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Title: Geographical studies
Author: Carl Ritter
Contributor: Heinrich Bögekamp
Translator: William Leonard Gage
Release date: November 1, 2026 [eBook #79899]
Language: English
Original publication: Boston: Gould and Lincoln, 1861
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/79899
Credits: Aaron Adrignola, Laura Natal 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 GEOGRAPHICAL STUDIES ***
TESTIMONY
FROM
PROF. ARNOLD GUYOT, PRINCETON COLLEGE.
IT is with unmixed feelings of pleasure that I hail your attempt to
make our great and excellent RITTER known to the American
public by his own works, and thus to give, in his own words, to the
numerous lovers of Scientific Geography in this country, the large and
suggestive views contained in the translated memoirs.
I am aware that, owing to Ritter’s mode of thought and style, both
so eminently German,--as you remark yourself,--this work may not be
destined to become what is termed by our booksellers a popular book;
but I think too well of the American mind and culture not to believe
that it will find its way to a large number of true scholars, by whose
influence it will largely contribute to foster a deeper and more
philosophical study of both Geography and History.
Having myself begun, many years ago, to translate several portions of
Ritter’s works into French, I can, perhaps better than many others,
appreciate the great difficulties that you had to overcome to give us
his thoughts in the clear and flowing English which distinguishes your
translation. For this success I sincerely congratulate you.
I remain, dear sir, with sincere esteem, and cordially, yours,
ARNOLD GUYOT.
PROF. D. C. GILMAN, YALE COLLEGE. (From the New Englander.)
BY common consent, HUMBOLDT and RITTER are regarded
as the founders of the department of Physical Geography. For its
promotion they labored, not unitedly, but harmoniously, during a longer
period than is appointed for the life of most men. While they differed
widely in character, and exerted themselves in very different ways
for the promotion of their favorite study, their names will always
be remembered together in their works. The Cosmos and the Erdkunde
will together be handed down to posterity as an enduring monument of
the extent to which the knowledge of nature, and especially of its
relations to man, has been carried in the nineteenth century of the
Christian era.
In contrast with the popular homage generously lavished upon Humboldt,
both in Europe and America, stands the equally honorable and equally
enduring reputation which the genius of Ritter has achieved, not
indeed among the multitude, but among his peers in the higher ranks
of intellectual culture. Yet we would not disparage the well-earned
fame of the author of the Cosmos, when we say that the author of the
Erdkunde was far more nearly his equal in genius, in learning, and
in perpetual influence, than would be supposed by those who should
judge them by their present notoriety; for the New Geography is almost
equally indebted to them both. It is not easy to say whether Humboldt
or Ritter has done most in this science, for they have labored by
different methods and in different departments,--Humboldt inclining
decidedly to the study of material science, in geology, hydrography,
orography, and terrestrial physics; and Ritter in as marked a manner
evincing his love for the study of mankind, in history, ethnology and
archæology, and regarding the world as a theatre for human progress. To
define the relative value of their services is happily as needless as
it would be difficult. They acted and reacted upon each other.
At the basis of all Ritter’s writings lies the thought that each of the
grand divisions of the earth has its own peculiar character as really
as any person; and that thus it is designed to fulfil a specific office
in the culture of mankind. This idea, promulgated and illustrated with
such eloquence and skill in the University lectures of Ritter, has
already to some extent pervaded the geographical literature of the
day, and may be traced in many of the school-books of Germany, which
are based upon his method. His principles are brought out in a volume
composed of various contributions to the Academy of Science, and other
occasional essays, which was published in Berlin in 1852. It is this
volume which is now first brought before the English reading public, no
translation of it having appeared in England.
[Illustration: Gould and Lincoln. Boston]
[Illustration]
GEOGRAPHICAL STUDIES.
BY THE LATE
PROFESSOR CARL RITTER
OF BERLIN.
=Translated from the Original German=,
BY
WILLIAM LEONHARD GAGE,
TRANSLATOR AND EDITOR OF PROF. HEINRICH STEFFINS’S
“STORY OF MY CAREER,” ETC.
“Is it not worth while, for the sake of the history of men and of
nations, to study the surface of the earth in its relation to its
inhabitants?”
BOSTON:
GOULD AND LINCOLN,
59 WASHINGTON STREET.
NEW YORK: SHELDON AND COMPANY.
CINCINNATI: GEORGE S. BLANCHARD.
1863.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1861, by
GOULD AND LINCOLN,
In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the District of
Massachusetts.
TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE.
THE papers presented to the American public in the following work are
so purely the product of German thought, and retain, even in our own
language, such distinct traces of their source, that a translation
becomes necessarily hazardous. An eminent living writer has said that
“every great nation has a mode of expression and of thought peculiar
to itself, and with which its sympathies are intimately connected. To
introduce any foreign model, however admirable it may be, is to violate
this connection, and to impair the value of literature by limiting
the scope of its action.” Physical Geography, and the generalizations
which it involves, have been to so great an extent the fruit of German
soil, that its terminology has hardly forced itself yet into other
tongues, and its ideas are still colored with the nationality of their
origin. To cast the thought in an English mould of expression has been
a prominent object with me in executing the translation, yet I am aware
that the result has been but imperfectly reached. The obstacle has been
not so much in the extremely involved style of Ritter (though in this
respect educated Germans grant that he has hardly his parallel) as in
the newness of his field of inquiry.
There are some pages of this work whose contents have been presented
heretofore to the American and English reader in our standard
treatises on Physical Geography; and they are here given anew mainly to
show them in their first statement, to bring them forward in the light
in which they appeared to the eminent discoverer. But a large part
of the generalizations of this book are not as yet worked out: they
may appear loose and vague and unmeaning; and yet they had to their
author, conversant as he was with the myriads of geographical details,
a distinctness of meaning which hardly any one can see who has not read
the twenty thousand pages of Ritter’s Erdkunde.
Mr. Buckle has elaborated, in one of the opening chapters of the
History of Civilization in England, two or three of Ritter’s thoughts,
and has applied them briefly to a few countries; and while he goes to
an extent to which Ritter was ever a stranger, abusing the thought
instead of using it, that nations as well as individuals are modified
by their geographical conditions, yet his chapter shows how wide
a field of application lies still open to the generalizations of
the great geographer. Ritter nowhere makes man subject, in silent,
unresisting dumbness, to the influences of nature; he allows for
results which issue from the mutual conflict of geographical conditions
and the freedom of man’s will; but Buckle, going far beyond Ritter,
makes the former element all, and reduces the latter to a cipher.
The Introduction to the Erdkunde, and the General Observations on the
Fixed Forms of the Earth’s Surface, are the only portions of Ritter’s
great work, of any length, which could be incorporated into this
translation. The Erdkunde, or Physical Geography of Asia and Africa
(for the work never went beyond these two continents), is a monument
of genius as well as of research; and yet the nineteen volumes, with
their twenty thousand pages, are not filled with generalizations,--they
are made up almost exclusively of details. The Erdkunde differs from
all preceding geographical works, as diamond differs from charcoal: the
details are not thrown together in a hap-hazard way, but are organized
into unity. The sciences of botany, geology, chemistry, astronomy,
natural philosophy, and mineralogy are made subservient to the great
purpose of the work, and the results of all these and kindred sciences
are introduced and unified. The principles that underlie the Erdkunde
are found in the two papers which are translated here, but, as the
reader will see, the work itself could not be to any great extent used.
The six lectures read before the Royal Academy of Science at Berlin, in
different years, from 1826 to 1850, are esteemed the consummation of
Ritter’s geographical labors. Guyot and the English geographers have
made the public acquainted with a part of their contents, yet some of
them have not been drawn upon at all. They will all repay study; though
it is to be regretted that the turn of the German mind is so little
towards illustration of principles; that it rolls out thought after
thought, keeping them in an abstract shape, instead of casting them in
that more concrete form which is characteristic of the results of the
French, English, and American mind.
Ritter, unlike Humboldt, seems to have paid no attention to beauties
of style; and this although he had a poet’s sensibility, and was alive
to every natural grace. The reader will not fail to see, especially in
the Introduction to the Erdkunde, that its author had an imagination
of rare strength, one which threw a rich and warm glow over all that
he wrote. But as for beauty of style, he had none of it. He fully
illustrates the truth of what has been said by an eminent living
writer: “The great German authors address themselves not to their
country, but to one another. They are sure of a select and learned
audience, and they use what is in fact a learned language; they turn
their mother tongue into a dialect, eloquent indeed and very powerful,
but so difficult, so subtle, and so full of complicated inversions,
that to their own lower classes it is entirely incomprehensible.”
Of two pictures of Ritter in my possession, I present the earlier one,
taken at the height of his power. Although it does not in any way
represent his appearance as I knew him in his advanced age, yet it is
certified to as a very correct likeness of him in middle life.
I cannot close without expressing my thanks to Mr. Balfour, of
Dantzig, Prussia, for valuable hints and help in the execution of this
undertaking, and more especially for revising the entire translation,
word by word, thus at once ensuring and assuring its accuracy.
May this work, which in another language has already given a new
direction to Geography in all civilized lands, be more fruitful of
good, now that it can be read in the tongue which will always be
largely employed in diffusing its results.
WILLIAM LEONHARD GAGE.
PORTSMOUTH, N. H., March, 1861.
CONTENTS.
SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF PROFESSOR RITTER, BY THE TRANSLATOR, 13.
ACCOUNT OF RITTER’S GEOGRAPHICAL LABORS, BY DR. BÖGEKAMP, OF BERLIN, 33.
INTRODUCTORY ESSAY TO GENERAL COMPARATIVE GEOGRAPHY.
The study of Man as an individual preliminary to the study of
the globe, 55.--The norm of individual and national development,
56.--Sources of individuality, 57.--Slow workings of nature,
58.--The earth the scene of all natural phenomena, 59.--Natural life
a resultant, 60.--Influences of nature, 60.--A knowledge of God
solving a thousand seeming contradictions, 61.--Impossible that a
single mind should compass the whole theme of this work, 61.--The
greatest triumph of the human mind to trace the influences which
modify man, 61.--Possibility that some may be able to forecast
history, 62.--The beginning of historical development a circuitous
and rambling course, 62.--All forms to be studied, 63.--Man must find
his true locality to attain his perfect development, 63.--GENERAL
COMPARATIVE GEOGRAPHY IN ITS AIM AND OBJECT, 64.--Every
observation on nature conducts from details to their relation
with the whole, 64.--Regularity in diversity, 65.--Illustrations,
65.--Influences of periodic change, 66.--Contrast between east and
west, 66.--Contrast between the Old World and the New, 67.--Special
characteristics of Asia, Europe, and Africa, 68.--Influences active
in the western half of the globe, 70.--Advancement from the simple
to the complex, 70.--Africa as rightly the first field of study,
71.--THE CONTINENTS AS FIXED FORMS, 71.--Africa, Asia,
and Europe, the natural order of study in the continents of the
Old World, 71.--These three continents contain all leading types,
72.--Reason of the above order in naming them, 73.--Unity of the Old
World, 73.--Strict use of the term Old World, 74.--General usage
in the names Old and New Worlds, 74.--THE FLUID FORMS ON THE
EARTH’S SURFACE, 75.--The geographical elements, their laws,
activity, functions, and mediatorial agency, 75.--THE THREE
NATURAL KINGDOMS, 78.--Their relation to Man, 79.--METHOD
OF ARRANGEMENT, 81.--The deductive system, 82.--Brief résumé
of authorities, 82.--Why called _Physical_ Geography, 83.--Why
called _General_, 83.--Excellence of a systematic arrangement,
84.--Importance of hypotheses in geographical investigations,
85.--The union of all truths, 85.--Fundamental principles of this
work, 87.--GEOGRAPHICAL AUTHORITIES, 89.--_Nature of the
Authorities_, 91.--Ritter’s personal observations, 91.--Books
written by investigators themselves, 93.--Books written by others
than the first investigators, 94.--Value of maps, 95.--Specification
of authorities, 96.--_On the Features of the Earth’s Surface_,
99.--Ritter’s personal acquaintance with leading authorities,
100.--_On Oceanic Forms_, 104.--Contributions of British
navigators to science, 104.--Benjamin Franklin and American
savans, 105.--_On the Atmosphere_, 107.--The barometer and
its historical development, 108.--Labors of Von Buch, Humboldt, De
Saussure, and Sömmering, 111.--_On the Subterranean Regions_,
114.--Forces of fire and heat, 114.--Observations on volcanic
eruptions, 115.--Leopold Von Buch’s investigations, 116.--Scotch
naturalists and Humboldt, 117.--_Authorities in the Vegetable
Kingdom_, 118.--_Authorities in the Animal Kingdom_,
123.--_Remaining Materials_, 125.--Early geographical
investigators, 125.--The agency of boards of trade, missionary
societies, and the like, in collecting facts, 127.--Tribute to
Humboldt, 128.--Universality of modern studies, 129.--The course of
human inquiry, 130.--Mission of nature, 130.
GENERAL OBSERVATIONS ON THE FIXED FORMS OF THE EARTH’S SURFACE.
SKY, SEA, AND LAND, in their mutual relations and their
inherent activities, 133.--Using the past to illustrate the
present, 135.--Order of investigation, 135.--THE LAND,
136.--Equipoise of continents, 136.--Southerly direction of
continents, 137.--Divisions of the _Old World_, 138.--Africa,
Asia, and Europe, in respect of form, 138.--_The Elevations of
the Earth_, 141.--Relative and absolute elevation, 142.--General
water horizon, 143.--_Definition of Mountain Ranges_,
144.--Chains of marine mountains, 145.--Watersheds, 146.--Mineral
mountains, 150.--Inner formation of mountains, 151.--Illustrations,
151.--Incorrect use of the term “mountain,” 152.--False use of the
words “low” and “high,” 153.--_Establishment of Terms indicative
of Elevation_, 154.--Building of the earth, 156.--STREAMS
OF WATER, 157.--Course of streams, 157.--_River Systems and
the Districts which they water_, 159.--Watersheds as a means of
internal communication, 162.--_Direction, Fall, Upper, Middle, and
Lower Course of Streams_, 164.--The direction and fall of streams,
164.--Their upper course, 166.--Middle course, 167.--Lower course,
170.--_The Terrace-Lands of the Earth_, 172.
THE GEOGRAPHICAL POSITION AND HORIZONTAL EXTENSION OF THE CONTINENTS.
Progress in a knowledge of the globe, 177.--The earth as an
organism, 178.--The earth as the theatre of the forces of nature,
178.--The unequal division of the earth into land and water,
179.--Conformations of the earth’s surface, 179.--CONTRAST
BETWEEN THE LAND HEMISPHERE AND THE WATER HEMISPHERE,
180.--Exhibited in Australia, America, and Africa, 181.--Influence
of the oceans upon the atmosphere, 184.--THE GROUPING OF
THE LAND MASSES, 185.--Breadth at the northern extremities
contrasted with that at the southern, 185.--Proximity of all lands
around the North Pole, 186.--Uniformity of products in all Arctic
regions, 187.--Diversity in unity, 188.--Rifting of the continents,
189.--Influence of internal seas and arms of the ocean, 190.--The
various districts of the earth brought into intimate relations
by the arts of navigation, 191.--POSITIONS OF THE SEPARATE
CONTINENTS, 191.--Of Europe, 192.--Figurative appellations
of the continents, 193.--Position of America and Australia,
194.--SIZE OF THE CONTINENTS, 195.--Its influence,
195.--EXTENSION IN LENGTH AND BREADTH, 196.--THE
CONFORMATION OF THE CONTINENTS AND THEIR BROKEN OUTLINE,
199.--Conclusion, 208.
REMARKS ON FORM AND NUMBERS AS AUXILIARY IN REPRESENTING THE
RELATIONS OF GEOGRAPHICAL SPACES.
The application of geometrical figures in geography, 212.--Use
of numbers in aiding to grasp relations, 219.--Want of accurate
measurements, 221.--Humboldt’s method of description praised,
224.--Final use of measurements, 225.--Application of numbers to
shore-lines, 225.--Also to river systems, 228.--To mountains,
234.--Geographical labors which ought to be undertaken, 236.
THE HISTORICAL ELEMENT IN GEOGRAPHICAL SCIENCE.
True scope of the geographical sciences, 241.--The world the
theatre of historical development, 242.--Mutual relation of history
and geography, 242.--The former consciousness of this relation,
243.--Gradual improvement in text-books, 243.--The union of all
sciences, 246.--Sources of geographical science, 246.--Its field
of study, 247.--Changes in places, times, and forms, 249.--Objects
formerly remote or inaccessible brought near, 250.--Fixed and fluid
forms, 251.--All natural forces made subservient to human uses,
252.--The complete transformation of the earth, 252.--Difference
between geography and astronomy, 254.--Difference between geography
and other natural sciences, 254.--Changes on the earth, 255.--Victory
of man over natural forces, 257.--Unprogressive notions have little
influence over the aspects of nature, 257.--Effects in this regard
of the configuration of surface, 258.--The Ural chain as an example,
260.--Effects of all level regions to bring men together and to
diffuse the results of industry, 260.--Effects of the progress of
nautical art, 261.--Influence of improved river navigation, 263.--All
countries now in virtual proximity, 265.--The longest way often
the shortest way, 270.--Favorable situations in relation to the
sea, 271.--Conditions of nations of former times, 273.--Change in
the methods of descriptive geography, 274.--Influence of incorrect
astronomical data, 275.--Concluding remarks, 277.
NATURE AND HISTORY AS THE FACTORS OF NATURAL HISTORY: OR, REMARKS ON
THE RESOURCES OF THE EARTH.
A knowledge of the resources of the earth an important part of
geographical science, 281.--Deficiency of standard treatises in
this regard, 282.--Influence of the diffusion of the gifts of
nature, 283.--A thorough knowledge of the theme yet wanting, 283.--A
knowledge of natural history indispensable to the full appreciation
of geography, 284.--Relation between the mental state of a people
and its surroundings, 285.--Lack of data in geographical science,
290.--Efforts to reduce fragmentary facts to order, 292.--The
relations of the mineral kingdom to organized productions,
296.--Diversity in the geognostic forms of the globe, 297.--The
science of comparative natural history a new one, 300.--Duties of
a naturalist, 301.--Three questions preliminary to an explanation
of the laws of propagation on the globe, 302.--Diversity leading to
harmony, 307.
THE EXTERNAL FEATURES OF THE EARTH IN THEIR INFLUENCE ON THE COURSE
OF HISTORY.
The apparent confusion on the globe, 311.--Difference between
works of nature and works of art, 313.--Man’s capacity of
progress, 314.--Clear accordance in all the relations of things,
315.--Influence of the wedge-like masses of land in the Antarctic
hemisphere, 316.--Contrast between the land and water hemispheres,
316.--The great belt of coast-line, 317.--Influence of the
continental and oceanic divisions of the globe, 318.--The great
volcanic circle, 319.--Volcanic groups, 323.--Laws of volcanic
activity, 325.--Laws governing the direction of mountain chains,
325.--The cradle of history, 330.--Significance of the continents
in their relations to each other, 331.--Ancient ideas of the
Orient and the Occident of the globe, 333.--Under the influence of
navigation, old contrasts disappearing, 334.--Future conquests of
science, 335.--Characteristics of the separate continents, 337.--The
island formation of Europe, 344.--Absence of islands on the coast
of Africa, 345.--Products of various islands, 346.--Effects if the
world were entirely insular, 347.--Favorable position of Europe,
348.--Connection between nature and history, 348.--A secret principle
of unity, 349.--Historical value of each continent, 350.--America
in this regard, 351.--Australia and Southern Asia, 353.--The future
greatness of the New World, 354.--Concluding remarks, 356.
A SKETCH
OF THE
LIFE OF CARL RITTER.
THE first day of October, 1859, witnessed a funeral in Berlin, second
only in the display of public sympathy and appreciation of worth to
that which was exhibited in May of the same year, when Alexander
von Humboldt was carried to his grave in Tegel. I refer to the
burial ceremonies of Carl Ritter, the most eminent geographer in the
world--the man who not only gave the first impetus to the study of
physical geography, but also raised it to the dignity of a science, and
who remained till his death without a rival in the branch of knowledge
which he had created. This language may seem unwarrantably strong, but
it is not more emphatic than that expressed by the savans of Berlin
over his grave. His influence is felt in America; for such works as
Guyot’s “Earth and Man,” and Mrs. Somerville’s treatises, confessedly
owe their origin to the teachings and discoveries of Ritter. A brief
memoir of so great and influential a man cannot be misplaced as a
threshold to his writings; and though no full biography of Ritter has
yet appeared, yet the sketches of Krämer, Hoffmann, and Strauss, aided
by personal recollections of his teaching, must suffice, in want of
more complete materials.
Carl Ritter was born at Quedlinburg, Prussia, 1779. The time was most
favorable, for it was then that the world was beginning to be deeply
moved by the great intellectual struggles which preceded the French
Revolution, and yet it was late enough to perceive whither all the
currents and counter currents of opinion would run, if left to their
own self-direction. His father was a physician of skill and note. Dying
when Ritter was a mere child, he left a large family utterly without
means. Carl was the youngest child; he was then but five years of age.
Through the kindness of friends and the gentry of the neighborhood,
three of the children found homes immediately. Carl and another brother
were cared for in an almost providential way. It was just at that
time that Salzmann was founding his famous school at Schnepfenthal.
He was looking carefully around to discover some boy of promise whom
he might adopt in his sixth year, and bring to manhood, applying his
favorite system of moral suasion. Salzmann accidentally learned of
the death of Dr. Ritter, and knowing of his large family, he thought
that in it there might be some promising boy whom he might adopt, and
sent two friends to Quedlinburg to make the proper inquiries. They
were so well pleased with Carl, and so well satisfied that he would
be a suitable subject for Salzmann’s experiment, that they proposed
to his mother to surrender him to their friend to be educated at his
expense. She consented, after a hard struggle, and accompanied her
boy to Schnepfenthal. A friend of the family went with them. She
remained for some time with her son, and returned to her home, having
conceived the greatest respect for Salzmann and his system. Thus Carl
Ritter was the first pupil in the school which has since risen to such
eminence, the institution at Schnepfenthal. He remained there eleven
years, till his entering the university, and so this pleasant place
became his real home. And scarcely could a better one have been found
to develop a mind like Ritter’s, and fit it for the pursuit of such
studies as he was to become eminent in. Surrounded by the charms of a
highly diversified landscape, on the border of the Thuringian forest,
looking out on all sides upon a most fruitful plain dotted with cities
and villages, with meadows and mountains full in view, he was not only
able in all this beauty to penetrate to the goodness of the Creator,
but also to get glimpses of many geographical forms, there thrown
together, which in most other places would be scattered. So to him
Schnepfenthal became a miniature Cosmos; and I can easily see how his
whole later method of regarding the entire world in its cosmical unity
grew out of the blended unity and diversity in the midst of which he
passed from childhood to manhood. His education was conducted with the
most jealous care. Schnepfenthal was one of the first schools where
the languages of Greece and Rome were pushed aside in favor of the
modern tongues, and where the attention of the teachers was specially
directed to the practical branches, and the formation of character.
To the latter Salzmann devoted most of his energies. To give physical
strength, and hardihood of nature, and ruggedness of spirit, he much
preferred to merely imparting the details of learning. It is but just
to say, that the religion taught was the rationalism of those times,
of which Salzmann was a prominent supporter; but Ritter seems never to
have been affected by it. During the last days of his life, while he
was suffering great pain, his thoughts ran back to Schnepfenthal; he
sent a word of greeting to the home of his youth, and expressed his
thankfulness that God had made that school the place where he had begun
to enjoy the consolations of religion. This institution still exists,
and among the eight hundred men whom it has sent into the world, Ritter
stands incontestably on the highest stage of eminence.
Eleven years spent in Schnepfenthal brought him to the age of sixteen.
He must be thinking of the future. He had chosen no profession. He had
a strong relish for study, but how he should support himself during the
years to be spent at the university, he did not know. The way before
him seemed quite dark, as it had been to him, when a boy of five years,
at his father’s death. But again Providence disclosed the path that he
should take. Mr. Hollweg, a wealthy merchant of Frankfort-on-the-Main,
and partner in business with the same Bethmann whose name every visitor
to Frankfort still recognizes in connection with Dannecker’s statue of
Ariadne, sent him, upon Salzmann’s recommendation, to the university,
under the condition that after leaving it he should become the private
tutor of his two sons. So Ritter went to Halle. He had then no special
inclination towards geography, and entered upon the study of finance.
Halle was then the centre of the intellectual life of Germany, as it
now is of its religious life, and, happily for Ritter, he soon found
himself domesticated in the home of one of the most distinguished
of the professors, Niemeyer, who may be said to have been the most
eminent educator of his age. He had just published his first principles
of the pedagogic art, and was then at the height of his fame. During
the two years which Ritter spent in Halle, he was brought under the
daily influence of Niemeyer, and it is not strange that it gave him
not only a great bias towards the life of a teacher, but an admirable
knowledge of the principles which underlie a teacher’s work. In the
year 1798, he entered upon his duties as private tutor of the children
of Mr. Hollweg, of Frankfort.
It was a trying step for the youth of nineteen, who had always moved
in the most retired way, to enter at once the family of a very
wealthy man, in the richest city of Germany, and to mingle freely
with its aristocracy. Of course he found a multitude of difficulties
to overcome. But he set himself in good earnest to his duty, and the
result has followed as it has to few teachers beside. One of the two
little boys died in the very freshness of childhood; the other has
grown up to be first a contemporary professor with Ritter in the
University of Berlin, and now to be the distinguished head of medical,
ecclesiastical, and educational affairs,--Baron Bethman Hollweg,--a
man not only of the finest talents, but also the great pillar of
evangelical religion in Germany; a man of such exalted character
and true influence that I cannot write his name without a glow of
enthusiasm.
There are few places which so call every quality of a teacher into
action--trying at every point, attainments, temperament, judgment,
disposition, and strength--as the post of tutor in such a house as
Ritter was called to, where there are the most capable of children
to receive, and the most capable of parents to judge. But Ritter went
to his duty fully equipped. And the longer he staid, the more he
was loved. He was brought not only into daily contact with such men
as Sömmering and Engel, but with Leopold von Buch and Alexander von
Humboldt. Such acquaintanceship drove him deeper into study; and amid
the advantages of a place like Frankfort, with wealth, art, and books
at his free disposal, with friends to reward and stimulate his zeal,
and in the midst of an attractive country like the valley of the Main
and the Rhine, his mind was enriched with all the accomplishments that
could adorn it.
And all these advantages he appreciated and improved. The time of his
stay in Frankfort was a period of the most diversified studies, to
which not only his duties as teacher invited him, but to which his
own nature drove him. So, among other things, he turned his attention
to the languages of Greece and Rome, which had been overlooked in his
education at Schnepfenthal, and read the most eminent authors in Latin
and Greek literature. It was at Frankfort, too, that he turned his mind
with special interest to geography and history. The thought of devoting
himself to these departments presented itself to him while a teacher in
Mr. Hollweg’s house. So he began his studies in this direction by going
over, first, all the most eminent works then written on geography and
its relations. The little excursions which he made with his pupils into
the environs, near and remote, of Frankfort, aided him in collecting
independent observations. The happy faculty which he possessed of
grasping, with perfect ease, all the features of a landscape, was to
him of great service, and, by sketching them on his little journeys,
he rendered them forever his own. So, from every one of these little
trips he used to bring home a portfolio full of sketches, which served
him as the points to which important observations began by and by to
attach themselves. It was in this way, by studying in this minute and
careful manner the mere neighborhood of Frankfort, that he gained
that thorough grounding in geography which displayed itself in his
first publications. He began his career as an author by sending to a
paper for youth, published by his friend Engelmann, these geographical
studies of which I have just spoken. But in 1806 appeared his six maps
of Europe, and in 1811 the Geography of Europe, in two volumes. In both
of them can be seen the singular capacity of his mind for grasping the
facts of geography and apprehending their relations. They are the first
efforts to express what lay in his soul. Many more preparations were
needed to ripen him for his great work.
In 1811 he began his series of short journeys, which lasted through his
whole life, by excursions with his pupils into Switzerland and Italy. I
do not need to speak at any protracted length to make intelligible to
my readers of what never-ending significance the careful observation
of these two countries--the most perfect representatives of the
most important and weightiest geographical types which Europe has
to show--was to such a man as Ritter, whose mind was so singularly
sensitive to external impressions, and so well adapted to trace the
relations existing between the formative features of a country and the
character of its population. In Switzerland he studied nature in her
most stupendous forms. Italy, which he traversed from north to south,
gave him an insight into volcanic activity, the relation of the land
to the sea, the effects upon climate, and of all geographical features
upon the character of a people. The riches of art which Italy possesses
as does no other land, laid the finishing touch upon his most delicate
and sensitive soul. And of not less worth to him were the personal
relations which he entered into on those journeys with the most eminent
men of the times. I mention Pestalozzi before all, whom he met in his
excursions to Switzerland, and whom he repeatedly visited; the time
which he spent with him and his coädjutors in discussing the method of
instruction which Pestalozzi was exhibiting to the world he used to
look back upon as most valuable and delightful. With Saussure and de
Candolle--names known to all my readers--he was on terms of intimacy,
meeting them in the course of his Swiss journeys. With his pupils he
penetrated into every corner of this country, tarrying months at a
time in places of special interest, as, for example, at Geneva, the
centre of the intellectual life of Switzerland, and at the base of Mont
Blanc, the point of the greatest interest to the geographer. He tarried
long at Rome, too, not only on account of its manifold historical
associations, but because it was then the centre of attraction to men
of world-wide reputation; and while there he became intimate with such
artists as Cornelius and Overbeck, the painters, and Thorwaldsen, the
sculptor,--men whose gifts were not those alone of a skilful hand, but
of able minds, and new and rich thought. With all the vast range of
knowledge, with all the sharpness of his genius, with all the energy
of his activity and the strength of his intellect, the quality which
most endeared him to his friends was the sweetness of his nature, his
friendly mien, the cheerful, bright, child-like soul; these made a bond
that could not be broken. This made them almost forget at times that
that noble _intellect_ was, and would remain, the basis of his
fame.
Thus enriched by the fruits of all these journeys, he began to lay his
hand upon the work of his life. In 1814 he went with his two pupils to
Göttingen, for they were then ready to commence their studies at the
university. Here he could associate freely with eminent men, and have
the use of the vast library which had been recently gathered there.
He spent two years at Göttingen; thence he went to Berlin, and there
finished the first copy of his great geographical work, and commenced
printing the “Erdkunde.” Like Niebuhr’s “History of Rome,” the first
edition is but the basis of what stood as the Erdkunde when he died.
In 1817 the first part of his life-work appeared. Its title, which I
translate, hints plainly at its character: “The Science of the Earth
in Relation to Nature and the History of Man; or, General Comparative
Geography as the Foundation of the Study of and Instruction in the
Physical and Historical Sciences.” In this work the true treatment of
geography has been fully unfolded and established, and it has been
raised to the place of a sister between the natural sciences and
history. It would be impossible to give a characterization of this work
in few words. Its Introduction has done this fully; but that is too
extended to be reduced to the dimensions of this sketch. The Physical
Geographies which have abundantly appeared in our country within the
past ten years are the faint shadow, as they are the direct resultant
of this work of Carl Ritter. Mrs. Somerville’s books, and Guyot’s
“Earth and Man,” are the best representatives of the Erdkunde, but in
size they are but miniature, compared with Ritter’s ponderous tomes. In
this great work he has succeeded in presenting the forms of the earth’s
surface in their horizontal and vertical dimensions, embracing geology
as well as the mere description of the exterior; in bringing all the
facts connected with geology proper and geography proper into direct
relations; and in presenting, besides, a view of the entire productions
of the earth, the whole animated creation, and more especially in
grasping the development of races from their surroundings. To have
accomplished this immense undertaking in a clear, and at the same time
comprehensive way, was a great service and a high praise; and yet,
perfect as was the result, his hopes and attempts were directed to an
ideal as much higher than what he wrought out as the ideal of an artist
is raised above the actual result. But Ritter was admirably fitted
for his work. To enable any one to accomplish what Ritter did, there
were wanting those varied qualities of mind which had come to be his
through the circumstances of his youth, his later course of education,
and the most protracted studies. And, added to these advantages,
Ritter possessed the following in a manner that no man of our times or
past times has surpassed,--the union of a power of combining with a
thoroughness which went unweariedly to the smallest details; a great
fulness of scientific knowledge, with a complete mastery of historical
facts; and the ability to present in a thorough and exhaustive way,
and at the same time in a picturesque and vivid manner. But it was
_this_ that struck the deepest roots into Ritter’s soul, and
displayed itself as the basis of his book--the search for the knowledge
of the living God in his works. It was from this that arose that
well-known, humble, and complete surrender of himself to his subject,
making him never satisfied, yet not allowing him to shrink back before
so ponderous an undertaking; it was from this living spring that arose
that ceaseless sprightliness of his, which was not crushed by the
immense accumulation of his facts. His work was to him, as he once
wrote of it in his diary, his “song of praise to God.”
During the printing of the Erdkunde he lived in Berlin. Here work
of all kinds accumulated upon his hands. He was appointed, in 1819,
Professor of History in the Gymnasium of Frankfort, spent one year
there in that capacity, during which he married, and then obeyed a
call to Berlin to become Professor extraordinary of Geography in its
university. On the nineteenth of September, 1820, he entered upon his
duties in this new capacity.
With that event began the second half of his life, in which all his
scientific studies and his work as a teacher bore their best fruit.
There was indeed no place which presented so varied attractions to a
man of such attainments and abilities to interest others, as Berlin.
In the university he found an intense scientific activity, sustained
by men of world-wide renown, into whose circle he at once stepped as
an equal, and was soon cherished as one of the chief ornaments. His
lectures were received with the greatest satisfaction; and his intimate
acquaintance with such men as von Buch and von Humboldt, and the vast
scientific interests which are centred at Berlin, constantly stimulated
him to advance in his studies. So his life, therefore, became not only
full of delight to him, but in the highest degree advantageous in the
prosecution of his labors. His former pupil, Bethmann Hollweg, had
become a professor also in the same University of Berlin.
His ceaseless activity now turned itself upon the issuing of the
second edition of his great geographical work, in so far as his time
could be spared from his direct duties as a teacher. It soon began to
appear, much enlarged; yet his devotion to that duty suffered many
interruptions. His time was more and more taken up with new demands.
He was elected a member of the Scientific Commission of Enquiry in
Geography and History; shortly after, was appointed Lecturer on History
in the War School; and almost immediately thereafter director of the
studies of the corps of Cadets. Upon this followed the appointment
of Ritter as the private tutor to Prince Albert of Prussia in the
department of history; and he was directed to read lectures to the
Prince Regent and a few noble friends during the winter months. With
these and kindred demands, his time was largely taken up. He discharged
them all with his wonted faithfulness and care, and yet had time--such
was his physical strength and unwavering activity--to devote a part of
each day to his great geographical work. In the years of which I am now
speaking, he founded the Geographical Society of Berlin, in connection
with friends, and remained its most active working member, and
generally its president, down to his death. His place in that society
is now filled by the distinguished Dove; his place as professor in the
university, by Kiepert, the well-known Chartographer.
Of the greatest worth to him in connection with his studies were the
journeys which he used to take in the long autumn vacation. Twice they
were so extended that they embraced the largest part of the summer.
These journeys served not only to refresh him, but to give him an
immense mass of observations of the greatest importance to him in
the prosecution of his studies. He made frequent visits to Vienna,
Paris, London, and other great cities. He repeatedly traversed Central
Europe, travelled through Greece, Wallachia, Bulgaria, Hungary and
Turkey; crossed France in all directions, and explored the Pyrenees;
visited Denmark, Norway, and Sweden; and was familiarly acquainted
with England. Germany, Switzerland, and Northern Italy, were however
his geographical homes, and with them he was the most familiar. His
letters home while on these travels are charming; for he was open to
impressions of all kinds, was introduced to the most eminent men,
and was, of course, one of the closest of observers. Any one who has
enjoyed the pleasure of hearing Ritter lecture, would mark everywhere
the results of those personal wanderings.
But, after a succession of years spent in miscellaneous work, obeying
all the demands which were laid upon him, he found that he must
concentrate himself upon his great work, which lay but imperfectly
completed; and in 1831 he had to give up the private instruction of
princes, and the delighting of select circles with his wisdom, and
devote himself entirely to the “Erdkunde.” The result of this new
step was soon apparent. In 1832 began to appear the first of the
volumes, and they followed in rapid succession till the nineteenth was
published, and the great monument of his life was complete. They remain
now, and will long remain, the fullest encyclopedia of geographical
lore; and he who brought geography into the rank of the sciences as an
equal sister, is still at the head of the one he loved so well.
With the advance of his work his fame advanced with equal steps, his
relations with naturalists extended into all lands, and he became
one of the central points of science, not more known for the almost
unparalleled extent of his knowledge than for the soundness of his
judgment, and for his sweetness and patience in answering all questions
put to him; bearing himself with unwavering “humanity,” as the Germans
say, in his relations with all kinds of men.
In such ways it could not fail to follow that all manner of honors
should pour in upon him. He was elected member of almost all the
scientific societies of Europe, and numerous orders were bestowed upon
him. He received all these things thankfully, but was far from valuing
them beyond their worth. In his journals is to be found scarcely any
mention of them. But he did prize the personal affection of the present
king of Prussia, and the familiar intercourse which he had with him,
and always regarded it as one of the things to be cherished, that he
had such private access to the affections of his king.
I have thus far spoken of Ritter as a learned man and an author. But,
eminent as is his rank in these relations, it is not higher than his
position as a teacher in the lecture-room. Very few teachers have
had the extended and lasting reputation which he enjoyed. When he
came to Berlin in 1820, and announced in the university his lectures
on Universal Geography, there were no hearers at the opening of the
course, very few at the close, and but a handful in the following
course. Yet still there was a gain; and ever on went his success,
till in 1823, only three years from the beginning of his labors as
professor in Berlin, he wrote in his diary: “Full lecture-room; I
must have a larger.” And so it went on, till the largest hall in the
university could hardly contain his pupils. It soon began to be “the
thing” to hear Ritter, and nearly every student of the natural sciences
was a daily attendant on his course. When I was in Berlin, five years
ago, Ritter’s room was still full; more than three hundred young men
were hearing his lectures. He knew his art well. With almost womanly
tact, he seized upon those features which present circumstances made
interesting, and culled out of the immense masses of matter lying
in his mind just what he could use with the greatest profit. He
illustrated freely by excellent maps, and was a master in the use of
the blackboard, sketching gracefully and readily whatever made his
subject clear. I shall not forget the patriarchal appearance of Carl
Ritter in the lecture-room in 1855. He used his notes about half the
time, but read them easily, and with great distinctness. Obscure and
involved almost without parallel in his written dissertations, yet
his style was simple in the lecture-room, and his clear articulation
and well-chosen emphasis, combined in a highly musical voice, made
it easy to follow him. He was a tall, finely-proportioned man, with
a noble head, a most sincere and earnest manner, yet unusually
quiet and simple. His dress was peculiar when an old man, and no
one who frequented the famous Linden-avenue of Berlin would fain to
remark that tall and venerable figure, clad in a long blue cloak and
broad-rimmed hat, both half a century out of date. He used to wear
a large rolling collar, like that worn by a past generation of New
England grandfathers; and that, together with the huge horn spectacles,
gave him a rusticity of appearance, and a simple friendliness, which
captivated every one who knew his learning, his talents, and his
heart. It was a characteristic of Ritter, that the external man was
so penetrated by his inner nature, that the two were inseparable and
indistinguishable. He was such a one that if you had looked upon his
face you had read the whole man; and therefore he belonged to that
class of minds which always makes the same impression upon men of all
conditions and mental varieties. The cause of this uniform impression
is found in his natural humility, in the quiet peacefulness of his
inner life, which was more than mere tranquillity: it was the holy
calmness of a Christian.
Indeed, there has hardly lived a man of so great eminence who has been
of such purity of heart, simplicity of manner, and strong personal
sympathies as Carl Ritter. His loss is felt in Berlin more as a
personal calamity than as a mere break in the list of scientific men;
for in all things which constitute a still, pure, peaceful soul, loving
home and loving friends, Ritter was most eminent: a man who found his
greatest delight in serving those who loved him. He was absolutely
free from egotism and from personal vanity. Towards the close of his
life he made the assertion, which so few can make, that he had never
alienated an old friend, and that the remembrance of every one whom
he had loved, and who had been removed by death, was cherished by him
through life. It was only natural that this should be so, for Ritter’s
circle of sympathies knew no bounds; and, despite his retiring way,
and the quiet of his disposition, he was an untiring helper of all who
needed advice or active assistance. In private he was benignant and
fatherly--were the word allowed, I should say grandfatherly--as I knew
him. I went to Berlin to study under his direction, and found him most
kind and gracious; opening his hand, his library, and his house to the
young American, and attaching me to him by a strong bond. I am most
happy to be able to speak of him to my countrymen, and testify to his
greatness and his worth.
I must allude to another aspect in Ritter’s character. He was one of
the foremost Christians in Germany. He cherished from his schooldays
a living faith in God and Christ, which the loss of his wife, twenty
years before his own death, only strengthened. He was a Christian in
the full sense of the word. He was a man who _spoke_ little of
faith; but it lay deeply at his heart, and showed itself in his active
coöperation in the great Christian enterprises of the day. He was one
of the most active men in Germany in promoting church harmony; and when
the Evangelical Alliance met in Berlin three years ago, Ritter was
one of the greatest voices there. He was steadfastly opposed to all
forms of strife in the church; but he cherished, as the chief joy of
his life, his faith in Christ and the grace which God had implanted in
his heart. God’s word was the light of his steps; and it was the great
end of all his scientific labors to confirm the truth of the Bible.
Hoffmann, his pastor, the eminent cathedral preacher of Berlin, uses
these words in his address over Ritter’s grave: “No one who lived in
near intimacy with him will forget the bright glance of his eye when
the richness of God’s grace was spoken of, nor that serious earnestness
of his with which he traced the hand of the Eternal in his works; no
one will forget that venerable head and that reverential face, as he
sat in the house of God during the hour of afternoon worship, nor
the few but precious words with which he proclaimed his peace in God
through Jesus Christ, and expressed his hope of future glory. No one
could approach him without feeling that the richness and vastness of
his knowledge were all subordinated to a desire for His praise, by
whom, and through whom, and for whom all things have been created. The
blessing of the meek was plainly his, and no one could be with him even
for a season and not feel it to be so; for he would note the universal
peace of Ritter’s soul, and the humility of his nature, pictured in
every feature of his countenance. His was the face of a man whose
labors, investigations, and researches--whose collecting, arranging,
and linking together of facts, drawn from a field uninvestigated before
him, culminated in the study of the workings of God. Even in the
midst of the woes of life, and those bitter separations which God’s
providence compelled him to meet, his head remained unbowed; for He
whom he knew as his redeemer from death was his redeemer from every
evil.”
Ritter carried his religion into his scientific studies. This earth
was to him not a mere dwelling-place for nations; it was the material
out of which life is woven; it was the garment in which the soul
clothes itself, the body wherein the spirit formed by God must move.
This was Ritter’s central thought; all his ideas illustrated, all his
researches confirmed it; through the earth as his way he reached God
as his goal. The globe was to him but the place where God’s kingdom
should be founded; and in all his study of man, Christ became the
middle point. In his most valuable scientific writings the thought that
underlies them all--whether his subject be mountain heights or dark
valleys, heaths or cities--is, that everything in the world comes from
the counsels of God, and has a relation to the kingdom of Christ. This
is the secret of those impressions which his geographical writings
produce. Free from all striving after effect, his great aim was to show
the workings of the living God in the conditions of history. This was
the reason why he always expressed the purpose of his work in a manner
equally indicative of his humility and of the religious bearings of
science. In sending me a copy of his last volume, he wrote in it with
his own hand that it was another note added to the harmony of that
general song of praise in which all branches of science must unite, if
they will retain the honor which God has lent to them, until the time
shall come when they shall raise the “gloria in excelsis” in still
nobler notes.
A brief passage written by him in 1845, just on the eve of his
departure for the Pyrenees, and found after his death, will throw light
on his faith. It runs thus: “Although now, in my preparations for my
departure to west France and the Pyrenees, well and strong, yet my life
lies in God’s hand, whose grace and compassion have already accompanied
me so many years, that in all my thoughts and actions I must give
praise and thanks to Him so long as I live. Should it please Him not
to send me back safely to my beloved ones and my work, but to take me
to a place in his blessed kingdom, it is my request that there be no
sorrow over my journey home to him, for what God does is well done.
My Saviour, in his compassion, will care for my eternal future. I am
deeply conscious of my weakness and my sin, and yet I trust him; for I
know that God is everlasting love, and I know that my Redeemer lives,
who will make his believers participators in his eternal grace.”
Ritter died at the age of eighty years. On the night before his
decease, as his pastor sat by his bedside and pressed his hand,
quoting the beautiful twenty-third Psalm, “The Lord is my Shepherd,”
Ritter replied, “He has guided me thus far, and he will not desert me
now.” These were among the last words of that rare man,--rare for his
learning, his talents, his sweetness, and his Christian strength. In
England and America the men of loftiest powers and the widest learning
are the men most firmly persuaded of the truth and saving blessedness
of Christianity; while those who doubt or disbelieve are now found
almost wholly among the half-educated or the utterly neglected. But in
Germany the order is reversed. The lowest classes are those that are to
be found within the walls of churches, while the men of thought are, to
a great extent, disbelievers. Ritter stands, therefore, more eminent
for his grace than for his intellect. And as Kant led the way in giving
the Germans philosophy instead of Christ, it may be that Ritter, a
spirit of hardly less magnitude than his, may inaugurate the reign of
Christian principle among the future scholars of Germany.
AN ACCOUNT
OF
PROF. RITTER’S GEOGRAPHICAL LABORS.
BY
DR. H. BÖGEKAMP.
IF the question be asked, In what spirit did Ritter investigate
geography, and in what way did he elevate it to the rank of a science?
The answer can only be found by a perusal of his great work, and the
lectures which he delivered before the Royal Academy of Berlin. The
outlines of thought contained in the Introduction to the Erdkunde
are briefly these: As every individual has received from God certain
peculiarities of character, and certain mental tendencies, so the
nations of the globe have an aggregate of such peculiarities and
tendencies, because nations comprise but a multiplicity of individual
lives. It is the student’s task to trace the source whence these
peculiarities proceed, to ascertain the conditions which form the
character of nations. The individuality of a nation--that which makes
it unlike all others--is only to be traced in its own inner nature, and
in its relations to itself, to its parts, and to its surroundings; and
since no nation can exist without state and country,--that is, without
political organization and localized position,--so the individuality of
a nation is to be traced in its relations to neighboring districts and
neighboring political organizations. Thence arises the influence which
nature exercises upon a people,--an influence which, as Ritter remarks,
can only be justly appreciated by one of those calm, reflective minds,
who delight to trace workings which, though involving great power,
are yet silent and mysterious. Thus he leads the way to his favorite
thought, that geography and history have mutual influences upon each
other,--history not standing outside of nature and natural influences,
but in their very heart; so that the historian only grasps a people’s
character with true perception when he keeps in full view its position,
and the influence which its surroundings have wrought upon it.
Nor can the geographer dispense with history; on her pages he has to
read the tasks and destinies which have been assigned to the various
nations to fulfil. And this brings us to the theoretical postulate of
Ritter’s method, which, as he himself has told us, does not find truth
in a single phase of truth, but in the union of all truths, and thus
in the domain of belief. He rests upon an inward intuition which has
been gradually forming by contact with nature on the one side, and
with man on the other. In other words, a living God is at the head of
the physical and moral world. Mankind is a whole; but it is divided
into peoples, which, in the counsels of God, have their tasks to
perform,--tasks apparently disunited and different, yet linked together
by a secret law of God, who alone sees the accordance and unity of so
varied results: the earth itself a whole, divided into many parts,
but all these parts to be the field where the nations shall, each in
its own way, solve the problem of its destiny. Thus history is not
a lawless thing,--a shapeless, uncrystallized mass of mere details;
its parts fit together in a regular and beautiful connection. The
surface of the earth does not remain as something without influence and
relations; but the various districts have mutual dependence upon each
other,--all in harmony, like the events of history,--making of nature
no lawless chaos, but a unit, an organism, a Cosmos.
Thus, as early as 1818, Ritter had grasped the conception of the close
inward connection between history and nature, between a people and
the country which it inhabits; and it is clear that no materialistic
philosophizings could creep in with this elevated thought. More
sharply outlined and clearly expressed, this view is unfolded in one
of Ritter’s early papers, written in 1826, entitled The Geographical
Position and Horizontal Extension of the Continents. The earth, he
there states, is not alone a member of the solar system; it exists as
itself a system of phenomena; and the division of its surface into so
many parts, and the apparently random manner in which these different
districts have been scattered, are not fortuitous, but in conformity
to important laws: nor have these districts stood without any mutual
play of action and reaction, but they have powerfully influenced each
other. So all the countries of the globe are in immediate and direct
connection; each, as an active member of the whole, has its own share
in the general result, and the individuality of the earth as a planet
springs from the combined individuality of its parts.
In this result, which embraces animate and inanimate nature alike,
and which throws equal light upon nature and upon history, there is
another element present, one which pertains exclusively to the earth,
not as a planet, but as a system of phenomena complete in itself. In a
true, but by no means in a loose, materialistic or pantheistical sense,
the earth as a whole is an organism; and there is a certain principle
of life interfusing all its parts, bringing into crystalline regularity
its inorganic parts, and reaching all the activities of organized
life. We trace the workings of this mysterious force especially in the
connection of history and geography. They two have a unity not shared
by any other two departments; and the former is not understood till the
earth, the field where its events occur, is regarded as the home, the
place of development for the human race.
