Mountains are seldom equally accessible from all sides. Rarely does the

crest of a system divide it symmetrically. This means a steep, difficult

approach to the summit from one direction, and a longer, more gradual,

and hence easier ascent from the other. It means also in general a wide

zone of habitation and food supply on the gentler slope, a better

commissary and transport base whence to make the final ascent, whether

in conquest, trade or ethnic growth. Mountain boundaries are therefore

rarely by nature impartial. They do not umpire the great game of

expansion fairly. They lower the bars to the advancing people on one

side, and hold them relentlessly in place to the other. To the favored

slope they give the strategic advantage of a swift and sudden descent

beyond the summit down the opposite side. The political boundary of

France along the watershed of the Vosges Mountains is backed by a long,

gradual ascent from the Seine lowland and faces a sharp drop to the rift

valley of the middle Rhine, Its boundary along the crest of the Alps

from Mont Blanc to the Mediterranean brings over two-thirds of the

upheaved area within the domain of France, and gives to that country

great advantages of approach to the Alpine passes at the expense of

Italy. With the exception of the ill-matched conflict between the

civilized Romans and the barbarian Gauls, it is a matter of history that

from the days of Hannibal to Napoleon III, the campaigns over the Alps

from the north have succeeded, while those from the steep-rimmed Po

Valley have miscarried. The Brenner route favored alike the Cimbri

hordes in 102 B.C. and later the medieval German Emperors invading Italy

from the upper Danube. The drop from the Brenner Pass to Munich is 2800

feet; to Rovereto, an equally distant point on the Italian side, the

road descends 3770 feet.

[Sidenote: Its ethnic effects.]

The inequality of slope has ethnic as well as political effects,

especially where a latitudinal direction also makes a sharp contrast of

climate on the two sides of the mountain system. Except in the Roman

period, the southern face of the Alps has been an enclosing wall to the

Italians. The southern cultivator penetrated its high but sunny valleys

only when forced by poverty, while the harsh climate on the long

northern slope effectively repelled him. On the other hand, Switzerland

has overstepped the Alpine crest in the province of Ticino and thrust

its political boundary in a long wedge down to the lowland of the Po

near Como; and the Alpine race, spilling everywhere over the mountain

rim into the inviting Po basin, has given to this lowland population a

relatively broad skull, blond coloring and tall figure, sharply

contrasted with the pure Mediterranean race beyond the crest of the

Apennines.[1229]

The long northward slope of the Alps in Switzerland and Tyrol, and the

easy western grade toward France, have enabled Germanic and Gallic

influences of various kinds to permeate the mountains. A strong element

of blond, long-headed Germans mingles in the population of the Aar and

Rhine valleys up to the ice-capped ridge of the Glarner and Bernese

Alps,[1230] while the virile German speech has pushed yet farther south to

the insuperable barrier of the Monte Rosa group. The abrupt southward

slope of the Himalayas has repelled ethnic expansion from the river

lowlands of northern India, except in the mountain valleys of the Punjab

streams and Nepal, where the highland offered asylum to the Rajput race

when dislodged by a later Aryan invasion, or when trying their energies

in expansion and conquest.[1231] The Tibetan people, whose high plateaus

rise almost flush with the Himalayan passes, have everywhere trickled

through and given a Mongoloid mountain border to Aryan India,[1232] even

though their speech has succumbed to the pervasive Aryan language of the

piedmont, and thus confused the real ethnic boundary. [See map page

102.] The retarded and laborious approach of British "influence" up this

steep ascent to Lhassa, as opposed to the long established suzerainty of

the Chinese Emperor in Tibet, can be attributed in part to the

contrasted accessibility from north and south.

[Sidenote: Persistence of barrier nature.]

Mountains influence the life of their inhabitants and their neighbors

fundamentally and variously, but always reveal their barrier nature. For

the occupants of one slope they provide an abundant rainfall, hold up

the clouds, and rob them of their moisture; to the leeward side they

admit dry winds, and only from the melting snow or the precipitation on

their summits do they yield a scanty supply of water. The Himalayas are

flanked by the teeming population of India and the scattered nomadic

tribes of Tibet. Mountains often draw equally clear cut lines of

cleavage in temperature. The Scandinavian range concentrates upon Norway

the warm, soft air of the Atlantic westerlies, while just below the

watershed on the eastern side Sweden feels all the rigor of a sub-Arctic

climate. In history, too, mountains play the same part as barriers. They

are always a challenge to the energies of man. Their beauty, the charm

of the unknown beyond tempts the enterprising spirit; the hardships and

dangers of their roads daunt or baffle the mediocre, but by the great

ones whose strength is able to dwarf these obstacles is found beyond a

prize of victory. Such were Hannibal, Napoleon, Suvaroff, Genghis Khan,

and those lesser heroes of the modern work-a-day world who toiled across

the Rockies and Sierras in the feverish days of '49, or who faced the

snows of Chilkoot Pass for the frozen gold-fields of the Yukon.

[Sidenote: Importance of mountain passes.]

For migrating, warring and trading humanity therefore, the interest of

the mountains is centered in the passes. These are only dents or

depressions in the great up-lifted crest, or gaps carved out by streams,

or deeper breaches in the mountain wall; but they point the easiest

pathway to the ultramontane country, and for this reason focus upon

themselves the travel that would cut across the grain of the earth's

wrinkled crust. Their influence reaches far. The Brenner, by its

medieval trade, made the commercial greatness of Augsburg, Ratisbon,

Nuremberg, and Leipzig to the north, and promoted the growth of Venice

to the south. The Khaibar Pass and the Gates of Herat in Afghanistan

have for long periods dominated the Asiatic policy of Russia and British

India. The Mohawk depression and Cumberland Gap for decades gave

direction to the streams of population moving westward into the

Mississippi basin in the early history of the Republic. Where Truckee

Pass (7017 feet) makes a gash in the high ridge of the Sierra Nevada,

the California Trail in 1844 sought the line of least resistance across

the barrier mass, and deposited its desert-worn immigrants about the

Sacramento Valley and San Francisco Bay. There they made a nucleus of

American population in Mexican California, and in 1846 became the center

of American revolt.

[Sidenote: Persistent influence of passes.]

Though modern engineering skill, especially when backed by a political

policy, may cause certain passes to gain in historical importance at the

cost of others, the rule holds that passes are never quite

insignificant. Their influence is persistent through the ages. They are

nature-made thoroughfares, traversed now by undisciplined hordes of

migrating barbarians, now by organized armies, now by the woolly flocks

and guardian dogs of the nomad shepherd, now by the sumpter mule of the

itinerant merchant, now by the wagon-trains of over-mountain settlers,

now by the steam engine panting up the steep grade. Nowhere does history

repeat itself so monotonously, yet so interestingly as in these mountain

gates. In the Pass of Roncesvalles, notching the western Pyrenees

between Pamplona in Spain and St. Etienne in France, fell the army of

Charlemagne surprised and beset by the mountain tribes in 778;[1233]

through this breach the Black Prince in 1367 led his troops to the

victory of Navarette; in the Peninsular War a division of Wellington's

army in 1813 moved northward up this valley, driving the French before

them; and by this route Soult advanced southward across the frontier for

the relief of the French forces shut up in Pamplona. The history of

Palestine may be read in epitome in the annals of the Vale of Jezreel,

where the highlands of Palestine sink to a natural trough before rising

again to the hill country of Galilee and the mountain range of high

Lebanon. This was the avenue for war and trade between the Nile and

Euphrates, between Africa and Asia. Here the Canaanites expanded

eastward from the coast, cutting off northern Israel in Galilee from

Samaria and Judea. Here Gideon turned back the incursions of the

Midianites or western Arabs. Here was the open road for Assyrians,

Egyptians, for Greek armies under Antiochus, and Roman armies under

Pompey, Mark Antony, Vespasian and Titus. Hither came the Saracens from

the east in 634 A. D. to rout the Greek army, and later the Crusaders

from the west, to secure with castle and fortress this key to the Holy

Land. Finally, hither came Napoleon from Egypt in 1799 on his way to the

Euphrates.[1234]

[Sidenote: Geographic factors in the historical importance of passes.]

The historical importance of passes tends to increase with the depth of

the depression, since the lowest gap in a range relegates the others to

only occasional or local use; and with their rarity, in consequence of

which intercourse between opposite slopes is concentrated upon one or

two defiles. The low dips of the Central American Cordilleras to 262

feet (80 meters) at Panama, 151 feet (46 meters) in the Nicaraguan

isthmus, and 689 feet (210 meters) at Tehuantepec, present a striking

contrast both orographically and historically to the South American

Andes, where from the equator to the Uspallata or Bermejo Pass (12,562

feet or 3842 meters) back of Valparaiso, a stretch measuring 33 degrees

of latitude, the passes all reach or exceed 10,000 feet or 3000 meters.

The southern or Pennine range of the Alps, stretching as a snow-wrapped

barrier from Mont Blanc 90 miles to the central Alpine dome of the St.

Gotthard, is notched only by the Great St. Bernard and Simplon passes,

which have therefore figured conspicuously in war and trade, since very

early times. The Pass of Thermopylæ, as the only route southward along

the flank of the Pindus system, figures in every land invasion of Greece

from Xerxes to the Greek war of independence. All movements back and

forth across the Caucasus wall have been confined to the Pass of Dariel

and the far lower Pass of Derbent, or _Pylæ Albaniæ_; of the ancients,

which lies between the Caspian and the last low spurs of the mountains

as they drop down to the sea. The latter, as the easier of the two

passes, has had a longer and richer history. It alone enabled the

ancient Persians temporarily to force a wedge of conquest to the

northern foot of the Caucasus, and it has been in all ages a highway for

peoples entering Persia and Georgia from the north. It has so far been

the only practicable route for a railway from the Russian steppes to the

southern base of the Caucasus. While Vladicaucas and Tiflis have direct

connection by the military highway over the Pass of Dariel, the railroad

between these two points makes a detour of 300 miles to the east.

[Sidenote: Intermarine mountains.]

Intermarine mountains as a rule offer the easiest passways where they

sink to meet the flanking seas. The Pyrenees are crossed by only two

railroads, the Bayonne-Burgos line, along the shore of the Bay of

Biscay, and the Narbonne-Barcelona line, overlooking the Mediterranean.

Between these extremities the passes are very high and only two are

practicable for carriages, the Col de la Perche (5280 feet or 1610

meters) between the valleys of the Tet and the upper Segre, and the Port

de Canfranc (7502 feet or 2288 meters) on the old Roman road from

Saragossa to Oloron. The coastal road around the eastern end of the

Cheviot Hills has been the great intermediary between England and

Scotland. It was the avenue for early Teutonic expansion into the Scotch

Lowlands, the thoroughfare for all those armies which for centuries made

Berwick a chronic battleground.

For purposes of trade these intermarine mountains are less serious

barriers, because they can be avoided by an easier and cheaper sea

route. Hence on each side of such ranges grow up active ports, like

Narbonne and Barcelona, Bayonne and Bilbao with San Sebastian, on the

piedmont seaboard of the Pyrenees; Petrovsk and Baku on the Caspian rim

of the Caucasus, balancing the Crimean ports and Poti with Trebizond on

the Black Sea. Analogous is the position of Genoa and Marseilles in

relation to the Maritime Alps. Such ports are inevitably the object of

attack in time of hostilities. In the Peninsular War almost the first

act of the French was to seize Barcelona, San Sebastian and Bilbao; and

throughout the seven years of the conflict these points were centers of

battle, blockade and siege. If Russia ever tries to wrench the upper

Euphrates Valley from Turkey, Trebizond will repeat the history of

Barcelona in the Peninsular War.

[Sidenote: Pass roads between regions of contrasted production]

As the world's roads are used primarily for commerce, pass routes rank

in importance according to the amount of trade which they forward; and

this in turn is decided by the contrast in the lands which they unite.

The passes of the Alps and the Pass of Belfort have been busy

thoroughfares from the early Middle Ages, because they facilitate

exchanges between the tropical Mediterranean and the temperate regions

of Central Europe. Or the contrast may be one of economic and social

development. The Mohawk depression forwards the grain of the

agricultural Northwest in return for the manufactured wares of the

Atlantic seaboard. The passes of the Asiatic ranges connect the

industrial and agricultural lowlands of India and China with the

highland pastures of Mongolia, Tibet, Afghanistan and Russian Turkestan.

Hence they forward the wool, skins, felts, cloth and carpets of the

wandering shepherds in exchange for the food stuffs and industrial

products of the fertile, crowded lowlands. Where passes open a highway

for inland countries to the sea, their sphere of influence is greatly

increased. San Francisco, New York, Marseilles, Genoa, Venice, Beirut

and Bombay are seaports which owe their importance in no small degree to

dominant pass routes into their hinterland.

