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Title: Comparative geography
Author: Carl Ritter
Translator: William Leonard Gage
Release date: May 13, 2024 [eBook #73615]
Language: English
Original publication: Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott & Co, 1865
Credits: Aaron Adrignola and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK COMPARATIVE GEOGRAPHY ***
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.
PART II.
A more extended Investigation regarding the Earth’s Surface.
It is the province of Hydrography to deal with the oceanic world;
Geography proper concerns itself simply with solid forms. The Hydrography
of the globe we must pass over, however. Aside from the fact that it
would lead us into studies of the most protracted nature, it forms
strictly one department of nautical science. Besides, there is the less
occasion to speak of it here at length, that works of great excellence
have been published, relating to that branch. We turn therefore to the
land, and shall study the world of waters only so far as it exerts
influence on the land.
By land we mean the islands as well as the continents, for, as remarked
before, the difference between them is merely relative. To the land
division of the globe, however, belong all rivers and the internal fresh
water lakes, however large. The basis of difference does not lie in the
fact that one part of the globe is water, the other part land, but in the
fact that one is a tract of uniform evenness, the other of constantly
varying surface, the internal rivers and lakes only being frills, so to
speak, to the elevated region, and not sharing the sea level of the great
oceanic mass. Uniformity of surface is then the chief characteristic of
the sea; a lack of it, of the land. A mathematical level is a thing
unknown on extended districts, and an approximation to it is very rare.
Even the basins of former seas do not display a perfectly level bed. The
plains of North Germany are characterized by this billowy rolling. The
flats along the Danube, in Hungary, and along the Po, in North Italy,
have really important deviations from a true level, though the eye is
not able to discern them. Milan is four hundred feet above the Adriatic;
but the eye does not discern that it is not at the center of a plain as
perfect as the surface of the sea itself, and yet that plain does shelve
gradually away till the Adriatic checks and defines it. Pesth is two
hundred and fifteen feet above the ocean level, yet the gradual decline
to the Black Sea is undiscernible to the eye. The immense plains along
the Amazon, even the celebrated llanos on the Orinoco, which Alexander
von Humboldt likens to inland seas of verdure, have a not insignificant
slope from west to east. The middle point of these llanos near the City
of Calabozo, about 100 geographical miles from the sea, he found to be
180 feet above the sea level; far lower indeed than Milan or Pesth,
relatively, yet at a perceptible elevation. All of these plains were
once the bottom of the sea; the Adriatic laved the base of the Apennines
and the Cottian Alps, and the Atlantic swept westward over the llanos
of the Orinoco and the Essequibo, having the Sierra de Venezuela on the
north and the Sierra Parima on the south, till it was checked by the
Cordilleras of Merida and Pamplona.
Depression and elevation, then, are the characteristics of the land. They
are both measured from the level of the sea; their absolute altitude is
reckoned from the imaginary sea level, extended over the whole globe.
Their mutual relations to each other are determined from their relative
heights. The absolute elevation above the level of the ocean can be
determined in a number of ways. If the heights to be measured are in
the immediate vicinity of the sea, a simple system of triangulation
will effect it. If they are removed from the sea, the difficulties are
greater, and increase according to the distance from the sea. The heights
of great inland mountains are determined by complicated operations with
the spirit-level, protracted trigonometrical calculations, the unwearied
and skillful use of the barometer, and constant appeal to the boiling
point of water. The description of these methods falls within the
province of Physics.
As the determination of the heights of the loftiest mountains could not
be made before the appointments of scientific explorers have attained
to a certain degree of accuracy and delicacy, the knowledge of them in
former times was almost wholly relative. The inquiries of La Condamine,
Saussure, and de Luc, in the Andes and the Swiss Alps, are almost
the only ones to be trusted among those of the older observers. All
unscientific travelers without accurate instruments confounded absolute
heights with relative heights, and innumerable errors crept therefore
into the earlier text-books. It is only within the most recent times that
Hypsometry has attained to the dignity of a science.
To meet and counteract the errors alluded to above, and current in
the loose language of popular speech, we shall use a new and indeed
arbitrary terminology,—arbitrary because the data which mensuration
will sometimes furnish are now, in part, wanting. We will divide the
earth not relatively, but absolutely, into highlands and lowlands. The
great districts often met, whose elevations are very moderate, we call
lowlands. They are, for the most part, immense plains, varied but little
above the level of the sea. The great districts which inclose mountain
ranges we call highlands, and sometimes plateaus. True highlands can
often embrace very extended and elevated plains, and these plains again
may include hills and mountains. This does not affect their character
as highlands, which lies in the fact of elevation rather than in more
or less modified variation of surface. There may be vast variety in the
physical manifestations of a great plateau district, entirely independent
of the relative effects produced by the distribution of its surface into
plains, rolling land, hills, and mountains.
In the lowlands there may exist hills to some extent, and these may even
be combined in ranges, provided only that they do not violate the uniform
characteristics of the district in which they are found.
The highlands are generally met with in the interior of the continents;
the lowlands at the coasts. Yet there are exceptions to this.
In the transitions from lowlands to highlands there is great diversity.
We can speak of three distinct bases of discrimination: a sudden
and abrupt ascent; a rise in elevation so gradual as scarcely to be
perceived; and a terrace formation. Yet in these there is a blending of
one variety with another; there is no place sharply marked, where we can
say that one form ends and another begins. There are constantly found
modifications of these three transitional phases. The plains along the
Indus and the Ganges rise sharply to the plateaus of Thibet The flat
Pacific coast of South America is exchanged with equal abruptness for
the highlands of Peru. The transition is a gradual one from the lowlands
of North Germany, along the Baltic and the North Sea, through Saxony
and Bohemia to the Bavarian highlands, north of the Alps. The Spanish
highlands form a series of terraces, increasing in height from south to
north. The immense plateaus of central Asia are also terrace formations,
of diminishing elevation, as they advance to Siberia; so, too, are the
eastern plateaus of Peru, falling off in altitude toward the plains of
the Amazon.
Just as varied are the heights taken from the sea level of the leading
plateaus. Yet they never rise to a point of elevation comparable
with those of isolated mountain peaks or ranges. These attain, in no
insignificant numbers, the height of 24,000 feet, while some ascend
thousands of feet beyond that. In Mount Everest, of the Himalaya chain,
the loftiest summit yet measured (29,000 feet) is found; although it may
be that future investigations more to the south will disclose yet greater
heights.
Highlands.
Continuous highlands or plateaus seldom attain an elevation greater
than a half or a third of the loftiest mountains; the most elevated
range in altitude, from 8000 to 12,000 feet above the sea level. On an
average, they lie about 4000 to 5000 feet above the sea. We take the last
height as a convenient point of demarkation between the two classes of
highlands—those of the first and those of the second magnitude. It is an
arbitrary point, of course, and the division there must remain, without
a natural base to rest upon, till more results in Hypsometry shall have
determined the real point of average between the combined lowlands and
the combined highlands of the earth’s surface. Meantime this division
will be of great service to us in enabling us to bring into a definite
and appreciable classification many facts which would otherwise not be so
well understood in their relations.
_Highlands or Plateaus of the First Class._
By plateaus of the first class, we mean those high, continuous plains
which lie at the elevation of more than from 4000 to 5000 feet above
the sea level. The extreme height to which such plateaus rise is a fact
yet to be ascertained. At an elevation of from 4000 to 5000 feet the
highlands of the first class merge into those of the second. The point of
transition is, of course, very difficult to fix with precision.
The high plateaus of Asia rise more than 14,000 feet. They inclose the
head-waters of the Ganges and the Indus. All central Asia is a vast
congeries of highlands; but, as a body, they by no means belong to
the most elevated of the globe. They are colossal in their length and
breadth, but not in their uniform altitude. In the latter respect, they
are far more varied than is generally supposed.
The plateau of Thibet attains, in its whole great extent of 1800 miles
in length and 500 miles in breadth, an average elevation of 10,800
feet above the sea level. In some cases it rises, of course, much
higher, as, near the holy lake Manasarowar, for instance, where it is
14,000 feet above the sea. Others sink, as at Ladakh, in Little Thibet,
to an altitude of about 9000 feet; so, too, Gertope, in the region
remarkable for its goats and the rich shawls manufactured there, and
Shiffke, are about 9804 feet above the sea. The plateau of Great Thibet,
east of Lassa, the capital, and north of the Upper Brahmapootra or
Yam-Dzangbotscha, is 9000 feet in elevation. There are also districts
filled with mountain groups of great heights, but where the depressions
sink to the level of the valleys of the Indus, Sutlej, Brahmapootra, as
low indeed as 5460 feet, as at Cashmere, so that there is no lack of
diversity in the great plateau of Thibet.
The plateau of Mongolia, or more exactly the desert of Gobi, can be
ranked only on its lower edges, where it touches the Chinese frontier, as
of the first class, although in extent it is twice as large as the great
plateau of Thibet. Only near the north bend of the Hoang-Ho and near
Peking does it reach an altitude of 8000 feet, and gradually sinks away
as it advances toward the northern frontier of the Chinese territory,
to 5100 feet, and farther north to 4000 feet; in the middle portions of
the great table-land it is depressed to a height of 2400 to 3600 feet;
it rises again at the head-waters of the Orkhon and the Toola to an
elevation of 4620 feet, and falls off in terraces toward Kiakhta, near
the northern boundary, where it is 1330 feet high, Selenghinsk, on the
Selenga, where it is 1632 feet high, and Berch-Udaisk, where it is 1458
feet high, till it reaches Lake Baikal, 1332 feet above the sea level
according to Humboldt, though Erman makes it greater.
Western Mongolia, (west of the meridian of Lassa, and west of the
point where the Tarine flows into Lake Lop,) upper Bokhara, and upper
Toorkistan were formerly considered to be a highland district; this is
now subject to doubt. We shall discuss this further on.
Africa, too, has highlands of the first class, which, however, do not
rise to the extreme height of the plateau of Thibet. As in Asia, so in
central Africa, the old supposition of the existence of a plateau of
colossal extent has been very much done away with by the more exact and
critical modern investigations. The strip of territory lying between 4°
and 10° north latitude has been demonstrated by Barth and Vogel to be
destitute of highlands. The range of mountains announced as discovered
by Mungo Park, and called the Kong Mountains, is proved to have no real
existence, and of course his statement fails of verification that that
range is the northern limit of an elevated central plateau. The peaks
which really do rise in the Kong territory form no continuous ridge; they
are mere isolated groups of moderate height. Between these groups the
lowlands continue toward the south, in an unbroken level, for an immense
distance. How far south of the equator the central African plateau
begins, is yet unascertained, for the snow-tipped peaks of Kilimandjaro
and Kenia, discovered by Rebmann and Krapf, in the parallel of Mombas,
1° to 3° south latitude, are of immense height, it is true, but they do
not demonstrate the existence of a plateau of the first class there. They
rise out of table-land about 2000 feet above the sea level, which Krapf
explored in the year 1849.
The Abyssinian plateau, on the contrary, takes rank among the most
elevated on the globe. At 10° north latitude, south of the sources of
the Blue Nile, lies Upper Abyssinia, or the kingdom of Shoa, with its
capitals, Ankobar and Angolalla, 10,000 feet above the sea. Still farther
to the north, in the ancient kingdom of Gondar, the German naturalist
Rüppel ascertained the level of Lake Tzana to be 7000 feet above the
ocean; to the southward of that the land rises to a still greater height,
and northward of Gondar the plateau ascends to an elevation of 8000 feet,
and mountains are met with 14,000 feet high. The terrace of Axaw on the
east is 6650 feet above the Red Sea, which lies along its border.
To the south of Shoa lie the highlands of Kaffa and Enarea. All
travelers agree in the statement that the inhabitants of that region are
light-complexioned; and Johnson draws from this the conclusion that the
central plateau must rise to a height of over 10,000 feet to harbor
people of a whiter hue than the dwellers of the less elevated localities.
He saw a number of men of light complexion who came as far as from the
fifth degree south latitude, not from mountain homes, but from high
table-lands.
The plateau of South Africa rises at Lattakoo, in the country of the
Bechuanas, north of the Orange River, to the height of 6000 feet. To
the east, near the Snow Mountains, where the river has its source, it
ascends to an altitude of over 10,000 feet. To the north, discovery had
made great progress since 1849. There, on a broad plateau, Oswell and
Livingstone brought to the knowledge of the world the existence of Lake
Ngami, whose surface is 2825 feet above the level of the sea. The plateau
which includes this lake at its place of deepest depression cannot be
less than 3000 feet high, and at some localities yet higher. Still more
to the north, at latitude 14° south, on the water-shed between the Zaire
or Congo on the west and the Zambeze in the east, the plateau reaches
an elevation of 5000 feet, according to Livingstone. Yet farther to the
west, it rises still higher and takes undisputed rank among plateaus of
the first class. There, at 18° south latitude, Galtne, on his journey of
discovery in 1850, ascended the table-land of Ovompâ, a region of great
natural productivity. On the way thither, going from south to north, at
21° south latitude, and therefore in the parallel of Lake Ngami, but
about 500 miles westward, he ascended north of the Swakop River, the
table-land of Demara, which he found to be 6000 feet high. From that
plateau mountains, Koniati and Ometako, for instance, rise to a height
of 8800 feet. From the Swakop River to Lake Ngami there is a continuous
plateau.
The high table-land of southern central Africa does not then extend, as
was once supposed, as far north as 9° north latitude, nor even to the
later limit of 4½° north latitude; but at about 4° 10′ the distinction
between lowland and highland seems to be sharply drawn, as the cataracts
which terminate the navigation of the White Nile indicate. Here Father
Knoblecher turned back in 1849, but he ascended the first of the
mountains which there began to rise; his eye reached onward to mountains
very near or on the equator. He says that those high mountains stand
upon an elevated table-land. Thus, here at the source of the White Nile
we have a plateau seemingly of the first rank. From such a plateau it is
probable that the snow-capped mountains, seen by Rebmann and Krapf in the
neighborhood of the equator, rose, which they thought, approaching from
the eastern coast, held the source of the Nile.
At the northwest of Africa, too, at 10° north latitude, the territory
which feeds the springs of the Senegal and the Niger is supposed to be a
plateau of great elevation and of great extent. But at present our lack
of knowledge prevents our attaining certainty regarding it. No thorough
system of measurement has been yet applied there.
America possesses a number of plateaus of the first class. To the
most prominent of these belong the ones which were first thoroughly
studied by Alexander von Humboldt. It is to him that we owe our first
accurate impressions of table-lands which, before his day, had been
indiscriminately confounded with mountains, and had had no place assigned
to them in the department of Geography. Doubtless, too, great prominence
was given to plateaus at the outset; they were pushed into unseemly
proportion to other matters as well worthy of investigation, but they
have come into their true place, and now only wait the development of new
facts regarding the size and height of some, to be properly understood
and appreciated.
The measurements made in North, Central, and South America give the
following results; much more complete, it may be remarked, than the
results yet gained in Asia and Africa.
To the plateaus of the first class belong in America, at latitude 0°, the
plain of Quito, almost 9000 feet above the sea, (Los Pastos in the north
being near 11,000 feet,) and to the south, at 17° south latitude, the
plateau of Upper Peru. Here the great Lake Yiticaca is found, 12,000 feet
above the sea; eastward of the lake, the table-land rises yet higher, and
at Alto de Toleda it is 14,000 feet in elevation, as high as the highest
part of Thibet. At 20° south latitude, south of Lake Yiticaca, is the
City of Potosi, whose streets are 12,822 feet above the Pacific.
In Central America is found, at 20° north latitude, the extended
table-land of Mexico, 500 miles wide, rising to a height of 7000 feet,
and farther to the north, in New Mexico, the plateau of Santa Fé, 35°
north latitude east of the Rocky Mountains, and 7100 feet above the sea.
The table-land on the west side of the mountains, and toward the Great
Salt Lake, is undoubtedly just as elevated.
Europe and Australia are wanting in plateaus of the first rank, and in
general the whole immense flat northern districts of the globe, though we
are not yet quite familiar enough with the extreme north of America to
speak with entire confidence regarding it.
_Plateaus of the Second Class._
Elevated plains which are at once continuous and bounded by a definite
line of demarkation, and which do not attain an altitude of more than
4000 or 5000 feet, are considered plateaus of the second class. They
are far more general over the whole earth than plateaus of the first
class; in every one of the great divisions of the globe they appear in
the utmost possible diversities of elevation, sometimes so gradually
ascending that the lowest limit is hardly to be perceived. This makes it
not only expedient but necessary to assign to plateaus a fixed though
arbitrary system of classification, for without it we could attain to no
thorough view of all their relations. This general system must afterward
be confirmed and justified by protracted special investigations.
That not all the vast plains of Central Asia, from Thibet to the Altai
Mountains, and from the Belur range to the Chinese Gobi, belong to
the first class of plateaus, has been demonstrated by the Russian
measurements, made by Fuss and Bunge in 1832, between Lake Baikal,
Kiakhta, and Peking, and rendered highly probable by the investigations
of Klaproth, Humboldt, and Zimmermann. Toward the northwest the plateaus
generally sink from the moderate elevation of the Middle Gobi, 4000 feet,
to Lake Baikal, 1332 feet above the sea, Lake Zaison, not 1000 feet above
the sea, and the border of the plateau at Choimailocha, the Chinese
frontier post on the Siberian line, 1000 feet above the sea, then to the
lower border of the plateau of Bookhtarminsk (936 feet) and Semipalatinsk
on the Irtish, (708 feet,) where the great Siberian plain begins. In the
valley of the Tarim and of Lake Lop, pomegranates and grapes thrive, and
cotton, which has been raised of an excellent quality in Eelee, is found
at a height of from 1200 to 2000 feet. And in contrast with the great
arctic plain of Northern Asia, not 500 feet above the level of the sea,
this central plateau will take its place as distinctively of the second
rank.
The plateau of Persia lies on the border of both classes; for while the
central portion touches 4000 feet, some parts rise much higher and some
sink much deeper than the normal point. These balance each other, and the
average is about the maximum elevation of plateaus of the second degree.
East of the Persian plateau lies the plateau of Cabool, 6000 feet above
the sea. On the northern edge of Afghanistan is the plateau of Bamain,
7500 feet in elevation. More to the south is the high plain of Candahar,
being 3500 feet, and the City of Candahar, 3264 feet above the sea. The
plateau of Kweltah west of the Bolan Pass is 5220 feet. Still farther to
the south is the great plain of Beloochistan, 7000 feet, with the City of
Kelat, 5418 feet above the sea.
In the central part of the eastern Persian plateau in ancient Gedrosia,
Drangiana, and Parthia, and Lake Zareh, the depression is the lowest.
At Lake Zareh the elevation is 2100 feet; at Herat, more to the north,
2628 feet. In West Persia, on the meridian of the Caspian Sea, it rises
higher; on the northern edge at Teheran it is 3672 feet; at Schabred,
southeast of Astrabad, it is 4000 feet; at Kasbin, west of Teheran, it
is 4000 feet; and at Samegon, 5700 feet. The lowest depression at Com
and Kashan is not 2000 feet above the sea. Toward the northwest Persia
thrusts up a short arm into the adjoining territory of Armenia. This is
the highland of Ayerbaijan, Zoroaster’s “Land of Fire.” This connecting
plateau of 7000 feet elevation belongs to the first class. To the west
of this the plateau of Armenia extends in varying range of elevation,
from that of Lake Van, 5124 feet, to the plain of the Aras, (the
ancient Araxes,) on which the double cone of Ararat rises to a height
of 14,656 feet. But the table-land at the northern base of Ararat, the
site of Erdschmiazin, is only 2860 feet high, Erivan a little higher,
and Erdzeroune, on the plateau of the Taurus, the plain of the Upper
Euphrates, 5730 feet.
The plateaus of Asia Minor embrace wide plains extending through the
whole of the country, at an elevation toward the east, in ancient
Lycaonia and Cappadocia, of 3000 feet, and sinking toward the west to
2000 feet.
To the plateaus of Armenia and Lycaonia, Strabo, whose home was there,
and who carefully studied them, gave the expressive name of ὀροπέδια,
_i.e._ mountain plains, a term which corresponds remarkably with our word
plateau, but which, as Humboldt has remarked, was not of much use among
the ancients. Strabo, however, directed attention also to the Oropedia of
Sicily and India.
In India, Deccan displays similar formations, which rise gradually
from south to north in Mysore, in Poonah of the Mahrattas, and in the
table-land of Vindhya and Malwah, to 2000, 3000, and even 4000 feet.
Deccan enjoys an admirable climate and the richest abundance of all
natural productions. China too must have plateaus, for the Chinese word
_youen_ indicates very clearly a large elevated plain.
In Arabia the plateaus of the second class are largely found, and their
height ascends from north to south, instead of from south to north as in
Deccan. The Syrian Hauran is 2000 feet high, the plateau of Damascus 2200
feet, the plateau of Taif, above Mecca, 3000 feet, the plateau of Sapaa,
in Southern Arabia, 4000 feet.
In North Africa that portion of the great Sahara which has heretofore
been considered a low plain, lying between Tripoli and Lake Tchad, has
been ascertained by the German explorers, Overweg and Vogel, to be
a table-land of the second class, ranging in elevation from 1000 to
2000 feet. It begins at the Chorean plateau (2000 feet) in the south
of Tripoli, and sinks to an elevation of 800 feet in the neighborhood
of Lake Tchad. The average altitude is about 1500 feet. This moderate
elevation of Sahara corresponds with the equally high plateau of
Cyrenaica, 2000 feet.
The Atlas plateau, in the northwest of Africa, rises to a greater
height—2000 to 3000 feet; the upper course of the Draa, near the Sahara,
being 3000 feet; the high, broad table-land on which Timbuctoo lies,
according to Renon’s measurement, is 1500 to 1800 feet above the sea.
In south Africa the low, or rather the moderate plateau, which borders
the district of the Bechuanas on the north, rises, as it advances toward
the lower rim of Africa, at Cape Colony, to an altitude of 3000 feet.
America has many plateaus of the second range of elevation, but her
highlands of the first class are so imposing in extent, as well as
in elevation, that they have been more carefully observed than the
table-lands of the second class.
Along the eastern slope of the Andes, on the same parallel with the
great plains of the Orinoco, the Amazon, and the La Plata, these
plateaus extend, touching the base of the mountains, and appearing
rather as terraces, or vast plains of transition, from the highlands to
the lowlands, than as independent forms. Where Alexander von Humboldt
measured them, west of the low plains of the Amazon, he found their
height, measured from the sea, to range from 1050 to 1200 feet; he
describes them as having the appearance of vast plains, and as differing
from the lowlands of the Amazon only in their greater elevation; their
slope toward the narrowing of the Pongo de Mauseriche being too slight to
be appreciable.
Between the threefold forks of the Northern Andes, Humboldt ascertained
the heights of ten plateaus, extending as far as the plains of Orinoco,
and called by the various names, according to their elevation—Tierras
templadas, or temperate districts, Tierras calientas, or warm districts,
and Tierras frias, or cold districts—varying in height from 1800 to 6600
feet, the highest belonging clearly to the first class of plateaus.
The mountains of Brazil are interspersed among plateaus of the second
class. The Brazilian mountains are not true ranges, but lie in groups,
their height varying from 2700 to 5700 feet, and between them are the
vast elevated plains, called Campas, which are true plateaus of the
second class.
The southern point of South America, south of the Rio Negro, as far as
the Straits of Magellan, known as the plateau of Patagonia, is a true
table-land of from 1200 to 1400 feet in height. It is composed of ragged
strata of porphyry or of vast lava-masses, and has been explored by
Captain Fitz Roy, in 1837, from the mouth of the Santa Cruz River to
the snow-capped Andes in the west. The plateau diminishes gradually in
elevation from west to east, till it touches the sea line.
In North America the broad plateau extending through Northern Texas and
the Indian Territory, and lying on both sides of the Arkansas River,
increases in elevation gradually from St. Louis, on the Mississippi,
less than 500 feet above the sea, to Santa Fé, on the upper course of
the Rio Bravo, 7000 feet above the sea. It ascends so slightly that the
rise is imperceptible to the eye, the broad plains there taking the name
of prairies. St. Louis is 420 feet in absolute elevation; the eastern
Arkansas plateau 1500 to 3000 feet; the high western Arkansas table-land
from 3000 to 7000 feet, where, at the point of greatest altitude, lies
the City of Santa Fé, in the Territory of New Mexico, 7047 feet above
the sea. This broad, sloping tract reaches out to a great extent at the
north, crossing the Missouri, and embracing the colossal North American
lakes. Lake Huron and Lake Michigan, about 578 feet deep, and Lake
Superior, 627 feet deep, lie in vast hollows in that great continuous
plateau, which extends into the British Possessions, rises again to 800
or 1000 feet in elevation, and is rocky and craggy, yet not enough so as
to take the name of a mountain chain, but simply to form a clearly-marked
water-shed, which Fremont and Nicollet have measured.
In Australia and Europe plateaus of the second grade of elevation are
not wanting. In Australia, however, they are limited to the triangular
district in the southeast, which has become the place of settlement
for the chief English colonies, and which, bearing the name of King’s
Table-land, rises to a height of 2500 feet, and occupies the largest area
of all the Australian table-lands.
In Europe this physical feature is displayed most distinctly in the
Spanish plateaus, which occupy by far the largest proportion of the
entire peninsula. Madrid lies on one of these plateaus, at a height of
2100 feet, five times as high as Paris, on the Seine, and as high as
Innspruck, in the very heart of the Tyrol; Toledo, in the valley of the
Tagus, is 1734 feet above the sea. The average elevation of New Castile,
the central part of Spain, is 2000 feet. Old Castile, which borders
it on the north, separated from it by the Guadarrama ridge, is about a
thousand feet higher. Burgos, in the center, is 2700 feet above the sea;
Segovia, to the south, 3100 feet. The average elevation of Old Castile is
3000 feet.
Then comes in natural order the Bavarian plateau, in southern Germany,
ranging from 1500 to 1600 feet high, a broad table-land, on which lie
Munich and Augsburg. It extends along the course of the Danube from west
to east, from Lower Switzerland to Ratisbon.
According to the mean measurements of Humboldt, the lower plateau of
Auvergne, in southern France, is 1040 feet in elevation; still less in
altitude (840 feet) is the plateau of Burgundy and Lothringia, between
the Vosges and the Ardennes. Limousin, Aveyron, la Forez, Monts, and Côte
d’Or are plateaus.
The plateau of Lothringia, whose mean elevation is 648 feet, lies between
the Rhine and the Moselle. The plateau of Luxemburg extends northward to
the Eifel, where Prum lies, and to the Ardennes, where Malmedy, Eupen,
Namur, Liege, and Aix-la-Chapelle lie.
In Middle Germany, a series of plateaus of the second grade begins in
Upper Hesse, and extends eastward, crossed by mountains and valleys,
traversing Upper Silesia and Galicia, and running along the northern side
of the Carpathian Mountains to Podolia, on the Dnieper, thus embracing a
strip extending through the larger part of central Europe.
A line of plateaus begins still farther to the north, at the low hills
of Jutland, crossing Holstein, Mecklenberg, the whole southern edge
of Pomerania, and extending to Lithuania and the Valdai Hills. It is
characterized by a band of inland lakes, whose basins it incloses, and
is crossed by the valleys of the Oder, Vistula, Niemen, and Duna. It has
been called the Pomerania lake country. In the hollows where the lakes
lie, (whose surfaces are, at the highest, not more than 300 feet above
the sea,) and yet more in the depressions, where rivers break through,
the level descends to as low a point as that of the great plain of
Central Europe; but at other places it rises to an elevation as high as
500 feet, and so touches upon the limits of plateaus of the second range.