The study of these activities is the peculiar task of science. Every
detail which meets the naturalist is seen to have its connection with a
universal law. There is no point, however trivial, but it has relations
with the entire system of phenomena on the earth; and in a scientific
light, the chain is apparent which connects the entire round of facts,
and shows their relation to each other.
The earth is the field on which man is to gain his education. As in the
higher arrangements of all things, mere rude force and the external
aspect of greatness gain no lasting sway, but only that greatness
which is real and inwardly nourished, so with the features of our
globe. Ritter himself, in his account of Palestine, writes: “Does
not every garden spot owe to the cherishing care of the gardener its
influence over the trees, the fruits which are in it, in their growth
and fruitage? And can any country in God’s wider domain lie under
his active rule without affecting its people and the inhabitants of
the earth? The historian has a vast field of inquiry yet open to him;
and in the want of a full view of his field, he has fallen into many
false judgments. But this much is certain: history does not stand
_outside_ of nature, but wholly _within_ her domain; she is
truly a part of God’s garden. The activities of nature cannot hereafter
be excluded from the list of those agencies which God himself uses for
the welfare of the human race. Yet the activities of nature are as yet
far from being comprehended by us, in spite of that tone of confidence
which a false and presumptuous science not seldom assumes, while
nevertheless it is hardening in its own groundless delusion.”
This, in general terms, was the groundwork of Ritter’s geographical
conceptions. The forms of the earth’s surface are not disposed by
accident; on the contrary, they display a wise plan which we are now
able to grasp. The various districts of the globe have been created
for the life of connected people; and the world is as much fitted to
be the home of man as the body to be the habitation of the soul. It
is at once apparent how full of life and interest a science must be
which traces these influences of nature on history, and how widely the
geographical method, founded by Ritter, differs from what used to be
called geography, namely, a lifeless summary of facts about countries
and cities, mingled with all possible scientific incongruities. We
have now to show how Ritter not only established a new foundation for
geographical inquiry, but how he applied it in detail, and showed, as
in the words quoted above, how to connect general principles with
accumulated facts.
Nature presents contrasts of every kind; but the one which is most
apparent is that existing between the water, land, and atmosphere.
A mere glance at the surface of the earth leads us to notice this
contrast, and a more attentive consideration of it shows us that these
bodies cannot be without a strong influence upon each other. The mutual
action and reaction of land and water is the one which becomes first
apparent. If we suppose what is technically called a great circle to
pass around the earth, traversing the west coast of Peru, and running
along the southern shore of China, and across the island of Malacca,
we have a northeastern hemisphere which is specially continental, and
a southwestern hemisphere which is specially oceanic. England is the
centre of the first; New Zealand of the last. The climate of the two
is widely different. The water takes warmth up slowly, and slowly
parts with it; it easily maintains an equilibrium with the atmosphere,
and, so far as temperature is concerned, the two do not widely vary.
The land, on the other hand, takes up warmth very quickly, and loses
it as quickly again. The temperature of the atmosphere overhanging
the land passes from one stage of heat or cold to another with great
rapidity; and as uniformity is characteristic of the oceanic districts,
so diversity is characteristic of continental regions. A continental
climate is marked by extremes; hot days are followed by cold nights,
hot summers by cold winters; whereas an ocean climate has great
uniformity between day and night, summer and winter. The latter climate
is moist, and favors luxuriance of growth, but not a large number of
species, whether of plants or animals, if we except butterflies and
reptiles; it has, too, a strong influence upon man, making him lose
his elasticity, and become enervated and unenterprising. A continental
climate, on the contrary, does not give luxuriance, but a great variety
of species; its animals, too, have more spirit, and man has more life
and fire.
A second contrast is that of the Old and New World, or of the eastern
and western hemispheres. Here the Old World is the continental,
the New the water hemisphere. The contrast in climate is the same
as between the land and water hemispheres, although not so sharply
defined. Connected with this is a contrast in the main direction of the
continents. The Old World belongs almost exclusively to the temperate
zone, and has its longest extent from east to west. The result of
this was that wandering tribes could pass from east to west without
experiencing a great change in climate, and in the flora and fauna
of the regions through which they should pass. But the New World has
its greatest extension from north to south, from pole to pole. This
occasions a great diversity in climate, ranging from the icy cold of
the extreme north to the burning heat of the equator, and thence onward
to the cold of the south pole. A third contrast presents itself between
the northern and southern hemispheres. In the northern, the land bears
to the water the relation of one to one and a half; in the southern, of
one to five. The former is characterized by continental, the latter by
oceanic forms.
But all these contrasts vanish in a higher unity, in the completeness
of the earth as itself an organic whole. And the previous course
of history allows us to see what part has been assigned to each
district to play in the grand universal drama. Thus the Old World is
subdivided into three great parts, which stand to each other in varied
contrasts,--Asia, Africa, and Europe. Asia has been regarded, from the
earliest times, as the land where the human race began to be. In Asia
all the germs of culture are to be sought, while in Europe they have
unfolded. Africa is the Soudan of the earth. Says Ritter, in his highly
imaginative way, “If the morning and evening greeting become to every
man, even to the most wearied pilgrim on the road of life, a heart-felt
necessity, yet one which is not known when the glaring hour of midday
comes, the hour poorest in hope of all,--then, from a like analogy, all
the people of the Soudan of the earth, in the peaceful possession of
the bright midday, seem bound only to the present, which no legend of
gray antiquity beautifies, which no care for the future disturbs, and
which no hope for that future ever bears on the pinions of imagination
endlessly away.” To the Old World the New stands in direct contrast,
and offers its great Atlantic slope as a field ready to receive the
ripened results of European culture, but ready also, in consequence
of its simple structure and its uniform climate, to soften the strong
contrasts and the tendencies to individualization manifest in the Old
World, and to produce the same uniformity in it which characterizes the
New.
In this way we pass from contrast to contrast, as the anatomist does
when he dissects the body and shows the functions of the several
members.
The varied position of the separate continents is occasioned by
the contrasts between the land and water hemispheres, the Old and
New World, and the northern and southern hemispheres. “Europe,”
as Ritter remarks, in a lecture given before the Royal Academy,
in 1826,--“Europe, the smallest of the continents, surrounded by
the others in a broken ring, and Australia, the largest island,
surrounded by the open ocean, are the regions which in the north and
south respectively hold the middle place in the land hemisphere, the
continental side and the oceanic side of the globe. This position gives
Europe, in preference to any other of the continents which are linked
together, the right to be called the most continental of all; for it is
the highway of all, and the link that binds them all. So the classical
soil of the west of hither Asia, and the lands of northern Africa,
have largely affected the world’s history, for theirs is a great part
of the coasts of the Mediterranean. The influence of this section
of the world on the whole course of human culture is confessedly
great, and is produced by a combination of causes which can hardly be
repeated in any other spot,--an indisputably favorable arrangement in
the elements of position and form. In any other part of the globe the
careful student could see in the surroundings, if he looked at them in
their analogies, that it would need a longer time, and that greater
limitations and difficulties must be met, before the needed conditions
should evolve equally perfect results. And so, too, the old strugglings
after a higher culture in other places, as in India and China, which,
with all other helps, yet lacked the true position for attaining to a
development which should embrace the earth, yet show that as everywhere
the unseen only works itself out through the seen, so the development
of the inhabitants of the world stands in close relation and harmony
with the organization of the earth to which they directly belong.
“A harmonious and general arrangement of the various continents of
the earth, in their relations to light and heat, and to the rising
and setting of stars, has, from the earliest times, awakened the
interest of man, and in the course of history has received a variety
of appellations, which have, in a measure, been indicative of the
character of the continents to which they have been applied, and which
can still be used in a wider sense, and one more adapted to our modern
needs. From the earliest times men considered Asia as the land of the
morning, and Europe as the land of the evening; and they indicated the
contrast thus conveyed by the terms Orient and Occident, which find
their fitting application in all the phenomena of these two continents.
Between these, more to the south, lies Africa, divided exactly by the
equator, the true south of the globe, which is not to be sought at the
south pole, but at the place of greatest light and heat, the bright
midday, to use the old figure, between morning and evening.
“America forms, in consequence of its remote position, the entire
western arc of the great land circle; and since Europe has for all the
past been the Occident of the Old World, and has fulfilled its mission
in being the place of transition for the whole globe, America must
become the latest goal for the efforts and activities of men--must be
the New World, the land of the evening, in contrast to the Old World,
which has already become the land of the morning.
“None of these historical relations, with the mass of phenomena
connected with them, could be shared with Australia, in consequence of
its position. Continent though it is, in its isolation it is like an
island of the sea, and seems to be connected with the land hemisphere
merely as the great continental form of the oceanic world.
“To this cosmical arrangement of the continents there correspond those
relations of nature and history which are in part displayed in the
course of human development. But the position of special places also
gives rise to subordinate characteristics; and the formative influence
which special places have exercised, especially where they have been
the field for the most marked transfer of different races across them,
on the development of man and the course of affairs, is a subject
worthy of the most careful study.”
In a masterly manner Ritter has applied these generalizations to
the smallest countries on the globe. I refer, for example’s sake,
to Palestine. In one of the volumes of the Erdkunde he writes:
“Palestine was from the beginning an isolated land, as Israel was an
isolated people, and therefore, for thousands of years, both have been
unintelligible to the world at large. No great highway led through
Palestine from people to people; all passed _by_ it, and not
_over_ it; all its coast was without favorable harbors. No one
of the pagan states of antiquity could come into close geographical,
mercantile, political, and religious relations with a people existing
under the sway of Jehovah. All the nations around Canaan were kept
aloof from it by the theocratic circle of ideas which had the supremacy
among the Hebrews.”
Palestine forms a part of the great district of Syria, between the
Isthmus of Suez and Arabia on the south, and extending to the middle
plateau of the Euphrates, where its turbulent waters break through the
narrows of the Taurus range.
Syria is bounded on the west by the Mediterranean, and on the east
by the desert of what is in the widest sense Arabia. Separated thus
from Orient and Occident alike, and left by itself, having its longest
course from north to south, and being quite narrow from east to west,
it formed a natural bond between the Armenian highlands of Taurus and
the lowlands of Egypt; and the characteristics of its population must
correspond to the conditions amid which they are formed; and people
must be found there who had come from the regions of inner Asia, and
others who had left the culture of Egypt for a home in Syria. And thus,
from the very beginning of human history, the position of Palestine has
been such that it has served as a bridge, parting a sea and a desert
waste, and connecting the Euphrates and the Nile. It has been, too,
an appointed home for culture in the very centre of hither Asia, and
at the same time it has remained isolated and unaffected by external
influences. No other land on the globe lies like Palestine, in this
respect. The northern half of Syria has not so favorable a location,
for, traversed as it is by the great highway from Asia Minor to
Assyria, it was subject to the influences of foreign travel from the
earliest times. But Palestine lay surrounded by populous countries, and
yet isolated from them. In the midst of six of the greatest nations of
antiquity--the Babylonians, the Assyrians, Medes, Persians, Phenicians,
and Egyptians--it was yet separate from them all. This allowed it to
maintain its contrast with them,--to follow its appointed course of
development, and not to lose its monotheism. It seems to have been
placed equidistant from all three continents of the Old World, and near
five great seas, that it might be a central point whence the gospel of
Christ could be sent at once to all parts of the known world.
In characteristics of such prominence as these,--characteristics
which have had a great influence over the destinies of millions of
beings,--is there not seen, asks Ritter, “the hand of a higher Power?
Or are they to be attributed to mere chance, to the activity of nature,
to an upheaval promoted by water or fire held within the bosom of
the earth, where mountain chains, devoid of regularity in form or
direction, are thrown up by the irresponsible forces of nature, and
where the waters of the sea run in to fill the new-formed hollows? If
we are in a position to trace the forces which have the most weight in
giving order and harmony to the destinies of nations,--forces which act
intensively where they act, and which yet reach over large fields,--can
we not see the workings of a superior Mind in the arrangements of the
world, manifest not only in effects existing before our eyes, but in
actual progress? And can science account for the spiritual activities
which are moving over the face of the earth, if she does not see in
the globe itself an organism, and loses sight of those vital relations
which exist between its parts? In a hundred places which have already
exerted a strong historical influence, a close and scrutinizing study
will disclose the functions of the earth as an organism; and the places
which have not yet become the scenes of historical events will fulfil
their destiny in the course of time not less faithfully than those
which have been the theatres of classic story.”
Next in importance to the position of the various countries on the
surface of the globe, Ritter pays special attention to the relations
which grow out of the superficial dimensions of the continents, and
the proportion of the coast-line of different lands to their internal
extent, and the proportion of the area of peninsular formations to that
of the main body.
“In these regards,” says Ritter, “Africa presents the simplest forms.
It is distinguished palpably from the other continents by its almost
insular position, connected as it is with western Asia by a mere strip
of land, and that probably of recent formation--the Isthmus of Suez.
In its close and compact form, and very regularly outlined coast, it
resembles an ellipse, although its diameters are of about equal length,
and although the climatic features are nearly the same on both sides of
the equator, advancing as far as the thirty-fifth parallels of north
and south latitude. Having no great sea inlets, its entire circuit is
only about seventeen thousand miles in extent, and is the simplest
coast-line of all the continents. Africa has, therefore, in spite of
its insular position and its great area, relatively the shortest as
well as the most uniformly regular and simple coast of all the great
divisions of the earth, and in consequence of this meagre outline its
interior has the least contact with the ocean.
“Asia, washed on only three sides by the sea, unites with Europe in
the formation of a common trunk, and thus completes the vast range of
territory extending from east to west. Its eastern and southern coasts
abound in far-projecting peninsulas and half-insular forms, which are
all to be regarded as the more or less scattered limbs of an immense
body. From the peninsulas of Tschuktschan and Kamskatka, round the
continent, over Corea, China, the two Indies, Arabia, and so west to
Asia Minor, these projecting forms, wholly wanting to Africa, embrace
a vast extent of territory. And even the Siberian coast, although, in
itself considered, small and especially unfavorably situated, is more
extensive and more provided with sea inlets than the whole shore-line
of Africa. Yet there remains, notwithstanding, in the interior of Asia
a district very large and broad which is not brought in contact with
the seas that partly penetrate the continent, and which so greatly
modify all things within their reach; and this inner region is the true
trunk of the whole. This central district does, indeed, preponderate in
respect to area over that included in all the projecting peninsulas.
But Africa is a trunk without _any_ limbs. The great influence
of so large and so complex a coast upon the wealth and the variety of
all natural gifts is evident at a glance; its entire shore-line has
promoted, in consequence of the projections which it occasions, not
only individuality, but also an increase of influence with reference to
Asia, and the rest of the world besides.
“Europe, the smallest of the three continents of the Old World, is,
in its superficial form, the most varied, and rifted, and divided
up of all. Its most remarkable characteristics are its broken form,
and the individuality not only of its coast outlines, but of the
countries which these enclose. For its main body, which, long though
it is from east to west, is yet relatively very small, diminishes
constantly in breadth towards the west, and is divided by the numerous
arms of the Atlantic into several peninsulas of greater or smaller
size, some of which again are subdivided in the same way, as, for
instance, the very peculiar and remarkable conformation of Greece,
which seems to have reached the last degree of complexity in its coast
outline. Not only on the east and south, like Asia, but also and in
as marked a degree on the north, this subdivision in Europe goes on,
so that there its projecting forms, relatively to the whole area so
great, enclose, in entire contrast to the northern coast of Asia, two
large inland seas--the North and the Baltic. As the result of this
marked characteristic of Europe, its shore-line, measured in all its
sinuosities, is of very great length. The area of its enclosed seas is
equal to nearly half of its true territory. Although its superficial
contents are three times smaller than Africa, yet the extent of its
coast is far greater--twelve times the length of its land boundary
between itself and Asia. The shore-line of Asia is, indeed, about a
third longer than that of Europe; but the area of Asia is more than
four times greater. Thus Europe is the continent with the greatest
relative coast-line, and with the most varied conformation of the
lands which lie on its outer limit; it is therefore the continent most
approachable of all from the sea.”
After the influence of position and of superficial extents had been
established in this way, Ritter advanced to the study of vertical
distances. Naturally, it is not a matter of indifference whether a
land rises to the dry and cold regions of the atmosphere, like the
table-land of central Asia, or whether it is sunk to the level of
the sea. The most superficial glance discerns this. Had the land of
the Indus and the Ganges the elevation of the plateau of Thibet, it
would not be the luxuriant tropical clime that it now is. Had the
_terra caliente_ of the Mexican plain the height of the _terra
templada_,--the home of a perpetual spring,--it would not be the
home of fearful fever which it now is. Even, further, were the north
of Asia, Europe, and America mountainous, the south, on the contrary,
a low plain, instead of the north being level, as is really the case,
the south mountain land, our earth would never fulfil the mission which
it has fulfilled. The north would lie in perpetual ice; the south
would sicken under the blaze of a tropical sun. Even more apparent is
this division into high land and low land, if we follow it into the
details of continents and separate countries. The Old World displays
itself as the land of mountains and high lands; the New World, as
the land of plains. Five-sevenths of the area of Asia belong to the
mountainous region and the plateaus; two-sevenths to the low lands.
Two-thirds of Africa are elevated; one-third is low. In the New World,
on the contrary, two-thirds belong to the districts which are level
and not high, while one-third is elevated. In those parts of Europe
which have been the scenes of history, the mountain forms prevail; but
if we add Russia, then three-fourths of the whole are low lands. Only
the east is uniform in its geographical features--uniform as is its
history; the west, on the contrary, as varied as is its history. What
a rich historical part has the south,--the coast of the Mediterranean
Sea! Here was the theatre of ancient history,--here the domains of
the Egyptians, Hebrews, Phenicians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Gauls,
Iberians, Carthaginians; and when the Roman Empire was shattered, the
Mediterranean coasts still continued to be the field of modern history.
We need but refer to the Crusades, the wide rule of Rome, Venice,
and Genoa. America was discovered by Spain; and then the great march
of history turned to the northwest, exchanging the localities of the
early nautical enterprises for the Atlantic,--for the art of voyaging
was then able to use the ocean as its field. Here navigation unfolded
itself to an extent that made the whole earth accessible, and that drew
all countries within the domain of history.
What has been said may suffice to convey a tolerably perfect conception
of Carl Ritter’s leading thought, and his application of a new method
to geographical science. It is hardly necessary to add that his study
did not content itself with the mere position of the continents,
and with matters of vertical heights and depths, and of superficial
dimensions. From these things he advanced to climate, conditioned
by them as it is; and at last, passing from the animal world, he
came to man, to the state, to the nation, to history,--seeing in all
the working of divine laws, and the active and constant presence
of God. Only a few have followed the great naturalist in all his
researches; and yet the gold which was gained from the earth by him,
now transformed into available coin, runs everywhere, and passes
freely even into the hands of our children at the schools. Upon the
last point Ritter laid great stress. It went against his soul to see
geography regarded as a confusion of incoherent details; it went
against his soul to find geographical treatises but medleys of all
possible things. He thought that this was unjust to the science which
he regarded as a kind of mediator between all the sciences,--as the
one which gathers up and uses all the fruit of the sciences. Geography,
he held, if it lacked an inward germ capable of unfolding, would never
render other sciences fruitful, nor enrich life. Born dead, it would
remain lifeless, and only bear the semblance of being animated by the
illusions of art. It would then have no claim to be considered a means
of discipline in the attainment of culture, and it would merit no place
in the ranks of the constructive sciences. But he would have geography
be a brief statement of all divine laws, a revelation of God in nature
and history, to be used in instructing youth to see and to trace the
manner of working which the Deity follows. He therefore hailed all
books written in this spirit, although he did not live to see the day
in _his_ country when the popular teachings of the science which
came in with his own researches were largely used, either in oral
instruction or in the most noted text-books.
INTRODUCTORY ESSAY
TO
GENERAL COMPARATIVE GEOGRAPHY.
GEOGRAPHICAL STUDIES.
INTRODUCTORY ESSAY
TO
GENERAL COMPARATIVE GEOGRAPHY.
[WRITTEN IN 1818.]
THE introduction of an effort to exhibit the collective natural
sciences in an inwardly united, more scientific whole, demands, before
a statement be made of plan, methods, and sources, an exposition of
their connection with Man, for whose sake indeed they in great part
exist and become a desirable object of study. But here we shall only
briefly state the relation of Nature to History, of the Country to its
People, and in special of the Individual to the Globe, in order to
direct the reader’s attention to the ultimate object of our undertaking.
If it be confessed that every moral being who would be wholly true to
his vocation and fill up his entire measure of right action, must be
completely conscious of the extent of his power, and conscious, too, of
the influence of his surroundings and of his relation to them, then
it is also clear that every _association_ of moral beings, in one
word every people, must be fully aware of its strength, both internal
and external, and of the strength of neighboring peoples; conscious,
too, of all influences which are moulding it from without, in order not
to lose sight of its true aim and destiny.
It is not a blind striving nor mere unintelligent desiring that give a
man, with all his zeal and effort, the power of attaining right being
and right action: the striving must be directed, the desire must be
intelligent, and correspondent with his abilities, and then, uniting
clear views with a truthful aim, he can attain to those fair and great
and memorable deeds whose influence is eternal. It is not the confused
number of loose, unbridled powers, but the sight of measure and law in
the limitless fulness of God’s power, which impresses us irresistibly
in the moral world with the conviction that the Maker’s hand is there.
A right will in man, and the recognition in all his surroundings of
what is supplementary to his own peculiar powers, come only from a deep
and thorough knowledge of himself, and from the observation of men, and
of everything which has been disclosed in the history of Man.
Now, as not every man is fitted by his training for every place, or
called to every post, so it is not every people that can attain to the
crown of glory and of fortune. It is characteristic of human nature
that in every man some peculiarity is lodged, his own alone, through
whose unfolding he can become a complete being. This is true of every
nation, also. In the perfect development of this peculiarity lies
the moral greatness, and indeed all the greatness of man; in this
development, too, the nationality and individual greatness of nations.
It is this which cheers and illumines the present as well as the
future, and throws far out its glancing rays over the entire realm of
national life as it is and of history as it is to be.
Individuality is not a thing that a people can coin for itself, any
more than it is what a man can make for himself: all that they can
do is to preserve it. Individuality springs from a higher and a more
permanent source than from the nature of short-lived man. All that man
can do is to become aware of the peculiar nature and the true direction
of his powers; for without this knowledge he will not accomplish
the mission of his life. And the individuality of a people can only
be perceived in its own nature, in its relations to itself, to its
members, to its surroundings, and--since no people can exist without
a country and without the state--in its relations to both of these,
and in the relations of country and state to neighboring lands and to
neighboring governments. And here is displayed the influence which
nature exercises over nations, and that in a far higher degree than
over individuals, because here masses work upon masses, as it were, and
the individuality of a people rises far above that of single beings.
This influence is well-known, and has been at all times a weighty
subject of investigation in the history of nations, government, and
man; and in our times, too, it is a theme of general consideration.
But nature always works only gradually, and much more in secret than
in the open day. The seed germinates beneath the earth, and, veiled in
the bud, is going on the preparation for the creation of a new harvest.
And just so are the relations and influences of nature everywhere
deeper than they appear to be, simpler than in their first manifold
variety they seem, and widely reaching out and winning large results.
And the still power which nature exerts demands a like peaceful soul[1]
to watch its workings, and see that even to the very heart of its
activity it always moves conformably to law. It often demands, in
order to discover such a soul, only some sign which is recognizable,
such as a right view, or some inwardly spoken word, because like
always understands like. But nature does not now at least stand so
conveniently near to man; she has become a hidden and unknown existence
to him, and yet she refuses to be studied except in the great mutual
play of all her powers, in the connection of all her manifestations.
Only when thus studied does she irradiate with life and light all
the paths which human activity dares to tread; only when so studied
does she become a constellation of such dazzling light that we cannot
bear all its fulness; only thus studied does she illuminate all the
relations of that creation which we are wont to call the world of
animate and inanimate nature, and give us clear convictions about all
things which we investigate, and, above all, about man.
Ought it not to repay our trouble, for the sake of the history of
man and of nations, once to take our stand on a side hitherto little
regarded, on the place of their united activities, and consider the
earth in its real relation to man; that is, to view the surface of
the globe as the type of life, in as close and pointed a manner as
special agencies will permit; to study these agencies in their unity,
and to trace the course of the simplest as well as the most diffused
geographical laws in results, some of which are settled and permanent,
some changing, some living and organic?
Independent of man, both without him and before him, the earth has
been the scene of the occurrences of nature. The law of their working
does not proceed from him. In a science of the earth, the earth itself
must be questioned regarding its laws. The monuments erected by nature
upon it, and their hieroglyphics, must be observed, described, and
deciphered. Its surface, its depths, its heights must be measured,
its features arrayed in accordance with their real character, and the
inquirers of all times and people must be listened to and understood
in the purport of that which the study of these things has revealed to
them. And the facts which are freshly brought out by such observations,
as well as those which have long been known, must be brought forward;
and though they, in their number, variety, and unity, have been kept
out of sight and well-nigh forgotten, they must be reärranged as a
clearly-seen and harmonious whole.
Thus from every single feature of the earth, and thus from every group
of features, a resultant truth appears, whose existence manifests
itself in the phenomena of nature, and then is carried over and
repeated in the life of those nations whose individual peculiarity
coincides with this or that group of formative influences. For nations,
like men, are formed under a law superior to themselves, and they
become a part of the great circle of the world’s life by being woven
by the activities of nature as well as of mind out of physical no
less than out of spiritual elements. Every organism forms itself in
accordance with its inner nature and its modifying surroundings, and
thus the formula of its existence is read in the law imposed on it and
in the mould in which it is found; both of these condition it: in no
way is it subject to chance or accident.
Nor is it alone of the narrow vale or the mountain range, of _one_
people or of _one_ state, but it is everywhere, on plains and high
lands, among all peoples and in all states, that external agencies
condition history, from primitive eras up to the latest times. They
all exist under the influence of nature; and although the fact may not
always appear, yet it is just as certain that nations are formed under
this influence, and that it has everywhere and at all times penetrated
to the very heart of history, as it is that God, although unknown to
the ancients, yet was always and everywhere present.
And of the Divine Being we can see that although in earlier days he was
recognized and reverenced only in his special workings, even when no
mortal eye had looked upon him, yet that even when this step had been
taken, this small knowledge been gained, all at once the contradiction
in a thousand scattered and seemingly antagonistic powers was solved,
the veil which concealed their internal unity was removed, and the
unity of nature became one of the ideas of the human mind.
By confidence in the principles already laid down, every effort,
however weak, to comprehend the workings of nature in their mutual
relation may be of service; and only when regarded from this point
of view can an essay like the present be regarded with favor by
contemporaries, and its contents become a vital part of knowledge. But
it is not in the compass of a single mind to entirely exhaust a theme
to which every man of more than common power must contribute some share
of labor and research, if its depths are to be penetrated. The solitary
investigator must join himself, with all the ability which has been
intrusted to him, to all other inquirers, and trace with them, in the
true method of historical research, the unity of law among a variety of
phenomena.
The palm of glory is awarded to those students of nature, as it is to
the heroes of history, who, furnished with great keenness of sight
and strength of character, are able to eliminate human nature from a
mass of events, from the ordinary channel of ideas, from the external
history of the individual, or of the nation, or of the group of
nations; and, having grasped and held firmly to the nature of man in
the midst of so many things which modify it, are able to illustrate it
and throw light upon it in its entire range, from its deepest abasement
up to its noblest heights; and who, through their teachings on the
law of individual development from simple beginnings to the highest
national and moral greatness, become the immortal instructors of all
nations of men.
And it is not impossible that the time may some time come when such
great minds as these, when they shall have compassed the world of
nature as well as of morals and mind, shall be able, sending their
glance backwards and forwards, to determine from the whole of a
nation’s surroundings what the course of its development is to be, and
to indicate in advance of history what ways it must take to attain the
welfare which Providence has appointed for every nation whose direction
is right and whose conformity to law is constant.
To reach a goal so glorious and so striven for, the highest limit of
statesmanship--a result which in its entire grandeur is hinted at
nowhere but in the bursts of song to which the prophets gave utterance
when inspired with deep intuitions of the significance of nature and
history--to reach again such a goal, needs such helps from science as I
shall briefly sketch in this essay.
At the beginning, then, of a course of historical development, the
path or course, at first very rambling and circuitous, leads from its
starting-place just in the direction to which, speaking in the common
way, it happens to be turned; and although in this irregular wandering
it is not approaching its final goal, yet the points of observation
which it brings to view, and the fragments of knowledge which it throws
up, are not in themselves insignificant. Without losing itself in the
maze of special phenomena, it leads on step by step from experience to
experience, and at last resolves itself into the curve which expresses
the universal law in which various results and materials find their
formula and become available for high uses.
Pursuing the same figure, in tracing the course of historical
development we must subject to our observation not alone the universal
law of _one_ set of forms, but of _all_, both where nature
works on the largest scale over the entire surface of the earth, and
where it works on the smallest scale in insignificant localities;
for it is only from the perfect blending of the general laws in the
inanimate as well as in the animate creation that the harmony of the
entire world of phenomena can be conceived.
And if it is true, as we have already hinted, that the idea of a
human race cannot be grasped without a conception of the earth as its
habitation, then is it also true that man as an individual, and that
nations (being, as they are, far more dependent on the earth than the
state, as such, is upon its surroundings), cannot attain to perfect
harmony with themselves before they find their true place to live and
develop what is in them. Or, in other and simpler words, it is this
harmony between people and country, this relation of the state to
nature and to the life of man, and so to politics and philosophy, which
has given, through the course of history, prosperity and renown to
peoples and states.
And if, in the less advanced ages of the past, this harmony has been
imperceptible, if in the organic development of nations it has not been
marked, then, in these our times, the law which controls this harmony,
its never-failing source, must be sought with all the aids which
science gives, and must become a part of human knowledge.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: What confirmation do this and the following sentences find
in the author himself, of whom no friend speaks but as the mild, calm
Ritter!--TRANSLATOR.]
GENERAL COMPARATIVE GEOGRAPHY IN ITS AIM AND OBJECT.
Every observation on man and nature conducts us from details to their
_relation_ with the whole, from what is apparently accidental
to what is really the result of law. But it is to be remarked that
the complete knowledge of the whole does not result from the study of
details, if we begin without some _recognition_ of the whole.
Through the whole we sometimes come to a knowledge of a part; and it
is at times the case in the course of our studies that the working of
law throws light on details, and conducts us from the whole back to the
specific and individual. We may illustrate this by the fact that the
course of the earth through the heavens is learned from the working of
the solar system, and that from a conception of the world as a planet
and globe the arrangement of its divisions and their mutual relations
is understood.
Whenever a conception of the unity existing between the whole and its
parts becomes a matter of clear consciousness, then regularity appears
in the midst of diversity; but whenever there seems to be only a
striving after this unity, and whenever it appears that there can never
be more than a striving after it, it is only because the conditions
of order are not complete. The details are yet to be marshalled into
regularity, and some full and simple truth to be evolved.
Thus the establishment of an equilibrium in the attracting and
repellent forces of the earth in the direction of its axis produced
a conformation in the relation of north and south that was soon
mathematically outlined; and in the contrasts of north and south a way
was opened to the discovery of a contrast in all the activities of
animate and inanimate nature. The establishment of this equilibrium and
its supplementary influence has produced characteristic and universal
effects, yet they have ever been more striking on the purely physical
side and in the lower stages of development, and more remote and
hidden, yet always present and indeed powerful, in that which has life
and spirit.
But in the direction from east to west we do not yet discover that the
forces towards and from the earth’s centre have exerted so great an
influence over the physical conformation of the globe, or even have
determined the existence of a settled and absolute east and west. To
this, indeed, they seem to be tending; but we must regard these forces
as yet in a state of development, and it is even possible that the
earth in its daily revolution is seeking its equilibrium, its final
poise.
But subject to this influence of periodic change, which is most
apparent in the daily rotation of the globe, everything is placed which
comes and goes upon the surface of the earth. But this influence is
less marked than that which attends the relation of north to south,
because it has more sway on the intellectual than on the physical side,
and because in its contrasts of east to west it acts more on the plains
of higher development than in organic and undeveloped nature; and yet
it always exerts power, especially in the yet unfixed forms of plastic
elements.
And because this relation of east to west is not more fixed, and
exhibits itself in a formative state, in whose process of unfolding man
himself is embraced,--just from this cause would the contrast between
east and west appear, according as controlled by the relations of
times and circumstances, a constantly changing and formative contrast.
Nor indeed have we attained to the knowledge whether what appears to
us to be changing in the physical world may not have elements at its
foundation which are constant, whose vast reach the great land systems
of both hemispheres might indicate, yet whose prevailing influences
we might have to seek in the east, whence the earlier and higher
development of the life of the earth appears to have proceeded.
But since the time when the discovery of the New World on the western
half of the globe revealed its true contrast to the old continent which
had heretofore divided itself into a minor east and west, the efforts
of man have taken a new direction in seeking to grasp all that is now
required for a complete study of the structure of the earth. And if
the physical world had existed from the beginning as a whole, which
had resulted from a certain mutual trial of forces between north and
south, east and west, yet it is only now that it can be comprehended by
man as it is. Now, first, can the relations of the Old World be seen
in its contrast to the New, and what is peculiar to both hemispheres
be understood. Thus the great divisions of the earth have come to be
viewed as so many wholes more or less severed from nature, and we have
to regard them in a general way as the great individual features of the
globe. The Old World will therefore rightly be the first subject of our
study.
In the east the sun rises, and passes with radiant curve through the
heavens to the far west, and thus this great cosmical relation displays
itself at the very beginning; nature’s first division of the earth’s
surface commencing with the sun itself, the source of all life.
In the east is Asia, the portion of the globe whose real character is
expressed in the widest sense of the word Orient. Europe has been in
all times, and is characteristically its Occident, contrasted with
it in every part of its nature, and on every page of its history,
notwithstanding that there is, in the broadest view, a subordinate
lapping of one over upon the other, which, though subordinate, is not
insignificant. This contrast is not only expressed in the countries
themselves, their skies, their productions, and their animals; the
voices of all their nations express it in the whole course of their
history, in their songs, religions, philosophies, and languages. Truly,
says an eminent writer, “The nations of the east and of the west are
turned from each other: the former, with face towards the rising of
the sun, the morning; the latter, with face towards the setting sun,
the evening. The former sacredly guarding the unchanged seat of the
primitive past, the latter ever seeking through all the changing forms
of existence for a glorious future.”
But between both, on the south, in the bright midday, lies Africa, the
Soudan of the earth, the land over which the sun follows a uniform
course; the land where the changeable and startling phenomena of Asia
and Europe are not seen; where the climate, from spring to winter, does
not know inconstancy and perpetual change; where do not exist this
strongly contrasted sinking and rising as we look at past and future;
and where, through a want of contrast between nature and man, there is
no effort to add to the wealth of nature, or to quicken and stimulate
man with the thought of eternity and another world.
If the morning and evening greeting become to every man, even to the
most wearied pilgrim on the road of life, a heart-felt necessity, yet
one which is not known when the glaring midday comes,--the hour poorest
in hope of all,--then, from a like analogy, all the people of the
Soudan of the earth, in the peaceful possession of the bright midday,
seem only bound to the present, which no legend of gray antiquity
beautifies, which no care for the future disturbs, and which no hope
for that future ever bears on the pinions of imagination endlessly away.
And in yet another direction, where there is no daily sunrise and
sunset; where a clear, warm midday does not leave the world, as in
the south, in peaceful stillness; where the heat quickens no burning
passions; beneath the polar star extends the north, whose wider,
flatter, and more intersected area surrounds the pole like a disk, and
seems like the realm of night, which, dark as it is, yet has gleams of
brightness that beautify the earth like a dream. In that region the day
wholly vanishes, as it were, with all its variegated attendant train;
and when it does appear with sudden glimpses, it is no real day, but
rather the flashings of a great meteor in the long night.
Thus, stating in one word the result of what we are expressing in the
language of metaphor, Asia represents the morning; Europe, the evening;
Africa, the midday; and the cold regions of the north the night.
In like manner, this same cosmical law is repeated in the western half
of the globe, only subject to other limitations, because there the
atmosphere,--which from its dryness exercises a most definite influence
upon the eastern half,--floating above the oceanic regions, becomes
saturated with moisture, especially near the surface. The water, as
a geographical element, has a tendency adverse to individualization;
and so in the western hemisphere the contrasts which exist in the
whole are fewer and less sharp, and the entire mass falls more into
the attitude of a uniform group. Its nature can therefore only become
completely clear after a subsequent study of its contrast with the Old
World, since the latter has so early and so powerfully, by means of its
more perfected culture, struck in with the working of nature, partly
modifying it, partly furthering it.
As we now enter on the observation of individuality in these divisions
of the globe, or rather on an investigation of their basis, and
progress towards the position which nature itself proclaims that they
sustain to the world, it will be more conformable to the course of the
most natural development, where relations are various, to advance from
the simple to the complex. Through this course, the inquirer is often
rewarded by meeting a gleam of light, which sometimes penetrates into
the most intricate labyrinths.
As in the observation of the inorganic world the nature of attraction
to a centre in contrast with the attraction of opposite poles is
studied first as the simpler; as cohesion in contrast with chemical
affinity is studied first for the same reason; as in the world of
plants the examination of cryptogamous forms, and in the world of
animals the examination of polyps and organisms more simple yet, are
antecedent to subtler investigations; as in the processes of life
inquiries into the nature of simple activities must precede, if we
would be rightly taught, our deeper questionings;--so here, in the
field of geography, as conditioned by the external form of the earth,
our course must be from the simple to the complex.
Now Africa, which lies in what I have called a constant midday, is,
_par excellence_, the most compact and unrifted continent of
all. Africa has the most simple coast-line, the most equal division
into high and low land, the slightest inequality of uniformity in its
surface, and, in one word, does not exhibit contrast and diversity
as a salient, but as a subordinate feature. Through these conditions
are developed the remarkable uniformity which in Africa distinguishes
nature and the world of plants, animals, and men. Therefore Africa
rightly opens the series of observations which are devoted to the
characteristics of the continents.
PART FIRST.
THE CONTINENTS AS FIXED FORMS.
The first part of a general comparative geography will embrace
primarily Africa, Asia, Europe, then the other continents. We proceed
from the earth, taken as a unit, or rather we begin with high land,
which, like a ruin of the primitive world, even yet locked against us
by the power that reared it, rises in the midst of every great division
of the earth as many isolated features, or as one vast plateau, and
gives character to the continent, as if its lower lands were strewn
with sundered fragments, or with loose debris. The rivers of the earth,
in their systems and chief watercourses, then conduct us through those
large regions, of medium elevation, whose limits are so well defined by
cataracts and rapids and swollen floods, and which are, in a special
degree, favored by nature and culture, until at last we are conducted
down to the lowest lands of all.
These low lands reach out in vast extent, and are the mediators, if I
may so speak, between the high lands on the one hand and the oceans
on the other, influenced, each in a manner peculiar to itself, by the
mountain chains and elevated plateaus of the continent, and by stagnant
morasses, banks of sand and the neighboring islands of the sea.
And as the three great divisions mentioned above--Africa, Asia,
and Europe--embrace all of these elements, mountain ranges, lands
of medium elevation, and low, marshy regions, we can find in them,
therefore, all leading types of animal life contained in this
entire earth. But these are only discovered after the most refined
investigation of all characteristics of the continents, and after the
most painstaking measurement of their horizontal and perpendicular
dimensions. And the tracing of the outlines of our globe, as they have
been determined by the plastic hand of nature, instead of degenerating
into a mere mechanical task, will become even a high necessity, if we
regard them as the real basis of the whole living creation.
And it is just on this account that these three divisions which we
are now considering--Africa, Asia, and Europe--do not come before us
in their mere external limitations, a knowledge of which, fixed as
it is by careful surveys, is presupposed, but in the place they hold
in relation to the whole earth, or, we might say, to nature and the
history of man. Therefore they appear in the order given above, as
Africa, the Soudan of the globe; Asia, the land of morning; Europe,
the land of evening, figuratively, and in reference to the advance
of civilization; and, coming to the other divisions, the northern
continent, and the New World, by the discovery of which the entire Old
World has again become an Orient, as it were, to this new land of the
evening.
If by the name Soudan of the Libyans and Ethiopians we understand
to-day the larger half,--to speak in a loose but common manner of the
division which we call Africa,--then it is exactly the Soudan which,
in the history of the world and of human culture, has exercised the
larger half of influence in that great continent of which we speak.
Thus closely linked are geographical characteristics and historical
phenomena. They constitute together a necessary unity, and therefore
it is not by accident that we find, in coming to the study of the
Old World, as well as to a study of the past, that geographical
characteristics and historical phenomena rest upon the same basis.
The name Old World belongs, in its strictest sense, only to those
limited regions where whatever is greatest and highest in human history
has been formed, from the primitive wisdom of the inhabitants of India
down to the latest products of kindred races.
So far as all which lay outside of this limited theatre of great
historical events remained long unknown as the extreme northern,
eastern, and southern extremities of the old continent, the name
of New World was as fitly applied to such as it was to the lands
of the western hemisphere. And yet, when we had the well-known Old
and comparatively unknown New existing in lands almost or quite
contiguous, this distinction was lost; all took the name of the Old
World, in contrast with the regions newly discovered, and separated by
intervening oceans, properly called the New World.
But since seas often bring the great continental divisions more nearly
together than lands interposed would do, so in the course of our
investigation it will appear how much the New World is now narrowed
in consequence of natural conditions, now enlarged, reaching over
into the Old; and that the latter, on the other hand, under different
conditions, has already usurped, and still seems to usurp, a place in
the New.
Thus the close of this first part of the present work, after
characterizing each of the continents in its essential features, and
their influences upon nature and history, displays the combinations
and reciprocal relations which grow from the physical formation of
the earth, and thus we begin to comprehend how a limitless variety is
marshalled into symmetry in the great whole.
PART SECOND.
THE FLUID FORMS ON THE EARTH’S SURFACE.
A sharply defined individuality in natural features does not indeed
wholly disappear in this second part, but the fluid forms are
distinguished by broader and more general relations.
The name _elements_ is often applied to these, not in its exact
chemical sense, but in the language of common life, or, rather, in
accordance with the former usage of words, caught as it were from
nature herself. In the movable fluid forms the earlier physicists
used to find the representatives of nature’s method of workings;
but we shall consider them here in their characteristics, in their
uniformity, and in their influence, as they meet us in the indistinct
and impalpable forms of water, air, and heat, or fire.
These follow in their working the primitive laws of expansion,
inertia, and gravitation, and they are to be regarded as the supple,
hundred-armed, skilful, unceasingly busy carriers and servants in the
household of nature. They have a mediator’s office, too; for they unite
heights, depths, and common levels in friendly relations, bring north
and south, east and west, together, and soften that alienation which
exists between the sharply outlined and widely sundered continents, by
interposing their mild voice.
They are water, air, and fire: water, as existing in oceans, seas,
rivers, as well as in vapor; the air, as a veil encompassing the
earth,--the element especially modified by its relations with sea and
land, where it comes in contact with them, and thus the storehouse of
climatic influences; and, thirdly, the fire, which exists in the heart
of the earth, always living and reäppearing, and which, although buried
beneath the earth’s surface, cannot lurk there secret and unknown,
but in the shocks of earthquakes and the eruptions of volcanoes often
brings death and destruction in its train.
All these three elements are in constant activity; they all seem to
have but random relations to the earth, and to exist independently
of laws; and yet, with all their freedom, they are held within their
bounds entirely in conformity to law. We shall not be able to examine
them in their specific characteristics, but only in their connection
with the earth’s surface as a whole. Thus alone can the fact be
discovered that their course is fixed and uniform, not devious and
changeable; thus alone can their unceasing influence upon the animate
and inanimate creation be seen.
This still, constant, often unseen and secret working of the elements,
is, beyond comparison, more subtle and deep and true, and a worthier
object of study when we are observing nature as a whole, than the
passionate and rare moments of their fearful outbreaking, when their
balance is lost. These may, indeed, now alarm and afterwards deeply
stir us, but they do not best open to us the hidden things of the
world’s laboratory.
It is the fluid elements, everywhere met, and compassing heights and
depths alike, which have the highest significance in relation to the
globe. Yet, from the lowest forms up to the grade of civilized man,
their influence is more apparent in a general view than by looking at
details. The significance of the fluid elements was not unknown to
antiquity, for Hippocrates, a careful student of natural phenomena,
has sketched with masterly clearness the influence of climate upon the
political conditions of states.
At the same time, these elements, whether considered in large or small
masses, become, in consequence of their ceaseless motion, mediators
between organized and unorganized bodies. Thus the water seems not only
in geology and vegetation, but in the history of animals and nations,
to be the first condition of increase or improvement, from lands well
watered by rivers, coast regions, and internal seas, up to the great
union of the world by oceans.
PART THIRD.
THE FORMS OF THE THREE NATURAL KINGDOMS.
The third part of General Comparative Geography is devoted to the
chief forms of the three natural kingdoms, so far as those forms have
had influence on the earth’s surface as a whole. They are adduced,
according to their genera, first from the mineral, then from the
vegetable, and lastly from the animal kingdom.
In the first part, all which was stated with regard to these kingdoms
was given merely to _characterize_ the continents or fixed
elements; they now appear, so far as they belong to the province
of General Geography, as independent forms, having their special
peculiarities, and related in their threefold way to the earth’s
surface and to human history.
These kingdoms are first viewed in their conformation as leading types
of some one spot on the earth, selected because nature has given it a
degree of individuality, and thus they appear as _representatives_
of certain localities on the globe. Their natural home and the law of
their geographical appearance are traced in the second place over the
entire earth. This involves of course the investigation of the extent
of their activities. In the third place the mastery which the working
forces of nature and man have gained over the rude material of the
earth must be exhibited geographically and historically.
Thus in every representative feature of the three natural kingdoms the
individual is found to be linked to the whole. One series of living
forms is seen to be resting upon another, and receiving from it its
character. In like manner, when a thorough study of climates has gone
before, a correspondent climate will be found in all cases to mirror
itself in every one of these forms, so that, by the observation of
climatic conditions alone, its own place, in relation to the animate
world, can be determined for every spot on the earth.
The belts which serve to show the regions especially characterized
by the unorganized bodies of the mineral kingdom lead us to certain
general geological phenomena, which, where they have been made
subservient to the uses of man, conduct us at once to the history of
art, and to the earliest culture of fixed races. On the other hand, the
lines which indicate the home of the most useful vegetable productions
and animals seem to throw some light upon the history of man during
its infancy and development. Man naturally followed where these led
the way for him to enjoy them; and as these productions and animals
changed their home or increased their bounds, the history of man moved
in parallel course. And when nations wandered from their old haunts,
these sources of subsistence flourished without men’s care, and waited
for some new-coming people to again enjoy them.
Thus these and other results arise from the close connection of the
history of man with nature. In one view history is inevitably dependent
upon nature, and all the more, the lower man stands in respect of
culture, and the more like wild hordes the nations live. In another
view, however, there is seen a constantly increasing freedom from this
dependence, and as culture advances, the outward conditions of country
and nature lose their power. While the inhabitants of great cities can,
through an artificial supply of all their wants, live wholly apart from
nature, having neither connection with her nor dependence upon her,
man, even if alone, and in whatever place, is able to raise himself
above her, if the ideal of the genuine philosopher is present in his
life, as the divine Plato has represented it in his Theatetos. And it
is interesting to remark incidentally, and as a confirmation of the
close connection between man and nature, the great value set by all
nations upon their native land. The Germans recognize this connection
in every utterance of Fatherland.
In the path which we only open through this great field of interest,
we get some glimpses of the way in which diversity in detail is yet in
nature ruled into perfect unity, even if the whole of this great truth
shall remain veiled to us.
MAN.
Man is the highest subject in nature. Through him she becomes complete,
and attains her full significance. Man is the thread which leads us
through the mazes of the labyrinth. All types culminate in him. He
becomes the mirror of nature, to reflect her secrets and make them
intelligible.
It is in this general manner that we express what are those relations
of nature subject to which nations are placed, and from which proceed
all the progressive developments that nature conditions.
Were it now in human power to trace all the influences of nature, one
phase of general history would take a great step forwards; for the
active working of exterior natural conditions upon the advancement
of man, a subject which has given much light to the investigators of
ancient history, would be more clearly understood than even now. There
would then remain still another province of inquiry,--that subtle
action of nature, when viewed in a purely spiritual light, and not as
seen and measurable, upon man, nations, and states. This field would be
found not less exalted, and no less fruitful in profitable results.
METHOD OF ARRANGEMENT.
The title of the present work indicates that it falls within the
province of the historical or experimental sciences, whose advancement
can only progress at an equal pace with the course of experience, and
will, therefore, be more and more marked as age follows age.
The section following this shall be devoted to the leading sources
whence we draw our experimental knowledge, while the present shall
delineate some of the chief features in our mode of arrangement.
The method which will be followed in the study of this special
department of science will be the _deductive_; our object
being to exhibit the base-type of geographical forms, and thereon
to ground a true system, following out all the relations which are
inherent in the very being of nature. The whole arrangement must,
therefore, be widely different from that of those excellent earlier
works which treated of the same science under the names of Geography,
or a Physical Description of the Earth, according to the method of
_classification_, and for the needs of other sciences, not for
their own department as specially worthy of attention or existence.