[Sidenote: Passes determine trans-montane roads.]

In plains and lowlands highways may run in any direction expediency

suggests, but in mountain regions the pass points the road. In very high

ranges there is no appeal from this law; but in lower systems and

especially in old mountains which have been rounded and worn down by

ages of denudation, economic and social considerations occasionally

transcend orographical conditions in fixing the path of highways.

Scarcely less important than pass or gap is the avenue of approach to

the same. This is furnished by lateral or transverse valleys of erosion.

The deeper their reentrant angles cut back into the heart of the

highlands, the more they facilitate intercourse and lend historical

importance to the pass route. The Alpine passes which are approached by

a single valley from each side are those crossed by railroads

to-day,--Mont Cenis, Simplon, St. Gotthard and the Brenner. The Alpine

chain is trenched on its inner or southern side by a series of

transverse erosion valleys, such as the Dora Baltea, Sesia, Tosa,

Ticino, Adda, Adige, and Tagliamento, which carry roads up to the chief

Alpine passes. The coincidence of the Roman and medieval roads over the

Alps with the modern railroads is striking, except in the single point

of elevation. Railroads tend to follow lower levels. Modern engineering

skill enables them to tunnel the crest, to cut galleries in the

perpendicular walls of gorges, and to embank mountain torrents against

the spring inundation of the roadbed, where it drops to the valley

floor.

[Sidenote: Navigable river approaches to passes.]

Where gaps are low and the approaching waters are navigable, at least

for the small craft of early days, they combine to enhance the

historical importance of their routes. The Mohawk River, navigable for

the canoe of Indian and fur trader, greatly increased travel and traffic

through the Mohawk depression. The Pass of Belfort is the greatest

historic gateway of western Europe, chiefly because it unites the

channels of the Rhone, Saône and Rhine. Lake Lucerne brings the modern

tourist by boat to the foot of the railroad ascent to the St. Gotthard

Pass, as the long gorge of Lake Maggiore receives him at the southern

end. Lake Maggiore is the water outlet also of the Simplon Pass from the

upper Rhone, the Lukmanier (6288 feet or 1917 meters) from the Hither

Rhine, and the San Bernadino (6766 feet or 2063 meters) from the Hinter

Rhine.[1235] This geographical fact explains the motive of Swiss expansion

in the fifteenth century in embracing the Italian province of Ticino and

the upper end of Lake Maggiore. A significance like that of the Swiss

and Italian lakes for the Alpine passes appears emphasized in the Sogne

Fiord of Norway. This carries a marine highway a hundred miles into the

land; from its head, roads ascend to the only two dents in the mountain

wall south of the wide snowfield of the Jotun Fjeld, and they lead

thence by the valleys of Hallingdal and Valders down to the plains of

Christiania.

[Sidenote: Types of settlements in the valley approaches.]

Genuine mountain passes have only emergency inhabitants--the monks and

dogs of the hospice, the road-keepers in their refuge huts or

_cantonière_, or the garrison of a fort guarding these important

thoroughfares. The flanking valleys of approach draw to themselves the

human life of the mountains. Their upper settlements show a certain

common physiognomy, born of their relation to the barren transit region

above, except in those few mountain districts of advanced civilization

where railroads have introduced through traffic over the barrier. At the

foot of the final ascent to the pass, where often the carriage road ends

and where mule-path or foot-trail begins, is located a settlement that

lives largely by the transmontane travel. It is a place of inns,

hostelries, of blacksmith shops, where in the busy season the sound of

hammer and anvil is heard all night; of stables and corrals crowded with

pack and draft animals; of storehouses where the traveler can provide

himself with food for the journey across the barren, uninhabited

heights. It is the typical outfitting point such as springs up on the

margin of any pure transit region, whether mountain or desert. Such

places are Andermatt and Airolo, lying at an altitude of 4000 feet or

more on the St. Gotthard road, St. Moritz below the Maloja Pass, Jaca

near the Pass de Canfranc over the Pyrenees, Kugiar and Shahidula[1236] at

an elevation of 10,775 feet or 3285 meters on the road up to the

Karakorum Pass (18,548 feet or 5655 meters), which crosses the highest

range of the Himalayas between Leh in the upper Indus Valley and

Yarkand in Chinese Turkestan.

[Sidenote: Lower settlements.]

Farther down the transverse valley the type of settlement changes where

side valleys, leading down from other passes, converge and help build up

a distributing center for a considerable highland area. Such a point is

Chiavenna in northern Italy, located above the head of Lake Como at the

junction of the Mera and Liro valleys, which lead respectively to the

Splügen and Maloja passes. It lies at an altitude of 1090 feet (332

meters) and has a population of 4000. Such a point is Aosta (1913 feet

or 583 meters elevation) in the Dora Baltea Valley, commanding the

Italian approaches to the Great St. Bernard Pass, and the less important

Col de Fenêtre leading to the upper Rhone, the Little St. Bernard

highway to the valley of the Isère, and Col de la Seigne path around the

Mont Blanc range to the valley of the Arve. Aosta was an important place

in the Roman period and has to-day a population of about 8000. Kokan, in

the upper Sir-Daria Valley in Russian Turkestan, commands the approach

to the passes of the western Tian Shan and the northern Pamir. Its

well-stocked bazaars, containing goods from Russia, Persia and India,

testify to its commercial location.

[Sidenote: Pass cities and their markets.]

When the highland area is very broad and therefore necessitates long

transit journeys, genuine pass cities develop at high altitudes, and

become the termini of the transmontane trade. Such is the Leh (11,280

feet or 3439 meters) on the caravan route from Central Asia over the

Karakorum Pass down to Kashmir, and such is Srinagar (5252 feet or 1603

meters) in Kashmir. To their markets come caravans from Chinese

Turkestan, laden with carpets and brick tea, and Tibetan merchants from

Lhassa, bringing wool from their highland pastures to exchange for the

rice and sugar of lowland India.[1237] Leh is conveniently situated about

half way between the markets of India and Central Asia. Therefore it is

the terminus for caravans arriving from both regions, and exchange place

for products from north and south. Seldom do caravans from either

direction go farther than this point. Here the merchants rest for a

month or two and barter their goods. Tents of every kind, camels, yaks,

mules and horses, coolie transports of various races, men of many

languages and many religions, give to this high-laid town a truly

cosmopolitan stamp in the summer time when the passes are open.[1238]

Kabul, which lies at an altitude of nearly 6000 feet near the head of

the Kabul River, is the focus of numerous routes over the Hindu Kush,

and dominates all routes converging on the northwest frontier of the

Punjab.[1239] It is therefore the military and commercial key to India.

Its narrow winding streets are obstructed by the picturesque _kafilas_

of Oriental merchants, stocked with both Russian goods from the Oxus

districts and British goods from India in evidence of its intermediary

location.[1240]

Occasionally a very high market develops for purely local use. The

Indian Himalayan province of Kumaon contains the market town of

Garbyang, at an elevation of 10,300 feet or about 3000 meters, on the

Kali River road leading by the Lipu Lekh Pass (16,780 feet or 5115

meters) over to Tibet. It has grown up as a trade center for the Dokpa

Tibetans, who will not descend below 10,000 feet because their yak and

sheep die at a lower altitude.[1241] Farther east in the Sikkim border,

Darjeeling (7150 feet or 2180 meters elevation) is center of the British

wool trade with Tibet.

Often the exchange point moves nearer the summit of the pass, dividing

the journey more equally between the two areas of production. Here

develops the temporary summer market. High up on the route between Leh

and Yarkand is Sasar, a place of unroofed enclosures for the deposit of

cotton, silk and other goods left there by the caravans plying back and

forth between Leh and Sasar, or Sasar and Yarkand.[1242] Nearly midway on

the much frequented trade route between Leh and Lhassa, at a point

15,100 feet (nearly 500 meters) above sea level, just below the Schako

Pass, lies Gartok in western Tibet, in summer a busy market surrounded

by a city of tents, and the summer residence of the two Chinese

viceroys, who occupy the only two substantial dwellings in the place.

Here at the end of August is held a great annual fair, which is attended

by traders from India, Kashmir, Mongolia, Chinese Turkestan, China

proper, and Lhassa; but by November the place is deserted. The traders

disperse, and the few residents of Gartok, together with the viceroys,

retire down the Indus Valley to the more sheltered village of Gargunza

(14,140 feet or 4311 meters elevation), which represents the limits of

permanent settlement in these altitudes.[1243] The Sutlej Valley route

from the Punjab to Lhassa is capped near its summit at an altitude of

about 5000 meters by the summer market, of Gyanema, whose numerous types

of tents indicate the various homes of the traders from Lhassa to

India.[1244]

[Sidenote: Pass peoples.]

Natural thoroughfares, whether river highways or mountain pass routes,

draw to themselves migration, travel, trade and war. They therefore

early assume historical importance. Hence we find that peoples

controlling transmontane routes have always been able to exert an

historical influence out of proportion to their size and strength; and

that in consequence they early become an object of conquest to the

people of the lowlands, as soon as these desire to control such transit

routes. The power of these pass tribes is often due to the trade which

they command and which compensates them for the unproductive character

of their country. In the eastern Himalayas the Tomos of the Chumbi

Valley are intermediaries of trade between Darjeeling and Tibet, In the

western Himalayas, the Kumaon borderland of northern India, which

commands some of the best passes, has made its native folk or Bhutias

bold merchants who jealously monopolize the trade over the passes to the

Tibetan markets. They stretch for a zone of thirty miles south of the

boundary from Nepal to Garhwal along the approach to every pass, each

sub-group having its particular trade route.[1245]

[Sidenote: Transit duties.]

It is always possible for such pass tribes to levy a toll or transit

duty on merchandise, or in lieu of this to rob. Cæsar made war upon the

Veragri and Seduni, who commanded the northern end of the Great St.

Bernard Pass, in order to open up the road over the Alps, which was

traversed by Roman merchants _magno cum periculo magnisque cum

portoriis_.[1246] The Salassi, who inhabited the upper Dora Baltea Valley

and hence controlled the Little St. Bernard wagon road leading over to

Lugdunum or Lyons, regularly plundered or taxed all who attempted to

cross their mountains. On one occasion they levied a toll of a drachm

per man on a Roman army, and on another plundered the treasure of Cæsar

himself. After a protracted struggle they were crushed by Augustus, who

founded Aosta and garrisoned it with a body of Praetorian cohorts to

police the highway.[1247] The Iapodes in the Julian Alps controlled the

Mount Ocra or Peartree Pass, which carried the Roman wagon road from

Aquileia over the mountains down to the valley of the Laibach and the

Save. This strategic position they exploited to the utmost, till

Augustus brought them to subjection as a preliminary to Roman expansion

on the Danube.[1248]

Turning to another part of the world, we find that the Afghan tribes

commanding the passes of the Suleiman Mountains have long been

accustomed to impose transit duties upon caravans plying between

Turkestan and India. The merchants have regularly organized themselves

into bands of hundreds or even thousands to resist attack or exorbitant

exactions. The Afghans have always enforced their right to collect tolls

in the Khaibar and Kohat passes, and have thus blackmailed every Indian

dynasty for centuries. In 1881 the British government came to terms with

them by paying them an annual sum to keep these roads open.[1249] Just to

the south the Gomal Pass, which carries the main traffic road over the

border mountains between the Punjab and the Afghan city of Ghazni, is

held by the brigand tribe of Waziris, and is a dangerous gauntlet to be

run by every armed caravan passing to and from India.[1250] The Ossetes of

the Caucasus, who occupy the Pass of Dariel and the approaching valleys,

regularly preyed upon the traffic moving between Russia and Georgia,

till the Muscovite government seized and policed the road.[1251]

[Sidenote: Strategic power of pass states.]

The strategic importance of pass peoples tends early to assume a

political aspect. The mountain state learns to exploit this one

advantage of its ill-favored geographical location. The cradle of the

old Savoyard power in the late Middle Ages lay in the Alpine lands

between Lake Geneva and the western tributaries of the Po River. This

location controlling several great mountain routes between France and

Italy gave the Savoyard princes their first importance.[1252] The autonomy

of Switzerland can be traced not less to the citadel character of the

country and the native independence of its people, than to their

political exploitation of their strategic position. They profited,

moreover, by the wish of their neighbors that such an important transit

region between semi-tropical and temperate Europe should be held by a

power too weak to obstruct its routes. The Amir of Kabul, backed by the

rapacious Afridi tribes of the Suleiman Mountains, has been able to play

off British India against Russia, and thereby to secure from both powers

a degree of consideration not usually shown to inferior nations.

