COMPARATIVE
GEOGRAPHY.
BY
CARL RITTER
LATE PROFESSOR OF GEOGRAPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF BERLIN.
Translated for the Use of Schools and Colleges
BY
WILLIAM L. GAGE.
PHILADELPHIA:
J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO.
1865.
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1865, by
J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO.,
In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the United States
for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.
TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE.
The translator of Ritter’s “Geographical Studies,” which has received
in its English dress the hearty greeting of our most cultured scholars,
takes a renewed pleasure in giving to the students of our higher
Seminaries a second volume from the pen of the great Geographer. The
former work, addressed, as its contents mainly were, to the members
of the Royal Academy of Berlin, was too recondite in thought and too
abstruse and elaborate in statement ever to become, whether in German or
in English, a popular work; but the present volume—the bright, compact
crystal of Ritter’s life—will pass into a general circulation, and will
be recognized as not merely a simple and perfectly intelligible treatise,
but as a masterly application of the comparative method of Geography, and
as philosophical as it is practical and interesting.
Besides the voluminous Erdkunda, which deals almost exclusively with
Asia, and treats it with an exhaustive fullness, Ritter has left the
world the volume already referred to, and three courses of Academical
Lectures. One of these courses is now before the reader; one of the
remaining two relates to the geography of Europe, and the other to the
history of Geographical Science and of Discovery. Of these three courses,
a distinguished American scholar[1] has said: “Free from excessive
details, systematic, clear, bold, and fresh, they are better fitted to
bring up to the mind Ritter, the university instructor, than all his
other writings.” This praise is by no means excessive; and the student
who shall, with the assistance of a good physical atlas, go through
this work, will find himself master of a far larger number of special
facts than the size of the volume would indicate; and also of a _science_
of Geography, which subsidizes all detail, and makes it auxiliary to
the comprehension of relations no less beautiful and singular than are
revealed in the study of the other departments of Nature.
The peculiar difficulties attending the translation of the Geographical
Studies have not been met in this volume; in the University lecture-room,
Ritter’s style, which, before the Royal Academy, was extremely involved,
poetical and inexhaustive, became simple, straightforward, and luminous.
In style, Ritter carried neglect to the point of slovenliness; and the
finish which Humboldt cultivated so assiduously, he rejected as unworthy
of a true scholar. The highly figurative words with which he used so
liberally to decorate his writings, I have generally had to render with a
rather too bare fidelity to a prose style; for grateful and captivating
as they were to his German hearers, they would look over-fanciful to
an English reader, and obscure rather than illustrate the thought.
It has been my earnest purpose to make this work fill a great void
in our educational literature; and its convenient size gives it an
incomparable advantage over the voluminous works of Sir John Herschel
and Mrs. Somerville; while in rigid philosophical precision, in method,
in natural growth—not to use that inevitable German word _development_,
(Entwickelung)—even those eminent geographers would, doubtless, award it
the palm.
The demands of the public may yet render needful the translation of other
of Ritter’s works; meanwhile, the editor of this work purposes to prepare
a biography of that great man, whose memory all his pupils revere, and
whose life was not less beautiful to his friends than it was fruitful and
valuable to the whole scientific world.
W. L. G.
July 5, 1864.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
INTRODUCTION.
Introductory Remarks ix
Solar System. Planets. Middle Position of the Earth. Figure
of the Earth. Ptolemaic System. Copernicus. Conception of
Geography.
The Earth as the Dwelling-place of Man xiv
General Remarks.
Geography as a Science xv
The Earth and Man. Geography. Scientific Definition of
Geography. Geography as a Science.
What Geographical Science has yet to accomplish xix
The Earth a Unit. Geographical Treatises. Comparative Geography.
Sources of Geographical Science xxv
The Study of our own Neighborhood. Strabo, Cluver, Humboldt.
The Sciences illustrative of Geography xxvii
Illustrative Sciences. Nautical Science.
COMPARATIVE GEOGRAPHY.
PART FIRST.
THE SURFACE OF THE EARTH CONSIDERED IN ITS
MOST GENERAL RELATIONS.
The Spheroidal Form of the Earth 31
Flattening of the Poles. The Surface of the Earth.
The Threefold Covering of the Earth 34
The Atmosphere. Depth of the Sea. The Interior of the Earth.
The Superficial Dimensions of the Land and Water on the Globe 39
Water and Land. Area of the Earth.
Contrast of the Land and Water Hemispheres 41
Continents and Islands. Contrast of the Hemispheres. The great
Coast-belt. Historical Contrast.
The Position of the Continents and its Influence on the Course
of History 46
Structure and Architectural Relations of the Continents.
The Pyramidal Forms of the Great Land-Masses, and their Southward
direction toward the Oceanic Hemisphere 48
Pyramidal Structure. Hypothesis as to its Origin. Surface of
the Moon.
Situation of the Continents in their Relation to each other, and
to their Collective Whole 51
Continents. Submarine Volcanic Connection. Arctic Polar Lands.
The Polar World. America. Australia.
The Historical Element in Geographical Science 58
Matter and Spirit. Steam Navigation. Europe’s advantageous
Position. Natural Endowment of the Various Continents.
Perfectability of the Earth. The Oldest Homes of Culture.
PART SECOND.
A more extended Investigation regarding the Earth’s Surface 69
Plains. Relative and absolute Heights. Highlands and Lowlands.
Lands of Transition.
Highlands 73
General Remarks.
Highlands or Plateaus of the First Class 74
The Asiatic Plateaus. The African Highland. The American
Plateaus.
Plateaus of the Second Class 80
Lower Asiatic Plateaus. Lower African Plateaus. Lower American
Plateaus. Lower European Plateaus. Use and Misuse of the word
Plateau. Limits of the Lower Plateaus.
Mountains and Mountain Lands 89
Mountains and Plateaus. Height of Mountains. Size of Mountains.
Linear Elevation. Mountain Systems. Divisions of Mountains.
Mountain Chains. Serrated Ranges. Peaks and Passes. Ranges
of Demarkation. Superimposed Mountains. Independent Mountain
Systems.
The Relations of Plateau Systems 104
Geological Differences between Plateaus. The Continents with
their respective Plateaus.
Primeval Formation of Plateaus and Mountains 107
General Remarks.
Origin of Plateaus 107
Intumescence of the Earth. The great Plateau Circle.
The Origin of Mountains 109
Volcanic Forces. Deposits from Water. Geography and Geology.
Lowlands 114
Limits of Lowland. The Polar Flat Regions. America, Africa, and
Australia, the Continents of Lowlands.
The Middle European Lowland 119
General Description.
The Origin of the Great Central European Plain 122
General Remarks.
The Ponto-Caspian Plain, the Great Depression of the Old World 126
General Description.
The Origin of the Ponto-Caspian Depression 132
General Remarks.
The Depression of the Jordan Valley and of the Dead Sea 138
Description.
The Bitter Lakes of the Suez Isthmus 142
The Altitude in Relation to the Sea Level.
The Regions of Transition between Highlands and Lowlands. The
River Systems of the Globe 144
General Remarks.
Terrace Lands and Rivers in their General Character 144
Terrace Lands. Rivers. Their Individuality. Water-sheds.
Territory watered. Falls.
Rivers more closely considered 150
Direction. Water-sheds. District drained. River Valleys.
Upper Course of Rivers 154
General Descriptive Remarks.
Middle Course of Rivers 158
General Descriptive Remarks.
Lower Course of Rivers 163
General Descriptive Remarks. River’s Mouth. Navigation of
Rivers. Sinuosity of Rivers: its Influence on Civilization.
Sources. Double Streams. Cross Streams. Weak and Strong
Currents.
Review 177
The Historical Influence of Plateaus. The Influence of River
Systems on Civilization. The European Terrace Lands. The Danube
Terraces.
PART THIRD.
The Configuration of the Continents 183
Teleology of the Earth’s Structure. Horizontal and Vertical
Dimensions. Articulation. Strabo on the Articulation of Europe.
The Superficial Dimensions and Articulation of the Continents 188
Africa. Asia. Europe. The European Triangle. The Articulation
of Europe. Its Extremities. Its Relation to the other
Continents. Its Historical Function. Its complete preparation
for the place assigned to it.
Islands 203
European Islands. African Islands. Asiatic Islands. Polynesia.
Concentration and Dismemberment. Europe.
The Results of the above Considerations briefly stated 210
Review of the Old World.
The New World 212
America. South America. Terra del Fuego. North America.
American Polar Regions. The Future. Conclusion.
INTRODUCTION.
The subject of these lectures is Geography in its most enlarged and
comprehensive sense. It will be necessary to preface them with some
general observations, which shall serve to indicate the scientific basis
on which the discussion will rest. Our starting-point will be with Nature
herself and not with arbitrary geographical systems hitherto constructed.
By the word Nature will be meant the entire Creation. The grasping of
Nature in all its objects and all its forces becomes, in conjunction
with the agency of Time and Space, the comprehension of a great system.
The inanimate creation may be represented under the term inorganic, the
animate creation under the term organic. Yet there is not an absolute
contrast between them; for in both there is ceaseless progress, no pause,
but in a higher and comprehensive sense a cosmical life, the whole
forming one great Organism, in which the inorganic world, so called, is
only the foundation on which the animate creation stands.
To us, our own Earth is the most marked feature of Nature viewed on its
inorganic side. To us it is the planet best known of all, or rather
the only one closely known, the point whence we draw conclusions on
the whole Universe, the resting ground for the glass that searches the
Kosmos, to use Humboldt’s word, discerning the place which the Earth
holds in it, and prying into the mysteries of the entire creation. Our
globe is one of the major planets of our system, all of which gird the
sun with great elliptic orbits, midway in which is our own. There begins
the first popular division of the planets,—those that are within and
those which are without our own orbit. This is one of the most simple of
discriminations, one which we inherit from the ancients in an unmodified
form. Humboldt retains this primary classification.
The external planets are those whose orbits embrace that of the Earth
within their own. The minor planets are those whose orbits are embraced
by that of the Earth. These are Mercury and Venus.
The ancients, counting both the sun and moon, reckoned only seven
planets. At the end of the eighteenth century another was added, Uranus,
an external planet. Through the instrumentality of improved telescopes,
soon after, four minor ones were discovered, Ceres, Pallas, Juno, and
Vesta; and by the still more perfect lenses recently introduced, and the
assiduity and skill of astronomers, the number of these little planetary
bodies, ranging between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, has grown great.
Beyond Saturn and Uranus is Neptune, discovered mathematically by Le
Verrier, in Paris, and seen by Galle in Berlin, the 23d of September,
1846.
To these (now eighty) planets may be added the twenty to thirty moons of
our solar system, and a number of comets.
The middle position of the Earth’s orbit is not without its consequences.
The distance of the Earth from the Sun is, in round numbers, 92,000,000
of miles, nearly three times as far as that of Mercury, the planet
nearest the Sun. Jupiter, on the other hand, is five times as far from
the Sun as the Earth; Uranus about nineteen times as far, and Neptune
about thirty-three times as far.
The time of the Earth’s revolution around the Sun is also equally removed
from the extremes; its year is 365 days; Mercury’s being 87 days;
Jupiter’s 11 of our years; Uranus 84 years; and Neptune’s 165 years.
The daily revolution of the Earth on its axis is also of only medium
swiftness, consuming 24 hours. This, of course, controls the periods
of waking and sleep of the entire animate creation on our globe. Some
planets revolve slower, some more rapidly than our own; Jupiter’s
revolution, for example, is accomplished in little less than 10 hours.
This extreme rapidity seems to account for the much greater flattening at
the poles of the planets than the Earth exhibits, occasioned doubtless
during the formation processes, while those immense revolving masses
were passing from their primitive fluid state into the more rigid forms
in which we know them. Of all the planets, however, the Earth has most
perfectly retained the spherical shape; and the spherical form is in one
sense a medium form; i.e. it is removed from all extremes of angularity,
and so falls in with the analogies which I am endeavoring to establish,
springing from the position of the Earth’s orbit _midway_ between those
of the inner and outer planets. According to Plato, the beauty of form
lies in symmetry, and our Earth is the most symmetrical of planets,
and, unquestionably, the spherical shape is the one best adapted to the
display of the largest number of phenomena possible.
The variations from the spherical form, produced by elevations and
depressions, are only of medium magnitude in our globe compared with
many others in our system. On the smaller planet of Venus, for example,
the mountains are thought to rise to a height of many miles, while five
is the greatest altitude of ours. According to Mädler’s conjectures,
the mountains in our own moon rise to a height of over three miles, an
altitude altogether out of proportion to the size of the moon as compared
with the earth.