So, then, Eratosthenes, of Cyrene, in developing the first astronomical
geography, Herodotus and Strabo, the first geographical history
and historical geography, and among the moderns, Cluver, the first
ancient geography, Bergmann, the first geographical physics, Büsching,
the first application of geography to politics, were all, by these
elaborate preparations and the constantly advancing knowledge of
natural phenomena, laying the foundations for a thorough system of
Physical Geography. Werner first stated all the facts, so far as
science reveals them, of the creation of the earth; Saussure, De Luc,
and Humboldt, the connection of the earth and the atmosphere; Buffon,
the connection of animate and inanimate nature. Zimmermann first showed
the relation of animals to the surface of the earth; and Blumenbach
gave his observations upon the races of men to the science of Physical
Geography.
The naturalists have thus opened the way for such a Physical Geography
as is here attempted, which, however, in order to reserve all its
strength for what is strictly within its own sphere, disclaims to treat
of relations which have always been considered foreign to it, those
which are only commensurate with the universe, and those that are
strictly political, growing out of the constitutions of states. All
these may be found in the special works devoted to them.
The science is called _physical_, because the theme is the forces
of Nature, in so far as they work in the world, conditioning forms,
and ordaining changes. Nor can we confine ourselves to mechanical
and chemical forces. We have to study those which are organic and
less known, those which time gradually reveals, and which enter into
rational and moral natures. Therefore, the common term, Physical
Geography, is too meagre to express the whole significance of our
work, while another, and one more exactly conveying it, Physiological
Geography, is too harsh, and capable of being misunderstood. From the
two expressions taken together the real nature of our work can be
gathered.
This geography is called General, not because it strives to communicate
everything known, but because, without giving special prominence to
any single feature, it aims to portray, with equal care and according
to its true character, every part of the earth, and each of its forms,
whether in the waters or on land, whether in distant regions or in our
own country, whether in the home of the world’s culture or on barren
wastes; for only from the types which form the basis of geographical
forms can a true system spring.
It is called Comparative in the same sense in which that word is
applied to other leading branches of science, as, for example,
Comparative Anatomy.
In studying special localities on the globe, we should take our place
upon that point from which we may practically institute comparisons of
analogous forms and influences. Herodotus it was, the keen observer, as
well as extensive traveller, who first suggested this method and its
use in geography (II. c. 33), and in the same place he has
largely used the Niger and the Danube in drawing a comparison between
Northern Africa and Europe.
The bringing of small things into a systematic arrangement is
preferable to the mere collecting of details which have no inner unity,
and which the memory has to retain singly, if these small things only
show a relation to great laws and groups, to ideas and wide-reaching
views. What gain for science can proceed in all directions from this
source, has been shown by Alexander Von Humboldt, the founder of
Physical Geography. He has opened a new field for this science, which
we, with our weak powers, shall try to till. The fruit, when it shall
in the future be ripe, will be a Universal Geography.
The arrangement of all the facts collected in this work must, in order
to lead to a methodical and natural system, have an ideal background,
a point of departure. Only in this way can what is empirical come
into a digested statement, and what is manifold attain that unity
which would be wanting were nature but a lifeless form. Without this
imaginary background, hypothesis, theory,--call it what you will,--let
it be, or let it not be, a matter of consciousness, and you will gain
no view of a perfect whole. For even a sure conviction, in the absence
of any other background to aid you, is, in truth, as Playfair has
said, in itself the first of theories. The absence of a preconceived
theory does not guide one to the truth, nor guard from partial views.
A knowledge of the history of philosophy and of the sciences, care in
the application of thought, and the devout striving after truth, are
all that can help human impotence, and justify the expression, “an
_impartial_ view,” which every naturalist so freely employs.
That ideal background which the author of this work sets up as his
point of departure does not lie in the truth of a single conception,
but in the UNION OF ALL TRUTHS, and thus in the domain of
belief. An intuition of this union has gradually been forming during
his study of nature and of man. Through conversation with one of the
great men of the age it came to the author’s consciousness, and it is
the grand principle on which he builds. Did we know the whole of truth,
this intuition would become general. And since these things are thus,
the science which forms the theme of the present work does not admit
of the sharpest definition at the outset, nor does it allow that its
bounds be rigidly set; this can only be done when the whole is before
our eyes, and when the completion of our undertaking is just at hand.
And here we remark, in passing to the fundamental principles of our
science, that, in comparing an _intuition_ with a sharply defined
_comprehension_, the former seems especially adapted to that
process of combining and constructing by which the whole form of the
present work has been shaped.
A few general principles of arrangement can now be more definitely
determined, by the aid of which to look through our edifice with a more
critical eye.
The fundamental principle which can conduct us to truth in the study of
our subject as a whole, is to advance from observation to observation,
and not from opinion or hypothesis to observation. Hard and uncommon
as it is to remain perfectly true to this principle, yet men always
come nearer and nearer to the bearings of a result as the throng
becomes numerous and varied of the most accurate observers and the most
accomplished naturalists of all times, far and near, and of all lands,
distant and remote. Therefore, in the establishment of every point, the
best authenticated proofs from all nations and ages should be summoned,
if not to be brought into harmony, yet to be compared. They should be
quoted as much as possible in the language of the original statements,
which generally retain a characteristic individuality. Thus, what seems
in one view to be lost, in consequence of a diversity of coloring and
a want of being understood, is, in view of the whole, brought out as
unquestionable truth. _Then_ the special theory links itself to
our view of the point under study, and to the expression which conveys
it, and even becomes the winged genius to aid in further search. Thus
hypothesis finds its place, and, once in a while, can be in advance of
its age, as when it proceeds from a Halley, a Leibnitz, a Lucas, or
a Franklin, and a thousand years in advance, as when a theory of the
planetary system springs from a Pythagoras.
The fundamental principle which gives character to the exposition of
our science is the same which conditions the forms of the earth. We
have first to view the world according to length and breadth, which
we call the geographical dimensions, and then according to height
and depth, which we call the physical dimensions. The former are
determined most accurately and conveniently from the stars, the latter
from the atmosphere. It is much to be regretted that in early times
these physical dimensions, in great contrast with the other class
(which, indeed, had more relations with the world, as a unit, than
with political divisions), were entirely left out of consideration,
and can, to-day, be followed with rigid exactness over only a small
portion of the earth’s surface. The study of this class of dimensions
has, therefore, brought forward the science of comparative physical
geography, and with the study of that class all our observations
have to begin. As much as solid measure differs from long and square
measure, so much does the present form of this science differ from that
which it formerly had.
The fundamental principle which ensures progress to the whole, and
gives its use to every detail, is to pass from the simple to the
complex, from the sides to the centre, from diversity to unity, from
the rule to its exceptions, and thus to do in all departments of the
earth’s relations. Thus, for example, from heights to plains, from
river sources to mouths, from water vegetation to land vegetation,
from the frigid and torrid zones to the temperate, from mechanical,
chemical, and organic influences to living bodies, from nature to man,
from general to special characteristics, from the universal to the
individual.
A subordinate law, which aids in gaining greater clearness, is the
grouping of things similar and related; another, which gives us an
insight into the various designations and conceptions of different
epochs, comes from the effort to trace them back to their beginning,
and in their progress to see their development, and to distinguish them
geographically from one another; a third is, that of the superiority of
_intenseness_ in every phenomenon to its mere _extent_. The
drift of them all is aid in the subjection of mere matter to the sway
of universal law.
Where there is a failure in the execution of what we have now briefly
sketched, the fault must be laid upon the want of materials, and upon
the manner in which the writer discharges his part; but it may not be
laid upon the method, which, with many weak points in the execution,
will yet accomplish some part of what it promises.
GEOGRAPHICAL AUTHORITIES.
All the special authorities need not here be cited which have been used
in the preparation of this work. They are to be found in the libraries,
and the judgment of the learned world has, as a general thing, decided
their worth; and, besides, a volume would hardly suffice even to
briefly characterize what has been done by those who have gone before
me.
Yet, needless as it may seem, the most conscientiously prepared list
of authorities is essential in a branch of the historical sciences
which heretofore has not received careful examination. And it becomes
especially serviceable in a treatise in which the statements may be
made to appear in other relations, or in a different light. Only
by such a list is the disclaiming, in the province of geography,
justified, of new methods of representation, and facts which time has
not sanctioned, or which are but newly ascertained, as of uncertain
character, or contrary to the truths of nature.
But since we shall not occupy ourselves with partial views of the
earth, but with the general facts of nature, there will be, if
possible, no link in the connected chain considered as a thing by
itself and out of its relations, but as each theme comes before us we
shall seek its origin, and what is its hold upon our general subject as
a whole.
In this way alone will it be possible to replace the weak parts, whose
number is greater than we are wont to think, with stronger, and to give
to science, as an inalienable possession, a chain incapable of being
broken, or to disclose, by a careful examination, want of coherence,
and thus, for the good of science, again to sever it.
It will often be important, as has already been hinted, when disputed
points arise, to adduce all the authorities of any weight, in order
to give the clearest insight into first sources. For so many errors
have crept into geographical science, that one who has grown up with
a knowledge of the truth has to wonder exceedingly at the learned
nonsense which the world contains in such abundance. The story is told
of the eminent Abyssinian, Abbe Gregory, that in a company of savans,
in the heart of Germany, he burst into loud laughter, and expressed the
sensible wish that nothing at all should be printed rather than lies;
he was speaking of his own country at the time. And yet we confess
that it is very rare that geographical accounts are purely false. As
a general thing, they are only unskilful or incomplete presentations
of views which are one-sided, limited, and narrow, or they result from
false and perverted views. They may all bear, subjectively, the stamp
of truth, but they are far from being measured with the standard of
objective reality. And therefore it is not unimportant to know whether
it is Tacitus, Æneas Sylvius, or Petrarch who has painted the land of
the Germans, or whether it be a Reissner, a Frundsberg, a Frank, or a
Kinkelback portraying his native land.
Just as necessary is it to know whether it is a Venetian, Marco Polo,
an Armenian, Haiton, a Byzantine, Procopius, a Persian, Scherifeddin,
an Arabian, Ebn-Hankal, an inhabitant of India, Abu Fazil, a body of
Chinese savans in the emperor Kang-hi’s geography, modern European
naturalists, or the histories of the ancients, which are the leading
authorities on the nature of the Asiatic Highland.
Nor is it a matter of indifference to know whether an inhabitant of
coast regions or of the interior, of high lands or of low lands, an
experienced scientific inquirer or a man of mean mind, has discovered
and communicated this or that fact. For only a few, among many,
possess that gift of faithful description, of sharp delineation, and
of childlike simplicity in style, of which the father of history,
Herodotus, has given us an enduring example.
NATURE OF THE AUTHORITIES.
The nature of the sources where our facts are recorded are widely
diverse in another respect, according as they result from personal
observations, from the investigations and documents of others, or
again from the digests of those documents, among which we include also
drawings and charts.
This work would never have been undertaken without some personal
investigations of the surface of the earth, and acquaintance with its
most significant forms. Under favorable circumstances, many facts
connected with the most important geographical relations of Germany
and its inhabitants, from the Oder to the Rhine and Danube, have been
ascertained and confirmed by personal observations. The entire valley
of one of the largest streams in Europe, the majestic Rhine, from its
source to its mouth, with a large share of its branches, was, during
many years’ wanderings, the subject of our special study. One of the
leading lakes of Europe, Lake Leman, was studiously observed in all
seasons of the year, and in all its relations to nature and to natural
influences. So the extensive Alpine region, which gives character to
the whole of Europe, was explored by us, during three different years,
and in all directions. By more than a year’s sojourn at the foot of its
highest summits, and months’ sojourn on its icy heights, we have felt
the influence of those gigantic masses, extending from Mont Blanc to
the Brenner, and have confessed that it is great enough to reach far
away and exert a controlling force upon surrounding natural forms.
On the other hand, a visit to the extremity of Italy made us acquainted
with the nature of volcanic activity, and with that classic land, as a
type of high intellectual culture, and with the general coast formation
of the Mediterranean Sea. There too we learned to perceive some of the
relations between sea and land, and between the three natural kingdoms
and men. Regarding this relatively small portion of the earth, the
sources have, therefore, been in a measure personal observations, which
sometimes have been joined with the results of others’ inquiries, now
communicated orally, at other times by writing; and thus results which
personal research has first gained, and which others have corroborated,
have become the most valuable standards in judging of other parts of
the earth. It is in this way that a true foundation is laid for a
knowledge of the various relations of the surface of the globe, and
that maps become serviceable in a further study of physical geography.
These contain but seldom the personal observations of the naturalist
himself, brought together under his own eye, although they always
assume an authoritative form. Among such as are the works of the
investigators themselves, whose names they bear, we mention La
Condamine’s and Humboldt’s Charts of Peru and Mexico, Rennell’s Map
of Bengal, Von Hermilin’s Atlas of Sweden, Cassini’s Map of France,
Rizzi Zanoni’s of Campagna Felix, Peter Anich’s first Map of Tyrol; as
a masterpiece among all the smaller special maps, the Carte de Chasse
of Louis XIV., and among larger works, Green’s Bavaria, Amman’s and
Bohnenberger’s Swabia, Le Coq’s Westphalia, and many others. Among
those which present natural forms with considerable fulness, and which
are the direct fruit of personal observations, are Humboldt’s view of
the Mexican plateau, Lichtenstein’s Essay on the terraces of South
Africa, Marsigli’s and Von Wiebeking’s courses of the Danube and the
Rhine, Von Riedl’s charts of the Bavarian lowlands, bogs and lakes,
Reinke’s view of the mouths of the Elbe and Weser; of those giving
the sea-bottom, Heather’s chart of the North Sea and the Baltic; of
volcanic regions, Borg’s Map of the Isle of Bourbon, and Freycinct’s of
the Isle of France; of the Alpine chain, the most important views in
Weiss’s chart of Switzerland. Very lately Salzburg and Karnthen have
issued admirable maps to represent the formation of mountain ranges;
these owe their origin to a German archduke. Flinder’s maps of the
coast-line of Australia are equally fine in representing that feature.
These, and similar ones, certainly appearing but seldom, which afford
material for enlarged and comprehensive study, must be termed leading
authorities in every respect. Many excellent maps and works, as, for
instance, those of D’Anville, Arrowsmith, Lapie, Sotzmann, Mannert,
Streit, Reimann, Reichard, Schmidt, Klöden, and others, who have made
the most assiduous use of astronomical and historical researches, but
without personal observation of the countries which they portray,
have their value, a value great indeed, but not to be specified here,
because for a knowledge of physical geography they are all liable to
mislead, and must be used with caution. They convey the truth only,
so to speak, symbolically or hieroglyphically. While all are thus
erroneous as guides in the science which claims our attention, that of
Gutsmuth is to be specially designated as so.
If an attempt be made to represent the nature of a country on a chart,
it ought to be executed in a full remembrance of that background of
hypothesis of which we spoke a few pages back. This has been done by
Buache, Gatterer, Zimmermann, Schultz and Reichard, and not without
advantage to science. By Zeune it has been accomplished in a very
complete manner. But in consequence of the blind theory of imitators,
who work without this hypothetical background, the advantage is often
lost again; and instead of a representation of nature, a caricature
appears, which physical geography rejects as summarily from the rank of
her authorities as physiognomy spurns a badly executed silhouette.
But the best maps even are related to the study of General Comparative
Geography as collections of preparations are to Physiology, which are
of no value so long as the physiologist sees only lifelessness in the
dry trunk, the injected heart, and in the sundered limbs. Should the
geographer use the valuable aid of maps for the prosecution of his
science, as many have done in their systems, he must fall into greater
errors than the physiologist who seeks in the dead form the living
heart and the centre and mystery of life, for the former would only
have at command a distorted and reduced drawing of the dead mass.
If many of the foregoing remarks do not harmonize with, or directly
contravene, that which characterizes the great body of our maps of the
earth’s surface, then it is plain that the reproaches still hold good
which Ludolf, that critical and most accomplished man, brought against
the map-makers, when, a full century ago, he published the first and
the best map of the unknown land of Abyssinia.
Advancing now, in our indicating of authorities, to the second general
division of them, we remark, that if in the first the poverty of
observations on the world considered as a unit is confessedly great, in
this the wealth of observations and treatises is extraordinary.
Although pure gold does not run from all, although in many there lies
some ore unquarried, and in but few is a wealth of treasure to be
found, yet we owe a great burden of thanks to our predecessors, and we
have gratefully to remember that the eighteenth century was so rich in
men who spared not their means nor their strength to promote the growth
of this science freely and widely, and to cherish its bloom and its
fruit for the good of coming ages. The result has been entirely reached
which the first modern physical geographer, the great Scheuchzer,
prophesied, in a poor age for science, a century and a half ago:
“Should men continue in the same right course of observations which
has been adopted within a few years, the learned world will reap more
advantage from it in the next hundred and fifty years than in thousands
heretofore.” He gave to the world a treasure in his observations made
in the Alpine region; and to him, as to an active member of the London
Society, the great profit in investigating the laws of the entire world
of phenomena was clear. He saw the connection between every fact and
the whole; between the universal law and all that follows from it in
the entire round of sciences; and he said, most fitly, in speaking of
barometrical measurements: “Every truth gleams with its own special
radiance; and as one light heightens another, so one truth imparts its
brightness to another. First truth is a rich spring, from which other
truths flow; and again, every special truth is like an abounding river,
which branches off in countless little streams.”
The greatest number of physical truths is unquestionably found in the
volumes, extending over a period of more than a century, of the London
Society of Science, in the Philosophical Transactions since 1660, and
in the Memoirs of the Academy of Paris. These, as well as the valuable
Acts of the Societies of Turin, Petersburgh, Berlin, Stockholm, and of
other places, are of the first degree of usefulness to the student of
Geography.
At the commencement of the eighteenth century there were two men
born in the same year, 1707, Linneus and Buffon, who, in a wide and
philosophical spirit, devoted their lives to the same department of
study, although in opposite ways, and therefore, perhaps, with the
greater advantage to science. Since the middle of that century their
labors, being seconded by many others, have given a new life to the
investigation of nature. With the beginning of the second half of the
century scientific efforts were more unitedly undertaken, and the
newly-awakened interest called out three great undertakings, widely
different from each other, and taking very diverse courses, but which
have become perennial springs to the study of physical geography.
We mention first the valuable and protracted scientific journeys of
members of the Petersburgh Academy through the great Russian Empire,
from the Baltic to the northwest coast of America, and from the
Northern Ocean to the Caucasus and the Altai mountains, whose rich
results the unwearied Gmeline, Pallas, Georgi, Steller, Güldenstadt,
and others, mostly Germans, have collected, and thus made general a
knowledge of the North.
At the same time Captain Cook, called the Discoverer, sailed three
times round the earth between 1768 and 1779, and enlarged our knowledge
of the globe in all directions. Through his means, and that of his
associates, Banks, Solander, Sparrman, and the Forsters, father and
son, we have gained our knowledge of the oceanic world.
At the same period, 1774, Werner, in the mountains of Saxony, and De
Saussure, 1772-79, through the study of the Alps, in his native land,
had found the soil and the roots of a new branch of physical geography,
which, though yet in its youth, is heavy with fruit, and which shall
yet, a royal tree, raise its top to the heavens.
The most civilized nations of Europe vied with the learned societies in
India (Asiat. Research., Calcutta, 1778) and in North America (Transac.
of the Amer. Soc. of Philadelphia, and Mem. of the Americ. Acad.) in
furthering these varied discoveries.
All these good results have been attained, in part, by individual
observers, but more by men closely bound together by friendship,
struggling, side by side, after truth. What physical geography owes
to Joseph Banks, senior, can hardly be overstated. And what he did in
Great Britain and its vast empire, J. F. Blumenbach did in Germany,
through his writings, his collections, and yet more by his living word
as a teacher. Others have done the same in Brunswick, Berlin, and
Vienna. In France, Delametharie and Cuvier have labored; in southern
Europe, Bonnets and Saussure’s accomplished pupil, companion, and
friend, M. A. Pictet, whose name is held in so high esteem in his own
country.
The sum of the facts established, by means of this wealth of
authorities, is the more important in consequence of their being
traced in special fields. But even here we can only allude to the
leading authorities, those from which the weightiest facts are adduced,
while all others will appear in the places where we shall need to
employ them. While we shall follow the connection of the ideas which
generalize our whole theme, we shall name the works from which those
ideas are taken, and thus avoid, in this place, the unnecessary length
to which a list of books would run, which have become known, indeed,
for other reasons than from their bearing upon the science of geography.
THE FEATURES OF THE EARTH’S SURFACE.
Werner discovered, by following the indication of fossil forms, the
first universally intelligible language, descriptive of the countless
myriads of bodies which are buried in the earth. From accepting various
earlier and later, general and partial deluges, and the theory of the
precipitation of different deposits from these, he sought to understand
the masses of the surface, hitherto regarded as chaotic, and without
relations to law in their formation. He then advanced to all the facts
which offered themselves to him in his examination of the Ertzgebirg,
and those which came to him, as the great teacher of his time, from
distant lands, with detailed accounts and specimens, until the idea
dawned upon him of homogeneousness in the creation of the parts of the
globe; and thus his mind threw out the first plan for deciphering the
process of the earth’s formation. By the numerous pupils of this great
man his thought was widely diffused, and almost all new facts relating
to this subject are described with little deviation from his language.
At the same period, the genial De Saussure had examined in all
directions the extensive chain of the Alps,--whose formation seemed
clear,--had questioned its nature, and had received perplexing
answers about its characteristics, the number, the course, and the
importance of all its subdivisions, whose hidden significance neither
the older theories nor his own genius could unfold. Yet, while he
gave to physical geography the whole treasures which he had won and
recorded, with the greatest care, in his work, he also gave a language
which makes intelligible the whole outer surface of the earth; and in
this language science still continues to teach. By these two men’s
labors the earth found a tongue to express her secrets and her varied
relations.
Alexander von Humboldt was the first to trace the working of universal
forces, the law of mountain elevation, and the law of continental
extents. He widened the knowledge of this whole domain by bringing into
view the analogies in the different features of the earth, and showed
the relation between the New and the Old World. He has been one of the
greatest benefactors of physical geography.
Leopold von Buch introduced into science the idea of local and general
mountain formations, understood how to outline more sharply what was
known before, to characterize it, to disclose its nature, and to enrich
it still more. He observed every local feature according to its inner
and its outer qualities, in its individuality, and in its relation to
the whole. Studying the formation of the earth’s surface according to
its _physical_ dimensions, that is, by height and depth, every
step brought him to some new fact in nature; and the present work is
largely indebted to him for his instructive additions to scientific
knowledge, and for the spirit which encourages its appearance even in
an incomplete form.
Through the combined efforts of these two eminent friends the
geognostic relations of the earth’s surface were carefully
examined,--the tropical regions, in the direction of the parallels of
latitude, by Humboldt, and the northern hemisphere, in the direction
of the meridians, by Von Buch, from the southernmost point of Italy,
through the heart of Europe, to the North Cape,--and the beginning
made possible by both of a strict comparison. It has been for the
great furtherance of geography that they both employed the comparative
method. What a gain would still accrue to it if these naturalists,
carrying their mode of inquiry to the Asiatic plateaus, would there
institute their comparisons and researches, and thus complete our
knowledge of the entire surface of the earth, studied in this way.
Meantime, the third man of the youthful party of geognostical friends,
J. C. Freiesleben, in his more limited field, collected the material
for his work on the copper formations of Thuringia,--as the venerable
Heim had done before, in preparing his account of the Thuringian Forest
Mountains,--and, in that model of scientific investigation, he arranged
all his facts in their mutual relations. The works of these three
men show how the present scientific efforts, springing from youthful
friendship, not only are more earnest on that very account, but that
they, in every case, attain higher and more valuable results for the
world.
At the same period J. G. Ebel, in his classic work on Switzerland,
which speaks to the solitary traveller in every place there like
a wise friend, and has become a people’s book, was showing how to
communicate the vast richness of the whole Alp system, because a
rich soul was in the man himself. Therefore he took his first step
in the work of elevating and instructing the people in the exalted
regions of geography and history. So, too, the larger part of the
cultivated travellers who yearly stream to that attractive country,
to enrich themselves with its magnificence, was humanized yet more by
being led by him to Nature, and to her workings in the solemn silence
of the Alpine heights. So, animated in this, as in all things, with
a ceaseless interest in behalf of the enrichment of men’s minds,
incessantly toiling for this end, his second work took a scientific
form; he exhibited the combinations of the many classes of facts which
nature made him acquainted with, and that idea of uniformity in the
formation of the strata, and in the reproduction of the primitive
types, which Hausmann had discovered at the same time in the North;
he showed the universal connection in nature, passed from a new view
of the mountain system as a whole to its scattered members and their
forms, and thus conveyed that settled conception of a highland of the
earth which Humboldt had traced on the other hemisphere, and introduced
it within the domain of physical geography. The present work is
indebted to an intercourse of many years with Ebel for what of warmth
and life it may possess.
Already, before the epoch of these active discoveries, the Swedes, Gahn
and Haüy, had traced, with their peculiar mathematical keenness, the
laws of the crystallizations exhibited in the working of the forces at
the poles of the earth.
The modern chemists, in their observations on the atmosphere and in the
laboratory, were carried through a diversity of paths to the discovery
of elective affinities, whose conformity to laws Berzelius first
employed in the use of mathematical symbols.
Thus, after observing this varied activity in the inorganic world,
after an analysis and a synthesis of the formative conditions inherent
in them, and after noting too the beautiful coherence of them all,
the conception arose of an inorganic class of forms, and of all the
relations which spring from such a class. The latter were traced
by Hausmann through the whole inorganic kingdom, even to its very
confines. From this view was developed a great wealth of truths and
generalizations for all departments of natural science. The citation
of some of them, communicated to me orally by this valued friend, in
so far as they are appropriate to the uses of the present work, may
compensate for many other imperfections; and let me here record a word
of the deepest thankfulness to this unwearied seeker after truth, this
most enthusiastic of teachers.
OCEANIC FORMS.
The extraordinary progress which has been made in the knowledge of the
sea and of oceanic forms we owe almost exclusively to the British.
What has been done in this department, up to the present time, by
other nations, the Portuguese, the early Spaniards, along the coasts
and within the tropics, and what has been accomplished by the French,
Marchand, Fleurieu, and La Perouse excepted, is easy to pass in review;
even Krusenstern’s journey round the world is really to be ascribed
to the British. The Americans, though they have become rivals for the
mastery of the deep, and their sails whiten every part of the South
Sea, have, unfortunately, so far as we know,[2] cared more for their
own gain than for the advancement of science; but they have compensated
for this in giving the great name of Benjamin Franklin to the world.
The British, on the other hand,--only to name the mere outlines of
what they have done,--have sought, in behalf of science, to reach
both poles, through Captain Cook’s endeavors, and especially the
northern one through the exertions of Captain Phipps; they have not
only discovered and given to the world a knowledge of the youngest of
the continents, by the agency of a long succession of voyages, which
have been recorded in Zimmermann’s Australia, but they have, through
the careful investigations of Flinders, surveyed, with the utmost
exactness, the entire coast of the mainland of New Holland. Thus the
nature of the sea has taken entirely new relations to the surface of
the globe.
The researches of those naturalists who devote themselves to the
botany and zoölogy of the sea,--Ellis, Lightfoot, Turner, Mertens,
Donati, Forskal, Müller, DeBosc, Peron, Tilesius,--have brought the
life and activity of those depths to light. Merely from Capt. Baudin’s
unfortunate expedition to Australia, Peron brought home, as the result
of his own and his friends’ activity, 28,414 specimens, of which
there were, according to the statements of the savans of Paris, 1400
new specimens from oceanic zoölogy. More remarkable still are the
observations upon the life of the organized forms, of which Tilesius
collected so many during his journey round the world. Those which yield
generalizations relating to the oceanic economy will be given in their
place, as we have received them from his own mouth.
The observations of Peyssonel, Benjamin Franklin, Captain Cook, Charles
Blagden, Bladh, and Marchand, upon the local movements of the sea,
awoke the attention of navigators. La Place completed his theory of
a universal oceanic motion; Lamotherie threw out an hypothesis to
explain the local currents which Romme has observed. But Fleurieu,
Rennell, Humboldt and Krusenstern, enriched this new field with the
most definitely determined facts, showed the changes in the course of
these currents, their limits, and their average velocity. Pennell and
Humboldt made them a special object of study, in order to increase
the safety of human life, and to trace their historical influence in
promoting ready communication between seafaring nations.
They first drew Franklin to that study of the sea’s temperature, which,
since his day, has at extreme depths, and near the surface, led to
the most remarkable facts. By means of the measurements of Irving and
Forster, near the North and South poles, and of Peron, Humboldt and
Horner in the equatorial seas, our knowledge of the diffusion of the
inhabitants of the sea has received much enlargement.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 2: The date of the writing of this Introductory Essay
will be borne in mind by the reader, as he meets these and kindred
remarks.--TR.]
THE ATMOSPHERE.
In the domain of the atmosphere, viewed without reference to its
cosmical and chemical relations, the efforts of observers, from the
last half of the past century on, have been very marked, and their
works, based almost invariably upon facts, have become rich sources for
General Comparative Geography.
Not only have astronomers like La Place, Olbers, Brandes and
Benzenberg, striven to determine the upper limits of the atmosphere,
by the study of the laws of refraction, but the strongest efforts to
ascertain its dimensions have also been made by the ascent of the
highest mountains by De Saussure, De Lucs, Humboldt, and others, as
well as by penetrating the surface and the depths of the earth. Others,
like Robertson, Jungius, Gay Lussac, and Biot, have made long journeys,
that they might study the atmosphere as the laboratory where climates
and climatic characteristics are formed.
But especially weighty have the facts become which barometrical
observations, and yet more the efforts to determine heights with the
barometer, have established. Even Pascal, who first (1648) saw at the
Puy de Dome that the Toricellean vacuum is of the greatest significance
for the comparison of distant levels, could as little suspect as
Scheuchzer, who first (1709) made an application of this discovery in
a series of observations, imperfect indeed, among the Alps, to what
varied results the now perfected barometer would lead, as used by
mathematicians, physicists, naturalists, and artists. Without this
instrument, comparative geography would be still in an unsettled state;
our knowledge of vegetation and our knowledge of climates would still
be isolated branches; while now, still further established by the
hygrometer and the thermometer, each of these branches finds, even in
its minute subdivisions, its exponents in the other, so that the round
sum at least of their diversities could be divided into its factors.
Every step forwards in the history of this remarkable instrument has
become, through contemporaneous discoveries on the earth and in the
atmosphere, rich in facts illustrating the physical nature of the
globe. The barometrical investigations set on foot by Townley, and
conducted by Mariotti and Boyle, led to a knowledge of the variance in
the density of different layers of air; from the study of this varying
density Halley drew his barometrical formula.
Since De Luc’s journey through the Alps, in 1795, portable barometers
have come into general use, and, through his corrections of
barometrical formulas, our knowledge of atmospheric conditions has
become favorable to our understanding what pertains to the whole domain
of nature.
By means of M. A. Pictet’s first and long-protracted investigations,
at Cartigny, 1778, into the temperature of the atmosphere directly
above the earth’s surface, in layers of from half an inch to five
feet, and so on to seventy-five feet in perpendicular thickness,
important additions were made to our knowledge of general vegetation,
especially of facts relating to evaporation, the formation of dew and
clouds, the direct and reflected warmth of the sun on plains and in the
soil, and particularly the relation of this warmth to shade. From his
investigations, too, sprang the first generalizations on the remarkably
unequal and yet constant relation of warmth to light in the daytime and
twilight of every revolution of the earth. To an acquaintance with this
skilful naturalist among the Alpine valleys, and to communications from
his lips, this work is indebted for many an important thought.
De Luc’s contemporaneous observations on the state of the barometer,
taken at fifteen points of observation on the Salève, and Schuckburgh
and Le Roy’s applications of those observations, led to important
knowledge relative to the advantage of a moderate temperature to
vegetation, and to the expansion of the air as connected with winds
and their dependent phenomena: thus incorporating these topics into
physical geography, which was yet further to be enriched with the
important facts and applications of De Saussure.
Ramond’s exact and full barometrical observations at six stations
of various absolute heights within the range of small horizontal
distances, led to a mathematical certainty of a medium state of the
barometer, and assisted in reaching an understanding of the relations
of absolute heights to the level of neighboring seas and oceans.
M. A. Pictet’s contemporaneous barometrical observations over greater
horizontal distances, but at the same absolute heights, afterwards
followed further, and with the most scrupulous care, by the acute
Wahlenberg, between Vienna, Casmark, and the Carpathian range,
illustrated by the vivid drawings of J. F. Pictet, and applied most
advantageously by Pfaff to the theory of climates, led to remarkable
generalizations on the contemporaneousness and succession of
atmospheric phenomena over large districts, and sometimes over entire
continents.
These continued observations from the same standpoint taught--through
the agency of the curvilinear tables of Studer, in Berne (continued a
whole life long), the works of so many Academies, and the comparisons
of La Cotte, Gronau, and others--that nature does not move in cycles
of a quarter of a century each, or even of a whole century; and they
also showed that a man who always argues _a priori_ with regard
to the course of nature, reasoning outwards from some standpoint
purely subjective, may make great strides forwards, but to no purpose.
Meantime, all unexpectedly, the finest and most neglected features of
nature were examined by French naturalists in the heights of Quito, by
the English on the plains of Bengal, by Mutis and Humboldt on the coast
of Caraccas, and the universal and constant currents in the atmosphere
of the tropics were discovered, as they had been by Chiminelli in
Padua, Ramond in Auvergne, and Von Buch in Germany, as existing in the
temperate zone, and by Horner for the sea. Flinders went so far in
his barometrical observations, during his voyage round Australia, as
to trace the influence of sea and land winds upon the weight of the
atmosphere, and to prepare a table to show the mariner how to employ
this fact in determining his distance from the shore. Thus, this little
quicksilver tube has even become an instrument to make men feel at
home upon the ocean, as upon the land it has undertaken the duty of
determining for us all heights and depths.
The barometer, too, brought into light the weighty difference between
relative and absolute heights, and afterwards the differences in
plains. These things had before formed no part of the science of
geography, for the former method of scientific study was to search for
the most striking phenomena; and men who followed that method were
content with measuring and wondering at the stupendous height of the
loftiest mountains.
What a mass of efforts must precede in order to exhibit in numbers the
series of facts regarding the altitudes so fully given in Miltenburg’s
comprehensive collection! Only he who has made researches of his own
upon the Alps knows how to prize the worth of every name recorded there.
These collections of measurements and observations were first turned
to the profit of geography by De Saussure, Humboldt, Von Buch, and
their pupils, by yielding the means for comparing general, climatic,
geologic, and botanic relations. To Von Buch belongs the credit of
bringing out, following in the path of De Saussure, the characteristics
of mountain passes, driving many errors from the science of Physical
Geography, and of establishing many truths; since it is the mountain
passes, and not the extreme tops, which are the standpoint of
observation for all travellers through such regions, in the east and
west of the earth.
By the agency of the two naturalists, Von Buch and De Saussure, who
have merited so much of science, and with the signal help besides
of the equally indefatigable Wahlenberg, in the different flora of
Lapland, Carpathia, and Switzerland, the climatic characteristics, as
limits of vegetation in the vegetable world, were compared with those
of the tropics; and through the completeness of their treatment of
the heat of the earth, gained by a large acquaintance with the facts
of temperature, the perfect order and beauty and consistency in the
arrangements of the earth’s surface, especially on the side explored by
them, were exhibited in detail. Meanwhile, the efforts of these men,
stimulated by the early investigations of Scheuchzer, Tournefort, De
Saussure, Ramond, Townson, and the calculations of Kirwan, had really
determined, by the help of barometrical observations, from the North
Cape to the southernmost point of Europe, as well as upon the heights
of the torrid zone, the limits of vegetation, and had showed that the
line of eternal snow is the border of the living creation.
The special influence of the investigations which the barometer has
served, like a wanderer’s staff, in the confused world of phenomena,
must here be particularly referred to, since it is the soul of the
whole arrangement of the present work. And yet the first efforts to
leave the earth, and to penetrate to the very heart of a knowledge of
the atmosphere, that is, to compass the whole secrets of meteorology,
have in no way been satisfied, nor have all results been subjected to
a strict analysis. Every prognosis seems to be unfavorable to science,
and to be more a matter of egoistical curiosity than of pure and
earnest striving, because it lacks humility and confidence in Divine
Providence; so there seems to be no suitable reward held before the
zeal which does not grow from a worthy root; but every disinterested
effort after truth has already been often crowned, by being led back to
certainty and the living God.
Thus, from what has now been said, without any more specific citing
of authorities, the bearing appears of all these results upon an
understanding of the laws which control the whole world of life. If,
here and there, in the present work, an interesting view holds the
reader’s attention, and charms him into patience, the author extends
his thanks for it to a long, instructive, and, with pride be it said,
intimate acquaintance with a noble man, S. T. Sömmering, the ornament
of his age and nation; for his spirit imparted to others glimpses into
those depths of nature which his own genius had penetrated to their
most secret recesses.
THE SUBTERRANEAN REGIONS.
If we now pass to the third element, to the workings of the forces of
fire and heat, we find that the protracted efforts of men who have
studied ocean characteristics, and those who have studied volcanic
phenomena, have awakened a lively interest to overthrow something
old, or to establish something new, and have ever been making these
researches more keen. If they have not satisfied themselves, yet
their efforts have enriched Comparative Geography with a treasure of
unquestioned facts regarding the details and the extent of subterranean
and marine phenomena.
Only the latest times have taken the first important steps towards
the settlement of that old vexed question, whose symbol the primitive
wisdom of India used to represent to the people as the lotus flower,
with a boy in the garden by, and flames licking the corolla,--the
question which the gods of Greece renewed in their strife with
Poseidon, Athene in Attica, Helios in Corinth, and Here in Argolis,
and whose heat the divine Plato seems to have kindled among mortals,
by his story of Tartarus on the earth, recorded in the Phädon. At
last the happy settlement of the question has confirmed the truth of
the old motto, that everywhere error, as well as truth, has been the
instructress of men.
At first, the inhabitants of Campania and of Sicily at the South,
and of Iceland at the North, recorded carefully in their annals the
eruptions of the neighboring volcanoes; then P. Bonguer, la Condamine
and Aut. Ulloa, explained volcanic formation, and brought out the fact
that even more constant activity was manifested in the volcanoes of the
New World. The earthquake of the first of November, 1755, which was so
powerfully felt in the southwest of Europe, carrying destruction from
the Escurial to Lisbon, did not spend its force there, but rolled along
the Atlantic shores, from Madeira, over Morocco, Tetuan, and Algiers to
Tunis; shook Corsica and Valais, and all the lakes of central Europe;
passed from Zurich down the Rhine to the Netherlands, over the North
Sea to the British Islands as far as Loch Ness, in Scandinavia even to
Falun, and Abo in Finland, and filled all Europe with fear. But when,
from all sides, the accounts of Wolfall, Sachetti, Ulloa, Stoqueler,
Foroke, Heberdeen, and many others, came in, with the tidings of a
violent commotion of the sea at the Antilles taking place at the same
time, and the report of a fearful earthquake occurring but two days
later at Java and Sumatra, all together filling an entire volume of
Transactions, naturalists came to an insight into these phenomena,
and hypothesis followed hypothesis, explaining them all on physical
or physico-theological principles. First, Stuckeley, and, after the
earthquakes in Italy, Vivencio and Dolmieu, and after them Williams,
Mitchell, and Franklin in North America, sought to form a theory
from the numerous facts, and so drew men’s thoughts not only to the
phenomena of earthquakes, but to their periodical recurrence. Hamilton
described volcanic eruptions; Dolmieu and Ferrara observed them as
naturalists, in respect to their phenomena, Breislack in respect to
their results and chemical causes; and all these framed interesting
hypotheses connected with them.
Leopold Von Buch was the first who was able to separate the exceptional
from the essential in volcanic phenomena; to indicate the means of
determining the great periods of upheaval and sinking; to designate
the chief elements of every period in the preliminary earthquake,--the
throwing out of lava, the smoke, and the belching of ashes. In the
course of his repeated wanderings through Italy, he grasped the idea of
volcanic construction, inward and outward; described volcanic products;
and indicated the submarine district of tufa strata at Epomeo, and
in the classic soil of Rome itself. He propounded a bold hypothesis
regarding the peculiarity of the formation of Auvergne, which, indeed,
is not now much regarded, since Weiss at Viveray has given more
satisfactory explanations. And Von Buch, too, first established a
definite and universally intelligible language for this department of
science.
What his keen search has elicited from a solitary volcano, doubtlessly,
indeed, admirably calculated for study, the ever active Vesuvius,
was traced on another side of the earth, at the isles of France and
Bourbon, in the Indian Ocean, by Bory St. de Vincent, in the nicest
detail. There he studied volcanic groups, and confirmed and added to
all that had been taught by Von Buch.
At the North, too, the Scotch naturalists, unbeknown to him, gave the
hand of welcome to the ideas which he had originated. The renowned
hypothesis of Hutton, founded upon the granite courses of Cornwallis,
and developed in a better method, with yet greater acuteness, and with
a more masterly group of facts, by Playfair; the chemical experiments
of Hall, upon volcanic products, so far as they had been formed under
the influence of pressure from above, enriched physical geography with
views and conjectures, which appear to have been reached not only in
Iceland by Olafsen, and later still by Mackenzie, but at almost all the
volcanic formations of the Atlantic Ocean.
Alexander Von Humboldt not only enriched the whole field with a vast
mass of measurements and facts, drawn from his own researches, but,
while he compared the familiar details of the Old World with the
analogous or different features of the New, he threw much light upon
the widely various characteristics of both continents, as well as upon
phenomena which are coextensive with the world. Leopold Von Buch turned
his inquiries to what is truly continental in the oceanic forms; and,
while his sharp search was thus directed, islands were rising above the
surface of the Atlantic and Pacific, as it were, to do him honor.
And so, perhaps, the time is not distant when the key shall be found
to the perplexing and gigantic ridges of basaltic rocks, which break
through the heart of India and of Europe, in colossal courses, from
a coast border even to the extremities of great peninsulas, and are
everywhere rich in grottos and pillared caves.
Only that man who is most deeply skilled in the secrets of nature will
be able to make this discovery, which in truth is only the prelude to
one yet greater. There is something magical in the mysterious lines,
once good and useful, but now worse than useless, which men drew over
our globe, lines which were dragged from mathematical to physical uses,
but men can no more proscribe and banish them than they can draw the
stars from their courses in the heavens.
THE VEGETABLE WORLD.
The study of the vegetable growths, after its reänimation by
Tournefort, Jussieu, and Linneus, spread over the earth more rapidly
than any other, and called out everywhere active scholars. A long
list of distinguished names might be given of men who have enriched
science with new facts. But only those could be valuable authorities
for general comparative geography who have either contemplated their
science as a whole from the side of nature, and thus stood elevated,
as it were, above the level of science, or who have considered certain
portions of their theme in special connection with the surface of the
earth.
Thus the works of Gmelin, Pallas, and Willdenow, written after the
manner of Linneus, have called our attention to the flora of mountains,
in contrast to that of plains. Pallas, for example, has explored
exhaustively the flora of eastern Europe, Siberia, and the Taurus,
while Haller, Scopoli, Wulfen, Römer, Hoppe, Suter, and others, have
made great additions to our knowledge of the flora of the Alps.
Desfontain first investigated the growths of the Mediterranean and the
Atlantic coasts; Cavanilles devoted himself to the botany of Spain, and
Decandolle to that of France.
Willdenow was the first to call attention to the characteristics of the
collective flora of all the continents, and to establish in Europe a
flora of the North, a Swiss, an Austrian, a Spanish flora, and a flora
of the Apennines. Lamark, while he sought for a certain centre to every
botanical order, believed that he had discovered eight leading flora on
earth, the Virginian, the West Indian, the African, the Australian, the
Antarctic, the Northern and the Asiatic, and in these again, with equal
ground, various special floras; he thus enriched physical geography
with all the facts which the natural system of grouping employed by
French botanists offered. Decandolle carried the idea of special floras
through his whole researches in France, with the greatest persistency,
and found, from the prevalence of growths in different districts, five
great regions which are characterized by distinct physical natures.
On the other hand, George Forster had already thrown his penetrating
glances upon the nature of vegetable growths, while Humboldt, in his
Ideas on Botanical Forms, had established the existence of sixteen
characteristic varieties in the torrid regions, and exhibited the
richness of tropical vegetation by that vast array of facts which he
knew how to exhibit with the skill of an artist. So, too, Wahlenberg,
by his exceedingly close observations, set the polar floras in a
new light; he did the same with the Swiss, displaying it from his
own standpoint, and in addition he enriched science with a highly
characteristic flora,--the Carpathian,--which, as the noteworthy link
between the vegetable forms of Europe and of Asia, has led to the
most valuable results for comparative geography. It was Wahlenberg,
too, who first ascertained definitely the influence of a continental
climate upon vegetation in contrast with an oceanic climate, and their
mutual action and reaction in continental flora. Aubert du Petit
Thuars had already showed the union of the natural floras of two
continents--America and Africa--upon the oceanic island of Tristan
d’Ancuna, in the torrid zone; while Zoega, Mohr, Hooker, and Mackenzie
had displayed in the frigid zone the poverty of the island flora of
Iceland, in contrast with continental polar floras.
Tournefort’s view, which occurred to him more than a hundred years ago,
as he ascended the Armenian highlands and Mount Ararat, of the decrease
of vegetation with the increase of absolute height, and the thought of
comparing this reduced vegetation with that of plains in the colder
zones, became a hundred years later, under the able guidance of the
naturalists whom we have named, and others, one of the most fruitful
storehouses of facts for geography.
The partly practical, partly historical and antiquarian, works of
Linneus, Arthur Young, Pallas, Georgi, Michaux, Von Buch, Wahlenberg,
Heyne, Sprengel, Durean de la Malle, and others, have informed
us regarding the spread of imported growths through the northern
countries of the earth, during ancient as well as modern times; the
Forsters, father and son, have treated thoroughly of the flora of
the South Sea islands. Raynal, Sprengel, Edwards, and others, have
discussed the growths of colonial lands. Bory and le Dru, and before
them the Spanish botanists, seized the idea of a general flora in the
climate of the islands of East and West Africa. Bernier in Cashmere,
Reineggs, Güldenstadt, and Von Biberstein in Caucasus, the Portuguese
missionaries in Abyssinia, Poncet and the Spaniards in the New World,
have exhibited the rich vegetation of terrace formations, but their
vast resources were reduced to a scientific form by Humboldt. Through
the aid of these men, Link has delineated the topography of Spain. The
almost complete banishment of a native flora by imported growths in the
Nile valley has been described by Forskal, Browne, Girard, and others.
The Chinese agriculturists, the great masters in their department, had
for a long time established the principles governing the influence
of situation upon the productions of a given district, when the
English, French, and Germans were beginning to study the facts of
their own experience in the same light. De Saussure wished to show by
chemistry the relation of the animate to the inanimate forms in the
vegetable world. Leslie demonstrated the diversified influences upon
the native growths of a power, resident in the soil, of absorbing
moisture. Pallas treated of the flora of salt steppes, Humboldt that
of sandy regions and desolate heaths. A new field was opened by the
study of the cryptogamous plants in their broadest relations, and
thereby our knowledge of the north of the earth became more sharply
characterized. In the lichens, whose formation is clearly conditioned
by their surroundings, and which appear to stand in the lowest grade
of plants not aquatic, Hausmann discovered a first principle relating
to the favorable influence of inorganic upon organic forms, and
the disintegrating influence of organic upon inorganic forms. Neeb
showed how the power which plants have of drawing their food to them
compensates for the power of motion which animals possess. Through the
comparisons instituted by Florke between the cryptogamous forms of
Kamskatka and Europe, their uniformity through the northern hemisphere
appeared, while a further comparison of these with the flora of the
island of Bourbon and the Isle of France revealed uniformity still
between the cryptogamia of the North and of these isles. This marked
exception to the diversity of the higher forms of vegetation, as
existing in different parts of the world, displays uniformity in the
cryptogamus plants of the northern and southern hemispheres, which, by
their countless varieties, show the infinite diversity of which nature
is capable.
THE ANIMAL WORLD.
The geographical relations of animals have long been known in a
general way, and have long formed a part of human knowledge. In their
most dangerous as well as in their most useful classes their haunts
have been near the homes of men, in their leading forms they have
been open to view; and, since zoölogy is the centre, as it were, of
natural history, they have been studied in their most prominent and
characteristic features. Almost every writer of antiquity has given us
accounts of them, and what modern times have added, as contained in
the writings of Buffon, Zimmermann, Blumenbach, Cuvier, Treviranus,
was known and worked out by the ancients, and stands recorded in their
works as our authority. May the general relations of those minor
classes of the animal world, whose relations to nature and to man have
not yet been traced, be yet more clearly taught and better known.
Those results which the restless activity of that signal benefactor
of Physical Geography, Count Hoffmannsegg, has deduced from numerous
facts, his daily observations and comparisons, as they are exhibited
in his systematized geographical works, would of themselves alone give
a new aspect to the relation between vegetation, climate, and all
natural influences, and the forms and life of animal organizations,
as well as the world of birds and insects, in its entire extent. Some
facts bearing upon this might, to advantage, be adduced in their
proper place, and would manifestly be a part of a system of General
Comparative Geography.