Many parts of this broad upland may possibly be formed of shifting sand
dunes which have been gradually piled up along the sea line. The plateau
reaches its highest point at the eastern end, in the Valdai Hills, where
it averages 1000 feet in elevation. The highest point is 1100 feet. East
of the Volga, which rises at the eastern side of these hills, the plateau
falls off by imperceptible steps, till it is lost in the great Russian
plain.
In the peninsulas of Southern Europe, as in the Morea, (2000 feet,) and
in the Crimea, (800 to 1200 feet,) the plateau again appears in not
insignificant proportions.
The lower range of plateaus, it will be seen, is far more frequently met
with through all parts of the earth than the higher, yet both combined
occupy a larger share of the surface of the globe. We can designate them
as sharply defined and broadly massive elevations, in contradistinction
to the long, narrow, and broken masses which have received the name of
mountain chains. The latter have too often been confounded with the
former and have received from geographers a treatment disproportionately
full in relation to their claims. The plateau has been until recently
an almost forgotten geographical element. Humboldt restored it to its
rightful place; by many hundreds of measurements he has accurately
settled its form, its effect on climate, on isothermal lines, on
agriculture, on the physical and moral life of nations, and even on the
course of human history.
In closing this attempt at a general consideration of plateaus, I must
confirm the reproach which Humboldt has cast upon most geographers of
this day for their abuse of the word plateau. And I must at the same
time admit that it is justly due to some parts of my own “Erdkunde,”
where I have considered the plateau systems of Central Asia and Africa.
When I wrote the pages of that work, thirty and more years ago, there
were no scientific measurements then made of those regions, and the
general ignorance led to a premature generalization, in which I used the
ascertained features of the New World as probably in analogy with the
unexplored center of the Old World. This use of really untrue analogies
was carried by others to great lengths, and choratographers went so far
as to depict the country according to the hypothesis of those who had
written at first hand, and after using all the lights then existing, but
who had never supposed that what they had indicated in general terms,
would be afterward made so definite and real to the public eye. Those
untrue statements of my own, I must leave however just as they are,
and rejoice that the great advance of science has led to the accurate
knowledge of the great plateaus of which the civilized world then knew
but little. One word more: I set the lower limit of plateaus of the
second grade at 500 feet, lower therefore than the great master in
Physical Geography set his.
“Elevations of the soil,” says Humboldt, “which do not display a marked
difference in climate and vegetation from the country around them, are
not rightly called plateaus.” His meaning is, that the name does not
relate to absolute height measured from the sea, but harmonious climatic
relations existing between contiguous districts, one of which is more
elevated than the other. Highland and lowland are therefore to him words
of unfixed meaning, if they do not stand in the contrast of height,
climate, relief, and rates of temperature. Humboldt therefore did not
consider the depression of Central Asia, at the Taringol, as a plateau;
and table-lands from 200 to 1200 feet in absolute elevation, _i.e._ from
the sea level, are passed over by him as not worthy of the same name
which he applied to the plains 6000 to 10,000 feet above the sea.
Dealing as I do with the elementary features and the physical contrasts
of countries which for the most part are now thoroughly explored, I
prefer, for the purpose of elucidating the subject of Physical Geography,
to consider the plateau as beginning at 500 feet above the level of the
sea. By comparing the plateaus of both hemispheres it is not difficult to
deal with a variety of features, and to make a number of discriminations
which, without an absolute standard, it would be impossible to make.
We pass to the consideration of the much more varied and more imposing
characteristics of mountains.
Mountains and Mountain Lands.
Mountain lands cannot, in the strict use of language, be compared with
plateaus, except in way of contrast, because they are not uniform, broad,
and sharply defined tracts, but extend in a linear direction, having as
their chief feature the longitudinal axis of the mountain chain. Groups
of mountain ridges may be separated from each other, or may be united in
any coherent way which does not make them continuous, and yet, despite
the want of continuity, form a perfect whole.
Mountains, with their fissures, chasms, abysses, valleys, ravines,
clefts, precipices,—in a word, their varied diversities of feature,
broken through in every direction, the whole chain rent into fragments by
these transverse breaks, are in direct contrast with plateaus. They have
quite often a common range of elevation, which, measured from the sea
level, is not unfrequently much greater than the districts lying at their
base. Yet this relation is only incidental, it is not essential. There
is no necessary connection between the height of the outlying plateau
and the height of the mountain range. In Switzerland the mountains rise
to the altitude of 13,000 or 14,000 feet; the country at the foot of the
Alps is but 1000 to 2000 feet above the sea. Here the distance between
the summit and the plateau at the base suggests no relation between them.
The distinctive characteristic of a mountain land is the height of
isolated groups. Great differences of elevation within small distances
characterize mountain regions; small differences within great distances
characterize plateaus. The plateau depends upon uniform evenness of
surface, or an approximation to it, over a large extent of territory.
The mountain range is the exact opposite, the development of all kinds
of extremes within a limited space, and the consequent individualization
of the locality where it stands. Mountain lands cannot therefore be
identified with the type of the highland and the plateau. The mountain
chain has a character of its own, whether existing in unbroken unity, or
subdivided into subordinate ranges, ridges, and spurs, and whether the
summits are conical or sharply pointed,—whether also of moderate, medium,
or loftiest elevation.
And high as mountains rise, their height is equivalenced by the depth of
the depressions which form their valleys; the higher the mountain, the
deeper the abyss which cleaves to the base. The immensely elevated peaks
of the loftiest chains find their correspondence in the narrow ravines
and the mountain lakes at the foot; the precipitous summits of the great
American chain have their barrancos in the Andes and their cañons in the
Rocky Mountains. The valleys are in natural contrast with the summits.
They have just as little of the uniformity of lowland plains as the
mountain tops have of the uniformity of elevated table-lands. They are
infinite in variety, highly individualized, and always adapt themselves
to the characteristics of the chain which conditions them. The mountain,
too, has no uniformity in its character; it embraces within the smallest
compass the production of all climes, and unites the characteristics of
both highland and lowland. Mountain regions have therefore had a great
influence in history and in the development of humanity, even greater
than the more monotonous plateaus, which in general harbor nomadic
races and give little encouragement to permanently settled people. For
this reason the geographer cannot, like the geologist, classify high
table-lands and mountains together; he cannot draw the same inferences
from the plateau as from the mountain range; to the geographer the
plateau is not a lower type of mountain, but the two, in their relations
to man and to history, suggest entirely different results and condition
entirely different processes.
And yet it must be confessed that mountains do stand in intimate
connection with plateaus of both classes, and that the transitions from
the one form to the other are well worthy of study. Yet the present lack
of correct measurements has made this little understood.
It is not the element of height alone which gives mountains their
significance. There are many other features, which are little studied,
yet of real import. It is, however, not a matter of indifference whether
a chain thrusts up its peaks 1000, 5000, 10,000, or 20,000 feet, and the
height has been made and will continue to be made a subject of careful
investigation. In reference to height, we distinguish what, in a general
sense, we call mountains,[3] into hills, mounts, and mountains of various
degrees of magnitude. Yet the height of the highest range, in comparison
with the diameter of the earth, is insignificant, only about ¹⁄₁₇₀₀, and
the combined mass of mountains are of no more account in comparing them
with the entire mass of the globe, than the roughnesses on the rind of
an apple, or perhaps more exactly still, than those on the shell of an
egg. The combined mountain systems in the world would not suffice, if
transferred to the North and South Pole, to fill out the earth to such an
extent that the polar and equatorial diameters would be equal.
In following out his profound scientific investigations, Alexander von
Humboldt, in order to ascertain the center of the earth’s gravity,
taking into account the existing elevations above the ocean level, was
led to the conclusion that too great importance was formerly assigned to
mountains in their relations not to the course of history, but to the
earth as subject to mathematical laws. Very careful observations revealed
the fact to him that all the mountains of France, if reduced to a level
and spread out, would raise the grade of the whole country to a height
not more than 816 feet above the sea line. All the mountains of Europe,
distributed in like manner, would raise the level to only about 630 feet.
In Asia the same process would make the vast plain only 1080 feet high,
in North America 702 feet, in South America only 1062 feet; while the
mountains of the entire globe would raise the level to only 947 feet
above the level of the sea. So insignificant are the combined mountain
systems of the earth in respect to size, in comparison with the immense
body on which they stand, though their importance is great when we regard
their influence on the localities where they are found. Yet in this last
regard, mountains deserve careful study, for they not only exercise and
have exercised a great influence over nature and man, but they serve as
our best key to open to our view the internal structure of the earth.
Some mountains, though of great height and broad base, like Etna,
Vesuvius, Teneriffe, and many volcanoes, belong to no true mountain
system; and even when they lie near together, and yet have no inner
principle of unity, they are not spoken of as a chain or a range: they
make merely a mountainous district. It is the repetition of the common
type and the existence of a continuous valley which gives a right to use
the names chain and range.
The linear extent and height of mountain ranges vary very much; no
definite limits to these can be assigned. Yet there are few chains which
are less than 25 miles long and 1500 feet high. Other features are
necessary in order to determine the strict application of the word chain
or range; one is a ridge-like or comb-like aspect; (that it should be a
water-shed is not essential, although very common;) another feature is
that the rock composing it should be of the same geological formation.
Sand dunes, although occurring in regular and ridge-like uniformity,
like those in Holland, and looking from a distance like a mountain chain,
are not to be reckoned as mountain chains, though like the tells on the
Syrian steppes and dunes in the Netherlands and along the Baltic coast,
they sometimes rise to the height of a thousand feet. In South Germany
and in the neighborhood of lofty mountains, such elevations are called
mere hills; at the north foot of the Alps, yet greater heights are almost
always called level land. In judging of the fitness with which the word
mountain is used, it must always be remembered whether he who employs
it dwells among the Himalayas or on the lowlands of eastern Europe; and
in order to give any fixedness to the use of the word, it is necessary
to take into account other physical characteristics besides height. By
common usage, however, the Alps have become the standard of comparison
for all the mountains of the world, mainly because, besides having their
imposing height, they are found in the middle of the temperate zone;
they are the most convenient to study of any great system on the globe.
In respect to height, we divide these into four grades: the lowest from
2000 to 5000 feet above the sea; the next from 5000 to 8000; the next
from 8000 to 10,000; and the highest from 10,000 on to the height of Mont
Blanc.
Another standard might be found in the colossal Himalaya chain of Asia,
and the Cordilleras of both Americas, which could easily be brought into
unison with the Alpine chain of Switzerland.
The linear direction of a mountain chain, the axis of elevation as we
might say, (so sharply hinted at in the very word mountain-chain,)
brings out relations which vary not only according to the longitudinal
direction itself, but to the lateral extent, the number of mountains,
the situation, and the ramification of the chain. If the direction be
a straight one, we can rightly speak of an axis of elevation. According
to Humboldt’s measurements, this axis in the Pyrenees is 230 miles in
length; in the Alps, from Mont Blanc to the Hungarian frontier, 515
miles; the Ural Mountains, 550 to 2042 miles; the Scandinavian Mountains,
1100 miles; the Altai Mountains, 9900 miles; the Kuenlun, 1600 miles;
the Thian-Shan, in Inner China, 1700 to 2150 miles; the Himalayas,
1600 miles; the Yablonoi Chrabet, 550 miles; the Aldan, 400 miles; the
Ghauts, 760 miles; the Andes of South America, 4400 miles; and the whole
Cordillera of North America, 9200 miles. There is often much doubt about
the true beginning and ending of a mountain chain, and judgments differ
according as they rest on the fact of elevation or on the geological
traces of upheaval where they begin to be manifest. Geographers are not
agreed, for example, whether the Ural Mountains continue as far north as
Nova Zembla, and whether one or two chains in America are to be spoken of
as traversing the plateau of Mexico.
If there are parallel ranges, it is correct to speak of a transverse
axis, running at right angles with the main axis. There is, it is
apparent, a marked difference between simple chains and the accumulated
parallel chains, where breadth is a prominent element, as in the Vosges,
the Black Forest Mountains, the Fichtel range, the Hartz, the Ardennes.
The parallel rows form a mountain system. Yet all great chains are made
up of smaller ones, of groups at least, and so are mountain systems.
Often the grouping is seemingly irregular, a lawless aggregation, but
only because our knowledge is incomplete, and the law of arrangement
concealed from us. This law is traced in the very geological qualities
of the chain, not in the later form. The outer form is often very
deceptive, the very convulsions which indicate the surer signs having
served to obliterate what we should suppose the most prominent marks. The
present of mountains must often be studied in the light of their past.
Orography must be interpreted by geology. But the geological surveys
of the earth are as yet very imperfect; the outer form has often to be
accepted as the only guide. Orography and geology are two sciences which
now go on hand in hand.
In the simple mountain chain it is easy to discriminate between the parts
which make it up; the base is easily ascertainable and the ascent to
the comb-like ridge is readily traced; the eye does not fail to see the
relation between the special prominent heights and the chain from which
they rise, and to trace the manner in which spurs and outlying mountains
are connected with the main chain. Small isolated collections of
mountains are especially valuable as elementary studies, for they always
have a unity of their own. And all the greater and well-known chains are
made up of smaller, simple chains, whose connection and mutual relations
are, however, sometimes exceedingly difficult to trace. But the character
of the whole is not sometimes ascertainable with this preliminary
knowledge of the parts.
The true base of a mountain chain, the line of periphery, in consequence
of the general unevenness of the adjacent country, must be ascertained
by very exact measurements with the level. The geologist does not
begin with this step, he strikes deeper, and seeks the place where the
structure diverges from that of the more level land lying near; and, in
the search after the basis of structure, he discovers the unity of the
range from the foot to the summit. The whole geological district which
has been upheaved into mountains, Leopold von Buch found to be generally
ellipsoidal in form, the longer axis being far more prominent than the
shorter one. The axis of most mountain chains is, then, the longer axis
of an ellipsoid. The Swiss Alps display about a dozen such ellipsoids,
of different characteristics, and arranged according to no perceptible
law of harmony. Each is developed from its own base, as the trunk of a
tree grows out of its root. These separate bases lie contiguously, but
the peaks which shoot up are widely sundered. The forms of the mountain
groups resulting from this are, of course, various. Some of them I will
briefly characterize.
1. The longer axes of the subordinate chains may run in parallels, as in
one portion of the Swiss Alps, the Jura, the Ural Mountains, the Mexican
Cordilleras, and the Himalayas.
2. The chains may diverge or converge. The Alps diverge at the east, and
the forks run northeast and southeast respectively; the Rocky Mountains,
toward the Arctic regions, divide into from five to seven diverging
chains. Converging ranges may come together at varying angles, and
these can mass themselves into confused mountain knots, the summits of
which soar to amazing heights, as the West and Middle Alps do around
Mont Blanc. Alexander von Humboldt distinguishes five of these mountain
knots in the Andes, Porco, Cuzco, Pasco, Assuay, and Los Pastos, whose
construction, carefully studied, he considered, gives the key to the
structure of the whole chain. Side chains often display this knotted
form, as in Upper Peru around Lake Titicaca, the three branches of the
Ural, at the Irmel Tau, the Himalaya, Kuenlun, and Hindoo Koosh chains,
in upper Afghanistan, and the ranges of Swiss Alps, which converge around
St. Gothard. Yet the convolutions which these mountain chains make at
their point of convergence are never regular, never mathematically exact,
but to be measured in sections, and the traces of a linear direction
to be carefully sought with the compass. The whole has, to the eye, a
labyrinthine appearance, and the law of structure is only ascertained,
with exactness, by the geological features, the direction of the strata,
and the like. The geographer must call in the geologist to help him solve
his problems.[4]
3. If from some high central point the mountain ranges radiate
in the form of a star, they form a new variety of system called,
for convenience, by the name “star-shaped.” In volcanic mountains
this configuration is common, as in Mont d’Or and in Auvergne. The
southwestern Alps, known sometimes as the Sea Alps, the Ural at the
Arctic Ocean, the Quito range of the Andes, are types of this form.
4. The ring-shaped system is in direct contrast with the last. It is
found where mountain chains are arranged in a circle, inclosing a plateau
of larger or smaller extent. There are two marked examples of this form
in Europe: Bohemia and Transylvania. The ring of mountains around the
former is made up of a number of ranges, which dovetail together at the
ends, making a unit, but only a rude circle, speaking with mathematical
exactness. The inclosed basin is only relatively a lowland; it is
rigid with hills and low mountains, yet of such little importance, in
comparison with the rim of peaks, that the common name, the “Bohemian
Kettle,” has begun to have an accredited significance, and is stronger
than the more loosely-used word Basin. Transylvania, too, partakes of
similar characteristics. Its border consists of a number of minor ranges,
of varying heights, up to 1800 feet; and the central hollow, which is
much more strongly marked by hilly land than Bohemia, lies 2200 feet
above the Adriatic. The ring-shaped system is one of the rarest met of
all. They are, however, observed in abundance on the moon.
5. Just as rare is the form where ranges intersect in the form of a
cross, those running, for example, from north to south, meeting those
running east and west. As an instance of this, Humboldt cites the
confluence of the Himalaya, the Kuenlun, the Hindoo Koosh, and the
Belor or Belurtagh Mountains. The belt between 35° and 40° N. lat.
is remarkable for its gridiron-shaped mountain system, the points of
conjunction being marked by knots of peaks of colossal height. The most
remarkable one of these is the lofty Pamir Pass, between 37° 30′ and 40°
5′ N. lat., and 18,000 feet high, known, historically, from the sixth
century, and described by Marco Polo, as well as by the ancient Greek
historians. The Persians dwelling in the neighborhood term it the Roof of
the World. Elsewhere the same feature is observable, though on a scale
of less magnitude. So in the Altai range at Lake Yetzkoi, in the western
Swiss Alps, and in the porphyritic chain of Room-Elee, known to the
ancients as Rhodope, and now as the Despoto Dagh. This gridiron-shape of
some mountain systems seems to be the result of upheavals at different
times, which necessarily occasions the most broken configuration at the
point where a chain of more recent formation has been projected through
one of older date.
The varying relations of length, breadth, direction, connection, and
severance of mountain ranges give great diversity to them, and impart
to every system a character of its own. To the features just indicated
must be added vertical or precipitous descents, for the influences which
they exert upon the possibility of man’s constructing mountain roads, are
very great. The extent of these sudden depressions, or, more exactly,
the relation which the distance from the base to the pass bears to the
distance from the base to the summit, gives a key to the uses of certain
mountains as adjuncts of civilization, and shows how some ranges rather
than others may become the abode of men, and produce marked effects on
human culture and the world’s history.
I have before alluded to the comb-like structure of most mountain
chains. The resemblance is more striking than may appear; for not only
do the peaks correspond in general uniformity of height with the teeth
of the comb, but the equally uniform height of the passes from the base
corresponds with the uniform thickness of the solid part of the comb.
The relation, however, of the distance from the base to the passes, to
the distance from the base to the peaks, is widely various. Humboldt has
estimated it in a few leading chains as follows:—
Himalayas.
Height of chain, 25,000 ft.
” pass, 15,000 ”
” base, 1000 ” (Delhi.)
Alps.
Mont Blanc, 14,500 ft.
Height of pass, 7200 ”
” base, 1200 ”
Andes.
Chimborazo, 21,000 ft.
Height of pass, 10,000 ”
” base, (Sea.)
Pyrenees.
Maladetta, 10,722 ft.
Height of pass, 8000 ”
” base, (Sea.)
In the Alps and Caucasus the relation of the height of the pass to the
height of the chain is as 1 to 2; in the Himalaya, Quito Cordillera,
and Alleghany Mountains, as 1 to 1·8; in the Pyrenees and Cordillera of
Bolivia, as 1 to 1·5. In the Alps, therefore, where the pass is only half
as elevated as the chain, the communication is the most direct, and the
least barrier is put to the purposes of man,—a fact of great import in
relation to human culture. The Pyrenees are in direct contrast in this
respect, the most unapproachable, the most sundering of mountains.
The position of mountain chains is a matter of the first importance in
relation to the welfare of man, and the solution of many of the most
important problems in history. Whether interior ranges like the Ural and
the Atlas, or ranges connecting two seas like the Caucasus, or those
like the Mexican Sierras, lying between two oceans, are most open to
human approach and use, is a question which we will not here stop to
consider; but it may be said that, whether situated in the relations
just indicated, or whether they are meridianal ranges like the Ural, the
Scandinavian chain, the Alleghanies, or the great Cordillera of both
Americas, which extends from the tropical world to both polar zones; or
whether they run in the same direction with the parallels of latitude,
turning one side to the colder north, and another side to the sunnier
south; or whether they assume a diagonal direction like the Swiss Alps,
from southwest to northeast, or like the Caucasus, from northwest to
southeast, is a matter of the first importance to ascertain. Of not less
consequence is it to discover whether the chain is the edge or rim of a
plateau, and can have, therefore, only a one-sided development, like the
Himalayas toward the south, or the Anti-Taurus toward the north, because
the existence of a plateau on the reverse side dwarfs the slant distance,
and gives but a fractional part of what, without the plateau, would be
open and clear.
As plateaus usually display this edge on both sides, the border has
been aptly compared to a double ledge or rim, between the two sides of
which the table-land lies, often tolerably high above the sea level. If
these rims, like mountains, are not contiguous to the plateau; if they
are separated from it by a valley of greater or less width and depth,
running parallel with the edge, they form what Humboldt has called
natural circumvallations. Of such the Altai range, on the north side of
the Asiatic central plateau, is an example. The hollow between the range
and the plateau just mentioned is partly filled with inland seas. The
Caucasus may, in like manner, be regarded as the circumvallation of the
American plateau, separate from it by the Koor and the Aras (ancient
Araxes) rims. Yet in the Caucasus another modification occurs—a partial
linking of the plateau with the range at the west extremity, by the
connecting chain of the Moschic Mountains. In like manner the Pyrenees,
in their eastern half, form a circumvallation around the north side of
the Castilian plateau, separated from it by the basin of the Ebro, and
forming a perfect ring around Upper Castile and the elevated province of
Biscay.
In cases where a mountain chain rests upon a plateau, rising up in the
very heart of it, its summits seem to be not high, although the basis,
the true foot of the chain, may not be at the level of the plateau,
but far lower, and such mountains may, therefore, be of great absolute
height. The name superimposed mountains has been given to them. Such are
the Kuenlun and the Thian-Shan ranges of Central Asia, the Guadarrama
chain between Old and New Castile, and the Rocky Mountains in North
America. These superimposed ranges often run near to and parallel with
the rim or edge of the plateau, and seem to give it more completeness and
breadth.
The geologist employs the word “sutures” to designate such forms, because
they serve to unite those parts of a plateau which are at different
heights above the sea level. He regards the mountains as rising to fill
enormous clefts which great convulsions have rent in the earth, and as
passing up, while in their fluid state, to a height above the level of
the plateau, and bridging over the abyss. In this way our mountains which
rest on plateaus seem to have been formed, as indeed is indicated by
their geological structure.
The smaller plateaus display analogies kindred to those seen in the
larger superimposed mountain ranges. The extinguished volcanic group
of Auvergne rests upon the central plateau of southern France, which,
according to Remond, has an average elevation of 1000 feet. The now
silent volcanic group of the northern Rhine broke through the moderately
elevated gray-wacke formation of that locality, and is, therefore, a
superimposed range.
Mountain chains which diverge from plateaus and their serrated rims seem,
nevertheless, to have some relation to them, even though they cannot be
considered continuations of them. The Lebanon chain, for instance, which
turns away at a right angle from the Taurus range, and runs southward
through Syria and Palestine; the Lutznetskia and the Alatau Mountains,
mineral ranges running from the Altai northward to Tomsk; the Yablonoi
and the Stanovoi Chrabet ranges running to the northeast; the still
unknown or little known range of Farther India, traversing the whole
peninsula of Malacca, come under this head.
Completely unlike the groups thus far considered, are the isolated
mountain systems, with uniform slopes on all sides, and with a roof-like
form, distinguishable to the base. The mountains of Europe are mostly
of this class—the Ural, Carpathian, Scandinavian ranges, the Alps,
Apennines, and, in part, the Pyrenees. They give rise to rivers, not
on one side alone, as do the Himalayas and the Andes; they are rich
in resources of all kinds for the student and the economist, and thus
make up in part for their comparatively unimportant dimensions. Their
double-sidedness gives them a large influence on civilization, since
rivers flow from them in all directions; while from the Himalayas they
only flow to the south, and from the Andes to the east.
Plateaus and mountains, different as they are in appearance and
characteristics, yet constitute, in their mutual action and reaction,
and in their forms of transition from the one to the other, the highland
system of the globe. Their relations are inexhaustible as Nature herself.
We cannot study them without profit; but we can never come to a perfect
knowledge of them all.
The Relations of Plateau Systems.
Like mountain systems, plateaus are not to be estimated in respect to
elevated and superficial area alone, but in respect to form and position
as well.
The American plateaus are elongated from north to south, but are of
disproportionate breadth from east to west. The Asiatic plateaus, on the
contrary, are not only of great length, but also of great breadth. The
Spanish plateau, that of the Atlas system, and that of Asia Minor have
their length and breadth nearly equal.
The surface of plateaus is exceedingly varied. It sometimes assumes
the aspect of elevated plains, sometimes of rolling land, sometimes
of horizontal strata of naked rock, as in Patagonia and the western
Sahara. In one place it displays sand-hills, as in parts of the Gobi
Desert; in others barren steppes, as in portions of Persia. Sometimes we
find a gradual ascent of minor plateaus or terraces; sometimes single
mountains rising out of the plateaus, as does Demavend; sometimes we find
a chain of colossal peaks emerging from the heart of a plateau, like
Thian-Shan and Bogdo-Oola. Sometimes there are plateaus broken up into
crags and patches of level ground, like Persia; sometimes plateaus with
deep valleys or river basins, like the plateau of Yoorkistan and Gobi,
including the River Tarim, and reaching its greatest depression at Lake
Lop, or, like the plateau of Afghanistan, including the River Hirmend
and Lake Zareh; again, we have plateaus traversed by water-courses which
forced their way in times of flood, and leave in the rainless seasons
the traces of the former violence. Such are some of the less elevated
plateaus of France and Bavaria.
Especially important are the combinations and groupings of plateaus, as
well as their relation to adjacent lowlands.
In Africa the plateau form embraces the larger southern half of the
continent. Low plains are, on the contrary, the prevailing form in the
north, broken, however, by the Sahara, and the high coast plateaus of the
Atlas range, and of Barca.
In Asia there is a vast central plateau with gradual declivities toward
the east, toward Yoorkistan and Persia on the west, and toward Lakes
Baikal and Zaisan on the north. On the south the descent is abrupt to the
Indian lowlands.
In Europe there are, for the most part, scattered and disconnected
plateaus of small size and little elevation, often passing by an
imperceptible gradation to the other forms. The Spanish plateau is,
however, a marked exception, and has the sharply-defined character of the
northern African plateaus. In eastern Europe the central situation of the
isolated Valdai plateau, whose elevation is very moderate, but 840 to
1080 feet, is remarkable, and is of very great influence in determining
the hydrographical character of the great Russian lowlands. And in fact,
the hydrographical influence of both mountains and plateaus is so great,
that it is worthy of careful and special study.
