement
of peoples reaches its culminating point, permanent settlement its nil
point. Here the hunting savage makes the widest sweep in pursuit of
buffalo or antelope, and pauses least to till a field; here the pastoral
nomad follows his systematic wandering in search of pasturage and his
hardly less systematic campaigns of conquest. It is the vast area and
wide distribution of these arid plains, combined with the mobility which
they impose on native human life, that has lent them historical
importance, and reproduced in all sections of the world that significant
homologous relation of arid and well-watered districts.
[Sidenote: Pastoral life.]
The grasslands of the old world developed historical importance only
after the domestication of cattle, sheep, goats, asses, horses, camels
and yaks. This step in progress resulted in the evolution of peoples
who renounced the precarious subsistence of the chase and escaped the
drudgery of agriculture, to devote themselves to pastoral life. It was
possible only where domesticable animals were present, and where the
intelligence of the native or the peculiar pressure exerted by
environment suggested the change from a natural to an artificial basis
of subsistence. Australia lacked the type of animal. Though North
America had the reindeer and buffalo, and South America the guanaco,
llama and alpaca, only the last two were domesticated in the Andean
highlands; but as these were restricted to altitudes from 10,000 to
14,000 feet, where pasturage was limited, stock raising in primitive
South America was merely an adjunct to the sedentary agriculture of the
high intermontane valleys, and never became the basis for pastoral
nomadism on the grassy plains. However, when the Spaniards introduced
horses and cattle into South America, the Indians and half-breeds of the
llanos and pampas became regular pastoral nomads, known as llaneros and
gauchos. They are a race of horsemen, wielding javelin and lasso and
bola, living on meat, often on horse-flesh like the ancient Huns,
dwelling in leather tents made on a cane framework, like those of the
modern Kirghis and medieval Tartars, dressed in cloaks of horsehide sewn
together, and raiding the Argentinian frontier of white settlement for
horses, sheep and cattle, with the true marauding instinct of all
nomads.[1051]
[Sidenote: Pastoral nomads of Arctic plains.]
Aridity is not the only climatic condition condemning a people to
nomadic life. Excessive cold, producing the tundra wastes of the far
north, has the same effect. Therefore, throughout Arctic Eurasia, from
the Lapp district of Norway to the Inland Chukches of eastern Siberia,
we have a succession of Hyperborean peoples pasturing their herds of
reindeer over the moss and lichen tundra, and supplementing their food
supply with hunting and fishing. The reindeer Chukches once confined
themselves to their peninsula, so long as the grazing grounds were
unexhausted; but they now range as far west as Yakutsk on the Lena
River, The Orochones of the Kolima River district in eastern Siberia,
who live chiefly by their reindeer, have small herds. A well-to-do
person will have 40 to 100 animals, and the wealthiest only 700, while
the Chukches with herds of 10,000 often seek the pasture of the Kolima
tundra.[1052] Farther west, the Samoyedes of northern Siberia and Russia
and the Zirians of the Petchora River range with their large herds
northward to the Yalmal Peninsula and Vaygats Isle in summer, and
southward in winter. [See map pages 103, 225.] Here a herd of fifty
head, which just suffices for the support of one family of four souls,
requires 10 square versts, or 4.44 square miles of tundra pasturage.[1053]
Hence population must forever remain too sparse ever to attain
historical significance. [See map page 8.] The Russian Lapps, too, lead
a semi-nomadic life. Each group has a particular summer and winter
settlement. The winter village is located usually inland in the Kola
Peninsula, where the forests lend shelter to the herds, and the summer
one near the tundra of the coast, where fishing is accessible. In
winter, like the nomads of the deserts, they add to their slender income
by the transport of goods by their reindeer and by service at the post
stations.[1054]
[Sidenote: Historical importance of steppe nomads.]
These nomads of the frozen north, scattered sparsely over the remote
periphery of the habitable world, have lacked the historical importance
which in all times has attached to the steppe nomads, owing to their
central location. The broad belt of deserts and grasslands which crosses
the old world diagonally between 10° and 60° North Latitude from the
Atlantic in Africa to the Pacific in Asia, either borders or encompasses
the old domains of culture found in river oases, alluvial lowlands or
coastal plains of the Torrid and Temperate Zones. The restless, mobile,
unbound shepherds of the arid lands have never long been contained by
the country which bred them. They have constantly encroached upon the
territory of their better placed neighbors, invading, conquering,
appropriating their fields and cities, disturbing but at the same time
acquiring their culture, lording it over the passive agriculturists, and
at the same time putting iron into their weaker blood. It is the
geographical contact between arid steppes and moist river valley,
between land of poverty and land of plenty, that has made the history of
the two inseparable.[1055]
[Illustration: CULTURAL REGIONS OF AFRICA AND ARABIA.]