Meanwhile, the study of the remains of a world, once full of life,
now buried in the heart of the earth, whose myriads of forms have
astonished ancient and modern times alike, has first attained its true
significance, and the vast number of species, fully known or only
partially understood, has been reduced to system by Blumenbach, that
veteran in the domain of animate nature. Through him and J. Kant, the
conception of the archæology of the earth has been introduced into
physical geography, which now, with this vast accession, seems to
rejoice in a new creation. If it was long a matter of astonishment to
see what a vast store of bones of colossal creatures, like in kind, lay
hidden in the North, not less wonder did it cause to have discovered
the most varied genera of a lost animal world in a single spot on the
earth, the gypsum deposits of Montmartre. By the most exact study of
the Testacea, the widely diffused formations of the primitive world
have been brought to light, so far as regards the uppermost strata of
the earth’s surface, and the most limited tracts; as, for example,
before the gates of Paris, outside of Berlin, and in other places,
hundreds of the most varied species have been found side by side. The
observations and discoveries which the works of Cuvier, Brougniart,
Parkinson, Daudebard, Schlottheim, Merk, Sömmering, Pallas, Fortis,
Faujas, Peale, Jefferson, Torrubia, Humboldt, Link, and others,
contain, have yielded such a mass of facts as make the mind giddy in
looking back into the ages of the primeval world.
REMAINING MATERIALS.--CONCLUSION.
Thus we come to the close of our summary of authorities which have
been our chief guides, and which have given not only our material, but
also, in still higher degree, the form pervading this entire work; they
having been what we may call the organizing instruments which have
shaped it.
Through what was done by Aristotle and his followers in the Alexandrian
school,--Eratosthenes, Hipparchus, and others,--a net-work was so
thrown over the earth, for the establishment of mathematical geography,
that every spot in the old known world, or in the new world to be
discovered, might be represented in its true place, according to the
determination by degree and minute of its latitude and longitude. The
object in this was to ascertain the relation of every spot to the
earth’s surface as a whole, and to secure, for the present and the
future, all the facts which have any connection with it.
So too that honored band of men of the last century, and especially
of the last quarter of a century, who have united the observation of
nature with a mathematical method, in order to attain to the clearest
views, have disclosed an invisible net-work, likewise enfolding the
globe, and woven by the laws of nature. In its leading strands, nature
herself reveals it, by the facts brought to light in the heart of the
earth, by the movements of the elements, by the life of the organic
world, so that short-sighted man, by following the lines which lead
from one point to others related to it, and ascertained by comparison
with it, finds a reflection of himself in the richness and variety of
nature.
After the era of Alexander the Great, there was indeed many a planet
revealed in the heavens, and yet the ground of the division which
had been made, and which lay in truth, remained fixed, and will
remain fixed to the end of time. And even now there are but few
leading points ascertained of the physical life of the globe and the
organic conditions of the earth as a planet; and many a star is yet
to appear above the physical horizon, and gradually dawn upon our
full understanding; but as certainly as they all belong to the same
solar system, so certainly, if their grand principles lie in truth,
a knowledge of them may be endlessly increased, but their nature can
never be disowned and rejected. If the main lines of the net-work are
correctly drawn, and the manner of construction is appreciated by the
understanding, then all the facts of physical geography find in it at
once their true and determined place. Everything which we have thus far
said aims at conveying this; and this essay has for its purpose to show
how all geographical materials are related, and all belong to a system
whose deficiencies will soon be made good.
It would not be desirable to cite all the authorities which have been
employed in the preparation of this work; they shall all be specified
in the places where they are employed. It would indeed be impossible to
state them all, much as we hope to attain to completeness in our work;
but none of the most important shall be wanting here which have to do
with the work as a whole.
We have not spoken in this essay of what we owe to the geographical
and historical systems of the Greeks and Romans, the Arabians, the
learned men of the middle ages, as well as to those of the very latest
years; nor have we named those instructive books of travel which, from
the wanderings of Ulysses down, have enriched our knowledge of the
earth and its peoples. Many of them are very valuable, and have been
used, where it has been possible, in the languages in which they were
written, and not in the rarely unmutilated translations, in which,
only too often, the scientific portions have been omitted, as heavy
and uninteresting reading. This has been done even with works of prime
importance, as, for example, Flinder’s Researches on the youngest of
the continents.
We have made no mention of the share which entire organizations
have had in the opening of sources to us; such as boards of trade,
missionary societies, scientific institutes, as the African Society
in England; nor of the share which great powers have exercised in the
same direction, such as Alexander the Great, Timur Beck, or the Russian
Czars and the Chinese Emperors, in opening the interior of Asia; nor of
that which the histories of the wars of the world have had in opening
a knowledge of the earth to us. Nor have we showed how much the masses
of population have contributed, century after century, towards our
understanding general physical relations, as, for example, the hordes
which have wandered from East to West, the pressing of the inhabitants
of mountains into the vales, the armies of Crusaders thronging to the
Orient, the fleets of the Portuguese along sea-coasts, the Spaniards
in the track of the trade-winds, the struggles of the British after
dominion in Hindostan.
The phenomena appearance of one single traveller shall here make an
exception, and the name of Alexander Von Humboldt be cited yet again at
the close of my list of authorities, because it is to him, who united
all the knowledge of an Academy of Sciences with a grasp of what is
the basis of all phenomena, that the present work owes its whole form;
without him it would never have been brought to its completion.
The extraordinary progress which has accrued to the system of General
Comparative Geography through Humboldt’s personal researches,--as well
as through the ideas which have been propounded by him, and have been
resisted or accepted through the whole of cultivated Europe,--appears
to lie, speaking in general terms, in this: that he, endowed with the
spirit of antiquity and with a mathematical method, passed through
the entire domain of physics, as far as astronomy, geology, and a
third science,--which the last century has carried almost to its
height,--physiology, and employed his method as the measuring rod of
the world. Moreover, he caught glimpses of nature on another and not
measurable side, in its still hidden, higher, organic life, even in its
connection with history (for its connection with the general order of
the world had been traced before); and so he searched for the workings
of this higher life, and its results in its most exalted domains, and
endeavored, in every direction, to strike to its very centre. Thus,
through this happy league of union between all the kingdoms of science
and nature, and the free scope which it gave to man to trace more
than simple bonds between them,--to look deeply and see their hidden
connections, science became enlarged in its grasp, and was invested
with new charms.
Yet the influence of this man, who, as he himself says, has stood
not alone, but in the midst of colaborers, seems to be only one of
the indications of the position which the scientific inquiry of our
times has specially established, and which exhibits the greatest
possibilities for the next hundred years.
Earlier times gave themselves more exclusively to the forms, phenomena,
and facts which are general, and which lie loosely and at random in
each one of the natural kingdoms. The present times study what is
universal: men now reach to the farthest extremes, come to the places
where different regions encroach upon each other, or else exist in a
continued state of action and reaction, measure the world according
to length and breadth, height and depth, as well as by more subtle
measurements of organic and intellectual conditions, and seek to
penetrate to the living heart of the whole.
This characteristic, already apparent in what we have written, will
appear more fully in the body of the work, and will indicate that
contrast between the efforts of man and those of nature, which the
words _striving_ and _being_ plainly suggest. Man advances
in his domain only through ideas which spring from his most inner
self, ideas to which external activity had been subjected even before
results had been proved from the testimony of facts; he extends the
boundaries of his knowledge only step by step; extraordinary minds
make advances, at long intervals, for the use of all, or else each man
works out his facts for himself alone, and thus a fitful and irregular
progress is made. But wherever Nature is unveiled to human sight,
we see her steadily working, from her centre to her circumference,
from circumference steadily back to centre; not from one living point
outwards, but in her great kingdom, everywhere so full of life; not at
broken intervals, but with unvarying force, and mystery, and vastness,
through all time.
And thus Nature was appointed by God to be the constant and the near
friend, mentor, and comforter of mortal man; to be his guardian spirit,
calling him to unity with himself;--with himself as an individual; with
himself as a race. As the earth is the mother of all human beings,
so ought Nature to be their awakener from careless and thoughtless
slumbers; she ought to be the steps on which they mount to nobler life;
she ought to be the organizing power of humanity, ever making it more
exalted, and preparing it for the final contemplation of the unseen and
the eternal.
GENERAL OBSERVATIONS
ON THE
FIXED FORMS OF THE EARTH’S SURFACE.
GENERAL OBSERVATIONS
ON THE
FIXED FORMS OF THE EARTH’S SURFACE.
[FROM THE FIRST VOLUME OF THE ERDKUNDE.]
SECTION I.
SKY, SEA, AND LAND.
THE sky completely envelops the globe, one part of whose surface the
waters cover, while the other or fixed portion is ever dry. In contrast
with the two movable forms, which we call atmosphere and sea, the fixed
portion is termed the land.
Sky, sea, and land are formed from a variety of elements, as their
components, which we need not examine here in detail, either in respect
to their extent, or in respect to their functions; that is the care of
other departments of science. It is for us to consider the _forms_
which sky, sea, and land take in relation to the _globe_, and to
discuss, even more thoroughly still, what is _dependent_ upon
them. The _forms_ we are to examine in detail, _i.e._, their
parts, and the mutual relation of these; what is _dependent_
upon them we are to consider in a general light, striving to reach
its essential nature. The collective body of all these forms, or the
study of the globe as such, we must presuppose in our investigation,
since the detailed treatment of the world in that light is the proper
province of astronomy. On the other hand, the investigations of what
is dependent upon these forms, if we should seek to follow them into
details, would lead us into the province of mechanics, physics,
chemistry, physiology, and other sciences, whose truths, so far as they
have been traced, and can serve us as helps, must be presupposed, and
used as results, without our going out ourselves on the path of those
who study them exclusively.
The forms which are the special subject of our present inquiry are, of
course, material, and, being material, cannot exist without inherent
forces; sky, sea, and land cannot be without certain activities,
working on one another, in one word, without mutual relations. The
root of this system of relations is the play of the constraining and
formative powers of nature; and in all the alternations and changes
which they induce, these forces appear moving, in short, periodically
recurring, or in ever-widening circles, between which certain periods
of equipoise are apparently interposed.
It is not the history of these changes and modifications that we have
here to trace; this is the province of physics and of archæology. Nor
is it ours to investigate the laws of these changes. The chief object
of our inquiry is their external phenomena, the relation between the
forms of the earth’s surface, and the fixed element in these changes.
Certainly, in the incomplete and constantly advancing condition of the
science of Comparative Geography, it will be often necessary to call
in the past to help us understand the present, and sometimes we shall
even have to consult subordinately in the interpretation of the world
its primitive state. In this view, we embrace all that period which
the history of man covers as belonging to the present, in contrast
with that period of formation and change in the earth’s surface which
precedes our records. The account of the workings of natural forces,
which have been in any age remarked by man, is historical; but in the
beginnings of things, in the ages which antecede history, theory has to
be our guide.
All the changes and alternation to which we have alluded above will
only be referred to here in as far as they are grounded in the
diversity and the mutual relations of sea, sky, and land, in their
superficial extent, and in their heights and depths.
In the present investigation of the relations of these three forms,
various ways open. Why we choose the course leading from solid to fluid
forms has been hinted above. Besides, it seems most natural to follow
this course, because man himself, from whom all observation proceeds,
has made his home upon the fixed form, and because this is the most
distinctly outlined, and therefore the most definite; the other forms
being, in some respects, subordinate to it.
The chemical arrangement would be capable of a more exact treatment,
since in it the advance is made from liquid to solid or concrete forms:
every beginning of things is in the fluid state. Therefore, since we
are delineating the _progress_ of development, we shall enter
in the second part of this work, in what we shall have to say of the
elements, upon a stricter treatment of relations than in this first
part, which concerns itself with what has at last become fixed, without
reference to the manner how. And so we come directly to our theme.
SECTION II.
THE LAND.
In early times men’s knowledge did not go farther than to embrace a
single continent, with the islands belonging to it; but within the
last three hundred years Columbus has brought into view the western
continent, in contrast with the older or eastern.
Soon the conception arose that there must be an equally large continent
in the south, to give equipoise, and this held its ground till Cook,
the discoverer, in the last half of the past century, showed the
groundlessness of such an idea, by exhibiting the outlines, not of one,
but of many lands, coasts, and islands in the south, to which, also,
the latest discovered, New South Shetland (between 55° to 65° west of
Greenwich, 62° to 63° south latitude), appears to belong.
The conception of a great continent towards the South Pole was a
result of the rational supposition that the largest mass of lands,
surrounded by water, both of the Old and the New World, lay, in the
northern hemisphere, in such vast extent around the North Pole,
that the promontories jutting out from them approach within a few
miles of each other. For towards the south the continents all have
a pointed, wedge-like form, the points being very widely apart; and
three promontories alone, running far down towards the South Pole, and
parting the waters of the southern seas, are the sole representatives
of three mighty continents.
All that pertains to the southern portion of the great land divisions
is easy to determine; but towards the north there are so many
difficulties in the way of finding a passage, and discovering all
that is to be known about the regions there, that we have by no means
reached the limits of what is yet to be learned.
Instead of encroaching upon our space with any theories of the origin
of these continental forms, with a numerical statement of their special
divisions, with outlining their boundaries, giving their superficial
contents, and other familiar facts, we advance at once to the general
study of the forms themselves; and in the first place, on grounds
already indicated in the Introduction, only in relation to.
THE OLD WORLD.
A mere glance at the globe reveals to us the Old World in its
external, mathematico-physical form, which, measured according to
its superficial dimensions, is a simple, great, coherent land-mass,
divided, however, into three leading subordinate parts. These parts are
so disunited that we can get no very definite conception of them as
related to each other; and the very naming of them _continents_
conveys an indefinite idea to the mind. Nevertheless, if we look
at them historically, we see plain marks of individuality in them,
psychological characteristics running through the human family in them,
and physical characteristics in their surface.
Africa forms, in consequence of its sea border on every side, a nearly
isolated whole; and thus comes the nearest of all to being in itself
complete and independent.
Asia, sharply outlined on three sides by the sea, makes, with Europe,
one common trunk, as it were; it being much more connected with Europe
than with Africa.
Europe, in consequence of its many projecting forms, and its enclosed
arms of the sea, is more multiform and complex than any other grand
division of the earth, and is more and more broken into subordinate
members as it recedes from the long line of its Asiatic boundary.
Africa appears like a body without limbs, Asia as a body with limbs,
indeed, on three sides, but of disproportionate size compared with
the vast trunk, and Europe as a body divided into countless limbs, in
combined importance vastly preponderating over the continent itself.
Equally unlike are the three in form and in what regards physical
dimensions, _i. e._, heights and depths.
Africa is subdivided into two almost equal parts, the southern of
which is largely highland, the northern being the level portion of the
continent. The boundary between them is a straight line running almost
due east and west, and upon this line (if we except a few scattered
points and sea-coasts) occur all the combination of contrasts, all the
varieties of development, and even all the action and reaction of the
relations of nature and man. A greater uniformity in the union of two
leading forms cannot be pointed out in the world.
Asia, not so equally divided into halves, is distinguished by its
immense highlands, formed from two terraces, a higher and a lower.
Its great table-lands do not lie at one extremity, but centrally, and
sink away towards the four cardinal points, till they are lost in
the lowlands (of which Africa has but one) which, wide and varied,
surround the elevated central plateau. On these lowlands, again, are
found scattered groups of smaller highlands (of which Africa displays
but one), in various directions around. From the combination of these
manifold relations result equally manifold phenomena, while the
simplicity in Africa induces an equally marked uniformity. There is no
part of the earth in which Nature works on so grand a scale as in the
Orient of the world.
The prevailing form which characterizes Asia and Africa repeats itself
but once in Europe, and that in a very small measure, as exhibited
in the Spanish highland. In the central portion of this continent,
which is so much less in mass in proportion to its extremities, and
in every respect so much more rifted and broken into fragments by the
branches of the sea than the other two, there is wholly wanting the
disunited, inaccessible form of the highland; duly here and there mere
types are found of the plateau formation. In Europe that vast mass no
longer appears which in Asia and Africa form widely extended regions
of elevated plains. Instead of great superficial areas, we have in
Europe scattered points towering to the sky, and rich in precipices
and glancing sides. The great Alp-land is the characteristic form
of central Europe. With the loftiest elevation, with the greatest
diversity of productions upon the smallest amount of surface, broken
through everywhere with water torrents and with valleys, it possesses
a greater closeness of connection between its northern and southern
approaches, and a greater accessibility, than any leading form of
the other two continents. On every side it sinks away into level
tracts, which again, through the mediation of lakes, are broken up and
separated from mountain lands and highlands of the lowest grades.
Thus, in the fine subdivision of a country of limited extent, in the
large variety of fixed and fluid forms, and in the clearness with
which the relations of nature and man are seen in the lapse of brief
periods, the peculiar character of Europe shows itself, through which
that continent seems to have been, from the beginning, shaped for a
different function from those with which it is connected in a manner
equally peculiar.
Yet, in order to read these general sentences in a comprehensive
manner, and to be able to assign to every spot on the earth its uses
for science and for life, a thorough and protracted inquiry into the
details of every great feature on the globe is needed. This shall be
the task of the first part of the present work.
We must, at the outset, come to an understanding about the usual
expressions which designate the course of formation in the earth’s
surface. Their whole significance is only _fully_ felt after
personal observation, or from what exposition of them we shall be able
to make in the future course of these investigations. No theory shall,
therefore, now be laid down, but only just so much of the prevailing
views and opinions given as will serve to indicate what is most
important to help us grasp true conceptions afterwards.
EXPLANATION FIRST.
THE EARTH’S SURFACE: MOUNTAINS, PLAINS.
The earth’s surface is considered as consisting of a multiplicity of
forms, all rising above the level of the sea, and may be conveniently
called the land, which, with countless heights and depths, reaches from
sea to sea. The manner of division into those heights and depths gives
to the greatest continent, as well as to the smallest tracts, their
limitations and their areas, and thus the conformation of the whole.
The elevations of every kind, in so far as they can be observed
from a lower standpoint, are called hills and mountains; the tracts
intervening, valleys.
So, too, those elevations, important so far as we know, which rise
above the level of the sea, have also been called mountains, in
contrast with the depths which surround them, although, of course,
no one has been able to look at them from a standpoint lower than
themselves.
Thus the same expression indicates two wholly different relations,
namely, absolute height and the contrast between height and depth, a
circumstance which has occasioned nearly all the great confusions and
errors in geography, so that we, from the very outset, have to be on
our guard against similar ones. For whoever knows to what conditions,
taken generally, the various portions of the earth’s surface have been
subjected in the warfare of forces, will readily perceive that it
cannot be a matter of indifference whether great continents rise above
the sea’s level into the atmosphere or not, and whether it be with some
a few hundred feet more or less than with others.
According to that same double use of speech, the mountains are now
called gigantic, now insignificant; and worse yet with the valleys,
which are collectively viewed, in almost all cases, as depths.
In the most careful manner we have to consider these two relations:
firstly, the _relative_ relation of heights and depths to their
surroundings, and secondly, their _absolute_ relation to the level
of the sea. Only after protracted study, and a course of investigation
extended through entire continents, can we attain to a correct
knowledge of the earth’s forms, and view the world as in relief. This
method alone leads us to see what is common in diversity, and so to
trace a unity in the whole.
By comparing mountains and plains with this absolute standard of the
sea’s level, we discover their relation to one another, and their
height considered by themselves. For on the supposition of the surface
of the sea being uniformly distant from the centre of the earth, and
uniformly diffused over the globe, we accept it as a _general_
water horizon. It gives us the natural base of measurement, the zero
point of the scale, to reckon upwards and downwards, and compare the
elevations and depressions of the earth’s surface. Hence arises this
first law of the arrangement of all heights and depths according to
their relation to the earth as a whole.
The second law follows this directly, of the relative arrangement of
heights and depths in their relations to the separate continents; the
hidden connection between each grand feature of the globe, considered
as a unit, and its subordinate parts.
Our task, therefore, will be to investigate these two permanent
relations of height and depth; to view the earth’s’ surface in respect
to its two great forms or types, the mountain system and the valleys of
the earth, as well as all their modifications, and the results which
they condition.
By such a course of research, we shall soon learn how all diversity in
the organic world results from the combination of both these forms;
firstly, from this, where and how they find their limits, and secondly,
with what they are in contact.
EXPLANATION SECOND.
DEFINITION OF MOUNTAIN RANGES.
If under the term mountain range we imply, in an orographical sense,
that feature which brings the elevations and depressions of the
earth’s surface into palpable contrast, and if we mean the aggregate
of qualities in mountains grouped together, submitted to a certain
arrangement, subjected to certain laws, and definitely founded, we
obviate, at the very outset, many troublesome misunderstandings in
geography. For under the term mountain range the most various, as well
as the most similar, features have been embraced; or, if there has
been an effort to express any common quality, the character of what is
common has been drawn from what is special and peculiar. Or, in one
word, as the child thinks all mountains are like the hill on which he
plays, so geography has, up to the present time, supposed an equal
uniformity to exist in the relations of mountain chains to the level
regions of the earth, and has developed those relations in a wholly
one-sided manner. And yet there is an individuality in the forms of
the earth’s surface which, by personal observation alone, must win
its place in science before we can treat of general classifications.
And, therefore, in order rapidly to touch upon a few points (for these
appear in their individual characteristics, each in its own place),
a hydrographical, geognostical, mineralogical conception of mountain
chains must be freely blended with what is purely orographical.
1. CHAINS OF MARINE MOUNTAINS.--In 1752, the hydrographer
Buache published his Physical Planisphere and his Memoir on the
Mountain Chains of the Globe, in which he considered them all as
connected features, which break the continent up into certain
divisions. These features he traced through the deepest oceans, far
and near, finding them in island groups, rocks, and shallows (_que
je regarde comme les sommets de la suite des montagnes marines_).
But the fact that the volcanic groups of the Atlantic rise abruptly
from vast depths, shows that this theory does not rest upon a broad
induction of facts; so far as we can see, there exists no real proof,
but only a faint suspicion of a submerged continent (the Atlantis); and
where shallows are found, confirmations of this hypothesis are equally
wanting. The division of the ocean into huge basins by these chains
of marine mountains has no real existence in nature, and is merely a
pleasing view from a theoretical standpoint.
There are, it must be confessed, in special districts, such submarine
continuations of mountain chains, as, for example, in inland seas; but
where this is the case there are other and decisive reasons for it, as
in the Aleutian Isles, those of the Greek Archipelagos, and the Straits
of Sicily.
The systems of elaborate mountain net-work, mountain equators, mountain
meridians and parallels, are all artificial, superinduced upon nature,
and in no way appertaining to her.
2. WATERSHEDS.--Altogether different from these are Buache’s
_châines de Montagnes terrestres_,--those continental chains which
have been pointed out by him, as designated by the sources of rivers,
cataracts, and the courses of streams.
If such a watershed does really exist (and its existence is hinted
at in classical accounts of the connection subsisting between all
elevations), it divides the earth’s surface in the most definite
manner possible, and this division affords observations of the utmost
interest; and yet, although it draws over all the lands of the earth
a real and permanent net-work, it is not able to reveal the inner
nature and reason of the earth’s formation as a whole. These are only
displayed in collective masses, which, because independent of the mere
laving of those streams, whose power to shape and fashion is slight,
exhibit in the contrasts of absolute heights and depths the relations
which characterize the different features of the earth. There must
first exist a sharp and clearly discernible form to every great natural
division of the globe, before we can trace the subordinate working
upon it of water, whether in the primitive action of the sea, or the
later action of rivers. Thus the present system of watersheds only
exhibits a very recent tertiary modification of the earth’s surface,
often indeed widely changed from the primary form, and therefore well
worthy of careful study, even if it does not reveal the true reason
of the conformation of the great natural divisions of the earth.
From the interchange of the most varied relations, hereafter to be
traced over the entire globe by careful observations and measurements,
many unfounded generalizations early arose, which crowded themselves
into not a few general geographical descriptions and systems, and in
particular this, that a watershed must always coincide with a mountain
range, and be one with it. It is a great exaggeration of the truth to
suppose that where a watershed is there must be a mountain chain also.
But this seductive view has contaminated the later geography; and
instead of assigning to the continents a system of highlands, it has
covered them all over with mountain chains, which exist, only too
abundantly, in the mere imagination of the designers of atlases and the
writers of school books.
It has therefore become necessary to revert everywhere to the first
sources and primitive documents, from which all that follows has been
drawn, and of which it is a continuation.
In the first place, a real mountain range does not always form a line
of watershed, even in a wide and level district, as, for example, the
Hartz, in this respect so isolated; the whole chain lies outside of the
watersheds; and if these are the necessary condition of existence to a
mountain system, all that does not pertain to them has but a secondary
and subsidiary importance.
In the second place, in case that watershed and mountain range
coincide, yet the course of the watershed is not unfrequently entirely
different from the course of the mountain range, as in the whole
Pyrenees and Alps. Often the highest peaks of a mountain chain are
wholly outside of the watershed, which may extend to only a very
moderate elevation; as, for example, Mount Perdu, of the Pyrenees, lies
aside of the watershed, and not in its course. Often the watershed lies
on the plain, hard by a high mountain range, as in the country south of
the Carpathian chain, between Hernad and Poprad, where the waters of
the Baltic and Black seas divide upon the uniform plains of Teplics and
Canoes, eighteen hundred and sixty feet above the sea, and not upon the
highest ridge of the Carpathians themselves.
In the third place, there are large districts on the earth’s surface
where the waters divide, and yet where there is no mountain range. This
occurs where great absolute height coincides with a plateau formation,
and where relative heights are therefore lost. We look for this
coincidence between high ranges and between important river systems,
as, for example, the district north of Lake Constance, where the waters
of the Rhine and the Danube divide, and which neither contains a
mountain ridge, nor indeed any chain whatever of prominent elevations,
false as our atlases are in representing it thus. So the low range
of hills, hundreds of miles in length, which runs through Poland and
Russia, between the Gulf of Bothnia and the Northern Ocean, and the
greatest portion of the watersheds of North America, as well as of
northern and eastern Siberia, appear on our maps as extensive ranges of
mountains, rivalling the Alps in importance, and yet having nothing in
reality which entitles them to the name of mountains.
And, in the last place, there is often a wholly peculiar combination
of watersheds and mountain ranges, out of which there is formed, as
in Spain, a complex system. Here the watershed is wholly separated
from the mountain range. Not the chain of the Pyrenees, but the main
watershed, has been the political boundary of this peninsula, between
it and the continent, since the treaty of 1660, for the watershed is
an imaginary line, while the mountain range is sometimes a hundred
miles in breadth. The division into provinces, too, is based upon the
lines of watershed, and these run over elevated plains. This comes in
consequence of the very curious windings of mountain ranges on Spanish
maps, while their general course, as far as they are distinguishable,
is parallel from east to west, entirely independent of those windings.
There is an opinion that rivers always run along by the side of
mountain chains, when, in point of fact, as in Spain itself, and all
over the world, they often break directly through such ranges. The
Euphrates is an instance. It rises in the high plains of Armenia, and
breaks through the important chain of Taurus, which obstructs its
way,--a circumstance which has led Rennell into error, and which has
had its effect upon the generalizations of ancients and moderns.
3. MINERAL MOUNTAINS.--The miner’s use of the word mountains
to designate all places where ore is to be found, has misled geography,
and has caused writers of travels and makers of maps to represent
them as real mountains wherever they occur. Yet Freyberg itself lies
between mere hills, rich in metal; and the highest parts of the
so-called Erzgebirge, or mineral mountains, in Saxony and Bohemia, are
only elevated plains. Schemnitz, in the gold mountains, lies in level
Hungary; and so many other ranges, as the Ural, the Altai range, the
mineral mountains of South America, appear on the maps as true Alps,
while nature gives no ground for such an exaggeration, only the general
use of the term mineral mountains to indicate the source of the metals,
whether it be in plains, hills, or veritable mountains.
4. THE GEOGNOSTICAL VIEW of the inner formation of a mountain
range can only be fully presented later in our work. Meantime it
may be serviceable to remark that we gain much, in coming to a
consideration of this side of our general subject, if we regard
every mountain system as composed of members, even if these are only
externally related to the entire system. This is a new theme in the
study of the geography, _i. e._, the exterior, of the earth. But
there may not be in our study, if it have a truly scientific character,
any collision between what is exterior and what is interior to the
surface of the globe.
If, with a certain degree of reason, the Neptune Mountains, and those
of Cape Peloro, in Sicily, be considered as a true continuation of the
Apennines, since they have the same direction and materials (granite
and gneiss) with the mountains in Calabria opposite, yet, on the other
hand, it is a wholly false assumption, resulting from a glance at
maps, rather than from the study of natural phenomena, to treat of
the mountains of Sardinia and Corsica as a continuation of those of
Genoa. That the granite Cape Corte, of Corsica, is a continuation of
the Genoese Cape delle Malle, prominent indeed, but composed of black
transition calcary-rock, sounds as singularly, says a great student of
mountain formations,[3] as if the Vosghes Mountains should be treated,
as is often lightly done in the geographies, as a continuation of the
Jura chain.
On the other hand, to separate anew what really belongs together as a
perfect whole, as, for instance, the Asiatic highland and the African
highland, would, on the orographical side, be just as arbitrary, just
as adverse to the observing of the earth as a whole, and just as
barren of results as heretofore. Our views of geographical features
as connected have certainly come to us gradually, and the nations and
peoples of all kinds, who live and wander over the earth, in a state of
constant warfare and contention, have seen little but diversity on the
globe; and yet no true observer has yet failed to trace, in all special
and separate forms, some characteristic common to all.
5. INCORRECT USE OF THE TERM MOUNTAIN.--The custom which has
become quite general, and which is met in almost all level countries,
of calling hills and slight elevations mountains, of taking everything
which bears the name of mountain as equally important, and, to go
still further, of representing every rough country, like Hesse and
Transylvania, as filled with mountain chains, which upon the map seem
to be of Alpine height, has introduced many errors into physical
geography, and in special the opinion that all the high ranges of the
earth, or even of a continent, must stand in solid phalanx.
The Carpathian chain extends from the Sudetes Mountains, in Bohemia,
in a great circle of about five hundred miles extent, entirely around
Hungary. The highest part of the range is but about forty miles across;
the rest is of such moderate dimensions, that the loftiest peaks would
only be called hills in Switzerland. Townsend, the traveller, was
deceived in Hungary by the word mountain, which the Germans employ so
loosely, but for which other nations use nicely graded expressions,
coteaux, collines, montagnes, hillocks, hills, mounts.
In just as arbitrary a way are the Alps and the Pyrenees, in southern
France, united by mere rows of hills, and by hilly land, and thus
treated as one vast cohering system, although the factitious union is
entirely untrue to the character of both of its members.
The very general custom, on the other hand, of calling all level
countries plains, whether their position is low or absolutely high,
has led to the separation of what, according to its formation, belongs
together, and to the overlooking of a true connection where there seems
to exist real separation. The elevated terraces of Spain, for instance,
really existing in entire unity, have been described as separate; while
in Germany great numbers of low mountain ranges have been cited as if
existing independent of each other, and the common basis of relation
has been overlooked; and so, with the exception of the most striking
instances, this fact has been unnoticed, or at any rate only touched
upon in geography. Although it has been confessed to be a subject
worth attention, its widely reaching influence has not been studied,
and in our special treatises there is no recognition whatever of this
very weighty fact; and notwithstanding that Humboldt long since called
attention to it, it has hitherto exerted very little influence to the
advantage of science.
EXPLANATION THIRD.
ESTABLISHMENT OF TERMS INDICATIVE OF ELEVATIONS OF THE EARTH’S SURFACE.
It is our first and special duty to grasp firmly and look fairly at the
essential characteristics of the leading forms on the globe, and to
weigh the most important relations which exist between the highlands
and the lowlands of the earth’s surface.
Those elevations above neighboring plains, or above the sea’s level,
which plainly belong together in a cohering mass, which are large and
unbroken by any river forcing its way through them, which have common
characteristics, and are scattered over a wide reach of territory,
are called mountain systems or plateaus. They may appear as plains,
as terraces, or in knob-like form; they may lie at various degrees of
absolute height, may themselves bear up other mountains, or be in the
fullest sense elevated plains. Those of great length and height, but
of comparatively small breadth, having definite and discernible ranges
(see Explanation Second), are termed the great mountain chains of the
earth; these appear as girdles to bind the world together; sometimes
they may be called the framework of highlands, and, considered by
themselves, are, with strict propriety, designated as mountains.
Where we find a number of mountains standing together, forming a
collective mass not long in proportion to its breadth, we treat it
as a mountain group, the name by which in orographical language it is
generally called. A more intimate acquaintance with mountain systems
alone can help us to indicate with exactness the characteristics of
these mountain groups, for their forms are various, their relations
numerous, complex, and as yet unstudied with a view of drawing valuable
results from them by personal observation. We need remark no further on
them now. Suffice it to say, that our present knowledge of them will
lead directly from the facts which we now have to those broader results
which will follow. The absolute height of all these forms above the
level of the sea is the starting point in a scientific treatment of
them, and that will help us to future exactness.
All collective elevations of more than four thousand feet above the
level of the sea we will designate as highlands of the first or highest
grade, and below that of the second grade; all between we will call of
an intermediate degree, or intermediate terraces. Single heights of one
to two thousand feet altitude we will designate as hills; from three to
four thousand feet, as mounts. There is not much dependent upon a very
nice discrimination of these subordinate elevations. Mountains of the
second class may be ranked between four and six thousand feet, while
those of six thousand feet upwards are mountains of the first class.
Those above ten thousand feet are exceptional and gigantic.
From this it can be readily determined what is meant by hilly country,
mountainous country, and the like; although in using these terms we
can refer to no scientific and exact standard, because the poverty of
measurements thus far made does not allow us to speak with certainty of
the whole world.
REMARK.--BUILDING OF THE EARTH.--If we employ at times the
term _building of the earth_, it will indicate nothing connected
with the supposed fixedness and cohering unity of the globe, but only
convey a hint that at the base of its exterior form lies an inner
constructive force, which must yet be investigated and ascertained.
Buache first introduced the expression _Charpente du Globe_,
and Desmarest changed it to _Ossature du Globe_, which makes a
skeleton or a scaffold of bones out of the earth. Scheuchzer rightly
named the mountains, taken collectively, the frame-work of the earth,
and called special attention to the process of mountain formation. The
expression “mountains of the globe” has a narrow meaning, while the
expression “building of the earth” hints at an internal as well as an
external arrangement, and has been employed, therefore, by Alexander
Von Humboldt. Yet the term, building of the earth, belongs really to
the department of geology, and has introduced some evils into physical
geography.
After what was said in the Introduction regarding our general course,
and what has been said in these remarks upon geographical nomenclature,
we may advance at once to an explanation of special features. Gaining
thence an ample treasure of observations and generalized results, we
shall work our way back to the system which includes them all. But till
we attain this, we allow ourselves, in the most vivid conviction of our
personal ignorance and blindness, to be lost in the wealth of forms and
forces which the earth harbors, hoping to come from the special, and
the comparison of the special, to the universal, and to exhibit our
results in a scientific method.
SECTION III.
STREAMS OF WATER.
In accordance with natural laws, streams take their course from high
lands to the low; the effects of their descent are manifested in a
great variety of ways. This variety must correspond with all the
combinations which on the one side arise from the quantity of water
and the time of its wear upon the soil, and on the other side from the
number and kind of resistances brought against it. The inexhaustible
diversity thus produced is subdued into that harmonious blending of
natural objects which we term landscape. The landscape will always and
everywhere exercise a charm over all who live surrounded by it; and so
it becomes a marked basis of all organic life.
We are accustomed, too, to think of the effects of streams as something
everywhere the same, because everywhere carried to the same point, and
to overlook the fact that there is a constant development going on in
their work. This false view creeps in, because we are in the habit of
considering the whole earth as everywhere uniform, like some work of
man, from which the master workman has withdrawn his hand, and which
can now, in its completeness, be measured with absolute exactness. But
the study of nature prevents any such idea of river systems, shows us
that their effects are only partly ended, that their distribution over
the earth is not uniform, and enables us to see, even in the present
state of our knowledge, that many of them have their characteristic
peculiarities.
In the region where rivers find their sources, there is at one time
so little individuality in each, that they exist without any distinct
watersheds separating one from another, but have in the first part of
their course a common channel, the whole year through, as often occurs
in northern countries, or only a part of the year, the rainy season, in
the tropics, as in the highest probability is the case with the Nile
and Niger in Africa, and many others.
Where rivers break through mountain chains, the constantly changing
condition of their channel reveals itself in the succession of wastes
and of beds of pebbles, as in Africa; or, elsewhere, by a series
of lakes stretching along, which are commonly regarded as true
enlargements of the rivers, connected together by rapids, cataracts,
and rocks rising above the surface. This feature is displayed in the
more depressed polar countries, and also in the most elevated regions
of southerly latitudes, where mountain lakes are formed, which
elsewhere are entirely wanting. The swampy districts, which are almost
uniformly found where river systems escape from a mountainous country,
also furnish a proof that the channels of the streams have not reached
a perfect and settled condition.
As rivers draw towards the lower portion of their course, their
channels become fixed, certain, and easily traced; frequently, indeed,
filled up again in some rivers, as in the Nile, the Ganges, and the
Euphrates, but less observably so in others, as the Niger, and the
American and Siberian rivers. There are even cases of a cross stream
connecting two river systems, as the Cassiquiare, in South America, the
lake above Martaban between the Ava and the Pegu, in Annam, between the
Siam and the Camboja, and the Tarando between the Tornea and the Calix.
And here, in order to make intelligible what is to follow, we must
insert a few remarks.
EXPLANATION FIRST.
RIVER SYSTEMS, AND THE DISTRICTS WHICH THEY WATER.
If the range of elevations which we trace near the sources of all
streams as the watershed indicates the line where the fall in their
course begins, then the channel far down in the valley is the line of
ending; for at the mouth of the river all motion ceases, the level of
the sea is reached, and both bodies come into equilibrium.
This absolutely lowest channel, in a narrow sense called the stream,
and all the district which the line that passes from spring to spring
encloses, is called, in a general sense, the source. All waters which
are tributary to the main stream are called right or left branches, and
the entire system which all form is not unlike the arterial system of
the human body.
The district watered is the region which pertains to the stream, and
which is in direct relations with it, as circumference is to centre;
while the entire body of land and water, conceived as in unity, and
having mutual dependencies, is known by the general term river system.
The comparison of streams according to their breadth and depth
determines the size and importance of their main currents, while the
comparison according to length and the number and size of the branches
gives the extent of their influence. After these points had been
settled, matters connected with the use of maps of rivulets, brooks,
and rivers, might be determined. Yet this would hardly reward the toil,
for such maps will always differ in scale according as they present
their objects as relative to the entire globe, or to a single part of
it. Yet there are happily words, local indeed, yet significant, which
designate the smaller class of rivers of the world; such are the wadys
of Arabia, the ulastus of the steppes of Tartary, the weds of Barbary,
the barrancos of all Portuguese possessions, the creeks of North
America, the elfs in Sweden, the gangas of Hindostan. To arrange all
such in a mathematical scale, according to relative rank, would be in
great measure unfruitful of valuable results; at all events, it would
not be more profitable than the severe divisions of Chinese geography,
in which provinces, cities, and mountains are named according to their
relative greatness; and thus the very titles of Chinese rivers, such as
Kiang, Ho, Choui, express their relative importance.
Our method is to arrange river systems according to their length and
to the superficial area which they drain (including the district where
their sources lie), and to consider them, whether taken in relation
to a single continent or to the whole earth, as river systems of the
first, second, or third rank.
But a stream which, in view of the whole globe, is insignificant, is of
much importance to the local district to which it belongs. The little
Bavarian Isar receives, between its source and its mouth, eight hundred
and sixty tributaries on the left side, among which are forty-four
small rivers; on the right side, four hundred and thirty-three, running
into it through fifty-nine channels; on both sides, one hundred and
thirty-one lakes, and five branches of importance, empty into it. In
the whole, it is fed by a hundred and thirty-six lakes, and twelve
hundred and ninety-three tributaries, which enter it through a hundred
and three channels. But the Isar is only one of the thirty-four
branches of the Danube, which in relation to the great river systems of
the earth can only be classed in the third rank.
Not the size merely, but the entire combination of elements which enter
into the composition of a river system, indicates its characteristic
individuality. There lies a certain unity at the base of them all,
a ground principle which can be mathematically expressed, and which
a comprehensive view of them as a whole reaches and grasps. For an
example, look at the great river systems of the East, the Ganges and
the Indus. The word Mabar, _i. e._ the great frith, signifies in
the East Indies the collective body of land extending from the Bay
of Bengal, along the Ganges on both sides, up to the Himalayas, and
corresponds completely to our conception of a river system. We may
mention that the people of North America have traced, with great care,
the boundaries of their river systems, and learned the bearing which
they have had in the historical development of their country.
REMARKS.--WATERSHEDS AS A MEANS OF INTERNAL
COMMUNICATION.--The watershed indicates always the beginning of
a river system; the sources of a stream are, in every case, to be
found there. The waters which are to flow to oceans, remote from each
other, here are brought almost together. On the watershed of the Rocky
Mountains, the sources of the Missouri and of the Columbia are not a
half mile from one another; but they empty indirectly into the Atlantic
and Pacific, which are widely separated at the northern part of North
America. The watershed of the Black and Baltic seas lies between
Teplics and Canocs, on the Carpathian table-lands. The Caucasians
indicate the streams that flow to opposite seas by the name Rioni;
the Buraetes, in Siberia, call them Dogno, as, for example, all which
flow from the watershed between the China Sea and the Arctic Ocean;
the streams running northerly into the Lena, they call Aru-Dogno;
those which belong to the upper course of the Amur, Urbu-Dogno. The
Mongolians pay honors to the elevations which serve as watersheds,
erect heaps of stones or stations for prayer upon them, and the
Tungneses never go by such stone heaps without casting a cedar branch
upon them, in order, as they say, that the holy mountains which part
the waters may not diminish, but always increase. Underlying this usage
is the correct observation that watersheds are not to be regarded as
absolute boundaries, that the river courses are, at the place of their
beginning, working backward, eating their way slowly but surely, and in
the fall of trees and rocks carrying change, sometimes destruction, in
this retrograde advance.
On the wide plains of the northern part of North America the watersheds
are used as means of communication and of transport; in the Russian
steppes, they are known as wolocks, the word itself being significant,
wolocsit meaning in Russian, to carry, and the people themselves have
been named from this word Tschudi transvolocani. There are only two
such wolocks in Russia between the Black Sea and the Arctic Ocean,
the one at Zarizyn, between the Don and the Volga, the other above
Tcherdin, between the Kolwa and the Petschora. In Hungary they are
called kaetz, as, for instance, Themeskaetz, between the Themesch and
the Marosch.
Watersheds are found in the different continents variously apportioned,
and not of uniform significance. America has nine important ones
between the Atlantic and the Pacific. Europe has ten, which are
noteworthy, between its sea-basins of the North and of the South, and,
in consequence, is more readily traversed, a fact not unnoticed by
Charlemagne. Asia and Africa, on the other hand, are remarkable for
their meagreness in those forms, which, acting as watersheds, must be
presupposed to condition a means of communication between the interior
of every continent and its borders.
The leading watersheds divide the surface of the earth into five basins
of the largest size, sixteen of the second, and twenty-six of the
third; the consideration of which will engage us at another place.
EXPLANATION SECOND.
THE DIRECTION, FALL, UPPER, MIDDLE, AND LOWER COURSE OF STREAMS.
The main or normal direction of a river is conditioned in part by
the amount of water and its fall, and in part by the barriers which
mountain ranges and masses of earth and rock form to check its course.
The law of the parallelogram of forces is often very apparent, but
only seldom, or perhaps never, does the course of a stream proceed
purely from the conflict of two bodies of water. The always varying
district through which it has to pass creates a resistance, which
has a powerful influence upon the direction of a river. The slight
deviations from a general course are often caused by mountain barriers.
This is strikingly the case in the Rhine, between Bingen and Kaub, in
the upper Ticino, and in the Swedish Dal, where the causes of deviation
are readily marked.
From an angular zigzag line of short, unbroken courses, running
this way and that way, and all in a perfectly and painfully regular
manner, if the stream passes through a compact, thoroughly stratified,
and completely crystallized district, it softens down to a gentle,
wave-like line if it enters a district where the rock is easily
disintegrated, and where the soil has been formed by deposit. The
practised eye can judge with tolerable correctness, from an accurate
delineation of a river’s course, what are the general characteristics
of the soil through which it makes its way.
It is the common law that streams break through intervening obstacles
in those directions in which they find the least resistance. In the
case of mountain barriers, where the strata are perpendicular, the
river course is made as nearly parallel with it as the frequent
occurrence of cataracts can effect it. Where the strata are horizontal,
rivers always take their course through the most marked clefts which
lie in their way. Where the mountain barriers are of heterogeneous
composition, the streams choose their course where different elements
come together, and thus, as is so often the case in the Alps and the
Pyrenees, keep upon the borders of all, without running directly
across any. This is probably the great reason oftentimes of the sudden
bending of a river where it emerges from a mountain range (according
to Heim, the attraction of the river to the mountain), which not only
appears in small streams, as, for example, those which flow out from
the Hartz, but also on the largest scale in the great rivers of India;
the Indus, the Ganges, the Chinese river systems, and others from the
Asiatic highlands, apparently demonstrating this feature as a general
one. From all these things we see that rivers neither form their
channels where and as they will, nor do they take possession of courses
which have been always formed, but which have before been, _res
nullius_, the property of none.
The rapidity of streams depends upon the amount of water, upon the
friction occasioned by different kinds of soil and bottoms, upon the
pressure from above, and upon the fall. It must, therefore, be widely
various. In passing through or from mountains the fall is greater,
the pressure from behind less; in the valleys the pressure behind is
greater, and the fall less. Rapidity is hindered by the accumulation
of waters where they run into and are resisted by the sea and by the
levelness of their course, but it is increased by receiving auxiliary
streams. Rapid streams pass in a second over a space varying from three
to seven feet, slow ones far fewer, torrents far more.
1. UPPER COURSE OF STREAMS.--In mountainous tracts the
waters plunge rather than run, and so they are known by appropriate
names in different languages: torrents with us, _wildbaeche_
in Germany, _achen_ in Switzerland, _gaven_ in Spain and
Portugal, _elfs_ in Norway. In the Pyrenees the fall of the
gaven, or mountain streams, is an inch in every foot; here and there
occur cataracts of two to three feet, and sometimes more, which are
very beautiful. We meet this feature in all mountainous districts,
and on the sharply defined crests of polar regions. Even the mountain
lakes have often a considerable fall, as, for instance, Lake Maggiore,
above Milan, between Magadin and Arona, where, in so inconsiderable
a distance, there is a fall, according to the measurements of Count
Morozzo, of fifty-two feet.
2. MIDDLE COURSE OF STREAMS.--The descent below the mountain
country and the lakes where rivers rise is far less, and far less,
too, in streams which have in the main but a slight grade, as, for
instance, the Neckar, which, from its source to Heilbronn, a distance
of one hundred and fifty miles, has a fall of only thirty-two feet to
every three miles, and to every thirty-two feet a fall of an inch.
Still less is it in the grade of the Oder, and less yet in the Danube
from its source to Presburg, there being only seventeen hundred feet
to nine degrees of longitude. The general very slight fall of streams
has already received some attention from observers, and ought not to be
lost from sight by us in the course of this work.
By the term bed of the stream is meant its entire width, which,
of course, varies with the height of the water, as, for instance,
the Mississippi, at Natchez, is a mile wide at low water, while at
high water it is thirty miles wide. The Orinoco, at St. Thomas, is
ordinarily three miles wide, but at the time of the floods it is,
according to Dupons, nearly ninety miles in width.
The channel of a river is different from its bed; it is the channel
which gives life and motion to the whole mass of water, the beating
artery, as it were, of the stream. In the upper course the channel
and the bed mostly coincide, but in the middle course the channel
becomes distinct, and indicates the direction, slope, and rapidity of
the river. It does not ordinarily lie in the middle of the stream,
but follows the general fall, drawing, however, in its greatest depth
near the steepest rocks which form the banks. By the influence of the
channel the windings of streams, as they pass through level lands, are
increased; these windings check the onward motion, the serpentine or
meandering current is increased, and becomes a characteristic of the
middle course of rivers. Here and there islands and meadows are formed,
but with few exceptions none of the lakes which characterize the upper
course of rivers. At the same time the low intervale lands abundantly
indicate that they are at present only broad and dry basins of old
lakes.
This last feature is observable in the Rhine from Schaffhausen to
Bartberg, below Strasburg, and again from Ladenburg to Bingen. It is
to be seen, too, in the course of the Danube from Ulm to the Narrows,
at Kloster Neuburg, above Vienna, and from there the same feature
appears several times above Pesth, and below Semlin, in the rapids of
Orsova. It is also observed in the Ganges, the Indus, the Euphrates,
and the American rivers. In the yet imperfect river system of the St.
Lawrence the series of lakes is seen still existing, forming many
separate basins, one emptying into another, and thus all constituting
the stream; and nowhere else can the different steps in the process of
river formation be observed on so great a scale as there.
The passages through which the running waters force their way from the
higher of these dry sea-basins to the lower, are in almost all streams
yet visible, more or less characterized by defiles or narrows, often by
the accumulation across the river-bed of former banks, rocks, slopes,
and shallows, producing frequent eddies and rapids, and, in America
especially, cataracts. Not to go farther than examples in Europe, there
are the Saltor de Lobo of the Guadiana, the rapids above Monte Corvo in
the Duero, the swift current below Saragossa in the Ebro; the rapids
of the Rhone between the granite banks of Pierre Encise below Lyons,
the rocky shores of the Loire at Iguerando, those of the middle Rhine,
below Strasburg at Bingen Loch, at St. Goar, and below Andernach;
those of the Elbe at Leitmeritz, Aussig, Rauhe Ford, Klingler, and
Meerschützen Ford, below Meissen. There are the whirlpools of the
Danube at Grein, the rapids at Kloster Neuburg, the rocky passes at
Tachtali, Demirkapi, Orsova; in the Dnieper, there are the fifteen
rapids (porogs) below Katharinoslaw. We might easily adduce others.