The combinating and grouping of plateaus in different continents give
rise to great contrasts, observable most distinctly in Asia and America.
Asia, with all its great internal depression from Cashgar to Lake Lop,
yet displays such immense districts of plateaus, all ranges of elevation,
low, moderate, and very great, that the very grandeur and extent of its
colossal mountain chains are subordinate in comparison. Asia is the land
pre-eminently of plateaus.
America displays, not in its central but on its western coast, the
greatest chain of mountains on the globe, flanked by plateaus of great
elevation, but of superficial area quite out of proportion to the length
of the mountain chain, and to the extent of the lowlands of both the
northern and the southern divisions. And while in Africa the regions of
depression are in the north, and in Asia around the great central plateau
system, in the Americas, both North and South, they are thrown into the
eastern portion.
Australia, in perfect contrast again, is, with the exception of its
southeastern corner, a vast tract of unbroken lowland. No diversity is
possible there, no change in the condition of life, but a ceaseless
uniformity of monotonous but prodigal gifts.
Is not the imposing grandeur of these harmonious, provisional
arrangements for the use of man calculated to fill the soul with admiring
wonder, and to lead us to suspect, above all this display of cause and
effect, above all this working out of a manifestly preconceived plan,
the existence of a great and active Being, who has planned and executed
it all with higher ends and a loftier purpose than to satisfy the mere
earthly life of man?
Primeval Formation of Plateaus and Mountains.
To enter upon a discussion of the manner in which plateaus and mountains
were formed, would make it necessary to resort to such judgments as we
could draw from their external appearance and their internal structure.
The rapid progress of geology does indeed afford us many probabilities
thoroughly grounded. A few of these may have been briefly indicated in
connection with some elevated regions, where the massiveness is striking,
and where the axis of elevation is prolonged to a considerable extent.
In such cases the influence exerted on the world is more evident than it
could be elsewhere.
_Origin of Plateaus._
Alexander von Humboldt has employed the term Intumescence, to indicate
the manner in which plateaus have been upheaved. Plateaus appear as long,
often wide, mostly level, sometimes rolling, sometimes hilly elevations,
presenting an appearance as if the earth had swelled with confined gases,
and with depressions here and there as if, in the casting of the molten
mass within, a natural external subsidence had followed. They have,
therefore, viewed in their internal structure, an unbroken wholeness, and
are free from those vast fissures which characterize mountains, rending
the earth for hundreds of feet down. The utmost want of uniformity is
seen in the gradual depressions which often harbor the large internal
lakes found in great plateaus. Varied as they are in configuration, they
always retain marks enough to indicate that they owe their upheaval to
steady, gentle, and not tumultuous forces within, exerted at the time of
the primeval cooling of the earth’s crust; in contrast, therefore, with
mountains, which were thrust up from beneath, through huge seams made
by the bursting through of pent-up vapor and gases. These elevations
of the earth’s crust, whether in the form of mountain or plateau, must
correspond, in order that the symmetry of the globe may be preserved, to
the depressions found in lowlands and beneath the water of oceans and
seas.
It is observable that the great plateau upheaval of the Old World has
taken the shape of a belt, which runs in a northeasterly direction along
its whole southeastern shore, crossing the equator at an angle of 45°,
broken, however, at some places, but never so much as to destroy the
coherence of the belt. The diagonal of the rhomboidal plateau of eastern
Asia, passing due northeast through the table-land of Thibet, indicates
the direction of the whole band of highlands. This band drops toward the
south in uniformly steep declivities; while toward the north it falls
away with gradual steps of transition, reaching at length the regions of
the greatest depression—Libya, northern Arabia, the Caspian, Siberia,
and, at last, the low regions around the north pole.
In this belt or chaplet of plateaus lie the high table-lands of South
and Northeast Africa, Abyssinia, South Arabia, Persia, Beloochistan,
North Deccan, Afghanistan, Thibet, East Tangut, and eastern Gobi, in
Mantchooria.
Correspondent with this immense plateau belt, in the New World, is the
great American chain, once a wholly volcanic, and though differing so
much in structure, direction, and hydrographical influence, yet giving
the globe a wholeness, a unity in diversity, which is strikingly apparent.
_The Origin of Mountains._
The linear regions of elevations of the earth’s surface, as we may term
them, in contradistinction to the plateaus which are characterized
by breadth rather than by length, have been projected in the form of
mountain chains, as has been already hinted, through huge fissures made
by the rending of the earth’s crust. The upheaval to fill the seam has,
in some cases, been all made at once; in others, in a succession of
periods. The uniform agreement of all the geological strata or their
diversity decides this point. Sometimes the rocky strata are laid bare
and easily investigated. Often, however, the observer is obliged to draw
conclusions from a part to the whole. Yet in all cases the mountain, in
contradistinction to the adjacent plateau, is the tract which has been
thrust through the crust. The frequent steep and lofty precipices show
the immensity of the internal force required to lift the mountains from
their places, while the lines of stratification indicate the direction
of upheaval. The rifting of a seam in the earth’s crust was the first
step in the formation of mountains; the filling up of the seam by
liquid matter, the second step. The upheaval of Asia, from the Persian
plateau to Gobi, in a line 60° N. E., seems to be connected with the
most ancient revolution which the earth’s crust ever experienced. The
mountains there are, therefore, more modern in origin than the plateau
on which they stand. The direction of the chain, in all cases, seems
to have been dependent on the direction of the fissure in the earth’s
crust, which the mountain range afterward fills. The breaking through
the crust necessarily occurred when the pressure beneath the surface was
very great, or when a moderate pressure was exerted beneath a thin crust,
where the resistance was slight.
The latter case seems to have been prevalent in most plateau regions.
Their own gradual upheaval probably thinned the surface, and made it
more liable to fracture. This accounts for the fact that the greatest
mountains of the globe are found contiguous to plateaus. And the broader
the original seam in the crust was, the broader the mountain range
which rose to fill it, either at a single upheaval, or in a series of
convulsive throes projecting successive masses of molten matter from
below. In the latter cases the strata thus formed lie on each other
like the leaves of a book, their constitution changing according as the
more advanced stages of melting in the vast internal caldron throw out
more metamorphosed rocks. These later layers rose to a greater or less
height on the sides of the partially-formed mountain, according to their
specific gravity, their more or less fluid state, and their rapidity
of cooling, as we can now see by examining the layers in their present
permanent condition.
Thus far we can conjecture, with great security, taught by the manifestly
wild and fierce convulsions which once threw up the mountains, since in
them distortion is the rule and regularity of structure the exception,
and also by the equally manifest quiet and sustained process of
upheaval, when the plateaus were formed; their strata being in a state
of regularity and unbroken repose.
When the great vents produced by the outward pressure of internal
volcanic forces occurred beneath the sea, they were filled up in the same
manner as on the dry land, excepting that the summits of the mountains
emerge above the surface in the form of isolated islands, or when there
was a chain or group of mountains upheaved, as an archipelago. When there
was no rifting of the surface, and no forcing up of whole chains of peaks
through a thinned crust, the fierce action of the internal heat appears
to have necessitated the upheaval of solitary volcanoes here and there,
in some cases even rows of them, to give vent to the pent-up steam and
gases, and to convey away the molten tide within. When such volcanic
series rose in parallel ranges, they lifted, or may have lifted up the
whole district between them, as if upon their shoulders, and so formed
the American type of plateaus, of less breadth and greater length than
the Asiatic, and in height corresponding with the volcanic peaks which
form their rim, and to which they are probably indebted for the form of
their structure.
It needs hardly to be added to what has been said above, that the general
direction of existing mountain chains depends upon the direction of the
primitive seams made in the earth’s surface by internal forces. The Ural
Mountains, the Scandinavian chain, the Alleghanies, the Ghauts, run on
meridian lines; others more or less transversely.
The various kinds of rock which have been thrown up in mountains
enlighten us as to the process and results of the internal heat of the
earth; the successive formations display not only the various eruptions
of molten matter, and its discharge in new layers above what had been
thrown out before, but reveal the relative age of the various formations.
We have in a single chain sometimes a whole volume of history, marking
off the epochs of upheaval with the most perfect legibility and
exactness. Many crystallised rocks result evidently from the gradual
process of cooling after the ancient exposure to the intense heat of the
inner portions of the earth—granite, porphyry, gneiss, slates, and the
so-called metamorphosed rocks. These used to be considered the oldest
formations, but the upheaval theory treats them as the latest formed.
Most mountain chains have been uplifted to their present height by a
succession of upheavals. To accomplish this has been labor of uncounted
thousands of years. Only a very few—the main Carpathian range, for
instance—seem to have been upheaved at a single convulsion, and to have
assumed their present appearance at once. Where there were incessant
eruptions accompanied with flames, and masses of molten matter (lava)
have been ejected from the crest or from single summits, these volcanoes
and volcanic ranges have been the result. Elsewhere no such phenomena
have been visible. Possibly, in such cases, the masses cooled so rapidly
as to extinguish or fill up what may have been embryo craters, and the
plutonic acclivities may have been repressed, leaving us the traces of
primeval eruptions, but no vestiges of any dangerous forces remaining
till now. Of mountains formed in this manner, may be mentioned the Puys
de Dome, the Bohemian basaltic peaks, trachyte Transylvania Alps, the
Katak Kaumene, (“Burnt Tract,”) of Asia Minor, and Hauran, Iceland,
parts of the great American chain, parts of the Sunda chain, the South
Sea Islands, and Bagdoola, and its range of extinct volcanoes in the
Thian-Shan chain.
But other forces besides fire were competent to form mountains and
plateaus, to spread layers of clay and sand and various deposits at
the bottom of the sea, afterward to harden into strata of rock. In
contradistinction to plutonic formations, these have been called
neptunic, because formed at the bottom of the sea. The oldest of the
neptunic or stratified rocks have been upheaved by the subterranean
forces, and now are found in the elevated plateaus or mountain ranges,
still having, however, their unbroken irregularity of structure. Also,
after the stratification has been complete, and plutonic acclivities have
opened the seams in the earth of which I have already spoken, and molten
masses have rushed up to fill them, fragments of the primitive stratified
rocks have been caught up and raised, together with the molten masses, to
the very summits of lofty mountains; so that the geologist finds fossils
there more or less perfectly preserved, the stratified rocks which
contain them surrounded by the plutonic rock upheaved from below the
surface. Chalk layers full of mollusca and infusoria have been found by
Humboldt and von Buch on the very summits of the Andes, and corresponding
with those which have been discovered by Ehrenburg in the deposits at the
bottom of the sea.
Other older and more recent oceanic deposits are found in their primitive
condition at the bottom of the sea, or in very low places on the land.
In such localities the surface of the earth is composed of horizontal or
slightly inclined layers or strata, of secondary formation, and whose
origin in deposits from water cannot be denied. These are the beds
of chalk, clay, sand, marl, gypsum, and other common substances; and
these strata again have been overlaid with more recent accumulations,
the result of diluvium or alluvium, continuing even up to the present
time.[5]
Lowlands.
This variety of the earth’s surface stands in the strongest contrast with
mountain regions, or, in one word, with the highland form in all its
modifications. The name lowland we apply to all those broad tracts which
do not rise more than four hundred feet above the level of the sea. The
absolute elevation is determined from a section drawn vertically from the
superior surface to the plane of the sea. Every comparison by numbers
of one lowland plain with its more elevated surroundings gives only a
relative result, as for instance, in comparing the valleys of one chain
of mountains with those of a more lofty chain. Such relative lowlands
may lie at a great elevation above the sea, as the vale of Chamouni, for
example, at the north foot of Mont Blanc, is 3000 feet above the ocean
level. Both conceptions of the word lowland, which is common to elevated
plains as well as those at the sea’s margin, are entirely different, and
should be kept distinct, although they are very often confounded.
We are to deal here only with the absolute, great, and generally diffused
lowlands, in contrast with which the elevated valleys and plains just
referred to may be considered as mountain table-lands and the rims of
plateaus.
We assume, as we did in judging of the two grades of plateaus, an
arbitrary standard of measurement, and limit the rise of real lowlands
to an altitude of 500 feet above the level of the sea. Great tracts of
running plain, rising by so slight a grade as to be almost imperceptible,
can be regarded only relatively as lowland, and, in a strict sense,
belong to those regions of transition which fall more truly within the
domain of highland or plateau. The word plain indicates the opposite of
hill or mountain, but has nothing to do with the greater or less degree
of absolute elevation, although it is often used as if it had.
The lower limits of lowlands are sharply defined enough. They are
the margin of the sea, toward which the slope usually becomes almost
imperceptibly small. Often the expression is used, yet not quite fitly,
that the lowland extends into the sea for some distance, and is found
beneath the surface. Strictly this is the bottom of the sea, and does not
fall under consideration in this connection.
Many lowland plains rise so slightly above the sea level, that they are
not unfrequently submerged, and, in many cases, owe their existence to
repeated overflows. They are the basins of old gulfs, as in the very
slightly elevated plains of Caracas, whose whole shore is open to the
influences of the great Atlantic current flowing from east to west;
or, as in the great Lombardy plain, which slopes at the same almost
imperceptible degree toward the Adriatic. There are also some lowlands
found in the interior of continents, and these, too, sinking below the
level of the sea; but they are altogether exceptional, and only met with
in two or three instances. They are called, by an accommodation of an
algebraic term, _negative_ lowlands. To them belong the region around the
Caspian and the Aral Seas, and the much smaller tract comprising the Dead
Sea, and forming the Jordan valley; besides, there is the Suez steppe,
inclosing the bitter lakes between Asia and Africa; and possibly the
Beled-el-Jereed, in the western part of the Sahara and the central part
of Australia.
To these it might not be incorrect to join those partial lowlands which
have been rescued by human efforts from the sea; the marshes, for
instance, behind the dikes of Holland, Sleswick, East Friesland, and at
the mouths of the Vistula, the Weser, the Nile, the Ganges, and other
rivers.
The most extensive lowlands in the world are probably those which embrace
Siberia, in Asia, and the Canadian and polar region of North America.
Many great tracts, entirely inland, are in those flat districts covered
by sea-water which was once driven in by great storms, and now lies
stagnant, resulting in inapproachable swamps and morasses. Yet, under the
equator, there are immense lowlands, as, for instance, in the eastern
Sahara, although this region is broken by strips of plateau, and is by no
means that uniform lowland plain which it used to be regarded. Northern
Australia belongs to the same category, and also those immense plains
which reach from the Atlantic so far into the interior of Brazil, along
the lower Amazon. By the time, however, that they reach the middle course
of that river, they have acquired, though in such imperceptible steps, a
considerable degree of elevation, according to Humboldt’s barometrical
observations, and not reckoning certain limestone hills found there,
from 1050 to 1200 feet. The plains of the middle Marañon are, therefore,
true plains, but not absolute lowlands, and not to be identified with
the great flat region at the mouth of the river, and in comparison with
the real lowlands of Venezuela, which do not rise over 200 feet above the
sea, and genuine plateau, which, level as it is and broad as it is, is
far more elevated than the Valdai plateau, in Russia.
Almost all great river mouths are true lowlands—the Egyptian delta, the
delta of the Ganges and the Indus, for instance, (the two latter being
separated by the very moderate plateau (100 feet) between Delhi and
Mooltan;) to these we may add the delta of the Euphrates, the east shore
of China, between the Blue and the Yellow Rivers, and Senegambia, between
the Senegal and the Gambia. And in America, the same thing occurs in the
Mississippi, Orinoco, Amazon, and La Plata, where the immense mass of
water which they send to the sea passes through lowlands of very great
extent. In the Mississippi they extend from the mouth as far north as the
confluence of the Missouri and the Mississippi, where stands St. Louis,
not 500 feet above the level of the sea. The prairies west of the lower
course of the river rise rapidly, though imperceptibly to the eye, to the
high terraces of Kansas, at Council Grove, varying from 1500 to 2000 feet
absolute elevation, and then more rapidly toward the west, to mountain
plains or plateaus, from 3000 to 6000 feet high. These, of course, lose
the distinctive character of lowland.
The mouth of the St. Lawrence is, in some respects, analogous. Lowlands
accompany it for a great distance from the sea; at Lake Ontario the
elevation is only 232 feet, at Lake Erie only 565 feet. Yet the level
tract is narrowed down to a mere border, and does not widen into great
lowland plains. The contracted region of low country along the St.
Lawrence is broken up, too, by rocky heights and rib-like ledges, whose
absolute height, however, is not to be confounded with the elevation of
the plain which they traverse.
In entire contrast are the broad plains of South America, which lie
along the course of the Orinoco, La Plata, and Amazon, the so-called
pampas and savannas, which extend a great distance into the interior,
farther, indeed, than investigators have yet thoroughly prosecuted
their researches. In no continent are the distinctions between highland
and lowland so sharply drawn as in America. The lowland plains occupy
four-fifths of all the country east of the Andes, in South America: only
one-fifth is highland; for, notwithstanding the extent of low plateaus
and diminutive mountains scattered through these great plains, yet their
entire amount is inconsiderable, compared with the immense lowland
tracts of that continent. America has fitly been called the region of
the greatest depression on the globe, because this is the prevailing
characteristic of its whole eastern side, lowlands forming two-thirds of
all America, and highlands only one-third.
In Asia, the later hypsometrical observations have shown that the
lowlands are by no means so extensive as they were formerly supposed. The
highland extends, according to von Middendorf, much farther northeast of
the Yenisei, toward the northern limit of Siberia and Tschatschi, than
was formerly supposed; and the Siberian plain extending westward to the
Ural Mountains is narrowed down from 4,079,970 to 2,233,800 square miles.
Yet this lowland comprises, including central Bokhara or Toorkistan,
1,051,200 square miles, and other low Asiatic plains 1,314,000, the
enormous area of 4,599,000, or more than twice the extent of Europe,
leaving 9,636,000 square miles for the highlands.
In Africa there are almost no lowlands to speak of, excepting the
districts around the mouths of the great rivers indicated a few pages
back. To all equatorial Africa this physical feature is entirely wanting.
In the north, where the whole Sahara was formerly thought to be one
vast low plain, there are now known to be the moderate plateaus already
indicated. The area of true lowland is, therefore, sensibly diminished.
Vogel’s barometrical observations have already shown us that the country
around Lake Tchad is about 1200 feet above the sea; the surface of Lake
Tchad is 850 feet above the ocean level, and the lower limit of that
region does not, therefore, come within the range already set as the
point where lowlands become highlands.
In Australia the lowland seems to be the prevailing physical form,
although here and there exceptions to it occur.
In Europe there are three great lowland plains to be specially mentioned.
The greatest, that of middle Europe, embraces the shores of the North
Sea and the Baltic far inland, and extend the farthest to the southeast.
A second, hardly of less extensive proportions, comprises all northern
Russia as far as the White Sea and the Arctic. It embraces but one-third
of the great polar plain, and is really one with the region beyond the
Ural chain. The third is the region around the Black and Caspian Seas.
The Middle European Lowlands.
The Germanic-Sarmatia-Russian plain extends, without a break, from the
mouths of the Rhine, through all central Europe, to the middle Volga
and the Ural. It is pre-eminently a region of lowlands, without any
elevations of importance, and having no change of level, except very
gently undulating swells, and on the north and south margin plateaus
which very seldom rise over 500 feet. It begins with the deltas of the
Rhine and the Scheldt, in Holland, passes through Lower Westphalia, Lower
Saxony, the Marks, Lower Silesia, Lower Gallicia, and Poland, as far as
the upper Dnieper and the middle Volga. It extends up the Rhine as far as
Strasbourg, 474 feet above the sea, up the Weser as far as Cassel, 486
feet, and up the Elbe as far as Dresden, 280 feet.
The true Rhine delta may be defined as lying between Amsterdam, on the
sea, and Dusseldorf, 107 feet above the sea level. Then passing by
the broken and romantic tract lying between Dusseldorf or Cologne and
Mayence, we come to the true Rhenish lowland, 240 feet above the sea.
Munster is 400 feet above the ocean level. East of the Weser is the
Lüneburg Heath, which advances in elevation, as we go toward the Elbe and
the Havel, to 300 or 400 feet. Brunswick lies at an altitude of 200 feet;
Magdeburg, of 128 feet. The height gradually increases; at Wittenburg it
reaches 204 feet; at Dresden 280 feet, where the Elbe issues from the
highlands; and in Lower Silesia we find Breslau, 375 feet above the sea,
and its observatory, standing on the hills around the city, at a height
of 453 feet, which seems to be the highest point in the whole vast tract.
Between the Rhine delta and the now dry basin of Paderborn, from the Ems
to the Weser, Aller, and middle Elbe, is the mountain tract of the Hartz,
(with the Brocken at the north, 3500 feet high,) running up as far as
52½° N. lat. By this natural feature the breadth of the great plain is
considerably curtailed. As it is also more to the east of the Leipsic
basin, from which the Mulde, Elbe, and Elster flow, by the hill country
of Lausatia and North Silesia, with the Riesengeberge, (Giant Mountains,)
5000 feet high, which extends northward as far as 51° N. lat.
A third basin is in the Silesian, from which the Oder flows toward the
northwest, and enters the southern limits of the great plain near Oppeln
and Brieg. A third tract of hill country lies on the east bank of the
Oder, and extends to the middle Vistula, the Tarnowitz Heights, in Upper
Silesia, about 1000 feet in altitude. The plateau north of the Carpathian
range, on which Cracow lies, is 669 feet above the sea; and the most
northern hill group of Kielce, between the Pilica and the Vistula, rises
in the Kreutzberg to a height of 1920 feet, and in St. Catherine to 2000
feet.
The great lowland advances eastward, with always diminishing breadth
from north to south, over the extensive plains of the middle Vistula,
at Warsaw, 330 feet above the sea; over the Lithuanian morasses of the
Bug; over the Sarmatian district of Minsk and Pinsk as far as Kiev, on
the middle Dnieper, at the southeast, and as far as Orsha and Smolensk,
at the northeast. Pinsk, in the middle of this tract, lies about 400
feet above the sea. The north side of the plain is bounded by the very
moderate plateau south of the Valdai hills, at Smolensk, 792 feet high;
at Osmana, southeast of Minsk, 882 feet. On the south side it is bounded
by the equally moderate plateau of Wolhynia and Podolia, whose absolute
altitude is yet undetermined, but which, at the source of the Bug, is
about 1000 feet.
This is the great Lithuan-Sarmatian plain, which, east of the Dnieper,
is transformed into the central Russian lowland, at whose middle point
is Moscow, whose exact elevation above the sea is between 300 and 400
feet; at Kazan, on the Volga, the height above the ocean level is but
270 feet, measuring from the highest point on the banks. Southward, the
plain reaches to Simbeersk, 181 feet in altitude. The maximum breadth of
this whole vast lowland tract is about 500 miles; the distance between
Smolensk and Kiev, and the distance from the central point of the great
Russian section to any sea, is between 500 and 600 miles.
The Origin of the Great Central European Plain.
The slight elevation of the lowland just described, rising but very
little above the sea level, bears, throughout the most of its extent
between the dunes of the north and the hill chains of the south, the
character of a formation rescued from the domain of the sea within the
very latest geological periods. The almost unbroken uniformity of the
surface from the Scheldt to the Volga, about 2500 miles, confirms the
character which its geological structure indicates. The deposition of
disconnected, superimposed layers, running to a great depth, is exactly
similar to that which we know results from the action now going on at the
bottom of shallow seas. And in the great central European plain there is
no sharply-defined geological limit met at the border of the North and
the Baltic Seas. The same features extend beneath the surface of both
of those seas. This whole lowland is, therefore, to be regarded as an
immense basin, now dry, but once the bottom of a great sea,—an extension
of the seas which now form a part of its northern border. The old coasts
are now seen far inland. Wherever this coast-line changed its course, the
whole landscape now alters its appearance; and yet more striking than
the external view is the internal constitution of the soil. Masses of
stone, standing out in full view, reveal the inner structure of what lies
concealed. And these rocky projections are precisely analogous to the
jagged outlines of our present bold sea-shores. The land is not cut up by
inlets hollowed out by the action of waves and currents to a considerable
depth, yet traces of such movements, and of the physical formations
effected by them, are found. Promontories and islands are now found
in plateaus, and hills encompassing dry basins. To the latter belong
the intervale of the Rhine, and the basins of Paderborn, Leipsic, and
Silesia. To the former belong the hills and plateaus of Middle Germany;
of the Westphalian Mark, from Elberfeld to Dortmund, or, as might be
said, from the Ruhr to the Lippe; the Yeutoburg Forest to the Weser; then
the Weser Mountains, and the Hartz to the middle Elbe; the Thuringian
Forest and the Ertz Mountains around the Leipsic basin to the upper Elbe;
the Lausatian Mountains and the Riesengeberge to the Glatz Mountains, on
the upper Oder; the Trebnitz Heights of Silesia, and the lower plateaus
of the Fore Carpathian range, embracing Cracow as far as the hills of
Kielce and the confluence of the Sau with the Vistula. Along the southern
border of the ever-broadening plain are the plateaus of Gallicia, about
1000 feet in height, of Wolhynia and Podolia, and then less elevated
plateaus, till we reach the Dnieper.
The geological character of the border of the sea which once covered
what is now central Europe, is full of interest, because from it can be
deduced all that we can know of the history of those great changes.[6]
But we must pass over this, and only indicate the geographical
configuration of the dry basin as it exists now, and forms the great
Germanic-Sarmatia-Russian plain.
In the course of previous remarks on the lowest range of plateaus, I
have remarked, that along the south coast of the Baltic the moderately
elevated hill chains of Pomerania and of Old Prussia separated the true
coast with its lowland from the great interior plain, forming a barrier,
averaging about 300 feet in height, with here and there a form which runs
hard upon the lower limit of plateaus of the second class; at any rate, a
transition from between the lowland and the plateau.
It may here be remarked that the long, low chains, made up mainly of
loose sand and other mixed and uncombined materials, and running along
the southern border of that long, low band which skirts the Baltic, seem
to be dunes once running along the shore of a sea which has now receded
many miles to the north. In the deep channels and old inlets now dry, as
for instance in the great break through which the Vistula passes below
Thorn, only loose breccia, and no united layers of stone, appear. Yet
this does not seem to be the case everywhere, although in the Cis-Ural
and Baltic depressions dune-like ridges are to be found, some of them
rising to a height much greater than was formerly suspected. These, it
is true, are scattered, and only partially prevalent, but here and there
they ascend to an altitude of nearly 1000 feet. At the eastern end of
the great Pomeranian sea-plain west of Dantzic, and between that city
and Bütow, where the sand ridge, which formed the ancient shore-line,
runs very far to the north, there are a number of villages 400 feet above
the sea. The Lower Mountain, (Thurmberg,) 54° 13′ 29″ N. lat., rises
to a height of 1024 feet; the hill near Upper Buschkau, east of the
Thurmberg, is 814 feet high; the hill near Hulterfeld, 846 feet; and the
Höckerberg, near Schönberg, 902 feet.