In respect to the number of its moons, too, our Earth is no extremist; it
has but one: other planets, Mercury, Venus, Mars, have none. On the other
hand, Jupiter has 4, Saturn 7, Uranus 6 at least, and doubtless more. The
general law seems to be, the farther from the Sun the greater the number
of moons; perhaps in the wonderful providence of God, to compensate the
feeble light of those distant realms by the number of the reflecting
bodies.
Now, summing up all that has been said, it will be seen that the Earth is
equally far removed from every extreme. This fundamental classification,
drawn from the place of its orbit in relation to those nearer the Sun or
more distant from it, gives it a character which is felt and seen in many
different things, and responds to analogies which it is not incorrect
to mark. A _medium_ is seen in all its attributes and relations: it is
neither the largest nor the smallest of planets; neither the swiftest
nor the slowest; neither the warmest nor the coldest; in nothing is
it either at a minimum nor at a maximum point. And this very medium
character brings the Earth into harmony with the system of which it forms
a part; the symmetry of the one corresponding with the symmetry of the
other, and specially fits it to become the temporary home of a race like
ours, which makes the whole surface of the globe tributary during the
short terrestrial life of man to his preparation for a celestial state
of being. Our globe is certainly the only one of our system which could
possibly be inhabited by man; and as his residence, and as the arena for
his culture, it is worthy of being studied in all its features; no point
is too trifling to be overlooked.
As man looks for a center to the system which _evidently_ pertains to
him, and in which our Earth plays no slight part, the Sun is clearly
the source of a large share of what makes our life desirable. Thence we
receive light, warmth, and indirectly, and yet directly too, life and
the bloom of health. Nor can men, even if ignorant and degraded, _help_
seeing the relation of the Sun to the Earth, and linking, in their rude
thoughts, the heavens with the earth; and hence, before all higher
Revelation, the worship of the Sun has been the primitive instinct of the
oldest of nations.
Looking at the earth as simply one among the innumerable hosts of heaven,
it, like each one of them, becomes to the imagination a mere point of
light, a “star among stars.” But, when we shift our point of view, and
leaving the cosmical or universal for the special, for what pertains to
the individual life, the mere point of light flames up into a great,
busy world, full of phenomena demanding investigation and thought.
And yet this world, so attractive in its multiplicity of details, is
almost a chaos at the first sight; a confused and inextricable mass, so
large, so high, so deep as to defy human effort to compass or master it.
Science alone, the gift and the growth of centuries, can measure the
field; science alone can enter it and reduce the chaos to a beautiful
and orderly grouping, and make a perfect picture of the whole; it alone
can dispel crude ideas and give truer ones in their stead. To the rude
dweller on the plain, the earth seems a gigantic floor, as it did to many
a tribe in the past, and as it does to-day to thousands of wondering
Arabs. The South Sea Islander, in the Pacific, takes his island or island
group to be the whole earth; the world he considers an endless ocean
plain, from which the Sun arises, and, when the day is over, into which
it sinks. And even within the pale of civilization itself, the ignorant
Neapolitan lazzarone considers his gulf the center of the world.
As men advance in their inquiries, and, ascending the sides of mountains,
look out over a larger tract, or find new lands across the seas, they
do not outgrow their first idea, the world merely expands from the
narrow homestead to a larger circle, such as the Romans used to call
their orbis terrarum. The conception of the earth as a vast, unsupported
ball, careering through the heavens, was the possession, slowly won, of
such great minds as Pythagoras and Aristotle, and slowly found its way
among the ideas which whole nations accepted as true. Circumnavigators
must sail around the globe and tell their story to the world before the
conjectures of science could have real weight with the popular mind in a
matter so remote from the crude speculations of the ignorant as this. And
less than one century and a half ago (in 1727) another step was taken,
and the theory was propounded by Newton, that the Earth is a spheroid
and not a perfect sphere. Later investigations have determined that the
spheroidal form is only an approximation to perfect accuracy, and that
the Earth is a polyhedron, whose exact number of zodes has not yet been
determined, and which may prove indeterminable. Bessel has assigned, as
the great task of science for the coming century, to settle this question
with perfect exactness. But what has been said is enough to indicate that
in our knowledge, at present, certainly there is only progress, only
approximation, no absolute exhaustion of the processes of discovery.
And just as in ruder lands each man looks at his own island, or village,
as the center of the earth’s circle, so the ancients looked at the
earth as the pivot of the universe, the central point around which all
the heavenly hosts revolve. That was the fundamental principle of that
Ptolemaic system which was older than Ptolemy; held in the most ancient
times in Arabia, Babylon, Persia, and India, but first luminously
expanded in the proportions and with the dignity of a system by Ptolemy.
Its outlines were, in one word, this: there are seven planets, the Moon,
Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn; each has its own
orbit, in which it is in a limited sense supreme, but they all revolve
around the common center, the Earth. Beyond the seven, and including them
all, is the Firmament, in which the other stars stand like golden nails
in an imperishable floor; the whole vast external Firmament is opaque and
motionless.
The Ptolemaic system won and held the greatest regard in the ancient
world. Mohammed established it in the Koran as a truth of religion. The
advance of science revealed the falseness of the Ptolemaic scheme of the
universe, and demonstrated the fact that the stars of heaven are not
mere torch-bearers for us, and mere interpreters of human destinies, but
are worlds like our own, our earth being but one of numberless thousands
equally worthy of the Common Creator. The Copernican system, which was
to re-create the whole domain of science, wrought this great change.
The Sun, according to this theory, forms the central point around
which, and not around the Earth, all the planets wheel. Copernicus, in
1543, left this imperfect and yet fruitful conception to his successors
to unfold; and in the results gained by Kepler, in 1631, by Newton and
Galileo, 1727, the Copernican system was firmly established. The vast
improvements in the telescope removed the limits of the visible universe
to a place till then unrevealed, and added inexhaustible fields to those
which had been known before. The number of the planets was enlarged.
The list of determined comets increases yearly. The number of the fixed
stars has been determined by the extreme accuracy of such observers as
Lalande, Lacaille, Bessel, Argelander, and Lamont. The great work of
mapping and cataloguing the heavens has been accomplished. Many hundred
stars, supposed to be single fixed stars, have been ascertained to be
double stars, and some have been resolved into systems like our own.
The 300-400, observed by Struve, have grown, through the labors of
Herschel, in both the Northern and the Southern hemispheres, at the Cape
of Good Hope, and elsewhere, to over 3000, and the number is constantly
increasing. Nebulæ have been analyzed, and been shown to consist of
worlds distinct and perfect as our own. Thus there is a steady and
perceptible advance in man’s conception of the Earth, of Nature, of what
we call the World and the Universe, though each individual, generation,
and century are but dimly conscious of this progress.
THE EARTH AS THE DWELLING-PLACE OF MAN.
The Earth draws our attention to itself, however, not as simply a unit
in the planetary system, but as the home of the human race. The physical
description of the globe includes the relations of the Earth as a star
amid the heavenly hosts, while Geography, taken most comprehensively,
regards the Earth as the dwelling-place of Man. From a geographical
point of view, the world becomes to us the common home of our race, the
theater, not of the operations of Nature in the most unrestricted sense,
but the arena for the development of human life and history. The whole
animate and inanimate creation is tributary, looked at geographically,
to the fashioning of the destiny of Man. Without Man as the central
point, Nature would have no interest to the geographer; without the
Earth, constituted just as it is, the races of men and the course of
human history could not claim his attention. The Earth is not only the
best known of planets, but, as the home of man, infinitely the most
interesting. The study of it is at the foundation of history as much as
of physics.
No man of science can fail to regard it with the deepest interest.
More than a hundred years ago, George Foster remarked that European
culture had ascended to that height, that it must include an intimate
knowledge of all that is peculiar in the features and phenomena of the
entire globe. How much more true is this remark in the middle of our
nineteenth century! It is no longer European culture that demands this,
but the welfare of all countries claims of scholars this knowledge far
more imperatively than a hundred years ago. Still, it must be confessed
that we are far from the attainment of a perfect science of Geography,
in its largest sense; the science which regards the Earth as the field
of human discipline; the science of which what was formerly called
Geography is only an outlying, rudimentary part. The compass of what it
holds as its goal is too large, and its contents too varied for _his_
grasp whose existence is hemmed in by narrow bonds, and whose life is so
brief. And though there have always been detailed descriptions of the
different parts of the earth, many of them remarkable for their accuracy,
yet there has been lacking a knowledge of the principle of organic unity
which pervades the whole, and the mutual play and interdependency of
all the parts. The whole subject of _relations_ was unstudied. And it
is a knowledge of the relations of things that leads to a scientific
interpretation, not the description of detached parts. Geography was and
continued to be mere description, not the teaching of the most important
relations. Only now are we beginning to comprehend the true elements
of geographical science, only now are the first efforts made to deal
profoundly with this science, although the progress of discovery is still
going on with unabated speed, leaving far behind us all the advances of
our predecessors.
GEOGRAPHY AS A SCIENCE.
The Earth, considered _per se_, is only a fragment of the Universe, of
the Kosmos, in that wide use of the word which Humboldt has given to
it in his celebrated work. The Earth is the grand floor, so to speak,
of Nature; the home, or rather the cradle, of men and of nations, the
dwelling-place of our race. It is not merely a region of immense spaces,
a vast superficies, it is the theater where all the forces of Nature and
the laws of Nature are displayed in their variety and independencies.
Besides this, it is the field of all human effort, and the scene of a
Divine revelation. The Earth must be studied, therefore, in a threefold
relation: to the Universe, to Nature, to History.
And it is not only as a mere passive agent, but active, that it assumes
this threefold relation. It is an inseparable, an integral, a working
member in the great system of things. But higher than this, and grander
than its relation to the system of _things_, is its relation to an unseen
world, to an unseen hand, even that of the Creator. We view it not as the
field of forces and laws and phenomena, but the crowning gift of God,
displaying the tokens of perfect adaptation to our wants, full of beauty
and excellence—a revelation of Divine wisdom, in the form of a visible
world. How beautifully has the inspired David painted this in the 104th
Psalm!
In relation to its inhabitants, crowned with the Imperial gift of reason,
the Earth is not merely the place where they may stand, the cradle where
they may sleep, the home where they may live, it is the school where they
may be trained. This is one of the first and one of the greatest lessons
that we learn from the history of the race. The Earth finds its highest
mission, not in its relation to inanimate nature, but to the world of
intelligence—the minds that dwell upon it, the spiritual world to which
it gives bodies. And as the Earth alone of the planets is adapted to be
the home of such a being as man, so in our world of animate and inanimate
things, man alone partakes of a moral nature, incapable of being shared
or even imitated by the lower creatures. The Earth was made to be the
home of mind, soul, character. And Man was created to make this earth
tributary to his largest growth in mind, and soul, and character. In
this sense the Earth and its noble possessors are correlative. Each
individual rises to his own appointed work, runs his own course, uses all
the appliances of Nature, all the help with which God invests him, and
then ceases from his mission here; but the Earth remains, the home of the
advancing millions, helping them all onward, and granting them new power
to fulfill the noble purposes of human life.
Nor can this constitution of things be the result of a happy accident.
Evidently under the supreme power of a Divine mind and will, Nature
is made subservient to Man. That mutual working and interdependence
of things, which opens to our comprehension the History of our race,
cannot be ascribed to a fortuitous combination of events. It can only be
the result of Divine Providence. Had there been no wise ruling of the
blind forces of nature, no subjection of the rough, unbridled powers of
the air, and sea, and earth, the human race would have become extinct,
as so many races of beasts have done. But there are no traces of the
extinction of a human race in our Paleontology. The constitution of the
globe is incontestably coincident with a plan to preserve and perfect
Man. There are destructive agencies, it is true, but they do not operate
on an extended scale; our earthquakes, and volcanoes, and great storms at
sea affect but a fraction of the race, they are no longer universal in
their action; while, on the contrary, the instrumentalities which favor
mankind remain in force—the earth’s changeless garment of green, the
uniform progress of generation among subordinate creatures, the ease of
acclimatization, and of transferring seeds and germs, with undiminished
fruitfulness, from one region to another. The very agencies which, in the
dawn of history, brought death, have been changed to auxiliaries of life
with us to-day.