They are characteristic of streams in all the continents, and the study
of them will yet lead to important results in our knowledge of river
formations. They impede shipping everywhere, or stop it entirely. They
are not, of course, to be confounded with real cataracts. The latter,
and the sharply defined rocky outline, are the characteristics of the
upper course of a stream as it makes its way through the high lands;
the rapids, the broad, level sea-basins, and the winding course, on
the other hand, indicate the middle course as it passes through the
shelving lands. Below the last rapids, the river spreads out over the
low and level districts, where the third class of characteristics
appear.
3. LOWER COURSE.--The beds of the upper and middle courses,
as they lose by degrees their redundance of water, become dry; the
barriers which impede rivers near their beginnings are broken through
only to allow their lower channels to be more abundantly filled. This
indicates, in a word, the history of all river formations.
The fall of the lower courses is often unobservable; as, for instance,
that of the Senegal, according to Adanson, from Podor to the ocean, a
distance of sixty leagues, is only two feet and a half; the fall of the
Amazon, according to Condamine, for two hundred miles is only ten feet
and a half,--for every thousand feet but one-sixth of an inch.
The pressure of immense masses of water behind, the antagonistic
pressure of the tide, and the yearly floods, create, before an
equilibrium is adjusted, a constant strife of the elements, whose
result will, of course, vary with the region exposed to it.
The body of water carried down the channel of rivers sometimes seeks to
find a level by dividing or forking near its mouth, as the Nile does at
Cairo; the action of the stream upon the land, and the resistance which
the sea gives, occasion the alluvial deposits, which when remaining
below the surface of the water are called bars, and when above the
surface, deltas. Thus, for instance, in the Ganges, Indus, Euphrates,
Nile, Rhine; briefly, in fourteen of the main river systems of the
earth. The contrary form, the wide estuaries not filled up, called
negative deltas, or inlets of the ocean, are to be seen in nine leading
river systems, such as the Obi, Genesee, St. Lawrence, and Columbia; in
short, mainly in northern parts of the earth, and noticeable even of
the small elfs and creeks.
Another peculiarity of the lower course is the extremely frequent
change of the channel, and therefore the wandering of the river-bed
from one side of the plains through which it flows to another, which,
when historically traced in the Ganges, Indus, Euphrates, Nile, and
Rhine, is so remarkable.
In the lower course of rivers begins the annually recurring general
inundation of the low districts, common to all tropical regions, and
this gives rise to a new deposit of alluvium, the result of what
Herodotus called ποταμὸς ἐργατικός, or stream forces.
According as rivers are brought in conflict with the resisting waters
of an inland sea or the tides of the ocean, the whole nature of the
lower course is affected. This is shown, for instance, in the river
systems of the Nile, the Danube, and the Volga, that triad of systems
which do not run into the ocean, on the one hand, in contrast to those,
on the other, which are exposed to the highest waves of the ocean,
as the great streams of China, India, and eastern America; and in
contrast, too, to those which are only one degree less affected by the
waves beating in, such as, in general, those mouths of rivers looking
towards the west and north, in opposition to those looking to the east
and south.
EXPLANATION THIRD.
THE TERRACE-LANDS OF THE EARTH.
It follows from the brief indication of the leading peculiarities of
river systems now given, if they are compared with each other, and if,
too, they are viewed in relation to the highlands and the lowlands of
the earth as a whole, that they have three main forms, which gradually
appear as the observer passes down their whole course from the most
elevated to the lowest point.
In reference to the stream, we indicate these forms by the expressions
upper, middle, and lower courses; in reference to the area of the
entire river system, we can indicate them as the three terraces, and
the lands thought of in this connection as the three terrace-lands of
the earth. For the same laws which show themselves in the main channel
of a stream repeat themselves, though in less degree, in all its
ramifications, and pervade the _entire_ river system. It is not,
as in vegetation, the working out of certain forces from the root, and
going from below upwards; it is just the reverse,--a gradual formation
and conditioning process from above downwards; an old bursting of the
barriers which confined the waters of the earth to the highest places
on the earth’s surface, after which they forced their way downwards,
working out channels, and spreading a net-work over the world, as a
tree daily throws out new branches from its central trunk.
And as the vital forces of a tree occasion an intricate system of
ramifications, so does this moving of water from mountainous regions
give rise to an intricate system, whose development, it is to be
remembered, is ever _downwards_, and whose ramifications are not
fortuitous, coming from this point and that, running this way and that,
but are the result of a singularly constant law running through all
such systems, that common effects must be referred to common causes. We
do not dwell here upon single exceptions. But the uniformity with which
this law works occasions this constant and natural division into three
grades of land between the sources and the mouths of rivers, which we
have already quite fully indicated.
Monographs on the river systems will yet further disclose how various
natural divisions can come in, and how the peculiarity of every leading
river system is modified by them.
These observations assume a yet greater importance in Comparative
Geography when we think that some nations have reached the highest
grades of elevation only within the limits of great river systems, and
that the pulsation of the great veins of the earth, if I may call the
rivers such, conduces to the activity of the human race, and calls
states and nations forth, and stamps them with conscious individuality.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 3: L. von Buch.]
THE
GEOGRAPHICAL POSITION
AND
HORIZONTAL EXTENSION OF THE CONTINENTS.
[READ BEFORE THE ROYAL ACADEMY OF BERLIN.]
THE
GEOGRAPHICAL POSITION AND HORIZONTAL EXTENSION OF THE CONTINENTS.
[READ DECEMBER 14, 1826.]
SINCE the method arose of viewing the Earth, not in a purely
mathematical light, but physically, as a body moved by the forces
of nature, as Newton led the way in showing, the greatest progress
has been made in a knowledge of the globe in all its divisions.
This later method has already given a new direction to mathematical
inquiries, and it will serve as a stepping-stone to all future
mathematical investigations. The most varied phenomena on our planet
now find their solution in the great yet simple laws of attraction.
These phenomena display themselves as the results of very manifold,
although harmoniously united influences of the members of the solar
system,--members largely unlike; here, nearly joined; there, widely
sundered; yet only in appearance divorced from each other, and
constantly and regularly having a controlling power over the earth, and
mutual influence over one another.
The earth, a mere member of the solar system, exists _in itself_
as a complete system of phenomena, under the influence of which the
sundering of its parts, their scattered position in one place, and
their compact closeness in another, have, in a variety of ways,
affected the surface. And so, too, every one of the earth’s divisions
gives rise to special effects: each does not merely lie separated by
chance from other, but they are all closely related to the whole. Each
is a needed and rightful link in the perfect chain; and the peculiarity
of the globe, considered as a planet, grows out of what is special and
distinct in the arrangement of all its divisions. This arrangement
generates special relations.
In this arrangement, which has a connection with the nature and history
of the earth considered as in itself a system, there is a real though
peculiar element,--an element having to do with the earth alone,
embracing all lands, whether devoid of or teeming with life,--an
element directly concerned with the earth as a unit, and carefully to
be distinguished from any force which acts in scattered countries,
or in the earth when not regarded in its wholeness. You grasp this
when you view our planet as itself an organism, which, having higher
functions than the mere filling of space, or the lying idle in
unorganized forms, penetrates the realm of vegetation, influences life,
and even reaches with a formative and controlling hand into the sphere
of spiritual activities.
This higher system of agencies reveals itself in all the phenomena of
history, exhibiting the earth as the theatre of the forces of nature;
as, in a certain sense, the mother of races; as the home and the
temporary field of development for man.
The analysis of this general relation to its nicest details is the
task of science; every minor relation gains thereby its significance,
as standing between and connecting what is individual with what is
universal; and thus causes apparently insignificant are seen to
give rise to large and complex results. Among these causes belong
unquestionably matters of distance and space, following their natural
divisions; and of those we shall be allowed here to say a few words.
The unequal division of the earth into land and water has long been
remarked; and the relation, in respect to quantity, of what is fixed
to what is unstable, has been ascertained with approximate exactness;
as to mere area, we have a knowledge of the extent of the globe. But
less attention, it seems, has been paid to the conformations of the
earth’s surface, and to the mutual relations of the parts to the
whole; and this in spite of the fact that from the beginning there
have lain in those conformations the very germs and conditions of
these developments, whether already realized or yet in progress, which
give nature her force, and which cover our planet with organized
life. Besides the striking climatic differences, upon which these
diversities of the globe have a great effect, and which ought never to
be overlooked, there is also a direct system of action and reaction
in time and place; that is, a certain correspondence between the
conformations of the earth’s surface and the phenomena of history,--a
correspondence growing out of contact, separation, or changes, and
which, in one word, is dependent upon nearness and distance in point
of place, and has a parallel development in the events of time. It is
indisputably certain that to every physical condition there answers
some result in the course of things; every cause in nature has its
correspondent development in history, influencing what is hidden or
apparent, what is special or general.
We will here consider merely some of those relations which lie in
horizontal dimensions and extents; later we will study the relations
of vertical dimensions,--a topic which has heretofore called out much
observation, but which has never been rightly viewed, excepting far
enough to correctly establish fundamental principles.
I. CONTRAST BETWEEN THE LAND HEMISPHERE AND THE WATER HEMISPHERE.
Some observers have already called attention to the unequal division of
the earth’s surface into land districts and water districts, and have
also showed that the former lie more around the north pole than the
south, and that they are more compacted towards the east than towards
the west.
From the double system of relations which this division of the earth’s
surface occasions, there arises naturally an arrangement as regards
the fixed and fluid forms of a northeasterly land hemisphere and
a southwesterly water hemisphere, forming together the greatest
contrast, probably, on the globe. The system of relations arising
from the mutual action of these on each other may be indicated by the
contrast once supposed to exist between the circle of land (in the
sense of the ancients) and the circle of water, which were together
thought to cover the vast plain of the earth’s surface. We may speak,
therefore, of a continental and of an oceanic side of the earth. The
boundary of these two hemispheres of land and water is not indicated by
a mere line, but by a broad belt, which, spanning tracts of water and
coasts of seas, is readily traced, passing round the globe as it does,
and crossing the equator northeast of the Mozambique Channel, and in
the neighborhood of the coast of Peru, at an angle of somewhere near
forty-five degrees. In the heart of the northern, or land hemisphere,
lies Europe, surpassing in its perfected civilization all other
countries, brought into the greatest possible contact and connection
with the other continents, in the centre of the greatest activities,
and at the head of all the highest and noblest developments which
history exhibits.
The shores and island groups of Australia, situated at the middle of
the water hemisphere, were always external to a natural, inevitable,
and, even in early times, important contact with the great land
hemisphere; and hence the people inhabiting them, antipodes toms,
could only be brought within the sphere of our influence after the
art of navigation should be far advanced, and after many centuries
had rolled away. The mere position of Australia was the cause of its
entire want of development, just in the same way that the wonderful
capacity exhibited by Europe of assimilating the peculiarities of
all surrounding countries, and the consequent early maturity of its
culture,--occasioning as it did a powerful reaction and a general
diffusion of the gains reached by itself,--were the result of Europe’s
central position in the land hemisphere.
Entirely different from the position of the scattered and remote
lands of Australasia is that of other continents apparently equally
separated, such as America, Africa, and a great portion of eastern
Asia. Belonging to the land hemisphere, they lie, in point of distance,
far nearer to the common centre; favorable connections of both land and
water, in every form, unite them in the progress of time yet nearer to
the great theatre of life and activity, which would naturally arise
and assume importance first in the midst of the land hemisphere,--the
field of the world’s early history. Therefore, almost all the countries
of the land hemisphere show, in their productions, populations, old
sayings, monuments, and traditions, the traces, at least, of this
ancient connection of the parts which make up the whole, and show them
the more the nearer they lie to the common centre. They show them,
on the other hand, less, but in every respect more individualized,
the more removed they lie from the centre of the land hemisphere, and
the nearer they approach its limits; and in the islands which have no
connection with the main land, excepting those which can be called
neighboring islands, they wholly fail.
In this respect the southern extremities of South America and South
Africa are to be reckoned with the isolated tracts of Australasia, not
merely because they extend beyond the boundary line into the region
where the oceanic form is predominant, but because the advantages of a
general connection of countries do not, to any marked extent, accrue
to them, in consequence of their solitary, very remote position, and
the unfavorable nature of their surface. And if they do not wholly
partake of the character of oceanic islands, they yet belong to that
belt or zone of coast lands which separates the land hemisphere from
the water hemisphere,--a belt of various widths, sometimes partly or
wholly sundered,--of disunited and isolated continental extremities
and islands, forming the outer periphery of the land hemisphere; a
circle which has in its entire extent but two breaks of different
lengths,--one where it comes nearest to the south pole, in the space
between Cape Horn and the Cape of Good Hope, and again in the short
distance intervening at Behring’s Straits between Northeast Asia and
Northwest America. In the uniform position of this belt of coast
lands, the only one of its kind in the world, in relation to the water
hemisphere, lies the fact that it is in its characteristics more
allied to this than to the land hemisphere; that though the place
of transition forms, yet it partakes more of the water than of the
land. And yet, uniform as is its relation to the sea, it has climatic
differences notwithstanding. Yet these are but slight, and their
relation to the general characteristics of the entire belt is like
that of species to genera. Within this circle of coast-line fall the
southerly portions of South America, southern Africa and Madagascar,
southern India, with the isles of Sunda, the volcanic groups along the
eastern coast of Asia, Japan, Kamskatka, Alaska, Northwest America,
California, and the volcanic shores of South America, back to the
southern portions of this continent again.
The contrast in the relative position of these vast land and water
hemispheres appears to have just as great an influence on the
organization of the globe as the mathematical contrast between the
north and south at both poles, and as the climatic contrast which is
indicated by the terms tropical and polar regions.
The first of these intersecting and mutually influential contrasts
rests upon the peculiar extension of the fixed and fluid forms, and
thus its relations are the simplest, though they exercise sway over
the whole globe. They even directly affect the most movable and pliant
element of all, the atmosphere; and, by the combined action of the
sun’s heat and light with moisture, this veil, enveloping the earth, is
woven. One half of it, surcharged with the excess of moisture, contains
within itself suspended seas, while the other half spans with its
clear, dry arch the regions of the land hemisphere; while, again, you
seek the place where the moist and the dry come into equilibrium on the
great belt of coast lands, where the monsoons, for instance, are found.
The greenness of the earth is the indication of the ever-changing
contrast between the continental and the oceanic regions: with the
predominance of oceanic influences the greenness of vegetation becomes
more deep and beautiful.
II. THE GROUPING OF THE LAND MASSES.
A second subject, entirely different from the foregoing division of the
surface of the earth into land and water hemispheres, is the grouping
of the land masses, expanding themselves, as it were, from a central
principle, just as vegetation as it grows always advances towards the
sky, and as the soil, full of all kinds of germs for the future to
develop, is covered now with all forms of beauty, yet reserves itself
for the unfolding in days to come of nobler forms.
This grouping of which we speak comprehends, indeed, the accumulation
of continental forms in the northeast, but it concerns more directly
this very significant phenomenon in the formation of the land portion
of the globe,--the compactness of the region around the common centre,
and the rifting and sundering of the exterior regions.
A glance at a globe will show how the two great bodies of the Old and
New Worlds lie around the northern polar circle from the seventieth
to the eightieth degrees of latitude, and reach out in capes and
promontories to such an extent that they approach each other so nearly
that in one place--namely, between Asia and America--the distance is
not greater than a man ordinarily walks in a day. This great breadth at
the north is set in contrast to the constantly increasing narrowness
as you go southwards; a contrast between breadth and contraction which
is seen everywhere, and which characterizes small masses of land as
well as large ones.
It is everywhere noticeable that none of the continents point towards
the Arctic regions, but that they all tend in wedge-like form towards
the south, in ever narrowing peninsulas; the small projections from the
main land into the water hemisphere, and lastly the islands, form the
final representatives of the continental form, until even these become
mere rocks in the open ocean, and then wholly disappear.
It is this contrast between the extension and the contracting towards
the extremities, together with the radiation of the land masses from
a common point, one of which is found in the Old World and one in the
New, which gives the collective groups a character which must be of
decisive and lasting influence upon subordinate tracts, and which is
increased and strengthened by the fact that the amount of water on the
globe is twofold greater than that of land.
From the system of grouping of which we are speaking there results,
that the Arctic regions of the entire earth are brought into
great proximity; they, therefore, display, in the various degrees
of longitude, less diversified phenomena than occur under the
same meridians, but in parts of the earth lying widely sundered.
Geognostically, these regions stand very near each other. The organic
formations are conditioned by geographical forms brought into
proximity, and standing in very simple relations, and show in the two
great divisions of the Old and New Worlds great similarity. Even the
distribution of races displays a similarity of characteristics in man,
peculiar to the Arctic regions of the earth.
Yet not only in general the Arctic extremities of the earth, but also
in special all those extremities of the continents which turn to
the north, remain, since they tend more or less to converge to the
great land centre, in a greater degree of relationship as to their
productions and phenomena than those which turn southward, which are
separated from each other by relatively greater tracts of ocean, and
which, therefore, lying under other meridians and in other conditions,
exhibit entirely different phenomena. This is shown not only in the
southern extremities of the great divisions, America, Africa, Asia,
but also in the contrast between the tropical peninsulas of southern
Asia and the temperate peninsulas of southern Europe. For intervening
distances between countries, measuring from east to west, occasion
great diversities in the land systems and all their phenomena; so that
specific differences in the formations and productions of lands which
are separated are not only determined by the question of latitude, but
also by their distance from other lands.
The radiation and the breaking up of the periphery of the land
hemisphere into fragmentary parts has given rise to more natural
divisions and differences, depending upon the double action of the
fixed and fluid forms, at the outer limits of the system of groups
than at their common centre. And, therefore, even without reckoning
in climatic differences, which confer their share in shaping the
characteristics of a country, it is at the outer limits that the great
diversity of contrasted land systems, each of which is in itself
complete, appears in sharply defined and individualized features,
between which, in the lands contrasted, there are no softened stages
of transition. But towards the centre, on the other hand, diversity
wholly disappears, more comprehensive relations of all kinds enter in,
transitions, and those not alone in climatic peculiarities, are met
with; and thus there was the field of classical history, established
as such because the central tract of the great group of countries
composing the land hemisphere was fitted for the duty, which it at
length discharged, of bringing into adjustment all the contrasts in
physical and historical phenomena before unsettled, and, in great
measure, unstudied.
The peculiar advantages which accrued from the arranging of wide
districts around a common centre, indicated by the harmonious solution
of contradictory relations, would have almost wholly disappeared, as
they partially have done, from the earth, if the central part should
have spread out in an _unbroken_ form, and would have robbed the
great land hemisphere of that diversity in unity, consequent upon its
broken outline, which was just as essential to the full development of
its central regions as to the enrichment of its shores.
As physical phenomena always and everywhere condition mathematical
outline and form, the compactness of the continents is not perfect, but
they are rifted even to the very centre. The openings thus occasioned,
which we call straits, bays, gulfs, inland seas,--sometimes even parts
of the ocean, as the Arctic and North Atlantic, for instance,--are
yet, with all their magnitude, in comparison with the great, open,
unconfined water hemisphere, only narrow basins; mere contracted, and
we can say with much propriety, continental bodies of water. But,
although they have their general characteristics in common, yet they
have, in their two classes, relations different from one another
and peculiar to each, arising mainly from their situation. Take,
for instance, what gives waters their life, and what is their chief
characteristic,--their motion. While some, lying open and unconfined,
follow laws whose influence is universal, others, like the inland seas
of Europe, either do not share at all in the larger movement, or, like
the North Sea, they exhibit different phenomena, although primarily
deduced from those which are general; or, in cases where the waves of
the sea have a direct action upon them, as is the case with the broad
channel of the Atlantic in its relation to the great water hemisphere,
there is often a counter motion, as, for instance, in the Gulf Stream,
setting from America towards Europe, in opposition to the great
current from east to west, which results from the earth’s rotation.
All this indicates plainly enough how great effects arise from the
relative position of bodies of water to bodies of land, and how the
various movements of seas, and bays, and gulfs have their share in the
influences of the oceanic world.
These tracts of water, with their ceaseless movements and currents,
have done something to soften down, especially towards the west, the
great separation of the common centre of the land hemisphere from
the water hemisphere and the great boundary of shore-line already
described, and have thus brought Europe into far more immediate
connection with the rest of the world than its mere position, aside
from communication by sea, would have made possible; thus, this
continent has become more marked than any other, because it unites
the advantages of a central position with those of the land lying on
the external boundary of the land hemisphere. Similar subdivisions
elsewhere, by channels of water and arms of the sea, greater degrees of
isolation, and other situations of the continents, would have awakened
influences just as various and just as striking.
The peculiar division of the land hemisphere into two great masses,
known as the Old and the New World, and the subdivision of these into
the four continents, has occasioned a most favorable arrangement for
them to be brought into more close connection than they would be if
they were all a solid mass, by the intervention of a coast-line, which
is especially advantageous on the northwest shore of the Old World
and the northeast shore of the New;--a coast-line whose quickening
and enriching influence, far beyond its own immediate self, appears at
once when one thinks for a moment of the places which gave a home to
the people of the ancient world,--the Phœnicians, Egyptians, Greeks,
Carthaginians, the Scandinavians of the North, as well as the more
modern races of western Europe and northeastern America.
Still, an advantageous coast-line is denied to the great mass of the
boundary of the land hemisphere; it is of profit to island groups, but
not to those continents which are too remote to present a shore-line
easily attainable and made of service by currents and winds for the
distribution of races, and of plants and animals, as well as for the
diffusion of culture. The perfected art of navigation alone has brought
the southern extremities of the earth into the closest relations with
us.
All these great and mutual relations depend alone upon the peculiar
arrangement of land and water, or upon that division and grouping of
them in reference to the whole surface of the earth already described;
and a long list of general and special phenomena, easily traceable
in detail, finds its satisfactory solution, so far as concerns all
subordinate characteristics of different regions, in the relations
which arise directly from the dimensions of the earth’s surface in
length and breadth.
III. POSITIONS OF THE SEPARATE CONTINENTS.
Quite different phenomena have been occasioned by the special positions
and extents of the separate divisions of the earth in their relation
one to another. These new sources of influence are to be discriminated
from that general system of action and reaction of which we have
spoken, but they work harmoniously with it.
Europe, the smallest of the continents, surrounded by the others in a
broken ring, and Australia, the largest island, surrounded by the open
ocean, are the regions which, in the north and south respectively, hold
the middle place in the land hemisphere and the water hemisphere,--the
continental side and the oceanic side of the globe. This situation
gives Europe, in preference to any other of the continents which are
linked together, the right to be called the most continental of all,
for it is the highway of all, and the link which eminently unites them
all. So the classical soil of the west of hither Asia and the lands of
northern Africa have largely affected the world’s history, for theirs
is a great part of the coasts of the Mediterranean. The influence of
this section of the world on the whole course of human culture is
confessedly great, and is produced by a combination of causes which
can hardly be repeated in any other spot,--an indisputably favorable
arrangement in the elements of position and form. In any other part of
the globe the careful student could see in the surroundings, if he
looked at them in their analogies, that it would need a longer time,
and that greater difficulties and limitations must be met, before the
needed formative condition should evolve equally perfect results. And
so, too, the old strugglings after a higher culture in other places,
as in India and China, which, with all other helps, yet lacked the
true position for attaining to a development which should embrace the
earth, show that as everywhere the unseen only works itself out through
the seen, so the development of the inhabitants of the world stands in
close relation and harmony with the organization of the earth, to which
they directly belong.
A harmonious and general arrangement of the various continents of
the earth in their relations to light and heat, and to the rising
and the setting of stars, has, from the earliest times, awakened the
interest of man, and in the course of history has received a variety
of appellations, which have been in a measure indicative of the
characteristics of the continents to which they have been applied, and
which can still be used in a wider sense, and one more adapted to our
modern needs. From the earliest times, men considered Asia as the land
of morning and Europe as the land of evening, and they indicated the
contrast thus conveyed by the terms Orient and Occident, which find
their fitting application in all the phenomena of these two continents.
Between these, more to the south, lies Africa, divided exactly by the
equator, the true south of the globe, which is not to be sought at the
south pole, but in the place of greatest light and heat,--the bright
midday, to use the old figure, between morning and evening.
The night side of the earth, in the view of the ancients, or the broad
extents of the land around the north pole, form the true cosmical
contrast to these three; for the south pole, the mathematical contrast
to the north pole, is the domain of the world of waters and of oceanic
phenomena.
America forms, in consequence of its remote position, the entire
western arc of the great land circle, and, since Europe has, for
all the past, been the Occident of the Old World, and has fulfilled
its mission in being the place of transition for the whole globe,
America must become the latest goal for the efforts and activities of
men,--must be the New World, the land of evening, in contrast to the
Old World, which has already become the land of morning.
None of these historical relations, with the mass of phenomena
connected with them, could be shared with Australia, in consequence of
its position. Continent though it is in its isolation, it is like an
island of the ocean, and seems to be connected with the land hemisphere
merely as the great continental form of the oceanic world.
To this cosmical arrangement of the continents there correspond those
relations of nature and history which are in part displayed in the
course of human development. But the position of special places also
gives rise to subordinate characteristics; and the formative influence
which special places have exercised on the development of man and the
course of affairs, especially where they have been the field for the
most marked transfer of different races across them, is a subject
worthy of the most careful study.
If one looks at the continents in detail, they exhibit in size,
length, breadth, shape, and manner of subdivision, very diverse
characteristics, which cannot be without their influence.
IV. SIZE.
That Asia was the largest of the continents, made it and its
inhabitants, from the beginning, able to confer rich and diversified
gifts upon its western neighbors, the continents of less dimensions,
without impoverishing itself, and without over-filling, checking, or
disturbing the independent development of Africa and Europe, connected
with it as they were by both land and water communications. That Europe
was limited, in point of space, in comparison with the more colossal
continents, favored, unquestionably, the more harmonious development
of the nature of its people and governments, and forwarded discovery
and colonization, in consequence of the impetus given to culture and
navigation, resulting, first, from its small and manageable size, and
next, because its great extent of coast-line brought it into immediate
relations with the other continents.
The great size of America has united with its insular position to
increase its susceptibility for the gifts of the Old World, and with
the meagre numbers and the weakness of its aboriginal races to secure
its transformation, in the course of time, into a Transatlantic Europe,
and to make it acquire, in the course of a few centuries, what has
been wrought out in Europe only in the lapse of thousands of years.
The small extent of Australia leaves a much freer play and larger
opportunity for the commerce of the world than would have been the case
had a broad and barren Antarctic continent usurped the whole southern
regions of the earth, as it was once supposed to do. The unfavorable
effects of a conglomeration of lands in the Arctic regions will
constantly diminish, in consequence of their really slight extent at
the extreme north, and in consequence of their broken and fragmentary
condition; while their position in the ring of continents, and near
the centre of the land hemisphere (not in the unattainable middle
point of remote seas, but in the neighborhood of the greatest human
activities), has exercised an influence over the whole globe by no
means conservative, but stimulating and promotive of progress.
The mere element of size, and, indeed, every physical element, will
everywhere become more and more subordinate as civilization advances,
and as art gains renewed and unresisted mastery over nature.
V. EXTENSION IN LENGTH AND BREADTH.
The continents are widely various as regards length and breadth. Africa
and Australia are more equal in these respects, and therefore their
remote interior becomes extremely difficult of access on all sides.
America is unequal in the highest degree, in consequence of its vast
range from north to south, compared with the distance from east to
west, and so in its most narrow part--the part, too, most open to
access from the sea--it was easily mastered by the power of invaders.
At its broad extremities, that is, in the northern portions of North
and South America, it exhibits similar phenomena to those which Africa
and Australia exhibit at their very centre. Asia in itself, and still
more with its continuation, Europe, has, on the contrary, its greatest
length from east to west; and in the contrast between these two old
and closely united continents lies the foundation of their intimate
connection and reciprocal action in all natural phenomena and all the
affairs of history.
Lying in unbroken connection, these two continents cover more than
a half of the circumference of the earth, a space of more than two
hundred degrees of longitude. The distance from north to south is, on
the other hand, very much less. In Asia, which lies wholly north of
the equator, it does not embrace a quarter of the distance around the
earth, and in Europe not a sixth; while the united length of both, from
east to west, is about one-half of the circumference of the globe.
America’s extensions are precisely the reverse; from north to south it
spans nearly one-half of the earth, while its measurement from east to
west is much less, not amounting to much over a fifth. The two worlds
stand, then, in these regards, in entire contrast; and the results
which these conditions have brought about cannot be thought slight and
unworthy of notice.
America extends through far more zones of the earth than Asia;
its special countries are characterized by far greater climatic
differences,--reckoning numerically, by double as many; for Asia
has not, between the equator and the polar circle, more than half
the changes of climate that America has. Therefore America suffers
from greater climatic extremes in its special countries. Asia, with
greater variety of surface, has yet a greater climatic unity. This
great distinction between the eastern and the western worlds would
have given rise to a sharp contrast between them, were it not for
some circumstances which soften it, as, for example, the existence of
the great range of the Cordilleras, running from north to south. Yet
wide differences in all productions, as well as in the ethnographical
character of races, must result from this climatic diversity, and all
the more in proportion to the small progress which human culture has
made in overcoming, by art and civilization, the hindrances which
nature interposes. The greater climatic unity of Asia has conditioned
and favored a marked commonness of results, a greater uniformity in
man, and, without taking the advance of navigation into account,
the closest union of its nations, and the largest exchange of their
manners, customs, ideas, and religions. It was comparatively easy
for the early races of Asia to pass from the greater climatic unity
of a common home to the climatic diversity of the world, and divide
themselves up in their new possessions. But they had in all their
divisions and wanderings, at least so far as is known to us, no
contrasts to encounter which were great enough to be destructive; they
could go forth in search of _kindred_ climates and surroundings;
the Old World displayed to them, in the most favorable light, its
immense area from east to west. It was, therefore, in this direction
that, in the eastern continent, the great stream of life and culture
set; and Asia was more perfectly prepared for this course of progress
than any other great division by reason of its vastness, for it could
supply the needs of wandering races and tribes as well as of those
which should be permanently settled.
VI. THE CONFORMATION OF THE CONTINENTS AND THEIR BROKEN OUTLINE.
In our treatment of the general and broader characteristics of
the continents, we have yet to consider them in respect to their
conformation and their broken outline.
In these regards, Africa presents the simplest forms; it is
distinguished palpably from the other continents by its almost insular
position, connected as it is with western Asia by a mere strip of land,
and that probably of recent formation, the isthmus of Suez. In its
close and compact form, and very regular coast outline, it resembles an
ellipse, although its diameters are of about equal length, and although
the climatic features are nearly the same on both sides of the equator,
advancing as far as the thirty-fifth parallels of north and south
latitude. Having no great sea inlets, its entire circuit is only about
seventeen thousand miles in extent, and is the simplest coast-line of
all the continents. Africa has, therefore, in spite of its insular
position and its great area, relatively the shortest, as well as the
most uniformly regular and simple coast of all the great divisions of
the earth, and in consequence of this meagre outline its interior has
the least contact with the ocean.
Asia, washed only on three sides by the sea, unites with Europe in
the formation of a common trunk, and thus completes the vast range
of territory extending from east to west. Its eastern and southern
coasts abound in far-projecting peninsulas and half-insular forms,
which are all to be regarded as the more or less scattered limbs of
an immense body. From the peninsulas of Tschuktschen and Kamtschatka,
round the continent, over Corea, China, the two Indias, Arabia, and
so west to Asia Minor, these projecting forms, wholly wanting to
Africa, embrace a vast extent of territory; and even the Siberian
coast, although in itself considered small, and especially unfavorably
situated, is more extensive and more provided with sea inlets than
the whole shore-line of Africa. Yet there remains, notwithstanding, in
the interior of Asia a district, very large and broad, which is not
brought in contact with the seas that partly penetrate the continent,
and which so greatly modify all things within their reach; and this
inner district is the true trunk of the whole. This central portion
does, indeed, preponderate in respect to area over that included in all
the projecting peninsulas; but Africa is a trunk without _any_
limbs. The great influence of so large and complex a coast upon the
wealth and the variety of all natural gifts is evident at a glance;
its entire shore-line has promoted, in consequence of its projections
and indentations, not only individuality, but also an increase of
influence, with reference to Asia and the rest of the world besides.
Europe, the smallest of the three continents of the Old World, is, in
its superficial form, the most varied and rifted and divided up of
all. Its most remarkable characteristics are its broken form, and the
individuality, not only of its coast outlines, but of the countries
which these inclose; for its main body, which, long though it is from
east to west, is yet relatively very small, diminishes constantly
in breadth towards the west, and is divided by numerous arms of the
Atlantic into several peninsulas of greater or smaller size, some of
which again are subdivided in the same way, as, for instance, the
very peculiar and remarkable conformation of Greece, which seems to
have reached the last degree of complexity in its coast outline. Not
only on the east and south, like Asia, but also, and in as marked a
degree, on the north, this subdivision of Europe goes on, so that
there its projecting forms, relatively to its whole area so great,
inclose, in entire contrast to the northern coast of Asia, two large
inland seas,--the North Sea and the Baltic. As the result of this
marked characteristic of Europe, its shore-line, measured in all its
sinuosities, is of very great length. The area of its inclosed seas is
equal to nearly half of its true territory. Although its superficial
contents are three times smaller than Africa, yet the extent of its
coast is far greater,--more than 24,000 miles,--twelve times the length
of the land boundary between itself and Asia. The shore-line of Asia
is, indeed, about a third longer than that of Europe, nearly 32,000
miles; but the area of Asia is more than four times greater. Thus
Europe is the continent with the greatest relative coast-line, and with
the most varied conformation of the lands which lie on its outer limit;
it is, therefore, the continent most approachable of all from the sea.
In the conformation of Europe we arrive at the most perfect and equal
adjustment of the fixed and fluid forms to one another which we meet
on the globe, divested of the prejudicial effects which would have
been produced had it been wholly instead of partially divided, and had
it consisted of widely sundered islands instead of mutually connected
peninsulas. We have an opportunity to observe this from a district of
nearly equal area,--the island group of Sunda, southeast of Asia. Here
the division is perfect; every member stands apart from the others;
and, through too great a subdivision, we have the exact contrast to
Africa, which has no subdivision at all. Of course two such extremes
must work in exactly contrary ways, and entirely unequally, and yet
they both constrain alike the progress of man; and in these isolated
islands he can, at best, arrive only to the stage of development which
_one_ continent or _one_ shore might attain, and never enjoy
the benefit of the reciprocal action of continent upon continent and
of shore upon shore. We find a proof of this as an actual result
in the condition of the Malay race. But Europe enjoys not only its
large extent of sea-coast, but also its central position in the land
hemisphere, and, in brief, all the advantages which nature can give
to help it realize this remarkable fact, that the smallest continent
should be the field for the greatest deeds of history, and that the
smallest, too, should gain the mastery of the whole.
As to Africa, we cannot speak of the relation between the members to
the main body of the continent, for these members are there wholly
wanting; in the absence of favorable forms, none of its coasts have
received in a high degree those diversities and abundant resources
which the shores of the other continents present; the natives of Africa
form, in comparison with the inhabitants of other divisions of the
globe, a very uniform group of nations, and, in consequence of their
limited and purely continental relations, are left far behind. Asia
is much partitioned up by sea inlets, and in the southeast and south
is it especially divided into the richest and largest peninsulas,
every one of which offers in itself a world of phenomena. We seek them
in China, farther India, Hindostan, Arabia, and Asia Minor. But the
seas which form these peninsulas do not penetrate and bring a kind
of individuality into the heart of the great central body. This vast
extent stretches away in a colossal mass; the area of the members
in comparison with the whole of the continental form ever seems to
shrink. The relations between nature and man have displayed themselves
in the most diversified and special manner in the various members of
the continent; far more uniform has been their manifestation in the
centre, for there the vast intercepting mass of land has been the
main cause of preventing the attainment of results which contact and
intercommunication and the exchange of gifts and forces could give.
Thus central Asia ever remained severed from its own border-lands. In
Europe the mutual relations of the various parts of the continent have
been entirely different; for in Asia the area of the members to the
main body of the continent is as one-fifth to four-fifths, while in
Europe it is as one-third to two-thirds. Thus in Europe the members
have a far wider significance in their relation to the body, and they
have become of paramount influence in consequence of their diversified
forms. Europe always narrows as it approaches its peninsulas, and its
central portion is a means of connecting their branches. Thus the
influences of sea and coast are felt through the entire continent: no
other grand division of the earth resembles it in this. Its interior
countries are brought almost to the shore, and enjoy all the activities
and advantages of the shore. The historical development of Europe,
of its peoples, and states, is in harmony with its geographical
conditions. Not alone through its half-sundered peninsulas, but through
its wholly sundered islands, the coast of Europe has been especially
enriched; not through the mass of distant, scattered islands, which
properly belong to no continent, but to the sea alone, but through the
signal greatness and number of the neighboring islands which follow
the coast-line, and which are to be regarded as continuations of the
continent. These islands increase the number of its members two or
three fold.
To Africa islands are almost wholly wanting; the south coast of Asia is
so largely bordered by them, that that labyrinth, of which the isles of
Sunda are merely the most level group, has no special action upon the
continent, and exists as a world in itself.
In Europe, where the areas of the main body, its peninsular forms, and
its islands stand in the relation of 2, 1, 1/20, the significance and
value of the last being special, it is manifest that there is such
a rifting and dividing up of the main body as to make it especially
accessible to neighboring countries.
America alone remains to close this series of brief observations,
for it, in a certain manner, completes the circle of continental
forms,--reaches the limits of the possible varieties in conformation,
by repeating in itself the contrasts of the Old World, and bringing
them into union and harmony. Entirely unlike Africa, America is
divided by an inland body of water, the Gulf of Mexico, into a double
continent, whose bond of connection, the isthmus of Panama, though in
itself not narrow, is utterly inconsiderable compared with the great
land masses which it connects. Its small size operates to make it
rather a barrier between the two countries than a connecting link,
and only by the agency of the intermediate oceans are North and South
America brought into that close relation which is needful for the
development of nature and the unfolding of history.
In connecting these two widely separated continental forms, the
great central island group which America exhibits plays an important
mediatorial part; at any rate, it has done so since the discovery of
that group, and its being opened to navigators and adventurers. The two
great bodies which are separated by the Mexican Gulf have many features
in common,--their greater breadth at the north, their constantly
increasing narrowness towards the south, a triangular form, like that
of Africa, repeated in both North and South America. There is, also,
in consequence of this regular outline, a diminution of the length of
coast in America, and in this regard South America stands next to the
simplest of all the continents, Africa, which however it is in other
respects unlike, on account of its entirely different hydrographical
and orographical features. North America exhibits a greater diversity
in its outline, favored as it is with a very broken shore on the side
of the Atlantic. The vast bays and inland lakes, which penetrate so
deeply into the heart of North America, give it a great advantage over
northern Asia, and create for it, well watered as it is at the south
and supplied with inland lakes, easy and perfect accessibility, and
impart to it great resemblance to Europe, notwithstanding the nearness
of its northern regions to the pole. The similarity of climate aids in
completing the resemblance between North America and Europe; and thus
the New World--having the extent which it enjoys, having its position
on the globe, having the favorable advantage of broken shores and an
extensive coast-line--seems destined to become a second Europe within
a short lapse of time, and to plant civilization at the most northern
regions of the earth.
If, from these observations on the conformations of the continents, it
appears that to the features which we have briefly indicated progress
and individual development are in great part to be ascribed, and if
the outlines of a systematic arrangement are discernible in what we
have advanced, it will follow that all the remaining phenomena are not
independent of this systematic arrangement, or connected with it in a
loose and indefinite way, or antagonistic to it, but that they are all
conditioned by it and related to it in a fixed and ascertainable manner.
But the complete action of all the forces of nature, in special and
in general relations, cannot be discerned by any one-sided view of
them. The extents of the earth’s surface, measured horizontally, are
only one side of what we have to study. To a complete view of the
earth as a whole, and of its parts, there is needed the study of
vertical dimensions, which are the complement of horizontal dimensions,
and which condition them in a hundred ways. A view of both, and an
application of both to the development of forms, relations, and
laws, alone lead to a comprehensive view of the earth, to a clear
understanding of the influence of nature upon history, and to a true
system of geographical science.
REMARKS
ON
FORM AND NUMBERS
AS AUXILIARY IN REPRESENTING THE
RELATIONS OF GEOGRAPHICAL SPACES.
[FIRST READ BEFORE THE ROYAL ACADEMY OF BERLIN.]
REMARKS ON FORM AND NUMBERS
AS AUXILIARY IN REPRESENTING THE
RELATIONS OF GEOGRAPHICAL SPACES.
[DELIVERED JANUARY 17, 1828.]
I SHALL venture to communicate now, in a desultory manner merely, a
few remarks, the digested results of which would be more worthy of
presentation here, if, at the present time at least, the means were
not wanting for the attainment of such results. And, in truth, efforts
made under very disadvantageous circumstances to lay out for one’s
self a scientific path through new and unexplored regions, demand of
the judgment a measure of leniency, while the very effort is of some
service in aiding the acquisition of means to lead us to valuable
results.
In a former paper it was my effort to reach the basis of the relations
which spring from the position and the superficial divisions of the
continents, and to develop those relations in reference to the entire
surface of the earth. This could only be done in broad and rough lines,
whether in reference to the collective forms and the more general
subdivisions of the surface of the globe, or in reference to the course
of history.
But should the application of these general relations lead us back
to an instructive method of considering every special country,
and of studying its people, and bring to clear view the share of
every district in the collective circle of its influences, it would
be necessary, it seems to me, in order to make these relations
intelligible, that the auxiliaries of form and numbers should both be
employed, and in a way hitherto but little used.
We call to our aid the auxiliary of form, in the use of well-known
geometrical figures, to bring into view before the mind, without the
employment of measurements, the characteristic to which we would
give prominence in the portion of the earth at any given time under
our consideration. The right use of geometrical figures, and their
intelligent application to the study of geographical forms, should
be largely brought out in a scientific treatise, in order to conduct
the student, in a very simple and direct manner, to well defined
conceptions. He may be securely led to new applications of these
figures, and thus to a constant succession of new views, which shall
exhibit in the distinctest manner whatever features of the earth’s
surface are capable of representation in geometrical forms.
This use of geometrical figures was a long time since introduced into
botanical science with very great advantage, and, while it has imparted
clearness to it, it has been not at all wanting in accuracy. But in
geographical science this coadjutor has, with very few exceptions,
and those mostly of a light and playful sort, not been brought into
use, because people have hitherto been content with the old-fashioned
descriptions, and have made no attempt to reach scientific results, or
even to grasp the central idea on which all special phenomena rest. In
a method wide enough and consecutive enough to embrace the great system
of countries that cover the globe, this use of geometrical figures,
applied to superficial surfaces of very comprehensive or subordinate
size, would lead to a clear view and definite comprehension of the
earth’s surface; provided only and always that these geometrical
figures were not arbitrary and imaginary, but plainly existing in
nature, and expressing natural forms, as in a mathematical formula. How
speedily would such a method lead geography to entirely new phases,
and rid it, whether in its elementary or in its scientific forms, of
the vast mass of mere undigested descriptions which only burden the
mind with endless details. And it is just because these materials have
not been brought into system, and still lie in this crude state, that
geography is yet in its rudimentary condition, and that the scholastic
works and the treatises for schools are all in their primitive form.
The free and full application of geometrical progress to this science
would lead, as may easily be seen, to a reconstruction of it, to
greater breadth of scope, and to a thorough digestion into a systematic
shape of facts now loose and burdensome.
In the preceding paper the attempt was made to put to some use
geometrical figures in the establishment of those general relations
which spring from the grouping of the continents, their position on the
earth, their respective length and breadth, their configuration, and
brokenness or unbrokenness of outline.
This application of geometrical figures would lead to a clearer
view, and therefore to a speedier and surer comparison of special
countries, as well as to greater brevity and exactness in geographical
terminology, because a geometrical outline conveys at a glance what it
would take many sentences to describe. But in order to reach a more
perfect conception of geographical forms, since geometrical figures
are only partially exact, not strictly coinciding with the outlines of
countries or continents, here falling short, here having an excess, we
must designate the countries which overrun or do not come up to the
limits of the figure taken as the basis by the + and - signs. This
simple arrangement proves very convenient and serviceable.
In the application of geometrical forms in the manner just indicated,
we should find that some countries were measured by the square, as
Spain and the Peloponnesus; others by the rectangle, as Thessaly and
Epirus; others by the circle, the ellipse, the triangle, the pentagon,
and so forth: that these things meet the eye at a glance, and that
this variety of contact with the surroundings gives immediate and
perceptible occasion to direct results. Yet it is not easy, it must be
confessed, to reach, in the generality of instances, the geometrical
figure which best expresses geographical forms, because the number and
size of the irregularities prevent the observer from imagining its
base type in his mind, and reaching that pure outline on which depend,
however, a great many important things,--the climate, the productions,
the river systems; these all have much more intimate relation with the
geometrical figure which is the type than with the + and - excesses or
fallings off from it.
After the analogies had been carefully traced between different
countries and geometrical figures, it would be time to advance to
deviations from the base types, peculiar as they are in the case of
every separate district. Even in the individuality of these deviations
does every country show that it has a specially designated place for
itself, and for its peculiar productions, surroundings, and relations.
The two great triangulated countries of North and South America
(to speak only of the largest), when brought into contact with the
triangle of hither India and the south half of Africa, will offer, upon
careful consideration, points of resemblance, and yet again points of
difference; they will at the same time show many other features less
studied, in respect to size far inferior, but in which everything
dependent upon conformation is subjected, though in less degrees, to
the same general laws and influences.
In this way there will result from the use of geometrical forms
as the types of geographical configuration certain classes and
classifications, which, in reference to the type and the deviations
from it, allow of a sharp scientific statement of the relations
and characteristics which spring from the entire class, from the
subordinate divisions, and from individual members.
This making intelligible and bringing into subjection of the varied,
unwieldy, and almost unmanageable mass of material, by the simple
employment of the element of form, seems to be the great improvement
of the age in geographical science, which has always remained in the
rear of her sister sciences of natural history; and so continues to-day
a vast helpless mass, of very little service in the instruction of
schools, or for yet higher needs, and whose very ponderousness and
shapelessness has prevented her being reduced to compact and useful
forms.
These geometrical figures are not only applicable in this broad
way to the different continents and their natural or arbitrary
subdivisions, but they may equally well serve to clearly indicate
other characteristics of the earth, such as tracts of water, mountain
and plateau districts, plains, lowlands, wastes, fruitful spots,
connected forests, regions watered by river systems, grain lands,
mineral locations, and the like; and here, where there is not
palpable regularity, but only an approximation to the coincidence of
geographical configuration with geometrical form, the deviations may,
as before, be designated by the + and - signs.
This second manner of applying geometrical figures to the other
characteristics of a country besides mere extent, is, as may at once
be seen, more difficult than the first, which merely embraces the
relations of space and distance. The first would only presuppose a pure
geometrical statement, to enable one to discern in the best existing
maps and charts the simplest figures which would express the outline
of any given countries. By applying a geometrical figure in this way,
the maximum and minimum of deviation from it in the protrusion of
peninsula formations would be instantly apparent. Thus Europe, to cite
the most irregular of all the continents, the one which is the least
congruent with a geometrical figure, and which is in this respect
characteristically unlike the other grand divisions, would in a general
view present itself as an immense right-angled triangle, with the
shortest line from north to south, in the direction of the Ural as
the basis, for a distance of about fourteen hundred miles. The right
angle would fall at the Caucasian isthmus, not far from the mouth of
the Volga. The next larger side would be that of the Mediterranean,
from Astracan westward through all Europe, to Bayonne, more than
twenty-three hundred miles; and the hypothenuse would pass from there
northwards by the North Sea, the Baltic, and Archangel to the sources
of the Ural, a distance of over twenty-eight hundred miles. The space
embraced within this triangle would comprehend by far the greater part
of the continental mass of Europe, about two-thirds of the whole, (two
millions five hundred thousand square miles, the whole being three
millions seven hundred and sixty-seven thousand), and outside of it
would lie the three peninsulas towards the south, Greece, Italy, Spain,
and at the north, Scandinavia. Thus one-third of the whole would lie
outside of the inscribed figure, and this third would be characterized
by relations quite unlike those of the main body of the continent. In
this case, while there would be much excess beyond the figure used
as the norm, there would be few places where the measure would come
noticeably short. The use of this figure is plainly valuable in helping
to observe a large number of relations which are dependent upon the
essential unity of the continental surfaces, in contradistinction to
the contrasts produced by land and sea, or that which might be called
the contrast between the body and members of the continent. In respect
to the relations of temperature and the wind systems, in so far as they
are dependent upon the configuration and position of the country, the
name of the European climatic triangle properly pertains to it, and,
in fact, has been recently applied by a French writer. What is true of
temperature and wind systems, and their relation to the geometrical
form of a country, will be found true of many other influencing agents.