Of the Thurmberg, Humboldt remarks that it is the most remarkable
elevation between the Hartz and the Ural Mountains, and that but a few
points in the Valdai range can be brought into comparison with it. Its
position close by the sea is especially noteworthy. It is very probable,
according to Humboldt’s opinion, that those inequalities of surface,
formed of sand once partly or wholly submerged,—found in Mecklenberg,
Pomerania, East Prussia Proper,—and now divided into flats and hill
ranges, do not belong to the dune system of the ancient shore-line, but
have the reason of their existence in ordinary upheaval; in the formation
of limestone, and of the usual Jurassic rocks, which, afterward,
have been covered with sand and other loose materials. The peculiar
accumulation of genuine marine fossils indicates the existence of
upheaved rocks below the upper layer of sand.
It is these elevations which in the constantly advancing ridge or ridges
run northeasterly, and take the form of plateaus, increasing in breadth
from the water-shed north of Smolensk, and the source of the Dnieper, in
the Valdai Forest, and the western Uwalli, and which are found between
the Volga and the Dwiner, and thence run eastward as far as Perm, on
the Kama. They form the line of demarkation between the great Central
European plain and the North Russian lowland, which extends as far up as
the Arctic. This easterly chain, so far as it has been measured, seems
to be less in altitude than the Valdai hills, which are about 1000 feet
high. In East Prussia Proper and Livonia there are elevations of more
than 600 feet; about 55 miles south of Dorpat Munnamäggi, the point of
culmination, according to Struve, is 996 feet above the sea; south of
Vilna the heights of Puzewitch reach an elevation of 990 feet.
In the same direction, still northeast, runs the Valdai, forming the
source of a number of large streams and the great water-shed of eastern
Europe. On the road from St. Petersburg to Moscow, Humboldt found the
altitude at Norwaja Ijetza 660 feet, and the highest point at Popowa Gora
792 feet, (according to Pausner, 876 feet.) One point going south from
the Valdai, at Mosti Derewna, the latter naturalist has ascertained to be
1032 feet above the sea; and the highest point in the range is, according
to Helmersen, 1098 feet. Still further eastward, between the Valdai hills
and the lake region between Lake Seligher and Bielo Ozero, the range of
uplands, known as Uwalli, running northwesterly, intersected by numerous
canals, and forming the water-shed of a number of rivers, gradually
diminishes in height, but, still advancing eastward, it rises again, in
the neighborhood of Perm and the Kama, to 1014 feet,—about the elevation
of the Valdai range. Uwalli is only the Sclavic name of such hills as
those whose absolute height is insignificant, but which, crossing as
they do the great plains of Poland, Lithuania, and Russia, were formerly
confounded with mountain ranges, and were so represented on the maps.
They have, of course, great hydrographical value, and play a leading part
as the water-shed of eastern Europe.
The Ponto-Caspian Plain, the Great Depression of the Old World.
This second vast lowland is the direct continuation of the central
European lowland, with a decided sinking toward the Black and the Caspian
Seas, indicated by the course of the rivers of that region. It extends
from the month of the Danube over the lower Dniester, Bog, Dnieper,
Don, and Volga, as far eastward as the Sea of Aral. To the last named
the Siberian plain gradually declines. The southern plain of Europe
stands in unbroken connection, so far as its formation is concerned,
with the West Siberian plain, (2,213,400 square miles in extent,) and
is, therefore, one of the most extensive lowlands on the globe. The
Baltic-Sarmatian plain is separated from the West Siberian merely by the
long Ural chain, (from 50° to 67° N. lat.,) whose elevation is only from
4000 to 5000 feet, and whose breadth is unimportant. Take away the Ural,
and a continuous line could be drawn from Breda, near the confluence
of the Meuse, Rhine, and Scheldt, across Europe and Asia, following
the line of 50° N. lat as far as the Chinese frontier, passing over a
continuous series of low, insignificant hills, heathlands, and steppes,
and traversing a space estimated by Humboldt to be three times the length
of the Amazon!
Toward the south, the Cis-Ural, European side of the Ponto-Caspian
lowland, is separated from the Black Sea by a ridge of granite knolls,
which passes from Volhynia and Podolia eastward as far as the cataracts
of the Dnieper, and thence southeast, with diminished breadth, reaching
its limit at Taganrog, on the lower Don, and the Sea of Azof. This ridge
separates the narrow steppes of the northern shore of the Black Sea
from the lowland of South Russia, the fruitful district of Ukraine. The
height of these hills in the west, where they appear to have the greatest
elevation, has been estimated to be about 1000 feet above the sea. Toward
the Dnieper they have not yet been carefully measured; but probably there
they do not rise above 700 feet.
The small sand steppe south of these granite hills runs from the Crimea
eastward as far as the North Caucasian steppe, between the Don, Volga,
and the Caspian, and indeed may be traced to the northeast as far as
the Bashkiric-Ural chain. Lakes of marked saltness are found there:
Elton, for instance, which lies 24 feet above the sea; while farther
eastward they are found, as for example on the Kamysh and at Samara at a
depression of—138 feet, 60 feet below the level of the Caspian Sea. Yet
this lacks confirmation.
From this lowland, only a few elevations arise, and these of
insignificant absolute height; yet, on account of the extreme uniformity
of the whole country, they are objects of amazement to the whole steppe
world. The Little Bogdo, south of Lake Elton, and yet farther south,
Great Bogdo, 504 feet above the sea, according to Humboldt, and Mount
Arsargar, 331 feet in absolute height, according to Murchison, are the
only important hills. The Great Bogdo is composed of calcareous limestone
and of sandstone, with rich deposits of salt.
The Kirgheez steppe separates, by a plain of very moderate elevation, the
north Siberian lowland from the Caspian-Ural depression. It was formerly
supposed, and indeed represented on the map, that a mountain range passes
through this district from the Ural chain to the Altai. The Kirgheez
steppe appears to range from 780 to 960 feet in elevation; while the
Siberian plain is but 280 feet above the sea at Omsk, 192 feet at Tora,
and 108 feet at Tobolsk. It has been considered by some that the Kirgheez
steppe, as well as the granite hills of southern Russia, belong to an
undeveloped system of mountains, an early cooling having solidified them
before reaching the elevation which they would have attained; and that
they partake of the direction which analogy would teach us such a chain
would have, from northeast to southwest, parallel with the Carpathian and
the Caucasus ranges.
The great depression of the Old World begins with the deepening of
the Volga basin below Simbeersk; and at the place (51¾° N. lat., near
Orenboorg and Saratov) where it breaks through the last row of hills in
the Obstshei-Syrtis, it commences a rapid descent toward the Caspian and
the Aral Seas. This great concavity, on the confines of Europe and Asia,
at the center of the greatest land-mass, and far removed from any ocean,
is remarkable as having no parallel on the globe. Humboldt remarks that
perhaps a similar phenomenon would be repeated at the interior of other
continents, if the tertiary formation and the parts found by marine
deposit did not exist. It would be profitable to follow out so weighty a
thought, with the surface as it now is.
The Obstshei-Syrtis is the moderate range of hills which runs westward
in two branches from the Bashkiric-Ural, at Orenboorg, the northern spur
running by Uralsk and the Ural River; the southern by Samara, rising
on the east shore of the Volga to a height of 600 feet, and ending at
Sarepta.
Orenboorg, on the Obstshei-Syrtis, where it leaves the Ural chain, is 255
feet above the sea. Uralsk lies somewhat lower, being 234 feet above the
sea. The surface of the Volga, where it breaks through the high banks of
Saratov, is only 36 feet above the ocean level; while the western shore,
above Saratov, is 562 feet in height. Farther down the river, Sarepta
lies 30 feet below the sea level; and there is, therefore, between
Saratov and Sarepta, a distance of about 180 miles, a fall of 66 feet.
West of the Volga, and following the river, is the continuation of the
Obstshei-Syrtis, ranging in elevation from 562 feet down to 168 feet.
At Sarepta, the low hills which thus far have skirted the Volga turn to
the southwest, to the Manitsh steppe, sinking to an elevation of but 75
feet, and extending as far as the Sea of Azof. At Sarepta, too, the Volga
turns from its normal southerly course, and strikes southeasterly across
the Astracan steppe, entering the Caspian at the City of Astracan, 72
feet below the level of the sea. The level of the sea is 4 feet below the
shore on which Astracan is built.
The old statements that the level of the Caspian is 300 feet below the
ocean, rested solely on conjectures made by the naturalist Pallas. The
influence of this great depression on the warmer climate of that region,
the peculiar vegetation of the salt steppes, and the salt morasses which
exist where the land is perfectly level, as well as the great beds of
oyster-shells and other crustaceous remains, led him to the hypothesis
that the whole neighboring district is the dry and deserted bed of a
former sea, now shrunk to the comparatively insignificant dimensions
of the Caspian. The broken line of bold bluffs which bounds the
Obstshei-Syrtis on the south seemed to him to be the northern boundary of
this inland sea, into which the Volga entered below the pass of Kamyschin
and Saratov. Parrot and Engelhardt supposed that their barometrical
elevations in 1811 confirmed Pallas’ theory, that the Caspian lies 300
feet below the ocean. Many hypotheses were based upon their observations;
but the whole were at length brought into discredit by Humboldt, who
distrusted the accuracy of instruments made at that time. Nothing but a
trigonometrical survey from Taganrog to Astracan could give conclusive
results, and this was accomplished in 1837, under the auspices of the
Russian government. The result proved that, so far from being 300 or 350
feet below the ocean, the Caspian is not 100 feet. Its depression, as
already stated, is about 76 feet.
The level of the Aral Sea, which is evidently closely linked to
the Caspian, has not yet been determined with absolute certainty.
Barometrical observations were instituted for this end by the expedition
under General Berg, which explored that region in the winter of 1826,
but the cold was severe, and the results are questionable. The result of
their investigations was, however, that the surface of the Aral lies 110
feet higher than that of the Caspian. This would make the Aral to be 34
feet above the sea level. More careful inquiries may, however, determine
the level of the two seas to be the same; but at present we have to be
content with the results of the expedition referred to, and accept its
elevation as 34 feet above the level of the ocean.
Without, however, going into details respecting the Aral, the region
around the Caspian and directly connected with it, which is below the
ocean level, embraces an area of not less than 131,400 square miles. This
survey extends from the Volga to the Ural River, thence to the Emba and
the northernmost point of the Sea of Aral, and thence to the salt lakes
of Aksakal-Barbi, lying to the northeast of this sea. The tracing of
this line from the higher to the lower stages of depression gives clear
indications, in the nature of the soil, of the existence of a great sea
once occupying that whole tract.
Thus much for the configuration of the Caspian lowland. If to these
131,400 square miles be added the 153,000, or, according to Humboldt,
164,000 square miles of the Caspian itself, the entire depression
embraces almost 318,000 square miles, and is greater than France,
greater than Germany, and only to be compared with the whole Austrian
empire! If to this great region be added the district around the Aral,
which sea alone covers nearly 25,000 square miles, and then to this the
yet unmeasured surface covered by seas yet to the eastward, the entire
region of depression is immensely increased. And then if to this be added
the great Siberian plain, whose level is not greatly above the sea, the
combined district would be at least once and a half as great as all
Europe.
The Origin of the Ponto-Caspian Depression.
Thinking of the immense extent of this depressed region, whose entire
surface occupies no inconsiderable fraction of the interior of the Old
World, and whose greatest depth at the bottom of the Caspian is from
500 to 600 feet below the level of the ocean, and looking at it as a
phenomenon wholly unique, the question arises: How would such a condition
be possible, contradicting, as it seems, all analogies? The answer, could
we reach it, would not fail to illustrate many recondite geological
questions, and to be full of instruction.
Yet the time has not come when a full answer can be given to this
inquiry. We have not yet learned the elementary conditions of this
remarkable fact; there are innumerable investigations yet to be made,
before we can feel perfectly certain that its reason is understood.
Still, there have been some preparatory inquiries entered upon, and some
preliminary steps taken toward reaching a conclusion, or, at least,
toward assuming a reasonable hypothesis. We have already indicated our
belief that this depression is connected with a ring of plateaus which
have been upheaved around it, and which now inclose it and isolate it
from the ocean.
The hollow has its greatest depth near the southern extremity of the
Caspian, where it rises abruptly to the Persian plateau. There pass, in
the form of a half circle, the loftiest mountains and plateaus of central
Asia. On the west side the Caucasus rises, with its giant peaks of
Kasbek and Elbrooz, 15,000 to 17,000 feet high, bearing all the marks of
volcanic origin,—avalanches of solidified lava on the sides, a lake lying
in the abyss of an extinct crater, and the like.
At the southwest, the Armenian plateau follows the course of the Aras
from its mouth back to the huge dome of Ararat, 14,656 feet high. The
entire geological appearance of that region—the old lava streams, the
trachyte rocks—indicate with equal clearness, as in the Caucasus, the
agency of volcanic forces in the upheaval of that district. Traces of
this great power are also seen in the caldron-shaped hollows, and in the
narrow and deep defiles, which are abundant in that region.
South of the Caspian, which in its southern part reaches a depth ranging
as low as 420, 480, and 600 feet, and, according to Hanway, even 2700
feet, rise sharply from the sea the Persian Coast Mountains. The plateau
of Teheran, 3400 feet in elevation, is directly beyond, from which rise
the volcanic peaks of Demavend, 20,000 feet, and Euczan, 6600 feet high.
The Coast chain embraces the Elboorz Mountains, uniformly more than
5000 feet high, but which, at Schemrum, northwest of Teheran, rise to
a height of 8560 feet; at Churchurah, southwest of Demavend, to 7650
feet; at Nevo, southeast of Demavend, to 8540 feet; at Nejoster, in the
Seriakush, east of Demavend, to 7200 feet; and which, above Asterabad,
rise in the Shahkush and the Sundukkush to a height of 7270 feet, and
almost everywhere display in their trachyte rocks the traces of ancient
volcanic activity. Still farther to the east, the chain which has girdled
the Caspian sinks from the lofty height of the Northern Taurus to 1872
feet; in Meshed, 2628 feet; in Herat, an average elevation of 3400 to
4000 feet. But east of Herat it rises abruptly to the lofty plateaus of
Bamian and Cabool, 7000 and 8000 feet high, and in the peaks of Colubeba
16,800 feet. The Hindoo Koosh, at Dsellalabad, rises to a height of
18,984 feet; the table-lands of the Bolor, at the Issikul, are at an
elevation of 14,664 feet; while the gigantic Pameer is not yet measured,
though its noted Pass is estimated at 18,000 feet above the sea.
At this point we reach almost the 40th degree of N. lat., whence
northward the mountain ranges gradually decline in height, after
throwing off eastward the great chain of Thian-Shan. From the sharp
angle formed by the Hindoo Koosh and the Bolor, where the head-waters
of the Gihon rise, that large but commercially unimportant river takes
its way westward through the Bokharan table-land, falling so rapidly
in its course to Bokhara that at the city its surface is but 1116 feet
above the sea, then striking northwesterly to the Aral and Caspian. The
course of that stream indicates, therefore, the direction and degree of
the mountain slope toward the great depression east of the Caucasus and
Armenia, north of the Persian highland, and west of the Hindoo Koosh and
the Bolor systems.
The lower course of the Gihon, from Bokhara downward, is through masses
of mud, sand, and gravel, and can very easily be conceived to have
changed its course in the lapse of centuries, from the Caspian to the
Aral, as the course of the Sihon seems also to have changed. The great
Bokharan plain is covered in this part with a deposit of dried mud; it is
a steppe formed evidently from a now dry sea-basin, which, no less than
the northern shores of the Caspian and the Aral, displays the traces of
the oceanic character of entire regions.
Halley, the astronomer, made an attempt to solve the mysterious origin of
this great sunken basin, and attributed it to the stroke of a first-class
comet! Arago, instead of calling into the scene meteorological forces
little known, contented himself, in his theory of its origin, with the
forces which we know are active even now on the earth, the plutonic
powers which are only half confined by the surface of the globe. No
one, he says, will hesitate now to accept the upheaval theory, through
which geology is able so clearly to indicate the forces and progress of
structure of the soil and rocks. The upheaval of great masses in one
place predisposes the depression of districts in their neighborhood, to
make good the true relation of highland to lowland. And in this case a
compensation may be found, according to Arago, for the great semicircle
of mountains which passes around the southern margin of the Caspian
basin, in the depression caused by the natural falling in of the adjacent
region when the great mountains of western Asia were upheaved.
In longitudinal mountain chains the parallel ranges of valleys have
a similar origin; in volcanic chains, which have been thrown up in
a circular form, similar depressions have been found in the middle,
although, it must be confessed, on a much smaller scale of dimensions
than in the Caspian hollow. The same feature is observable in the
upheavals, by Von Buch, as observed in the Island of Palma, one of the
Canaries, or in the Val di Bove, near Etna. Such depressions would at
once fill with water, if connected with the sea, as in the cup-shaped
island Santorini, or remain land-locked, if they occur in the interior,
as in the case of Lake Laach, as the half-ring of mountains girding the
lower portion of the Caspian seems to consist mainly of trachyte thrown
up by volcanic agency: the analogy just drawn does not seem too remote.
Yet the process of structure must have had other concomitant conditions
to account for the vast reach northward of the Caspian depression. It
is clear that any such volcanic convulsion as would throw up those vast
mountain ranges at the south, must have affected largely the geological
condition of all the adjacent region; the extent vertically of this
effect would be best ascertained perhaps by deep boring. Unquestionably
there was many a revolution in the upper portions of the earth’s crust
during the formation of the great Caspian hollow, before it assumed its
present condition. From the agencies at work in connection with a great
internal ocean, the upper soil, as we have it to-day, was formed.
The Aral and the Caspian Seas remain as the lowest places of that great
depression, water being found in them, while elsewhere it has entirely
disappeared by evaporation: leaving us broad, low plains, instead of that
great ocean which once extended from Persia over all Siberia, and west
of the Caspian to the Sea of Azof. A more thorough account, geographical
as well as geological, cannot be given till after much more extended
investigations have been made into the physical characteristics of this
region than as yet have been prosecuted. It may be remarked here, that
the waters of the Aral and Caspian are bitter and salt, but not so much
as those of the ocean; the bottom is covered with slime and sand. The
Aral has a depth ranging from 90 to 222 feet; the Caspian, beginning
with its extensive, shallows at the north, deepens toward the south,
till, reaching the lower third, its depth is over 600 feet; and thence
southward it is no less deep, till it reaches the bold shore of Eusellis.
From this lowest point the upheaval begins, which culminates in the great
mountains on its southern border.
According to Humboldt’s view, the great Caspian hollow embraces not only
the basin of the sea, but a vast dry plain, extending northward as far as
Saratov and the Obstshei-Syrtis; even Uralsk lies lower than the level
of the Black Sea. The same physical feature, though on a less extended
scale than here, is found in Holland, China, Lower Egypt, and Palestine.
Subsequently to the emergence of the continents, long before the filling
in of huge fissures by mountain chains, and during the continuance of
those great convulsions which reach back into the remotest geological
periods, the surface of the continents must have been subjected to
frequent partial changes of level. The surface undulated probably in that
same wave movement which is now observable, though in much less degree,
in those earthquakes and upheavals which the whole western part of South
America is experiencing even now.
The depressions which have assumed a permanent form since the convulsions
which formed them, have gradually filled with deposited soil, and, were
the naturalist able to lay bare the primitive rock, he would discover
that it exists in the shape of great concavities, without a trace of
that evenness which now characterizes the surface. Eichwald has made
it probable, by his personal observations, that the upheaval of Ararat
and of the Armenian plateau on which this trachyte mountain rests, has
driven the Caspian Sea back east of the flat steppe of Karabagh and
Mogan, on the lower Aras, to the neighborhood of Bakoo. The water of
that sea formerly extended to the confluence of the Bargashad, (called
also Bergershat and Bergernet,) with the Aras, below Ireben. The traces
of volcanic action there are decisively evident: the Caspian reached,
before that action occurred, up what is now the valley of the Aras, as
far as Ararat; and in many places south of Erivan—at Saliyan, in Shirwan,
and elsewhere—salt beds of the most crystalline quality, forming whole
mountains and whole belts of salt lakes at the confluence of the Aras and
the Koor, demonstrate their formation in a former sea which once covered
that region. The very recent upheaval of the Ural chain cannot fail also
to have had an influence in contracting the dimensions of the Caspian
hollow.
Only two kindred depressions to this remain to be spoken of, which,
though of not so great superficial dimensions, are of yet greater
depth—the depression of the Jordan Valley and the bitter salt lakes on
the Isthmus of Suez. These we must consider before we pass from the
contrasts between highlands and lowlands to the transitions between them.
The Depression of the Jordan Valley and of the Dead Sea.
The nearest relationship to the Caspian hollow, displayed by any similar
feature, is found near the heart of the Old World, in the comparatively
diminutive and isolated valley of the Jordan, including the Dead Sea,
whose absolute depth below the level of the ocean has been determined
only within the most recent period. Many former travelers had noticed, in
the deep gulf which holds the Dead Sea, and especially at its north end,
near Jericho, a much greater degree of heat than elsewhere in Palestine,
and the existence of many plants and fruits which they had met in the
hotter climates of Arabia and India. The tree which yields the Mecca
balsam flourishes in the oasis of Jericho; the product of the balsam
of Palestine supplied the pin-money of Cleopatra. A number of German
and English observers endeavored to solve the question of the depth of
the Jordan basin—von Schubert, Russeger, von Wildenbruch, Moore, and
Bake, later Symonds, and Lynch; de Berton and Russeger made the first
barometrical observations at the Dead Sea, but they did not attempt
to give more definite limits to their results than to assert that its
surface is somewhere between 500 and 1100 feet beneath the ocean level.
Von Shubert’s barometer did not suffice to determine this point, but he
ascertained the surface of Lake Tiberias to be 535 feet below the surface
of the Mediterranean. All barometrical measurements were unreliable at
that depth; yet it could not be denied that the depression could not be
an insignificant one. A measurement with the level made by Symonds, an
Englishman, from Jaffa to the Dead Sea, in 1843, gave us our first sure
results. The surface of the lake lies 1231 feet beneath the level of the
Mediterranean at Jaffa. The subsequent expedition of the Americans—Lynch,
Dale, and Anderson, in 1848—has given the following additional results:—
The surface of Lake Tiberias lies beneath the ocean level, 612 ft.
” ” the Dead Sea ” ” ” 1235 ”
Soundings of the Dead Sea, made with the greatest care, determined the
depth to be, according to Lynch, 1227 feet; according to Symonds, 1970
feet. The entire depression below the ocean level would be, then, by
Lynch’s measurement, 1235 + 1227 = 2462 feet; according to Symonds’, 1235
+ 1970 = 3205 feet. This is the greatest known depression on the globe.
Jerusalem lies 2449 feet above the ocean level. From the roofs of the
city to the surface of the Dead Sea is, therefore, 2449 + 1235 = 3684
feet; and the entire descent from the capital to the bottom of the Dead
Sea is 4911 feet, if we adopt Lynch’s measurement, and 5654, if we follow
Symonds’.
The basin of the Dead Sea consists of two very different parts—the larger
and deeper northern one, the smaller and shallow southern one; the two
being separated by a sandy peninsula—el Mesraa—and connected by a narrow
channel of insignificant depth. The northern basin seems to owe its
present form to the unchanged primitive depression; the southern one
to a partial upheaval at some later epoch. But in breadth they do not
vary much one from the other; both have their larger axis coincident
with the Jordan valley, which here widens a little, but which is still
hemmed in here, as farther north, by the parallel ranges of mountains.
The chain east of the sea appears to rise a thousand feet higher than
the one west of it. The depths of the two basins are entirely unlike.
The southern is nowhere more than 12 feet deep, and diminishes to 5 feet
and less than this near the shores, so that the southern half of it is
entirely unnavigable by craft of any size; and those who wish to land
have to wade for a long distance through mud as deep as their ankles.
The northern part, on the contrary, attains a uniform depth of more than
1000 feet, from the north to the south; in the northern third it is even
1227 feet; toward the west coast it shoals to between 600 and 800 feet,
but is 500 feet deep hard-by the coast. There is but a very narrow rim
of shallow water on the western side, and the navigation is, therefore,
tolerably safe. On the eastern shore the coast is even bolder, and the
descent to deep water immediate. Close by the romantic mouth of the
Arnon, embouching through rocks, the depth of the sea is about 1052 feet.
So great a difference in the depth of the two basins seems to indicate a
considerable diversity in the manner of their formation.
Volcanic activities have been felt in the Jordan valley up to the present
time. They manifest themselves in various forms—deposits of salt, hot
springs and naphtha springs, asphaltum beds, sulphur fumes, currents
of heated air, clouds of smoke, and rumblings beneath the surface.
The Jordan valley remained, from Lake Tiberias down, unfilled, as we
should infer from analogy that it would be by the upheaval of a chain
of volcanic mountains; or by the expansion of an internal lake or sea,
the waters accumulating till at last they should acquire such volume as
to break away and form new channels. In case the obstructions were too
great, they would remain inland lakes. And such is the Dead Sea, its
southern border being too high to allow it a free exit into the Red Sea.
Many other fissures or hollows on the surface of the continents would
be regarded as lowlands, were they not filled with water. The bottoms
of such lakes often sink suddenly to a great depth, while others are
lagoon-like, or shallow seas of an entirely different hydrographical
character. Internal lakes, regarded as isolated lowlands, merely filled
with water, are an especially interesting theme of study; yet much
remains to be investigated regarding their structure and historical
formation. The Dead Sea has been regarded, up to this time, as the
deepest of all such lakes. The greatest depth of the Caspian has not yet
been fully ascertained; but if Hanway’s soundings, 2700 feet, are to be
relied on, it is very great. Lake Baikal, in its deepest part, between
the two steep walls of rock which rise high above the surface, has not
yet been carefully sounded; but as its surface is 1500 feet above the
sea, its bottom does not probably fall below the ocean level. The great
chain of North American lakes, whose area embraces about 109,500 square
miles, are surrounded by level country from 500 to 600 feet above the
sea—a region which, in part, falls under the designation of plateaus of
the lowest class, and which, in part, comes under the name of lowland;
the surface of Lake Superior being 627 feet above the sea, Lakes Michigan
and Huron 578 feet each, Lake Erie 565 feet, and Lake Ontario 232 feet.
The three first named, having a depth of about 900 feet, have their beds
about 300 feet below the surface of the ocean; Lake Ontario, with a depth
of 500 feet, reaches a point 268 feet below the sea level. The depth of
the St. Lawrence river bed, as related to the sea, is not ascertained.
The most of the Swiss lakes, too, having a depth often of more than 1000
feet, come under the same category with the lakes under consideration
above, waters from the mountains having gradually filled up chasms made
at the time of the upheaval of the adjacent region. Some of these lake
basins may be deep enough to lie below the level of the ocean.
The Bitter Lakes of the Suez Isthmus.
Some bitter salt lakes on the Isthmus of Suez, forming a chain from
the Red Sea to the southeast corner of the Mediterranean, long claimed
attention from their supposed singularity. During the occupation of
Egypt by the French in 1799, a survey of the district was made with the
level, in view of a prospective canal across the isthmus, connecting
the Nile with the Red Sea. An account of that survey was published
by Le Père, in his great Description de l’Egypte. The result of the
survey was very surprising; it assigned to the Gulf of Suez a height of
25 feet at ebb tide and 30½ feet at flood tide, above the level of the
Mediterranean, a result which seemed to agree with Pliny’s account (vi.