Similarly in colonial America, the Iroquois of the Mohawk depression,

who commanded the passway from the Hudson to the fur fields of the

Northwest and also the avenue of attack upon the New York settlements

for the French in Canada, were early conciliated by the English and used

by them as allies, first in the French wars and afterward in the

Revolution.

NOTES TO CHAPTER XV

[1186] For physical effects, see Angelo Mosso, Life of Man on the High

Alps. Translated from the Italian. London, 1898.

[1187] W.Z. Ripley, Races of Europe, pp. 463-465. New York, 1899.

[1188] Strabo, Book IV, chap. VI, 3.

[1189] W.Z. Ripley, Races of Europe, pp. 31-32. New York, 1899.

[1190] Sir Thomas Holdich, India, pp. 32-33. London, 1905.

[1191] W.Z. Ripley, The Races of Europe, Map p. 439. New York, 1899.

[1192] Imperial Gazetteer of India, Vol. I, pp. 294-295. Oxford, 1907.

Sir Thomas Holdich, India, relief map on p. 171 compared with linguistic

map p. 201. London, 1905.

[1193] Census of India for 1901, Risley and Gait, Vol. I, Part I, p. 2.

Calcutta, 1903. B.H. Baden-Powell, The Indian Village Community, pp. 40,

130, 131. London, 1896.

[1194] Count Gleichen, The Egyptian Sudan, Vol. I, pp. 184, 185, 190.

London, 1905.

[1195] Gustav Nachtigal, _Sahara und Sudan_, Vol. III, pp. 178, 188-192.

Leipzig, 1889.

[1196] Spencer and Gillen, The Northern Tribes of Central Australia, pp.

6, 13. London, 1904.

[1197] W. Deecke, Italy, p. 365. London, 1904.

[1198] Sir Thomas Holdich, India, pp. 295-296. London, 1905. G.W.

Steevens, In India, pp. 202-204. New York, 1899.

[1199] Francis Younghusband, The Heart of a Continent, pp. 138, 140,

145, 272-273. London, 1904.

[1200] E. Huntington, The Pulse of Asia, p. 87. Boston, 1907.

[1201] E.C. Semple, American History and Its Geographic Conditions, pp.

184-185. Boston, 1903.

[1202] Isabella Bird Bishop, The Yangtze Valley and Beyond, Vol. II, pp.

70-72, 88, 91. London, 1900.

[1203] Francis H. Nichols, Through Hidden Shensi, pp. 170-171. New York,

1902.

[1204] Otis T. Mason, Primitive Travel and Transportation, pp. 450-454,

474-475. _Smithsonian Report_, Washington, 1896.

[1205] Col. George E. Church, The Acre Territory and the Caoutchouc

Regions of Southwestern Amazonia, _Geog. Jour_. May, 1904. London.

[1206] M. Huc, Journey through the Chinese Empire, pp. 39-40. New York,

1871.

[1207] Perceval Landon, The Opening of Tibet, pp. 54-55. New York, 1905.

[1208] Jean Baptiste Tavernier, Travels in India. Vol. II, p. 264.

Translated from the French of 1676. London, 1889.

[1209] E.F. Knight, Where Three Empires Meet, pp. 231, 274, 276,

286-289. London, 1897.

[1210] Census of the Philippine Islands, Vol. I, p. 544. Washington,

1905.

[1211] Joseph Partsch, Central Europe, p. 134. London, 1903.

[1212] M.S.W. Jefferson, Cæsar and the Central Plateau of France,

_Journal of Geog._, Vol. VI, p. 113. New York, 1897.

[1213] P. Vidal de la Blache, _Tableau de la Géographie de la France_,

p. 276. Paris, 1903.

[1214] E.A. Freeman, Historical Geography of Europe, Vol. I, p. 450-453.

London, 1882.

[1215] William Morris Davis, Physical Geography, p. 183. Boston, 1899.

[1216] P. Vidal de la Blache, _Tableau de la Géographie de la France_,

p. 260, map p. 261. Paris, 1903.

[1217] Indian Census for 1901, Risley and Gait, Vol. I, Part I, pp. 1,

2, Calcutta, 1905.

[1218] Hans Helmolt, History of the World, Vol. IV, p. 479. New York,

1902.

[1219] Sir Thomas Holdich, India, p. 67, cartogram of Hindu Kush

orography. London, 1905.

[1220] _Ibid._, pp. 102-104.

[1221] _Ibid._, p. 26.

[1222] J. Partsch, Central Europe, p. 27. London, 1903.

[1223] B.H. Baden-Powell, The Indian Village Community, pp. 40-45, 111,

116. London, 1896.

[1224] H.R. Mill, International Geography, pp. 394-395. New York, 1902.

[1225] Gottfried Merzbacher, _Aus den Hochregionen des Kaukasus_, pp.

73-78. Leipzig, 1901.

[1226] W.Z. Ripley, The Races of Europe, p. 438. New York, 1899.

[1227] _Ibid._, Maps pp. 143, 147, text p. 148.

[1228] E. Huntington, The Pulse of Asia, pp. 106-109. Boston, 1907.

[1229] W.Z. Ripley, The Races of Europe, pp. 249-253. New York, 1899.

[1230] _Ibid._, p. 282 and cartogram, p. 284.

[1231] Sir Thomas Holdich, India, p. 201. London, 1905. Imperial

Gazetteer of India, Vol. I, p. 295. Oxford, 1907.

[1232] Census of India, 1901, Ethnographic Appendices, Vol. I, p. 60, by

H. H. Risley, Calcutta, 1903. C. A. Sherring, Western Tibet and the

British Borderland, pp. 341-353. London, 1906.

[1233] B. Lavisse, _Histoire de France_, Vol. II, Part 1, p. 294. Paris,

1903.

[1234] George Adam Smith, Historical Geography of the Holy Land, pp.

383, 384, 391-400, 407, 409. New York, 1897.

[1235] Wilhelm Deecke, Italy, pp. 20, 21. London, 1904.

[1236] Francis Younghusband, The Heart of a Continent, pp. 150, 194,

199. London, 1904.

[1237] E.F. Knight, Where Three Empires Meet, pp. 12, 88, 157-159, 231.

London, 1897.

[1238] _Ibid._, pp. 173, 177.

[1239] Sir Thomas Holdich, India, map p. 85, pp. 86, 89. London, 1905.

[1240] Vambery, _Reise in Mittelasien,_ pp. 371-375. Leipzig, 1973.

[1241] C.A. Sherring, Western Tibet and the British Borderland, p. 136.

London, 1906.

[1242] O.P. Crosby, Tibet and Turkestan, pp. 112-116. New York, 1903.

[1243] Elisée Reclus, Asia, Vol. II, pp. 50-51. C.A. Sherring, Western

Tibet and the British Borderland, pp. 146-148, 152, 157, 300-303.

London, 1906.

[1244] _Ibid._, pp. 326-327.

[1245] _Ibid._, pp. 4, 61-64, 310-311.

[1246] _Bella Gallico,_ Book III, chap. I.

[1247] Strabo, Book IV, chap. VI, 1, 11.

[1248] Strabo, Book IV, chap. VI, 10.

[1249] Sir Thomas Holdich, The Indian Borderland, p. 48. London, 1909.

[1250] H.R. Mill, International Geography, p. 467. New York, 1902.

[1251] Pallas, Travels Through the Southern Provinces of Russia, Vol. I,

p. 431. London, 1812.

[1252] E.A. Freeman, Historical Geography of Europe, Vol. I, pp.

286-287. London, 1882.

CHAPTER XVI

INFLUENCES OF A MOUNTAIN ENVIRONMENT

[Sidenote: Zones of altitude.]

There are zones of latitude and zones of altitude. To every mountain

region both these pertain, resulting in a nice interplay of geographic

factors. Every mountain slope from summit to piedmont is, from the

anthropo-geographical standpoint, a complex phenomenon. When high

enough, it may show a graded series of contrasted complementary

locations, closely interdependent grouping of populations and

employments, every degree of density from congestion to vacancy, every

range of cultural development from industrialism to nomadism. The

southern slope of the Monte Rosa Alps, from the glacier cap at 4500

meters to the banks of the Po River, yields within certain limits a

zonal epitome of European life from Lapland to the Mediterranean. The

long incline from the summit of Mount Everest (8840 meters) in the

eastern Himalayas, through Darjeeling down to sea level at Calcutta,

comprises in a few miles the climatic and cultural range of Asia from

Arctic to Tropic.

[Sidenote: Politico-economic value of varied relief.]

For the state, a territory of varied relief is highly beneficial,

because it combines manifold forms of economic activity, a wide range of

crops, areas of specialized production mutually interdependent. It

induces a certain balance of urban and lief, rural life, which

contributes greatly to the health of the state.[1253] The steep slopes of

Dai Nippon, fertile only under spade tillage, will forever insure Japan

the persistence of a numerous peasantry. For geological and geographical

reasons, as from national motives, therefore, Japan will probably never

sacrifice its farmer to its industrial class, as England has done. On

the other hand, contrasted reliefs on a great territorial scale tend to

invade political solidarity. Tidewater and mountain Virginia were poor

running-mates for a century before the Civil War, and then the mountain

region broke out of harness. Geographical contrasts made the unification

of Germany difficult, and yet they have added to the economic and

national strength of the Empire. The history of Switzerland shows the

high Alpine cantons always maintaining a political tug of war with the

cantons of the marginal plain, and always suffering a defeat which was

their salvation.

[Sidenote: Relief and climate.]

The chief effect of a varied relief is a varied climate. This changes

with altitude in much the same way as with latitude. Heat and absolute

humidity diminish, generally speaking, as height increases, while

rainfall becomes greater up to a certain level. The effect of ascending

and descending currents of air is to diminish the range of temperature

on mountain slopes and produce rather an oceanic type of climate. The

larger and more uniform a climatic district, the more conspicuously do

even slight elevations form climatic islands, like the Harz Mountains in

the North German lowlands. A land of monotonous relief has a uniform

climate, while a region rich in vertical articulations is rich also in

local varieties of climate.[1254] A highland of considerable elevation

forms a cold district in the Temperate Zone, a temperate one in the

Tropics, and a moist one in a desert or steppe. Especially in arid and

torrid belts does the value of elevation for human life increase.

[Sidenote: Altitude zones of economic and cultural development.]

The highlands of Mexico, South America and the Himalayan rim of India

show stratified zones of tropical, temperate, and arctic climate, to

which plant, animal and human life conform. The response is conspicuous

in the varying density of population in the successive altitude zones.

Central Asia shows a threefold cultural stratification of its

population, each attended by the appropriate density, according to

location in steppe, piedmont and mountain. The steppes have their

scattered pastoral nomads; the piedmonts, with their irrigation streams,

support sedentary agricultural peoples, concentrated at focal points in

commercial and industrial towns; the higher reaches of the mountains are

occupied by sparse groups of peasants and shepherds, wringing from

upland pasture and scant field a miserable subsistence. The same

stratification appears in the Atlas Mountains, intensified on the

southern slope by the contrast between the closely populated belt of the

piedmont and the wandering Tuareg tribes of the Sahara on the one hand,

and the sparse Berber settlements of the Atlas highlands on the other.

The long slope of Mount Kilimanjaro in German East Africa descends to a

coastal belt of steppe and desert, inhabited by Swahili cattle-breeders.

Its piedmont, from 1000 feet above the plain up to 2400 feet,

constitutes a zone of rich irrigated plantations and gardens, densely

populated by peaceful folk of mingled Bantu and Hamitic blood. At 6000

feet, where forests cease, are found the kraals, cattle, sheep and goats

of the semi-nomadic Masai of doubtful Hamitic stock, who raid the

coastal lowlands for cattle, and purchase all their vegetable food from

the tillage belt.[1255] [See maps page 105 and 487.]

[Illustration: DENSITY OF POPULATION IN ITALY.]

This stratification assumes marked variations in the different

geographical zones. In Greenland life is restricted to the piedmont

coastal belt; above this rises the desert waste of the ice fields.