How instructive would it be always to have at easy command in this way
a very simple and yet universally intelligible expression for action
and reaction in comparative geography, and thus to indicate, in a word,
the natural home of the various families of beasts and plants, of
peoples, and whatever else might need expression. The bearings of this
upon what may be technically called the _qualitative_ relations,
in distinction from _quantitative_ relations (and by the term
quantitative I mean all the conditions which result from extent, by the
term qualitative all other conditions), can only be traced after a very
careful preliminary acquaintance with the workings of nature; but after
such an acquaintance it becomes at once apparent, as in an instructive
and in every view masterly and comprehensive sketch of the outlines of
South America, contained in the fifth part of Alexander Von Humboldt’s
Journey to the Equinoctial Regions of the New World, which has so
greatly enriched geographical science. From the grouping of geometrical
figures according to quantitative and qualitative relations, with all
that is subordinated to this arrangement, the briefest expression
would arise for the characterization of continents, countries, special
tracts, provinces, districts; in short, a statement in brief, as a
substitute for the general and unreliable descriptions which, in
consequence of the constant repetition of the same principles, make
geographical science diffuse and tedious, and thus inflict upon it
serious injury. Nor does it need prolonged remarks to show what a ready
means of characterizing arbitrary political divisions is also found in
the same method, if they be regarded as readily determined sections of
these geometrical figures.
From the employment of form for the more correct and profitable
comparison of different countries, we pass to a large and important
use of numbers, to aid in grasping another set of the relations of
geographical districts to one another, and getting full and accurate
knowledge of them. We shall not introduce, as is so often done in books
of statistics and geography, that misuse of numbers which always creeps
in where more stress is laid upon mere facts expressed in the numerical
form than upon the relations which they indicate. We shall employ
numbers solely and strictly for the determining of fixed and definite
relations. As, in descriptive botany, figures and numbers indicate the
different parts of a plant, as, for instance, stamens, pistils, glands,
calyx, corolla, leaf-incisions, stem divisions, manner of flowering,
and rootlets, and give a clear conception of all the qualities of
the plant, and the relative place which it occupies in the vegetable
creation, since all these things are but exponents of all the causes
which condition it; so, in the formation of every natural division of
the earth, there is a large number of physical relations capable of
numerical expression, all of them essential to a true conception, none
of them of indifferent worth and accidental position, like so many
things thrown together at hap-hazard, but which are so regular and so
needed that in them can be seen the general principles which control
the separation, connection, and grouping of similarly conditioned
tracts, wherever they occur.
The numbers thus used will either indicate horizontal and vertical
extents, and thus rest upon measurements in square miles, miles of
length, and feet above and below the sea level, or they will be the
statement in numerical form of matters directly kindred to these.
Measurements have already come into general use for the expression of
certain relations, at least; commonly those of political divisions. And
yet, for a true system of scientific geography, the statement of the
area of political divisions does not suffice; that of the divisions
marked out by nature itself, and expressed by geometrical figures, must
be first ascertained in square miles, that such tracts may judged in
their true relation to the entire globe. Hitherto no efforts have been
made to ascertain any areas, excepting those of the continents, and of
political states,--and these, indeed, are not without value,--but we
ask in vain for the statistics of the size of natural divisions, as,
for example, how large the right-angled triangle which is inscribed
in Europe is, in proportion to the projections from that continent,
and the seas, gulfs, straits, wholly or in part inclosed within it by
means of these projections. And whence arises that varied share which
these geographical forms, seas, gulfs, and straits have respectively
had, and still have, in the powerful influences which they exert upon
the entire continent? In what relative magnitude do the great and the
small peninsulas stand to each other, to the islands which belong
to them, and to the vast continental domains untouched by the sea?
In what numerical relations can we estimate the area of the great
and well watered river basins; of the regions lying between them,
poor in streams or wholly unwatered; of the coast lands, which are
traversed by the short rivers characteristic of the shore, and which,
therefore, are quite otherwise related to the sea than the central
continental districts which are watered by important streams and
their branches? We look in vain to find the area in square miles of
fruitful plains, of great grain districts, of morasses, of peat bogs,
of sand wastes, of heaths, of mountain regions; only here and there
have natural features been subjected to measurement, and the relative
areas ascertained of lakes, arable lands, forests, and meadows.
Valuable as it is, for some statistical purposes, that we learn such
facts as these, no less advantageous would it be for all historical
and geographical ends that we ascertain such data as those alluded
to a moment since, in order to be able to determine and compare, in
tabular form, the varied influences of physical forms on countries and
people. This would be a comparatively easy task, because such facts,
having to do with inanimate and fixed forms, do not partake of that
constantly changing character which marks the movements of men. After
ascertaining the limits of the natural divisions of the earth, even
if in an incomplete way, the various changes which past centuries
have witnessed in the boundaries of states, the movements forward and
backward of those boundaries in ancient and modern times, the diffusion
of nations and of languages, the progress of culture, and many other
like things, could be established and indicated in a more precise way.
A great mass of valuable historic relations could be indicated, for
which language would otherwise have no fitting expression. Take, for
example, the relation existing between the life and occupations of men,
and the characteristics of the earth’s surface where they live, and
which supports them. Observe the people of the sea-coast, the people
of the mountains, the dwellers on continental arable land, whether
grain-producing or not, and see how great a share the nature of the
soil on which they live has in determining their political states;
see how mutual is the action and reaction, and what varied results
flow from it in all the countries of Europe. Such topics as these,
of wide and manifold relations, have been subjected to the severest
investigations, and their principles, when ascertained, have been
stated in those well-known modern works, which have opened a new era
in historical, geographical, and statistical sciences as connected.
We will refer only to Malthus’ Essay on the Principles of Population:
London, 1803; Dupin’s standard works on Great Britain and France
(_Force maritime, militaire, commercielle et industrielle de la
Grande Bretagne_, Vol. III., 1824; _Forces productives et
commercielles de la France_, Vol. II., 1827); and on Italy
the classical researches of Lullin de Chateauvieux, (_Lettres sur
l’Italie_, Vol. I., where he treats of agriculture). Not
unimportant would it be, in reference to every country of the world, be
it great or small, to be able to speak in the same manner with which
Humboldt commences his description of South America: “South America is
one of those great triangular-shaped masses which constitute the three
continental divisions of the southern hemisphere; of the area which it
embraces, 6,560,000 square miles, the fourth part, 1,640,000 square
miles, is covered with mountains which lie in ranges or groups; the
other three-fourths are plains, of which four-fifths lie east of the
Andes. The mountainous region, one quarter of the whole, is so divided,
that somewhat over one-third forms the great chain of the Andes on the
west. More than one-third of this chain, measuring by superficial area
577,400 square miles, lies above the snow-line; nearly two-thirds,
862,600 square miles, never reaches the snow-line, and lies mainly
upon the east side of the Andes,” etc. The more simple the results
from very intricate conditions as here, so much the more instructive.
At once there are evolved from such clear exhibitions of relations the
differences and contrasts of other regions in an entirely different way
than from descriptions. The student is led on to further researches
into their peculiarities, as, for example, the mutual relation of the
three great mountain systems of the world, the Andes of America, the
Himalayas of India, and the Alps of Europe, as ascertained from their
areas and their most important dimensions. Through this method of
study and criticism, he is led from these masses to see the nature of
all elevations, to learn how countries are watered, to discover the
constituents of soils, their mineral wealth, the extents of flora, of
fauna, of nations, of political divisions and their resources, the
number of roads over mountainous tracts, of passes through them,
and of settlements upon them, and thus to bring them into a true and
complete relation with all their surroundings and the whole earth. This
method of treatment is almost unknown, even in our best descriptive
works.
The final use which we make of measurements and of computations
embraced in geometrical figures, and in the districts which can
be considered as large or small, according as the point of view
may demand, and according as they are regarded absolutely or
relatively,--the final use of measurements is to sum up together a
number of geometrical forms, _i. e._ to gain the aggregate of
areas, in order to draw a general principle from them, to analyze them
as a mass, to subdivide them and treat them historically, physically,
or politically, in order to get at whatever may be peculiar to each,
and thus to reach the minor characteristics of the parts which compose
the great whole. Merely to indicate a few such will be for the present
sufficient to show the diversity and the abundance of such analysis.
We only name these: the varied configuration of coast, the effects of
river systems, and the relations of medium heights to the loftiest
mountains and the depressions which stand in direct contrast with them.
Other examples we shall not need to cite.
The relations induced by coast configuration depend upon the length
of shore-line, upon the superficial contents of the area inclosed by
the surrounding seas, roughly represented as it is by a geometrical
figure, but more exactly expressed by the application of the + and
- signs to those sides of the figure which overrun or fall short.
There is for every assignable place a possible maximum or minimum of
intricacy in the configuration of its outline, from the most simple
outline of such continents as Australia and Africa, advancing to the
favorable conformation of the shores of Asia and America, on to the
intricate configuration of Europe, and its radical division into trunk,
members, and isolated, dissevered fragments. There is met even such an
extent of coast as to be a superabundance, where the word continent
is a misnomer, where there is such a complete dismemberment by the
intervention of the sea, that the combined periphery of the islands
thus formed is equal to the coast-line of a continent. This is the
case with the Sunda group, which has a total shore-line nearly equal
to Europe. To a less extent, the same principle holds good down to the
smallest groups. The relation of the extent of coast to the area is a
prime element in the establishment of a maritime character, whether in
the largest or the smallest continents. We have, in previous parts of
this work, showed, that although Europe is threefold less than Africa
in area, yet it has a much greater extent of shore, 24,685 miles,--the
distance around the world,--while Africa has but 17,300 miles of coast.
Asia, with five times the territory of Europe, has but 32,000 miles
of shore-line. These continents, thus widely unlike in respect to the
extent of trunk, members, and isolated parts, or islands, correspond,
briefly stated, to these numbers:--
Main body. Peninsulas. Islands.
Africa, 1 0 1/50
Asia, 4 1 1/8
Europe, 2 1 1/20
When one considers how dependent upon the coast-line are the contact
of the sea with the earth, and the whole vast variety of their mutual
activity, influencing both animate and inanimate nature; when one
thinks how the conformation even of countries has been conditioned
by it, and how the various groups of elevations and depressions have
received from it their boundary lines, their grades of ascent and of
descent, and their absolute distance, whether upwards or downwards, and
that all these results appear in the smallest peninsulas and islands,
as well as in the largest continent; when one considers all this, it
will be confessed to be a matter of the greatest geographical interest
to judge the coast-line always and everywhere in reference to the area
to which it belongs,--to the land boundaries, to the country enclosed,
and to every other feature; to grasp by numbers, computations, and
measurements whatever relations they may disclose, and apply them as
auxiliaries in every direction that may seem desirable. More than
this; these numbers and computations ought to have a place in every
delineation of the surface of the earth. Only then would appear every
advantage possessed by countries by the sea, in their relative gain
from winds and currents, in their configuration, in their ease and
safeness of approach, and in their supply of harbors; and only then
should we have all the data which we need to estimate rightly the
relation of countries washed by seas and oceans, to the people who
inhabit them.
In like manner, by the application of measure and number, the form of
territory watered by rivers can become very serviceable in the study
of those districts which are usually the home of culture and the
seat of organized political states, if the principle that underlies
all relations comes clearly into view, and is made more conveniently
available for scientific comparison than mere description allows. The
various river systems of the earth have been entirely neglected thus
far as to the marked peculiarity and individuality of form which appear
in the plainest manner among the largest of them, and are capable of
being seen in all. And yet this is a feature too prominent to allow us
to forget on what foundation geographical science must stand that it
may not suffer to lie unused one of the greatest means at our command
for its enrichment.
In every description of a country the rivers are mentioned because
they water it, and some scattered remarks are added; very rarely are
details given regarding their rate of fall, the source as it is of
movement in their current, or regarding their depth and navigableness,
the source of their usefulness; and yet all such details might be
exhibited in tabular form with great fulness. There do, indeed, exist
treatises on the length of rivers from their source to their mouth,
in which an attempt has been made to supply existing wants, and to
ascertain the significance of streams, by presenting their length
in tabular form, arranged in the order of relative magnitude. Among
the most valuable of these are some measurements of Buache (1752),
from which, however, he himself, as well as his followers, neglected
to draw any useful inferences. (_Essai d’un Parallèle des Fleuves
de l’Europe._) But it was seen, notwithstanding, that here, as
everywhere, there was in the phenomena of countries watered by rivers
a close interior union, which would not be arbitrarily broken without
being utterly lost. Very diverse features of the river systems had to
be grouped in their mutual dependence at once, if the student would be
led directly to a comparison of their characteristics, and to the true
meaning of every detail in its connection with the economy of nature
and the course of history. The relations of extent, which form the
basis of all relations, and which, because essential to the highest
wants of science, must, in the case of all leading streams, be first
established, are more or less closely connected with the depression
and elevation of the surface. The first one of these is the distance,
in an air-line, from the source of a river to the mouth; the absolute
fall is to be traced in the result of this measurement. The second is
the maximum distance from source to mouth, following the bendings;
in this is seen the tract of the intervale land which has gradually
accumulated. The third is the area of the river basin, embracing all
the valleys of tributary rivers; or, stated in other words, the area
of the entire surface which is indebted to a river system for being
watered and enriched in manifold ways, and thus fitted for its place
in influencing the human race. By being studied in reference to these
three points, every river system assumes its true shape, allows all
that is peculiar in itself to appear, and is itself formed by the
combination of most diverse features. In following this method of
research, it becomes possible, and at the same time greatly conducive
to the furtherance of a scientific treatment in extended descriptions
(needed in their proper place to complete our conception), to draw
from a comprehensive view of _relations_ such observations as can
become a basis for all future teaching and investigation, but which,
unless established by scales of magnitudes, would not become a part of
true science. A few examples will suffice to exhibit this. The river
Volga, measured from source to mouth, is at least two thousand miles in
length; the Danube seventeen hundred,--about one-eighth shorter; while
the Rhine is only eight hundred miles long, or about half the length of
the Danube. Thus it may be seen that these European rivers, looked at
in their relative length, do not vary widely from the proportions 3,
2, 1. But looked at in reference to the district which they water, the
proportions change to 8, 4, 1; since the basin of the Volga, which is
of nearly the same size as the Nile valley, embraces an area of about
six hundred and forty thousand square miles; that of the Danube three
hundred thousand, and that of the Rhine only seventy-five thousand six
hundred. Looked at in reference to the _fall_ of the rivers, as
it is commonly called, together with the many phenomena which spring
from this source, the proportions again materially change; for the
sources of the Rhine lie eleven thousand feet, those of the Danube
three thousand three hundred, those of the Volga one thousand two
hundred feet, above the level of the sea. These proportions continue,
not seriously changed, throughout the entire length of these rivers.
Yet their general course is widely unlike, being southeast, east, and
northwest; and, in consequence of their different situations in Europe,
all the varieties of their attendant climate, seasons, high water, and
productiveness are essentially modified. Simple as seem the lines on
our maps that indicate the river courses, yet the greatest diversity
appears in their influences, when first their relations are more
carefully settled, and are grasped in a single conception. How much
more complete is the result for the investigation of the whole, as well
as of details, if the student take note in this manner of all the most
important elements which manifest themselves.
The six most important streams of Europe which have a marked nearness
in their course and in the place of their termination, are the Kuban,
Don, Dnieper, Bug, Dniester, and Danube. Herodotus long ago wondered at
the fact that the mouths of rivers so large and so long should lie in
Southern Russia, in a land of not over four hundred miles in width,
between the Kuban from Caucasus and the Danube from Hungary. Among
these six, the Danube is the most important; but next to the Danube
is the Dnieper, whose whole valley is three times that of the Rhine
and Elbe combined,--two hundred and thirteen thousand three hundred
square miles. The entire length of the Dnieper, inclusive of curves,
is nine hundred and seventy-eight miles; while its distance, as the
bird flies, from source to mouth, is six hundred and twelve; the mere
bendings adding about four hundred and fifty miles to its length. The
result of this sinuous course is the enlargement of the relatively
extraordinary extent of the district that it waters, the number of
branches which run into it, and the great fruitfulness and variety of
the surface where it leads its lingering way. Its neighbor on the west,
the Dniester, pursuing a course also towards the southeast, and through
a very similar tract of country, yet displays entirely different
characteristics. It is, indeed, less in size, and yet it is not in this
that the great reason lies which occasions so many different relations.
The shortest distance from the source of the Dniester to the mouth is
three hundred and eighty miles; its entire course, inclusive of all
bendings, is only four hundred and forty miles; its sinuosities do not,
therefore, prolong its course more than one-sixth of its length, as
the bird flies. The district which it waters, considered relatively to
its length, is very small; we might almost say, insignificant--thirty
thousand square miles; about half that of the Rhine, and about
equal to that of the Tagus. The low place which this river takes in
the important hydrographical system of Eastern Europe appears not
only when it is compared with its important neighbors, but also when
compared with rivers not in themselves remarkable. From the fact that
its course is so nearly straight arises the dependent fact that the
area of territory watered is relatively to the length of the river the
smallest known. Since it is so uniform in its course, and runs through
a narrow strip of land extending from northwest to southeast, it lacks
to a great extent the variety which tributary streams effect; hardly
disturbed as yet even by the boats of explorers, it remains without
interest, having little to confer upon geographical science, and having
no history which it would be useful to unfold.
In striking contrast with this is the Vistula, the largest river that
empties into the Baltic, constituting, with the Danube, the Elbe,
and the Rhine, the four most important streams of Central Europe. In
size, the Vistula stands in the general hydrographical system of the
globe next to the Rhine,--between the Elbe and the Rhine. The direct
distance of the mouth of the Vistula from its source is three hundred
and twenty-nine miles; the length, including curves, five hundred and
sixty-two miles; the windings themselves, therefore, occupy two hundred
and thirty-three miles, or more than two-thirds of the entire length of
the river. This accounts for the extent of the country that the Vistula
waters. The shortest length of the Oder, that is, measured as the
bird flies, is the same as the Vistula; but its winding is far less,
only about ninety miles, and, therefore, it waters a tract far less
in magnitude than the valley of its neighbor on the east. The Elbe is
a much longer river, measured by the bird’s course, than the Vistula,
it being three hundred and eighty-four miles; but the territory which
it waters is relatively less. The Rhine in both of these respects
surpasses the Vistula in absolute magnitude; the direct distance from
source to mouth is about four hundred and fifty miles; its length,
inclusive of windings, is about six hundred and seventy-two miles; but
the sinuosities do not constitute two-thirds of the whole, and are,
therefore, relatively inferior to the Vistula. This detracts a little
from the greatness of the otherwise majestic Rhine, and the result of
this circumstance is, that the territory watered by both is almost
equal. The diversity, too, in the rate of descent in rivers introduces
another new element, and demands attention in every hydrographical
system; for this also gives rise to new contrasts, and occasions still
other characteristic points of individuality to each river.
But we pass over an enlarged consideration of this, for our object is
to show briefly how the application of form and numbers conducts us
to the principle that underlies all geographical relations. Without
this new employment of form and numbers, this grand principle would be
unobserved; but with its use we reach a clear method of expressing what
could hardly be expressed before, and attain that systematic statement
which geographical science has so long needed, to enable its votaries
to reduce into orderly arrangement the vast mass of confused materials.
To the third point referred to above, the relations of mountains of
medium height to those of the loftiest altitude, we need only allude
briefly in passing, because the very fruitful results of one eminent
naturalist, who has carefully studied the structure of mountains and
mountain chains, have been presented in his various treatises upon
the ranges of India and in his journey to the equinoctial regions of
the New World. That relation of mere height, which used to be exalted
into a matter of prime importance in studying the characteristics of
mountains, and which in the Pyrenees, Alps, Cordilleras, and Himalayas,
is expressed in the series 1, 1-1/2, 2, 2-1/2, has withdrawn into the
background, and now the ridge itself, taken in its average or rather
its ordinary height, is thought to give a more complete and true idea
of its characteristics, and, by being studied in a wider range of view,
the height of the highest peaks is regarded as a single and subordinate
element. This method is illustrated by the following brief category
of relations,--relations which are just and real, and far more worthy
of thought than those of isolated peaks. The general altitude of the
Andes is the same as that of the highest mountains of the Pyrenees; the
general altitude of the Himalayas is the same with that of the highest
of the Alps; the range of the Alps is almost equal in its general
altitude to that of the Pyrenees; they are slightly distinguished from
each other by the superior height of individuals of the Alpine range.
It will be easily seen that the study of the minimum elevation of great
mountain chains reveals the available passes and places of transit;
here is a fresh point to which a great number of facts join in new
relations, and here is a germ whence results distribute themselves over
entire continents; in its application to the making of charts, many
vertical measurements of heights and depths become a rich and fruitful
object of study.
These heights exhibited in tabular views from barometrical and other
measurements, give a basis for generalizations and comparisons, which
are convenient, and will ultimately be serviceable. We have introduced
these remarks on the relations of vertical and other dimensions only as
an index of the manner in which other relations should be viewed.
These remarks on the use of form and numbers, as tributary to the
expression of many relations which otherwise would be difficult to make
clear, may suffice, although the number might easily be extended, to
show how much might and must be done in this direction, not only for
the furtherance of geography as a science, but also to facilitate the
communication of its results, before both scientific advance and the
clear imparting of what science shall gain shall be promoted, as they
should be, and shall take the high place that this new method will
enable them ultimately to win.
As the ascertaining of these relations, although requiring no
extraordinary exertions, would yet demand a patient survey of the best
materials at hand, and a great number of observations made with this
end in view, and as time and means for this are not at the command of
every one, the question has recently been agitated, in consequence of
the somewhat antiquated character of the maps published by the Academy
of Berlin, whether the former progress in this department should not
be still sustained, and the number of improved elementary auxiliaries
be still enlarged. And it has seemed not unsuitable to undertake,
in a manner easy of realization, and yet worthy of the Academy and
of the needs of science, to assume anew this service, and to secure
its accomplishment. With the materials now at command, there might
be gradually formed a work which, while it should embrace all the
relations that geography makes known, should also grasp the central
principles of all _systems_ of relations, reach the common ground
on which they all, greater and smaller, rest, and present its results
in mathematical expression. The clearest ascertainment of the weighty
relations of the earth’s surface to all departments of historical
and physical, as well as natural and geographical, science, would be
the first care, and the discharge of this ought to devolve upon a
geometrician well acquainted with the entire body of details necessary
for the successful preparation of maps. He should be supported by all
the auxiliaries which could ensure success to the undertaking. The
second care would be to display scientific results in the clearest
manner, and so combined as to be applicable to all uses, meeting the
needs alike of physics, natural history, geognosy, botany, history,
and geography. To accomplish this, general charts, tables, and special
maps should be employed, for these agencies serve best to display
the relations with which the study of the earth’s surface makes us
acquainted. The third duty would be to follow this thorough scientific
preparation by giving a better form to the text-books of our schools,
and thus to establish the real difference between the general chart or
the reduced form, which, in consequence of its diminished size, has the
appearance of a copy, and the special map or the real copy. Through
these combined means, geographical science, as taught in our schools,
would enter upon a new course, and, instead of being mere description,
would become an organized system, marshalling its rich materials into
orderly arrangement, and showing constant capacity of advancement.
THE
HISTORICAL ELEMENT
IN
GEOGRAPHICAL SCIENCE.
[FIRST READ BEFORE THE ROYAL ACADEMY OF BERLIN.]
THE
HISTORICAL ELEMENT IN GEOGRAPHICAL
SCIENCE.
[DELIVERED JANUARY 10, 1833.]
THE geographical sciences have to do especially with the earth’s
surface as related to the natural kingdoms, and as made up of forms.
Therefore, their province is to describe the mutual relations of
districts near together, in their special as well as in their most
general phenomena. In this they are distinguished from the historical
sciences, whose province is to portray events in their sequence, and to
unfold, investigate, and exhibit their development in all relations,
inner and outer, general and special. Both classes proceed from plain
and positive details which stand side by side, or from occurrences
which follow each other in the order of time. Yet they soon pass to
more hidden relations, which have at first to be measured by geometry
and chronology, but for which the standard soon fails in the world of
thought, as well as in the physical world. Meantime, the inner laws
of nature, as well as moral principles, come into yet plainer view,
and both classes of sciences, geographical and historical, at length
attain their highest results. These results are, the action of physical
relations and laws upon the combinations and the standards of thought.
Thus both classes of sciences link into philosophy.
We have to keep constantly in mind that there is such a truth as the
contemporaneous existence of things, as well as their chronological
sequence. The science which embraces the affairs of place can just as
little do without a measure of the order of events in point of time,
as the science which embraces the affairs of time can dispense with a
theatre of observation where those affairs can be brought before the
eyes of men. History demands such a theatre for its own development;
it must, whether it declares the need or not, have a geographical
department,--a field where it may display its events; it must give a
prominent position to that science which concerns the _places_
where events occur, whether in the writings of such men as Thucydides
and Johannes Mueller, who open their works with a broad geographical
survey, or in the writings of Herodotus, Tacitus, and other masters in
this department, who give geographical delineations in the course of
their historical progress, and by way of illustration; or, again, in
the writings of such as only tinge their works with geographical tints,
as it were. In the philosophy of history, as Leibnitz and Bacon have
outlined it, and as Herder has carried it into fulfilment, the bearing
of geography has of course a doubly conspicuous place.
But, on the other hand, geographical science can just as little
dispense with the historical element, if it wishes to take rank as
embracing all the relations of extents on the earth’s surface,--not
as an imperfect and partial thing, the mere frame and rafters of a
structure, but the whole perfected dwelling itself, comely, shapely,
and in every part complete.
A kind of blind, unreasoning consciousness of this, as well as the
clear sense of some want, has, therefore, always linked geographical
and historical science together; and the geographers, from Hekatœus,
Dikœarchus, and Strabo on, have gained their richest harvests on the
field of history, while the Oriental nations, the Arabians and Chinese
in special, have given their geographies a strikingly historical
tone. The Europeans impressed upon theirs, in the middle ages, an
ecclesiastical stamp; in modern times, a political stamp. But a modern
school, freeing itself from these old ways, has imagined that a
transition is at hand to a wholly new method of grasping the essential
nature of this science that assumes so many protean forms.
If now this new reform, beginning with Buache’s Physical Atlas and
Gatterer’s brief sketch of Geography, should be carried by its
advocates to its logical results, there would arise, from this casting
away of the whole historical element, a merely physical geography,
which, however completely it might be worked out, would yet signally
lack one part of geographical science, if that science is to embrace
a knowledge of the earth in all its relations. The poverty, and to
a certain extent the stiffness, which at once took away the life
of geographical study as soon as history was eliminated from the
text-books, that the purity of geography might be increased, were
all the more remarkable, inasmuch as these compends did in no wise
penetrate physics deep enough to compensate by thoroughness for the
rejection of history. In order to proceed more securely, their authors
ought to have banished the geometrical and arithmetical element
from their _pure_ science. Not satisfied with the results of
frequent and oft-recurring contests, which have had signal influence
upon elementary as well as more advanced scientific instruction, and
which have flooded our literature with manuals more or less useful,
without giving a single geographical compend which could satisfy a
high scientific demand, there are those who have gone, as is so often
the case, from one extreme to another. Not satisfied with _pure_
geography, they came back so far as to see the historical side in its
higher significance as related to science, and they hoped to give
their books more interest and a higher tone, and adapt them better
to elementary as well as scholarly uses, by interfusing a portion of
history. As people used to be subject to the delusion of regarding
that as military geography wherein roads, bridges, battlefields, and
fortresses are indicated, or that as political geography wherein the
external features of the state are arranged side by side, or summed
up in a tabular view, so they believe that the trunk of geographical
science would be ennobled if it were grafted with various shoots of
history. To accomplish this, appeared, after many old attempts,
Schacht’s Manual of Ancient and Modern Geography for the use of under
classes, a work in which to every description there is added a brief
historical summary, which either embraces instructive anecdotes,
or takes a comprehensive review of facts. In the account of the
Grisons, there is a sketch of the Rascians from the earliest times;
in the account of the Rhine district there is given an abstract
of the history of the Swiss Republic, the battles of the ancient
Romans and Franks on the banks, and the outlines of the history of
the Netherlands;--excellent subjects, generally worked out in an
instructive, sometimes even in a spirited manner. So, after the
announcement of a new geography for the higher classes of our advanced
schools, appeared the work of a very painstaking scholar, Volger,
in which every paragraph, be the subject lands or people, cities or
mountains, sketches the history in the briefest outlines, with the
description of the subject as it appeared in ancient, early, and modern
times. To this work, as to the one last mentioned, there cannot be
denied a certain usefulness; and yet, without ignoring the good which
both books, written by personal friends of my own, include, and not
wishing to approach these and kindred works in too critical a spirit,
it must be confessed that no scientific progress has been made in
consequence of them, and that from them cannot come any true gain for
that method which in no point, from the rudiments on to the completed
outline, fails to display a scientific unity.
That science can never stand which refuses help from other sciences,
and which will not be linked with them in that chain which unites all
true sciences, and makes them one; and so, too, a science which lacks
an inner germ, which might be devolved into rich and abounding life,
can never come into contact with, and make fruitful, other sciences,
but will remain dead and ineffectual, and no human power can waken it
into activity. Lacking an inner vital germ, it can never be an agent in
giving generous culture to the human mind, and would have no place in
the circle of constructive sciences.
Geographical science could, by virtue of the nature peculiar to itself,
only arise from the scattered observation of places remote from
each other sometimes, and always in a manner isolated. It naturally
joined with this, to a certain extent, historical phenomena, whether
occurring in the lives of individuals or of nations, whether in the
career of kingdoms or states, but not in the sense of phenomena
taken collectively, but separately, and without note of sequence
and arrangement in them. After so false a course, a long time was
needed before the one great end of geographical science could be
seen,--the grasping of a conception of the earth as a whole, and the
getting at what may be called its essential nature. The task to be
done was to get away from mere description to the law of the thing
described; to reach, not a mere enumeration of facts and figures, but
the connection of place with place, and the laws which bind together
local and general phenomena of the earth’s surface, _ut cum eventis
causæ copulentur_, to use Lord Bacon’s words. The whole course of
historical events is intimately interwoven with the vast geographical
field that embraces all the forms of the globe, and whose wide-reaching
domain, taking in, as it does, the whole of the productions, life,
material, and resources of the earth, is like the most variegated piece
of mosaic.
What then is the task imposed upon geography, in its work of analysis,
but to reach the connection which exists between parts; or, in other
words, to get at the relation between places and what fills and
occupies them? This leads us to,--
Firstly: the arithmetical relations, or those of aggregates, distance,
and size.
Secondly: the geometrical relations, or those of conformation and
situation.
The material itself of the earth’s surface is our study; not as mere
material in its nature, composites, and forces, for these fall under
two other sciences, physics and chemistry; but according to its
diffusion, its length and breadth and thickness,--matters which the
two sciences just named hardly touch. We have, of course, to treat of
those things which result from all the combinations of geographical
forms in their diffusion, and thus we are led to matters of aggregates,
distance, and size, and also to those of configuration and situation.
Man cannot be regarded as dissociated from those things which cover
the earth and occupy space. He belongs to the earth, and to the three
natural kingdoms, the mineral, the vegetable and the animal, having,
by virtue of his material form, characteristics found in all of these.
And yet man, whether regarded as an individual or as having collective,
national existence, is not bound to one spot as are the members of
the three natural kingdoms; still he is very much modified by his
surroundings, both in his physical and intellectual nature. Thus it
results that the effects of situation, however great they may be, upon
the inanimate world as well as upon living forms, and the spiritual
development in special of human beings and nations, of the whole human
race indeed, is an important part of the themes which fall within the
province of geographical science. But, though laws do not change, the
elements which make up the earth’s surface are in constant change.
All the surroundings which condition life are in never-ceasing flux
and reflux; obeying the great promptings of the earth, they manifest
a constant movement and advance; they are all obedient to great and
harmonious laws of progress. But man, although following the laws of
development which have their home in his soul, yet, so long as he
is a creature moving upon the surface of the earth, is brought into
conflict with the unceasing movement of his surroundings. And thus
reflex influence of place upon the life of man, and the moulding of the
human race, physically and spiritually, become the crowning task of
geographical science.
The field of geography, which at the outset seems to embrace all the
domain of human knowledge, and which, after it has been shown that its
work is not to explore the depths that lie below the earth’s surface,
but to confine itself to the diffusion of the forms upon the surface,
even then in its rank richness has not attained the most abundant
fruit, seems now to be sufficiently well marked out to prevent him who
tills it from wandering into neighboring domains,--well enough known to
have force and time spent upon the kernel, instead of being wasted upon
the shell.
It is the observation of the whole which gives us the measure of the
parts. And now that we have spoken in another place of the numerical
and geographical relations of various places, and of their forms
according to their horizontal extents, we would add some further
observations in explanation of that which, in place of mere anecdotes,
seems to be, in a general sense, the historical element in geographical
science. We do this, not so much in view of exalting the significance
of this expression, as not to lose sight of it, as is too often done.
And since a protracted treatment of this subject is not practicable,
we shall be compelled to gather some details from the entire body of
facts, in order to render our theme the more intelligible.
Places, times, and forms, in their special features, in all that
relates to themselves alone, do not change in their value; they always
remain one and the same. But in their relation to the earth, viewed
as the habitation of the human race, they do change their real value
and significance with the progress of centuries. The contents of the
globe have to be regarded as altering from age to age, from decade to
decade. For if, to use Humboldt’s expression, man creates new means
for himself, in order to penetrate further into the earth’s crust and
the sea’s depths, and with the most exact instruments to extend the
field of his senses, ascertaining the temperature at the bottom of the
ocean, studying the unknown components of the soil and the waters,
examining the salt basins, the strata of earth and of water, and all
that pertains to them, by means of the thermometer, the sounding
apparatus, the pendulum, deep-sunk wells, and the like, what else can
occur than that the various localities on the earth’s surface take
entirely different relations from what has been the case, in the light
of a dwelling-place for man? And just in proportion as, by means of
the barometer, the hygrometer, and other instruments of measurement,
as formerly by the telescope, astrolabe, and other discoveries of the
ingenuity of man, the field of human observation and sympathy has been
widened, in the same measure has the outer world been brought nearer,
and the relations of man to the globe which he inhabits changed.
And not only the regions above and below the surface, but also those
lying in all directions, have been transformed by this chain which
links the entire earth together; whether by improved instruments, such
as those just named, or by scientific advancement, or by that spread
of the human race over new lands, flourishing, as well as animals and
plants, in a change of climatic conditions, and bringing within the
range of civilization regions which have before been untraversed,--the
remote shores within the polar circles, the loftiest mountain heights,
the solitary islands of distant seas, formerly utterly unknown as the
habitations of men. What once lay beyond human reach now has not only a
reality to us, but lies accessible, and regions once remote come daily
more within our reach and the circle of our intercourse.
The contents of the earth’s surface are distributed into two
forms,--the fixed and the fluid. With the separation of the
_immovable_ forms one from another, correspond, as complementary
to it, the differences which exist in all the fluid or _movable_
forms, such as seas, oceans, as well as the atmosphere. The fluid or
movable forms have double relations,--those of space and those of time;
of the space in which they move and act, and of the time during which
they move and act. Their motion and change of place are again of two
kinds,--either according to mechanical and chemical laws, as is the
case in the diffusion of the imponderables, heat, electricity, and
magnetism, in whose course of working cause and effect are so closely
brought together as to seem undistinguishable and coincident; or the
motion is more palpable, as in the case of bodies obeying broad and
comprehensive laws,--the winds, tides, oceanic currents, the atmosphere
in its ever-varying phenomena, and meteors; and, in general, all bodies
in immediate connection with these and dependent upon them.
To these mere blind and mechanical motions, utterly irresponsible
for any connection with human wills or human intelligence, there are
joined the uses to which man reduces them, compelling the agents of
nature into obedient service. Thus, the use of sails and steam is but
an application of these appliances to the broad fields and spaces
which the world offers; and nearly all the means which man employs
to facilitate his ease of passing from place to place are coincident
with helping forces of nature. And not only are the parts of the earth
united in a close and intimate connection, by the application of human
intelligence to the elements which the earth furnishes, constraining
them into service, but the history of these triumphs of man’s science
becomes inwoven in the same field, and our interest is drawn to that
gradual mastery which mind has won over nature, and the past and the
present are seen as the links of a never-ending chain.
Although many natural occurrences, such as volcanic eruptions,
earthquakes, and floods, have caused great and rapid changes on the
face of the earth, yet they are not the agents which are the most
effectual, and which have the largest share in reorganizing the surface
of the planet; there are slow yet surely working causes which are more
deeply seated and powerful. Their results are recorded in history, but
they themselves are not seen in the course of their action. In the
progress of centuries the earth has been completely transformed in its
outward relations. We might call the discovery of this truth the grand
dowry of our race for future ages. It teaches man to view the earth as
the house in which he lives, sustaining the same relation to him that
the body sustains to the soul. The earth, viewed in this light, has
a progress and a growth no less truly than the child, who is led on
from youth to the full development of his physical strength and mental
powers. And when the time of this progress and growth has become well
advanced, and the earth has reached a kind of maturity, the proper
season has come for tracing connections and dependences, for grasping
the whole range of physical facts. Man’s task, in viewing the earth,
becomes like the farmer’s, as he familiarizes himself with the lands
which he cultivates. Thus, even in the time of the Phœnicians, the
Indian Orient seems to have been brought near to Western Europe. During
the life of Columbus, a new half of the globe, whose existence had been
suspected but not ascertained, and which was not even _suspected_
to be within any moderate distance, was wedded, as it were, to the
other half of the globe. The southwestern half of the oceanic world,
the Australian archipelago, with its thousands of scattered islands,
has within little more than half a century been united, in terms of
considerable intimacy, with the northeastern and continental part
of our globe. And thus the various regions of the earth, formerly
widely separated, have been so closely brought together as to promote
civilization, benefit science, extend the productions of human
industry, and to exercise, in consequence, a perceptible influence
upon the history, politics, and general culture of nations.
In the effects of what we may briefly designate the historical element
upon the physical changes of the globe, lies the difference which
exists between geography and astronomy. Geography points out the joint
relations between the different parts of the globe; astronomy treats
of the earth as a planet, and discusses the laws which connect it with
the universe. Geography has to do with telluric formations; astronomy,
with those grand principles which are absolute and universal. The
_unchanged_ distance of the planets one from another, and their
constant courses in their orbits, have undergone no variation since the
reigns of the followers of Sesostris, excepting a progression of the
signs of the ecliptic. But the distances on the earth’s surface, which
at first sight would seem equally fixed and constant, have been largely
changed, and the distance of India from Egypt in the days of Berenice
was reduced one-half during the reigns of the Ptolemies, when Hippalus
made use of the monsoons in crossing the Indian Ocean; and how much
nearer yet have the Indies been brought to the western world by the
application of human science and skill in bringing the forces of nature
into obedient service.
Geography differs from the various branches of the natural sciences
in this: that, while they are all devoted to the same general theme,
the so-called natural sciences discuss special laws and forces and
organizations of matter, while geography has to do with all that
promotes human agencies, the capacity of passing from place to place,
the compelling of all the elements to be the servants of man in
his work of taking possession of the globe. The universe remains,
therefore, like Deity, unchanged; the forces of nature as exhibited
upon the surface of the globe, in their combination, action, and
results, remain also unchanged; they are only better understood now
than formerly. Solomon and Aristotle described only a few compared with
those now known, and since their days the uses to which men subject
nature have largely increased.
But in a historical point of view, that is, in the view which makes the
earth the habitation of man, it has undergone radical changes. Yet,
in the broadest sense, it is true that the globe has been subjected
to little modification. For, unable to renew itself by any process,
as its organic forms reproduce themselves by propagation, placed as a
whole beyond the action of chemical or magnetic forces, it attained,
as crystalline forms do, its perfect consummation in the moment of
its creation. The globe, regarded in its unity, could not be changed,
as its component parts can be, nor could it be subject to decay or
dissolution. It held, and always has continued to hold, the same
relations to the universe as other planets, and, like them, it has not
been subjected to changes which we might call cosmical or universal in
their character. Only by becoming the theatre of history has it become
subject, in a certain sense, to the laws of change, and made subject to
mechanical and intellectual forces.
And yet the earth, as made up of subordinate parts, is subject to
changes, many of them deep-seated and radical. The heavings of
earthquakes, the eruptions of volcanoes, the workings of a gradual
dissolution and of chemical forces, have not been without their
influence on the configuration of the globe. Even the places of
greatest inequality have not remained unchanged; many such rough
formations have been reduced, and have been converted even to the
uses of men, making the highways sometimes for the world’s traffic.
Masses of material whose uses have been discovered have been drawn
away from this place, or accumulated at that, such as humus and peat;
many like substances have now lost their claim of being found only in
certain limited regions. Many organic forms, on the other hand, have
entirely disappeared, or their number has been materially reduced. We
see this in the groups of petrifactions found in lakes and swamps and
streams, in the displacement of wild by cultivated floras in Egypt and
Lombardy, the disappearance of game and of fur-bearing animals, the
dislodging of colossal animals from the polar seas, and of the droves
of wild elephants from the interior of the continents. The forces of
nature which might be made subservient to mechanical purposes, as well
as those which were formerly unrestrained and destructive, have been
subdued into use, the influences of climate surmounted by civilization,
while the tropics and the poles have been transformed by the agencies
of science and knowledge. In many places want has been transmuted to
opulence by artificial culture; man has learned everywhere to gain the
mastery over nature.
In view of all these things it is supposable that many districts on the
globe, have acquired their importance by the changes which man has been
able to effect in their nature; that, in consequence of human efforts,
all their characteristics have been materially changed.
It is evident that the forces of nature in their formative influences
upon what is human in national development always had to withdraw more
and more as these influences advanced. At the very commencement of
history, the activities of nature were impulses which exercised a very
decisive influence upon the infancy of mankind. The diversities thus
occasioned we may perhaps yet perceive in the characteristics of the
various races, and in the diverse groups of nations whose origin is
lost in the past.
But this influence had to decline; at the appointed time the individual
rose above the limitations of childhood, which is far more subject than
manhood to the influences of nature. Civilized humanity threw off after
a while, as the individual had done before, the constraining fetters of
situation. The influences of the same conditions and position on the
world’s surface do not always remain the same.
In the case of unprogressive nations the aspects of the earth do not
seem to change; such nations have little relation with the shifting
phases of the world’s surface. But nations who are advancing or going
back in civilization are brought into direct relations with the changes
which are constantly occurring in the forms and the configuration of
the globe. A few examples will show how this is, not alone in isolated
countries, but in whole continents. The first inhabitants of the sandy
valley of the Nile were wanderers in the desert, as the surrounding
tribes, the Libyans and the nomadic Arabs, are even at this day. But
the civilization and culture of the Egyptians transformed this sandy
waste into the richest grain country in the world, by the simple
expedient of irrigation. Hemmed in on all sides by rocky wastes and
barren plains, they created a country whose fertility is its noblest
monument. In consequence of the indolence and tyranny of successive
generations down to the reign of the Osman dynasty, one part of this
fruitful valley relapsed into a desert, another, the rich Mareotis,
into a marsh. In this manner many changes were going on, modifying
not only their surface, but also affecting their relations with all
with which they were in contact, through the influences of commercial
intercourse.
We must attribute such remarkable changes, even when they occur in
continents, to the configuration of the surface. From this cause it was
that, during the early centuries of modern history, the refined regions
of southern Europe were effectually excluded from the uncultivated
Celtic and Teutonic hordes of the North by a great and then impassable
barrier,--the untraversed chain of the Alps. South of this vast
range lay the civilized states of the Old World, at the base of its
northern declivities extended the barbarous states of the North. But
this barrier, reared by nature, and which was so effectually a line of
separation in earlier times, has, within the past five hundred years,
no longer been an obstacle. So great has been the change, that within
the past century this colossal formation has gained such easy access
as even to have become one of the most attractive objects, in respect
to natural scenery, that the world displays. A long range of civilized
nations and states, extending from the Provence to Styria, has arisen
out of the former wilderness, the deepest valleys and the mountain
sides have become habitable, and in many places densely peopled; the
forests have partly disappeared. Every valley and mountain pass can be
penetrated, and even heavy loads can be conveyed with ease to remote
places. At the time of Hannibal and Cæsar the intercourse between the
North and the South was carried on at great disadvantage, but now
the country is perfectly open to transit. As the wild and seemingly
intractable horse found in the steppes of Turkestan is transformed into
the docile steed, subservient to the needs and uses of civilization,
so has this Alpine region been transformed in all its relations to the
surrounding lands. To such an extent do the great forms of nature lose
their power to separate or to connect nations, and are annihilated, as
it were, by the supremacy of the powers of the human mind. The physical
conditions remain the same, yet the introduction of what we call the
historical element, that is, the forces which attend man, and which
spring from his intelligence, teach and enable the human race to be
independent of the obstructions which nature places in the way of
advancement and change.
In the same light we may view the Ural chain, the eastern frontier
of Europe. It differs from the Alps in this regard in degree rather
than in kind. It never has been the barrier intervening between
civilization and barbarism, only between varying shades of ignorance.
Yet, having fulfilled its function in separating, for many centuries,
two continents from each other, it has become, since the reign of Peter
the Great, even the medium of connection and of transit between Europe
and Asia. The time will yet come when this mountain chain will no
longer be regarded as a barrier between the Orient and the Occident of
the Old World, as it was in the days of Herodotus; it is much nearer so
in the case of the Ural than of the lofty chain of the now impassable
Caucasus, although the latter lies closer to the centre of classical
and historical countries. In considering how the forces of man enter
into the process of subduing mountain chains to human uses, we discover
an entire range of relations that can be called neither physical nor
historical, but which offer a rich field for the investigations of
geographical science.
Such changes as those which we have thus briefly indicated in the
relations of mountain chains are equally apparent in plains, sandy
wastes, primitive forests, and low swampy tracts. So, also, on a more
enlarged scale, is it with continents and oceans. Formerly seas and
oceans were but hindrances to human progress, impassable obstacles
which the winds of heaven alone could freely cross. But now the mineral
wealth of the world, the fruits of agriculture, the various classes of
animals, and even the races of men, have taken new relations to the
earth, because they have been scattered over regions to which they
were formerly strangers. In earlier times, a few objects were drifted
about loosely and at hap-hazard, such as the fruits of the islands of
the Pacific, drift-wood, ice-cakes, and sea-wraik, tossed from coast
to coast by the currents of the air or ocean. Now, it cannot be said
that seas separate lands or continents; they are the chains that link
them together. They form not only the most convenient, but, in fact,
the safest medium of passage and of transport, and the oceanic regions,
which encompass three-fifths of the entire surface of the globe, have
been changed from a vast impediment to human change and progress, to
the most sublime instrument in accomplishing their furtherance.
The progress of navigation has completely altered the whole relations
of the globe and its inhabitants. Had it not been for the modifying
influences of navigation, how would it have been possible for the
volcanic rock of St. Helena, in former ages wholly unknown, and only
used within recent times as a watering station, to have been changed,
not twenty years after the opening of the present century, into an
island which we may call a neighbor of Northern Europe? From the
opening of the fifteenth century for nearly a hundred years,--from
the time of Don Henrique el Navegador to that of Bartholomeo
Diaz,--Portuguese navigators attempted in vain to sail from England to
the Cape of Good Hope. Now the voyage to this cape is regarded as a
short passage, and the use of favorable winds, currents, and seasons
of the year, enables the mariner to traverse the 9200 geographical
miles, lying between 50° north latitude and 40° south latitude, in
from fifty-five to sixty days, or a distance of about two hundred
miles in every twenty-four hours. The southern point of Africa can now
be reached by one from the northwest of Europe in fewer days than it
required years in former times.
At the close of the eighteenth century ships required eight or nine
months time, and in unfavorable seasons even longer, to sail from the
mouth of the British Channel to Canton. At the present, the passage,
which is equal to half the distance round the world, is reduced to
one-half of this time. Rarely does it require more than an average of
one hundred and twenty days to accomplish this passage. (Prof. Ritter
here details some records of trips which had just been made when
this was written, in 1832; but the improvements introduced by steam
navigation and by the use of clipper ships have superseded results
which, though striking then, now seem not at all remarkable.) It is so
with all ocean voyages; and the North American fast sailers vie with
British ships in shortening the distance between the Old World and the
New. The New York sailing packets sometimes accomplish the passage, a
distance of nearly 3500 miles, in less than sixteen days, or about 220
miles in twenty-four hours. The Atlantic Ocean has become but an arm of
the sea, and to cross it now has lost its greatness and its heroism.
The small interior seas, the bays, the arms of the ocean, are already
changed into sea-bridges, which we can cross with the greatest speed
in contrast with the slowness of roads over land; for the Baltic is
traversable for half the year, and the Mediterranean the entire year.
The _Meteor_, when it made its first passage in the English
service from the Levant stations home, carried letters of the third of
March from Corfu, of the seventh from Malta, and was from the tenth to
the twenty-fourth in passing from Gibraltar to Falmouth, including the
time spent at Cadiz to take in freight.
Throughout the regions of calms on the oceans, as, for example, in the
African waters, the use of sailing ships has nearly ceased; the use of
steamers has superseded the old method of navigation; and thus vessels
pass rapidly through regions which were once the most dangerous.
So, too, the waters of the continents, the colossal rivers, have lost
their former length; they are practically shortened six or seven fold;
and whereas they used to be navigable only in one direction, excepting
with the greatest difficulty, their current is now almost as readily
stemmed as followed.
The Mississippi river system, one of the largest on the globe, which,
with its net-work of branches, waters an area of 1,200,000 square
miles,--a district a third as large as Europe,--traverses, from the
Mississippi’s source to its confluence with the Missouri, a distance of
twenty-eight hundred miles, while the Ohio, the Illinois, and other of
its branches, are not of much less size. In 1833, there were no less
than three hundred steamers in daily employ on this river system.[4]
Ascending with difficulty, it used to take from sixty to seventy days
to sail from Cincinnati to Pittsburg, a distance of five hundred miles;
now it is accomplished in nine days.[5] In the city of Cincinnati alone
were built, in twenty years, from 1811 to 1831, one hundred and eleven
steamers for use on the Mississippi and its branches. Louisville, on
the Ohio, and St. Louis, the chief commercial city of Missouri, six
hundred and thirty miles apart, are now connected by lines of steamers
which accomplish the passage in less than a week; in like manner, too,
is St. Louis connected with New Orleans, and boats can now pass in two
weeks from one city to the other, even against the stream; and, thus,
all these are brought nearer together than they formerly were; the
whole river system of the Mississippi, from the Gulf of Mexico to Lake
Michigan, has assumed quite other dimensions, and the long labor of
months, in passing from New Orleans to Pittsburg, is embraced already
in less than three weeks, and will be reduced still further yet.