The investigation into the relations of the Earth, in this respect,
and into the organization of all the natural laws and phenomena in
their bearing on man, his life and history, must constitute a prominent
department of true geographical science. When Geography ceases to be
a lifeless aggregate of unorganized facts, and becomes the science
which deals with the earth as a true organization, a world capable of
constant development, carrying in its own bosom the seeds of the future,
to germinate and unfold, age after age, it first attains the unity and
wholeness of a science, and shows that it grows from a living root; it
becomes capable of systematic exposition, and takes its true place in
the circle of sister sciences. Philosophy gladly grants it a share in
its own domain, and permits it to indulge in those soaring speculations,
which it used to be thought that so simple a thing as Geography might not
enjoy. Yet, it must not be denied that there has for some time been felt
a need of bringing the earth, as an organization, more into the light
of scientific investigation. The study of final causes, the tracing of
infinite wisdom in the works of the Creator, the theories touching the
first issue of all things, have grown out of this necessity. Many errors
have, doubtless, drifted in during the course of these speculations;
man has undertaken to measure the Divine plan with most imperfect data,
and the illusion has been too fondly cherished of attaining final and
profound results while men were scarcely in the possession of the
elements of knowledge. It is for us, therefore, to enter upon our
inquiries with investigation rather than theory, to test the knowledge of
which tradition has put us in possession, and to advance, as we may, to
the new and the unexplored.
Man is the first token that we meet, that our study of the earth must
contemplate it as an organized whole, its unity consummating in him. As
every individual must, in his own career, epitomize the history of the
race, childhood, youth, manhood, and decrepitude, so each man mirrors in
his own life the locality where he lives. Whether dwelling in the North
or in the South, in the East or in the West, whether the shepherd of the
Tyrolese Highlands, or the Hollander of the plains, every man is, in a
manner, the representative of the home that gave him birth. In the people
the country finds its reflection. The effect of the district upon the
nature of its inhabitants in size and figure, in color and temperament,
in speech and mental characteristics, is unmistakable. Hence the almost
infinite diversity in the peculiarities of culture and attainment, as
well as of tendency in different nations. Anthropology and Ethnography,
the science of man and of race, are the running commentaries of Geography
and Topography. The historian and the geographer work toward each
other,—the historian going back from the acts of men to study the scenes
which have conditioned their life, the geographer going forward from
the study of the habitat of men to that of their deeds. The fundamental
question of history is, in fact, What relation does the country bear to
the national life? What relation to the civil structure, the state?
In fact, the whole constitution of Man is thoroughly connected with
the Earth on which he dwells; the roots of his being run down into it
in uncounted numbers. Man receives at birth from the earth not only a
spiritual but a physical dowry, from which he cannot free himself, and
of whose worth he becomes conscious more and more. It is, therefore, of
course one of the first of the legitimate studies to learn the limits of
the realm which Man makes his home, and to understand all its secrets,
all its forces, so as to turn them to his own uses. Thus alone can he
compass the sublime thought of his own freedom, the independence of
his own will in the kingdom of Nature, and learn the majesty of his
own spirit; for the knowledge of that freedom, which is the most noble
of all God’s gifts to him, is the most direct key to the attainment of
that place in the present, and that destiny in the future, which God has
appointed for man. Without a preliminary training, amid the conditions
of a limited life, can there be no step taken toward the enjoyment of
the life without limitations which is to come. Without the capacity of
breaking the higher law, there is no glory in obeying it, no freedom
to be valued, even in the world of thought. There can be no true
speculation, no philosophy of the unlimited and eternal, without inquiry
into and knowledge of the limited and conditioned. He who knows not the
earthly, cannot know the heavenly; he who knows not the finite, cannot
know the infinite. Statement and counter-statement are the substance
to the world of thought. Pythagoras investigated matters of number and
weight, before he dealt with the mysteries of metaphysical speculation.
Plato thought on the human soul, and the practical details of
legislation, before he gave himself to the deepest things of Philosophy.
Aristotle was a naturalist and physicist, before he became a logician and
metaphysician. Kant was a mathematician and astronomer, before he dealt
with the problems of transcendental science. Schelling went from natural
philosophy to the study of the soul of things. If there have been evil
results from this, it has not been from antedating metaphysical studies
by physical, but by passing too quickly from the solid foundation-stones
to the more unstable heights of the transcendental. Without these solid
foundation-stones, philosophy falls, crushed by its own weight; but with
this preparation, we may advance to the loftiest and yet most secure
speculations.
WHAT GEOGRAPHY AS A SCIENCE HAS YET TO ACCOMPLISH.
Geography can just as little be contented with being a mere description
of the Earth, and a catalogue of its divisions, as a detailed account of
the objects in nature can take the place of a thorough and real natural
history. The very word Geography, meaning a description of the Earth,
has unfortunately been at fault, and has misled the world: to us it
merely hints at the elements, the factors of what is the true science
of Geography. That science aims at nothing less than to embrace the most
complete and the most cosmical view of the Earth; to sum up and organize
into a beautiful unity _all_ that we know of the globe. The whole body
of facts revealed by past and present discovery must be marshaled into
harmony, before we gain the high pinnacle of Geographical Science. The
Earth, in all its parts, must be known in all its relations, before we
can speak of it as the scholars of our day ought to speak of the world
they inhabit.
Moreover, the Earth is to be considered in two main relations—a relation,
and an absolute relation; that is, we are to regard it in its connection
with the greater whole, of which it forms a part, the Universe, and
as a body standing alone, existing, as it were, for itself. It is the
latter view which falls within the strict province of Geography. The very
prominence of the old Greek word Γη indicates the pre-eminence which, in
this science, our own planet, rather than others, receives. _Ge_-ography
confines our attention to the Earth, and concentrates it upon the globe,
regarded _per se_, rather than in its relations to the Universe. Taken,
therefore, strictly, as already hinted at in the foregoing remark,
Geography is the department of science that deals with the globe in
all its features, phenomena, and relations, as an independent unit,
and shows the connection of this unified whole with man and with man’s
Creator. Should we go beyond this, and discuss the relations of the Earth
to the Universe, (as is often done in our geographical treatises, in a
singularly imperfect and unfruitful manner,) we should outrun the strict
bounds of a single science, and should be encroaching on the domain of
the sister science of astronomy. This we have no right to do. Yet, from
time to time, we must borrow the results of other departments of learning
to confirm our own. The field which we have to till has been immensely
reduced in its proportions by the publication of “Kosmos,” which great
work has almost exhausted the subject of the earth in its external
relations. The limiting of our own department may, perhaps, give more
opportunity for thorough investigation within itself.
The Earth, if discussed exhaustorily, must be spoken of in its relations
to Time as well as to Space. The word by which we characterize it,
in this regard, is History. The duration of the Earth outruns all
measurement. By thinking of its beginning, is the only way we have of
gaining a conception of Time. We cannot conceive of the universe as
antedating the creation of our earth. By this indefinite, not to say
infinite, duration of time, the Earth is discriminated from all that
it contains; it is older than any of its parts; it antedates all its
kingdoms. The nature of the whole is, therefore, radically different from
that of any of its divisions. The Earth has had a development of its own;
hence the too common error of treating it as passive and inorganic. The
history of the Earth displays, in all the monuments of the past, that
it has been subjected in every feature, in every division of itself,
to ceaseless transformation, in order to show that, as a whole, it is
capable of that organic development on which I lay so much stress. The
natural powers which the earth includes are constantly obedient to the
mechanical laws of chemistry and physics. The animate creation, plants,
animals, man, come and go, in accordance with the laws of their being,
and as subordinate dependents on the great forces which the earth holds
locked up within her bosom. The earth, the mother of them all, has her
own special advance, her own development, to use that overburdened German
word. She has relations to herself alone; not simply to organized forms,
plants, and animals; just as little to organic things; not simply to
her own countries, her rocks, and her crystals. These are but isolated
parts; or, if not isolated, yet bound _together_ by a common tie. There
is another tie above this; it is that which binds the earth to itself
alone; that subordinates its parts to such an extent that they almost
disappear. There is, above all this thought of parts, of features, of
phenomena, the conception of the Earth as a whole, existing in itself,
and for itself, an organic thing, advancing by growth, and becoming more
and more perfect and beautiful. Without trying to impose on you anything
vague and transcendental, I wish to lead you to view the globe as almost
a living thing,—not a crystal, assuming new grace by virtue of an
external law,—but a world, taking on grandeur and worth, by virtue of an
inward necessity. The individuality of the earth must be the watchword of
re-created Geography. To think of the Earth, as a seed sown from the hand
of God himself on the great fields of space, and filled with a germinant
power of life, which will transform it more and more, and make it more
and more worthy of its noblest inhabitant, is the first, as it is the
last, idea which we must take and keep in these inquiries.
Formerly, Geography was regarded as a mere auxiliary of History,
Politics, Military Science, Natural History, the Industrial Arts, and
Commerce. And in truth it does reach out and teach all these departments
of knowledge and action; but only in the most recent times has it assumed
the place of an independent branch of study. Only through the widening of
the whole circle of sciences has room been made for this.
Geography used, for the sake of commerce, to be divided into three
divisions: mathematical, physical, and political. This was at the time
when it was thought that the whole frame-work of the sciences was a
disjointed and sundered thing; before that minor principle of unity
which binds them all together was recognized as one of the noblest
conceptions that the mind can cherish. In the first two of these
arbitrary divisions into which Geography was severed, the relations of
astronomy, mathematics, and physics were studied, and their applications
to the confused phenomena of the globe investigated. Yet the most
important thing of all escaped notice; students overlooked their chief
task, the tracing of causation and interdependence in the phenomena, and
the relation of every one to the country which supplies its conditions
of being. It was not suspected that each phenomenon was one link of a
great chain of phenomena, the whole revealing a comprehensive law. Men
discussed porphyritic formations, basaltic columns, hot springs, and
a thousand features which dot the earth, and a thousand kinds of rock
which rift the surface of the globe, and treated them singly as if
each was a spore and the whole combination only a sporadic group. They
did not discover that in the one feature was to be found the reason of
the existence of its neighbor; that all the layers of stone owe their
singularities of structure to one another rather than to themselves;
that each one stands in the closest connection with the upheaval of
the loftiest mountains, with the formation of great volcanic islands,
and, in truth, with the building up of entire continents. And, in like
manner, plants were discussed as if they were obedient to no law of
grouping, as if they were scattered broadcast over the earth, having no
relation to zones of vegetation, to isothermal and isochimenal lines;
as if, in fact, there was no suspicion of any principle underlying the
very existence of the whole vegetable kingdom. And so, too, with such
phenomena as the Aurora Borealis; they were treated as isolated features,
rather than in their relations to the globe; the connection was not seen
between the maritime discoveries of voyagers and the great system of
oceanic currents, on which voyagers are so dependent; in fact, the whole
influence of the world of matter on the world of mind was unexplored.
And in order to study what was called Political Geography, a vast mass
of materials was converted into a stiff, ritualistic frame-work, in
the effort to impose some system and imaginal completeness on it, and
not in order to grasp facts and truths in their mutual relations and
inward life; they were merely arranged for convenient reference and
for available use in the departments of military science, politics,
statistics, and history; a method which is plainly our inheritance
from the Middle Ages, and which bears the marks of those days. Thus
from this arbitrary arrangement, made without reference to any
indwelling necessity, sprang the three groups with which we are
familiar: Chronography and Topography forming the first, Ethnography
and Anthropology the second, and Statistics and History the third, or
Political Geography.
From these three groups our ordinary text-books compile their usual
aggregate of facts, and each becomes after its own pattern a motley
in miniature. They contain variable quantities of this triple mass of
materials, and follow no law but the demands of the time when they see
the light; they favor, like our light literature, the whim of the hour,
and are political, military, or commercial, as the public may demand. A
systematic exposition of geography is very seldom to be found in them. A
harmony of parts, a true harmony, is very rarely attained in their pages.
They are at the foundation only arbitrary and unmethodical collections
of all facts which are ascertained to exist throughout the earth. They
are arranged according to countries, or great natural divisions; but the
relation of one great natural division to another, the mutual and immense
influence of one country on another, is never mentioned. The description
of Europe follows in them to-day the same order in which Strabo set
the pattern. The facts are arranged as the pieces of a counterpane, as
if every one existed in itself and for itself, and had no connections
with others. The setting out of these facts follows the rubrical method
of grouping, according to boundary, soil, mountains, rivers, products,
and cities. The beginning is usually made with _boundaries_ which are
generally most unstable and uncertain, instead of being made with some
rudimental fact around which all others arrange themselves as a center.
If we compare these geographical treatises with those made in the
interest of any other great department, we shall speedily discover that
they indicate knowledge rather than science; they form a mere aggregation
and index of rich materials, a lexicon rather than a true text-book. And
therefore ensues, despite the undenied interest of the subject and its
high claims, the mechanical and unfruitful method only too common—the
crowding of the memory without judgment, without thought; thence comes it
that Geography has taken so low a place among our school studies, worthy
only of the youngest of the pupils, and presenting little stimulus even
to them.
It will be my effort, in the course of these lectures, to exhibit the
subject of relations rather than to detain you with descriptions; in
one word, to generalize rather than to add new details. In the lack of
a thoroughly excellent text-book of geography, I shall presuppose an
acquaintance on your part with the materials, so to speak, of which the
science is to be constructed.