[Sidenote: Mobility of pastoral nomads.]
Every aspect of human life in the steppes bears the stamp of mobility.
The nomad tolerates no clog upon his movements. His dwelling is the tent
of skin or felt as among Kalmucks and Kirghis, or the tent wagon of the
modern Boer[1056] and the ancient Scythian as described by Herodotus.[1057]
"This device has been contrived by them as the country is fit for it,"
he says,--level, grassy, treeless. The temporary settlement of shepherd
tribes is the group of tents, or the ancient _carrago_ camp of the
nomadic Visigoths,[1058] or the _laager_ of the pastoral Boers, both a
circular barricade or corral of wagons.
[Sidenote: Tendency to trek.]
Constant movement reduces the impedimenta to a minimum. The Orochones, a
Tunguse nomadic tribe of eastern Siberia, have no furniture in their
tents, and keep their meager supply of clothing and utensils neatly
packed on sledges, as if to start at a moment's notice.[1059] The only
desirable form of capital is that which transports itself, namely,
flocks and herds. Beyond that, wealth is limited to strictly portable
forms, preferably silver, gold and jewels. It was in terms of these,
besides their herds, that the riches of Abraham and Lot were rated in
the Bible. That the Israelites when traveling through the wilderness
should have had the gold to make the golden calf accords strictly with
the verisimilitude of pastoral life.[1060] Moreover, that these enslaved
descendants of the Sheik Abraham, with their traditions of pastoral
life, should have simply trekked-ruptured the frail ties of recently
acquired habit which bound them to the Nile soil, is also in keeping
with their inborn nomadic spirit. Similar instances occur among modern
peoples. The Great Trek of the South African Boers in 1836, by which
they renounced not only their unwelcome allegiance to England, but also
their land,[1061] was another exodus in accordance with the instinct of a
pastoral people. They adopted no strange or difficult course, but
traveled with their families as they were wont in their every day life
of cattle-tenders, took all their chattels with them, and headed for the
thin pastures of the far-reaching veldt. The Russian government has had
to contend with a like fluidity in her Cossack tribes of the steppes,
who have been up and off when imperial authority became oppressive. In
the summer of 1878 West Siberia lost about 9000 Kirghis, who left the
province Semipalatinsk to seek Mongolia.
[Sidenote: Seasonal migrations.]
Environment determines the nomadic habits of the dweller of desert and
steppe. The distribution of pasture and water fixes the scope and the
rate of his wandering; these in turn depend upon geographic conditions
and vary with the season. The Papago Indians of southern Arizona range
with their cattle over a territory 100 by 150 miles in extent, and
wander across the border into Mexico. When their main water supply,
derived from wells or artificial reservoirs near their summer villages,
is exhausted, they migrate to the water-holes, springs or streams in the
cañons. There the cattle graze out on the plains and return to the
cañons to drink.[1062] Every Mongol tribe and clan has its seasonal
migration. In winter the heavier precipitation and fuller streams enable
them to collect in considerable groups in protected valleys; but the dry
summer disperses them over the widest area possible, in order to utilize
every water-hole and grass spot. The hotter regions of the plains are
abandoned in summer for highlands, where the short period of warmth
yields temporary pastures and where alone water can be found. The
Kirghis of Russian Turkestan resort in summer to the slopes and high
valleys of the Altai Mountains, where their auls or tent villages may be
seen surrounded by big flocks of sheep, goats, camels, horses and
cattle.[1063] The Pamir in the warm months is the gathering place for the
nomads of Central Asia. The naked desert of Arabia yields a rare herbage
during the rainy season, when the Bedouin tribes resort to it for
pasturage;[1064] but during the succeeding drought they scatter to the
hills of Yemen, Syria and Palestine,[1065] or migrate to the valley of the
Nile and Euphrates.[1066] The Arabs of the northern Sahara, followed by
small flocks of sheep and goats, vibrate between the summer pastures on
the slopes of the Atlas Mountains and the scant, wiry grass tufts found
in winter on the borders of the desert.[1067] When the equatorial rains
begin in June, the Arabs of the Atbara River follow them north-westward
into the Nubian desert, and let their camel herds graze on the delicate
grass which the moisture has conjured up from the sandy soil. The
country about Cassala, which is flooded during the monsoon rains by the
rivers from the Abyssinian Mountains, is reserved for the dry
season.[1068] In the same way the Tartar tribes of the Dnieper, Don, Volga
and Ural Rivers in the thirteenth century moved down these rivers in
winter to the sea coast, and in summer up-stream to the hills and
mountains.[1069] So for the past hundred years the Boers of the South
African grasslands have migrated in their tent wagons from the higher to
the lower pastures, according to the season of the year, invading even
the Karroo Desert after the short summer rains.[1070]
[Sidenote: Marauding expeditions.]