Thus, these constantly moving elements have now been bound, as it
were, and subjected completely to the will of man. Purely continental
relations have now to be studied in the very heart of continents; they
have been driven back to the places where rivers rise. This penetrating
to the centre of wide-spread regions in search of continental
characteristics takes the place of that older method which designated
as continental what had merely a continental form.
Although these changes are not so evident in other countries as they
are in America, yet they are everywhere accompanied by the same
results, and new combinations are effected which not only influence
contiguous lands, but which, also, extend to the civilization of more
remote nations. A system of commercial exchanges is one of the results
gained. By means of the Rhine steamers the orchards of the Palatinate,
Heidelberg, and the Rheingau supply the London market in a few days
with the first cherries and grapes of the season. Steamers now pass up
the Ganges, from Calcutta to the upper provinces of Hindostan, beyond
Benares, Agra, and Delhi; a voyage which formerly required four months,
in consequence of the opposing winds and currents, is now accomplished
in two or three weeks by steamers. By means of steam the Bay of Bengal
becomes traversable, and Rangoon, at the mouth of the Irrawaddy, the
great river of Ava, becomes an easily accessible port; and during
the season of monsoons the straits of Malacca are navigable as far as
Singapore. The Chinese alone, stationary in everything, have despised
and ridiculed this new instrument of civilization, this “fire thing,”
as they termed it; and so long as this indifference to the auxiliaries
prevails among that people, the interior of the Chinese empire will
remain unchanged, while in neighboring countries, such as Australia and
India, the whole aspect of nature is transformed. Nations must follow
in the course of civilization, although it be only in the guise of
promoting colonization, commerce, and warlike expeditions. A remarkable
instance of the independence which steam has given to the embassies of
powerful governments in modern times, is found in the voyage of the
English ambassador, John Crawford, who sailed up the Irrawaddy, in the
steamer “Diana,” to the residence of the emperor of Ava, a distance
of more than five hundred miles, in twenty days. The effect of this
movement, surrounded as he was by a treacherous nation, was such as to
render easy the gaining of that commercial treaty which put an end to
the Burman war.
Australia, too, is not so far distant as in former times; and although
discovered but little more than a century ago, it is able to tread,
even now, the same path of civilization with the older continents,
since, young as it is, their mature results and attainments have been
merely transported to it. It is easier and takes less time to reach
Australia at this day than it does to penetrate to the interior of
Asia, the cradle of civilization. So, all over the world, distances
which were once regarded as almost untraversable, are now readily
traversed by the aid of sails and steam. Harbors, found everywhere,
afford places of general refuge, and, provided with all the appliances
which an improved system of navigation has introduced, they serve as
the spots where many widely radiating interests converge in unity.
The whole physical conditions of earth are changed as the mind of man
gains wider and firmer rule; and in the course of centuries the subtle
life and less palpable characteristics of nations assume different
aspects. America is now less than a journey of ten days’ distance
from Europe, and other continents proportionally near. But Europe, as
we have said before, is the only one of the continents that has, as
yet, the greatest advantages from its use of the sea as a means of
transport or of travel. These advantages would be still greater if the
isthmus of Panama could be made navigable, for, as Humboldt has shown,
the east coast of Asia would be brought six thousand miles nearer the
west coast of Europe, a distance equal to nearly a quarter of the
circumference of the globe. This would realize the dreams of Columbus,
and his golden Chersonesus would be as near as he fondly imagined it
to be. The progress of improvement in this direction is by no means
at its end; perhaps as great advances are yet to come as have been
already experienced. The carrying of a canal through the isthmus of
Suez, joining the Levant with the seas of the East, is not impossible;
the sandy hills of the isthmus did not, in all probability, separate
the waters of the Red and Mediterranean seas in former times, and
form a link to join Africa with Asia. Yet we learn from the present
condition of Europe that some parts of the earth are more favorably
situated for progress and improvement than others; that no dull
repetition, no possible cessation, can ever occur in the advance of
the world’s condition. The continents of the Old World have, through
a continual course of development, completely changed their relations
to civilization. Times and distances are not what they were; both
have been so shortened that, in our loose freedom of speech, we talk
of their annihilation. In this, it is true, the West has outstripped
the East. The old centre of civilization has approached the sea.
Places once noted for culture and refinement have relapsed into savage
wildness. The extensive plains of the interior of Asia are not more
united by the ties of commercial intercourse than they were in the days
of Alexander the Great, during the caliphate or the crusades. In those
times the medium of admirable highways opened those districts, more
than is now the case, to interchange of every kind. And while in our
day the improved means of navigation have brought the coasts of Asia
into closer relation with the world, the interior may yet be regarded
as sealed and unknown.
The East Indies, the West Indies, the old Indian Archipelago, might now
be regarded, when looked at from Great Britain, Holland, or France,
as integral parts of Europe, maritime members, as it were, of the
European world, standing, despite the intervening distance, in direct
contact and in the closest relations. Though they lie so remote from
us, yet incessant commerce and travel have brought them to our doors
and made them neighbors. They are so far more truly than the mouth of
the Euphrates or the Tigris or the Gihon is neighbor to its source,
though the natural conditions of the basins of those rivers are uniform
through their entire length. They are neighbors far more than many
interior countries are which border directly upon each other, as Bengal
and Thibet, Persia and Sogdiana, Afghanistan and Cashmere, the Caucasus
and Bucharia, the west of the Chinese territory and the east of Europe.
For centuries the southeast part of Europe and the central parts of
western Asia have, in spite of their nearness, been in fact widely
sundered. The chains of the Caucasus and the Taurus have been barriers,
which even yet have hardly been passed; the savage tracts of the
Chirgises and the Turkomanns, the rooted barbarism and tyranny of the
Turkish hordes, and, lastly, the still more formidable barrier of the
Mohammedan religion against all Christian peoples, have been greater
obstacles in the way of close relations between these countries than
intervening oceans would have been.
What a powerful influence the agencies which follow the course of
human intelligence exert upon the globe, is abundantly testified in
the ruins of former affluence which abound in Asia Minor, in the once
flourishing Sogdiana, and throughout western Asia. In tracing the
history of countries, we have to do not only with those forces which
favor progression, but with those which promote retrogression. Science
has to take note of the most general and comprehensive causes, and of
those too which are minute, specific, and moving over little space.
As history may be analyzed into a vast number of biographies, so, in
investigating the broadest and most general results, we may trace them
to what is in the truest sense local, individual, and special. Yet,
without a general survey of historical events in their wholeness, it
would be difficult to see at a glance the changes which have come
over the globe. The common method of describing countries, nations,
and states geographically, is just as senseless as writing universal
history according to one idea. The historical element cannot justly
be excluded from geographical science, for the globe only attains to
its noblest uses when it comes into relation with man, and becomes
the theatre of human deeds. The study of mere laws is but a dead and
barren task if we do not apply them to man, if we do not regard them,
and, indeed, all scientific deductions, as the key to the solution of
problems of history.
In order to illustrate a point on which we have touched in the course
of these remarks, we may mention that in the months of winter,
when snow can be used, the easiest course from Cronstadt to the
harbor of St. Peter and St. Paul, in Kamtschatka, is in a direct
line across Russia and Siberia, although for the transportation of
bulky merchandise the longest way proves itself the shortest way,
and, instead of the seven thousand miles of land, the still more
intimidating distance by sea is preferable. Geography does not lay
great stress upon what is long and short, measured by geometrical
standards; it simply judges by the tests of convenience and
practicability.
The smallest group of islands in the world, perhaps, the Sandwich
group, lying intermediate between three continents, has gained a great
influence on the commercial relations of Eastern Asia, Australia, and
Western America, by the improvement of harbors and the building of
ships, thus stimulating the trade in many articles, as, for instance,
the interchange of furs between Russia, China and North America. It
is not unfrequently the case that a district of small extent may have
far more intimate relations with neighboring seas than many countries
of large extent less favorably situated. Cities especially, which,
like Alexandria, Ormuzd, Macao, Havanna, and in modern times the free
port of Singapore, have been founded at the most advantageous times
have attained to prosperity in a very brief term of years. So much
depends upon a favorable situation in relation to the sea, that from
the beginning of the sixteenth century the Cape of Good Hope, which
served the Dutch as a means of promoting their own aggrandizement,
might have exerted a mighty influence on the whole southern hemisphere,
had its value but been known. The British have at last discovered its
worth, and are making it instrumental in enlarging their political and
commercial power.
With what remarkable rapidity has the development of Australia, the
antipode of Great Britain, proceeded since communication by sea has
reached its present perfection. It may now be said to be an adjunct of
Europe. Its progress has been furthered by the remarkably favorable
formation of its coast, its excellent harbors, its fine climate, and,
in general, its situation relatively to the other continents, and the
remarkable adaptation of the wind and water-currents to the necessities
of commercial intercourse between Europe and itself. A drawback to
the prosperity of the southern hemisphere is found in the fact that
the large number of islands isolates each, and, as each is touched
comparatively rarely by ships, its connection with civilization is too
fitful and inconstant to insure the highest progress. But Australia is
so large, and withal so productive, and navigation has been directed to
it so largely, that its progress has been rapid without precedent.
The ancients confined the arena of history within the limited
sphere called by them the _orbis terrarum_; the people of ages
intermediate between us and them extended their knowledge to all parts
of the Old World, while modern history encompasses the course of events
over the entire globe. What we designate as the historical element has,
therefore, a varying influence upon physical geography, dependent in
part upon the epoch of time, and in part upon the progress which man
has already made.
In earlier times, when nations were more isolated than now, and when
they knew very little of that comprehensive science which embraces
the relations of the whole earth, the local influences of their own
land, its climate, soil, and formations, were much more powerful as
formative agents than they can be at present. So individualized and
independent of surrounding nations were they, that those which had been
richly endowed with natural gifts, and which had gained a high degree
of culture and refinement, stood more plainly in advance of others not
so favored than the close connection of nation with nation and their
mutual dependence allows in these modern times. Men grew up in lives
of stern simplicity, uncontaminated by contact with strangers, rich
in their love for home and their native land. This love nourished and
strengthened their patriotism and national unity so long as immigration
and commercial intercourse had not stimulated change and augmented
wealth. We find ready instances in the Egyptians, Persians, Hebrews,
Greeks, and Italians. In ancient times, districts which did not enjoy
the advantages of foreign intercourse only reaped what their own
industry had sown, but yet under this advantage, that what was their
own was in its complete maturity. The Libyan Desert retained its noble
date-palm; the Lebanon, and the region where the Jordan rises, enjoyed
the lofty cedar as their own; the shores of the Greek Archipelago
rejoiced in the fair plane-tree, and Italy nourished its favorite pine.
And these natural productions we may regard as typical of a certain
degree of refinement which all nations reached, unassisted by the
advantages of dependence upon their neighbors’ advancement.
In ancient times, also, the range afforded by the three continents
then known was, in consequence of the diversity which they offered, an
ample field for the development of history. Men put more value then
than now upon simple and isolated forms, and did not busy themselves
with complexities, with mutual dependences and relations. But with
the opening of commercial intercourse all was changed. The ocean lost
its vastness in human eyes, and all distances were shortened. A study
of the world requires now, not alone a survey of the continents, but
of the oceans, and the laws which are active in promoting oceanic
influences.
The methods of descriptive geography have, therefore, changed
materially in these our days from what they formerly were when the
world was younger. If we were to advance from the _orbis terrarum_
of the ancients to the present conception of the globe, we should
require new methods of delineation, in order to convey a faithful
picture of the changes which modern times have witnessed in commercial
and political affairs. A simple contrivance could easily be made, by an
ingenious mechanic, out of unfolding plates, capable of being brought
closely together, to indicate the world as known to the ancients, and
then to be pulled out, piece after piece, to represent that gradual
enlargement of the world which the discoveries of navigators have
made a part of human knowledge. Any such contrivance as this would
show the great changes which have accrued in the material,--the
capital of geographical science. The improved means of communication
would show in one place a great diminution in the value of horizontal
distances, and in another a reduction of heights, as obstructions in
the path of transit over continents. Europe would be comparatively
but little affected by this, but Asia would be largely changed in its
relations to the other continents. Though its interior is still nearly
as inaccessible as it has ever been, yet its coast is brought into
contact, as it were, with more civilized lands. So, too, in other parts
of the globe, we should find that the application of the forces and
intelligence of man has completely transformed their connections and
mutual dependence. If we do not study the map of the modern world in
this light, it is a caricature, and not a portrait of the globe; and
our conceptions of relative spaces and distances will be all false if
we do not keep in mind the working of that historical element, as we
have repeatedly called it, that compelling of the elements to obey the
human mind and human will, which makes many regions neighbors which on
the map seem most remote, and which widely disjoins those which seem
almost in contact.
How erroneous would have been our representations of the solar system
had we continued to calculate the distances of the sun and the planets
from the earth, as in former times, without regard to the laws
discovered by Kepler, or the theory of attraction propounded by Newton,
both of which correct former false estimates of the distances which the
stellar bodies traverse, and the times in which they accomplish their
courses. And no greater influence do the laws of attraction exercise
over planetary motions than history exercises over the surface of the
globe, as a home for its inhabitants. Our common literature gives
no sign of a recognition of this view of the globe. The earth as we
commonly regard it, as presented on our maps, is a caricature, and not
a portrait of features which are closely united in living relations. It
is too much the custom to apply to it the mere standard of measurement
of length, breadth, height, and depth, and to forget that true nearness
consists of ease of passage from land to land, and true distance in the
difficulty of communication.
We trust that enough has been said to indicate the difference between
the mere accidental mingling of history with geography, and that
necessary blending of the two which results from the application of
human forces and intelligence in bringing the world into subservience
to the wants and progress of man.
We have also made it a prominent desire, in what has been said above,
to treat of geography as a systematic whole, and to show that in it, as
everywhere else, the part can only be known from a conception of the
whole, and that without this conception every effort to grasp a part
will be imperfect, one-sided, and unscientific.
And a scientific treatment of the different countries of the globe,
viewed as the cohering members of the earth as a whole, whether such a
treatment were physical, ethnographical, or political, would be within
the province of a system of geography more perfect than we at present
possess; and it will only be with the attainment of such a system
that civil geography can be subjected to a scientific and thorough
discussion.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 4: The number is now far greater.--TR.]
[Footnote 5: This time is now abbreviated more than
one-half.--TR.]
NATURE AND HISTORY
AS
THE FACTORS OF NATURAL HISTORY:
OR, REMARKS ON
THE RESOURCES OF THE EARTH.
[FIRST READ BEFORE THE ROYAL ACADEMY OF BERLIN.]
NATURE AND HISTORY
AS
THE FACTORS OF NATURAL HISTORY:
OR,
REMARKS ON THE RESOURCES OF THE EARTH.
[DELIVERED APRIL 14, 1836.]
A KNOWLEDGE of the widely varied resources of the earth, in their
diffusion over its entire surface, in their amounts, their kinds,
and their relations to special lands and peoples, as well as to the
entire system of the globe, would always constitute, if rightly
viewed, a real, if not a prominent, part of geographical science. Up
to the present time, however, this has by no means been the case.
Blinded by the vastness of her riches, she overlooked their systematic
proportions, and never compassed their uses and applications. She
never rose above her material possessions, which always remained a
lifeless and a useless load to her. She never pressed forward to a
systematic survey of her whole domain, which, without an understanding
of its contents, could neither be useful to her, nor to the circle
of sciences. If the kindred sciences, history, physics, climatology,
mineralogy, geology, botany, zoölogy, had not met her from their side,
she would still be playing with her treasures, like children with gold
pieces, as she did four hundred years ago.
It is, perhaps, not incorrect to say that a systematic and accurate
description of the mineral, animal, and vegetable kingdoms is to be
found in our standard treatises on natural history; their localities,
the places where they may be found, are detailed in our works on
geography; and thus in a general and yet not inaccurate way their uses
and applications to meet and supply all the needs of man are known.
But granting all this, can we consider the subject as thoroughly
investigated in its entire relations, when we consider the
extraordinary progress which science has been making in late years?
By no means. A correct statement of the whole system of connections
and dependences in geography is wanting, the limits of all countries
are not definitively designated, their historical expansion and
development has not been fully described, no accurate delineation of
the distribution of the earth’s surface among the different races has
been completed, no account given of the course along which commerce,
civilization, colonization, and all their instrumentalities have
advanced in attaining their present position. The place where all these
subjects ought to be fully unfolded is in our geographical treatises.
In history we do not meet this lack, but find with the statement of
results the statement of their causes; in the natural sciences, we
find phenomena traced carefully in every direction to discover their
entire round of relations and dependences; but geography, instead
of attempting to be the complete mistress of its own domain, and to
embrace as truly its own what rightfully falls within its precincts,
surrenders its own resources to other sciences, for them to work and
develop.
The diffusion of the gifts of nature over the whole surface of the
earth exercises now, and always has exercised in the past, a powerful
influence upon the characteristics of the inhabitants of different
districts. The very productions of the soil have been interwoven, as
it were, into the texture of the human mind. Through all zones, and in
all stages of the world’s progress, the effects of the distribution
of natural productions have been felt. Even the very nature of human
thoughts, feelings, and abstract ideas has been subjected to this
influence. We cannot glance for a moment at the characteristics of
agricultural, hunting, fishing, and of shepherd people, without seeing
how their occupation stamps the whole of the feelings and thoughts,
directs their simple philosophy of life, and gives tone even to their
religious ideas. To trace the workings of the agencies involved in this
is often a difficult task, and often defies our most carefully directed
efforts to ascertain them.
A thorough knowledge of the earth’s resources in their relation to
the earth itself is yet wanting, as well as what we have just been
tracing, the connection with the characteristics of man. Nor is their
classification according to the three natural kingdoms, or according
to their local distribution, yet perfected. And yet a knowledge of
this is as necessary to a complete understanding of the organization of
the globe, as the inquiries upon which natural philosophy has entered
in order to gain an insight into phenomena which have hitherto been
unexplained.
If, as we have shown in previous articles, we need to employ
mathematical figures and expressions in conveying correct impressions
of form and size, and cannot dispense with natural philosophy in
elucidating many of the problems of hydrography, we find that natural
history is just as indispensable in enabling us to master those
provinces of geography which have their closest relations with the
productions and resources of the earth’s surface. We have already
attempted to show the close relation between history and geography, and
yet there are just as intimate relations between natural history and
geography, and the study of the connections between them is no less
profitable.
With ever enlarging preparation and observation with more thorough
study in all departments, something further might, perhaps, be won in
behalf of geographical science, if the element of natural history in
its relation to that science were more fully grasped by geographers. On
the one side, scientific geography would be enabled to confine the vast
flood of observations in natural history to its proper domain, and to
draw from it in fit channels for the fertilization of its own fields;
on the other side, becoming master of these rich acquisitions, it
would attain a higher place, and gain a new means of studying nature
and history through the unity of both in the characteristic individual
forms of the three natural kingdoms.
The earth viewed as a whole, or as divided into land and water, which
again have their own subdivisions, is the producer, wherever human art
has not turned it from its natural functions, of objects of every kind,
which we arrange and classify in definite groups, deducing from them,
when our classification is complete, the laws of their organization and
distribution. It is thus that we become able to explain and illustrate
the play of the great natural forces, and gain a systematized
conception of the productions of the globe.
Grouping all the productions of a district together, and tracing
certain principles of distribution in their diffusion, the mind is
able at last to grasp the whole characteristics of the region, and
to determine, with considerable accuracy, what would be the mental
characteristics of the people inhabiting it. This would be the more
easy were the people in a rude and primitive condition, but it is
still possible in the case of the most cultivated. The influence of
external conditions is so great (and we include not alone the mere
productions of the earth and its developed resources, but also what may
be summed up, as an eminent English writer has done, in the expression
_aspects of nature_), that when men are rudely torn away from
the scenes of their childhood, and have lost the old associations,
whether of mountains or plains, whether of wood or prairie, of island
or sea-coast, they experience a restless longing for the old home,
which seems to agitate every fibre of the heart, and which is satisfied
only by returning to the old scenes once more. Psychology thus has
this question to answer: whether this secret longing of the soul for
the old haunts may not accompany man even to the highest stages of
civilization, and prompt him to revisit the home of his ancestors. Many
instances of this desire to return to the old family estate, or in the
case of colonists to revisit the parent country, may be found, and they
all seem to find their explanation in this longing to be again among
the scenes and associations which were formative in moulding family
characteristics and national traits.
The full enjoyment of continuing in undimmed freshness the relations
which bind men to their former homes gives an element of strength to
those nations that cherish it, of which those who neglect to revisit
the spots where character was formed have as little conception as the
civilized European has of the sacredness ascribed to the Ganges by the
Hindoos, or as the mathematician of to-day can have of the ecstasy of
the discoverer of the relations which arithmetic reveals, in advance
of the knowledge of mathematical truths held by antiquity. It cannot
be doubted, too, that the constant presence of the planetary hosts in
the view of man had wrought, not alone fitful impressions, but deep and
permanent influences upon the human character, affecting the nature
and disposition and peculiarities of mankind all over the earth, and
lasting through all times. Thus, whether it be from the contemplation
of the forms on the surface of the globe, or the spheres which float
through the sky, the influence of nature becomes one of the prominent
sources of the individuality of national character, and men take,
therefore, from their surroundings a stamp, the peculiarity of which
is dependent upon the locality where they live. The nomadic Arab is
not only indebted to the country where he lives for the necessity of
hunting the creatures which supply him with food from day to day, but
the wild deserts and the cloudless sky give him that relish for a free
and untutored life, and for those quick and soaring dreams of fancy,
with which he always delights himself. The reserved and meditative
Hindoo, accustomed to the profuse luxuriance of his country, takes
the fantastic ideas of his mythology from plants, flowers, and trees,
and believes in the transmigration of souls from men to beasts. This
infinite diversity and richness in the forms of vegetation, some
of them being of colossal magnitude, the aspects of beauty and of
terror which daily confront him, in time make him their subject. His
surroundings exercise at last the strongest of influences upon him,
until, imagining himself under the sway of divine or demoniac powers,
he becomes at last an easy victim of tyranny.
If we take as an example of the truth which we are illustrating the
inhabitants of the tropics of the Old World, we notice that, west of
Arabia, one part overran the arid and barren desert of Libya as far as
the Atlas mountains, and soon attained a high intellectual development.
Another part, east of Arabia, took possession of the rich and fertile
plains extending as far as the straits of Sunda, but exhibiting a far
inferior degree of refinement and mental advancement in its population.
It cannot be the climate which occasions this difference of results,
for in this respect there is not a great difference. It is effected by
the combined influences of natural scenery, food, and, in one word,
geographical surroundings, and these have stamped the characteristics
of the theology, philosophy, and poetry of those districts for long
ages.
All the impressions derived from this source will be as various as the
diversities in the causes are numerous. They will give tone, too, to
all the occupations of life; will affect the mariner, the tiller of
the soil, the hunter, and the peaceful dweller in the city; they will
have their sway in times of peace or in times of war; they will be
felt equally by men who live together and by men who live in solitude.
Man’s complexion, his customs, all his characteristics are modified, in
whatever latitude he may live, by his surroundings. The poems of Ossian
are but the echo of the wild, rough, cloudy Highlands of Scotland; the
forest song of the Canadian, the negro’s plaintive melody in the rice
fields of the Joliba, the refrains in which the hunters of Kamtschatka
record their exploits with the polar bear, and in which islanders
celebrate their fishing feats and dangers, are only tokens all of the
influence which the scenes of daily labor have in moulding the thought
and feeling of men.
To what an extent Nature can, through a lofty and spiritual
interpreter, express herself in and modify the culture of the
individual, as well as of an entire people, can be seen on Ionian soil
in the verse of Homer, which, called forth under the most favorable
sky, and on the most luxuriant shore of the Grecian archipelago, not
only charms us to-day, but, bearing this impress, has determined what
shall be the classic form through all coming time.
This action of the forces and phenomena of nature upon the human race
in all its varieties has been one of the chief springs in the education
of man and in all historical development. But for a full view of this
subject we must refer the reader to special works on ethnography; and
yet there does not exist a thorough treatise dealing with these laws,
which are the very foundation of true ethnography.
In looking at the combined conditions which determine the
characteristics of nations, it is not the right course to dwell
exclusively on their primitive type and constitution, on what tradition
recounts of the peculiarities of their infancy, but rather to trace
how far the bodily constitution of the people, their temperament,
modes of life, habitations, customs, language, and religious opinions
have been formed or modified under the influences of that magic circle
of nature which surrounds them, and which so powerfully affects what
is individual in national character. Poetry and its sister in the
arts, landscape-painting, have tried to wield these instruments, and
to produce the same effect that the subjects do which they in an
artificial manner represent. They have not tried in vain. The poet
and the artist are of all men able to stir men’s hearts the deepest,
because they use the very agents which have already wrought the most
powerfully in forming their natures and shaping their genius. We see in
this daily repeated fact the echo of the sublime truth which we are now
illustrating. Poetry and painting, when they represent natural scenes,
only reawaken the impulses which had been caught during childhood and
infancy, and testify how mighty a hold the agencies of nature have upon
us.
This thought suggests the bond of connection which runs through all the
forms of the earth, revealing subtle analogies, which, though real, are
yet difficult to trace; but of these we will not speak.
Analysis must always be the precursor of synthesis, and before the
three natural kingdoms can be viewed in their wholeness, they must be
divided and subdivided, and arranged in families, genera, species, and
orders. And yet we can hardly say that the time has come for geography
to elevate itself to a branch of natural philosophy; and though it is
unquestionable that the conception of the earth as a single organism
is the true basis of geographical science, yet an attempt to build a
system, complete in all its parts, upon it, would, like many geological
systems in past times, be imperfect, from a want of data. To build a
structure which will endure for ages, we need a more comprehensive
range of materials than have as yet been accumulated. But to sum up,
in the manner of most of our geographical works, all the products
which are met in any province, to connect them together just as they
happen to be found, and without regard to any general principle, and to
make no mention of their uses, effects, and higher relations, is not
only tedious, but unprofitable for any scientific results. The common
methods of description will always fall short of the richness and
fulness of nature, and will always be regarded as unsatisfactory and
commonplace. The highest advantage which they serve is to discipline
the memory of the reader. In such masses of isolated facts, no chain of
cause and relation can be grasped; there is no profitable comparison of
analogies, no internal progress, no good results worked out from past
inquiries; there is no perception of the great object of geographical
investigations, no thought as to how the facts of this science can
be adapted to the wants of mankind, no true conception of the great
economic functions of the globe. While a new method of inquiry and
study would enlarge our knowledge, the modes of research hitherto
familiar will only ensure and perpetuate the same narrowness of view,
the same want of progress, and shut the gates upon an increase of
knowledge.
The constant desire manifested in modern times to supply these wants
by full lists of the productions of every quarter of the globe, and
to collect specimens of minerals, flowers, and animals, is deserving
of notice; for an accurate knowledge of the mineralogical, botanical,
and zoölogical riches of a country must always be desirable. Yet these
strictly belong to the department of natural history.
Besides, it would be impossible to bring together even the most
important productions of all countries; it would fill the volumes
of libraries, and, even if we should reduce them within moderate
dimensions, repetitions could not be avoided. The facts, too, which
would be given would have to be regarded as fragmentary and isolated;
their number would preclude the power of tracing their connections
and mutual relations. Doubtless much instruction might be gained from
so complete collections, yet it would only be drawn fortuitously;
the amount of matter to be examined would be so great as to form an
insuperable barrier, hiding from sight what we were endeavoring to
discover.
Efforts have been made in modern times to supply past deficiencies,
and to give a systematic shape to the older, stiff, and pedantic
catalogues of productions, by introducing some branches of natural
philosophy,--climatology, for instance,--and thus some valuable
geographical works have made some progress in disciplining into an
orderly arrangement the infinite richness of the gifts of nature.
By such steps as this we compress the vast range of facts within
such limits as to be within the grasp of the mind. A science like
climatology, which is simple in itself, and which is the same all over
the globe, becomes thus especially serviceable in promoting scientific
advancement. And by the word climatology we would imply everything
which is covered by latitude and longitude: the situation of places
relatively to the temperature on land and on sea; all matters connected
with the seasons, with isothermal lines, with the average distribution
of cold in winters and of heat in summers, with winds, both regular and
variable, with all hygrometrical phenomena, such as dew, rain, and the
climate of oceans, of sea-coasts, and of the interior of continents. In
consequence of help from this source, physical geography has made great
progress within late years, and climatology has not only given what we
have briefly hinted above, a systematic knowledge of many products of
the earth, but it has also showed conclusively how closely geography is
united to other sciences. Climatology designates the conditions under
which vegetation thrives and new organizations assume their functions;
and therefore no comprehensive view of the earth can be taken without
a recognition, at least, of the science which marks out the zones, and
establishes, indeed, all climatic distinctions.
Yet the use of auxiliary sciences to illustrate geography is just
in its infancy. Very few physical laws have as yet been applied to
generalize the relations of the natural productions of the earth. So
far as vegetation is concerned, the most dependent of all nature’s
gifts upon soil and climate, we find certain limits marked out, beyond
which only special classes of vegetables can exist. But we are not
aware that any attempt has yet been made to study the laws involved in
this, nor to classify and group such productions according to their
natural relations.
Schauw, who has published a scientific work on the agriculture of
Europe, has done more than any previous inquirer to form such a
classification. He established in that continent four zones, not
determined so much by latitude as by the trees indigenous to them;
one was the zone of the pine and birch; another of the beach and oak;
another of the chestnut, and still another of those tropical trees
whose verdure is continual. He also indicates important subordinate
zones, especially those characterized by the cereals, the vine, and the
olive.
Such zones of indigenous trees and vegetables, taking their character
from the chief products of each,--the landmarks of climate, as it
were,--may easily be established over the entire earth. No better means
could be devised for distributing, according to climate, the immense
variety of the productions of the globe, as well as for making that
scientific division into genera and classes, from a glance at which it
could be determined whether each is found in the field designed for it
by nature.
Much light has been thrown upon this method of classification by
Humboldt’s voyages in tropical America, Brown’s travels on the coasts
of Africa and Australia, Link’s researches into the botanical forms of
the past, and by other learned investigations; yet such works have not
to any great extent treated of any countries but those in Europe and
the islands of the globe. We ought to except, however, the attempt, the
first of its kind, and elementary in its character, to illustrate the
connection of natural history with geography, contained in Canstem’s
chart of the diffusion of plants over the globe; nor ought we to
overlook Meyer’s Geography of Plants, a work of great value, on account
of its practical, personal observations.
Without entering into that closer classification of the vegetable
kingdom, which would be needful were it our object to gain some
conception of the copiousness of the plants upon the earth’s surface,
in other words, to learn how vast are the domains of a single one of
the three great natural kingdoms, we have to speak briefly of the other
two kingdoms in respect to their resources.
Our knowledge of the distribution of the animal world, like that of
the vegetable world, is limited to the results of such investigations
as those which Zimmermann has prosecuted, carried on by personal
inquiries and observations. So far as regards climate and elevation
above the sea-level, animals are less dependent on the soil than the
vegetable world. The sphere of their activity is greatly influenced by
their manner of gaining their food. The laws of their diffusion are,
therefore, widely different from those of plants, although in many
respects these two kingdoms perfectly coincide.
A much more complete and finely graded physical scale, for the
various regions of the globe, than the instruments which have been so
elaborately prepared, might be gained, if the living organism of the
animal and vegetable world, in their most distinctly marked localities,
should be used as an index; that is, if the orders of beasts, birds,
insects, fishes, etc., supposed to be more or less dependent upon
position and climate, should be examined and compared according
to their diffusion. The suitably modified forms of sea and land
birds, particularly the American birds, according to Lichtenstein’s
investigations in that hemisphere, offer already valuable hints of what
can be done in this direction. The season when all the varieties of
plants come to their leafage and their bloom, the times of coming and
going for all the migratory birds, might serve as a rude climatometer,
and not be observed without important advantages.
The relations of the third or mineral kingdom to the globe, independent
as this kingdom is of the forms found on the surface of the earth, and
connected but indirectly with the existence of organized productions,
are examined with strict scientific exactness in works which treat of
geognosy and geology. And yet it may be remarked, that, coincident
with all the analogies which we discover in entire domains of physical
geography, the aspect of all the features of the outer crust of
the globe is dependent upon the inward arrangement, or the laws of
stratification, and on principles of elevation, depression, length,
and breadth, similar to those which we have indicated as having so
great influence in the instances of the forms of the exterior of the
earth and their effect upon the character and history of man. In the
diffusion of all the contents of the vegetable and animal creation over
the Old and New World, through all zones, and in all climates, there is
the greatest possible variety of form and characteristics, even if the
classes or families in which they occur be the same; yet in the mineral
kingdom there is the most remarkable uniformity; the various kinds of
strata are the same, and the mineral forms are homogeneous over the
whole earth. The individuality which characterizes the continents is
not found in their mineralogical features, and the diversity which
prevails in their flora and fauna is not shared by the components of
their soil.
There is, however, in respect to the combinations of strata and the
depth or deficiency of soil, a great diversity in the geognostic forms
of the globe. While the same component parts or elements are found
everywhere, even in districts where the formations are irregular
and unique, the quantity of the proportions combined changes. While
some of these formations maintain their place, or become large and
prominent, others, which are their concomitants, or are subordinate to
them, disappear, contrary to all analogies. And herein is one great
difference between organized and unorganized matter. Organized bodies
disappear entirely from the earth; but unorganized forms, that is,
those of the mineral world, outlive decay, and hold enclosed, in a
fossilized state, the petrified bodies which, were it not for such
guardianship, would have been lost from the earth.
Thus the components of the kingdom of which we speak, homogeneous as
to their nature, but heterogeneous as to combination and position, are
traced in all quarters of the earth, and at all heights and depths;
subject everywhere to the principle which we have hinted at, that
its elements are the same in all lands, in all climes, and under all
conditions; whereas the forms of the animal and vegetable kingdoms vary
wholly with the place where they are found, and with the influences
which are brought to bear upon them. Geological formations, in other
words, do not vary in their inner nature. Some plants and some animals
which belong in one district are found with unchanged forms in another,
but the components of the mineral kingdom are everywhere the same. And
they are found, too, generally in a certain similarity of combination,
although in respect to extent such collections have no resemblance.
Hills and mountains are often composed of the same materials, though
the careless eye would, from the great disparity in size, see no
resemblance. So, while the landscapes of the world seem widely
various, rejoicing in all the profusion of color and variegated forms
of beauty, the soil which underlies them, and which supports their
life, is often composed of substances so nearly alike as to be almost
undistinguishable from one another.
A mere enumeration of all the important minerals will as little
cover all that ought to be embraced in an account of the geognostical
contents of the earth’s surface, as a mere list of animals could
rightly be termed a treatise on zoölogy. It is necessary to state their
connection with the country where they are found. To be studied in
relation to their localities are the varieties of earth, the elementary
mineralogical forms, slate, limestone, the sandstone formations,
basaltic columns, trachyte groups, porphyry, veins of metal, gold and
tin ores, salt rocks and salt springs, mineral and thermal springs,
diamonds, gravel and silica, boulders, plutonic and fossiliferous
rocks, and many others. Whatever country comes under consideration
must be judged geologically; the inorganic components which enter into
the structure of its forms must be critically and carefully studied,
and all their relations and influences traced; for geology is just
as applicable in furthering our knowledge of geography, as far as
the latter science includes unorganized matter, as climatology is in
assisting us to understand the relation between geography and organized
forms.
The results of all these studies, the working of natural laws, and
the exceptions to them, which from time to time appear, are the true
material to be inwoven into geographical text-books, and not, as is
often the case, a superficial discussion of geology, mineralogy,
botany, zoölogy, climatology, and natural philosophy. Only by using
them correctly, by drawing from them the generalizations which are
applicable to our theme, can we make them of service. To bring them in
unconnectedly is but taking upon our shoulders an unnecessary burden.
But we have elsewhere indicated the deficiencies of our geographical
manuals, and we will not rehearse them at length again. We will only
say that we have not yet met with a work which meets in an adequate
manner our wants. Whatever has been done worthily in this way, is what
has been exclusively physical in its bearings, or what has been done
with a main eye to the furtherance of other sciences.
The demands that a scientific description of the resources of the
earth, according to physical laws, should form a part of geography,
are not exhausted. As has already been said, the statements which
have hitherto been made regarding the earth’s surface have been
merely concerned with questions of extent and absolute position;
but their specific character, that which connects them with certain
localities, and sustains that connection, has not yet been traced;
their _positive_ characteristics, the cause of their activity in
influencing the life of the world, and their _relative_ situation
to the world as a whole, have not been investigated with the care which
they deserve. The various productions of nature are yet to be studied
in their relations, before their unity can be seen,--before they can be
viewed as a broad and comprehensive system.
This work has hardly been begun; the science of _comparative_
natural history has been as yet studied but little; classes, genera,
and species have been treated absolutely, rather than in their mutual
connections; and the great fact has not yet been developed that the
roots of all things, if we may so say, are woven together in unity,
while in their leaves and trunks they are widely separate and unlike.
The first task of a naturalist is, therefore, to discover the sphere
of productiveness for every individual form, before specifying its
relations to the botanical or animal kingdom, and before advancing to
the study of all the classes which are found in the same localities,
or which are widely diffused. There is so great a diversity in all the
relations to which such a method of inquiry leads, and there is such
a complexity of the combinations of the gifts of nature, that there
must be an indefinitely large number of organizations in the animal and
vegetable world in nature really connected.
And not only the natural history of these organizations, but also the
laws of their acclimatization, the investigation of their importance
in the countries where they are indigenous, the tracing of their
development onward towards perfection, or towards their maximum
diffusion, or, on the other hand, of their diminution and gradual
disappearance from the earth, fall strictly within the sphere of a full
description of the earth’s resources. But it is not enough to become
acquainted with the primitive home of indigenous products, for the
means of their diffusion now are quite different from what they were at
former times. From the times when men lived on the sports of the chase,
and led an unsettled, migratory life, down to our days, when new modes
of transplanting are taught by our scientific agriculturists, and when
commerce quickly transfers and exchanges the gifts of all lands, there
has been a constant progress.
A true and fruitful inquiry into the resources of the earth, or,
to speak more exactly, the introduction of natural history into a
geographical work, and the tracing of the connection of natural
philosophy, climatology, and geology, present three principal questions
preliminary to an explanation of the laws of propagation on the globe.
The object of the first is to discover the primitive land, the soil
which first supplied the conditions of their existence, and to trace
them from their life in paradise, so to speak, down to the time of
their depreciation, and to their disappearance. Instances of this may
be found in various species of grain, in some fruit-trees, and in
spices.
The second question concerns itself with the agency of natural causes,
as a means of diffusing the gifts of nature, and of carrying them into
regions where the conditions of their existence will differ somewhat
from what they were in the sphere where they were indigenous. We refer
to such agencies as the movement of boulders, the transferring of
seeds, either through the air by violent winds, in the sediment swept
down rivers, or by the currents of the ocean; what may be carried,
and sometimes in fact is, by animals and birds; and, in general, the
effect of the constant movement which is going forward on the globe.
It would be impossible to specify all that might be auxiliary to this
diffusion. Yet it is easily understood how the application of natural
history to geographical investigations accounts for the great influence
of physical causes in promoting a change of place; how inanimate nature
itself has produced great effects upon the external appearance of the
globe; and, again, how man has made the instrumentalities of nature
the servants of his will,--has changed the whole aspect of relative
distances between place and place, making near what was once remote.
The object of the third will be distinctively the investigation of the
sphere of civilized man; to trace the agencies which he has brought
into play to increase the diffusion of natural organizations. This
question concerns itself with what was called in the preceding paper
the historical element; its special dealing is with the world as
the home of civilization; it shows how the diffusion of the earth’s
products has followed the course of human migration, whether by land
or water, and indicates the bearing which colonization, and even
persecution, has had in promoting distribution, and how there has been,
as the result of the movings of men, increase here, diminution there,
and sometimes a kind of oscillation in the diffusion of all kinds of
organizations. This last question shows, too, how ethnography and
natural history are connected by geography as an intermediate link, and
that the two former can be studied without interfering with, but rather
as auxiliary to, the latter.
The solution of the first of these three questions, that is, the one
which relates to the primitive home of the gifts of nature, conducts
us to the soil and climate which were specially favorable to them. The
collecting of kindred groups gives a character to every locality, and
aids in establishing the archæology of a country, and in understanding
its civilization. By continuous researches, those districts which have
been the most richly endowed are brought more conspicuously into view
than others less favored, and the attention is especially directed to
those that have had a greater influence over the rest in consequence of
the superior advantages which they have enjoyed from the beginning.
The inquiry into the second question, or the one which relates to
diffusion promoted by the inanimate agencies of nature, leads to a
discrimination between such products as must, from the partiality
of nature, be confined to certain limited but unchangeable
localities,--gold, diamonds, and spices, for example,--and those which
were specially designed, in accordance with more bountiful designs,
to be more easily distributed over the earth. And while the former
began to be, in the course of time, the points of attraction for the
avarice of nations, or, in some cases, the incentive of nobler impulses
in stimulating scientific research, the latter,--flocks, seeds, the
cocoa-nut fruit, and the like,--distributed by natural agencies,
prepared regions less endowed to become capable of supporting human
existence.
To employ a bold but true figure, we might liken the productions of
nature which were confined to the spots which produced them to islands,
which stand alone and unconnected in the sea; but when the agencies of
nature had scattered them abroad they became like continents; and as in
continents there is the closest connection between the various parts,
so in process of the wide distributions of natural organizations they
are commingled in the nearest relations.
The third question advances to man, the noblest of created things,
of whom we may say that he is the head of all the organizations of
the earth, as the lion is king of beasts, and as the palm is queen of
trees. Man has a capacity for progress not unlike that of which we
find abundant examples in the vegetable and animal kingdoms. As some
of these are developing and progressing, while others are diminishing
and dying out, so man exists in all stages of advancement, from the
savage to the most highly civilized. A great part of this advancement
is owing to the habit of travel so common among men. As nations move
their homes, and as they colonize, they become in time so ennobled that
their primitive characteristics disappear, and their connection with
their former places of abode is lost. This habit of travel brings them
into contact with objects whose uses they have not hitherto known, and
which in time become much diffused, and are considered as indispensable
to life. Such are the horse as a means of locomotion, and rice and the
cereals as articles of food.
To trace this third class of results, the guidance of history is
invoked. In studying the laws which control the diffusion of natural
resources, natural philosophy, climatology, and natural history must be
submitted to the uses of geography and history.
After investigating all three modes of diffusion which have just
engaged our attention, that of original creation, that caused by
inanimate agencies, such as winds and water currents, and that which
man directs, and having examined the localities which have exercised
a special influence upon the earth as a whole, we shall find that we
have gained important knowledge of man in his relations to nature.
Such branches of this knowledge as ethnography, physical and political
geography, have themselves been unfolded by the new improvements
in agriculture, manufactures, mechanics, as well as from advancing
commerce, trade, and colonization. Still, such is the distance which
intervenes between the great divisions of the earth, that commerce is
the main agency for promoting the diffusion of the world’s products,
and yet its powerful influence has never been so fully treated as it
deserves. It is to commerce that we are indebted for the blending
together in a common stock of all the varied productions of the earth,
for the light which the men of one country can lend to those whose
business is the same in another land. Commerce, therefore, is the great
combiner of all the activities of the world.
The study of the agencies everywhere promoting the distribution of
all the productions of the earth leads us to see that, in large
and small countries alike, diversity only guides to harmony; that,
though the gifts of nature are heterogeneous, yet they fall into hands
which can mix and unite them in true proportions and make them all
of service. More than this: it draws in distinct and well defined
lines the characteristics which give rise to political and physical
divisions, and traces with clear hand the reasons which stamp its own
individuality on each.
From all this it becomes apparent what an influence is exercised on
the progress of our planet by the situations of countries and their
productions; how these modify and determine political boundaries at
the present time, and will continue to do so in time to come. The
historical course of every country is read in its natural conditions,
and from the primitive endowment of a continent its capacity for
historical development is legible at a glance.
And when geography shall be able to collect, in a truly scientific
manner, all the resources of the earth, presenting them in all their
relations, and as the source and cause of wide and lasting influence,
will that science take a position which it has yet never reached.[6]
REMARK.--As appendices to a thorough work on the resources
of countries, the reader will find serviceable the various treatises
on the diffusion of the date-palm, the sago-palm, and others of this
family; those on the plantain (_Musa_), the mangrove, tea, coffee,
cotton, silk, opium, frankincense, camels, diamonds, tabascheer, pepper
(_piper nigrum_), faufel, cinnamon; on the extent of the district
containing the banyan tree, the Indian lion and elephant; on the
diffusion of the Indian pearl;--all of which have been partly treated
of in various volumes of my General Comparative Geography.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 6: It may be remarked that the sharp criticisms of Ritter
upon the geographical treatises of his day and the times preceding, as
well as the hints which he has given in many places in these papers,
have been greatly influential in their results. Such works as those of
Frederic de Rougemont and Heinrich Berghaus are elaborate performances
in Ritter’s method, while smaller treatises in the same manner are now
numerous in the English, French, and German languages. For a tribute to
Ritter’s influence, the reader need only turn to Rougemont’s _Precis
d’Ethnographie_, and to Guyot’s “Earth and Man.”--TR.]
THE
EXTERNAL FEATURES OF THE EARTH
IN THEIR
INFLUENCE ON THE COURSE OF HISTORY.
[READ BEFORE THE ROYAL ACADEMY OF BERLIN.]
THE
EXTERNAL FEATURES OF THE EARTH
IN THEIR
INFLUENCE ON THE COURSE OF HISTORY.
[DELIVERED APRIL 1, 1850.]
IF we glance at a globe, which, although the best representative of
the earth that we have, is yet inadequate to express perfectly the
form of its surface (although the spherical form conveys best that
unity in diversity which so powerfully strikes the mind,) the most
prominent characteristic which meets the eye is the vast complexity,
the apparently chaotic confusion of land and water, interfusing and
interpenetrating each other, and presenting in their contrasts not
the slightest trace of a systematic arrangement. No regions marked by
straight lines, or lying in perfect geometrical configurations; only an
intricate net-work spread out over the earth. The poles themselves are
only mathematical points which result from the earth’s rotation, having
no reality besides. No architectural symmetry, to which our eyes are
accustomed in works of human art, is to be perceived, not even in that
measure which meets us in the organisms of the animal and vegetable
kingdoms. And this completely unsymmetrical, apparently planless
whole, which can hardly be compassed with repeated observations, has
something in it which bewilders the senses, and only the names that
we give to the separate parts prevent us from viewing it as a chaos,
and enable us to see that thought and order have had a part in its
creation. In studying the world men have paid far more attention to
its forms in detail than to the consideration of their unity, and the
geographical treatises have chiefly confined themselves to descriptions
of the earth’s natural features. Geographical science has thus narrowed
itself within very small domains, and has become a science of mere
isolated facts; she has not yet risen to a place where she may view
the relations of facts, contemplate high and universal laws, and thus
become a science which, instead of grasping mere details, shall compass
the earth as a whole.
Although the earth cannot be adequately represented on the reduced
scale of an artificial globe, since the latter can only be a poor
symbol of the former, yet we have been obliged to adopt from this
inadequate representative the terms of expression with which we
describe the earth. And so the greatest part of our geographical
terminology has been drawn from this copy in miniature of the globe,
instead of from the original itself. As it is impossible to conceive
of that vast net-work of physical forms which is thrown over the great
world as pertaining to the smaller representative, our terms and
definitions, as illustrated by school globes, can only be imperfect,
incomplete, and by no means adequately thorough for scientific
purposes, whether in the study of superficial extents, or of heights
and depths, or of the relation of different districts to each other, or
of parts to the whole.
But works of nature have this marked distinction from works of art,
that although the latter seem to bear the signs of the greatest
excellence, to be consummately perfect, and symmetrical down to the
smallest details, yet on a closer search we discover that an inner
connection of parts is wanting; the microscope, too, reveals an
external roughness, whether it be in the most delicate fabric or the
most finished mechanism, the most beautiful pictures or the most
polished surfaces. But the apparent disproportions and incongruities
and roughness of nature’s works dissolve into a finer and nicer
organization when scrutinized under the microscope. The delicate
threads of a spider’s web, the exactness of form in vegetable cells,
the arteries of animals, the regularity of the smallest crystals, even
of those too small for the naked eye, are examples in point. Nor is
this contrast seen alone in the things which are minute and delicate,
but also in the mutual play and relation of larger bodies; in such are
revealed the workings of the laws of nature to which the sciences of
chemistry, natural philosophy, optics, and mechanics are indebted for
their being. And ought we not to find this contrast in the largest
of bodies which we have to study closely,--our own planet,--even if
we were acquainted with its surface merely in a superficial manner?
Has the earth reached its present stage of progress in course of the
workings of law, or by following without aim and plan the dictates of
irregular, internal forces? How can we answer these questions when we
consider the advance of the human race, study the development of man,
and see that our earth is only his nursery, or rather, we may say,
the school of man; its highest function being to assist him in his
training, and to prepare him for the discharge of the noblest duties of
life?