It has been a customary method to treat geography in connection with
epochs of time; dealing with it as it was in the past and as it is in the
present. We hear of Ancient Geography, the Geography of the Middle Ages,
and Modern Geography. In this course of lectures, it will be treated not
as the property of one age or another, but rather as a growth of all
time, from Herodotus down to our day. It is only in this way that we can
ascertain what is permanent and what is ephemeral; only in this way can
we subject geography to that comparative method which has given such an
impetus to the advancement of the sister sciences of Natural History;
only in this way can we see how the present is the birthright of the
past. Archæology, ethnography, and civil science are all gainers by this
method of treatment; in one word, the whole domain of cotemporaneous
study. The less positive knowledge we possess of the formative processes
of science, the more crude our hypotheses, the more flagrant our errors.
This is constantly verified under our eyes; the errors of the past are
the wisdom of the present, and the gradual upheavals of our knowledge
become indices, not less of outgrown untruths than of truths yet to be
revealed.
SOURCES OF GEOGRAPHICAL SCIENCE.
The sources of geography, as of history, are twofold—established
memorials and continued investigations. The study of it has this great
advantage at the outset, that the surface of the earth is a standing
monument of the past. We are obliged to search where all lies open; where
investigation must be crowned with success. No manuscripts in this great
library have perished; they all exist as legible, as accessible as ever.
Moreover, personal investigation must be made by every student in order
to understand the results of the investigations of others. Wherever our
home is, there lie all the materials which we need for the study of
the entire globe. Humboldt hints at this when he says in his Kosmos:
“Every little nook and shaded corner is but a reflection of the whole
of Nature.” The roaring mountain brook is the type of the thundering
cataract; the geological formations of a single little island, suggest
the broken coast lines of a continent; the study of the boulders which
are so thickly scattered in token of a great primeval deluge from the
north, reveals the structure of whole mountain chains. The digging of
every well may contribute to our knowledge of the earth’s crust; the
excavations made in the building of railroads may, without the loss of
time, labor, and expense, be a ceaseless source of instruction. In the
structure of a spear of grass, of a rush, of a single monocotyledon, may
be studied in miniature the palm-tree, prince of the tropics; in the
mosses and lichens on our walls, the stunted growths of mountain tops
may be investigated. A small range of hills may be taken as the type
of the loftiest Cordillera. The eye may be easily trained to see all
the greater in the less. The study of our own district is the true key
to the understanding of the forms and the phenomena of foreign lands.
Whoever has wandered through the valleys and woods, and over the hills
and mountains of his own State, will be the one capable of following
a Herodotus in his wanderings over the globe. He, and he alone, will
be able, with true appreciation, to accompany travelers through all
foreign lands. The very first step in a knowledge of geography is to know
thoroughly the district where we live.
Unfortunately the text-books which we now possess do not discuss, with
any approach to exhaustiveness, the districts where their readers live;
and hence they cannot give any true inductive generalization of the large
and the remote. In ancient times, the study of geography began with
the world of nature, not with the world of books. Herodotus, being 444
years B. C., became, by virtue of his investigations on his wanderings,
the first critical geographer of the Greeks. Polybius traveled through
the Alps and Pyrenees, Gaul and Spain, to be able to write the history
of Hannibal’s campaigns. He explored the Black Sea and Egypt, in quest
of facts. He is the father of all military geography; the greatest
strategists have busied themselves with writing commentaries on Polybius.
Strabo, the most industrious geographer of his age, did not write till
he had traveled from the Caucasus to the Rhone, and from the Alps to
Ethiopia.
Philip Cluver, of Dantzig, who died in 1623, the true founder of
classical geography, collected, by personal investigations, the materials
of his great work on Germany, Italy, and ancient Sicily, all of which
countries he traversed thoroughly, the classic authors in his hand.
Alexander von Humboldt has become, by his thorough studies of nature in
Europe, Asia, and America, the founder of Comparative Geography. He was
thoroughly acquainted with every geographical form in the neighborhood
of his home, before he traveled into foreign lands. These examples show
that personal investigation is one of the most reliable of all sources of
geographical knowledge.
The second class of these sources is the accounts given in the published
memoirs of travelers. In more primitive days than these, when very little
was known regarding the earth, personal examination was easily completed,
with a good degree of fullness, by almost any tourist. With the advance
of knowledge, the narratives of travelers have increased, and the sum
total of facts observed has become unwieldy; and, where facts have been
wanting, the imagination has amply supplied their place. Of course,
a single life soon became too short for the personal examination of
every quarter of the globe; the narratives of those who had thoroughly
explored any one were accepted as authoritative, and these accounts soon
became the most generally available of all the sources of geographical
knowledge. Yet, with this limitation, that now their abundance and
their exactness tend to repress and almost to destroy any personal
inquiry whatever. Nothing can take the place of some exploration and
investigation on the part of the student of geography.
To the accounts of scientific travelers, may be added those maps and
globes which indicate the contour and the vertical elevations and
depressions of the earth or its divisions. The demand for perfect
accuracy in these is now very great. The map must be a portrait, not a
caricature. In its way, the map has a certain dictatorial authority; it
is so decisive in its very character, that errors in it are far more
dangerous than in the letter-press of books. The English excel in the
beauty of their maps: there are none in the world engraved with the
rare excellence of theirs; but their care to secure accuracy is not
commensurate. The French and the Germans vie for the honor of perfectly
transcribing nature.
THE SCIENCES ILLUSTRATIVE OF GEOGRAPHY.
The sciences which are called in to illustrate the thorough study of
geography have largely increased in number within the past few years.
They are, for the most part, the same which illustrate history; to which
may be added mathematics and natural history. It is a very great mistake
to suppose that all that bears upon geography can be crowded within
the covers of a single book. It is commonly supposed that geography
is a matter of memory. Even in its elementary forms, it is capable of
a constructive treatment. Many a teacher, who has not paid special
attention to this department, dreams that he can qualify himself by
running through a single text-book. No philologist would dream that,
with a grammar and dictionary, he could grasp any constructive theory
of language. There must first be the study, comparatively, of the great
classes. And in geography, the personal study of the earth, with critical
closeness, and in the comparative method, is the true way.
Another very common error is, that geography must subsidize what is most
striking in other sciences, and thereby gain its charms and attain its
uses. Thus geography becomes everything—history, statistics, statecraft,
physics, a catalogue of all the possessions of natural history, in all
its kingdoms. It takes on all colors, and meanwhile loses its own. It
merges all its individuality in other provinces. In no way can it
escape this disintegrating force, unless by holding fast to some central
principle of being; and that is the relation of all the phenomena and
forms of nature to the human race. It cannot exist, if it is to be merely
an aggregate of all science, a mosaic of all colors. It is to use the
whole circle of sciences to illustrate its own individuality, not to
exhibit their peculiarities. It must make them all give a portion, not
the whole, and yet must keep itself single and clear.
For the comprehension of mathematical geography, a knowledge of the
elements of mathematics and astronomy is indispensable. For determining
localities, and for using many needed instruments, there must be some
skill in practical astronomy; for measuring distances, for projecting
maps and charts, and locating geographical districts upon them, there
must be some familiarity with trigonometry and the higher mathematics.
No one can thoroughly study geography in foreign lands, and leave all
astronomical instruments behind.
Political geography demands an acquaintance with history, and the same
helps which the study of history requires. The civil status of no country
can be determined without this. Büsching’s “Europe” was a master-piece
of its time. But it was impossible for even that book to compress within
its covers the whole history of that continent in its relation to the
geography of Europe.
The study of Man is, of course, in most intimate alliance with geography.
It is only since the opening of this century that ethnography has become
a prominent and clearly defined province of science, and enabled to
become a great tributary of geography; in fact, the greatest tributary.
Other departments are also drawn upon; there can be no close study of
the soil, the structure of mountains and plains, without mineralogy and
geology. Meteorology, too, the science which discusses the climatic
conditions of countries and the effects of climate upon the organization
of plants, animals, and man, is of no mean value in illustrating
geography. Nor can one be a great geographer who does not understand the
flora of the world. Not that he needs to be familiar with the myriads of
plants, but the laws of growth and the characteristics of localization
must be known. The geographer does not need to repeat in detail where the
cereals and the palm-tree thrive. The general conditions which control
the growth of plants are all that he has to concern himself with. The
main auxiliary for this is furnished in the botanical garden, where the
eye sees the products of all localities, arranged, according to their
grouping, in the countries where they are indigenous. Botany and zoology
and mineralogy are among the sciences most valuable in throwing light
upon geography; they display best what wealth each country holds in store
for the uses of man; for they are closely connected with the development
of industry, the arts, and trade.
This brings us to the last province, commerce, the science of
interchange. The study of minerals, of the distribution of plants and
animals, is of little advantage, aside from commerce and its uses to man.
It is the interchange of the products of one region for those of another
which has had, on the whole, the greatest influence on the human race.
Think, for an instant, of the transfer of the potato from America to
Europe, of maize to Asia; of the far more ancient introduction of wheat
and rice from Asia into Europe; and not these alone, but almost all the
fruits. Think of the carrying from Asia to America, and, in fact, to all
tropical lands, such products as sugar, coffee, and cotton. Think, too,
of the results of the search for gold, ivory, and slaves in the interior
of Africa, and of gold in California and Australia, opening such immense
districts to settlements. The search after platina has disclosed the most
guarded recesses of the Cordilleras and the Ural chain; while the need
of copper first gave us our complete knowledge of the great system of
American lakes. Without the expeditions to secure the whale, the walrus,
and the seal, as well as the fur-bearing animals, the polar world would
be still untraversed. The discovery of coal on a hundred shores otherwise
unknown, led to the settlement of man in colonies from India and China
southward to the Antarctic Continent, and northward to Nova Zembla,
Spitzbergen, and Greenland.
And not the continents only, seas and oceans have been thoroughly
studied, in order to secure a safe pathway for man to the regions which
contain his spoils. In the furtherance of this, the highest praise
must be awarded to the British government. Through its enterprise and
liberality, almost every island group has been examined, a thorough study
of marine currents undertaken, careful soundings made in all waters, and
a most extensive chartography accomplished. The charts published by the
English admiralty already are counted by thousands.
Yet the French have not been backward in like investigations.
Understanding the value of commerce, their Dépôt de la Marine has not
been inactive. Scandinavia has also done her part. The United States
has accomplished one of the most thorough coast surveys ever undertaken
by any nation; its difficulties are only to be measured by its extent.
In fact, the whole civilised world has sent its messengers to the
ends of the earth, and have united in this grand crusade of our age,
the enriching of all men by a liberal system of interchange of the
commodities of all climes.
COMPARATIVE GEOGRAPHY.
PART I.
THE SURFACE OF THE EARTH CONSIDERED IN ITS MOST GENERAL RELATIONS.
The Spheroidal Form of the Earth.
The measurements of, and investigations into the figure of the earth,
have led, as already stated in the introduction, to no absolutely
certain conclusion; yet they have made it certain that the earth is, in
a general sense, a spheroid. There are many discrepancies, as were then
stated, from the perfectly spheroidal shape; still it is in this sense
a spheroid, that the polar diameter is not of the same length with the
equatorial diameter.
The globular form of the earth, using that word in a loose sense, has
been established with certainty since Newton’s time. The experience of
circumnavigators, the uniform shield-shape of the shadow of the earth
during eclipses of the moon, are witnesses to this. The gradual emerging
and disappearance of objects, such as ships on the sea, in coming and
going, caravans on the desert, of mountains as they are approached,
establish the fact. These proofs are so well known that we but touch on
them and pass to what is not so obvious.
As soon as the fact was established that the earth was a subordinate
member of a system, it was brought into analogy with other planets, and
their uniformly spherical shape was considered another valid reason for
attributing the same to our globe. The discovery of the rotation of the
earth on its axis was still another argument in the same direction.
Mathematical measurements and observations of the pendulum, taken at
different stations, have confirmed the same result.
To measure a spherical body, it is only necessary to take the length of
a degree in one of its great circles, and to multiply its length by 360,
the number of degrees. The method of measuring a degree on the earth’s
surface is by taking two stars, just one degree apart, dropping, by
astronomical and mathematical means, vertical lines upon the earth from
them and measuring the distances apart of the points where those lines
impinge upon the globe. This can be done with perfect accuracy. Such
investigations show that the degrees are not all of equal length, as
they would be were the earth a perfect sphere. Nearer the poles they are
longer, nearer the equator they are shorter. The curvature of the earth
is therefore greater as you approach the equatorial line, and less as you
recede from it. In general terms, then, the earth is an oblate spheroid,
as it would be a prolate spheroid were the lengths of its diameters
reversed. By the most accurate measurements, those of the astronomer
Bessel, if the equatorial diameter were divided into 289 equal parts, the
polar diameter would measure 288 of them, being ¹⁄₂₈₉ shorter.