Norway shows a tide-washed piedmont, containing a large majority of the

population; above this, a steep slope sparsely inhabited; and higher

still, a wild plateau summit occupied in summer only by grazing herds or

migrant reindeer Lapps. Farther south the Alps show successive tiers of

rural economy, again with their appropriate density of settlement. On

their lower slope is found the vineyard belt, a region of highly

intensive tillage, large returns upon labor, and hence of closely

distributed settlement. Above that is the zone of field agriculture,

less productive and less thickly peopled. Higher still is the wide zone

of hay farming and stock-raising, supporting a sparse, semi-nomadic

population and characterized by villages which diminish with the

altitude and cease beyond 2000 meters. On Aetna, located in the tropical

Mediterranean, three girdles of altitude have long been recognized,--the

girdle of agriculture, the forest belt, and the desert summit. But the

tourist who ascends Aetna, passes from the coast through a zone of

orange and lemon groves, which are protected by temporary matting roofs

against occasional frosts; then through vineyards and olive orchards

which rise to 800 meters; then through a belt of summer crops rising to

1550 meters, and varied between 1400 and 1850 meters elevation by

stretches of chestnut groves, whose green expanse is broken here and

there by the huts of the forest guards, the highest tenants of the

mountain. From these lonely dwellings down to the sea, density of

population increases regularly to a maximum of over 385 to the square

mile (150 to the square kilometer) near the coast.

[Sidenote: Altitude and density belts in tropical highlands.]

In the tropical highlands of Mexico, Central and South America, on the

other hand, concentration of population and its concomitant cultural

development begin to appear above the 2000 meter line. Here are the

chief seats of population. Mexico has three recognized altitude zones,

the cold, the temperate and the hot, corresponding to plateau, high

slopes and coastal piedmont up to 1000 meters or 3300 feet; but the

first two contain nine-tenths of the people. While the plateau has in

some sections a population dense as that of France, the lowlands are

sparsely peopled by wild Indians and lumbermen. Ecuador has

three-fourths of its population crowded into the plateau basins (mean

elevation 8000 feet or 2500 meters), enclosed by the ranges of the

Andes. Peru presents a similar distribution, with a comparatively dense

population on a plateau reaching to 11,000 feet (3500 meters) or more,

though its coastal belt, being healthful, dry, and fairly well supplied

with irrigation streams from the Andes, is better developed than any

other similar district in tropical America.[1256] In Bolivia, 72 per cent

of the total population live at an altitude of 6000 to 14,000 feet,

while five out of the nine most densely peopled provinces lie at

elevations over 11,000 feet.[1257] [See map page 9.]

From Mexico to central Chile, the heavy rains from the trade-winds

clothe the slopes with dense forests, except on the lee side of the high

Andean wall of Peru and Chile, and reduce much of the piedmont to

malarial swamp and jungle. The discouragement to primitive tillage

found in the unequal fight with a tropical forest, the dryer, more

bracing and healthful climate of the high intermontane basins, their

favorable conditions for agriculture by irrigation, and their naturally

defined location stimulating to early cultural development, all combined

to concentrate the population of prehistoric America upon the high

valleys and plateaus. In historic times these centers have persisted,

because the civilized or semi-civilized districts could be best

exploited by the Spanish conquerors and especially because they yielded

rich mineral wealth. Furthermore, the white population which has

subsequently invaded tropical America has to a predominant degree

reinforced the native plateau populations, while the imported negroes

and mulattoes have sought the more congenial climatic conditions found

in the hot lowlands.

[Sidenote: Increasing density with motive of protection.]

The relativity of geographical advantages in different historical

periods warns us against assuming in all times a sparsity of population

in mountains, even when the adjoining lowlands offer many attractions of

climate and soil. In ages of incessant warfare, when the motive of

safety has strongly influenced distribution of population, protected

mountain sites have attracted settlement from the exposed plains, and

thus increased the relative density of population on the steep slopes.

The corrugated plateau of Armenia and Kurdistan, located on the uneasy

political frontier of Russia, Persia and Asiatic Turkey, exposed for

centuries to nomadic invasion from the east, shows a sparser population

on its broad intermontane plains than on the surrounding ranges.

Security makes the latter the choicer places of residence. Hence they

are held by the overbearing and marauding Kurds, late-comers into the

land, while the older and numerically weaker Armenians cower down on the

lower levels.[1258] Here is an inversion of the usual order. The militantly

stronger intruders, with no taste for agriculture, have seized the safer

and commanding position on the hills, descending in winter with their

cattle and horses to pasture and prey upon field and granary of the

valley folk, whose better soil is a questionable advantage.

[Sidenote: Motive of protection in primitive peoples.]

Instances of this sort, rare in modern times, because of of general

economic and social progress, multiply when we go into the history of

primitive or ancient peoples. The Cherokee Indians of the Southern

Appalachians, surrounded by powerful neighbors in the Chickasaws, Creeks

and the encroaching whites of the seaboard colonies, attacked by war

parties of Shawnees and Iroquois from the north, located the bulk of

their nation in the mountains. The Overhill and Middle towns, numbering

together thirty-three and situated wholly in the mountains, comprised

four-fifths of their fighting force in 1775, while the nine towns

distributed in the flat lands of Georgia and South Carolina were small

and unimportant. The Indians themselves distinguished these two

divisions of their country, the one as _Otarre_ or mountainous, and the

others as _Ayrate_ or low.[1259] Similarly in ancient Gaul the three

strongest tribes, the Sequani, Aedui, and Arverni, all had a large

mountain nucleus. The Sequani held the Jura range with part of the Saône

Valley; the Aedui held the northeast corner of the Central Plateau and

some lands on the Saône, while the Arverni inhabited the western and

central portion of the same highland. In a period of constant tribal

migrations and war, the occupants of these high, protected locations

were better able to defend themselves, and they maintained an adequate

food supply by holding some of the adjoining lowland. Archaeologists

generally agree that in central and southern Italy settlement first took

place in the mountains, gradually extending thence down into the plains.

The superiority of the upland climate, the more abundant rainfall, the

greater security against attack offered by mountain sites, and the

excellent soil for agriculture resulting from the geological make-up of

the Apennines, all combined to draw thither primitive and later

settlement.[1260] [See map page 559.] Similarly in Britain of the Bronze

Age, before the peoples of Aryan speech began to swarm over the island,

the primitive inhabitants, involved in constant clan or tribal warfare,

placed their villages on the hills, and left in the indestructible

terraces on their slopes the evidences of a vanished race and an

outgrown social order.[1261]

[Sidenote: Geographic conditions affecting density of mountain

population.]

The advance of civilization, which brought the ancient pirate-ridden

city from the inner edge of the coastal zone down to the wave-washed

strand, also drew the hill town down to the plain, and the mountain

population from their inaccessible strongholds to the more accessible

and productive valleys. These facts contain a hint. The future

investigation of archaeological remains in high mountain districts may

reveal at considerable elevations the oldest and hence lowest strata of

prehistoric development, strata which, in the more attractive valleys,

have been obliterated or overlaid by later invasions of peoples and

cultures. Ignoring this temporary attraction of population to protected

mountain locations in ages of persistent warfare, we find that a

comparison of many countries reveals a decreasing food supply and

decreasing density of population, with every increase of height above a

certain altitude, except in favored mining regions and in some tropical

lands, where better climatic conditions and freedom from malaria

distribute settlements far above the steaming and forest-choked

lowlands. The density of population in mountains is influenced also by

the composition of the soil, which affects its fertility; by the grade

and exposure of the slopes, which determine the ease and success of

tillage; by the proximity of the highlands to teeming centers of lowland

population, and by the general economic development of the people.

In Great Britain, the sparsest population is found in the sterile

highland moors of Scotland, where the county of Sutherland has only 11

inhabitants to the square mile, Inverness only 20.[1262] These figures

reveal also the remoteness of a far northern location. In the southern

half of the island the sparsest populations are found in the Welsh

county of Radnor, with 49 to the square mile, and in English

Westmoreland with 85, both of them mountain regions, but reflecting in

their larger figures their close proximity to the teeming industrial

centers of South Wales and Lancashire respectively. In France the most

thinly settled _départements_ are Basses-Alpes with 43 to the square

mile and Hautes-Alpes with 50, which again owe even these figures in

part to their situation on the margin of the densely populated valley of

the middle Rhone. [See map page 559.] Norway, almost wholly a mountain

country, averages only 18 souls to the square mile. Less than a thousand

square miles of its territory are under cultivation, and these are

distributed in small deltas at the heads of the fiords, in low strips

here and there along its western coasts, or in the openings of its

mountain valleys to the southeast. Here too is massed the larger part of

its inhabitants. A barren granitic soil, unfavorable zonal location,

excessive rainfall, paucity of level land, leaving the "upright farm"

predominant, and remoteness from any thickly settled areas, together

with the resulting enormous emigration, have combined to keep down

Norway's population.

[Sidenote: Sparsity of population in the Alps.]

If we turn to Switzerland, a country poor in the resources of its land

but rich in the resourcefulness of its people, we find a high average

density, 218 to the square mile; but this is due to the surprising

industrial development of the marginal plains, which show in the Canton

of Geneva 1356 to the square mile, and in Canton Zurich 705, while the

rugged upland of Graubünden (Grisons) shows only 38 to the square mile,

Uri only 48, and Wallis (Valais) only 59. How limited is the food supply

of the country is evident from the fact that only 2400 square miles, or

fifteen per cent. of its area, can be ranked as arable land, fit for

garden, orchard or grain field, while a larger proportion, or

twenty-eight per cent. is made wholly useless by watercourses, glaciers,

rock and detritus. One half of the entire country lies above the region

where agriculture is possible. In the Cantons of Uri and Valais, more

than half the area is absolutely unproductive, scarcely less in the

Grisons, and a third even in sunny Ticino.[1263] The three strictly Alpine

provinces of Austria, Tyrol, Salzburg and Carinthia, reproduce

approximately these geographic conditions. Nearly half of their area is

uninhabited, and only one-seventh consists of arable land. In

consequence they support only 75 inhabitants to the square mile, while

just outside the mountains, in the piedmont or Alpine foreland, this

density is doubled.[1264] Many tracts of the Carpathians, especially about

the sources of the Theiss and Pruth and the wooded mountain borders of

Transylvania, are among the most sparsely inhabited parts of Europe.[1265]

Japan, ridged by steep volcanic ranges, drenched by mountain-born rains,

strewn with detritus from plunging torrents, can cultivate only 15.7 per

cent. of its area, and is forced to leave 59 per cent. in forest

reserves.[1266]

[Sidenote: Terrace agriculture.]

These figures tell of the hard conditions of life characteristic of most

mountain regions. Population under normal circumstances settles in the

narrow valleys between the ranges and along the borders of their

drainage stream. Soon, however, the food supply becomes inadequate for

the growing numbers, so that artificial means have to be employed to

expand the area of arable land. The soil on the mountain slopes is so

thin that it yields only a scanty return to the labor of tillage.

Moreover, under the operations of ploughing and harrowing, it is exposed

to the danger of washing; so that after a few croppings the underlying

rock of the mountain side may be laid bare, and all that was valuable in

the quondam field deposited in the valley as silt or swept away to

enrich the distant delta of the nearest trunk river.

To obviate this difficulty and to secure the desired increase of arable

land, mountain peoples the world over have resorted to terrace

agriculture. This means hand-made fields. Parallel walls, one above the

other, are constructed on horizontal lines across the face of the steep

slopes, and the intervals between are filled with earth, carried thither

in baskets on the peasants' backs. The soil must be constantly renewed

and enriched by manure in the same way, and the masonry of the retaining

walls kept in repair. Whenever possible these costly terraced fields are

located by preference on southward facing slopes, where the tilt of the

land makes the fields catch the rays of the sun almost at right angles

and thus counteracts the chill of the higher altitude, while the

mountain behind protects the growing crops from cold northern winds.

Good arable land, being limited in amount, commands a high price; and

especially do choice terraced fields in vine-growing countries, since

they make the best vineyards. Such fields in Switzerland will bring from

$300 to $2,000 an acre, and are estimated to produce annually two

bottles of wine for every square foot.[1267]

[Sidenote: Geographical distribution.]

Terrace agriculture, rare in new countries, in the more densely

populated Old World is widely distributed in mountainous areas. In

Germany, where it is nearly identical with the culture of the vine, it

is found along the steep slopes overlooking the valley of the Moselle

and the Rhine; also in the Vosges Mountains, the Black Forest and the

Swabian Jura, to the limited altitude in which the vine will flourish in

these northern regions. In the Alps it is widespread, and not confined

to the culture of the vine. The traveler passing along the upper Rhone

through the sunny Canton of Valais follows these terraced fields almost

as far as Fiesch (altitude 3458 feet), beyond which agriculture proper

becomes more and more restricted on account of the elevation, and passes

rapidly into the mere hay-making of a pastoral community. Between Leak

and Sierre, not only the mountain sides, but also the steep gravel hills

constituting the old terminal moraine deposited by the receding Rhone

glacier across the valley floor, are terraced to their very tops.

Terrace cultivation prevails in the mountains of Italy; it is utilized

not only for the vine, but for olives, maize, oats, hemp, rye and flax.