23) of the elevation of the Red Sea above the level of lower Egypt. The
salt swamps lying between the two seas, and known even to the ancients,
lie, according to the same authority, 20 feet below the surface of the
Mediterranean, and 50 feet below that of the Red Sea. These singular
statements were not received without considerable doubt as to their
correctness; but during the military disturbances in that region, no
revision of the investigations could be made. Certain circumstances
connected with an unusual inundation of the Nile in 1800, when its waters
flowed as far as the transverse valley called the Wady Tumilet, in which
the salt lakes lie, and where traces of the ancient canal, built by the
Egyptians between the seas, could be seen, seemed to confirm the result
of the survey of 1799. The inference was a natural one—that the sandy
Isthmus of Suez was an accumulation of dunes, and of the deposits of
inundations of both the Mediterranean and Red Seas, and that the salt
morasses in the middle are but a trace of the primitive bottom. There
were not wanting defenders of the old measurement, Favier being the most
prominent. Since 1845 five surveys have been made, in reference to the
projected canal. These all contradict the results of 1799, and show that
there is but the difference of four-sevenths of a foot between the level
of the two seas, and that there is the same agreement there as in all
other parts of the earth. Many hypotheses, built on the old measurement,
have accordingly fallen to the ground.
The Regions of Transition between Highlands and Lowlands; the River
Systems of the Globe.
Between the two great and most sharply-marked physical features—the high
plateaus and mountains and the lands of very little elevation—there are
regions of transition very numerous and exceedingly varied.
The conception of highlands and of lowlands having a certain, constant,
and absolute value, and it being immaterial whether the elevation
be specially marked or not, provided it be uniform, the regions of
transition find their most marked characteristics in their want of
constancy, in their very change, and the rate at which the grade ascends
from a low to a high elevation, or falls from a high to a low one. Their
real value lies in the mutual compensation of highlands and lowlands,
which is effected through the mediation of a third physical feature or
system, which has received the name Lands of Gradation, or Terrace Lands,
and which, by their gradual rise from the sea level, serve as the means
of transition from the lowest lowlands to the loftiest plateaus and
mountains.
Terrace Lands and Rivers in their General Character.
Districts sloping to the sea, or lands of gradation, as we have called
them, varying as they do in elevation and in relative situation to
each other, are the true mediators between the districts but little
above the level of the sea and others much more lofty. At the sources
and the mouths of rivers they partake, more or less fully, in the
characteristics of both highland and lowland. The manner of their
mediation, as determined by the rate of the fall of water and by their
direction, gives to every one of these regions of transition its
peculiar character, determines its conformation and its relation to
the globe. And yet, no more than in lowlands and highlands, can we rid
ourselves of some arbitrary data relating to the size of rivers, when
we discriminate between those which we call large and those which we
call small. As in all other geographical distinctions, we must here
be content with arbitrary approximation, and with the ordinary usages
of speech. The comparison of streams, in regard to their breadth and
fullness, determines their volume; the comparison, in respect of length
and tributary waters, determines the compass of the river system. The
entire characteristics, breadth, depth of channel, length and extent
of drainage, determine the status of the river, whether first, second,
or third class, in relation first to those of the same continent, and
then to those of the world. The Volga, for instance, is, in relation
to Europe, a first-class river, but, like the Danube, in relation to
the entire globe, is merely in the second or third rank. Not the length
alone determines the importance of rivers. The Thames, one of the
smallest streams in Europe, is one of the most important. And aside from
commercial considerations, a river of insignificant size can have great
influence in consequence of its relation to the entire adjacent region.
The little Bavarian Isar, a river which, so far as the great world is
concerned, seems to have no importance, receives on the left side the
water of 860 tributary brooks, among which are 44 rivulets; on the right
bank the water of 433: these 1293 brooks and rivulets pour themselves
into the Isar through 103 direct tributaries, and not these alone, but
the waters of 136 lakes are embraced within the Isar system! Yet the Isar
is only one of 34 branches of the Danube, and of the fourth rank even
among them, and the Danube is by no means one of the great rivers of
the globe. A short but navigable stream can have great influence over
a territory limited in extent, and may make a long but shallow stream
sink into insignificance in respect of comparative importance to the
world. There are some great streams which are of first magnitude in all
their characteristics—rivers which drain millions of square miles in
their course to the sea. The number of such is small, however; there are
scarcely fifty on the whole globe. Besides these, there is a large number
of rivers much shorter, and of much less volume, but not deficient in the
attributes which give a stream value to man, and which serve to mediate
between highlands and lowlands, to fulfill the needs of navigation and
to drain regions of more or less magnitude. These can be classed in four
ranks: in the first place absolutely, and in the second place in relation
to each continent. Yet, in classing them, it is necessary always to keep
in mind that it is not size alone which gives a river its value, but a
combination of all its characteristics, and its relative influence on the
country through which it runs.
Looking at the direction of streams, we observe that there are some which
flow northerly, as for instance those of Siberia, the Nile, the Rhine,
the Elbe, and the Weser; there are those which flow southward—the Indus,
Ganges, Euphrates, La Plata, Mississippi, and Volga, for example; there
are those flowing eastward—Hoang-ho and Yang-tse-Kiang, the Amazon, the
Orinoco, and the Danube, for instance; and some westward, instances of
which may be found in the Gihon and Sihon, the Senegal, Gambia, Niger,
the Colorado, the Seine, Loire, Garonne, and the Spanish rivers which
enter the sea in Portugal.
And this characteristic, trite and unmeaning as it may at first seem,
establishes, for the area which these rivers water, very diverse
conditions. In like manner, too, their position, in relation to the
oceans into which they flow, is very influential, in consequence of
the action of the tide upon the lower course. The emergence of their
head-waters at various altitudes, whether on plateaus of the first or
second class, or on mountain tops covered with perpetual snow, gives rise
to a great diversity of relations, that makes no one stream on the earth
twin brother to any other. Rivers have an individuality which claims
recognition, although they are usually summed up in one category.
This diversity in rivers becomes more apparent from a study of the
diversified form of the terraces, or grades of transition, through which
they pass on their way to the sea.
The great basin of the Nile is divided into three distinct parts or
grades—Abyssinia, Nubia, and Egypt; and each of them has long been
studied historically and physically. The great basin of the Rhine is
also naturally divided into three grades—the Swiss highlands, the German
moderate plateau, and the lowlands of Holland. In a similar manner there
may almost always be traced in rivers three natural grades, and where
they do not have, as in the cases just cited they do have, a historical
significance, their physical influence is not hard to trace and to follow
into all its analogies.
The word water-shed, now a familiar one, is applied to that point
of division where contiguous springs pour their water in different
directions. It is not even in a mountainous country necessarily
coincident with the highest points of the chain, though it may be; the
valleys may slope in such a way as to have more influence in determining
the direction of running water than the mountains hard by. Every stream
has its own water-shed system, and this system is the real boundary of
its basin. If we trace this basin to its very limits on the highlands,
we may find, not a mile away, the beginnings of another river, which
shall flow in just the contrary direction, as for example in the case of
the Rhine and Rhone, the Volga and the Dwina. The sources of the Missouri
and of the Columbia lie close together, not a quarter of an hour’s walk
apart; yet the waters of one flow into the Atlantic, of the other into
the Pacific, and their mouths are almost 2500 miles apart. The Mongolians
hold the water-shed in such estimation that they throw up a heap of
stones wherever one occurs, establish it a shrine for prayer; and the
Toongooses of Siberia never pass by one without casting a cedar branch
upon the stone heap, that, to use their expression, “the holy mountain
that parts the waters may not lessen, but increase.”
The main channel is the stream proper; the others are tributaries. The
longest tributaries coming in from the region where the river proper
rises, can be grouped intimately with the source of the main current,
hardly distinguished from it in relative importance—the two, for
instance, in the Nile, the five in the Indus, two in the Ganges, three
in the Amazon, etc. All form in their confluence the real channel of the
river. And the entire body of tributaries, taken in conjunction with
the river proper, forms the river system, and the district which they
all drain is their true reciprocal. The two, in their mutual action and
reaction, form a whole, and are always thought of together. The source
and the mouth are the beginning and the end of the whole system; the main
channel and the circuit of water-shed, the center and the circumference
of it. All the tributaries in their union constitute what may be called
the arterial system of the river basin; the form of each and the
characteristics of each are analogous to those of the whole, only in
reduced pattern. The network which all the tributaries make is often
surprisingly intricate. The symmetry with which the main characteristics
of a river system are carried into the details, even of its smallest
accessories, can only be compared to that observable in the architectural
regularity of a tree, as it expands from the main trunk into the
countless symmetrical branches.
There are some rivers which are entirely independent of tributaries—which
pursue their way to the sea entirely alone. Such rivers, however, never
belong to the first class; they are always of subordinate magnitude,
and the humblest of them are mere coast torrents, like those west of
the Andes. Others find their way to no ocean, but lose themselves in an
inland sea or lake, as the Volga does in the Caspian; as the Gihon and
the Sihon do in the Aral; as the Jordan does in the Dead Sea. Others
disappear in sand wastes or in morasses; such are the rivers of the
African steppes. Others are blocked up, as it were, by the tidal wave of
the ocean, and are thus converted into estuary lakes.
There are some rivers, also, which remain equally or nearly equally full
the whole year through; there are others which have their seasons of
overflow: the Nile, for instance, and many rivers whose basin lies within
the region of tropical rains; there are temporary rivers, now full,
now empty, which, if they do not leave, like the torrents of Arabia, a
perfectly dry bed, are traced in the dry season by a row of stagnant
lakes, such, for example, as are found in the swampy lands of Australia.
Rivers more closely considered.
What is peculiar to every river is determined by the abundance of its
sources, the forking of its tributaries, the rate of its descent, the
distance from its most remote springs to its mouth, the main direction
of its course, and the greater or less sinuosities of its channel, as
occasioned by the structure of the country which it traverses.
The abundance of its waters is conditioned by the greater or less amount
of snow which finds the highest springs, the heavy rains which it
receives in tropical countries, and the exceedingly varied influences
which temperate climates may exert upon it. The fall softens from the
rush and plunge of the mountain district, first to an arrowy swiftness,
then to a moderate course, then to a beautiful gliding motion, to end
with an almost imperceptible flow just before entering the sea.
The direction of rivers is determined:—
1. By the structure of the region which they traverse, the layers being
in some places horizontal, and in others tilted to a vertical position;
here grouped, as in the granite Carpathian chain, in such a way that the
river courses which begin there run in parallel lines, radiating like
the rays of a star from a central point; then grouped in such a manner
that a stream may receive tributaries from two nearly contiguous ranges,
as among the spurs of the Ural Mountains, the Rhone in Valais, receiving
waters from the Bernese Alps at the north, and Pennine Alps at the south;
the Isère, in like manner, the Upper Rhine in Grisons, the whole Upper
Inn in Tyrol.
2. The direction is also determined by the mutual action of tributaries
and the main stream at the point of confluence. Very often the union of
two powerful currents gives rise to a third direction, according to the
law known as the parallelogram of the forces. This generally occurs when
no obstacle stands in the way of their taking a normal course, and is
exemplified in the cases of the Kama and Volga, the Theiss and Danube,
the Rhine and Main, the Saone and Rhone. Where an obstacle stands in the
way, their abnormal direction is manifested in the abrupt bendings of the
river bed. An instance is found in the bending of the Rhone northward
as it emerges from Valais. Its lower course, from Lake Geneva to Lyons,
betrays the same angularities, resulting from the obstacles which it
meets and cannot remove. The Rhine, breaking through the Jura at Basel,
is another instance; the Rhine, between Bingen and Caub, and the Dal-Elf,
in Sweden, also exemplify the same.
In case that rivers meet in their course large masses of stratified
rocks, they force their way through them in a zigzag direction, making
sharp angles always, and not unfrequently right angles, even. Instances
of this are found in the Rhine, between Mayence and Coblentz, and in the
Moselle, between Treves and Coblentz. When the river passes beyond these
rocky barriers, and meets with obstructions of a more movable character,
it crowds them more gently and gracefully aside, and leaves a path more
sinuous and wave-like; and yet more gentle are its curves, as it opens a
way through the plains where nothing obstructs its course. The last is
strikingly exemplified in the rivers of eastern Europe, especially in all
those of middle and southern Russia. The practised eye can determine the
structure of the soil with considerable certainty, by merely tracing the
course of rivers when represented on a faithful map. For, unless there
be other reasons to prevent, rivers always force their way where there
is the least resistance to overcome. In stratified rocks, where the tilt
is so great as to make the strata vertical, the river beds usually run
parallel with the lines of stratification. Instances are found among
the Alpine rocks, in Valais along the Rhone, in Tyrol along the Inn and
Adige, in Grisons, and among the Jura along the Rhine. Where the lines of
stratification are horizontal, rivers usually take their course through
the most marked ravines and fissures.
In most mountains, however, the lines of stratification are neither
vertical nor horizontal, but intermediate between them, more or less
sloping, as in most marked ranges of central Germany, for example. In
such cases, the process of excavating river beds has been determined by
various circumstances and conditions, and the direction of their channels
does not alone depend upon the extent and tilt of the strata, but also on
other forces which have exercised a favoring or a retarding influence on
their direct course. The stratification has its influence, indeed, but it
is general rather than specific. Still, it is very largely felt when it
happens to coincide in its main lines with the direction of the mountain
range, but is comparatively insignificant when it does not. We have
instances in the Alps where the axis of stratification coincides with
that of the main chain, from south-southwest to north-northeast; in the
Jura, from southwest to northeast; and in the Scandinavian range, from
south to north.
The different geological formations found in mountain districts have
a very important influence in determining the direction of rivers.
Mountains do not generally consist of rocks of one kind of structure,
but of several. What stratification is to mountains whose geological
formation is the same throughout, the superposition of different kinds
of rocks is to those of composite materials. The layers may be divided
into superior, inferior, and adjacent. These usually vary in respect to
age, and may be traced in a regular geological seniority, as for example
sandstone, gypsum, limestone, gray-wacke, and granite. These formations
are either closely contiguous, or are separated merely by valleys, as
for instance in the Carpathian chain, where the central granite knot is
separated by valley plains from the more southern limestone chain; an
example of contiguity is found on the west spur of the same Carpathian
range. Wherever mountain systems of varied geological structure approach
each other very closely, rivers seldom break their way through either
one, but find their way along the roots of the mountains, till at last
they come to a less confined place. Such river courses are often very
large and deep; for the mountain streams which meet and are hemmed in
by the narrow pass between the two contiguous ranges sweep all loose
obstructions before them, and not only leave their path clear, but
continually deepen it. We find this in the Ural, the Isère, the Rhone,
Aar, Inn, in all the long and winding Alpine valleys, and in the Ebro,
fed by the parallel ridges of the Pyrenees. The circle of rivers which
girds the central Carpathian knot is an illustration of what was said
a moment since. The Poprad, Dunayic, Arva, and Waag are found where
the true Carpathian chain, which is granitic, is closely contiguous to
subordinate ranges of limestone and gray-wacke. In any accurate map,
the long, winding course between these two chains may be easily traced.
Looking at the point where the Hartz Mountains and the Thuringian ridge
touch at their roots, the groups are seen to be insulated, as it were,
by the rivers which gird their bases. In the great streams of southern
and southwestern Asia, too, the line of the water-courses can be traced
along the narrow valleys which separate main from subordinate mountain
chains; the Terek, Kooban, Koor, Aras, Euphrates, Tigris, Indus, Ganges,
and probably the Chinese rivers, are all examples of this.
Some streams seem to be entirely independent of all these laws in forming
their channels, and to have their direction assigned to them by the
freaks of nature, such, for instance, as fissures in mountain chains and
clefts, which remain to indicate ancient convulsions.
The entire course of a river is divided into three distinct and
subordinate courses—the upper, middle, and lower. To these and their
respective tributaries correspond the three grades of transition found
on the banks, and which have already been alluded to. Not only the total
amount of fall in the river bed, but also the angle of inclination,
and the whole complex of phenomena in the basin, are reciprocal to
the threefold character of transition in almost every hydrographical
system in the world. Still, the variety of relations which arise from
the combination of different elements is so variable, that an almost
infinite diversity arises in the characteristics of rivers, and these
characteristics always vary, too, according as found in the upper,
middle, or lower course.
Upper Course of Rivers.
This begins at the ridge of the water-shed, and extends to the limits
where the river emerges from the most rocky highlands. It depends for
its existence upon the greater fall in the river bed there than lower
down. At the upper course, therefore, rivers which may flow in exactly
opposite directions are brought into direct neighborhood. The farther
they advance from the water-shed the more they recede from each other.
In the High Forest south of the Carpathian chain, and in the Bory Morass
north of it, the waters which flow into the Baltic and into the Black
Seas spring from the ground side by side. The name given to the districts
where the head-waters of large and navigable rivers part is usually the
French word portages, the English word transports being little used in
that connection, although all, the German Trageplatze and the Russian
Wolok, involve the idea of _carrying_, of porterage, from the head-waters
of one stream to those of another. The lowest parts of a water-shed, the
passes of a high mountain range, for example, the intermediate vales of
lower ones, and the most elevated plains in flat districts, are the most
suitable for the purpose of canal building, to serve as a connecting link
between the sources of divergent streams; as, for instance, the canal
which is proposed to connect the Baltic and the Black Seas by uniting
the Vistula and Danube, the tributaries, the Poprad, Hernad, and Theiss
being the channel of communication up to the mountains where a canal
is to pass over the water-shed formed by the valleys of the Carpathian
chain. Such a communication is the most available which can be made
between the opposite sides of a mountain range. The practicability of
constructing such canals depends very largely upon the degree of fall in
the upper course of the connected rivers, as determined by the slope of
the bed toward the horizon. The grade of most mountains’ sides, which
stand back to back, is unlike on the two sides: steep on the one, slight
on the other. Upon this depends the greater or less wildness of the
streams flowing through their upper course. In the Ural chain the slope
is steep on the eastern side, gradual on the western; in the Caucasus,
steep on the north, gradual on the south; in the Carpathian and the
Alps, just the reverse—steep on the south, gradual on the north. The rate
of fall varies; but, in general, it lies between an angle of 2° and an
angle of 6°, taking the entire upper course into account. On the very
steep north side of the Pyrenees, the fall is between 3° and 4°; on the
south side of the Alps, from the summits of Mont Rosa and Mont Blanc to
the plains of Piedmont, it is 3¾°. It is far less in more unimportant
ranges. And this angle, it should be remarked, is an average; it is the
resultant of a great number of special, short slopes, which vary from the
perpendicularity of an occasional waterfall to the equally occasional
tranquillity of a meadow-like flow. The incidental slopes are, of course,
much greater than the average of all. A grade of 15° is very steep; it
is the maximum that can be ascended by a beast of burden. A grade of
8° is the maximum for wheeled vehicles; all roads must be less sloping
than this. To accomplish the ascent of 35°, a man on foot must have some
assistance. A grade of 44° in the high peaks of Mexico and Peru, Humboldt
found inaccessible; only where the growth of trees and shrubs gave him an
opportunity of planting his feet, could he climb where it was a little
steeper than 44°. The Carpathians and the Pyrenees, on account of their
steepness and their scanty verdure, are very difficult to ascend. The
Alps are much more easily climbed than the mountains just mentioned, in
consequence of their abundant growth of turf and undergrowth. The richest
Alpine meadows of Switzerland have an inclination not exceeding 20°; at a
greater slope the vegetation becomes more sparse. The grade on which it
is possible for earth to cling, Lehman fixes at 45°, and considers that
the normal slope, because at a greater angle, rain glances or ricochets.
But Lehman is not right in assigning this as the normal slope possible
for earth to cling and vegetation to grow, for on the Alps soil adheres
and plants get a footing at a much steeper angle than 45°; in fact, the
modifications in the appearance of the Alps, by the growth of trees
clinging to steeper slopes than this, are very marked. From the highest
possible grade where vegetation can get a footing, we advance to the
sheer perpendicular.
The upper course of rivers is characterized rather by plunges than by
equable flowing, and determines its way by a series of leaps through
zigzag cuts and various ravines. It traverses bowl-shaped hollows and
narrow defiles, and makes its way even through mountain lakes, depositing
in them its residuum of sand and gravel which it has caught up and swept
along. In its wild plunges it draws into its body considerable air, which
appears as bubbles, and makes it a white mass of foam. By-and-by it
reaches more level ground, becomes clear as crystal, and assumes a rich
emerald green, or a deep blue. It is unnavigable, wild, romantic, and is
always found in mountain districts.
The brawling brooks of Salzburg, of the Pyrenees, and of Sweden and
Norway, all partake of this character. Those of the Pyrenees have a fall
of an inch in every foot, and in some places cataracts of two or three
feet. The same is observable in the Alps, where the continual stir of the
water mixes in air enough to turn all into a mass of silvery-white foam.
The Carpathian waters are the same before they reach the high plateaus
lying at their feet. The Alpine lakes, too, which lie within the upper
course of the rivers which feed them, have a considerable fall; Lago
Maggiore, for instance, has a descent of 52 feet between Magadino and
Arona.
In all the most marked mountain systems of Europe, the upper course of
the rivers is especially prominent. Northern Europe is characterized by
the fact that its streams have, throughout the most of their length, the
peculiarities of the upper course—whether observed in northern Russia, in
all Sweden, Norway, and Scotland.
With the exit of the river from the mountain district, all these
relations are changed, and a new character begins.
The Middle Course.
Far more moderate is the descent after the river emerges from the
mountain region, or where it has never experienced the wild turbulence of
the upper course, as is the case in most of the rivers of eastern Europe.
In the middle course the angle of inclination is much modified. The upper
Main has a fall of 342 feet within three miles after leaving Fichtel
Mountains. The descent of most of the rivers of central Germany is much
less than this. The Neckar, whose sources lie 2084 feet above the sea, in
passing to Heilbronn, which is 450 feet above the sea, falls at the rate
of about an inch to every 32 feet. The fall of the Saale, after leaving
the Fichtel range, is about 20 feet to the mile; that of Naab, about 14;
that of the Eger, less; and that of the upper Oder, in Silesia, still
less. More gradual yet is the slope of the Volga bed, which falls but
1400 in about 2050 miles, considerably less than a foot to a mile; and in
its lower course its inclination must be still less.
The effects of the current must necessarily be very different from those
observable under the influence of the dashing and wayward upper course.
The name River Bed is given to the entire breadth of the hollow which
holds the river, and which varies in width according to the stage of the
water, especially in large streams like the great rivers of America. The
Mississippi is a mile wide at Natchez at low water, at high water almost
thirty. The Orinoco, at St. Thomas, is three miles wide at low water, at
high water it is over seventy. In the Volga and the Danube the stage of
water makes great differences in the width of the river bed. In summer
the depth and breadth are, as a rule, less than in winter.
The Channel differs from the river bed; it is the part of the river bed
which gives life and motion to the whole current. In the upper course the
channel and the river bed generally coincide; in the middle and lower
courses, on the contrary, the channel occupies but a very small share
of the whole bed, but yet it determines the direction, amount of fall,
and the rapidity of the stream. It lies usually not in the middle of the
river bed, but on one side; it passes, however, from bank to bank; it
is indicated by the movement of ships, which always follow it, and it
lies uniformly adjacent to the boldest shore. It widens the whole river
bed toward one side, and not toward both; and so streams which traverse
great plains, like the great Hungarian one, for instance, do not now run
through the middle, but course along at the base of the marginal bluffs.
In all such cases, it will be found that the channel hugs the boldest
side of the bed. All the four Carpathian rivers, as they wind out between
the main range and the subordinate ranges, have their steepest shore, not
on the side of the loftiest, but on the side of the boldest mountains,
and these are the ones of the subordinate range. So, in the plains which
lie between the Swiss Alps and the Jura, the bold sides of the river bed
lie on the side of the bolder though less important chain, and not on the
side of the Alpine meadows. The bold banks of the Ebro are not on the
side of the Pyrenees and their plains, but on the south side. All the
streams of South and Middle Russia have, therefore, on the east side,
their low banks, on the west the bold ones; and this, because the most
extensive plains lie on the eastern side.
In the more level tracts the windings of rivers are very much increased
in magnitude. These windings check the current. The serpentine course
is characteristic of rivers in their middle course, and it is repeated,
though on a small scale, in every meadow brook. The serpentine course of
rivers gives rise to countless islands and intervals: as, for example,
between Bâle and the Rhinegau, but, with very few exceptions, no lakes,
the characteristic feature of the upper course of rivers. But the broad
meadow lands of the middle course very often indicate in the clearest
manner that they were once lakes of considerable magnitude, which have
subsided and left their basin a dry plain. An example may be found in the
meadow land of the Rhine, from Bâle to Bastberg, below Strasbourg, and
again from Ladenburg, in the Palatinate, to Bingen. So on the Danube,
from Ulm to Passau, Lintz, and Kloster Newburg, and again from Pesth
to Beloro Semlin, as far, in fact, as the narrows at Orsova. The same
feature is met in the middle course of the Volga, from Tver eastward to
the west Ural, and southward to Saratov and Kamishin, where it breaks
through the Obstshei-Syrtis, which was, doubtless, once the barrier of
a great inland lake. In these basins, now dry, there is a surprising
uniformity of characteristics wherever on the globe they occur. They
differ but little, whether found in the middle course of the Ganges,
the Indus, the Euphrates, or the American rivers. The still, incomplete
stream of the St. Lawrence shows us, even in the present, what the
ancient conditions were before they solved the problem of their complete
development. There, a row of such lakes as formerly existed in the now
fruitful plains of the middle Rhine, the middle Danube, and central
Russia, are the five great Canadian lakes. They still constitute the
middle course of the river, and one pours itself directly into another,
either over a gentle slope of land, or in a great cataract and rapids,
such as we do not observe in the middle course of other streams, which
are not, like the St. Lawrence, incomplete. Only when waterfalls
disappear can the inclination of rivers become a gradual one. The
uniformity of the grade of their channel is, therefore, a sign that they
have attained to a complete development. In such, slight rapids remain,
instead of the ancient cataracts. The existence of those primeval falls
we find in all rivers, even in the Rhine and Danube. The rounded faces
of the rocks which once were the barriers to the rivers’ course, and the
debris once swept down from the mountains and deposited over the bottom
of the ancient lakes, show this.
The strongest instance of cataracts, resembling the ancient ones which
connected the lakes of nearly all the great rivers of the globe, is seen
in the fall of Niagara. That cataract is an epitome of the falls of all
other streams. The Niagara River conducts the water of Lake Erie, by a
channel 33 miles long, to Lake Ontario, 300 feet below it. At the Great
Fall the river plunges about 150 feet into a chasm which it has hollowed
out from the soft stone between the two lakes. The cataract was formerly
seven miles below its present location, and has been observed to be
steadily working backward since its discovery. In the distant future it
will, doubtless, wholly disappear, as all others have done. For the
Niagara is merely a striking instance of a principle once universal, but
which merely worked itself out on a smaller scale. The more fragments of
rock and mountain debris were swept along, the sooner were the primitive
falls rent away by the wash and the percussion, and the development of
the middle course completed.
The places of transition which lie between the higher dry basins and
the lower ones are still to be traced in almost all rivers; not by
great waterfalls, which belong only to the upper course, but by simple
rapids. They are more or less characterized by narrows, with steep, rocky
banks, where, doubtless, cataracts existed in the primitive times. They
are recognizable by this feature, that they are uniformly alike, and
distribute their force equally on both sides of the river. Examples may
be found on both sides of the Rhine, in the narrows between Bingen and
Bacharach; on the Elbe, from Tetshen to Shandau, Dresden, and Meissen.