To this must be added what was said in the introduction, that the
surprising accuracy of modern instruments and modern investigations,
applied to meridian circles and parallels of latitude, have determined
the fact that the spheroid is not a perfect one, (just as so often in
nature the ideal is rather striven after than attained,) but an irregular
polyhedron of an indeterminate number of sides. Still for all practical
purposes, these minute inquiries have no value, and it is enough to
treat of the earth as a perfect globe, so far, at least, as map-drawing
is concerned. The deviation from a perfectly spherical shape is so
inconsiderable that in an artificial globe of eighteen inches diameter it
would hardly amount to the thickness of a sheet of paper; still, small
as this is represented on a miniature scale, it has, doubtless, great
importance on the great scale of a world like this, both in affecting
somewhat the perturbation of other heavenly bodies which depend on the
earth, as well as the perturbations in the earth’s own motion. Besides
this, which is really not a small point in consideration of the possible
results which the minutest perturbation of one little planet may have
on the universe, there is one other, more appreciable in its results,
the probable influence of this spheroidal, or rather polyhedrons form,
in producing the unequal division of land and water upon the surface
of the earth. The apparent want of any principle or reason for this
inequality has long perplexed geographers, and there seems to be no
more satisfactory solution than the one to which I have just alluded.
In the course of future investigations into the yet undetermined exact
mathematical form of the earth, the law which controls the division into
land and water will be more thoroughly understood. Unquestionably the
position of the great oceans depends upon their distance from the center
of the globe, and although the present proportion of land and water seems
fortuitous, undoubtedly it has a uniformly acting, and a thoroughly
appreciable law.
The Threefold Covering of the Earth.
What may in the largest and most general sense be called the superficies
of the earth, is threefold in character, and yet one in function;
consisting of a highly elastic body, the atmosphere, water, and the solid
ground. These three forms are variously proportioned; the more elastic is
universal, the fluid form is more restricted, and the solid one prevails
still less. The more dense the body, the nearer it is found to the center
of the earth. The lightest of all floats over the entire periphery of the
globe like a graceful mantle of cloud. Man, and in fact all organisms,
live by contact with all three of these forms. The investigation of the
elements, and phenomena of the air, _regarded in themselves_, is the
province of meteorology. The mercury-column is the true language of the
atmosphere, and tells us in distinct tones of all the changes there.
Mineralogy and geology make us acquainted with all the qualities and all
the elements of the soil, not in their relation to man, but regarded in
themselves. Geography deals with the conflict of all these bodies, their
relations to each other, their mutual action and reaction. Meteorology
gives occasion for the study of climate, and for the observation of
the phenomena of the lower strata of the atmosphere,—the fall of rain
and snow, for example. Geology and mineralogy give rise to the study
of plains and mountain formations, as well as of volcanic phenomena,
affecting the surface of the earth as they do in earthquakes, upheavals
of whole districts, and the opening of hot springs. Thus, geography has
it own province clearly defined, and uses all this and studies it in
relation to the organic world, and to man foremost of all.
The most highly elastic covering of the earth is unbroken, the other two
are sundered, and each only occupies a part of the surface. Formerly, in
most ancient times, the water seems to have covered the entire earth.
The study of this is, however, within the domain of geology. We have to
do only with the historic period which followed. We have to look at the
earth in its present relations, and as the home of man. Now, the portions
covered with water are, by far, the largest part of the surface; a little
less than three-fourths are water, a little more than one-fourth land.
The whole water-mass is composed largely of the oceans, which, in one
sense, constitute a continent of their own: in looking at them as we do
now, we are not to regard them as ceasing at the outlines of the great
land-masses, but as penetrating these as far as to the springs which feed
the rivers; for the world of waters, embracing springs, brooks, rivers,
lakes, seas, and oceans, is one, and but one.
The water is, in some respects, a form between the other two; its
peculiarities, weight, density, freedom of movement, and changeableness
of form, are a mean between the opposing extremes of air and the ground.
Water can pass to a more fluid or a more solid state; it can become
vapor or ice. The measurement of the depth of the world of waters has
lately been so clearly connected with the needs of civilization, that
geographers have made many exceedingly accurate investigations. Formerly,
this was much neglected; up to Captain Cook’s time 1500 feet was the
greatest depth ascertained; in the course of the Arctic discoveries
7000 feet limited the plummet’s descent; Captain Ross sounded, near St.
Helena, to a depth of 30,000 feet; and Captain Denhorn, in the South
Atlantic, reached a point 46,000 feet from the surface—about twice the
height of the loftiest mountains. And not single points alone, but
entire ocean districts have been traversed; the temperature of these
great depths has been studied, the currents, the density, in fact all the
features which must be known preliminarily to the laying of great lines
of submarine telegraphs, such, for example, as that proposed between
North America and Europe.
The atmosphere, too, is by no means thoroughly known to us. It rises
to a height between 85 and 95 miles from the earth, of which man has
explored in balloons only about five miles, or the height of the loftiest
mountains. At loftier heights than we can live, the bright light of
mid-day even fades into a dim kind of twilight, and meteoric masses of
iron are seen in full glow, there being oxygen enough even there to
support their combustion, and very little resistance to overcome from
the density of the atmosphere. Astronomers, Benzenberg in particular,
have calculated the distance of the meteors to range from 23 to 100 miles
from the earth, and have studied them[2] in respect to the time when they
were visible, their locality, and their direction. The limits of the
atmosphere must be at that point where the expansive power of air and the
attractive influence of the globe neutralize each other. The form of the
atmospheric body is therefore, like the earth, spheroidal, but far more
oblate than the earth, in consequence of its much greater fluidity. At
the poles, the distance is therefore much less from the surface of the
earth to the confines of the atmosphere than at the equator. The effect
of this upon the refraction of light must be very great.
The investigation of the interior of the earth is more difficult to us
than that of the atmosphere even. We cannot say that we _know_ thoroughly
more than we can learn by penetrating ¹⁄₆₀₀₀ part of the distance to
the center of the globe. Deeper than that our lowest shafts have not
sunk. The coal mines of England penetrate perhaps the farthest below the
sea level; for the deep mines in Germany, in the Hartz district, for
instance, have their entrance hundreds of feet above it. One coal mine
near Durham, England, descends to a depth of about 1584 feet, and reaches
a point where the thermometer is 79° Fahrenheit. The deep coal mines of
England have, however, one rival, in a shaft at Liege, which is sunk 1800
feet.
The modern Artesian well has gone to still greater depths, in the effort
to procure brine for the manufacture of salt, or fresh water for the
use of cities. At Rehme, in Porta Westphalica, a point 2160 feet from
the surface has been reached, and water brought up at a temperature
of 90° Fahrenheit, containing four per cent. of salt. By an ingenious
application of mechanics to the process of well boring, doubtless a depth
of 5000 feet could be attained. At Mondorf, in Luxemburg, a bore has been
made through sandstone and the mineral formations lying beneath it, for a
distance of 2700 feet, and water reached at 82° Fahrenheit.
The great upheavals caused by earthquakes and volcanoes disclose still
vaster depths. In the eruptions of the latter, immense masses of the
inner contents of the earth are thrown out, sometimes enough to form a
not insignificant mountain, and to desolate large regions with their
debris. As a general thing, the original mineral forms are lost and
indistinguishable in the molten mass. Yet not seldom perfect specimens
are hurled out, imbedded in lava and cinders; not always minute
fragments, sometimes huge blocks, testifying not with any degree of
completeness, yet clearly, to a certain extent, of the composition of the
region bordering on the great inner sea of molten matter. Yet most of
our knowledge upon this subject is hypothetical, and what we know only
indicates painfully the great extent of that of which we are entirely
ignorant.
The uniform increase of temperature, as we descend into the earth, at the
rate of about 24° Fahrenheit for every 100 feet, the heat of some mineral
springs, leads to the conclusion that, could we advance to a place about
twenty-three miles from the surface, we should attain the limits where
all becomes a molten mass. The cold surface, on which we walk in such
security, seems, by all analogies, to envelop a liquid caldron which has
been seething from the morning of the world. This internal mass is, of
course, the source of all volcanic eruptions, and of all the phenomena to
which I have alluded above. A distinguished geologist has well said that
“light and heat are the two extremes of being: the farther man goes away
from the earth’s surface, he encounters light; the farther he recedes
inwardly from its surface, he encounters heat.” It is true we are not
absolutely certain that the rate of increase is uniform, at the rate of
one degree Fahrenheit for every 45 feet; but if it is, we should reach
the boiling point of water at less than 10,000 feet from the surface, and
the melting point of iron (22° Fahrenheit) a little over 120,000 feet.
The relation of this thickness to the entire diameter of the earth is
about as 1 to 344, about the ratio of the thickness of an egg-shell to
the egg.
The Superficial Dimensions of the Land and Water on the Globe.
The equatorial diameter of the earth, 7925·6 miles, multiplied into
the circumference, 24898·8, equals 197,339,590, the number of square
miles on the earth’s surface, reckoning as if of a true sphere. The
deduction to be made, in consequence of its spheroidal shape, has not
yet been estimated with any approach to nicety. The sum indicated above
is exact enough to satisfy geographical purposes; enough to lead to
the laws of relative rather than to a minute individualization. The
proportion even of land to water has not been determined, except with
approximate accuracy. It has been commonly stated that two-thirds are
water and one-third land; others have computed three-fifths to be water
and two-fifths land. The most accurate measurements, those instituted by
Humboldt, have left it in this statement, that if the whole be taken as
one, the sea occupies ·734, the land ·265, or, reduced and simplified in
almost unchanged form, a little more than three-quarters water, a little
less than one-quarter land. Of course it is impossible, as yet, to attain
to accuracy in these estimates, as our knowledge is imperfect regarding
the polar regions; there are about 17,000,000 square miles unexplored.
The ascertaining of superficial areas with exactness is one of the
most costly operations undertaken in the interest of science. The
first mathematical survey of France, one hundred and fifty years ago,
undertaken by Cassini, cost four millions; the second sixteen millions;
a third, still more costly, has been made within the present century.
Still, it must be said that few countries have expended money in this
direction with as much prodigality as France. In Turkey, for instance,
so little accuracy has been attained, that the survey of that country,
undertaken by Beauchamp early in this century, resulted in establishing
the Sultan in possession of 17,000 square miles which he had supposed
were covered by the Black Sea. The recent surveys of Prussia have
rectified similar mistakes, and, in the constantly increasing accuracy,
have given hundreds of square miles to the Crown. Many countries, and
in truth the most, have never been subjected to a strict mensuration.
The jagged coast lines of islands and continents have been so great a
barrier, that we have to speak with great uncertainty of the superficial
contents which they inclose. The statements of these make no pretense,
therefore, to accuracy. We must be content, at present, with the rudest
approximation. This accounts for the discrepancy in our geographical
compendia; no two of them agree, unless one servilely copies the other.
The statistics relating to the superficial contents of continents, and
of separate countries, must be taken with a great deal of allowance. The
evil cannot be remedied at present; it will be, doubtless, at some future
day. The discrepancies which it occasions will be seen, from the fact
that the area of Europe has been computed to be between 3,254,800 and
3,870,500 square miles; that of Asia between 16,180,000 and 16,831,600;
that of Africa between 11,257,200 and 11,513,600; that of America between
12,140,400 and 15,963,600; that of Australia between 2,756,000 and
3,201,200 square miles.
According to this, Asia is five times as large as Europe, and almost
six times as large as the continent of Australia. Africa is three times
as large as Europe. America is four times as large as Europe, and is
as large as Africa and Australia combined. Europe would make about
one-third of Africa, one-quarter of America, one-fifth of Asia. Our
present knowledge does not allow us to speak more definitely nor exactly.
Contrast of the Land and Water Hemispheres.
Whether we divide the globe into northern and southern or eastern and
western hemispheres, their relative amounts of land and water will be
different The northern hemisphere contains (speaking approximatively
as above) 38,541,600 square miles of land, and 59,619,700 of water;
the southern, 12,847,200 of land, and 85,526,100 of water. The eastern
hemisphere contains 36,760,800 square miles of land, and 61,401,000 of
water; the western, 14,628,000 of land, and 83,533,300 of water.
Besides the division quantitatively, the division in respect to symmetry
of shape is entirely irregular. Symmetry, as we usually use the word,
consists in the arrangement of parts at equal distances, or two sides at
least, from some central point or line. Mineral crystals are regarded in
relation to the point where crystallization began; plants are viewed in
relation to the stem-axis; animals in relation to the symmetry of the
entire structure. A similar law of symmetry is entirely wanting to the
globe; its arrangement is altogether unlike this; it is not nearly so
perceptible at first glance, yet it is far more profound in design and
comprehensive in its relations.