On the gentler declivities of the Apennines, the terraced walls are

wider apart and lower than on the steep slopes of the Ligurian Apennines

and along the Riviera of the Maritime Alps, where the mountains rise

abruptly from the margin of the sea.[1268] Careful and laborious terrace

cultivation has produced in Italy a class of superior gardeners. The

Genoese are famous for their skill in this sort of culture. The men from

the Apennine plateau of the Abruzzi readily find positions in the

lowlands as expert gardeners.[1269]

[Sidenote: Terrace culture of the Saracens.]

The Saracens of Spain in the tenth century converted every mountain

slope into a succession of green terraces. They built walls of heavy

masonry, and brought water, loam, and fertilizing materials from great

distances. The slopes of Granada back of Malaga and Almeria were covered

with vineyards. Every foot of land susceptible of cultivation was turned

to account, every drop of water from the ill-timed winter rains was

conserved for the growing season. The application of intelligence and

labor to tillage enabled the Hispano-Arab provinces to support a dense

population.[1270] These Saracen cultivators had come from the severest

training school in all Eurasia. Where the arid tableland of Arabia is

buttressed on the southwestern front by high coast ranges (6000 to

10,500 feet or 2000 to 3200 meters) is Yemen, rich in its soil of

disintegrated trap rock, adequately watered by the dash of the southwest

monsoons against its towering ridges; but practically the whole country

is atilt. Consequently the mountains have been terraced from the base

often up to 6000 feet. The country presents the aspect of vast

agricultural amphitheaters, in which the narrow paths of ancient paving

zigzag up and up through successive zones of production. Here is a wide

range of fruits--oranges, lemons, figs, dates, bananas and coffee; then

apricots, apples, plums, grapes, quinces, peaches, together with grains

of various zonal distribution, such as millet, maize, wheat and barley.

The terrace walls are from five to eight feet high, but toward the top

of the mountains they often increase to fifteen feet. Though laid

without mortar, they are kept in perfect repair. Reservoirs filled with

water from the two rainy seasons, supply the irrigation channels.[1271] In

the narrow valleys of the Nejd plateau in central Arabia and on the

mountain slopes of Oman are found the same irrigated gardens and

terraced plantations. This laborious tillage underlay the prosperity of

the ancient Sabaean monarchy of Yemen, as it explains the population of

35,000 souls who occupy the modern capital of Sanaa, located at an

altitude of 7600 feet (2317 meters).[1272]

[Sidenote: In the Himalayas.]

Turning eastward, we find terrace agriculture widely distributed in

Himalayan lands. The steep mountain sides of the Vale of Kashmir are

cultivated thus to a considerable height. The terraces are irrigated by

contour channels constructed along the hillsides, which bring the water

for miles from distant snow-fed streams. Their shelf-like fields are

green with fruit orchards and almond groves, with vineyards and grain

fields.[1273] The terraced slopes about the Himalayan hill-station of

Simla (elevation 7100 to 8000 feet) feed the summer population of

English, who there take refuge from the deadly heat of the plains. The

mountain sections of the native states of Nepal and Bhutan present the

view of slopes cut into gigantic stairs, each step a field of waving

rice kept saturated by irrigating streams from abundant mountain

springs. Farther north, where Himalayas and Hindu Kush meet, terrace

agriculture is combined with irrigation in the high Gilgit valleys, and

farther still along that mere gash running down from the Pamir dome,

called the Hunza Valley. Here live the once lawless robber tribes of

the Hunzas and Nagaris, whose conquest cost the British a dangerous and

expensive campaign in 1892, but whose extensive terraces of irrigated

fields and evidences of skillful tillage gave the whole country an

appearance of civilization strangely at variance with the barbarous

character of its inhabitants.[1274]

[Sidenote: In Tibet and China.]

North of the outer Himalayan range, near the sources of the Indus and

Sutlej rivers in Ladak or Western Tibet, this same form of cultivation

has been resorted to by the retarded and isolated Mongolian inhabitants.

Here at an altitude of 11,000 feet or more (3354 meters), along mountain

ranges of primitive rock yielding only a scant and sterile soil,

terraces are laboriously constructed; their surfaces are manured with

burnt remains of animal excrements, which must first serve as fuel in

this timberless land before they are applied to the ground. In this

stronghold of Buddhism almost every lamasery has its terraced fields

yielding good crops of grain and fruit.[1275] In the densely populated Sze

Chuan province of western China, cultivation has climbed from the

fertile basins of the Min and upper Yangtze rivers far up the

surrounding mountains, where it is carried on terraces to the foot of

vertical cliffs.[1276] Farther north where the mountain province of Shensi

occupies the rise of land from the Chinese lowlands to the central

highlands of Asia, terraces planted with wheat or other grains cover the

mountain slopes.[1277]

[Sidenote: In ancient Peru.]

Terrace tillage is rare in new countries of extensive plains, like the

United States and Canada, where the level lands still suffice for the

agricultural needs of the people; but in the confined mountain basins

and valleys which made up the Inca's territory in ancient Peru, every

available natural field was utilized for cultivation, and terraces

brought the obstinate mountain sides under the dominion of the Andean

peasant. They were constructed, a hundred or more in number, rising 1000

or 1500 feet above the floor of the highland valley, contracting in

width as they rose, till the uppermost one was a narrow shelf only two

feet broad. These were extended by communal labor year after year, with

increase of population, just as to-day in Java and the neighboring

islands, and became the property of the Inca. Streams from the higher

slopes were conducted in canals and distributed from terrace to terrace,

to irrigate and fertilize. These terraces therefore yielded the best

crops of potatoes, maize and pulse. The cultivable area was further

extended by floating gardens, consisting of rafts covered with earth,

which floated on the surface of lakes.[1278] They existed in ancient

Mexico also,[1279] and are used to-day in the lakes and streams of Tibet

and Kashmir[1280] and the rivers of overcrowded China.

[Sidenote: Terrace agriculture in mountainous islands.]

Mountainous islands, born of volcanic forces or the partial submergence

of coastal ranges, have steep surfaces and scant lowlands. Their

inhabitants command limited area at best. Driven to agriculture by their

isolation, drawn to it by the favorable oceanic climate, such islands

develop terrace tillage in its most pronounced form. On the precipitous

pitch of Teneriffe, every particle of alluvial soil is collected to make

gardens. Long lines of camels, laden with boxes of earth, may be seen

coming almost daily into the town of Santa Cruz, bringing soil for the

terraces.[1281] This is desperate agriculture. Irrigated terraces scar the

steep slopes of many Polynesian islands.[1282] They are highly developed

among the Malay Battaks of Sumatra, especially for rice culture.[1283] In

Java, Bali and Lombok they reach a perfection hardly equalled elsewhere

in the world. In Java they begin at an altitude of 1000 feet, cutting

main and branch valleys into amphitheaters, and covering hundreds of

square miles.[1284] On the volcanic slopes of Lombok the terrace plots

vary from many acres to a few square yards, according to the grade,

while a complete system of irrigation uses every brook to water the

terraces. Here as in Java the work began at a very early period, when it

was probably introduced among the native Malays by Brahmans from

India.[1285] Japan, two-thirds of whose area is mountainous, has terraced

its steep valley walls often up to 2000 feet or more, and utilized every

patch of ground susceptible of tillage.[1286]

[Sidenote: Among mountain savages.]

A mountain environment often occasions a forced development in the form

of agriculture among peoples who otherwise still linger in a low stage

of barbarism or savagery. The wild, head-hunting Igorots, inhabiting the

Cordilleras of north central Luzon, have levelled the face of their

mountains into a series of platforms, held by retaining walls from

twenty to thirty feet high. On these they cultivate upland rice at an

altitude of 5000 feet. The Igorot province of Bontoc contains valleys in

which every available foot of land is terraced for rice, and which

present artificial landscapes vividly recalling Japan. Labor is the

heritage of each inhabitant. Every man, woman and child down to ten

years of age shares in the work of providing food.[1287] Africa shows

parallel cases. The Angoss people, a savage negro tribe who occupy part

of the Murchison Range in northern Nigeria, have mapped out all their

sloping land into little terraces, sometimes only a foot or two wide.

One of their peaks, 4135 feet high, has its plateau top covered with

populous villages, owing to the protection of the site, and every inch

of its slope cut into terraces planted with millet and guinea corn.[1288]

A more primitive form of this tillage is found in the country of the

Marunga negroes, who occupy the steep western face of the rift valley

filled by Lake Tanganyika. Here Cameron found the surface not regularly

terraced, but retaining walls of loose stones disposed at intervals,

which served to hold the soil in place, without greatly altering the

natural slope. The scene recalled the terraced heights of Switzerland,

and the people working there looked like flies on a wall.[1289] In the

semi-arid country of Sudanese Darfur, where only the mountain districts

are well watered and thickly populated, small terraces for grain and

melons cover all the slopes.[1290]

[Sidenote: Fertilizing]

Mountain agriculture is necessarily laborious. The paucity of arable

land precludes the possibility of letting fields lie fallow. These, to

prevent exhaustion, must be constantly and abundantly fertilized, all

the more as conditions of excessive subaërial denudation found in the

steep slope and usual heavy rainfall of mountains, as well as possible

glacial scouring of the land in the past, have greatly attenuated the

layer of soil called upon to support plant life. The Swiss or Tyrolese

farmer cherishes his manure pile as at once source and badge of his

wealth. After harvest it is carted or carried in baskets not only to

the terraces, but also to the wide alluvial fan that grows his oats and

rye, to his meadows and hay fields. Both in Mexico and Peru the soil

received a dressing of poudrette. Manuring was most extensive where

population was densest, as in the isolated mountain valleys opening out

upon the desert coast of Peru. Every kind of organic refuse was

utilized, and fish was buried with the kernels of maize as a fertilizer.

The deposits of guano found on the headlands and off-shore islands were

used from the remotest times. Different guano beds were assigned to the

several provinces, and the breeding places of the birds were protected

by law.[1291] Ashes and decayed wood were employed for the same purpose,

or plants were dug into the soil, while human manure was in Mexico a

marketable commodity as in China.[1292]

[Sidenote: Economy of level land for houses and villages.]

In all mountain regions where population has begun to press upon the

meager limits of subsistence, level land and soil are at a premium. In

ancient Peru space was begrudged for the dead.[1293] Cities covered

considerable space on the roomy intermontane plateaus; but in the narrow

lateral valleys, houses and temples were built on rocks, in order to

reserve every fertile spot for agriculture.[1294] The traveler notices the

same thing throughout the Alps. Compact villages cling to the mountain

sides, leaving the alluvial hem of the stream or level glacial terrace

free for the much needed fields. Only in broad longitudinal valleys,

like that of Andermatt, do the settlements complacently spread out their

skirts, or on wide alluvial fans where transverse valleys debouch upon

the plains. The mountaineers of the Crimea construct their houses

against the precipices, excavating into their face and building up the

front, with stones, and thus reserve the gentler slopes for vineyards

and gardens.[1295] In the Kangra, Kumaon, and Garhwal districts of the

British Himalayas, the large Indian villages of the plains give place to

small hamlets or detached homesteads, scattered here and there wherever

occasional patches of soil on a hillside or in a narrow valley offer

hope of sustenance. These hamlets or dwellings are located on the sides

of the mountains, because level spots which can be irrigated must be

reserved for rice fields.[1296] The high site is also freer from malaria.

[Sidenote: Perpendicular villages]

In the high Himalayan province of Ladak or Western Tibet, this principle

of land economy reaches a climax. All settlement is on the

perpendicular. The abrupt mountain sides are honey-combed with tombs,

villages and Buddhist lamaseries in the detached localities where

population occurs. A pleasure walk through one of these Tibetan towns

means a climb by steep flights of steps hewn out of the rock, varied by

a saunter up ladders, where the sheer face of a cliff must be surmounted

to reach the houses on a ledge above.[1297] Pictures of these recall

forcibly the cliff-dwellings of the Pueblo Indians. Even the important

market city of Leh covers the lower slope of the mountain at an altitude

of 11,500 feet, and from its height overlooks the cultivated fields in

the sandy valley bed below, made fertile by irrigating streams from

debouching cañons.[1298] The Ladak villages always shun the plains. The

desire to economize level arable land does not alone dictate this choice

of sites, however; the motive of protection against inundation, when the

snows melt and the streams swell, and also, to some degree, against

hostile attack, is an additional factor. In the mountainous parts of

overcrowded China, again, the food problem is the dominant motive. In

the rugged highland province of Shensi, a village of several hundred

people covers only a few acres, and rises in closely packed tiers of

houses against the mountain side.[1299] In the wilder, half-conquered

parts of Sze Chuan the villages crown the lower peaks, cling to the base

of the mountains, or are perched on ledges of rock overlooking the

gorges. Among the steep cliffs bordering the upper Yangtze, occupied

chiefly by the timid, displaced Mantze aborigines, at an altitude of

10,000 feet, small platforms resting on beams projecting from the sheer

mountain face support minute houses, whose backs burrow into the cliff

behind. The small children are tied to the door post, to keep them from

falling into the millet field below. The house is accessible only by

bolts driven into the cliff. Above and below is the farm--small patches

of tilled soil, often not larger than a bath towel, to which the

cultivator lowers himself by a rope.[1300] Here life hovers on the brink

of death and despair.