This systematic movement of nomads within their accepted boundaries
leads, on slight provocation, to excursions beyond their own frontiers
into neighboring territories. The growing herd alone necessitates the
absorption of more land, more water-holes, because the grazed pastures
renew their grass slowly under the prevailing conditions of drought. An
area sufficient for the support of the tribe is inadequate for the
sustenance of the herd, whose increase is a perennial expansive force.
Soon the pastures become filled with the feeding flocks, and then
herdsmen and herds spill over into other fields. Often a season of
unusual drought, reducing the existing herbage which is scarcely
adequate at best, gives rise to those irregular, temporary expansions
which enlarge the geographical horizon of the horde, and eventuate in
widespread conquest. Such incursions, like the seasonal movements of
nomads, result from the helpless dependence of shepherd tribes upon
variations of rainfall.
The nomad's basis of life is at best precarious. He and want are
familiar friends. A pest among his herds, diminished pasturage, failing
wells, all bring him face to face with famine, and drive him to robbery
and pillage.[1071] Marauding tendencies are ingrained in all dwellers of
the deserts and steppes.[1072] Since the days of Job, the Bedouins of
Arabia have been a race of marauders; they have reduced robbery to a
system. Predatory excursions figure conspicuously in the history of all
the tribes. Robber is a title of honor.[1073] Pliny said that the Arabs
were equally addicted to theft and trade. They pillaged caravans and
held them for ransom, or gave them safe conduct across the desert for a
price. Formerly the Turkoman tribes of the Trans-Caspian steppes levied
on the bordering districts, notably the northern part of Khorasan, which
belonged more to the Turkomans, Yomut and Goklan tribes of the adjoining
steppe than to the resident Persians. The border districts of Herat,
Khiva, Merv and Bukhara used to suffer in the same way from the raids of
the Tekkes, till the Russians checked the evil.[1074] The Tekkes had
depopulated whole districts, invaded Persian towns of considerable size,
and carried off countless families into slavery. Both Turkomans and
Kirghis tribes prior to 1873 raided caravans and carried off the
travelers to the slave markets of Bukhara and Samarkand.[1075] [See map
page 103.]
Among these tribes no young man commanded respect in his community till
he had participated in a _baranta_ or cattle-raising.[1076] For centuries
the nomadic hordes of the Russian steppes systematically pillaged the
peaceful agricultural Slavs, who were threatening to encroach upon their
pasture lands. The sudden, swift descent and swift retreat of the
mounted marauders with the booty into the pathless grasslands, whither
pursuit was dangerous, their tendency to rob and conquer but never to
colonize, involved Russia in a long struggle, which ceased only with the
extension of Muscovite dominion over the steppes.[1077]
[Sidenote: Depredation and conquests of African nomads.]
All the Saharan tribes are marauders, whether Arabs, Berber Tuaregs, or
Negroid Tibbus. The desert has made them so. The Tuaregs are chronic
freebooters; they keep the Sahara and especially the caravan routes in
constant insecurity. They stretch a cordon across these routes from
Ghadames and Ghat in the east to the great oases of Insalah and Twat in
the west; and from the oases and hills forming their headquarters they
spread for pasturage and blackmail over the desert.[1078] They exact toll
over and over again from a caravan, provide it with a military escort of
their own tribesmen, and then pillage it on the way.[1079] This has been
the experience of Barth[1080] and other explorers. Caravans have not been
their only prey. The agricultural peoples in the Niger flood-plain, the
commerce on the river, and the markets of Timbuctoo long suffered from
the raids of the Tuaregs of the Sahara. They collected tribute in the
form of grain, salt, garments, horses and gold, typical needs of a
desert people, imposed tolls on caravans and on merchant fleets passing
down the Niger to Timbuctoo. In 1770 they began to move from the desert
and appropriate the fertile plains in the northern part of the Niger
Valley, and in 1800 they conquered Timbuctoo; but soon they had to yield
to another tribe of pastoral nomads, the Fulbes from the Senegal, who in
1813 established a short-lived but well organized empire on the ruins of
the Tuareg dominion.[1081] [See map page 105.] The other agricultural
states of the Sudan have had the same experience. The Tibbus, predatory
nomads of the French Sahara just north of Lake Chad and the River Yo,
mounted on camels and ponies, cross the shrunken river in the dry season
and raid Bornu for cattle, carry off women and children to sell as
slaves, pillage the weekly markets on the Yo, and plunder caravans of
pilgrims moving eastward to Mecca.[1082] Nowhere can desert nomads and the
civilized peoples of agricultural plains dwell side by side in peace.