In these places the rivers have a very tortuous course, and there are
whirls and rapids (rapides, sauts, of the French; saltos, randales, of
the Spanish; schewerin of the Russians) which impede navigation. In these
localities the entire aspect of nature is changed, and the landscape
becomes exceedingly beautiful. Here we find ancient narrow roadways;
here are places of great historic interest, and of great interest to the
naturalist, assuredly not of accidental origin, but in close connection
with the development of the river bed, and in close analogy with all
places of transition from highland to lowland.
We may, perhaps, mark these features in all the rivers of the earth.
A knowledge of them is essential to understand thoroughly the natural
development of a river system in its true parts; unfortunately, they
have as yet been too little observed and described. Among European rivers
they are found in the Guadiana, at the Saltos de Lobo; in the Douro,
at the rapids below Torre de Moncorvo; in the Ebro, at Sastago, below
Saragossa; in the Rhone, the rapids below Lyons, between the granite
banks of Pierre Encise; in Loire, by Iguerando, below Roanne; in the
Rhine, below Strasbourg, and at the narrows at Bingen, near St. Goar and
Andernach; in the Weser, at the Porta Westphalica; in the Danube, at
Grein, at Kloster Newburg, and at Yachtali, Drenir Kapi, (Iron Gate,) and
Orsova; and in the Dnieper, the thirteen waterfalls below Yekaterinslav.
The same features are repeated in all the other streams of Europe and
the remaining continents. More close investigation of them will lead to
important results, concerning the structure of the earth in the regions
intermediate between plateaus and lowlands.
As a high grade, great cataracts, sharp and bold cliffs, and mountain
lakes characterize the upper course of streams, so rapids, dry lake
basins, and a meandering channel characterize their middle course. Below
the lowest rapids are found the level plains or lowlands which give
rivers their third characteristic.
Lower Course.
As soon as the rivers break through the lowest range of hills which once
beset their course, they deposit the debris which they bear with them,
and begin the formation of diluvial plains. We find in the soil of all
level places along the middle, as well as the lower course of rivers,
traces of the same kinds of rock and minerals, which characterize the
mountains where they rise. The rate of fall in the lower course of rivers
is so slight as to be almost imperceptible. Relatively, it is the
greatest in the Volga; from Kamishin to the Caspian the descent is more
than 150 feet, although the distance is less than 500 miles. The Senegal,
from Podor to the sea, a distance of about 200 miles, falls only about 2½
feet; the Amazon, within about the same distance, falls only 10½ feet, or
about an inch to the mile. In such rivers, therefore, the tide can flow a
very long way inland.
This gives rise to a great conflict of forces—the pressure of the stream
in its natural flow, heightened at the appropriate season by the annual
inundation, and the backward pressure of the tidal wave. Before these
forces come into equilibrium, the river bed is constantly changing. The
river proper seeks this equilibrium by a parting of its channel, dividing
into two mouths, as in the Nile, or into more than one, as in the Rhine
and Danube, or several (about 65) in the Volga. The momentum of the
stream, the resistance of the tide, and the consequent slow speed of the
current promote the fall of deposits along the lower course of rivers.
Below the surface the result of these deposits is found in sand banks
or bars; above the surface, as low, marshy land, the deltas, subject to
frequent inundation. We see this in the Rhine, the Nile, the Euphrates,
the Indus, the Ganges, the Mississippi—in all, about fourteen of the
first-class rivers of the globe. The contrary feature, single, broad
mouths not yet filled up by alluvial deposits, negative deltas, or deep
ocean inlets, can be observed in nine others of the largest rivers—the
Obi, Yenisei, St. Lawrence, Columbia, La Plata—mostly found, however, in
the north of the earth, where there is very little of the more loose and
fruitful soil which more southern rivers bear onward from the mountains
where they rise.
Another peculiarity of the lower course is seen in the extraordinary
changes in the river bed—the shifting of the channel from one side to the
other. This is the natural result of the very light and movable character
of the deposits brought down from above, and the strong pressure of the
current, which, though slow, has great momentum. In the lower course
of the Ganges, Indus, Euphrates, Nile, Rhine, and Po, these changes
can be traced as a matter of history, and, in the lapse of centuries,
have had great influence on the formation of the great plains of those
rivers’ mouths and on the people living there. With the lower course
begins the regular yearly inundations, which cover vast districts in
tropical countries; and to these inundations may be attributed the
gradual raising of the level of the plains covered by them. Hence arose
Herodotus’ descriptive phrase ποταμοὶ ἐργατιχοί, (prolific rivers.) The
great fruitfulness of these lowlands is well known. The rich alluvial
deposits have made Bengal, Babylonia, Egypt, Lombardy, Holland, and the
Netherlands the granaries of all neighboring countries.
In proportion as the mouth of great rivers resembles an inland sea,
having a strongly marked tidal flow in sympathy with the ocean, does the
whole nature of the lower course vary. The rivers whose mouths are turned
to the east and south are those which are exposed to the strongest and
the highest ocean waves. Such are Chinese, Indian, and South American
rivers, which sometimes show the result of this, 500 miles inland. The
tide extending so far into the interior facilitates navigation very much,
and transforms the lowlands along their margin into districts, which seem
transitional between true continent and oceanic islands. All the mouths
of first-class rivers which open toward the north and west are less
deeply affected by the entrance of the sea waves. To these belong most
of the European streams. Exceptional to both of these classes are the
three rivers, the Nile, Danube, and Volga, whose direction is not toward
the ocean, but toward the center of the Old World. They form a triad,
not of oceanic, but of continental streams; in them there is no ebb and
flood. Their lower course and mouths must, therefore, display different
relations from those of any other of the great rivers of the globe.
It was early remarked that not all streams, when they reach the sea, flow
at once into it, but come to a standstill. It is so with the Thames, and
with most of the North American rivers. The ocean sometimes throws a
tidal wave twenty to thirty feet high up their channel, and dams their
flow. Rivers vary exceedingly in their relations to this high barrier.
The Chinese streams are sometimes raised forty feet by it above their
normal level. This gives rise to a salt oceanic river, so to speak. It
is the same with the Thames at London. At high tide the surface is salt,
while the water at the bottom is fresh. The struggle with the downward
current and the upward current is very often visible. It is so in the
Orinoco, the Ganges, in the Chinese rivers; most of all, in the St.
Lawrence.
In all the continents there are many small rivers and rivulets which
have no normal mouths; which lose themselves in the earth before they
reach the sea. Sometimes they pursue a subterranean course, and emerge
again, though usually with a changed name. Among the best-known of such
instances is the Perte du Rhone, below Geneva, where the river flows
for a little way directly beneath a spur of the Jura Mountains. In like
manner, the Meuse, which loses itself in the earth at Bazoilles, in the
Vosges Mountains, west of Nancy, flows in a subterranean bed as far as
Noncourt, nine miles distant, and then emerges. The phenomenon is common
among the Jura, and in the limestone cliffs which feed the Drave and
Save. The tourist meets almost hourly there some brook or little river
disappearing beneath the ground. On the high Asiatic plateau of Gobi,
68 rivers are known, which disappear in a similar manner; in the north
of Thibet there are 115 such. They are common, also, in the Chinese
province of Yun-nan, on the Persian highland, and on the plateau of the
Bechuanas, in South Africa. In South America, between the Andes and the
La Plata, there are twelve lakes without effluents, the greatest being
Lake Titicaca. In Central America, there is the Lake of Mexico.
The division of the whole length of a river into the three courses—the
upper, middle, and lower—and the proportionate share which each of these
bears to the whole, depends upon the height at which the source stands
above the mouth. The greater or less extent of the transition grades,
and the greater or less extent of navigable waters, also depend on the
same. The upper course has, as a general rule, too many hinderances to
be very valuable for navigation; it is, at best, adapted only to boats.
The more united and deeper middle course offers facilities for vessels of
considerable draught; yet the frequent sunken rocks and eddies and rapids
are a great impediment to navigation. We find it so in the Rhine, below
the Falls of Schaffhausen, as far as Bâle; and in its middle course, at
Bingen and St. Goar; in the Danube, also, at Grein and Orsova.
The lower course, on the other hand, opens like a broad fresh-water sea,
that sometimes allows large ships to sail 50, 200, and even 500 miles
inland. These maritime streams ought to be discriminated from others;
the Chinese call them “sons of the ocean.”
The proportions in the length of the upper, middle, and lower course of
rivers are exceedingly variable; and equally variable of course are the
transition lands apportioned to each, and forming its natural supplement.
The upper course of the Volga is very short, the middle very long,
and the lower very short. The same relative proportions, though with
very different dimensions, are found in the Vistula, the Ganges, the
Euphrates, and the Mississippi. The upper course of the Rhine, on the
contrary, is very long, through all Switzerland to Bâle; the middle also
very long, to Cologne; the lower, very short, to Rotterdam and the sea.
It is the same with the Nile, the Danube, and the Indus. In the Marañon
or Amazon the upper course is very short, the middle and lower very long.
In the Chinese rivers Hoang-ho and Yang-tse-Kiang all the three courses
are relatively long.
The length of the middle and lower courses, although important
conditions of navigation, are not the only ones. Others are not to be
overlooked,—the amount of water, depth of channel, and the like. These,
however, are not capable of being generalized under any law, but depend
upon the individual characteristics of each stream. Every river needs,
for an exhaustive account of its features, its own monograph.
There remains but one important point to be considered—one which has
exerted a very great influence on the diversity of structure in all river
systems, controlling the area of their drainage, their volume of water,
their effect on human culture, and on the ethnographic character of the
people dwelling on their banks. It is the distance from the source to
the mouth in direct distance compared with that following the tortuous
course of the stream. The two lines almost never coincide; they generally
lie far apart. And the less they approach to coincidence, the greater
becomes the area of the river basin; the more numerous and valuable the
tributaries to the main course, the greater the volume of the stream and
the more varied and extensive its influence.
One or two examples drawn from European rivers will more fully explain
this point, to which Buache has already called attention in his
“Parallèle des fleuves.”
The mouth of the Volga is 982 miles distant from the source, in an
air-line. The distance, including all the curves of the stream, is 2012
miles, the bendings adding 1028 miles to the direct course. By this
doubling of the shortest possible distance, the area drained by it is
swollen to the enormous size of 657,000 square miles. The direct course
lies in a diagonal direction from northwest to southeast; but the real
direction is a changing one. First, it flows a short distance from north
to south, then in its middle course it has a double direction; first
eastward, toward the Ural chain, then to the south, and lastly, in its
lower course, to the southeast. Through this varied course it receives
tributaries from very remote sources, and waters a country altogether
greater than would be possible if the Volga’s course were direct from the
source to the mouth. Its basin becomes so large as to embrace a fifth of
Europe, and the stream becomes one of the longest and most available for
navigation in the continent. The vastness of the volume of water and the
wandering course have both contributed to the value of the Volga lowlands.
The exact contrast to the Volga is found in the Dniester. In the Volga
there is a maximum of windings; in the Dniester there is a minimum. The
air-line distance of the mouth of the Dniester from the source is 408
miles; the distance, including all the bends, is 450 miles; the loss in
winding is, therefore, but about 42 miles. The theoretical course of the
Dniester, _i.e._ measured by an air-line, would coincide very nearly with
its actual course. There cannot be, therefore, any distant springs whose
waters flow into its channel; its basin is one of the most contracted in
the world in consequence of its directness; and a small belt, embracing
but 32,850 square miles, comprehends the entire district that it drains,
freed from all those tributaries which make the Volga basin so important.
The Dnieper, its eastern neighbor, is 630 miles in direct distance from
the source to the mouth, but 1000 with all its windings; leaving 370
miles as the extraneous shore, which adds to the value of the basin, and
contributes to the 219,000 square miles which it drains.
The same contrast is seen elsewhere, though not on so extended a scale.
It is to be found in the Vistula, Oder, Elbe, Weser, Rhine, and Danube.
These rivers give shape to the transition terraces between broad eastern
Europe and the more contracted western portions of the continent; their
dimensions are, therefore, on a less extensive scale than in the great
Russian streams. Still, the differences in them are worthy of notice.
In the Vistula, the direct distance from the source to the mouth is
329 miles, and the real distance is 611 miles; the windings comprise,
therefore, 280 miles, or about two-thirds of the air-line from extreme to
extreme. It becomes able to receive a large number of tributaries, and
its basin is enlarged to an area of 78,402 square miles, becoming one of
the best-watered and most fruitful on the globe.
In the Oder, the direct distance from the source to the mouth is about
the same as in the Vistula. But while the latter frequently changes its
course, running first northward, then eastward to the Sau, then northward
again to the Bug, then westward to the Drewenz, and lastly northward,
and so gains a very large basin of drainage, the former is unvarying in
its course from southeast to northwest; so that the direct line drawn
from extreme to extreme, as the bird flies, is nearly coincident with
the actual course of the river. The windings do not, at most, comprise
one-third of the whole length of the stream, and the basin drained by its
tributaries is at least a third less than that of the Vistula, and is
proportionately less valuable to the interests of the world.
In the Elbe the air-line length is 394 miles, greater therefore, than
that of the Vistula or the Oder; its length, including its windings,
is about the same as that of the Vistula. The area of its basin lies
therefore between the two, 61,320 square miles; it is more valuable,
therefore, than that of the Oder, and less valuable than that of the
Vistula.
Still less striking in this respect are the Weser and the Ems; but the
Rhine assumes a prominence, in relation to the value of its basin,
greater than even the Vistula. The direct distance from the source of
the Rhine to its mouth is 423 miles, the actual distance 705 miles; the
windings comprise, therefore, more than two-thirds of the entire length
of the stream. The number of tributaries is uncommonly large, the area
drained is increased about 9855 miles beyond that of the Vistula; and the
entire basin (88,257 square miles) is one which has been of the greatest
import in the history of all central Europe.
All the rivers and all the terrace lands of the globe exhibit the same
relation which we have been briefly indicating in a few European ones;
in some of the great rivers of the world they are to be traced on a scale
of grandeur of which in those which have been touched upon scarcely a
suggestion is given.
But not in this feature, added to what has been already said, do we
exhaust the fruitful subject of Rivers, and the terrace systems which
accompany them from their source to the sea. The diversity of phenomena
traceable in them had hid their unity from geographers, and prevented
their tracing general principles in so manifold details. The dry, linear
representations on most of our maps have blinded the eye to the living
and organic relations which river systems enter into, and through which
they exert a great influence. They must be examined singly; they must be
studied in their real character and individuality, and each must have its
own monograph, before we can fully know the value of river systems to the
world.
We have now to touch upon one or two points omitted, thus far, in our
discussion of the hydrography of the continents.
The stream is a unit; most streams have a single channel as the last
goal of their descent. Others may have double channels, which contend
with each other for the superiority. If they are double only for a part
of the whole length of the river, and in the upper or middle course
flow together, and form one main channel, they can be called twin
head-streams. We have an example in the Danube and Inn, which are equally
long and equally large. Other instances are the Rhone and the Saone, the
Volga and Kama, the Missouri and Mississippi, the Blue and White Nile,
the Ganga and Jumna. Others have triple head-streams; as, for example,
the Hither, Middle, and Farther Rhine; the Ucayale, Huallaga, and
Marañon, which combine in the middle course to form the Amazon. There
may be even five head-streams, as in the Indus. Often it is only through
the usage of speech, often through ancient and exploded errors, that the
name of one of the head-streams is given to the whole river.
If the double channels continue through the whole length of the river
system, they belong to a different category; they become true double
systems, and have a double influence on the development of the whole
range of terraces from source to base. From their meeting in a common
bay or gulf at the mouth, they may be called sister-streams; and, from
the territory which they inclose between them, the Mesopotamia, they
may be called Mesopotamic streams. Between such double streams some of
the greatest States of Asia lie. Universally known, on account of their
influence on Asiatic culture, are the Euphrates and Tigris uniting in the
Persian Gulf, Ganges and Brahmapootra uniting in the Bay of Bengal, Gihon
and Sihon in the Sea of Aral, Hoang-ho and Yang-tse-Kiang encompassing
the Central Flowery Country of the Chinese Empire, and meeting in a
common delta. These double streams are mostly met in Asia, and they have
exercised a great influence on the whole growth of oriental civilization.
In South America there is yet another and more complex form yet of river
system. The Amazon is connected with the Orinoco by means of the little
cross-river Cassiquiare. By this connection the middle course of both
rivers is made more available to navigation than it would otherwise have
been. Such cross-streams may be found, though on a smaller scale, in
other continents; in Africa, for example, between the Senegal and the Rio
Grande. There a network is made between the parallel rivers, but it is
available for navigation only in the wet seasons. In Central Africa there
seems to be a similar phenomenon between the eastern tributaries of Lake
Tchad and the western tributaries of the Bahr el Abiad or White Nile,
though this rests on the authority of the Arabs. In India there appears
to be a similar connection between the middle course of the Indus and the
Jumna, and so the Ganges, by the mediation of the Sarasvati or Histara
and the Gharghara. There may have been the same in Central China, between
the Hoang-ho and the Kiang, where the Imperial Canal now runs; and a
similar feature may be found in the Lithuanian marshes, connecting the
Vistula and Dnieper river systems, through the mediation of the Bug and
the Przypec. The skill of man has, in many places, accomplished the same
end by the construction of canals.
Although all rivers, in the course of their development, follow the
universal law which leads them from their source, however high, to
the sea, yet there is, even in their descent, scope for exceedingly
varied phenomena. It is not necessary that everywhere a strongly-marked
line of water-shed should exist, but often, as in all the more level
plateaus, there are broad, neutral plains which perform the function of
water-sheds, though possessing no decisive character. It is so through
a great part of Central Asia, in the low plains of Australia, probably
in a large part of Africa, and so markedly in America, that all lines of
water-shed wholly disappear, and the rivers flow confusedly together,
without any system, and in obedience to no law.
Some rivers come down the sides of high mountains in torrents, then
course around in a long, winding course, turning out for all obstacles,
and at last find the sea. Others are entirely unlike them. The Ganges
flows from the south side of the Himalaya Mountains, and courses along
their base, following the direction of the chain in a southeasterly
direction, till it reaches the Bay of Bengal. The Indus springs from the
north side of the Himalaya, flows northwest over the plateau of Little
Thibet as far as Iskardo, then breaks through the whole chain to pour
itself out upon the lowlands of India, the Punjaub, and Mooltan. Dashing
its way through the most formidable barriers, it is entirely unlike the
gentle Ganges, which pursues its tranquil course through the plains,
meeting no barrier in its entire length. The Indus, so long as it remains
north of the Himalaya, traverses a plateau 10,000 feet above the sea;
while the Ganges, even at Delhi, is but 1000 feet above the sea. Both
rivers, although represented in precisely the same way upon the maps,
have an entirely different physical character.
The same difference in structure occurs in the streams of other
continents, and even in those of Central Europe, though on a less
colossal scale. There are, therefore, classes of rivers, and they ought
to be just as sharply discriminated as the classes in botany and zoology.
Plateau streams, such as the Danube, as far as the Lower Austrian and
Hungarian plains, and the Saone, down to its confluence with the Rhone,
pass through high, uniform plains with little fall. They are genuine
mountain followers, springing from the verge of the chain and crossing
along its base, the Saone taking the west side of the Alps, as the Danube
does the northern, and the Po the southern.
The rivers which force their way through mountain ranges form a second
class. The Rhine, a free child of the Alps, from its source to the sea,
breaks through all the ranges up to the Jura; then it forces a path
through all the mountains of Central Germany, till it comes to its lower
course. It may, therefore, be classified with the Indus. It leaves
the Alps suddenly at Bâle, and opens a new and romantic way through
no insignificant obstacle, and is everywhere a conqueror. That is the
peculiarity of the Rhine.
Two streams of analogous nature, though less marked in their
characteristics, are the Elbe and the Weser. But these both rise, not
among the Alps, but amid the German mountains. They lack, therefore, the
exceedingly romantic character of Alpine rivers; but they do not lack in
picturesque scenery, and this they owe to the obstacles which they pass.
The Elbe has broken its way from the Bohemian ridge through the so-called
Saxon-Switzerland, as far as Meissen, and the Weser from the fissures of
the Werra and the Fulda to the Porta Westphalica. The Elbe and the Weser
make, with the Rhine, the triad of Central European rivers, which have
broken a pathway for themselves through mountains which impeded their
course.
A third class of rivers are those which encounter no obstacles, and flow
in a placid stream from the source to the mouth. They extend in Europe
from the Vistula to the Ems, including the Oder and excluding the Weser
and Elbe, and from the Rhine along the whole Atlantic coast of France,
embracing the Seine, Loire, Garonne, and the Adour—all of these having,
in greater or less degree, the same hydrographical character.
From these can be still further discriminated the subordinate coast
rivers.
To a fourth class belong all those tributary streams, of whatever size or
length, which agree in possessing no independent character, and do not
pour their waters into the sea through their own mouths.
The application of this system of classification can be applied to the
streams and their accompanying terrace lands in the other continents. But
these observations may suffice to indicate the general principles which
we would apply to the study of rivers, and leave to the student their
further application.
Review.
The great typical forms already considered, highland, plateau, mountain,
lowland, terrace, and river, which all claim so large a share of
attention in studying their physical characteristics, are no less worthy
of careful attention, in consequence of their influence on human culture.
Our account would not be complete without devoting a few pages to the
consideration of the manner in which nature and history have reacted on
each other.
The most elevated highlands, the loftiest plateaus, uniform in their
aspect, immense in their extent, isolated, without trees, having the
thin soil characteristic of steppes, and useful only for grazing, are
the home of the primitive nomadic races. Without forests and without
shelter, without valleys and without water-courses, with sandy and rocky
soil, covered with a scanty vegetation, they serve only to supply food
for the gregarious animals which follow man, and to furnish a home to
wandering tribes of herdsmen. Instances are found in Central Asia, in
Toorkistan and Persia, in Central Africa, including the Galla tribes and
the Abyssinians. So, too, among the high plateaus of America, the home
of the primitive Aztecs. From such places came the first movements of
emigration; from the high plateaus of Central Asia came the wandering
Persians, Huns, Mongolians, and Turks; and the same course of emigration
was witnessed among the negro tribes of Central Africa, proceeding from
the Galla tribes. The lower highlands, less colossal in size, of more
moderate height, and of more genial temperature, have at all times
reached a certain low stage of culture, after giving a home to the nomads
from the higher plateau; but have never developed that culture to any
considerable extent. We find examples of this in the high terraces of
Bootan, the Deccan, and Persia; in Africa, among the Atlas mountains;
in Abyssinia, in the ancient Greek Arcadia, in Castile, in Arvernia,
(Auvergne,) in Gallia, in Hesse, in the Eifel, and on the Valdai hills.
In the exceedingly complex, subdivided, and romantic mountain districts
of the globe, the races have attained, by virtue of the variety of their
resources and the energy of their stock, to the highest results of
civilization, and have manifested the most independent and progressive
spirit. In such regions, hunting, working in wood, the settled life
of shepherds, working in metals, agriculture on such terrace lands as
those of Nepaul, Cashmere, Palestine, the Lebanon, Apennine, and other
ranges, fruit culture, tilling vineyards, the cultivation of all kinds
of industry, as in Central Germany and in most regions of the temperate
zone, develop most thoroughly and speedily the culture of a people. In
such occupations men learn to lean more on each other, and grow into
that diversity of occupation and division of labor, which are the latest
results of civilization. The Zend, the Sanscrit, and the Persian nations
which people the fertile tracts at the base of the Himalaya Mountains,
from Maghada, Lahore, Nepaul, and Cashmere, as far as Persepolis and
Hamadan, Susa and Shiraz, the inhabitants of the hill country of
Palestine and Syria, those of the Tehama range of mountains in Arabia,
those in the moderately elevated meadows of Gondar, as well as those in
all the European Alpine lands, Switzerland, Tyrol, Styria, as well as the
inhabitants of the mountain region of Peru and Mexico, all attain to an
early and considerably advanced state of civilization. Other nations have
found in mountains asylums in time of danger—the Tsherkeses and Ossetes
among the Caucasus, for instance, the Basques among the Pyrenees, and the
Gorals among the Carpathians.
The lowlands, as soon as the water had left them enough to make them
habitable, have become, from the first, the abodes of a teeming
population; and there has been the same blending of races in the most
ancient as in the most recently settled, in China as in Texas, and, in
truth, all North America. Often these inroads of population have been a
source of injury, as has been the case in the northern Siberian plains,
where the Finnish tribes have made their homes, and in the waste of
Sahara, where the Barbary tribes, the Bedouins, the Tibboos, and the
Tuaricks have made their retreat.
On the fruitful terraces, along the middle course of rivers, the earliest
fixed habitations and ripened culture have been attained. Through the
traditional handing down of past results, and by the habits of peace,
their inhabitants have more thoroughly subjected nature and advanced
to a higher state of civilization than the dwellers in the interior,
away from the rivers. It has been the same, in a great measure, with
the lower course, as, for instance, in Egypt, Mesopotamia, China, and
Bengal; and in Europe, in Lombardy, Holland, and the Netherlands, where,
to the efforts to recover land from the sea, have been added fishing and
commerce. On such fruitful tracts as the mouths and middle courses of
rivers water, nations could find a permanent home, and pass quickly to
all liberal and refining arts and occupations. This is clear, from the
instances of the eminent monarchies of the East, Meroe, Thebes, Memphis,
Babylon, Nineveh, Bagdad, and Mosul. So, too, on the Indus and Ganges, in
the domains of Taxila, Maghada, Benares; and later in the great empire,
whose centers were Agra and Delhi. China has arrived at its highest
civilization in the fertile district between its two greatest rivers.
Greece and Rome are marked exceptions. Their progress they owe, not to
great river basins, but to their peninsular form in the middle of the
coast of a delightful sea, full of islands and surrounded by lands in
a greater or less advanced state of civilization. England’s peculiar
maritime position has given it its wonderful vantage-ground for progress
in all human culture.
In the east of Europe, the basins of rivers have exercised the same
influence, to a certain extent, that has been hinted at above; and
Moscow, Kiev, Cracow, and Warsaw remain the seats of a civilization
which, rude as it was, owed its existence to the physical conditions of
the great Sarmatian river systems. In western Europe, the less marked
features of the country have contributed to the peculiar historical
development of the continent. The rich deltas have become the granaries
for a large part of the population, allowing industry to flow into
other channels besides agriculture. The sea-faring habits of the people
along the coast have broken up and done away with what is special and
provincial, and have conferred a cosmopolitan manner of living upon the
entire population. It was the same with the Phenicians in ancient times,
with the Portuguese in the middle ages, as it has been with the English,
Spanish, and Dutch in modern days. Fishing, navigation, and trade have
become permanent necessities of civilization. In the heart of continental
Europe, the rivers have had a great influence on the progress of nations;
the North German streams have extended their effect from the abode of the
ancient Saxons along the Baltic as far as the home of the Salic Franks on
the Scheldt, Seine, and Loire; the Danube, with its complex and important
system of terraces and lowlands, has opened communication between South
Germany and Hungary, Wallachia, and the East. The Vistula, Oder, Elbe,
and Weser have connected the homes of the old Sclavic population with the
Scandinavian coasts and the land of the Angles and Saxons at the neck of
Denmark, to the equal advantage of both. The great terrace system of the
Rhine, embracing the Odenwald, Hardt, Spessart, Taunus, Hundsrück, Eifel,
and the Siebengebirg, has thrown into the most active industrial and
commercial relations the whole district which it waters. It opened a way
to the Romans in their conquering advances before it did to the tribes of
Helvetia, Gallia, Germania, or the Lowlands: it sundered those tribes,
and kept them from preying upon each other; but, in the advance of
civilization, it has become one of the strongest bands to knit together
the central countries of Europe.