[Sidenote: Mountain pastures and stock-raising.]

Paucity of arable land in mountain regions leads to the utilization of

the untillable slopes for stock grazing. This industry is always a

valuable ally to mountain agriculture on account of the manure which it

yields; but in high altitudes, where the steepness or rockiness of the

soil, cold and the brevity of the growing season restrict or eliminate

cereal crops, it becomes the dominant occupation of the inhabitants,

while agriculture takes a subordinate place, limited to the production

of hay and fodder for the winter feeding of the stock. Above the line of

tree growth flourish the natural summer pastures up to the border of

perpetual snow; and just below lies a zone which, if cleared of its

forests, supports a thick carpet of grass and herbage, though too cold

to ripen grain.

The high pastures are particularly nourishing. Cows feeding here in the

Alps give better milk than the "home" or valley cows, though a smaller

quantity. Sheep and goats do equally well, but swine are profitable only

as a by-product, to utilize the refuse of the cheese and butter

industry. The area of these pastures far exceeds that of arable land in

mountain regions. In Switzerland they comprise about 27 per cent. of the

total productive area; hay meadows 24 per cent., but fields and gardens

only 20 per cent.[1301] In the Austrian province of Salzburg, pastures

make up 13.3 per cent., hay meadows 34.5 per cent., and tilled fields

only 11.7 per cent. of the total productive area. In the Tyrol the

figures are much the same.[1302] Since Norway has over 67 per cent. of its

total area in bare mountains, snow fields, bogs and lakes, it is not

surprising to find only 7.6 per cent. in pastures, 2.2 per cent. in

meadows, and 0.7 per cent. in grain fields; but here the pastures are

ten times the arable area.[1303] The season of the summer feeding on the

grass lands is short. In the so-called High Alps it frequently lasts

only six or seven weeks, in the Grisons at most thirteen weeks[1304] and

in Norway from two to three months.[1305]

High mountain regions, practically restricted to this _Graswirthschaft_,

soon reach their maximum of prosperity and population. The amount of hay

secured for the winter feeding limits the number of cattle, and the

number of the cattle, through their manure, fixes the valley hay supply.

Alpine pastures cannot be enlarged, and they may be reduced by

accidents of nature, such as landslides, devastating torrents, or

advance of ice fields or glaciers. They cannot be improved by capital

and labor, and they may deteriorate chemically by exhaustion. The

constant export of butter and cheese from Alpine pastures in recent

times, without substitution by any fertilizer beyond the local manure,

has caused the diminution of phosphoric acid in the soil and hence

impoverishment. Canton Glarus has shown a steady decline since 1630 in

the number of cows which its mountain pastures can support.[1306] Many

other Alpine districts show the same deterioration.

[Sidenote: Mountain herdsman and shepherds.]

The remoteness of these highland pastures from the permanent villages

necessitates _Sennenwirthschaft_, or the maintenance of out-farms and

shepherds on the mountains during the grazing season. This involves a

semi-nomadic existence for such inhabitants as serve as herdmen. In

June, as soon as the high pastures begin to grow green, cattle, sheep

and goats ascend step by step in the wake of summer, as she climbs the

slope, and they return in autumn to the valleys. There they feed on the

stubble of hay and grain fields, till the increasing cold confines them

to their low stables. The hut of the _Senner_ or _Saeter_, as the

herdsman is variously called in Switzerland and Norway, consists of a

living room and a smaller apartment for making butter and cheese, while

against the steep slope is a rude stone shelter for the cattle and

goats. The predominance of summer pastures has made cattle-raising a

conspicuous part of agriculture in the Alps and in Norway. In many parts

of Switzerland, cattle are called "wares" and the word cheese is used as

a synonym for food, as we use bread. A Swiss peasant who has a

reputation for cheese making is popular with the girls.[1307] Here even

Cupid turns dairy expert.

[Sidenote: Communal ownership of mountain pastures.]

Since it is scarcely practicable to divide these highland pastures, they

have generally remained communal property, whether in Norway,[1308]

Switzerland, the Bavarian Alps, the British Himalayan districts,[1309]

Nepal and Bhutan,[1310] or Kashmir.[1311] In Europe their use is generally

regulated. As a rule, a Swiss villager may keep on the _Allmende_ during

the summer as many head of cattle as he is able to stall-feed during

the winter. Any in excess of this number must be paid for at a fixed

rate to the village or commune treasury.[1312] Hay-sheds and herdsmen's

huts mark these districts of temporary occupation near the altitude

limits of human life throughout Europe. In Asia, likewise, are to be

found small villages, inhabited only in summer by herdsmen tending their

flocks. Such is the hamlet of Minemerg, located at an altitude of about

8000 feet at the southern entrance to the Borzil Pass over the Western

Himalayas, and Sonamerg (altitude 8650 feet or 2640 meters) just below

the Zogi La Pass, both of them surrounded by rich meadows on the

northern rim of the Vale of Kashmir.[1313]

The utilization of mountain pastures for stock raising is almost

universal. In the arid highlands of Central Asia, it is the essential

supplement to the pastoral nomadism of the steppes and deserts, and to

the limited sedentary agriculture found along the irrigated piedmont

slopes. Here and elsewhere the animal raised varies widely-the llama and

vicuna in Peru, which thrive best at 10,000 to 13,000 feet elevation,

and multiply rapidly on the _ichu_ or coarse grass which clothes the

slopes of the higher Andes up to snow line; sheep, goats, yaks and herds

of dzo, a useful hybrid between yak and cow, in the highland districts

of Sze Chuan. Here the Mantze mountaineers lock their houses and leave

their villages deserted, while they camp with their herds on the high

pastures at 10,000 feet or more.[1314] Only economical, ingenious Japan

has failed to develop stock raising, though mountains comprise

two-thirds of its area. The explanation has often been sought in

Buddhism, which inhibits the use of animal food; but this religious rule

probably found ready acceptance in Japan, just because the paucity of

animal food made its observance easy, for the fish industry of the

Empire never suffered from the inhibition. The reason is probably to be

sought elsewhere. The native grass of Japan, which relentlessly crowds

out all imported grazing crops, is a bamboo grass with sharp, hard,

serrated edges, and is said to cut the entrails of horses and sheep.[1315]

[Sidenote: Haymaking in high mountains.]

While the high pastures are ample for the summer feeding, the chief

problem of mountain stock-farmers is to secure feed for the winter

support of their animals. This taxes their industry and ingenuity to the

utmost. While the herdsmen are away tending their charges on the

heights, the rest of the population are kept busy at home, getting

fodder for the six or seven months of stall-feeding. This includes the

cultivation of hardy crops like oats, rye and barley, which will mature

at a great altitude, hay-making and collecting twigs and even leaves for

the less fastidious goats. In Switzerland as in Norway the art of mowing

has reached its highest pitch. Grass only three inches high is cut

thrice yearly. The Norwegian peasant gathers a small hay harvest from

the roofs of his house and barns, and from the edges of the highways. In

Switzerland not a spear of grass escapes. In places inaccessible to

cattle and goats, the peasant gathers hay by the handful with crampons

on his feet, generally from the ledges of cliffs. He stacks it in one

spot, and brings it down to the valley by sledge in winter. He is the

_Wildheuer_ or wild hay gatherer. His life is so dangerous, that the law

permits only one _Wildheuer_ to a family.[1316] In high Alpine cantons

this office is the privilege of the poor.[1317] The traveler in Norway

frequently sees huge bundles of hay sliding down to the valley on wires

stretched from some high point on the precipitous fiord wall. This

represents the harvest from isolated spots or from the field of the

summer shepherd. In the vicinity of every _saeter_ hut, a plot of ground

is fenced in, enriched with the manure gathered during the summer, and

utilized to grow fine nourishing grass, which is mown and transported

down to the valley farm.[1318] Here economy of vegetative resources

reaches its climax.

[Sidenote: Methods of curing hay in mountains.]

In mountain regions of heavy rainfall, thick dew and numerous cloudy

days, it becomes a problem to get the hay dried and stored before a

drenching shower comes. In many parts of Switzerland, therefore, the

peasant on a clear morning cuts a limited amount of grass. This, with

the help of his wife and children, he diligently turns and tosses at

short intervals all day long, thus subjecting it to a rapid curing

process by the action of the wind and the sun, whose rays are doubly

effective in the rarefied air of the heights. In the evening the hay is

made up into bundles and carried on his back to the barn. In other parts

of Switzerland the green hay is hung on horizontal poles arranged

against the sunny side of the chalet and under its projecting roof, thus

exposed to the heat and protected from the rain till cured. In Norway

the same purpose is achieved by setting up in the fields racks

supporting long horizontal bars, over which the newly cut grass is hung.

There it is exposed to the gentle fanning of the wind and penetrated by

the warmth of the sun, in the short intervals when the sky is not

overcast; and during a shower it sheds the water immediately, so that a

minimum of harm is done. In the mountains of Germany, the hay is stacked

on cone-shaped racks made of poles, with lateral projections which

support the grass; thus the air can circulate freely inside the hollow

cone, which is lifted well above the ground. Elsewhere sharpened stakes

provided with cross bars are simply driven into the ground, and on these

the hay is draped till cured.

Mountain hay-making leaves nothing to chance; too much depends upon the

crop. In fact, at high altitudes it becomes the only crop. Cereal

culture drops off with every increase of elevation. Norway has few

fields above 1600 feet;[1319] even barley fails to ripen above 2600 feet.

In the mountains of Würtenberg we find pure _Graswirthschaft_ at 3000

feet elevation, with only a small garden patch near the dwelling.[1320] It

is interesting to take a tramp up one of the longitudinal or lateral

valleys of the Alps, and observe the economic basis of life gradually

change from agriculture to hay-making, till in some high-laid Alpine

cirque, like Bad Leuk or Barmaz at the head of the Val d'Ilez, one sees

only meadows and an occasional potato patch, which impresses the

lowlander as a last despairing effort in the struggle for existence.

[Sidenote: Winter industries of mountain peoples.]

Where climate and soil do so little for the support of life, man must do

much. Work must in some way be made to compensate for an ungenerous

Nature. The closely housed existence necessitated by the long severe

winters of high altitudes stimulates industries in the home. The winter

feeding of the stock involves little labor, so the abundant leisure

would otherwise be wasted. Hence it is no accident that we find almost

everywhere native mountain industries in a high state of development,

and often characterized by an artistic beauty which seems to be the one

flower of this barren environment. They are naturally based upon the

local raw materials of the mountains, such as wood, metals, clays, and

especially the wool of sheep and goats. Moreover, their products are

articles of small bulk and large value, adapted to costly mountain

transportation. Those of Kashmir are typical-carved wood, artistic metal

work in silver and copper, puttoo cloth, carpets and the famous Kashmir

shawls.[1321] The stark life of Tibet shows in its industries an

unexpected richness and beauty. The men spin and weave wool into puttoo

cloth of all grades; some of it is extraordinarily fine in texture and

color, and is exported by caravan in considerable quantity to northern

China and Mongolia. Pastil sticks, made of aromatic wood and impregnated

with musk and gold-dust, are a conspicuous commodity in the trade with

Peking. Tibet is rich in metals, especially silver and gold. Even the

nomad shepherds of the tablelands know how to purify gold-dust over a

fire of argols; hence it is not surprising that the settlements in the

irrigated mountain valleys should develop real artists in

metallurgy.[1322] The province of Dèrgè, which excels in metal work,

produces swords, guns, teapots, bells and seals of extremely artistic

design and perfect finish.[1323] The jewelry of Tibet suggests Byzantine

work. It includes ear-rings and charm boxes of gold and carved

turquoise, and is marked by the same delicate finish. But whether the

Tibetan is working in wood, gold, brass, or wool, he uses native designs

of real merit, and shows the expert craftsman's hand.[1324] His activities

recall the metal work of the Caucasus and the famous rugs of Daghestan.