Raids, encroachments, reprisals, finally conquest from one side or the
other is the formula for their history. [See map page 487.]
[Sidenote: Forms of defense against nomad depredations.]
The raided territory, if a modern civilized state, organizes its border
communities into a native mounted police, as the English have done in
Bornu, Sokoto and the Egyptian Sudan, and as the Russians did with their
Cossack riders along the successive frontiers of Muscovite advance into
the steppes; or it takes into its employ, as we have seen, the nearest
nomad tribes to repress or punish every hostile movement beyond. Among
the ancient states the method was generally different. Since the nomad
invaders came with their flocks and herds, a barrier often sufficed to
block their progress. For this purpose Sesostris built the long wall of
1500 stadia from Pelusium to Heliopolis as a barricade against the
Arabians.[1083] Ancient Carthage constructed a ditch to check the
depredations of the nomads of Numidia.[1084] The early kings of Assyria
built a barrier across the plains of the Euphrates above Babylon to
secure their dominion from the incursions of the desert Medes.[1085] In
the fifth century of our era, the "Red Wall" was constructed near the
northern frontier of Persia as a bulwark against the Huns. It stretched
for a hundred and fifty miles from the Caspian Sea at the ancient port
of Aboskun eastward to the mountains, and thus enclosed the populous
valley of the Gurgen River.[1086] In remote ages the neck of the Crimean
Peninsula was fortified by a wall against the irruptions of the
Tauro-Scythians.[1087] The Russians early in their national history used
the same means of defense against Tartar incursions. One wall was built
from Pensa on the Sura River to Simbirsk on the Volga, just south of
Kazan; another, further strengthened by a foss and palisades, extended
from the fortress of Tsaritzin at the southern elbow of the Volga across
the fifty-mile interval to the Don, and was still defended in 1794 by
the Cossacks of the Don against the neighboring Kirghis hordes.[1088] The
classic example of such fortifications against pastoral nomads, however,
is the Great Wall of China.
[Sidenote: Pastoral life as a training for soldiers.]
The nomad is economically a herdsman, politically a conqueror, and
chronically a fighter. Strife over pasturage and wells meets us in the
typical history of Abraham, Lot and Isaac;[1089] it exists within and
without the clan. The necessity of guarding the pastures, which are only
intermittently occupied, involves a persistent military organization.
The nation is a quiescent army, the army a mobilized nation.[1090] It
carries with it a self-transporting commissariat in its flocks and
herds. Constant practice in riding, scouting and the use of arms,
physical endurance tested by centuries of exertion and hardship, make
every nomad a soldier. Cavalry and camel corps add to the swiftness and
vigor of their onslaught, make their military strategy that of sudden
attack and swifter retreat, to be met only by wariness and extreme
mobility. The ancient Scythians of the lower Danubian steppes were all
horse archers, like the Parthians. "If the Scythians were united, there
is no nation which could compare with them or would be capable of
resisting them; I do not say in Europe, but even in Asia," said
Thucydides.[1091] In this opinion Herodotus concurred.[1092] The nomad's
whole existence breeds courage. The independent, hazardous life of the
desert makes the Arab the bravest of mankind, but the settled,
agricultural Arab of Egypt and Mohammedan Spain lost most of his
fighting qualities.[1093]
[Sidenote: Military organization of nomads.]
The daily life of a nomad horde is a training school for military
organization. In the evening the flocks and herds are distributed with
system around the camp to prevent confusion. The difficult art of a well
ordered march, of making and breaking camp, and of foraging is practiced
almost daily in their constant migrations.[1094] The usual order of the
Bedouin march could scarcely be surpassed by an army. In advance of the
caravan moves a body of armed horsemen, five or seven kilometers ahead;
then follows the main body of the tribesmen mounted on horses and
camels, then the female camels, and after these the beasts of burden
with the women and children. The encampment of tents with the places
for men, arms and herds is also carefully regulated. More than this, the
horde is organized into companies with their superior and subordinate
leaders.[1095] John de Carpini describes Genghis Khan's military
organization of his vast Tartar horde by tens, hundreds and thousands,
his absolute dominion over his conquered subjects, and prompt absorption
of them into his fighting force, by the compulsory enlistment of
soldiers out of every freshly subjugated nation.[1096] In the same way the
Hebrew tribes, when preparing for the conquest of Canaan, adopted from
the desert Midianites the organization of the horde into tens, hundreds
and thousands under judges, who were also military leaders in time of
war.
[Sidenote: Capacity for conquest and political consolidation.]