The Danube, with its extensive terrace lands, faces the east, and has,
therefore, very different relations to European history from the Rhine.
It is a double-headed river, and one of its head-streams, the one which
bears the name of the river proper, extends almost to the Rhine basin;
while the other, the Jura, has its source in Grisons, and hard by the
head-waters of the Rhine. As the Danube connects the Caspian and Black
Sea basin with western Europe, and the largest part of the Asiatic
immigrations have followed its course, the Danube has become the great
avenue between Europe and Asia. Celts, Teutons, and Romans were mingled
even before Christ, in Noricum, Vindelecia, Bavaria, and Suabia. How many
tribes may have been crowded westward by these, is unknown to us. The
same fate has happened to the people who settled there before Christ,
and the inroads of the Huns, Goths, and other tribes of similar origin,
scattered the older inhabitants over all Central Germany. We know, too,
that Sclavic, Hungarian, and Turkish incursions followed, each one
dispossessing wholly or in part the one which preceded it.
All great rivers and river systems have had a similar influence on the
course of civilization. There is not a single type feature in the world
which has not contributed its part to the advance of the human race; no
one is without its place and its function.
PART III.
The Configuration of the Continents.
All the divisions of the earth, taken together in their internal and
external connections, in their mutual action and reaction, constitute
the unity of the globe, and make apparent that it is a simple organism,
designed and created by divine skill, and intended to be the home of a
race whose culture should, in the course of centuries, unfold from the
most simple beginnings to the most complex and elaborate perfection.
We have already seen that the surface of the earth is naturally divided
into three typical features—highland, lowland, and the transition
terraces between them. From the vertical and horizontal combination of
these result the most of the geographical forms which are the subject of
our study. They form what we may, for convenience, call the bas-relief of
the globe.
At the creation of the earth every great continental division received
(as every other organism has, regarded by itself, and not in relation to
the greater whole of which it forms a part) its own special form. Each
continent is like itself alone; its characteristics are not shared by any
other. Each one was so planned and so formed as to have its own special
function in the progress of human culture. This may be seen by reviewing
the history of the past; this may fairly be suspected yet to be in the
future. The individuality of each continent raises it to a place where
its characteristics give it an independent character, and a capacity of
development of itself, up to a certain point, but never beyond it. The
continents are never to be regarded as high, dead masses of land, but as
vital and effective instruments, working upon each other ceaselessly, and
helping each other to attain the consummation intended in the counsels of
the Divine Mind. The unity of the earth, the unity of the continents, the
unity of every physical feature of the continents, and the building all
up together in a perfect symmetry and mutual adaptation of parts, is the
crowning thought of Geographical Science.
The study of first causes has no less clear illustrations in the course
of our investigations than elsewhere. It is the task of science to show
the nature and mutual relations of all the subjects which fall within
the scope of Natural History. The nature of the parts is only understood
from a comprehension of the whole; not the reverse, however. That is a
most just saying of Plato. The knowledge of the universal cannot proceed
from a knowledge of the special. As the part is formed only in view of
and on account of the whole, in its study, dissociated from the whole,
it becomes a mere unit and independent existence. From understanding the
solar system, we might arrive at a knowledge of the motion of the earth;
and so, from a knowledge of the earth, we may advance to its continents,
their relations, the characteristics of the different natural divisions,
their subdivisions, their phenomena, and their living organization,
embracing man, animals, and plants.
The external formation of the globe, or what we may call the
configuration of the continents, rests upon two characteristics—the
horizontal and vertical dimensions.
1. The horizontal dimensions are designated by the sea-line boundary—the
geographical limitation.
2. The vertical dimensions—the physical limitation—are defined by the
elevation of terraces and highlands, and they exhibit the greatest
diversity of phenomena.
The horizontal dimensions supply most of the material for our elementary
compends for political geography, which seldom make much account of
vertical dimensions, and which, by no means, penetrate to their real
value. They are commonly held to be a side-matter, to be touched lightly
upon, or wholly cast aside. But both must be thoroughly studied; for
they are mutually dependent, and are never found divorced in nature. In
order to understand them in their true relations, we will look at them
in their general aspect, discussing first the horizontal extent of the
continents, then their vertical elevation, so far as that has not already
been treated. After this twofold investigation, the character of each
continent and its subdivisions will appear in its true light.
On account of the importance of thoroughly understanding the articulation
of great districts, in contradistinction to a mere division, which
implies no organic and living correlation of parts, and which gives over
to mathematics, political history, and fortuitous circumstances the duty
of explaining geographical phenomena, it is instructive to trace the
footsteps of our science back to some of the earlier conceptions.
Eratosthenes and Polybius were aware that the south of Europe was
a series of peninsulas, the first of the two speaking of the great
peninsulas of Spain, Italy, and the Peloponnesus, the latter adding
allusions to the smaller Grecian peninsula of Sunium, the Thracian
on the Bosporus, and the Tauric Chersonesus, now known as the Crimea.
Strabo got a clearer insight into the significance of these forms,
(whose meaning Hipparchus had already tried to explain,) by discussing
them according to the sea basins which they separate. Thus the Spanish
peninsula separates the Gulf of Cadiz, at the Pillars of Hercules,
from the Tyrrhene Sea; Italy separates the Sicilian Sea from the
Adriatic; the Peloponnesus separates the Adriatic and the Euxine.
This view, though apparently simple, was really profound; for it
hinted at the great significance of the maritime coast in developing
the civilization of those countries. And Strabo goes on to add that
Italy, with its southeastern and southwestern extremities, becomes
too pointed, (δικόρυφος,) and that the eastern peninsulas of Europe
are much more jagged and articulated (ποικίλαι καὶ πολύμερεῖς) than
Polybius had conceived them to be. He entered, therefore, upon a more
minute subdivision. Strabo had already (ii. 92) called the Peloponnesus
“many-parted,” (πολυ σχεδές,) as the Laconian peninsula (Tœnarum) is
separated from Malea, the Attic from Sunium, and all southern Europe
cannot, therefore, be laid out in six parts. Of the north of Europe,
Strabo was not in a position to gain any accurate conception. Toward
the end of his second book, where he gives his reason for beginning his
description at the West, he uses the awkward but significant phrase
“polymorphous formation,” to indicate the superiority which Europe
enjoys in its complex articulation over the other continents. The
passage in Strabo runs thus: “We begin with Europe, because it is so
intricately organized, and is the most favorable for human culture, and
has conferred upon the other continents the most of the advantages which
its position has secured for itself. It is habitable almost everywhere;
there is but a little portion of its territory too cold to be the home
of man, etc. It enjoys an admirable physical conformation, for it is so
perfectly harmonized in the mingling of plains and mountains, (ὅλη γάρ
διαπεποίκιλται πεδίας τε και ὅρεδιν,) that the city and the country are
brought together, and the people educated by equally favorable conditions
to habits of great bravery. Europe is, therefore, complete in herself,
(ἀμταρκεστάτη ἐστί.)” By this Strabo indicates the independent character
of Europe, and its equality with the other continents, despite its
smaller size.
Yet for long centuries this insight of that keen observer into one of
the most weighty of all the physical conditions of the globe was almost
wholly overlooked. At length, however, Humboldt brought it out into new
life in its climatological relations, and showed that it is one of the
most important considerations to base a study of the distribution of
plants and animals upon, as well as for the study of almost all kinds of
physical phenomena. In his very instructive paper on the most prominent
reasons for the variation in temperature on the globe, published in 1827,
he uses the significant expression: “Our Europe is indebted for its mild
climate, to its position, and its articulated form.” We have adhered to
the same view, and have expanded it in a paper[7] called The Geographical
Position and Horizontal Extension of the Continents, as well as in all my
lectures.
The Superficial Dimensions and Articulation of the Continents.
We proceed from the more simple to the more complex forms, and begin,
therefore, with Africa, which has the most uniform contour of all the
continents.
Africa, the true South of the earth, is distinguished from all the other
great divisions of the earth by its almost insular form and its unbroken
outline. It is separated from Asia merely by the Isthmus of Suez,
scarcely 70 miles wide. But it is of altogether more virgin a nature than
Asia, and has been encroached upon by scarcely any foreign influence.
Africa is a unit in itself; the most exclusive of continents, its
periphery is almost a perfect ellipse. With the exception of the single
Gulf of Guinea on the west side, the continent is a true oval. Its linear
dimensions are almost equal in length and breadth. It extends about 35°
on each side of the equator, and is about 70° of longitude in width. The
length and breadth are both about 5000 miles.
The periphery of its coast is the most simple and unbroken in the world.
A single glance at the map is sufficient to show this. Nowhere are there
the deep arms of the sea and the sinuous shores of other continents. The
Gulf of Guinea is all. The entire length of its coast-line is but 16,000
or 17,000 miles, not much more than the circumference of a circle whose
diameter is 5000 miles. Its coast-line, proportioned to its area, being
the shortest on the globe, gives Africa the least contact with the ocean
of all the continents, and subjects it to the least amount of oceanic
influences.
Thus all individualization of the various phases of life—vegetable,
animal, and human—is denied to this continent, whose extremities, on
account of the equality of its dimensions, lie equally far removed from
the central point. The similar size and configuration of the two lobes
north and south of the equator create no strong contrasts, and give
rise merely to tropical and sub-tropical conditions. All the phenomena
of this great division, the real South of the earth, in which all the
culminations of the tropical world are found, are therefore more uniform
than in any other part of the world. The characteristics of race remain
in their primitive condition, and have made no progress with the lapse
of time: this region seems to be kept as the refuge of a yet undeveloped
future. Only general, never individual and special development in the
world of plants, animals, nor man, appear upon this stationary soil; the
palm, the camel, and their natural companions appear in equal numbers
in the northern, southern, eastern, and western extremities; the negro
is almost exclusively the only inhabitant of the continent. There is no
striking individuality apparent in the culture, stature, organization,
nor popular characteristics of its various parts. Even a common
foundation language gives rise to mere dialectical differences. A mere
sporadic coast-culture gives rise to mere exceptions here and there, and
these are generally the result, not of inward progress, but of imported
foreign conditions.
Asia, the Orient, is wholly unlike Africa. On three sides it is entirely
sea-girt—the south, the east, and the north; on the west only partly,
about 1400 miles. On the west, too, it is connected with Africa, but not
in a way to insure any necessary relations between the two continents.
But with Europe it stands in the most intimate connection, forming a
single body with it, of which Europe is really but a great western
peninsula. Europe, the Occident of the Old World, is therefore for
less widely severed from its Orient than from its real South or Africa.
The history of Asia and that of Europe are woven with a twisted strand;
they form a single thread, and their populations are far more closely
connected in physical and spiritual organizations than are the people of
Asia and Africa.
Asia, instead of being a simple oval, approaches the trapezoidal form,
and consequently enters into a new set of relations resulting from its
configuration. With the deeply-penetrating gulfs and bays and seas
which sink into its trunk, the prominent peninsulas are in direct
correspondence, marking in an especial manner the eastern and southern
coast, but not lacking on the northern and western. These peninsulas are
to be regarded as the limbs of a great central continental trunk. The
eastern ones are the Tchooktchee foreland, the peninsulas of Kamtchatka
and Corea, and the Chinese foreland. The southern ones are the peninsula
of Farther India, including Tonquin, Siam, Malacca, and Birmah; the
peninsulas of Hindostan, or Deccan and Arabia. The western limb is the
peninsula of Asia Minor or Australia. The northeast of Asia is less
articulated; still it has a number of arms pointing southward—the Sea of
Kara, the Gulf of Obi and Yenisei, for example. The whole Siberian coast
even is far more serrated than that of Africa, where it is an almost
unbroken line.
Still, there remains in the interior of Asia a broad and long mass of
the continent, which is penetrated by no seas. It is to be regarded as
the real trunk, and preponderates immensely over the area of all the
confined projections. Asia is, therefore, a trunk with profuse richness
of articulation. Africa is a trunk without articulation: a mere compact
continental mass.
The immense influence which so complex a coast form has upon all physical
phenomena and on all organic life is evident. Far greater results must
come from the mutual influence of sea and land than from unbroken land;
far more numerous influences upon the climate, and upon plants, animals,
and man. Even the changing geological structure of the coast-line must
have an effect, when blending with all these other influences, greater
than it would have in the interior. Every part of the coast has become
different from every other part, with a different hydrographic and
climatic character; and the great increase of races of men, and species
of plants and animals, was a natural result. While Africa remained
limited in all its relations, and destitute of any richness of variety,
Asia has always enjoyed an amazing fertility of resources. Instead of
the three races or species of man found in Africa—Negro, Berber, and
Caffre—many are met in Asia, all different, Tchooktchees, Kamtchadales,
Coreans, Chinese, Malays, Bermese, Hindoos, Afghans, Persians, Arabs, and
Armenians. And these belong merely to the coast-line.
But the contrast of the great central region to the broken coast is so
great and complete, that the advanced culture along the sea-line has not
penetrated far into the interior, nor changed the habits of the nomadic
tribes which fill Central Asia, and whose representatives we have in
the Mongolians, Toorkomans, Kirgheez, Bukharians, Calmucks, etc. Still
less could it reach the distant north, to which, with all the splendor
which we associate with everything oriental, the civilization of the
southern coasts is utterly wanting. To this element of superficial size,
the immense and almost insuperable obstacles which Nature has placed so
thickly in Asia may be added, and also the immense variety of natural
productions which climates so different as those of the different parts
of the continent exhibit. Extending from the equator to the north frigid
zone, Asia affords a home for the most diversified kinds of plants and
animals, and shows, too, hardly less variety in its eastern and western
extremes than in its northern and southern. The characteristics of the
Chinese flora and fauna are very widely different from those of Hither
Asia. In the east, we have the sago-tree and the tiger; in the west, the
date-palm and the lion. The north gives us moss, the coniferæ, and the
reindeer, in contrast with the bread-fruit tree, the sugar-cane, the
broad-leaved banana, the elephant, rhinoceros, tapir, and monkey of the
south.
The inexhaustibleness of the Asiatic continent is not more visible in all
this wealth of productivity than in the abundance as well as the variety
of human life. Though Asia has been the mother of the world, and has sent
out so many and so eminent races, it has not been to the depletion of
the parent country. In race, figure, color, manner of life, nationality,
religion, political and social bonds of union, forms of government,
culture, language, it is so richly diversified, that no continent, viewed
historically, can be compared to it. Asia seems to have been created to
send forth its fruitful scions of life to all the other great divisions
of the earth.
Europe, the Occident. The smallest of the three continents of the Old
World, its superficial contents are the largest in proportion to the
amount of coast-line. Only on the east side has it a land frontier; and
there it has its widest extent from north to south. Like Asia, it is
bordered on three sides by the ocean. Asia seems like a mighty trunk,
at whose western extremity the broken and serrated Occident is found,
advancing in breadth from north to south, but articulating into arms of
various size from east to west, till it loses itself in the peninsulas of
the Atlantic coast. The nearer to Asia, the broader is Europe, and the
more akin to the Asiatic character; the farther from it, the more minute
become its subdivisions, and the more varied its character.
Taken in a general way, the proportion of the truly continental part of
Europe to the maritime districts is much less than is the case in Asia.
Its contrast with Africa is, of course, yet more striking.
Europe begins at the east, at the foot of the Ural and Caucasus, and
at the steppes of West Asia. It does not take, as Asia and Africa do,
(which are alike in this,) a trapezoidal or oval form, but in its linear
dimensions there is a great difference between its length and breadth. By
the diminution of its width, as we go westward, and by the increase of
its articulation, the number of its internal relations increases toward
the Atlantic. A great falling off in the oriental character which has
largely encroached upon Russia, and a constant increase of an independent
spirit, is the sure result of natural conditions, and is experienced
in all life and in things material as well as intellectual and moral.
The configuration here wins a palpable victory over mere quantity, and
the exceedingly varied coast gives to all European institutions their
distinctive character.
Beginning with a breadth of about 1400 miles at the east, the continent
gradually diminishes in width to 1000, 500, and even to 250 miles. Its
first narrowing is visible between the Gulf of Riga and the Bay of
Odessa; the next is between the Baltic and the Gulf of Trieste; the next,
between the Zuider-Zee and the Gulf of Genoa; the next, between the
English Channel at Calais and the Gulf of Lyons; and the last, between
Bayonne and Perpignan.
With almost three times as great a length as breadth, Europe extends for
a distance of over 300 miles from the southern part of the Ural chain
and from the Caucasus to the extremities of the bold coast of Spain and
Portugal, Capes Finistère and St. Vincent. In this way the continent
assumes very nearly the form of a right-angled triangle, the right angle
lying at the Caspian, the base extending westward to Cape Finistère,
the perpendicular running northward along the Ural Mountains to the
Vaigats Straits, and the hypothenuse connecting the two extremities.
The area embraced within this triangle would be not far from 2,200,000
square miles. Such a triangle, however, is not exact,—it is but an
approximation to mathematical precision; but it is clearly enough marked
to be traced upon our map, or, as a spherical triangle, upon our globes.
All geographical forms have only a more or less remote approach to
mathematical exactness, but enough to aid us very much in representing
them and showing their relations.
Almost all the greater and really important extremities of the continent
lie outside of the triangle above indicated; and this method of treatment
only serves to call attention to the great central mass, which would
otherwise be in danger of being overlooked, in view of the immense value
and influence of the countries on the coast and beyond the triangular
line of demarkation. It needs but a glance to see how the projecting
shores have marred all the theoretical precision of such a line.
The coast-line shows itself directly subject to almost boundless
diversity. Toward the west the independence of each peninsula increases,
the more evidently and prominently according to its distance from Asia.
Not articulated on two sides alone, like Asia, the east and south, but
on all three of its sides exposed to the ocean, the broken coast-line is
universal in Europe,—even toward the colder north, where its peninsulas
and adjacent islands almost inclose two seas, the North and the Baltic.
The advantage which this gives to Europe over Asia in respect to the
development of its more northern regions, is very great and evident.
We will enumerate the leading peninsulas of Europe:
Kola, on the White Sea, between Lake Enara, the Varanger Fiord, and the
Bay of Kandalaska, pointing westward.
Scandinavia, embracing Norway and Sweden, with an area of more than
350,000 square miles, a tenth of all Europe, connected with the main
land by the isthmus of Finland, but otherwise girded in a great bow by
the Atlantic, the North Sea, the Baltic, and the Gulf of Bothnia, and
pointing southward.
Jutland or Denmark, beginning at the Elbe and the Trave and running
north, embracing about ¹⁄₁₆₀ of Europe, between the North Sea and the
Baltic, low and flat.
The subdivided peninsula of Holland, between the Rhine and the Ems, a
flat plain, looking to the north.
The peninsula of Normandy and Brittany, between the Seine and the Loire,
a rocky granite formation, jutting out into the Atlantic and faced by
bold precipices.
Spain and Portugal, embracing about 220,000 square miles, about ¹⁄₁₆
of Europe, rhomboidal in shape, almost insular in position, turned
southwesterly, its surface a series of constantly rising terraces.
Italy, embracing ¹⁄₃₅ of Europe, between the Alps and Sicily, and
traversed by a mountain range.
Turkey and Greece, or summing it more strictly under one word, the
Grecian peninsula, between the Danube and the Morea, a most minutely
divided region of plateaus and mountain chains; in truth, the most
articulated peninsula in the world, and embracing ¹⁄₁₅ of Europe.
The Crimea, a rhomboidal peninsula, turned to the south—its northern
half a flat steppe, its southern a high plateau—the only peninsula of
southeastern Europe projecting into the Black Sea.
Every one of these peninsulas differs from every other in shape; every
one has a distinct individuality imposed upon it. Within the smallest
compass on earth, relatively speaking, there is found around Europe the
very largest variety in its articulations. The Grecian peninsula finds
its only superior on the northwest of Europe, in the coast of insulated
England.
By means of this characteristic separation of so many more or less
individualized parts of the continent through the agency of arms of the
sea, the coast-line of Europe has been prolonged to an extraordinary
length. The areas of the three continents of the Old World are as follows
in round numbers: Europe, 3,500,000 square miles; Africa, 11,800,000
square miles; and Asia, 19,300,000 square miles. Although the superficial
contents of Africa are three times that of Europe, the length of the
coast-line is so far from being equal, that that of Europe is much the
greater, being 25,400 miles. The Asiatic coast-line is about one-third
longer still, 32,900 miles; but, as the area of Asia is more than five
times that of Europe, a great part of the Asiatic coast-line, that on the
north, from Nova Zembla to Kamtchatka, must be considered as unimportant
in relation to the development of the resources of Asia.
Europe is, therefore, that continent of the Old World which has
relatively, and I might almost say absolutely, received the largest
coast-line of any, encompassing a distance of 25,400 miles. That is to
say, the coast-line of Europe, extended in a straight line, would pass
around the globe and coincide with the equator. To this admirable feature
may be added its favorable relation in situation to the various oceanic
and wind currents, and its magnificent supply of harbors, the result of
its articulated coast, all of which have made Europe the mistress of
the seas. Within modern times, the island group of Great Britain and
Ireland, the richest in harbors, is to the continent what, in ancient
times, the Greek peninsula was, with its wealth of inlets, which gave
it the command of the Mediterranean. A rich gift this has been to the
smallest of the continents of the Old World, to equalize its condition
with others. The providential wisdom which “sets one thing over against
another,” is clearly manifest in this. Europe, though in the center of
the great continental land-mass, becomes the most maritime of all, the
most approachable of all; or, in other words, its countries and its
peoples are the most closely connected with the sea of all in the Old
World, because they stand in the most unbroken contact with it.
Thus we discover the characteristic type which was impressed on Europe
from the very first. Its relation to the world could not be understood by
the ancients, as to them half of the earth lay in unbroken darkness. Only
by experience, only by the advance of civilization, and by comparison
with all the other continents, could this insight be gained. Doubtless
many similar relations yet remain unknown and unsuspected, which will
some day come to the light. The earth, as a planet, is only a grain of
seed-corn sown by the Creator, enriched with powers of unfolding to
infinite perfection in the unexplored future. What we now perceive are
only the elementary principles—our knowledge only a motley; but even this
is not without its uses, and is worthy of patient mastery.
Europe, so broken in its coast, and rifted far toward its center by arms
of the sea, has been affected in all its civil and social history to a
very great extent. This is the first natural condition of its progress,
the true physical basis of the fact that, upon the most limited of
the continents, the greatest historical diversity has sprung up. It
is not absolute size, but relative, which gives the pre-eminence; not
the raw material, the mere mass, but its articulation, its form, which
here, as everywhere, gives mind the mastery over matter. As in the
animal and vegetable world there is, amid all the diversity of forms,
a constant advance from a lower to a higher plane, manifesting itself
in the complexity of the organs; so, in the so-called unorganized side
of nature, we see the same characteristic as soon as we have grasped
the whole mutual system of adaptations. The most general study of the
differences between the continents exhibits an analogous harmony and
correlation. As the simple, broad-leaved, solid cactus, or bunch-trunked
euphorbia, (peculiar to the dry sand steppes of America and Africa,)
appear branchless and without foliage,—the lower and undeveloped forms
of vegetation,—so, too, the regions to which they are indigenous are the
unbroken plains of North America, or the plateaus of still less broken
Africa.
The broken coast-line of Asia and Europe is analogous to that higher
development which we find in the palm and in the full, round crown
of the European fruit-tree, which bears blossoms and fruit as far as
the very extremities of the branches. In the animal organization, the
articulation of Europe is to be compared with the complex hand of man,
so far superior to the prehensile organs of lower creatures, that Buffon
saw in that feature alone the manifestation of man’s place among the
animal kingdom.
If we look out over the earth, we see that the limbs of the continents,
so to speak, the coasts, the peninsulas, and the adjacent islands,
are the most favored places of all for civilization to find its true
home upon. With the degree of diversity in the structure of a country,
the value of its organisms advances. In this respect, Europe may be
considered as the branches and foliage of a great tree, whose trunk and
root are to be traced to Central Asia, Africa being a stunted side-shoot.
Or, to compare the continents to a still higher class of forms, Europe
may be called the Face of the Old World, out of which the soul of
humanity could look more clearly into the great and promising future.
We repeat it—it is not absolute size, it is not the mass nor the weight
of the material, it is the form, in its greater complexity, which
determines the fate of nations and decrees the advancement of man.
This gift, in its full measure, has been conferred on Europe. In its
complex articulation lies still another characteristic of Europe in
contradistinction to the other continents.
If in Africa the coast offers no contrast to the interior, and both
remain on the same low plane of development, Asia, on the contrary,
displays a perfect antagonism between its central regions and its
sea-board. The territory of the Mongolians, the Tartars, and Toorkomans
has always remained at the very lowest stage of civilization. The
sea-board, on the other hand, has witnessed the growth of a number of
isolated nations, who, without the help of mutual dependence, have
arrived at a considerably high degree of culture—the Chinese, Malays,
Hindoos, Persians, Arabians, Syrians, and Armenians. But their influence
could not penetrate to the compact interior, to transform its nature, nor
modify its nationalities. Individual progress in nations, however high it
may be carried, can never contribute much toward any real penetration of
the interior of so vast a region as Central Asia.
Europe shows in its construction and the relations to which it gives rise
characteristics exactly opposite. Being far less massive, the proportion
of its extremities to the undeveloped interior is much less great than
in Asia. From this, it results that the central part does not prove a
hinderance to civilization, viewed physically, hydrographically, or
historically; it nowhere serves as a barrier, but rather as a mediator,
and a means of communication between the extremities. This has given
Europe a character exactly opposite to that of Asia: its North and its
South are united, its East and its West; they are not like antagonistic
poles, but extend to each other friendly hands. In Africa, the greater
part of the interior lies absolutely without contact with and relations
to the coast. In Asia, there is a much larger portion of the interior
equally without connection with the sea-board, and remaining up to this
day in its primitive barbarism.
Symmetry of form gains in Europe a clear advantage over mere mass.
Europe, the smallest of the continents, was destined to gain precedence
over all the rest, Asia included. As Asia, lying within all the zones,
colossal in size, and most plentifully enriched with the gifts of nature,
was fitted to be the nursery of supply for all other parts of the world
without impoverishing itself; so Europe, limited in size and confined
to the temperate zone, but most complex in its subdivision, having a
great diversity in its ocean inlets, as well as in its hills, valleys,
plateaus, and mountains, yet, without great extremes, has been especially
fitted for the reception of stranger races, and for the development of
their energies and the advance of their culture. The symmetry and harmony
of Europe have constituted the true home of all varieties of national
character, and have adapted it to their mutual action, and to the
transfer of their distinctive character to one another.
Throughout the entire center of Europe there is an intimate connection
with the sea-coast and with the extremities, with the least possible
disadvantages. This is accomplished by those sinuous river-courses
whose analogies are to be found nowhere in the adjacent continents. The
very broadest part of Russia even is intersected with large navigable
rivers; and the west and center of Europe are not less richly supplied
with these lines of communication, whose starting-points lie often close
together, as in the case of the Danube, the Rhine, the Po, and the Rhone.