The land is broken up into masses, varying in size, and called,
arbitrarily, continents and islands. Strictly speaking, there are but two
continents, the old world forming one, the new world the other. Australia
may be called the smallest continent or the largest island; it is the
connecting link between the forms, and shows at a glance the arbitrary
distinction. We might easily go further and call New Guinea, Borneo,
Sumatra, Great Britain, and Java, continents, and, on the other hand, we
might designate the old and the new world as islands. There is nothing
absolute here but the usage of speech.
The continents and islands lie mainly in the northern hemisphere,
(38,341,600 square miles,) scarcely a third part of their superficies
(12,847,200 square miles) being in the southern.
The continents are so situated also that the eastern contains by far
the largest body of land, (36,760,800 square miles,) the western being
only about one-third as large, (13,628,000 square miles.) America, the
western, it will be seen, has no first-class island lying near it; it
stands isolated.
It is seen by this that the greatest mass of land lies in the northern
hemisphere, dividing the earth in one way, and in the eastern dividing
it in another; the smallest mass in the southern and the western. In the
northeast the watery realm is the most contracted, in the southwest the
least. We are thus enabled to speak of the land side of the globe, the
land hemisphere, and a water side, the water hemisphere.
The central point of the water hemisphere is at the island of New
Zealand. Toward this the points of all the continents are directed.
The center of the land hemisphere is in the northwest of Europe, at a
point near southeast of England, the northeast of France, and the coast
of Holland. The dwellers around the North Sea are the antipodes of the
New Zealanders. Great Britain is the country which, as a whole, is the
middle point of the continental world. In the oceanic world, the islands
lie like scattered dots, insignificant in respect to area, in comparison
with the waste of waters which surrounds them, while, on the other hand,
the land hemisphere is so solidly compacted, that even the Arctic Ocean
becomes merely a broad channel.
Thus arises the first great contrast which we have to study: the first,
and next to the great primary distinction between the North and South,
the most important. The division into land and water, aside from
commerce, must exercise the strongest influence on the distribution of
heat and cold, affecting the temperature of all the zones. This influence
has been fully noticed and brought before the world by Alexander von
Humboldt. It is sufficient to refer to it now as a well-determined fact
in physical geography.
The heat equator is a little farther north than the mathematical
equator, because the land hemisphere has a greater heat capacity (if we
may use an awkward but apt word) than the water hemisphere. All other
isothermal lines are modified in their greater or less coincidence with
the parallels of latitude as they advance from the heat equator toward
the maximum of the land hemisphere, or, in general terms, as they go
northward. In the western hemisphere the isothermal lines follow much
more exactly the parallels of latitude than in the eastern, which is
pre-eminently the land hemisphere. In America the proximity of immense
masses of water causes a perceptible reduction of the heat from that of
the eastern where the land form prevails. And the heat diminishes more as
we advance toward the South Pole, than toward the North, in consequence
of the greater deficiency of land in the southern hemisphere; while in
Lapland, Greenland, and in Siberia, even within the polar circle itself,
men find sustenance and trees live, in the same latitude, at the South
Pole, no vegetable life, worth mentioning, is found. The frigid zone and
the temperate zone of the southern hemisphere are not coincident with
those of the northern. The icebergs which are formed at the South Pole
are carried much nearer to the equator than those found at the North Pole.
An important phenomenon, first pointed out by A. von Humboldt and Dove,
is closely connected with what has just been said. The Atlantic shores
of the old world are warmer than those in the same latitude of the new
world. Norway, England, and France are warmer than Labrador and Canada;
Spain, Portugal, and Morocco are warmer than Florida; Congo and Benguela
are warmer than Brazil, although the countries brought in contrast all
lie on the same parallel.
A similar analogy is drawn from the west shore of America: Northern
California is warmer than Japan and Corea, which are in the same
latitude. It is true, other factors are at work to produce this, such as
winds, marine currents, elevations of land, etc., of which more will be
said hereafter.
Both of the two great land divisions of the earth, it will thus be
seen, have their peculiarities. But there is a great equalizer of their
diversities, found in a great coast-belt, of which I must briefly
speak. It passes from the Cape of Good Hope northeasterly at an angle
of 45°, passing through the Mozambique channel, thence skirting the
entire southeastern and eastern coast of Asia, taking in China, Corea,
Japan, and South Kamtckatka; thence it turns southward, following the
whole western shore of America to Cape Horn. This belt is broken at
only two points—a brief break at the north, at Behring’s Straits, and a
large one between Cape Horn and the Cape of Good Hope; in other words,
at the points nearest to the North and the South Poles respectively.
This coast belt has a relation to the habitable world similar to that
held by the temperate zone as a mediator between the torrid and the
frigid. It partakes of the character of the sea and the land, and shows
the advantages of both. It does not run parallel with the lines of
latitude, but crosses them diagonally, in the same direction with the
ecliptic, though at a more acute angle. This belt moderates all extremes.
Coincident with it are the paths of the sea and land winds, the course
of the monsoons, the most fertile shores of the whole globe. It divides
the surface of the globe into three great divisions, the two great bodies
of water, and the great, and, comparatively speaking, unbroken (for the
break at Behring’s Straits is of little importance) land-mass. On the
great coast line referred to above is the center of the great natural
acclivities of the globe. It is the most varied, the most stimulating,
and the most productive in all departments of the vegetable and animal
kingdoms. The Atlantic coast belt, which also has great influence on the
eastern districts of the new world and the western districts of the old,
crosses the great coast belt at almost right angles at the place of its
great sundering between Cape Horn and the Cape of Good Hope.
If the contrast between the sea and the land has the effect indicated
above on the general development of organic life, it must of course
have great effect also on the life and character of man. Man eminently
depends upon the conditions amid which his lot is cast. The inhabitant of
one of the Pacific islands dwelt in a world whose utmost possibilities
to him lay in the adjacent islands within view, and which his canoe
could reach in a few hours’ sail. The difference in culture between
him and those whose range of observation has been greater, must be
immense. The compacted land division of the globe, the solid cluster
of continents, must be the source of stimulus and culture, of which the
isolated inhabitant of the Pacific islands knew nothing, till commerce
had at length linked the world together. Only with the improvements in
navigation could civilization reach him. The European had to carry his
culture to the New Zealander, his antipode.
The ancients had little suspicion of all this. Yet the contrast between
the land world and the water world did not escape Strabo’s keen glances,
and he hints at its effects on man. It is glanced at in one passage of
his 15th Book. He is speaking of the effect of the moist air of India in
contrast with the dry air of Libya, and shows that he appreciates that
these are not without their influence on the constitution of the Indian
and of the Ethiopian. “Some,” he says, “rightly ascribe it to the sun,
that, in the absence of moisture in their air, the rays burn so deeply
into the body of the African; the Indian, on the other hand, is not jet
black and curly-haired, because, in his country, he enjoys the moisture
in the atmosphere.”
The Position of the Continents and its Influence on the Course of History.
Besides the three great forms spoken of above—the compacted land-mass,
the great water-mass, and the subordinate water-mass—the position of the
continents leads us to another discovery of prime importance.
The question arises, What relation have the continents, taken separately,
to the entire mass which they constitute? What relation do they bear
to each other? What influence does the proximity of great land forms
exercise? What influence their remoteness from each other? Is the
arrangement of the continents fortuitous, or adapted to great ends
always held in view by the Creator? Has Nature been left in this to a
wild, passionate caprice, or has she been subjected to law, and been
compelled to subserve the interests of humanity? And is it not worthy of
study, worthy of science, to investigate these things, to master their
law, and observe here the workings of the Divine Mind?
In the solar system, we have for a long time minutely studied matters of
size and distance, the approach and receding of planets, and observed
the effects of all these things with an accuracy which could not be too
thorough. In the study of our Earth, this has been neglected, because
heretofore those great tracts of land and water have seemed of little
mutual influence; because they are fixed forms. Yet they have a greater
influence, perhaps, on this very account. Although there is in them no
law of gravitation to study, yet there is in them the display of forces
no less surprising than those of attraction, and which are to be read in
the light, not of mathematics, but in the light of history. It indeed
seems self-evident that a grouping of these great forms cannot be without
an influence on the progression or retarded development of nations; on
the amount of population, the progress of colonization, and the union of
States in offensive and defensive alliance. Should a higher Power throw
the continents out of their present position and relation to each other,
a new history of the world would date from this day.
Here, then, is the primary element of history; the laws of continental
arrangement are the starting-point. Mathematics has thrown a network of
meridians and parallels over the surface of the globe; but these lines
exercise little influence over the course of history. The symmetry and
regularity which they suggest do not belong to the earth; the earth is
not bounded, like a crystal, by right lines. There is a freer play than
that mathematical mark of parallels and meridians suggests; there is
an interdependence of the great land districts of the globe that these
regular lines do not indicate; a higher law of order, evolving the most
perfect results from elements seemingly the most discordant.
The Pyramidal Forms of the Great Land-masses, and their Southward
Direction toward the Oceanic Hemisphere.
The great land-mass of the globe accumulates in size as we advance toward
the North Pole. South of 55° S. lat., the continental form disappears,
and the tracts discovered of late years in the neighborhood of the South
Pole are apparently islands, or rather long ice-coasts, whose continental
form is very doubtful. The great land division, embracing both the
old and the new worlds, reaches to about 80° N. lat., and the extreme
points come even yet nearer to the Pole. The distances of one body from
another, as, for instance, from Greenland to Iceland, are very small, in
comparison with the immense spaces which divide the southern points of
the continent, where the hundreds of miles of separation at the north
expand into thousands. Expansion of the land-mass is the law at the
north, contraction at the south. The great land formations terminate in
wedge-shaped extremities, a fact observed by Lord Bacon, J. R. Forster,
and Steffens; America ending at Cape Horn, 55° S. lat., Australia, which
may be considered to embrace Tasmania or Van Diemen’s Land, at the
southern extremity of the latter, 45°, and Africa, at the Cape of Good
Hope, 35° S. lat., respectively. Humboldt gave the name of “Pyramidal
Structure” to this cone-shaped form of the great land-mass, which, it
will be observed, all are directed toward the south. This pyramidal
structure contributes very much, unquestionably, to the diminished heat
of the southern hemisphere, and has given a great predominance to the
population of the northern in comparison with the southern; and not in
respect to number alone, but also to mental and moral force of character.
But not the southern extremities alone of the continents exhibit this
wedge-like form; it is repeated also in the northern countries of Europe
and Asia. In Europe we discover the working of the law in the peninsulas
of Spain, Italy, Greece, the Morea, and the Crimea, and also in the
great Scandinavian peninsula. The same phenomenon is repeated on a scale
far more imposing in Asia, in the great countries of Arabia, India, and
Farther India, Corea, and Kamtchatka; also in both halves of America.
Exceptions are rare. In Great Britain, the pointed extremity is toward
the north, and the greatest breadth at the south; but this is a peculiar
case, and has its exceptional causes; and perhaps with reason, for this
island has hitherto maintained an individual and exceptional character in
the development of modern civilization.
Various explanations have been offered for the almost star-shaped
figure which the combined body of great peninsulas assume, radiating,
as it were, from the center of the land hemisphere. This is seen very
strikingly in looking at a horizontal projection of the northern
hemisphere, viewed from the North Pole. There has been evidently the
working out of some great design in this, and the forces employed
must have been of the first order of magnitude. Clöden attributes it
to the rotation of the earth in its plastic, formative-state. Link
ascribes it to electrical forces, generated at the time the earth’s
crust was hardening into its present consistency. J. R. Forster finds
an explanation in the theory, that formerly great currents, now not
existing, passed, or sought to pass, from south to north or northwest.
He attributes to these the parallelism of the great gulfs which indent
the coast-line of the old world, the uniform abruptness of the shores at
the south, and the gradual widening of all the great land-masses as we go
north. The Atlantic is a channel cleft by those great currents. Behring’s
Straits is a smaller one; but everywhere else the effort was incomplete,
and no opening was effected, except in the straits of minor importance,
which separate island from island, or from the main land. The fossils
discovered by Pallas seemed to favor this theory, but later investigation
has showed that they do not.
Link overthrew Forster’s theory, yet the phenomenon is worthy of study.
Viewed on a map of the land hemisphere, constructed according to
Mercator’s projection, it is a storehouse of interesting observations and
studies, and is to be recommended to the student’s careful attention. We
must pass over the theories; scholars disagree as to the cause; Pisis
ascribes it to a hidden law of geometric construction; Necker, Brewster,
and Dana, to magnetism. We must simply accept the facts for the present.