Turning to Europe we find watch and clock making in the Black Forest and

the Jura, wood-carving in the Swiss and Norwegian mountains, bobbin lace

in the Erz range and in Alpine Appenzell, and the far more beautiful

Italian product of the rugged Abruzzi and the Frioulian Alps. The

Slovaks of highland Hungary are expert in wire-drawing,[1325] and the

peasant of the central Apennines makes from the gut of his goats the

finest violin strings in the world, the so-called Roman strings.[1326] The

low Thuringian and Franconian Forests, which harbor denser populations,

have by a minute subdivision of labor turned their local resources to

the making of dolls, which they supply to the markets of the world.

Here too the manufacture of glass articles, porcelains, majolica and

terra-cotta flourishes.[1327] Most of these mountain industries merely

supplement the scant agricultural resources; they represent the efforts

of industrious but hard pressed people to eke out their meager

subsistence.

[Sidenote: Overpopulation and emigration.]

The application of steam to industry has converted mountain regions of

abundant mineral wealth into centers of production for the markets of

the world. But this is the history of only the last century, and of only

favored mountain regions. The utilization of waterpower for electricity

in factories is transforming the piedmont belts of the Alps and

Apennines; but life in the interior of these ranges remains unaltered by

the denser population at their base, except for the increased demand for

the butter, milk and cheese of the highland pastures. For the world at

large, therefore, the obvious and persistent fact of mountain economy is

a scanty food supply secured by even the most intelligent and untiring

labor, and a fixed tendency to overpopulation. The simplest remedy for

this evil is emigration, a fact which Malthus observed.[1328] Hence

emigration is an almost universal phenomenon in highland regions.

Sometimes it is only seasonal. It takes place in the fall after the

field work is over, and is due to the paucity of industries possible in

the mountains during the winter. It seems to be a recurrence of that

nomadic note in the _motif_ of mountain life--that migration in summer

upward to the borders of the snow, in winter downward to the sun-warmed

plains. In autumn the Swiss descend from the Jura and Alps in great

numbers to cities, seeking positions as servants or pastry-cooks. The

Auvergnats leave their home by the thousand in the fall, when snow

covers the mountains, to work in the cities as hewers of stone and

drawers of water, then return in summer to resume their tasks in field

and pasture, bringing back sums of money which noticeably enrich the

home districts.[1329]

[Sidenote: Forms of temporary emigration.]

This seasonal emigration often assumes the form of peddling, in order to

dispose of small home-made wares. From the Basilicata and Modena

Apennines the young men follow the pedler's trade, but the Basilicata

village of Viggiano furnishes Italy with many wandering musicians.[1330]

The Kabyles of the Atlas Mountains go out in parties of two or three in

the fall, and hawk every kind of goods, bringing back from their journey

quantities of wool for home weaving.[1331] The emigration may last for

several years, but finally the love of home generally calls the

mountaineer back to his rugged hills. The Galicians of the Cantabrian

Mountains of northern Spain leave their poor country for a time for the

richer provinces of Portugal and Spain, where they become porters,

water-carriers and scavengers, and are known as boorish, but industrious

and honest. The women from the neighboring mountain province of Asturias

are the professional wet-nurses of Spain. They are to be seen in every

aristocratic household of Madrid, but return to the mountains with their

savings when their period of service ends.[1332] In mountainous

Basutoland, the Kaffir Switzerland of South Africa, arable land and

pastures are utilized as completely as local methods of husbandry

permit; and yet the native Kaffirs go in large numbers--28,000 out of a

total population of 220,000 in 1895--to work in the mines of Kimberley

and the Witwatersrand. They also return in time with their savings.[1333]

Similarly the Battaks of the rugged mountain-rimmed plateau of western

Sumatra emigrate in increasing numbers to the lowlands, and hire

themselves out for a term of years on the Dutch plantations.[1334]

Another interesting and once rather widespread phase of this temporary

emigration appears in the mercenary troops formerly drawn from mountain

regions. After the Burgundian wars of the fifteenth century, the Swiss

became the mercenaries of Europe, and in 1503 were first employed as

papal life-guards. They served the kings of France from Louis XL till

the tragedy of the Tuileries in 1792; and in that country and elsewhere

they made the name "Switzer" a synonym for guard or attendant,[1335] till

in 1848 the mercenary system was abolished. The pressure of population

at home and the military spirit of the Scotch Highlanders once led the

young Gaels to seek their fortunes in military service abroad, as in the

army of Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden.[1336] Gurkhas from Himalayan Nepal,

an independent state, are employed in considerable numbers in the Indian

army to-day, and constitute one of the most reliable divisions of the

native troops. In January, 1901, there were 12,797 Gurkhas drawing pay

from the Indian government as soldiers, besides 6000 more employed as

military police, porters, and in other capacities.[1337] Similarly ancient

Arcadia, the mountain core of Peloponnesus, was a constant hive of

mercenaries.

[Sidenote: Permanent emigration.]

Often, however, permanent emigration is the result, robbing the mountain

population of its most enterprising element, Piedmontese, Bergamese, and

Frioulians from the Italian Alps leave their country in large numbers.

Many of them find work in Marseilles and other towns of southern France,

infusing an Italian strain into the population there and making serious

competition for the local French. A proverb says there is no country in

the world without sparrows and Bergamese.[1338] Geneva, once the citadel

of Calvinism, is to-day a Catholic town, owing to the influx of Catholic

laborers from Alpine Savoy. The overflow of the redundant population of

this mountain province has given the Swiss canton a character

diametrically opposed to its traditions.[1339] The Chinese provinces of

Chili and Manchuria have been largely populated by immigrants from the

barren mountain peninsula of Shantung; Manchuria has thereby been

converted from an alien into a native district.[1340]

Emigration on so large a scale exercises far reaching economic and

historical influences. Norse colonization contributed interesting

chapters to the history of Europe in the ninth and tenth centuries.

Norwegians who have flocked to America have made a deep impress upon our

Northwestern States. Switzerland in 1902 and 1903 gave as 9500 of its

subjects, a valuable contribution. Scotchmen of Highland birth are

scattered over the whole world, carrying with them everywhere their

sturdy qualities of character. Even the stay-at-home French lose

emigrants from their mountain districts. The people of the Basses-Alps

go to Mexico, and the Basques from the French Pyrenees seek

Argentine.[1341] The honesty, industry, and frugality of these mountain

emigrants make them desirable elements in any colonial population, and

insure their success when they seek their fortunes in the uncrowded

western world.

The alternative to overpopulation and its remedy emigration is found in

preventive checks to increase. These sometimes take the form of

restricted or late marriages, as Malthus found to be the case in Norway

and Switzerland in 1799,[1342] before the introduction of steam or

electric motive power had stimulated the industries of these countries

or facilitated emigration thence. The same end is achieved by the

widespread religious celibacy which sometimes characterizes mountain

communities. In the barren Auvergne Plateau of France, the number of

younger sons who become priests is extraordinary. Many daughters become

nuns. Celibacy, seconded by extensive emigration, clears the field for

the eldest son and the system of primogeniture which the poverty of this

rugged highland has established as a fixed institution in the

Auvergne.[1343] A careful statistical investigation of the geographical

origins of the Catholic priesthood in Europe might throw interesting

light on the influences of environment. The harsh conditions of mountain

life make the monastery a line of least resistance, while geographical

isolation nourishes the religions nature and benumbs the intellectual

activities.

It is in the corrugated highland of Tibet, chilled to barrenness by an

elevation of 12,000 feet or more (4000 meters), sterile and treeless

from aridity, carved by cañon-cutting streams into deep gorges offering

a modicum of arable soil for irrigation, that monasticism has developed

into an effective system to keep down population. Buddhism, with its

convents and lamaseries, naturally recommended itself to a country where

asceticism was obviously expedient. The world shows nowhere else so

large a celibate class. In Tibet, monks are estimated at 175,000 to

500,000 in a total population of three millions. Archibald Little

estimates their number at one-third of the total male population.[1344]

Derge, which is the most productive district both agriculturally and

industrially of eastern Tibet and is also most densely inhabited, counts

at least 10,000 lamas in a total population of about 42,000.[1345] Not

less than one-sixth of the inhabitants of Ladak are in religious houses

as monks and nuns.[1346] Families in Tibet are small, yet each devotes one

or more children to convent or monastic life.[1347] In western Tibet,

especially about Taklakot in the Himalayan border, one boy in every

family is invariably devoted to the priesthood, and one or more

daughters must become nuns. But the nun generally resides with her

family or lives in some monastery--with unspeakable results.[1348]

[Sidenote: Polyandry.]

The Tibetans seem to be enthusiastic Malthusians, with all the courage

of their convictions. Religious celibacy among them is only an adjunct

to another equally effective social device for restricting population.

This is the institution of polyandry, which crops out in widely

distributed mountain regions of limited resources, just as it appears

not infrequently in primitive island societies. Its sporadic occurrence

in extensive lowlands, as among the Warraus of Guiana and certain tribes

of the Orinoco, is extremely rare, as also its occasional appearance

among pastoral steppe-dwellers, like the Hottentots and Damaras.[1349] It

is often associated with polygamy where wealth exists, and is never the

exclusive form of marriage, yet its frequency among mountain peoples is

striking. Strabo describes fraternal polyandry as it existed in

mountainous Yemen. There among a Semitic people, as to-day in Mongolian

Tibet and among the aboriginal Todas of the Nilgiri Hills in peninsular

India, the staff of one husband left at the door of the house excluded

the others.[1350] In modern times the institution is found throughout

Tibet, and in the Himalayan and sub-Himalayan districts adjoining it, as

in Ladak, Kunawar, Kumaon, Garhwal, Spiti, Sirmur, among the Miris,

Daphlas, Abors and Bhutias occupying the southern slope of the

Himalayans eastward from Sikkim, and the Murmese tribes of the Khasia

Hills just to the south. The same practice occurs among the Coorgs of

the Western Ghats, among the Nairs at the coastal piedmont of this

range, among the Todas of the mountain stronghold known as the Nilgiri

Hills (peaks 8000 feet or 2630 meters), and it crops out sporadically

among certain mountain Bantu tribes of South Africa.[1351]

[Sidenote: Female infanticide.]

There seems little doubt that polyandry, as Herbert Spencer maintains,

has been adopted as an obvious and easy check upon increase of

population in rugged countries.[1352] It is generally coupled with other

preventive checks. In the Nilgiri Hills, as we found also to be the case

on many Polynesian islands, it is closely associated with female

infanticide.[1353] The Todas in 1867 showed a proportion of two men to

one woman, but later, with the decline of infanticide under British

rule, a proportion of 100 men to 75 women, and a resulting modification

of the institution of polyandry.[1354] It may well be that the paucity of

women suggested this form of marriage, whose expediency as an ally to

infanticide in checking population later became apparent. The Todas are

a very primitive folk of herdsmen, living on the produce of their

buffaloes, averse to agriculture, though not inhibited from it by the

nature of their country, therefore prone to seek any escape from that

uncongenial employment,[1355] and relying on the protected isolation of

their habitat to compensate for the weakness inherent in the small

number of the tribe.

Throughout Tibet and Ladak polyandry works hand in hand with the

lamaseries in limiting population. The conspicuous fact in Tibetan

polyandry is its restriction to the agricultural portion of the

population. The pastoral nomads of the country, depending on their yaks,

sheep and goats, wandering at will over a very wide, if desolate

territory, practice monogamy and polygamy.[1356] The sedentary

population, on the other hand, is restricted to tillable lands so small

that each farm produces only enough for one family. Subdivision under a

divided inheritance would be disastrous to these dwarf estates,

especially owing to possible complications growing out of irrigating

rights.[1357] Polyandry leaves the estate and the family undivided, and

by permitting only one wife to several fraternal husbands restricts the

number of children. It does this also in another way by diminishing the

fertility of the mothers; for all travelers comment upon the paucity of

children in polyandrous families.

Westermarck lays stress upon the fact that polyandry prevails chiefly in

sterile countries. He regards it less as a conscious device to check

increase of population than a result of the disproportion of males to

females in polyandrous communities. The preponderance of male births he

attributes to the excessive endogamy bordering on inbreeding which tends

to prevail in all isolated mountain valleys; and also, as a possibility,

to the undernourished condition of the parents caused by scanty food

supplies, which Düsing found to be productive of a high percentage of

male births in proportion to female.[1358] The motive of restricting

population seems entitled to more weight than Westermarck concedes to

it; for he slurs over the fact that in Tibet polyandry gives rise to a

large number of superfluous women who fill the nunneries,[1359] while in

the Nilgiri Hills redundant females were eliminated by infanticide. The

fact seems to be that in the institution of polyandry we have a social

and psychological effect of environment, reinforced by a physiological

effect.