How different is this from the hydrographical system of Central Asia,
where the sources of the eastern rivers lie thousands of miles removed
from those of the western rivers, and where the rivers of the north are
separated by almost as great distances from those of the south!
To what nature has given to Europe man has largely added, seeking by
means of canals and railways to make the whole continent subject to him
and auxiliary to his needs. In this way the interior districts have
appropriated to themselves the advantages of the sea-coast, and the
distance which it has placed between itself and Asia and Africa has only
been increased. Nature first gave Europe its vantage-ground, and man has
gone on from that point and doubled the gifts of nature.
Great peninsulas stretch away into both the great inland seas of
Europe—that of the North and that of the South; the Danish and
Scandinavian peninsulas into the complex, and yet, physically speaking,
single body of water, embracing the North Sea, Baltic, and Gulf of
Bothnia; Spain, Italy, and the Grecian peninsula extending southward
into the Mediterranean. In the latter there is the greatest contrast
between the deeply-indented northern shore and the bare, sandy coast of
the African side. In just as great contrast is the uniformly unbroken
sea-line of northern Siberia, compared with the articulated shore of
northern Russia. How entirely different would the development of northern
Asia have been, if a Siberian inland sea had penetrated to the very foot
of the Altai, as the seas of northern Europe have pierced to the center
of the continent! And had the shallow Syrtis cleft northern Africa as far
as Lake Tchad, as the Adriatic has done on the opposite coast, Central
Africa would not now be a terra incognita.
The northern as well as the southern extremities of Europe, so far as
they are projected into inland seas, have received an equal size and
equal natural advantages, each of its own kind, so that, conditioned
by its own peculiarities, its population have helped it to attain
its rightful place, and an individuality independent of continental
influences. The abundant resources which each of these extremities
enjoys have insured it, in a physical as well as historical view, an
independence which has reacted favorably upon the whole continent. What
a debt does not Europe owe to the Greeks, Italians, Spaniards, Dutch,
Danes, Scandinavians! How entirely different would the whole development
of the shores of Europe have been, had they been bold, inaccessible
rocks, an unbroken line of coast, like Uralaska, or the smaller Asiatic
peninsulas of Kamtchatka and Malacca! And where would the accomplished
European stand to-day, in comparison with his black neighbor on the
south, were it not for the articulated coast-line of the continent which
gives him his home?
And still there remains, out of the inexhaustible richness of nature, one
leading feature to be taken into account. To estimate it properly, we
must pay attention briefly to the islands of the three continents of the
Old World.
Islands.
Europe, as a continent, is distinguished by its adjacent islands.
Following the irregular coast-line of its many extremities, they lie
along, in greater or less number, the satellites, so to speak, of the
main land. They are scattered almost everywhere, yet not distant from
the coast, like Iceland, but within sight of the shore. In character
they resemble the adjacent coast, and form a true part of the main land,
except in the one fact of separation. Strabo even called Sicily an
insular continuation of Italy, and discriminated between islands found
in mid-ocean and those found near the coast, calling the former pelagic
and the latter littoral islands. These he regarded as having been at
some previous period rent from the main land. The coast islands are by
no means, like many of the pelagic islands, mere rocky groups, thrown
up by volcanic convulsions, or small, desolate, barren ledges. They are
very diverse in character: some are fertile single islands, like Sicily,
Candia, Bornholm, Rugen, Negropont; some are double islands, like Britain
and Ireland, Zealand and Funen, Corsica and Sardinia; some are island
groups, like the 3 Balearic islands, the 3 Maltese islands, the 20 Ionian
islands, the 67 Orkneys, the 90 Shetlands, the still more numerous
Hebrides, the Aland group, and that of the Grecian archipelago. They are
generally of very large size, in comparison with the continent to which
they are adjacent; a characteristic not only very rare in islands, but
which must exert great influence. They are to be viewed, therefore, as
continuations of Europe, not as lands sundered from the main land; they
are to be considered as its sea-ports, and the mediators between Europe
and the other continents.
In round numbers, the islands of Europe embrace about 175,000 square
miles—a twentieth of the continent.
This amount of insular territory has given Europe a great diversity of
relations, and has contributed much to its ethnographical character.
Imagine only England and her whole group struck out of existence. What
impoverishment it would bring! The Danish peninsula, without the adjacent
islands of Funen and Zealand, were a mere tongue of sand. Without Sicily
to furnish grain, Rome’s history had been entirely different from what
it was. What a change it would have made in the development of Italy
and Greece, had the Cyclades and Crete not served as a bridge, over
which the civilization of Hither Asia might pass! Yet these islands,
with their inhabitants, do not stand in necessary dependence on the
contiguous main land; they have often in themselves the conditions of
independent growth and prosperity. And yet the geological qualities and
general features of islands may agree very closely with those of the land
hard by; as is the case with the British, Danish, Italian, and Grecian
groups. Southern England is a continuation of northern France, Picardy,
and the Netherlands, as the geology of these districts shows. Sicily is a
continuation of the volcanic soil of Calabria, and Candia of the Morea.
Hence the possibility, despite the separation of islands from the main
land, of a close connection in the habits, manners, and culture of the
people, thus separated, depending as they do on a common soil, and having
the same industries in common. It would be entirely different in Great
Britain, for example, if the south end of England were geologically
formed like the north end of Scotland. Instead of harmony there would be
repulsion, and that mutual interchange of relations would not exist which
has so powerful an influence on the whole course of European history.
The remarkable number of islands on the coast of Europe, and their
significance and value, formerly escaped attention; or rather their
influence on the development of that continent, in comparison with
others, was not made a matter of study.
Africa has never enlarged its domain through the aid of adjacent
islands. Poor as it is in all coast indentations, it is just as poor in
islands. Only a few insignificant ones, which have no close geological
connection with the shore, are found here. The sporadic groups found
in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans are almost exclusively the product
of subterranean forces, and are entirely unlike the stratified lime
and sandstone formations of the coast. There is, therefore, no close
connection between the inanimate nature of continent and islands and
their respective populations; no physical conditions have imposed upon
them a common historical development. Only the Canary Islands, southwest
of the Atlas Mountain range, and Madagascar, could be regarded as at
all exceptional to this. But the nine Canaries are relatively extremely
small, embracing but about 3000 square miles in all; much too small to
exercise any important influence, or to harbor a large population.
Besides, they are separated from the main land by marine currents, which
would prevent any very important reaction, however large the islands in
themselves might be. The Cape Verd islands, embracing only about 1750
square miles, stand in yet more unfavorable relations to the main land.
So, too, the solitary islands of St. Helena and Ascension, and in the
Indian Ocean the scattered groups of the Camara, Amirante, and Seychelle
islands, embracing all together but 3300 square miles, and Socotra, about
1750 square miles. Only Madagascar would be large enough to enrich the
continent essentially, if it were nearer to the main land. But it is
separated from it by the broad and dangerous Mozambique Channel; both,
therefore, have remained without mutual relations; their populations are
entirely unlike, and there has been no exchange of productions between
them. Madagascar is, therefore, only apparently, and by the apparent
contiguity of the mass, a neighbor of Africa; but, in reality, _i.e._ as
it relates to the organic unity of all the various parts of the globe, it
is far more intimately connected by the system of marine currents to the
Malayan Archipelago, southeast of Asia, than to Africa.
Entirely different is it with the island system of Asia. The eastern and
southern sides are remarkably characterized by the profuse numbers of
islands found there. It might be said, that what Africa lacks in this
regard, Asia more than supplies. On the Asiatic coast they appear in such
vast numbers that they have been called, in contrast with the Old and New
Worlds, the Island World, or Polynesia. They appear under the most varied
conditions—in long rows, in massive groups, and here and there singly.
They begin with the North Polar islands, and pass southward in unbroken
succession past the equator as far as the tropic of Capricorn.
The Aliaska chain connects the northwest coast of America with
Kamtchatka; it comprises over 100 islands, and embraces about 7660 square
miles.
The Koorile island extends to the south as far as Saghalien and Yesso.
The Japanese chain runs southward as far as Cape Corea, and includes the
great island of Niphon with numerous smaller ones, embracing an area of
164,000 square miles.
Then follow:—
The Loo-Choo islands as far as Formosa.
The single island of Formosa, 13,000 square miles.
The coast island of Hainan, 16,450 square miles.
The numerous group of the Philippines, with the adjacent islands, 121,000
square miles.
The greater Sunda group, with its adjoining archipelago, 689,500 square
miles. Of these, Borneo embraces 295,600 square miles; Sumatra, 167,700
square miles; Java, 54,600 square miles; and Celebes, 72,600 square miles.
The smaller Sunda group, 29,200 square miles.
The scattered group of the Moluccas, with the Banda and Ternate islands,
7950 square miles.
The great island of New Guinea, 262,800 square miles, which forms the
transition of the Australian group.
On the south coast of Deccan, the great island of Ceylon, 25,860 square
miles.
These rows and groups of islands, embracing an aggregate of 1,095,000
square miles, form a kind of insular isthmus from the southeastern
extremity of Asia to the northwest of Australia, though broken by
unnumbered straits. If lines be drawn from Sumatra and from Hainan to
Cape York, on the north coast of Australia, an ideal isthmus would be
formed not unlike that which connects North and South America. If this
insular isthmus be further conceived to have been thrown up by volcanic
forces, as that of Panama seems to have been, an addition of 1,095,000
square miles has been made in this way to the most productive portions
of the world. So great is the accession of territory that it has become
the abode of a distinct race—the Malay—which hardly finds a home at all
on the Asiatic shore. Asia has received very little advantage from this
vast archipelago. Only the southeast coast has been affected by it; the
continent, as a whole, has not been reached by its influence. On the
contrary, Australia has been largely affected by it in its productive
and ethnographical character. Not only was it first discovered through
the agency of these islands, but it probably derives its population
from them; it has received many of its animals and plants from them—the
sugar-cane, the sago palm, the bread-fruit tree, the dog, and the swine.
In Polynesia, which, in point of size, far surpasses the Antilles
group north of South America, we have the most dismembered region on
the surface of the globe. It is the highest degree of insulation,
of individualization, and results from the extreme carrying out of
dispersing causes. The space occupied by the greater Sunda group, with
its five seas—the China, Java, Molucca, Celebes, and Mindoro—together
with the islands adjacent, the whole lying between longitude 110° and
160° east and latitude 10° south and 20° north, a tract 3525 miles long
and 2115 miles wide may worthily be compared with the area of Europe.
Such a mass of island groups and single isles, belonging not to Asia with
any strict right, but in truth a maritime world of itself, having but the
slightest connections with the adjacent continent, is not to be compared
with the island system of Europe, which is bound to the main land by the
closest ties.
Were a similar insular dismemberment the universal principle on which the
world is constructed, and were there no continents whatever, there would
be an entire want of direct dependence in nations upon each other, and a
degree of independence which would be fatal to the best interests of man.
Europe would be broken up into a number of great islands, like Borneo,
and into countless islets. In the conformation of Europe, however,
there is the happiest system of compensations, and the most harmonious
play of contrasts to be found in the world. The disadvantages of a too
great dividing up into islands, as in Polynesia, and of too compact and
unrifted a central mass, as in Africa, are alike shunned. Both extremes
could not fail to be injurious to the best interests of the population.
The fullness and richness of nature might, perhaps, be increased; but the
effects on human life could not fail to be bad. Man’s highest development
does not consist with any extreme in the natural world: it is linked
to the action and reaction of contrasts. In Polynesia, the district of
extreme dismemberment, the Malays are the least homogeneous of any race
on the earth. Malays, Battahs, Dakkas, Horasuras, and Papuas are all
engaged in destructive war on each other, and are among the most degraded
peoples on the globe. In this region there is the greatest diversity
in physical nature, but not in the essential characteristics of man.
One point of accord ought not to be passed by: there, where the forces
of nature, maritime and volcanic, are on the greatest scale known, the
warlike passions of man are on a not less consuming scale. In Polynesia
there are the rankest vegetation, the most fervid heat, the most
costly spices, animals very large and rare; but man attains to no such
superiority,—he degenerates in worth and takes a low place. Where the
three natural kingdoms attain their perfection, man seems to linger in
the rear.
In Africa, where there is perfect uniformity in nature, there is
uniformity in man; and the negro stock, though prolific, gives no race
of high development to the world. Both extremes are equally unfavorable
to the advance of man; he must have, in order to expand and take the
place to which his possibilities lead him, a sphere of mutual conditions,
to which a compact continent like Africa and Central Asia can lay no
claim, and at the same time be free from that extreme individualization
characteristic of the islands of Polynesia.
Europe lies between these extremes. Limited in area, diversified in
surface, and deeply indented in its coast-line, it has experienced all
the advantages which a continent needs for its development, and for that
historical greatness which Europe has won for itself. Less striking in
natural scenery and comparatively poor in resources, its contrasts in
respect mainly to the action of its inland seas and rivers over the main
land have conduced to the happiest results. It has become the school for
the Old and the New World, taking the vitality and the crude gifts of
Asia and turning them into channels where they could issue in new forms
for the advancement and the humanizing of the race.
The Results of the above Considerations briefly stated.
It will be seen, from what has now been said, that, with an area three
times less than that of Africa, Europe (including its adjacent islands)
has a coast-line twice as extended. Without the islands, it is 25,380
miles in length, or the circumference of the earth. The coast-line of
Africa extends 17,860 miles; that of Asia 32,900.
The exceedingly varying areas of the continents may now be passed in very
speedy review. Europe is but a fifth as large as Asia. It is somewhat
more than a quarter as large as Africa; it is almost of the same size
with Australia. In relation to America, it stands between Asia and
Africa; it makes about ¹⁄₁₅ of all the continents, and about ¹⁄₂₀ of all
the land surface of the globe; but it is not absolute size, but relative,
which determines the importance of a continent; and this twentieth part
of all the land on the globe has had paramount influence over all the
rest within the past few centuries. The ethnographical character of
its population has had great weight in securing this result, and other
reasons will doubtless be more apparent in the future.
One of the most important features in the study of the relative
importance of the continents is the comparative relation of the main
trunk, articulation, and island system to each other. The following table
presents this relation as it exists in the Old World:—
Africa: trunk 1, extremities 0, islands ¹⁄₅₀
Asia: ” 4, ” 1, ” ⅛
Europe: ” 2, ” 1, ” ¹⁄₂₀
These are but approximations to the exact mathematical statement; but
they serve to indicate comprehensively this important fact. No exact
canon now exists for the perfect expression of the relations of the
continents to each other, and their physical superiority and inferiority,
and its lack is no less felt than it has been in art to express the
comparative importance of the organs of the human body in giving a
representation of man.
The New World.
America is broken by the Caribbean Sea into a double continent, both
parts being of colossal magnitude, although the southern portion is about
2,000,000 square miles less in area than the northern. North America
contains 9,055,146 square miles. South America contains 7,073,875 square
miles; and both contain 16,129,021. The connecting link is found in the
tapering isthmus of Central America, with its 302,443 square miles of
surface.
But closely connected as is the northern part of the continent with
the southern, in a physical sense, in real connection, so far as man
is concerned, they are widely separated. During the three centuries
which have elapsed since the discovery of America, the Spanish and the
Americans have thought of breaking the connection—of sundering the
isthmus. All communication between North and South America takes place
by water, absolutely none by land. Even before the navigation of the
historical period, there seems to have been no land road opened along the
isthmus. The old race of the Caribs passed in boats from the Appalachian
mountain land of North America to South America and the West Indies. The
Toltecs and Aztecs—the oldest tribes which wandered southward—seemed to
have ended their march on the high plateau of Mexico and the vale of
Anahuac. The legends of the Incas give us no tidings of their traversing
the isthmus and reaching Peru on foot, and it is probable that they
reached that land otherwise. The isthmus seems never to have been a
bridge, but always a barrier. The great Antilles group of islands appears
to have served far more as a means of communication between North and
South America.
In respect of contour, both divisions have an unmistakable analogy, which
appears at first view. Both exhibit a triangular form, with the base at
the north and the apex at the south. Toward the south, too, rather than
toward the west, speaking in general terms, the gradual conquests of
man advance, and therefore there cannot be in the New World, as in the
Old, a striking contrast between the Orient and the Occident. East and
west, in the New World, are less dependent on each other; they have more
individuality, but with a great preponderance of importance in the east
over the west side, by reason of the more favorable situation in relation
to the sea, less sharpness and boldness of physical features, and a more
scanty population. The west side of America has by no means kept up with
the advance of its eastern side. Nor could the more southern shores
of America compete with those on the northeast, and supply an analogy
to the occident of the Old World; for North America stands related to
Europe by ties of the closest nature, by wind systems, currents, a not
dissimilar climate, and is far more nearly connected with it than with
South America: nor could the latter derive any real advantage from its
opposite neighbor, rude and undeveloped Africa; nor has the Caribbean
Sea performed any such service for America as the Mediterranean has for
Europe, being twice as large in area and far more unfavorably situated to
advance the interests of civilization. It is only within a recent period
that the Caribbean has become a valuable auxiliary to the culture of the
world.
South America is only a colossal right-angled triangle of land, with very
little articulation in its shores. The northwest and the eastern angles
are sharply defined, and the southern one is very acute, the continent
running out in the shape of a thin wedge. With some modifications, it
has the same form with its neighbor Africa, and is just as unvarying
in its want of a serrated coast, its sea-line being but 16,000 miles
in length, almost the same as that of Africa. Like Africa, too, South
America is destitute of peninsulas and adjacent islands; its coast is as
unindented as that of Africa and Australia, all three of these continents
of the southern hemisphere being in strict conformity. Yet South America
is capable of great progress: its conditions are very plastic; it is
characterized by the size and number of the great rivers which pass
through its very center; its flora and fauna are extremely rich. In
the fruitfulness of its soil, its division by mountains, and its water
system, it holds great pre-eminence over Africa. An effort to connect its
great rivers, and thus to make its immense natural advantages of mutual
service, seems to promise a far more prosperous future for South America
than can be predicted for Central Africa; yet the native population of
the country stand on a very low plane of manhood.
The wedge-shaped plateau of Patagonia is not at all benefited, as
previous analysis would lead us to expect, by its long coast and by
the nearness of the islands of Terra del Fuego. The fruitful island
of Tasmania is far more valuable to Australia than is this island to
Patagonia, and even Iceland is a more productive neighbor to Norway. The
Terra del Fuego group, embracing a territory of 29,000 square miles,
although hard by the South American coast, only injures it instead
of blessing it, for it imperils shipping and harbors a population
so degraded that they have no wants which can stimulate the rudest
civilization. With a precipitous, craggy coast, without trees and without
grass, covered only with moss, and belonging strictly to the polar
world, it must give a habitation to the very lowest and most degraded of
the human race, isolated from the world, and only casually visited when
winds and storms throw mariners upon its shores.
Not every island is to be considered, therefore, as a gain to the
adjacent main land. If Terra del Fuego lay at the mouth of the La Plata
River, it would have become a valuable auxiliary to Brazil. The worth of
an island is relative, not absolute.
The Antilles group is the great insular formation contiguous to
Central America. Its area, though comprising 94,700 square miles, is
not one-tenth as great as that of the great Sunda group. By situation
and physical conditions, it is much more closely connected with North
than with South America. The Caribbean Sea is twice as large as the
Mediterranean, the one having 801,800 square miles, and the other
1,675,800 square miles. It has been, therefore, more difficult to make
the larger tributary to the advance of civilization than the smaller.
North America has entirely taken the palm from South America in the
progress of its culture, just as has uniformly been the case with all the
continents of the northern hemisphere compared with the southern; and yet
the tropical southern continent is far more profusely endowed with the
gifts of nature than the temperate northern one. The northern half, on
the other hand, enjoys a far greater advantage in its broken coast-line,
numerous bays, gulfs, islands, peninsulas, harbors, as well as by reason
of its greater want of conformity to a rigid triangular form.
Enlarging, as it does, toward its southern extremity, North America
approaches a trapezoidal shape, like Asia, and, as in Asia also, the size
of the main body preponderates greatly over that of the extremities.
Several of these extremities, too, extend toward the east and south, and
only a few toward the west. To the North American peninsulas and islands
belong the northeasterly island group of Greenland, (which for centuries
was considered to be a peninsula, but which, since Parry’s discoveries in
1820, has been known to be a group of independent islands,) Bank’s Land,
Boothia Felix, Cockburn, Melville’s Peninsula, Labrador, New Brunswick,
Nova Scotia, and Florida, the latter 59,000 square miles in area.
The northeast of North America is everywhere much cut up by inlets of the
ocean, larger bays, gulfs, and sounds. This is the main characteristic
of the shore of the northern United States and Canada. As all these open
toward Europe, the situation of this whole region has been especially
adapted to the most speedy advance in civilization. The pride of the
American can no more plume itself on an independent progress than can
that of the European; to the former, Europe is the Orient from which he
receives, in an already advanced stage, what the European receives from
Asia, his own Orient.
The less important peninsulas of North America, and the side most
destitute of them, are turned toward the northern Pacific. To this region
belong the Russian possessions, the desolate wastes of Aliaska, and,
farther to the south, the peninsula of Old California, which has begun,
within the last ten years, to play an active part in the world’s affairs.
But all three of these are capable at present of little independent
advance. They must wait till they feel the impulse of the civilization
of the older American States, before they take that place to which the
newly-organized commercial relations with China and Japan seem to be
leading the way.
North America enjoys a great advantage over Europe in the possession
of large inland lakes or seas. The prevalence of articulation and of
the adjacent islands is not toward the south, but toward the polar and
sub-polar regions, (from 40° to 50° N. lat.,) as in Europe. And although
many of these islands and peninsulas are as yet but little known, still
the progress of discovery has been so rapid within the past few years,
that it would seem, by European analogies, that an important history
is yet in store for them. For there is a great kinship between these
northern regions of America and the Scandinavian and North Russian
domains of Europe. And we know well that no degree of cold has ever
intimidated civilization from penetrating in the latter to the very
confines of the polar world.
As the White Sea, (48,500 square miles in area,) the Baltic, (167,000
square miles,) and the yet greater North Sea, have broken through the
northern regions of Europe, so on a far more gigantic scale have the
inroads of the ocean rifted and sundered North America. This we have
learned in our recent frequent voyages to the Esquimaux regions. Baffin’s
Bay, Lancaster Sound, Smith’s Sound, Jones’ Sound, Barrow Strait, Fox’s
Channel with its uncounted islands, Hudson’s Bay with its 499,000 square
miles of surface, Boothia Gulf, Victoria and Georgia Seas, Wellington’s
Channel, Melville Sound, Prince of Wales Straits, and very many other
water passages and basins divide those northern districts into a vast
mesh of islands and peninsulas. The superficial area of all these tracts
is on a colossal scale; even the Greenland group is estimated to include
766,500 square miles. Within the past few years this whole Arctic Sea has
been the scene of numerous expeditions of discovery, some of them on a
princely scale.
All this shows that North America is fashioned much more after the
analogy of Europe than of South America. The analogy would be much more
close, if North America were as favorably affected by climatic conditions
as Europe. Both continents are washed at the south as well as at the
north by great inland seas, and divided up by them in a manner peculiar
to them among all the continents. Of this articulation, America, less
favored by climate, has much the larger share. By its admirable harbors,
and by the action of the Gulf Stream crossing the Atlantic in two
directions, America has been specially fitted to receive the population
and civilization of the Old World, and to stand in the closest relations
with it. In this, united with the arrangement of its mountain chains
and the happy characteristics of its river systems, America bears the
palm completely away from Asia. In that continent the colossal rivers
of the north have no connection at their sources with the head-waters
of the great Chinese, Indian, and West Asiatic rivers. It is entirely
different in North America, where the St. Lawrence, Mackenzie, Columbia,
Colorado, Mississippi, and Missouri flow from the same region, as from a
common center, not separated at their sources by an immense plateau, but
forming a single river system, from the mouth of one to that of another,
flowing in just the contrary direction. We find, therefore, that there,
as in North Europe, civilization has followed the water-courses, and has
planted colonies as far north as 70° on the coast of Greenland; while in
Asia human habitations cease with 65° N. lat.
America seems to be appointed, by its physical conditions, to plant the
banner of human progress at the most northern parts of the globe, and to
do for the northern hemisphere what Great Britain, through her colonies
in Tasmania and South Australia, with their admirable harbors, is doing
for the southern.
Northern Asia seems to have no future indicated for her beyond the
sources and upper courses of her great rivers; she seems to depend upon
Central Asia and upon Russian Europe for all the scanty culture which
she may possess. In its south and east it seems to have within its
Chinese and Indian populations the seeds of an independent development,
whose results, like those of Arabia, have been transferred to Europe to
become improved there, and then to be given to the world. The form of the
three great peninsulas, which were the home of Asiatic culture, has been
repeated in Europe,—but with how great a difference! The three European
peninsulas are not in the tropical zone and near the equator, but are
1400 miles farther north. The two groups—the eastern one in South Asia,
the western one in South Europe—each consisting of three peninsulas, are
the most valuable auxiliaries the world’s civilization ever had. Through
their agency Asia in the torrid zone and Europe in the temperate have
become what America and Australia are yet to be to the extreme north
and the extreme south. The former were for the past, the latter for the
present and the future. South America, and yet much more Africa and
Australia, seem to be held in reserve for the need of a home where the
civilization of centuries yet to come shall expand into perfection. They
now are in their infancy; the day only begins to break in them. Furnished
as they have been with the most liberal gifts of nature, they must
receive a culture of which we as yet have little conception. In what way
this can be done, the history of the past reveals. The art of navigation
has, within the past three centuries, given to islands and to continents
a new life, and developed relations unknown till then. The very touch of
European civilization has already wakened the world to new life; and the
oceans, which were once the most impassable of barriers, have become the
closest of bonds to draw the earth together, and to further its progress
toward the consummation of all history.
THE END.
FOOTNOTES
[1] Prof. D. C. Gilman, of Yale College.
[2] Meteors, which are nightly visible, are different from the periodic
phenomena, seen in August and November, in different localities over the
earth, and called falling stars. These exist outside of our atmosphere,
and belong not to the earth, but rather to the great solar system.
[3] The English does not convey adequately, certainly as idiomatic
English, the fullness of the German classes, Berge, Vorberge,
Hochgeberge, Alpen, and Riesenberge.
[4] Not inappropriately has geology been called the Anatomy of mountain
ranges. The more mountains are studied geologically, the more safe become
the conclusions that are drawn from them. The smaller and more scattered
ridges of central Europe have become the chief quarries for geological
discovery, because of the rich variety which they afford to the student,
and also because of their accessibility.
[5] In exact correspondence with the historic progress of upheaval is the
internal and external aspect of the result. In direct connection with the
extent, course, grandeur, succession of oceanic and volcanic forces, and
in constructing new geological formations, is the inexhaustible variety
of structure, in respect to continuity, degrees of fracture, as well as
the more or less rich prodigality of mineral treasure brought to light.
The later formations—the masses injected to fill up huge chasms opened by
volcanic pressure from below—are easily distinguished from the primitive
formation. These courses are usually the depositories of minerals, which
the great internal heat has apparently sublimated and crystallised,
giving us our gold-sand, rock-salt, and the precious metals.
[6] See Fr. Hoffman’s Uebersicht der orographischen und geognostischen
Verhältnisse des nordwestlichen Deutschland. Introduction.
[7] This paper may be found in my earlier translation from Ritter.
Geographical Studies, page 177.—ED.
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