A careful study of the land surface of the globe suggests interesting
comparisons with what we know of the heavenly bodies, Jupiter, for
example, and our moon. Unquestionably, the entirely different grouping
of what seem to be the great features of that luminary must have had an
influence on the whole course of history there. We will not enter into
speculations regarding this, however, referring the reader rather to the
thorough investigations of Beer and Mädler.
Situation of the Continents in their Relation to Each Other and to their
Collective Whole.
The relation which the continents bear to each other arises, primarily,
from their position in reference to the cardinal points of the compass.
This has been a principle from the earliest times, and the great laws
of population may, in their working, be referred to this simple law of
grouping.
Asia was known as the Orient, or, in the apt and beautiful German phrase,
the Morgenland, or Land of the morning; Europe and the northern rim of
Africa, as the Occident, or, in the German, the Abendland, or Land of
the evening. In the south lay the torrid regions of the Ethiopians, in
the chill north the country of the Hyperboreans. This fourfold division
of the earth was for many centuries the only one known; the division
into continents being made, according to Herodotus, by the Phenicians.
And in very truth, a great principle lay in that rude and primitive
division; it was in entire harmony with nature, and, up to the latest
times and the opening of a new world, in entire harmony with history
also. With Asia, the Orient, is connected indissolubly the development of
the ancient world; with Europe, that of the modern. The contrast between
these two great divisions is wonderfully analogous to that of morning
and evening. The whole culture of the West had its root, its beginnings
at the East. The East is not merely the place where the sun begins his
daily course; it is the cradle of man, of nations, of dynasties of every
sort, in politics, religion, and science. All the old royal houses came
into Europe from the East; they are all “children of the sun,” no less
than the princely families of India and Persia. The West merely witnesses
the progress of what was begun in the East. From the most ancient times
onward through the Middle Ages,—from Homer to Dante’s “Purgatorio,”—the
West is associated with the kingdom of the dead, with “Hades,” and
the “islands of the blest.” And within these two great divisions of
Orient and Occident are comprised smaller ones, adapted to more limited
conceptions of the extent of the earth, but growing out of the same root
with the larger division. Bactriana and India constituted the Orient to
the inhabitants of Western Asia, Syria their Occident; Asia Minor was the
Orient of the Greeks, Italy and Sicily their Hesperia; while the Romans
called Spain theirs.
Between the Orient and Occident, and yet to the south of both, lay the
Libya of the ancients, exposed to the sun’s direct rays. In the very
middle of the earth, on both sides of the equator, and not at the South
Pole, is the true South. There we must seek the phenomena of the tropical
world in their culminations. As high noon, the middle point in the hour,
is the consummation of the day, so the torrid climes of the equatorial
belt, at the very middle of the earth, afford the extremes of luxuriant
growth.
The broad tracts of land at the northern polar regions formed the true
physical contrast to the Orient and the Occident, as well as to the great
South of central Africa. They lay around the North Pole like a vast
shield of earth, unbroken except by the comparatively insignificant seas
and gulfs of that region. And even where the water has broken its way and
severed those northern lands, a submarine volcanic activity is, even now,
constantly at work to restore the break, and bind the coasts together.
At about 70° N. lat., all the countries of the north are brought into
great nearness, and that parallel is a highway of little else than land
crossing the North Cape of Europe, Cape Chelagskoy, in Tchooktchee, at
the northeastern extremity of Asia, and touching Cape Bathurst, and the
Fury and Heckla Straits of North America. North of this highway and of
the Georgian Archipelago begins the great group of circum-polar islands.
The break between Asia and North America, at Behring’s Straits, is but
fifty-six miles wide; it is the mere outlet of the Sea of Kamtckatka into
the Arctic Ocean. The space between the northeast of America and the
northwest of Europe is much greater indeed, but, in comparison with the
distance between the southernmost points of the old and the new world,
insignificant. The distance from northern Norway to Greenland is but
about 940 miles.
It is noteworthy that, at the north of the great continental land-mass,
where minor seas and channels break through, great volcanic forces are
constantly at work, as hinted at above, to restore the unity. In the Sea
of Kamtchatka lie the Aleutian islands, extending more than 950 miles,
and forming what has been happily termed a bridge from the old world
to the new. It consists of more than a hundred rocks and islands, some
of which have been thrown up within the memory of man. In 1806, von
Langsdorf and Tilesius witnessed the emergence of one of these, with a
cone-shaped center, and about twenty miles in circumference. Grewingk has
counted more than fifty volcanoes in activity within the limits of this
island chain. The Curile islands, more to the south, form another similar
volcanic group, extending from Japan to Kamtchatka. In this range there
are known to be at least ten volcanoes, 10,000 feet in height.
The same high degree of volcanic activity must have formerly existed
between Europe and America, for the traces of it are still visible. And
not the traces alone, but a part of the same activity. And doubtless
the shallowness of the waters between those continents hints at the
same. More accurate explorations, then, will probably reveal multitudes
of mountains, thrown up by these submarine forces, but not far enough
to emerge and bear the name of islands. Yet many have emerged—those
which fringe the shores of Norway, Scotland, and Ireland; the Orkneys,
Shetland, and Hebrides islands; the Färoe group, with their blistered
surface, their recesses, and volcanic rocks; Iceland, with its hot
springs; and Mount Heckla; Jan Mayen, with its frightful craters, and
the eastern coast of Greenland; one island, Sabrina, in the midst of the
Azore group; which has had three upheavals within two hundred years,
in 1638, 1723, and 1811,—all these plainly indicate the presence of
tremendous forces, active in the past as well as in the present.
We thus fix the character of the arctic polar lands to be a close
drawing together. Europe has, fortunately for itself, the least share in
those inhospitable regions; only her pointed northern shores fringe the
shores of the polar sea, leaving the great bulk of the great land-mass
of the north to the broad shores of Asia and North America, with their
neighboring island groups.
This polar world, as we may call it, in contradistinction to the
Orient and the Occident, is not separated from more southerly regions
by any great physical line of demarkation. The arctic circle is a
mere mathematical line 66½° N. lat.; it has no geographical character
whatever. The true polar world reaches in some places far beyond this
mathematical barrier, bringing all its characteristics with it; while,
on the other hand, it withdraws, at a few other places, nearer to the
Pole. Were the polar world more broken up than it is by inland seas, and
separated from the great land-mass by broad channels, it would be far
more isolated in its whole character than it is. It is this immediate
contiguity of the polar world with the great land-mass which opens it
to whatever civilization it may be able to receive. And there is the
same unity in the polar world that there is in the tropical world. The
same phenomena which appear in one part of it are repeated in every
other part. There are, of course, subordinate modifications found, but
everything essential, which is discovered in one part, is discovered in
every other part. There is no distinction into “new world” and no “old
world;” the new world and the old coincide amid the arctic pole.
The characteristic of the polar world, next to this of unbrokenness, is
the simplicity, or what might be called the monotony of its productions
and all its features; the uniform reproduction of the same plants and
animals, as well as of geological forms. Even Lapland, which is the
farthest removed from the Pole of all the arctic regions, manifests,
in its rounded and polished granite and gneiss and its deep and
sharply-defined cuts, the same uniformity. The syenite found at Lake
Imandra displays the same characteristics as that found on the islands in
the White Sea, and on the shores of Greenland. The tops of the mountains,
instead of being green, are all white with the lichen, commonly known as
reindeer moss. And as with the geological formations and the vegetable
kingdoms, so with the animal kingdom. Elsewhere are found bears, foxes,
reindeer, seals, and walruses; the feathered tribes partake of the
general monotony of structure, and man not less. The range of his
development is extremely limited, and his character little different,
whether in northern Asia or northern America.
America forms the real West of the great land-mass, the true Occident
of the earth, young as yet, but to receive as its gift the entire
culture of the East, and to advance by giant steps to a position of
independent influence. Already it has far surpassed Asia in industry
and civilization. The old world was the preparation for the new. Almost
everything which the new world enjoys and values was the gift of the old.
Its most ancient monuments of religion, architecture, and art are closely
linked to those of the old world. Hieroglyphics have been found among
the Peruvians and the Mexicans. In like manner embalming of princes, the
engraving of astronomical data upon rocks, were borrowed from the East.
The _historic_ character of America is more striking in respect to
newness than the physical features of the water hemisphere. Buffon
supposed that the American continent is of more recent formation than
the old world, assigning for his opinion that it is more submerged,
because smaller in area, than the eastern land-mass; because, also, the
plants which demand moisture are predominant over those which depend on
a dry climate; and because the forms of homologous animals—the elephant,
rhinoceros, crocodile, turtle, apes, and serpents, for instance—do not
attain the same size as in Asia and Africa. But waiving this, we use the
name New World, only with significance in its connection with history.
With the discovery of America begins a new period in the history of man
and of nations in their civil relations. The enlargement of territory
occasioned by it was not greater than the enlargement of the bounds of
thought. The old world had been developed earliest, had gone as far
as it could go; it had to wait till another great step should be taken
before it could go on in its course. The highest progress of the human
race, the complete development of its possibilities, was not possible
till man should, in his wanderings from east to west, compass the globe,
and take possession of it, not for a day, but for all time. The primitive
settlements in Mexico, Peru, and Yucatan could not sustain themselves in
consequence of their isolation; navigation was in its rudest stages, and
it needed to be in its highest before the world should be bound together
closely enough to advance in all its parts toward the goal of a perfect
civilization. Those primitive colonies perished therefore, as Canaan
perished before Israel, and were replaced by others. The reason of this
lay in the isolation of the land-masses of the earth. Had America been
discovered and made accessible to the old world before the diffusion of
the Gospel and the establishment of the Christian Church, it would have
been too early, and heathenism might have had its grandest triumph and
its loftiest temples in the new world. The way was not open as yet for
the high moral development of the race; and the highways of civilization
were not made till the most modern times, when all was in readiness for
the great advance which we are witnessing now.
The contrast to the great continental hemisphere is found in Australia,
a land-mass of no insignificant size, situated at the center, or very
nearly at the center of the great oceanic hemisphere, and surrounded by
hundreds of groups of islands, generally of quite unimportant magnitude.
The name Australia was fitly chosen; it indicates its true relations
to the Southern or Austral ocean. As Africa is the true South to the
eastern hemisphere, Australia is the true South to the great continental
land-mass of the whole globe. As the earth has two magnetic north poles,
and two north poles of cold, one of the former in Siberia, north of Lake
Baikal, and east of Cape Taimura, 110° east of Greenwich; the other
in the neighborhood of Melville Island, in North America, 102° west
longitude from Greenwich, so there are, in a physical sense, two south
poles, (we do not refer to the magnetic ones and the poles of cold,) a
continental south pole in Africa, a marine or maritime south pole in
Australia.
This country, the largest of islands or the smallest of continents as we
may choose to designate it, the most remote of all the great divisions
from the center of the land hemisphere, has been the last to feel the
pulses of civilization. There, therefore, is to-day the most rapid, the
most amazing advancement to be witnessed on the earth; it has crowded
centuries into decades, and with its shores adorned even now, in its
youth, with states and cities, it cannot longer be called a land left
behind in the world’s advance. It has inherited all that was finished in
the knowledge and culture of the continental world; what the people of
that world have toiled for years to win, becomes at once the birthright
of the Australians. It is only an instance of the truth of Humboldt’s
remark, that the more full the world is of ideas, the more rapid is its
progress—a remark which throws the strongest light upon the connection of
geography with history.
The Historical Element in Geographical Science.
While so many a spot in the great continental land-mass was once the
home of a high culture, and from being a cradle of arts and sciences
has become a deserted waste, the civil and political condition of many
people in the remote districts on the oceanic side of the globe has
advanced with unprecedented rapidity. The course of development has been
very different from what it was formerly. Distances, natural influences,
natural productions even, yield always to the victorious march of man,
and disappear before his tread; or, in other words, the human race is
more and more freed from the forces of nature; man is more and more
disenthralled from the dominion of the earth which he inhabits. The
history of specific districts and of entire continents confirms this.
The first inhabitant of the sandy valley of the Nile was a dweller in a
waste, as the nomadic Arab is to-day. But the later and more cultivated
Egyptians transformed that waste, through the agency of irrigation and
canals, into the most fruitful garden of the world. They not only rose
themselves, but raised their own country, hitherto so sterile, into a
place of the first importance, and did it by the simplest of means,—the
bringing the water and the land into more intimate relations. Through
neglect and the tyranny of successive kings, the fruitful valley sank
again into its waste condition. The district around Thebes became a
desert, the fruitful Mareotis a swamp; similar phenomena occurred in many
parts of Europe and Asia.