[Sidenote: Effects of polyandry and polygamy.]

A comparison of social conditions in the adjoining provinces of

Baltistan and Ladak, which together comprise the Himalayan valley of the

Indus, reveals the character of polyandry as a response to geographic

environment. Both provinces are inhabited by a Mongolian stock, but the

Ladaki living on the uppermost stretch of the basin near Tibet are

Buddhists and polyandrists, while the Baltis farther down the valley are

Mussulmen and polygamists. The Baltis, with their plurality of wives and

numerous children, are wretchedly poor and live in squalor on the verge

of starvation; but as the elevation of their valley ranges only from

4000 to 8500 feet, they are inured to heat, and therefore emigrate in

large numbers to the neighboring Mohammedan province of the Punjab,

where they work as coolies and navvies. The Ladakis, on the other hand,

living 9000 to 13,000 feet above the sea, die of bilious fever when they

reach the lowlands. Cut off from emigration, they curtail population by

means of polyandry and lamaseries. Consequently they show signs of

prosperity, are well fed, well clothed and comfortably housed.[1360]

Baltistan's social condition illustrates in a striking way the power of

an idea like an alien creed, assimilated as the result of close vicinal

location, to counteract for a time the influences of local geographic

conditions.

[Sidenote: Marauding tendencies in mountaineers]

The less civilized mountain peoples, whose tastes or low economic status

unfit them for emigration, solve the problem of a deficient food supply

by raiding the fields and stores of their richer neighbors. Predatory

expeditions fill the history of primitive mountain peoples, and of the

ancient occupants of highland regions which are now devoted to honest

industry. The ancient Alpine tribes were one and all, from the

Mediterranean to the Danube, "poor and addicted to robbery," as Strabo

says. He analyzes their condition with nice discrimination. "The greater

part [of the Alps], especially the summits of the mountains inhabited by

robbers, are barren and unfruitful, both on account of the frost and the

ruggedness of the land. Because of the want of food and other

necessaries, the mountaineers have sometimes been obliged to spare the

inhabitants of the plains, that they might have some people to supply

them."[1361] The freebooters usually descended into the lowlands of

Italy, Gaul and Helvetia, but the pass peoples lay in wait for their

prey on the mountain roads. Strabo described the same marauding habits

arising from the same cause among the mountaineers of northern

Spain,[1362] the Balkan range,[1363] and the highlands encircling the

Mesopotamian plains.[1364]

Hunger is usually the spur. The tribesmen who inhabit the Hunza gorge

were notorious robbers till their recent conquest by the British.

Despite the most careful terrace tillage, their country was much

overpopulated. The supply of grain was so inadequate, that during the

summer the people subsisted wholly on fruit, reserving the grain for

winter use. Therefore, when early summer opened the passes of the

Karakorum and Himalayan ranges, and caravans began to move over the

trade route between Kashmir and Yarkand, when the Kirghis nomads from

the plains sought the pastures of the Pamir, the Hunza tribesmen found

raiding caravans and herds, and pillaging the Gilgit Valley of Baltistan

the easiest means of supplementing their slender resources. Hardy

mountaineers as they were, and born fighters, they always conducted

their forays successfully, and returned to the shelter of their

fastnesses, laden with plunder and driving their captive flocks before

them. The perpetual menace of these Hunza raids caused large districts

in the Gilgit Valley to be abandoned by their inhabitants, and

cultivated land to lapse into wilderness,[1365] while the Chilas to the

south pillaged the Astor Valley of Baltistan, carrying away crops and

cattle, enslaving women and children.[1366]

[Sidenote: Cattle-lifting.]

Marauding propensities are marked among all retarded mountain peoples of

modern times. The cattle-lifting clans of the Scotch Highlands, who

preyed upon the Lowlands, have their counterpart in the Pathans of the

Suleiman and Baluch mountain border who, till curbed by the British

power in India, systematically pillaged the plains of the Sind.[1367] The

forest Bhils of the Vindhyan and Satpura ranges are scarcely yet married

to agriculture; so when in time of drought their crops fail and the game

abandons the hill forests to seek water in the lowland jungles, the

Bhils cheerfully revert to their ancestral habit of cattle-lifting.[1368]

The Caucasus was long a breeding place for robber tribes who made their

forays into the pastures and fields of southern Russia. Robbery was part

of the education of every Circassian prince, while one group of the

Abassines conferred their chieftainship upon the most successful robber

or the man of largest family.[1369] The Kurdish hillmen of the Armenian

ranges descend with their herds of horses in winter to the warmer

plains, where they exhaust the pastures and subject the Armenian

villages to a regular system of blackmail.[1370] The wide grassy plains

about Koukou Nor Lake, near the Chinese border of Tibet, attract

numerous Mongol nomads with their herds; but these rich pastures are

exposed to the depredation of Si Fan brigand tribes, who have their

haunts in the deep, impenetrable gorges of the neighboring mountains,

and carefully guard all the approaches to the same. They are Buddhists,

but worship a special Divinity of Brigandage, to whom their lamas offer

prayers for the success of every foray.[1371] Hence, among mountain as

among desert peoples, robbery tends to become a virtue; environment

dictates their ethical code.

[Sidenote: Historical results of mountain raiding.]

These depredations reflect to a great degree the complementary relation

of highlands and lowlands. The plains possess what the mountains lack.

This is a fundamental fact of economic geography, and inevitably leads

to historical results. The marauding expeditions of mountain peoples

first acquire historical importance, either when the raids after long

continuance end in the conquest of the lowlands, and thus augment the

resources and population of the highland state; or, as is often the

case, the raiders call down upon themselves the vengeance of the

plainsmen, are subdued, and embodied in the lowland state. The conquest

of ancient Assyria and the destruction of Nineveh by the mountain Medes

seems to have been a process of this kind. Long before their descent

upon Mesopotamia, they were known as the "dangerous Medes," were

constantly threatening the Assyrian frontiers and occupying isolated

tracts.[1372] The predatory incursions of the Samnites of the Apennines

into the fertile fields of Campania eventuated in the conquest of

ancient Capua and other cities, and greatly strengthened the Samnite

Confederacy. But this encroachment of the mountain tribes upon the

plains aroused the cupidity and alarm of the Romans, who in turn bent

their energies toward the final subjugation of the Samnites.[1373]

Himalayan Nepal, after the unification of its petty Rajah states by the

Gurkha conquest between 1768 and 1790, began encroachments and ravages

upon the Indian Terai or fertile alluvial lowland at the foot of the

mountains; and finally by 1858 had acquired title to a considerable

strip of it, which by its rice fields and forests greatly strengthened

the geographic and economic base of the highland state.[1374] The Malay

Hovas, inhabiting the central plateau of Madagascar, braced to effort by

its temperate climate and not over-generous soil, have almost everywhere

subdued the better fed but sluggish lowlanders of the coast.[1375] There

can be little doubt that the beneficent effects of an invigorating

mountain climate, especially in tropical and subtropical latitudes, have

helped the hardy, active hill people to make easy conquest of the

enervated plainsmen.

[Sidenote: Conquest of mountain regions]

It is more often the case, however, that the scant resources, small

number, and divided political condition of the mountain tribes make such

conquest impossible. Their depredations provoke reprisals from the

stronger states of the plain, who bring the mountain region under

subjection, merely to police their frontier. Strabo makes it clear that

the Romans, having secured certain passes over the Alps, neglected the

conquest of the ranges, till the increase of Roman colonies along the

piedmont rim excited the cupidity of the mountaineers. Muscovite

dominion was extended over the Caucasus, both in order to check the

persistent raids of its tribes into the Russian plains, and to secure

control of its passes. The state of Kashmir, guided by a purely local

policy, for years tried to conquer the robber tribes on its northwestern

frontier, merely to protect its own border provinces. Then the British

authorities of the Indian Empire began the same process, but from a

radically different motive. They saw the Gilgit and Hunza valleys, like

the Chitral to the west, as highways through a mountain transit land,

whose opposite approaches were held by the Russians.[1376]

Such conquests, whatever be their motive, profit the vanquished in the

end more than the victor. They result in the systematic and intelligent

development of the mountain resources, and the maintenance of ampler

social and economic relations between highland and lowland through the

construction of roads, which must always represent the reach of the

governing authority. The conquest of mountain peoples means always

expensive and protracted campaigns. The invader has always two enemies

to fight, Nature and the armed foe. There is a saying in India that "In

Gilgit a small army is annihilated and a large army starves to death."

Hunger is king in high altitudes, and comes always to the defense of

mountain independence. Moreover, the inaccessibility of such districts,

the difficulty of maintaining lines of communication, ignorance of

by-paths and trails which forever offer strategic opportunities to the

natives or escape at a crisis, all serve to protract the war. The

independent spirit of the mountaineer, his endurance of hardships, his

mastery of mountain tactics, and his obstinate resistance after repeated

defeat, give always a touch of heroism to highland warfare.

Consequently, history abounds in examples of unconquered mountain

peoples, or of long sustained resistance, like that which for sixty

years under the heroic leadership of Kadi Mulah and Shamyl used up the

treasure and troops of Russia in the impregnable defiles of the

Caucasus. In the end, however, the highland tribes succumb to numbers

and the road-making engineer.

[Sidenote: Political dismemberment of mountain peoples.]

Political dismemberment, lack of cohesion due to the presence of

physical barriers impeding intercourse, is the inherent weakness of

mountain peoples. Political consolidation is never voluntary. It is

always forced upon them from without, either by foreign conquest or by

the constant menace of such conquest, which compels the mountain clans

to combine for common defense of their freedom. The combination thus

made is reluctant, loose, easily broken, generally short-lived. It

becomes close and permanent only under a constant pressure from without,

and then assumes a form allowing to the constituent parts the greatest

possible measure of independence. The Swiss canton and commune are the

result of a segregating environment; the Swiss Republic is the result of

threatened encroachments by the surrounding states. It owed its first

genuine federal constitution to Napoleon.

A report on the situation in the Caucasus, addressed to Czar Nicholas in

1829, contains an epitome of the history of mountain peoples. It runs as

follows: "The Circassians bar out Russia from the south, and may at

their pleasure open or close the passage to the nations of Asia. At

present their intestine dissensions, fostered by Russia, hinder them

from uniting under one leader; but it must not be forgotten that,

according to traditions religiously preserved among them, the sway of

their ancestors extended as far as to the Black Sea. * * * The

imagination is appalled at the consequence which their union under one

leader might have for Russia, which has no other bulwark against their

ravages than a military line, too extensive to be very strong."[1377]

Here we have the whole story--a mountain people pillaging the lowlands,

exercising a dangerous and embarrassing control over the passes, and

thereby calling down upon themselves conquest from without; weakened by

a contracting territory within the highlands and a shrinking area of

plunder without, doomed to eventual defeat by the yet more ominous

weakness of political dismemberment.

[Sidenote: Individualism and independence]

Mountain tribes are always like a pack of hounds on the leash, each

straining in a different direction. Wall-like barriers, holding them

apart for centuries, make them almost incapable of concerted action, and

restive under any authority but their own. Clan and tribal societies,

feudal and republican rule, always on a small scale, characterize

mountain sociology. All these are attended by an exaggerated

individualism and its inevitable concomitant, the blood feud. Mountain

policy tends to diminish the power of the central authority to the

vanishing point, giving individualism full scope. Social and economic

retardation, caused by extreme isolation and encouraged by protected

location, tend to keep the social body small and loosely organized.

Every aspect of environment makes against social integration.

The broken relief of ancient Greece produced the small city state; but

in the rugged mountains of Arcadia the principle of physical and

political subdivision went farther. Here, for four centuries after the

first Olympiad, the population, poorest and rudest of all Greece, was

split up into petty hill villages, each independent of the other.[1378]

The need of resisting Spartan aggression led for the first time, in 371

B.C., to the formation of a _commune Arcadum_, a coalescence of all the

fractional groups constituting the Arcadian folk;[1379] but even this

union, effected only by the masterly manipulation of the Theban

Epaminondas, proved short-lived and incomplete. What was true of the

Arcadian villages was true of the city states of Greece. The geography

of the land instilled into them the principle of political aloofness,

except when menaced by foreign conquest. Cooperation is efficient only

when it springs from a habit of mind. Greek union against the Persians

was very imperfect; and against the Roman, the feeble leagues were

wholly ineffective. The influence of this dismembering environment still

persists. As ancient Greece was a complex of city states, modern Greece

is a complex of separate districts, each of which holds chief place in

the minds of its citizens, and unconsciously but steadily operates

against the growth of a national spirit in the modern sense.[1380]

[Sidenote: Types of mountain states.]