Every plant demands the soil most suitable for it, that it may become
capable of bearing fruit. Every form of the animal creation has an
element in which it was intended to draw its being. And shall man be
bound to a habitation opposed to his nature? Should chance bind him to
a home which is not in harmony with his necessities? Because we are
not yet able to compass the undeveloped riches of the earth, are we
to consider its parts as a mere unorganized conglomeration, which has
happened to take a globular shape, and, carelessly tossed from the hand
of the Maker, has been left to its own course, to follow no law but
its own unregulated will? And has man no inward capacity of progress?
We have warnings enough in nature not to judge of things which pertain
to the Infinite and the Eternal by the small standards which we wield
in the present; warnings not to confound our impressions with their
source, nor to consider the laws of nature the result of _our_
sagacity, but rather what a happy discovery shows have existed always,
and which were in older times unrevealed. The gradual formation of
nebular worlds, the seeming irregular movements of the winds, are some
of the many examples that teach us that the most perfect unity and
order exist in the utmost apparent disorder and confusion.
The longer we investigate the surface of our planet and its apparently
unconnected parts, ever gaining a better knowledge of its nature, the
more clearly a perfect accordance in all its relations, as well as a
progressive development in them, are seen, especially if the natural
sciences and history aid in illustrating their connection. Astronomical
topography, geodesy, hygrometry, geognosy, meteorology, and natural
philosophy have done a great deal to make these things clear; and if
we study the historical development of individuals and nations, and
compare the various productions of nature according to their indigenous
character, we discover that their situation is always conformable to
the strictest law; that there is no confusion in their arrangement, but
that there is everywhere perfect order.
There is no occasion for dwelling here at length upon the elements
which are most evidently influential in conditioning the life of the
globe,--air, water, and land. These have been spoken of in a previous
paper in a general way, and the former remarks do not need to be
repeated here. We also pass over the well-known accumulation of the
continental masses in the northern hemisphere, and the contrast to this
found in the wide diffusion of water in the southern, in consequence of
which the preponderance of heat, the superiority of population, and the
ease of communication and the interchange of ideas are greater in the
northern regions of the globe.
Humboldt has called the attention of students to the pyramidal
and wedge-like form of the southern points of the continents in
the antarctic hemisphere and their influence on the globe; it is,
therefore, not necessary to enter fully upon this subject; we only wish
to remind the reader that, in consequence of these pointed extremities,
all marked southern extremities are the most susceptible of all to
external influences.
Perhaps less known than the above is the great contrast between the
land hemisphere and the water hemisphere southwest of it, which
two divide the possession of the globe, and give us two worlds, a
continental and a maritime. In the latter we find the most extensive
oceans, while the only land is found in islands and in the pointed
extremities of continents; in the former we find nearly all the
continents, while all the large masses of water may be regarded as
inland seas. New Zealand is the centre of the oceanic hemisphere; while
southern England and the coasts of the North Sea are the antipodes of
New Zealand, and the centre of the land hemisphere. England enjoys an
insular position, in addition to this great advantage, and hence has
been enabled to take almost undisputed possession of the seas, and to
carry its commerce and its dominion over the world.
The barrier which separates the continental from the oceanic hemisphere
is the belt of coast-land which crosses the meridians and parallels
diagonally, making a circle almost as large as a great circle of the
earth. This belt of coast-line forms a certain zone of transition
between the two hemispheres. The various characteristics of both are
seen in the daily change of land and sea winds, and in many other
climatic phenomena. For in this great ring of coast-line, intersecting
as it does the northern and southern hemispheres, and forming the
periphery of the oceanic world, is included the whole sea-coast of
Africa, of Southern and Eastern Asia, and of West America, which
completes the circle. On the south this circle is widely broken, for
here the continental form is completely missing. No trace of that
transition between land and ocean is found there, upon which depend the
phenomena of evaporation, dryness, and moisture, the direction of the
winds and the ocean currents, and the irregular action of tides.
It cannot be denied that there exists a great law for the promotion of
life on our globe in these arrangements, which, though arising from
the mutual relation of land and sea, is yet so largely influential in
shaping the destinies of nations. A mere glance at the world shows that
upon such geographical conditions as those which we have hinted at
depend large results. The imperfect soundings of the oceans, and our
very incomplete knowledge of the constituents of the earth and the
laws of construction in the formation of continents, do not allow us to
pass a full judgment on the unequal diffusion of land and water over
the surface of the globe.
Two great divisions of the globe, the continental and the oceanic,
each extending diagonally across the meridians and parallels, would
naturally modify all contrasts in the atmosphere, and in the vegetable
and animal world. The customs of individuals and nations differ
in all countries, because man is dependent on the nature of his
dwelling-place. The results in the history of individuals and nations
were also diversified, and civilization took an altered course of
development. The land hemisphere was civilized first, in consequence
of the different nations coming in contact with each other, causing
collisions in some cases, and in others an interchange of ideas. The
oceanic world, however, contained numberless groups of barbarous and
isolated nations, till navigation was perfected around the world, and
the progress of civilized man awoke them out of their stagnation. The
nations that inhabited the great coast-belt which served as the barrier
of these two main divisions of the globe, were very much favored in
their primitive advancement by a variety of natural causes. This can
be seen in the example of the Ethiopians, the Egyptians, Arabians,
Chinese, and the inhabitants of India and West America, as the Aztec
ruins of Mexico and Peru bear witness.
We have hitherto made use of such expressions as centres, great
circles, zones, hemispheres, pyramidal divisions, etc., but we must
always keep in mind, that as in physics all mathematical definitions
can at best only serve as analogies, so also this takes place in
their application on the surface of the globe, where we regard them
as hinting at, rather than as fully expressing, the settled relations
of objects on the earth. We may, therefore, make use of geometrical
figures, as rhombs, triangles, ovals, and the like, without fear of
causing any misconception of ideas.
Passing from the divisions of the earth’s surface into land and water
hemispheres, we find another class of contrasts in the volcanic forms
of the globe. These are found especially in the continental division,
while the greater oceanic hemisphere, although not quite free from its
influence, has only a few scattered groups, that show volcanic activity
at rare intervals, although they are full of the vestiges of past
eruption.
This unbroken volcanic circle has been shown by one of the greatest
naturalists of the age to pass around the Pacific Ocean and the South
Sea, and to coincide in part with that great circle of coast-line which
has been already mentioned. The two are coincident on the western coast
of North America and on the northeastern coast of Asia; in another
part of Asia, the southeastern, the volcanic circle runs in a number
of parallel rows over the islands along the coast, until, diverging
from the continent in a southeast direction, it at last takes its
course towards the centre of the South Sea. Thus it becomes, not indeed
so colossal as the great shore-circle of the Pacific, but somewhat
inferior in size to that, coinciding in part with it, but including, as
it passes through the middle of the Pacific, the thousands of small,
high, isolated basaltic islands and island groups, which have all been
formed volcanically, but which still exist above the surface; the
submarine activity which threw them up having become much weakened.
East of the Pacific this volcanic circle includes the Cordilleras, an
extent of forty-five hundred miles along the western coast of North
America, in which Humboldt discovered over fifty craters in action,
and saw numbers which had once been active. West of the Pacific, Von
Buch has shown lines of volcanoes to exist parallel with the coast
outline of Australia and eastern Asia, on the long range of mountainous
islands there. With uniform course towards the northwest, and of
similar formation in the inner and outer ranges, they, too, extend
about forty-five hundred miles from the double island of New Zealand
to the north of the Philippines, with one forking in the Moluccas, in
the east branch of which are eighty raging volcanoes, in incessant
activity. From thence, the range advances in a vast curve towards the
north, over Japan, the Curile isles, Kamtschatka, the Aleutian islands
and Analaska. In this division there yet exist more than fifty active
volcanoes, a part of which have been thrown up from the sea, as in the
Australian range, while another part are of continental formation. This
division joins the Cordilleras at Mount St. Elias and Buen Tiempo,
and thus completes a circuit of more than two hundred volcanoes in
constant action, rightly giving it the name of the Volcanic Circle.
Only in the south is this active volcanic circle broken; in the extreme
north, where the separation of the Old World from the New becomes very
slight, the close connection of the two continents does not prevent
it from completing its natural circuit and binding together what the
sea appears to sunder. There do, indeed, converge the continents of
Northeast Asia and Northwest America,--at the Behring’s Straits they
are almost contiguous,--and this may indicate that the forming of the
great volcanic circle was contemporaneous with the upheaval of the vast
table-lands of the continent close by. A confirmation of this appears
to be offered in the great break of about five thousand miles extent
from Cape Horn, in South America, to Tasmania, in South Australia, in
the latter of which volcanoes disappear, and so, too, does this vast
volcanic circle. In this connection, too, it will be noticed that the
sea within this volcanic circle is rich in islands, while without it
is barren of them, and stretches away, unrelieved by them, over the
larger portion of the globe. It is astonishing, on passing the eye over
that part of the maritime regions of the earth, to see how few are the
islands which appear in those vast tracts of water. While a belt in the
torrid zone, extending in the diagonal direction of the ecliptic from
the Philippines southeast to the solitary Easter Isle, is studded with
islands, making a kind of oceanic milky-way; and while there is, also,
more to the northward, another belt, inferior in importance to this,
yet not insignificant, running in the same direction, and extending
from Japan to the Sandwich group, the student of island formation finds
outside of the volcanic circle the greatest poverty of material. But
the navigator is, of course, best acquainted with these latter tracts,
where the sea is open and the sailing safe. The circumnavigator of
the globe in its southern latitudes, who should sail southward of the
well-known break in the volcanic circle, and should advance to Victoria
Land, the region recently discovered by James Ross, would encounter
only scattered rocks, mere fragments, which, with the exception of the
Alexander and Peter Isles, are hardly worthy of the name of islands. In
the vast spaces of the Southern Ocean, which James Weddel traversed in
1822, not a single rock is seen. So, too, in the northern waters of the
Indian Ocean, between West New Holland and Southeast Africa, the rocks
of Kergnelens, St. Paul, and Amsterdam may scarcely be called islands.
Bourbon and Mauritius stand there as islands, quite alone. In the
Atlantic Ocean, if you pass from the antarctic rocks of Sandwichland to
the New South Shetland group, there are only, in the line reaching from
Western Africa to the eastern shores of South America, these widely
sundered islands, Trinidad, St. Helena, Ascension, which rise from the
depths of the ocean fourteen thousand five hundred and fifty feet, the
height of Mont Blanc, according to the first measurements of James
Ross, and which, according to later researches, have been shown to
have a height of twenty-seven thousand six hundred feet from their base
to the level of the sea.
North of the equator there appear, as antipodes of the South Sea
islands, numerous volcanic groups, always small, the Canaries, the
Azores, the Faro isles, and so onwards up so far as Iceland, which is
not to be regarded as belonging to the open sea, but rather to the
polar coast. Thus, in the neighborhood of both poles, at the north John
Mayen Isle, and at the south Mount Erebus, twelve thousand feet high,
according to Ross, there are volcanic fires in renewed and constant
activity, again winning a place which a long interval has denied to
them.
The heaving, internal fires, which have now but few outlets beyond
the circle of volcanic activity, have concentrated their force in
active volcanoes more than in former times, when they were felt in the
upheaval of the group of islands from the whole of the South Sea basin;
and, besides sharply marked islands, a great number of shallows, banks,
and rocks have been thrown partially up, though not enough to emerge
above the surface. But these pent-up and invisible forces have not been
able to effect the upheaval of an entire continent, and we are left to
trace by soundings the possibility of such a continent having resulted
from volcanic action.
This former diffusion over large extents of volcanic phenomena, instead
of their concentration as now in a few spots, was apparent outside
of the great volcanic circle, in the upheaval of the Old and New
Worlds, in which the mountains always attain their greatest height
in the neighborhood of the volcanic circle. The less steep slope of
these mountain ranges is always on the side away from the volcanic
circle. This slope uniformly takes its direction towards the centre
of the continent, and in both the Old and New World, having reached
its place of greatest depression at the centre, the surface spreads
out horizontally towards the north, northeast, and northwest, till it
comes to the Arctic Ocean. Thus, the same forces which upheave islands
upheave continents too, and fit them both for the functions which they
are to fulfil in developing the history of the human race.
A large continental plain, the island of New Holland, lies westward and
outside of the great volcanic circle, and yet not an active crater is
found upon it. It seems as if the forces which have thrown it to its
present height were unable to upheave it further, and allowed it to
rest at its present elevation, while they found their vent and outlet
elsewhere. Even the great coral sea-bed, lying between that island and
New Guinea, either fell back after being raised higher, or the forces
of upheaval failed after it had been raised as far as it was.
The great district of moderate upheaval, which commences with the
Australian continent, continues north even of the isthmus of Sunda,
enters Asia upon its southern coast, is found in the lowlands of
Farther India, Tunkin, and eastern China, and does not find its limit
till it meets the great central plateau of Asia, and the steep shores
of Leaotong and Corea, opposite the isolated groups of large volcanoes
in Japan.
Analogous to this formation are the depressions on the continents of
North and South America, beyond, or rather in the rear, of the great
volcanic chain of the Andes, with their narrow but lofty plateaus,
which were elevated at the same time with the mountains. Within all
this depressed region there is, as in the Australian plain, no active
volcano. As hinted above, the slopes in North and South America are
away from the great volcanic circle, following the courses of the
rivers, and spreading out in broad and fertile plains, while on the
side of the mountain range that looks towards the centre of the
volcanic circle the slopes are rocky and precipitous.
We pass from the observation of the depressions and the slopes of
Australia and America to the analogous formations of the Old World.
Here the same law is repeated. The volcanic range runs away from
eastern Asia in a southeasterly direction, while the low range of
shores stretches away towards the west, crossing southern China, both
the Indies, South Arabia, and the whole eastern coast of Africa as far
as the Cape of Good Hope.
It is interesting to recognize in Humboldt’s view of Central Asia
that this principle runs through the entire Old World. The diagonal
which traverses the great Asiatic plateau, passing from southwest to
northeast, and dividing it into the northwestern and southeastern
triangular halves (of Thibet and Mongolia), is at the same time
the axis of the maximum altitude, the greatest rise being towards
the southeast, and the greatest depression towards the northwest.
The maximum of elevation in the plateau is at the southeast, in the
table-land of Thibet, and is about fourteen thousand feet, while
the mountains which hem in this plateau range from twenty thousand
to twenty-five thousand feet. Those mighty cliffs, which, like an
immense wall, stretch out into the plains of Farther India and
Bengal, rise to even greater heights, and are the most elevated on
the globe. Although no perfected measurements have been made, yet the
fact that the elevation increases as we approach the east confirms
the principle which we are illustrating. The most recent survey of
Kunchinginga, in Sikim, by Colonels Waugh and Hooker, shows its height
to be twenty-eight thousand one hundred and seventy-four feet, and
thus higher than Juwahir, Dwaleghiri, and Chamaluri, in the southern
declivities of the Himalaya chain.
Beyond the diagonal axis of elevation in this central plateau, the
Mongolian or northern half begins, which, dropping away in terraces
towards the northwest, gradually falls, in long and gradual slopes, in
its northwest course, till it at length reaches the sea-coast of North
Siberia, and finds its limit at the Arctic Ocean.
Beginning near Pekin, on the southern edge of Cobi, eight thousand
eight hundred feet above the level of the sea, it stretches on
towards the northwest, dropping, according to the Russian scientific
explorers, through the varying heights of five thousand five hundred
feet, four thousand four hundred, three thousand seven hundred and
fifty, two thousand six hundred and fifty, to the level of lake
Baikal, one thousand four hundred feet, and thence to lake Zaizan, the
source of the Irtish, one thousand one hundred feet above the level
of the sea. This slope, following the whole extent of the continent,
progresses uniformly towards the west till it reaches the large and
well-known basin of the Aral and Caspian seas, eighty feet below the
level of the sea. Near Tobolsk it sinks gradually to about one hundred
feet above the sea’s level, and then passes over to that part of
Eastern Europe which lies near to the Caspian, Black, and Baltic seas,
which spreads itself out in a vast system of plains, and which has no
elevation again till it reaches the remotest north and west.
The same general law of the elevation of mountain masses to their
greatest height towards the southeast, where they fall off steeply
towards the coast, while the gradual slope is towards the centre of the
land hemisphere, is repeated in all plateau formations, whether large
or small, whether continuous or not. Thus we come to the conclusion
that similar causes and forces have produced similar results. The
principal direction of the axis of elevation in Central Asia coincides
with the diagonal to which all elevated masses on our globe tend. Thus
the law of elevation on the earth’s surface seems to be expressed in
this diagonal line, for mountain chains of the greatest heights.
And yet, often where there is a plateau formation running in the
direction of this diagonal, a high mountain chain may be found running
diametrically across it. The entire range of laws bearing upon this
whole subject of the direction of mountains and of plateaus has been
scientifically discussed by Élie de Beaumont, a French naturalist.
In the Persian plateau, the southeast elevation rises at the table-land
of Kelat, in Beloochistan, to the great height of eight thousand eight
hundred feet above the sea, while its elevation as it passes northward
sinks at Ispahan to the half of that height, at Teheran to less than
four thousand feet, at Kom to two thousand two hundred feet, and
diminishes more rapidly as it nears Bucharia and the Sea of Aral, until
at the south of the Caspian it sinks suddenly below the level of the
sea. The plateau of Dekkan reaches its greatest height, ten thousand
feet, at Utacamund, in the south, near Cape Comorin; it sinks more and
more as it advances towards the high plains of Mysore, Malwa, Mewar,
and so northward to the lowlands of Sind, whose northern boundary is
the Himalaya range. In like manner the plateau of Arabia reaches its
greatest elevation in the southeast corner, at Hadramaut, Oman, and
Jemeu (the mountains of incense, five thousand five hundred feet high,
Dschebel Achdar in Oman, six thousand five hundred feet, Dschebel
Taas seven thousand seven hundred, according to Botta); but advancing
northward towards Sanaa it sinks to four thousand five hundred feet,
at Taif, near Mecca, it has fallen to three thousand three hundred, and
as it approaches the confines of Syria and the plains of Mesopotamia it
is lost in broad lowlands. Even the Sinai group, although lying between
two arms of the Red Sea, only a single elevation with a small plateau
extending to the north, follows the same general law. This group turns
its steep side, at the place of its greatest height, southwards to the
Red Sea; just as, on a far larger scale, the whole of the mountain
district of southern and eastern Africa attains the maximum of its
elevation on the side towards the Indian Ocean. The greatest diminution
of elevation in Africa is well-known to be seen in advancing northwards
to the depression of Sahara and the long valley of the Nile, and thus
towards the centre of that grand depression which the Mediterranean
in part fills, and towards which the great tract of flat land in
eastern Europe, lying west of the Euxine, gradually sinks, just as the
mountain land of middle Europe sinks as it nears the North Sea and the
Baltic. Only those mountain ranges which follow the meridians, that is,
whose course is from south to north, the three great parallel ranges
of the Ural, the Scandinavian Alps, and the Alleghanies, divide the
vast depressed area into radically different parts; and these, partly
covered with water indeed, are found in all the northern continents.
The mountain chains which run from east to west, such as the Caucasus,
the Carpathian, the Alps, and the Pyrenees, have no connection with
those chains which run north and south, excepting as the margins of
the plateaux are subject to the laws spoken of above; for towards the
western part of the Old World these last-named chains stand out as
independent systems, giving character to Europe.
We have thus far only spoken of five or six of the most remarkable
arrangements in the nature of the earth’s surface, so far as they can
be traced, as an example of the general appearance of the exterior
of the globe. We have not entered into possible causes, or into the
results which proceed from these arrangements, although the latter are
easily found. From this great law of general depression it follows, in
the Old World, that the family of nations was in early times brought
together on an accessible spot, which was destined to be the cradle of
history. Some branched off from this central spot, and spread out where
the formation of the country permitted them to go. All the roads of
commerce lay near together then, and converged at one place, as rivers
run to a common basin, and this all the more since the slopes of the
Old World and its depressed areas lay within homogeneous temperatures,
and not as in America, where the countries of similar characteristics
lie in a northerly and southerly range, and are hence subject to all
varieties of temperature. In the Old World they extend from east to
west, and so promote a diffusion of population by not changing the
conditions under which they live. The declivity of the mountain ranges
being steep on the outside, or that nearest the volcanic circle,
operated as a barrier to the nations, while the more gradual slopes
turning northward have favored the advancement and spread of the human
race.
It has been our effort to trace briefly in the apparent irregularity
of mountain ranges the traces of a symmetry of which a superficial
observer would hardly have an idea. The combinations of nature are so
various, and local peculiarities are so apparent, that oftentimes a
result which appears perfectly lucid and simple when brought before the
eye, is gained only slowly, and after most patient research.
We speak only in this sketch of features which are broad, and deal only
with the outlines of our subject. Modifications, of course, largely
ensue; and the mass of geographical conditions, which affect the life
of the globe, is so intricate and complex, that we can only compare it
to a net-work encompassing the earth.
We will now touch upon the figure of the continents, so far as they
are independent of each other. They are under the general laws which
influence all the formations of the world, yet each bears a distinctive
character. Yet they play together in perfect harmony, they stand in a
wholesome relation to the development of history, and they illustrate
the steady progress of human culture.
It is evident from that contrast between Orient and Occident, or, to
use terms which are not so limited by usage to the Eastern Hemisphere,
between the East and West, that the relative positions of the
great masses of land on the globe have exercised a deep and abiding
influence. Nor is this confined alone to the relations between East and
West; it has been observed, also, in the relations between Hyperboreans
and people of Africa: it was remarked before the arbitrary division
of the earth into continents. If we seek for analogies to these
contrasts, they are to be found. The East represents hope, the West
fulfilment; or, again, the East represents the morning, the West the
evening, while the polar regions are the still night. So the Orient
in Asia is the contrast with the Occident in Europe; and yet again,
and on a wider scale, the whole Old World is in contrast with the
New, as Orient with Occident. Ancient and modern, past, present, and
future, are in the Orient, the cradle of the world and of the world’s
culture and history; but _progress_ is in the Occident, the
_development_ of national life, of political organization, of the
whole circle of thought and its influences. All this results from the
relative grouping of the continents: even the inertness of the nations
in Africa, the land of light, heat, spiritual sluggishness, and dense
population, as well as the unawakened activity of the nations in the
sparsely inhabited, dark and cold North, harmonize, too, with this, and
will continue just so long as means remain undiscovered to master the
limitations and influences of nature, to free man from its fetters,
and raise him above the narrow world which his own horizon bounds.
This work, however, has been begun. Nautical science, with steam as
its auxiliary, is peopling the solitudes of the sea and vanquishing
distance, and, by the great system of colonizing, the productions and
peoples of one side of the globe are daily transferred to the other.
The contrasts spoken of above meet and are reconciled in the Si-Yu
(Occident) of the Chinese, and in the Para and Apara of the extinct
Sanscrit race, the real Orient of the Old World. According to the
traditions of those races, their gods sprang from an indefinite eastern
region, just as Oannes of Chaldea and Brahma were reputed to have risen
from the sea, as the sun rises at the early morning from a region in
the distant east. Farther west, the Greeks placed their Anatolia in
Asia Minor, their Hesperia in Italy; the Romans placed their Orient
in the Levant, _their_ Hesperia in Spain, and the _Insulæ
fortunatæ_ at the most western part of the known world; the Arabs
fixed their Occident there also, naming it El Magreb. The modern
European removes it beyond the ocean to the New World, and so enlarges
his associations and views, and sees the relations of the continents in
a new light. Distances disappear as civilization progresses, and the
old contrasts are solved. The land of the embrowned Ethiopians, and
that of the Hyperboreans of Homeric times, disappeared long ago. The
Hindu of to-day has his Hyperborean or Northland called Uttara-Kura,
but the Ethiopian Libya has increased so far as to become the great
African Continent.
These contrasts, _real_ in themselves, could only have a
_relative_ influence on national life when civilization had
completely changed the effect of different localities. From this we see
that there must be a great difference in the method of studying ancient
and modern geography.
The position of the different countries on the globe will always
exert a powerful influence, although this influence is under great
modifications, for, by the progress of time and the facile connection
by the art of navigation, the old contrasts are disappearing. The small
space, called the classic ground of Universal History, and embracing
the three continents of the Old World, from the Indus to the Tiber,
and from the Nile to Oxus and Tanais, will, for all future times,
be considered the field that has had the largest influence on the
development of mankind. But civilization has abridged the influence
which select localities exercised in former times on the culture of
nations, and transferred it elsewhere.
The various portions of the globe have received, with reference to
the different periods of history, diverse endowments; and each has
also received a peculiar capability of development, which can only
be recognized in the progress of history. Only a very small portion
of these properties has been revealed in the course of time, their
capacity of development has only begun to be understood within the past
few hundred years, while the greater part lies as a secret, yet to be
unveiled. The profound depths of man’s spiritual nature were revealed
sooner because we were more nearly associated with them, but the
mysteries of our planet were hidden from man a much longer time.
In former times the uses of the sea were revealed to mankind by the
science of navigation. Mariners, too, discovered the laws regulating
wind and ocean currents, and by establishing tide-marks determined the
ebb and flow of the great tidal-wave. Regions now favored with the
results of civilization were open to human knowledge by the efforts of
navigators, yet by far the greater part of the earth’s surface lies
still unknown; but science and the progressive course of civilization
are penetrating the secrets of nature in the most remote regions of the
earth. We have not as yet compassed the knowledge of all the elements
that enter into the composition of the earth’s surface. Geognosy, as a
science, is but beginning to be understood. In course of time we shall
learn what influence the unexhausted metallic veins and subterranean
coal-fields are yet to exercise in many parts of the earth; what
influence settlements, colonies, and missions are to have on places
that have not been touched by the hand of history, or where the seed
of civilization has only produced thin crops, and where the mind of
man has not been able as yet to effect those mighty results, so vital
to the welfare of a whole country, as were met in former times on the
classic grounds of antiquity.
The lowlands, plains, and valleys have assumed entirely new relations
to the progress of mankind in consequence of the modern appliances
of railroads and canals; they are capable of being applied on the
grandest scale, and of becoming subservient to the largest uses. The
construction of a canal through the isthmus of Suez would bring the
East Indies vastly nearer than at present; and if the isthmus of Panama
were to be similarly cut through, the circumference of the globe
would be shortened by one-fourth part, and China would be brought six
thousand miles nearer to Europe.
The river systems of Europe, and also the most colossal ones in other
parts of the globe, such as the Ganges and the Mississippi, may always
be said to flow backwards as well as forwards, since steam navigation
has been brought to its present state. Upon the Mississippi hundreds of
steamships daily sail, plying backwards and forwards, like the shuttles
of busy weavers. The group of the great American lakes, formerly so
solitary, and hardly traversed by navigation, are now thronged with
ships which sail from Lake Superior to Lake Ontario. They have become a
medium of civilization, in size equal to one-half of the Mediterranean,
the great medium of culture in former times. We cannot foresee what a
future these lakes, with their influences, are to inaugurate in the New
World.
The foregoing remarks are sufficient to show that by the action of
civilization the surface of the earth, and all the different forms of
nature, are undergoing a constant modification,--are in a state of
advancement. The task of the geographer is to discover what causes
have exerted a promotive or retarding influence on the various forms
of the globe and their development hitherto. Space, however, is hardly
allowed us for a full consideration of the subject.
A previous statement, at some length, of the distances of the
earth, measured horizontally, spares us the trouble of entering now
upon a repetition of details. It is sufficient to remark, that the
three continents of the Old World have each a separate and distinct
form, that of Africa being oval, of Asia rhomboidal, and of Europe
triangular. The greatest uniformity of shape is seen in Africa. Its
length from north to south being nearly the same as its greatest
breadth from east to west, it is in extreme contrast to Europe, whose
breadth is nearly three times the distance from north to south. Europe
directs the most prominent angle of the triangle which it forms towards
the Atlantic, while the base rests on Asia; Africa is a compact mass,
without any indentations; Asia, also, is a solid mass, but less
compact, and having large and fruitful peninsulas in the east and
south. Europe is a continental mass, open on all sides, and accessible
by water even to the very heart; in Europe, trunk and branches have had
equal opportunity for the development of civilization. Far inferior
in size to Asia, and being rifted into many parts, it has enjoyed
the largest advantages for the diffusion of culture throughout its
entire extent. Asia, more compact than Europe, and not so open to
maritime influences, has preserved its middle portions uninfluenced
by the indentations of the sea, which, although penetrating very
deeply, have not equalized the contrast of sea and land, and have not
brought the mountain ranges, as in Europe, in direct connection with
the ocean. The north and the south have not been brought together by
water communication, and a vast extent of country in Central Asia, not
much smaller than the entire continent of Africa, has been excluded
from the advantages of those indentations, which do not penetrate the
great Asiatic trunk. The southern coast of Asia is the most rent by
these arms of the sea, the north the least so. The peninsular forms
of this continent, although nearly as large when combined as half of
Europe, yet bear a very slight proportion to the entire body of Asia;
and while they have ever been inhabited by peoples in a high state of
civilization, their influence on the great continental trunk has been
small. The whole vast body of the Asiatic continent has remained the
home of nomad tribes, while the nations living on the peninsulas so
richly endowed by nature as China, Farther India, Hindostan, Arabia,
and Asia Minor, have so largely developed the resources of their own
country, although they have been unable to penetrate to the heart of
Asia.
The whole sea-coast of Africa is not penetrated by arms of the sea.
That country presents, therefore, the least development by far in
comparison with the other continents, and its centre has been regarded
as totally inaccessible; individuality has, therefore, been denied to
Africa, in consequence of its form; and since its extremities are all
nearly equidistant from the middle point, and since its position on
both sides of the equator does not suffer it to extend far beyond the
torrid zone, we discover that all phenomena on this division of the
globe attain their culmination within the tropics, and that they there
appear more uniform and homogeneous, and destitute of great contrasts,
than elsewhere. On that account the patriarchal and primeval conditions
of human society have not been altered in the course of time, have
known little advancement. Thus Africa seems to be spared as a field
of development for future ages; for only a general progress, but no
advancement of the individual, displays itself in this sluggish land;
plants and animals, nations and men, all move on in one unvarying
course; the palm-tree and the camel are distributed everywhere
alike; the negro race, a population having uniform characteristics,
is predominant; it exists in a state of dense compactness, and has
remained far behind in the career of development, undistinguished by
any special peculiarities of civilization, political institutions,
national or individual life. The greatest uniformity of language
prevails, varied only by unimportant dialects. A partial development of
the coast in certain portions of this continent may form an exception
to the rule; but this development has been called forth mainly by
colonies from abroad.
An entirely different world of phenomena is exhibited in the
coast formation of Asia, a singularly fruitful field of study,
notwithstanding that it is wanting on one side of the continent. A
striking individuality distinguishes all the peninsulas of the Asiatic
coast, for each is influenced by the marked continental characteristic
of its neighborhood, as well as by the sea; such agents as the
atmosphere, mountains, vales, and streams, the wear of the waves and
wind systems, must be in a large sense modifiers, and have great
effect upon population and culture. Hence arises the individuality of
the Chinese, Malays, Hindostanese, Persians, Arabians, Syrians, and
the inhabitants of Asia Minor. In sharp contrast with this well-known
coast-line is the main body of the continent, even yet locked up
against the influences of the culture whose home is by the sea. For
centuries the nomadic life of the interior has been unchanged; no
civilizing influences have been brought to bear upon Calmucks and
Mongolians, people of Turkestan, Kirghiz and Bokkaria. Still less have
these influences penetrated to the remote north; and with all the
splendor of so enlarged fields of enlightenment along the coast, the
excellence of a universally distributed civilization is lost. To the
formation of these differences between the coast-line and the interior
those colossal forms of vegetation have also contributed, the record
of which is historical; forms whose equals in point of size are rarely
met in civilized lands; and still the luxuriant development of growth
contributes to the same end, for great climatic differences give
sharp contrasts to this growth. Extending from the equator high into
the frigid zone, Asia exhibits the greatest variety of animals and
plants; and yet not alone in the direction from north to south, but
none the less in the still vaster extent from east to west, where just
as sharply defined contrasts are seen, of which we might adduce China
and hither Asia as representative. In the former we find the sago-tree
and the tiger, in the latter the date-palm and the lion. Looking at
the extreme north we find the mosses, all needle-leaved trees, and
the reindeer; in the south, strongly in contrast, are the bread-fruit
tree, the sugar-cane, and the broad-leafed plantain, the elephant,
rhinoceros, tapir, and monkey.
The consequences which the inexhaustible richness of the soil effected
in relation to the character of the indigenous nations of Asia were
various; for although multitudes of people were sent out at different
times to take possession of the neighboring continents, the Asiatic
population was by no means exhausted; on the contrary, it remained rich
in its native characteristics, whether in races, stature, color, mode
of life, religious, political, and social features, culture, language,
and nationality. No other continent shows analogies of this kind,
even in its primitive ages; and Asia, therefore, rightly preceded all
others, because the first civilized, and the first prepared to throw
its colonies into other countries.
Europe may be called a continuation of Central Asia. It surpasses its
oriental neighbor, however, in the advantage of having no internal
mountain barrier to divide its north from its south. Thus Europe
has been able to develop itself more independently and freely, in
consequence of the number and size of its peninsular forms. A more
uniform and harmonious advancement has taken place in Europe than
in any other of the continents of the Old World. The character of
its culture has been so conditioned by the form of the country, that
Europe, although the smallest of the continents, has become the most
powerful of all. Asia has been so bountifully endowed by nature,
stretching out, as it does, through all three zones, and excelling in
size and richness of productions, that it has poured its abundance and
wealth over the neighboring countries without impoverishing itself; but
Europe, confined alone to the temperate zone, and rifted by the arms
of the sea into scores of scattered limbs, has been made especially
accessible to navigation, and open to the reception of colonies and an
immigrant population, the more especially as it was not liable to great
extremes of temperature. The nature of the country and the energy of
its population were well adapted to the work of turning human ingenuity
to the manufacture of useful materials from natural productions.
Europe, too, has been especially able to increase by artificial aids
the gifts of nature, and to raise all the diversities of culture to a
higher standard, and afterwards to become the place whence the ripened
fruits of civilization might be transferred to all other nations of
the globe. It is well-known that the destiny of Europe, in developing
the richness of its natural productions and the intellectual qualities
of its population, has been modified from the beginning by the
conformation of the country itself. In history the honor of fulfilling
the destiny of nations is attributed to the efforts of man, and more
especially to the European race, although this honor ought only to be
partially ascribed to it. For brevity’s sake we will state, in but a
word, the three characteristic features in the formation of Europe that
are the physical grounds of the development of its nations: its large
extent of seaboard, its peninsular forms, and the number of its islands.
The coast-line of Europe is, relatively to its area, the largest of
all the continents. While Asia, whose area is five times greater, has
about thirty thousand miles of coast, and Africa, with three times its
area, has eighteen thousand miles, Europe has a sea-line of twenty-six
thousand,--more than the circumference of the globe. From this there
results, that, although lying within the great land hemisphere, it has,
through its branches formed by the inlets of the sea, relatively the
largest contact with the world of waters of all the continents of the
Old World. Its favorable position in regard to the currents of the sea
and of the atmosphere is an additional advantage; and so, too, is the
large number of valuable harbors, a natural result of the many ocean
inlets. These circumstances combined have given great prominence to
nautical science, and show why Europe has the control of the seas. In
these our times, the group of Great Britain and Ireland have a special
prominence in these regards, just as in ancient times the control of
the Mediterranean was in the hands of Greece, the most broken peninsula
of the Old World, and therefore the one most rich in harbors. The
division of Europe in the north, by the German Ocean, the Baltic,
and the White Sea, into the Scandinavian peninsulas and islands, has
secured to those cold regions as positive progress as is exhibited in
fair and fertile Greece, Italy, and Spain. Scandinavia gives to the
north of Europe a great advantage over the adjoining district of Asia;
for the flat regions of Siberia lack the ocean inlets of northern
Europe as well as of southern Asia. Besides this, they are sundered
from the more favored Asiatic districts by the vast table-lands
inhabited by nomadic tribes. Less favored, too, than northern Europe
by soil and climate, Siberia can never compete with its advancing
civilization.
Finally, the island formations of Europe must be considered superior to
all other continents, for, being near the sea-coast, and within easy
reach of the continent, they have immediate connection with it; they
form the sea station for Europe; and in this regard they have special
advantages, since their size is not insignificant, affording an area
sufficiently large for a dense population. The tendency of this has
been to stimulate these islands to a high degree of development. They
are not single fragments, or long series of oceanic rocks, or steep and
inaccessible peaks; for the south of England is only a continuation of
northern France, as Sicily is of Calabria, and as Candia is of the
Morea. In short, if we could suppose the British isles blotted out of
the maps of northwestern Europe, how impoverished would the history of
the continent in its maritime relations have been. The peninsula of
Jutland, without the islands of Zealand and Funen, is only a narrow
neck of sandy land. In former times the history of Rome and Italy would
have been quite different without the adjoining isle of Sicily. Crete,
the Ægean and Ionian isles, served as the medium for the transferring
of civilization from hither Asia to Greece and Italy.
It would take us too long to enter upon the consequences produced
by the want of islands on the coast of Africa, for Madagascar can
hardly be considered as immediately connected with this coast,
since it is separated from it by oceanic currents; nor can we state
with the fulness which the subject demands the effects resulting
from the immense number of islands southeast of Asia, the so-called
Sunda-Australian group, unquestionably the largest and the most
individualized group on the globe. In its triangular form it encloses
an area equal to that of Europe, and extends like an isthmus between
Asia and Australia, having a certain analogy with the American isthmus
of Panama, since both series of continents are north and south of each
other. We notice here also that the great number of these islands, and
their nearness to each other, cause them to appear in the light of an
insular division of the globe, having a distinct and characteristic
population. This immense group of islands, therefore, is not to be
regarded as having an immediate connection with the continent of
Asia, although its nearness to that continent causes a reciprocity of
influence, not unlike that of other islands more directly connected
with the mainland.
The remark which Strabo made with regard to Sicily, that the
fragmentary parts of continents, especially contiguous islands, are
the most richly endowed portions of the globe, holds true with the
insular groups from Ceylon to New Guinea; for every island appears to
possess some characteristic resources, which contribute greatly to
the development of commerce in the equatorial zone. Thus, the white
elephant, pearls, cinnamon, and also rubies, are found in Ceylon.
The rhinoceros, tapir, ourang-outang, and the finest dye-stuffs and
most costly woods, are indigenous to Sumatra. Banca is the richest
tin country in the world; Borneo furnishes gold, diamonds, and a
hundred other kinds of precious stones. Java, well-known as the barley
islands of Ptolemy, abounds in grains of all kinds, bread-fruit,
and sugar-cane. The adjoining islands possess each their peculiar
kind of species as far as the Moluccas and New Guinea, where the
camphor-tree and the sago-tree grow luxuriantly. There, too, we find
birds of paradise, and many productions of the three natural kingdoms,
indigenous to these islands, and not found in Asia. If the greatest
progress which civilization has anywhere made had commenced in this
part of the globe, the best endowed of all, where physical aids appear
in their perfection, where water and land combine with a tropical
climate to further the efforts of nature, this region would have been
the foremost in the world. But the laws that govern the development of
the intellect are widely different from those which regulate physical
conditions.
Had it been accordant with the plan of the Maker to create all
divisions of land as scattered islands, and not as connected
continents, as we have seen in Polynesia is the case (by which Europe,
with a surface of two million six hundred and eighty-eight thousand
square miles, would have been subdivided into fifteen large islands
such as Borneo, Sumatra, and the Celebes, or, more exactly speaking,
of the size of Spain), the nations of the earth would have been far
less connected than at present, and more independent of each other.
We find in the formation of the European continent all the advantages
which accrue from an insular position, and also a complete balance of
contrasts, without the disadvantages of too great a dismemberment,
such as that in the insular world of Sunda, so perfect a contrast
to articulated continents. Both forms, the extremes of subdivision
into islands, as in Polynesia, and the compact mass of such a land as
Africa, have exerted a retarding influence on the progress of man. The
result has been the same, although the causes have been unlike; in
both cases it has hindered the free development of national character.
In the place of maximum subdivision, the Eastern Archipelago, the
Malay tribes have been so disconnected as to enjoy but few of the
advantages of mutual health and dependence. In Africa, on the other
hand, the country of maximum compactness, we find an imperfectly
educated population, and in many places tribes in the rudest stage of
development.
These two physical conditions are both, as we have seen, unfavorable
to the advancement of nations from the first estate of barbarism.
Europe was placed between these extremes not to be retarded, but to be
favored and urged forward. It received for its portion a much smaller
area than the other continents; it was, therefore, much easier known,
and was sooner brought into cultivation. In consequence of its amount
of seaboard, its articulated form, and its islands, it was soon able
to realize its historical mission and destiny. Although apparently the
poorest in natural productions of all the continents, its end was to
become the place where all the finer fabrics of the Old World should
take their form, and to be the centre of all intellectual progress.
Europe was to be the middle point of development for both the Old and
New World, was to become the workshop of the globe. It was to become
susceptible to all healthy changes, it was to remain unfettered in
its natural forces, and its inhabitants were to enjoy the most ample
opportunity of culture and progress.
In searching for a connection in the events which nature and history
bring into view, we have to suppose the existence of a certain physical
organization of our globe, by which the different continents and the
larger features of the earth are brought into relations of action
and reaction, which greatly affect human life and character. The
organization to which we allude is entirely different from that which
concerns the flora and fauna of the earth; instead of dealing with
forms that are temporary, it deals with those that are permanent. The
world, if it could be rightly viewed, would be seen to be a perfect
organism, and what appears to be unsymmetrical chaos would be found,
could the observer take his place outside of the earth, to exist in
perfect harmony and symmetry. The seeming prevalence of confusion does
not result from the want of system, but only from the fact that man is
not able to investigate all the relations of the globe.
In the very dissimilarity of size and form, in the confusion and
want of connection that seem to prevail in the order of the world,
there does yet lie a secret principle of unity, and the forces which
control the workings of the world are linked together by a real though
invisible chain. As the human body is one, although composed of many
parts, so the world is by like analogy a unit, of which the countless
animal and vegetable organisms are the dependent parts.
We find a cause of the mutual influence of nature and history upon
each other in the unequal distribution and extent of land and water,
and also in the changeable temperature and irregular motion of the
winds. The difference in the size of the continents is accordant with
the difference of the size of great nations. In the contiguity of
land masses lie laws that influence the whole development of mankind.
The separation by natural barriers of the Old from the New World, and
of continents from their dependent islands, are only stimulants to a
general union by the aid of the arts of navigation. The difference
of endowment in the various countries of the world gives impulse to
distribution by commerce. In the size of Europe, and the harmonious
relation of its parts, we find the principal conditions of its
greatness and freedom.
We may express the proportion of the continents, in round numbers,
as follows: Europe is about one-fifth as large as Asia, while it is
a little more than one-third the dimensions of Africa. The size of
America is between that of Asia and Africa. Australia is smaller
than Europe, containing about one-fifteenth of all the continents,
or, including the islands, about one-twentieth of all the land on
the globe. But these absolute relations of area are not decisive in
judging the history of the world; their position and the date of their
discovery ought to be taken into account. Australia, for example,
though embracing one-twentieth of the land-surface of the globe, has
only come to the theatre of history in the most modern times.
In estimating the historical value of each continent, we have to
consider its own specific relation to itself, that is, the size, in
superficial extent, of its main body, compared with its peninsular
forms and its islands. The three continents of the Old World have in
this respect the following relations:--
Main Body. Peninsular Forms. Islands.
Africa, 1 0 1/50
Asia, 4 1 1/8
Europe, 2 1 1/20
The relations expressed by these proportions do not suggest all of the
influences exerted by main body, peninsular form, and islands, but
they suggest them in so far as they are dependent upon the superficial
extent.
But America, or the New World, displays, in its external form, quite
different relations. Although it repeats the contrasts of the Old
World, yet the course of its mountain chains is not from east to west,
but from north to south. We have already shown, in a former part of
this work, that the northern part of America extends farther towards
the north pole than the Siberian coast, and surpasses that coast, too,
in the minuteness of its articulation. We showed that the development
of its mountain chains and the position of its inland seas make it,
as a continent, analogous to Europe. Its sea-coast best endowed with
harbors and islands is on the eastern side, and so turned towards the
civilization of the Old World. The Gulf Stream, which may be called the
great commercial highway of nations, brought both of the continents
bordering on the North Atlantic into direct connection.
We are now in a position to sum up briefly our results.
North America was destined to be discovered by Europeans, and not by
Asiatics. Asia could easily have transferred a part of its population
to America, in consequence of the proximity of their shores at
Behring’s Straits. But the eastern sea-coast of North America is so
richly furnished with harbors and islands that it readily attracted
European civilization. The gentle slopes of the American continent,
too, offered a most favorable field to Europeans, allowing, as they
did, civilization to penetrate without obstruction every portion of the
land.
Nature has shown us, by giving to America river systems which run
northward to the numerous groups of islands and peninsulas of the
Polar Sea, that America was destined even more than Europe to send
civilization to the northern portions of the globe. Even now, after
the lapse of a very short time, human culture has advanced along the
western coast of Greenland to 70° north latitude. The Arctic Ocean is
covered with fishing vessels and craft of all kinds, and more northern
barriers still will in the course of time be overcome by the advancing
power of civilization.
And so the southern part of Australia, formerly _terra incognita_
to mariners, embracing in small circuit some of the finest harbors
in the world, and having Tasmania as its central port, was, ages
since, prepared to become, in the course of a few decades, the source
of activity upon the whole southern hemisphere. But this was to be
accomplished by means of a maritime connection with Europe, and under
the direct stimulus of that continent.
Northern Asia received at the beginning its civilization from the
central part of that continent, through the agency of great river
systems. It received its population from that quarter too, till the
advancing progress of Eastern Europe exerted a stronger influence upon
it than did Central Asia, especially since the Ural chain proved no
hindrance to civilization, but, in consequence of its great mineral
resources, a promoter of it. A favorable position was the cause that
Western Asia enriched Southern Europe, and the Mediterranean, that
washes the shores of three continents, was the agent in promoting
this. But this relation was only temporary; in modern times European
civilization reacts on the Levant.
Each continent, as a member of the entire organization of the earth,
has had a particular function to fulfil, in consequence of its position
and conformation.
Southern and Eastern Asia are so largely penetrated by arms of the sea
that civilization culminated there earlier than elsewhere, and the
Indies were the focus of learning and arts for ages.
The three great peninsulas of Southern Asia, Arabia, Hindoostan, and
Farther India, are repeated on the south coast of Europe in the three
dissimilar peninsulas there, Greece, Italy, and Spain. They lie twenty
degrees farther north, outside of the tropics, so that their whole
influence on the culture and thought of dependent countries is unlike
that of the Asiatic peninsulas.
Both groups, those of Asia and of Europe, each containing three
peninsulas endowed with the richest gifts of nature, are among the most
potential agencies of the globe. By means of them Asia has received in
the tropic zone, and Europe in the temperate, the best advantages for
influencing the life of the globe that the Creator has ever bestowed.
North America has received the same in a degree, and Tasmania, too; but
these are reserved for a future development, of which the beginnings
are making now.
The future greatness of the yet young American double continent, in its
colossal extension from north to south, may be partly anticipated from
a study of the relation of the peninsulas of Southern Asia and Southern
Europe, for an inference can be made from what has already been seen of
the future progress which America will make in civilization, especially
if South America endeavors to compete with the northern continent.
The great peninsulas of Southern Asia reach out into that silent and
deserted Indian Ocean, that is without islands and without life; the
southern peninsulas of Europe look towards the barren and sandy shores
of Northern Africa; but the rich coasts of the southern portion of the
United States and of Mexico lie not far removed from opposite coasts
most richly endowed by nature. South America with its luxuriance lies
before them, and as Europe was once the Occident of civilized Asia,
so North America awaits the time when its southern neighbor shall
awaken to a development of which the beginnings are not yet seen. The
intermediate groups of the Antilles will probably, in course of time,
link both continents more closely together.
If the outward arrangements of the globe had denied to the American
continent the Old World’s past progress in population and in all
departments of culture from east to west, following the leading of
kindred countries and temperature, a compensation would have been
found in the possibility of a new course of development in a different
direction, namely, from north to south.
In the contrasts which are often observed to exist in scientific
geography, history shows us that climate, by its many modifications
in temperate and tropical regions, is the harmonizing element. This
reconciling power has been given to it that man might become the
unconditioned master of the earth. That he may learn to be this is to
be the study and the task of the next centuries. The past ages have
given him the means of gaining the victory over nature; the New World,
now in its infancy, is to apply them.
Once, when the conformation of countries and their relative positions
gave them a larger measure of resources than lands situated less
favorably enjoyed, no method of distribution was in general use;
some districts were glutted, while others lacked. With the course of
time a change comes, and the lands which geographical situation has
especially favored confer their productions upon those which have not
this advantage; thus countries once insignificant through the poverty
of their resources become strong.
To what an extent this can result is already revealed in the contrasts
of ancient and modern history; it is revealed, too, in the most
striking and sublime manner in the new life and increased wealth which
the art of the navigator has now accumulated on the entire coast of the
continents and on all the islands of the sea; it is manifested, too, by
the culture of Europe.
On the other hand, what I must call a nicer susceptibility to
influences displayed in the land hemisphere, the true continental
regions, leaves scarcely room for a doubt that through a use of all the
resources of art a possibility is opened for yet greater changes in the
unfolding progress of human history.
THE END.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
Simple typographical errors have been silently corrected.
Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a
predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they
were not changed.
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