Another example of man’s subjugation of nature is found in great mountain
chains. During the first centuries after Christ, the cultivated south of
Europe was separated from the uncultivated Celtic and Teutonic north by
a great natural barrier, the unbroken, untraversed Alpine chain, which
passed through all central Europe from west to east. At the south lay the
rich states of the old world, beyond the Alps was the cold and barren
north. But this old formidable barrier has vanished, as the thronged
cantons of Switzerland and the crowded villages of the Tyrol yearly
bear witness; and they draw thousands of tourists instead of repelling
them. What a mighty change! From Provence to Styria run the stately forms
of the Alpine chain; but the deep recesses and the lofty highlands are
thickly peopled, the forests are thinned, the obstructing rocks removed.
No longer a barrier between the north and the south, as it was in the
time of Julius and Augustus Cæsar, Switzerland has become a country
of stupendous highways. The peaks which were once unapproachable, and
around which merely eagles idly flew, are now the passes of Mount Cenis,
the Simplon, Saint Gothard, the Splügen, and Saint Bernard; while the
snowy heights of Ortler, in eastern Alps, now give place to a public
road. Over the Semmering Alp a railway even passes. Just as the wild
horse of Toorkistan has given up his freedom and has become the tame and
useful servant of civilization, so this Alpine segment of the globe has
changed all its relations to the adjacent countries. The influence of
the most stupendous natural objects is weakened every year. The physical
dimensions may and do remain unchanged, but their influence on life
and on history is undermined by those new conditions which operate so
powerfully in freeing man from the dominion of nature. The power of man
makes him master of the earth, and gives even the key to the subjection
of the grandest mountain chains into his hands.
In further illustration of this, take the Ural chain, which was and still
is the eastern division line of one continent, and the western barrier
of another, but which has become, since the days of Peter the Great, a
grand center of labor and commerce, a great avenue of civilization in
its return passage from Europe to Asia. And so everywhere, from the wild
Caucasus and the Himalayas to the grand Cordilleras of America, the same
progress is seen; man becomes more and more the conqueror over nature.
And not in mountains alone, but in the great forest regions of central
Europe, in the primitive wilderness of North America, and in the marshes
of the Netherlands, does man vanquish the forces which once fettered him.
The once fearful wastes of Sahara have become the track of caravans; the
sterile plains of Australia and California have drawn great colonies to
their gold mines; the ice seas at the north have become, through the
efforts of Parry, Franklin, and others, the scene of heroic exploits and
of grand struggles of man with nature; indeed, the greatest victories of
modern civilization have been there, and the playgrounds of polar bears
and walruses have witnessed the noblest humanities, and the loftiest
courage, and the most disinterested heroism of the age.
The continents and oceans have witnessed still greater transformations.
The seas were once the impassable barriers of nations. The birds of the
air only traversed the great distances which separated shore from shore.
The metallic stores of the earth, the vegetable and animal kingdoms
were not transferred to any extent from place to place; the sea brought
nothing from lands remotely foreign but drift-sand, cocoa-nuts, floating
wood, ice masses, and seaweed, swept by the great currents from shore
to shore. But now the seas are no barriers; they do not separate the
continents but bind them together, and unite the destinies of nations
in the closest manner. The great improvements in ocean navigation have
entirely changed the relations of the entire globe. The isolated island
of St. Helena, which was for centuries at the very confines of the
known world, became, within the second decade of the present century, a
prison-house for the great European robber, and lay guarded under the
eye of Europe. The Cape of Good Hope, which was for centuries the limit
of Portuguese navigation, has become a mere halting-place for sailing
ships and steamers. The voyage from England to China has been narrowed,
within one hundred years, from an eight months’ to a four months’ sail.
These great changes have been mainly effected by the agency of steam.
Steam has transformed the smaller seas into mere bridges, and England
and France are securely joined, Marseilles and Algiers; while Prussian
Stettin is brought into proximity with Swedish Stockholm and Russian
Petersburg. The voyage to America, that remote land, which before the
days of Columbus was as inaccessible as the moon, was made by him in
seventy days, but is now accomplished in ten. Even Australia cannot be
said to be distant; a steamer needs but seventy-five days to reach it,
and ten of those are consumed on the Isthmus of Suez. No island now lies
beyond the world of commerce. The most active traffic exists between
places the most remote. The wool and the wheat of Australia control the
price of those commodities in London, and the value of cotton in America
fixes that of woven goods and even of bread in Europe.
The great rivers too have been curtailed of their relative importance,
and have been shortened by steam sixfold. They can be stemmed too, which
is an immense gain, for in the primitive stages of navigation they
could only be sailed upon downward, from source to mouth. In 1854, four
hundred steamers traversed the Mississippi and its branches, and came
into contact with a region one-third as large as Europe. The Indus,
Ganges, Irrawaddy, Nile, La Plata, and even the Amazon, the monarch of
rivers, which drains a country half as large as Europe, are now more or
less open to steam navigation. The great river systems of central Europe
too are thoroughly navigated; and Southern Germany, Trebizond, Mayence,
Cologne, and London may be grouped as neighbors. The land-locked seas are
reduced to insignificance, and their shores are now covered with villages
and cities, from the Platten-See of Hungary up to the Caspian and the
great lakes of North America.
To sum all up in one word, the mighty influence of Time on the
geographical development of the earth is displayed in the clearest
manner. But this influence is not the same for all localities on the
globe. While there are some people and some places which are left behind,
there are others which have made wonderful progress, and have taken
and now hold a foremost place. And such a position is that of Europe
at the present moment. Europe, the most central of all continents, in
relation to the great land-mass of the earth, and also the one most
equally removed from the middle point of the great water-mass, touches
the whole remaining world at the greatest number of points, and this, in
conjunction with her remarkably broken coast-line, so favorable to the
purposes of navigation, have given her her place of command, and have
assigned to England her evident role of mistress of the seas.
And looking from the present to the past, we see that as some great
tribes of men have given the whole fruits of their natural existence
to the world for its future use, so some places, and those of no
insignificant size sometimes, have conferred upon the world, the trust
which they once held, and now recede, as it were, from view. They
were great in the past, and the results of their greatness are now
incorporated in the world’s life. The earth is one; and through the
agency of what we may call either time or history, all its parts are in
ceaseless action and reaction on each other. Though some great districts
seem now to have no part to play, the element of time draws them into the
great cosmos; they once had a great share in the world’s affairs, and
the fruits which they brought to completion are merely in other hands.
The earth is, therefore, as was stated in the introduction, a unit, an
organism of itself: it has its own law of development, its own cosmical
life; it can be studied in no one of its parts and at no special epoch
of its history. The past and the future, the near and the remote, are
all blended in a system of mutual interdependence, and must be looked at
together.
This is shown clearly in the past of Asia, and the present of Europe and
some parts of the new world, while the history of all central Africa
seems to lie wholly in the future. Heretofore it has enjoyed no progress
excepting along its northern rim. The middle portion of the old world
has outlived its primitive ethnographical impulse, and sunk back into a
state of slumberous inaction. Asia, to call this region by its recognized
name, has projected its own life from the center to the circumference;
by this I mean, that while it seems to be exhausted of its old vigor,
other countries inherited its power. The population of Asia is much less
than it was in the time of Alexander the Great, much less than during
the Mohammedan and Mongolian conquests, when all the habitable parts of
that immense continent were bound together by highways of commerce and
travel. On the other hand, the coasts are now of much more value and
significance than they were in ancient times, and navigation has dotted
her sea outline with splendid and populous cities. These seem, by reason
of the facilities which steam affords, to be brought near to Europe;
while the natives who inhabit central Asia are not only widely separated
from the civilized world, but are divided up and set against each other
by religious and political enmities of the most bitter kind. This is
displayed in its fullest force by the comparative inapproachability of
the great mountain chains, the Ural, the Taurus, and the Caucasus, and
yet more by the unchanged barbarism of the central tribes, the hostile
political relations, lacking all of the amenities and mutual dependencies
of European policy, and the deadly antagonism of Mohammedanism and
Christianity. This last is the curse which the natives of the earth have
brought upon themselves. It is the clashing of religious faiths which has
put the extinguisher on Asiatic progress, annihilated her enterprise, and
set her in her present isolation. Still this barrier is not absolutely
settled and for all time, but already it shows that it is capable of some
modification. The politico-religious system of the Chinese is rending
under our eyes; the old bonds which Mohammedanism once laid on Asia are
now sensibly relaxed. The great highways of travel through the country of
the Euphrates and Tigris and the extended archæological investigations of
modern times have operated mediatorially between Europe and Asia; while
steam navigation on the Danube has brought Turkey, a hitherto undissolved
Asiatic element in European life, into closer relations with the great
powers of the West. The great missionary enterprise, too, of modern
times, has been laboring to remould the ideas of the Asiatic nations,
while navigation has operated on the material and more appreciable
interests of commerce and industry.
There are no possible limits to be assigned to the perfectibility of the
globe as the abode of man; no possible bounds to his enterprise. The
construction of a canal through the Isthmus of Panama would bring the
eastern coast of Asia seven thousand miles nearer than it is now to the
Atlantic shores of America and Europe. By saving the mere doubling of
Cape Horn, one-third of the periphery of the globe would be annihilated,
so far as the labor and expense of navigation are concerned. North
America would nearly double its resources when its Atlantic and Pacific
coasts stand in close connection and interdependence. The projected
canal at Suez would exercise an unbounded influence over Asia in binding
it anew to Europe. The building of highways through the passes of the
Ural, the Caucasus, and Himalayas is yet to be accomplished; and only
now are great roads constructing over the Rocky Mountains, welding North
America together. The construction of railways on the high plateaus of
central Africa will transform that vast undeveloped district, so rich in
resources for the future. The changes which art is yet to effect on our
globe are beyond all possible computation, and it might be said, beyond
any possible exaggeration.
We turn away from these glances into the future to look upon the past,
the long ages when men lived in rudeness and ignorance, having no art,
and knowing nothing beyond the little tract where they were born, and to
which they remained chained. There was no binding of shore to shore, and
of continent to continent, through the mediatorial agency of seas and
oceans. And this gave to the continents a far greater individuality than
they have now, and a much higher degree of apparent influence than now
when we cannot view them excepting as parts of the great complex which
forms the world. The wanderings of the old nomadic races, the enlarging
of the domains of culture, the transfer of the natural productions of
all climes, as well as the traditional ideas of all lands, proceeded
from the central portions of the ancient world toward the extremities.
The manner of this progress, following as it does the order of history,
displays more clearly than almost anything else the close dependence
of all national development upon geographical conditions, and their
indissoluble connection. Without this connection the order of historical
events would have been completely changed. In no instance has there been
self-evolved progress in the North, East, South, or West; it uniformly
began at the geographical center, at the point of conflict between the
Orient, the Occident, and the tropical South.
Western Asia, northern Africa, and southeastern Europe were the homes
of the earliest culture, and it is to them that all other parts of the
world owe the light which they enjoy, though they may have received
it at second or third hand. The territory of which I speak extended
from the highlands of India to Italy, and from the Nile to the Don,
including the valleys of the Euphrates and the Gihon. This broad and
fertile reach of territory has been the fruitful mother of the world’s
present thought and culture. Nor must we overlook the fact that, despite
what was said above, regarding the oceans as the greatest barriers to
the spread of civilization, that smaller seas aided it, for the very
country of which I speak was intersected by five important seas, and
to them it is under immeasurable obligations for its development. This
Asiatic-Africo-European belt has exercised the greatest influence on
all the course of human affairs, on all colonization, on the differing
of races and languages, and the arts of war and of peace, over the
habitable world. This territory lies as the background of all the events
of history, and has given to every one its distinctive character and its
appropriate place. Nor can we in the future dispense with the element
involved in this, of historical occurrences yet to come dependent on past
geographical conditions, although this will be far less marked than it
has been in the past. It demands and will demand a far larger measure of
investigation and thought than it has yet received. Whatever independent
progress the New World and Australia may seem to be making, and whatever
interest they may awaken in the minds of students, not even they can be
looked at without regard to their relations to the ancient historical
lands, the source of all the inherited culture which they are enjoying
in their vigorous youth. India, Egypt, Palestine, Greece, and other
countries still stand out as the formative lands of all modern history,
and we cannot study the present without studying them. They are to the
student what Plutarch’s Lives are to the biographer, the imperishable and
unequaled models which gain new luster as time rolls on. It is therefore
not without reason that ancient geography ought to be subjected to a
more systematic treatment than the geography of the Middle Ages. The
latter, though not unworthy of a large place, had no relations of special
importance to the whole world, to the study of the physical conditions
of the most imposing objects of nature, to the connection as cause and
effect of events past, present, and to come.
From these foundation principles, we advance to a more full study of the
configuration of the surface of the globe, for which we are now in a
measure prepared.