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Ube Continents ot tbe MoclO
THE CONTINENT OF EUROPE
MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited
LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO
DALLAS ■ SAN FRANCISCO
THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd.
TORONTO
THE CONTINENT
OF EUROPE
BY
LIONEL W.iLYDE
M.A., F.R.G.S;
PROFESSOR OF ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY IN UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON
1913
COPYRIGHT
PREFACE
In this series an attempt is made to treat the Continents of the
World from a double point of view. From the one^ emphasis is laid
only on what seems to be the essential individuality of the particular
continent^ e.g. the peninsular character and influence of Europe ; and
areas which seem to be not quite typical^ e.g. the British Isles and
Russia^ are treated in outline or with detail on such points only as
have direct relation to that individuality. For similar reasons the
countries of the core — Germany^ Austria-Hungary^ and Switzerland
— are not treated in quite the same way as those of the circumference.
From the other point of view, in treating the typical political
units, considerable attention is given to their political subdivisions, e.g.
the Roman provinces of France or the modern Swiss cantons, especially
when these illustrate principles or processes that are characteristic
of the continent. Much emphasis is laid on the political unit, because
I find it just as difficult to picture clearly the precise limits of a
natural region — in Professor Herbertson*s sense — as I find it easy
to picture the delimited frontier of a civilised State. It is almost
always the political control that gives the dominant note in the most
important areas ; and, as the method of treating such areas should
in each case, as far as possible, be appropriate to the dominant note,
the political unit cannot be made subordinate without more being lost
than is gained.
Besides, to most of us Geography seems to have neither mean-
ing nor value apart from Man; and so we usually think in political
units as far as human activities are concerned. For the name of a
political unit, e.g. France or "Japan, is far more than a mere label of
an atom of artificially partitioned land ; it contains a whole world of
suggestion and association, and is an epitome of all that makes a
nation — of things achieved, — of a type in art and literature, in science
and politics, — of an ideal, the passionate desire to preserve and
perpetuate which is the only thing deserving the name of patriotism.
vi The Continent of Europe
/ have attempted^ too^ to carry out an old conviction that
geographic details are illuminating only when viewed as instances
of world-processes^ and that therefore the geography of any large unit
should be approached through its world-relations. In this connection
I think that nothing else possesses a tithe of the helpfulness inherent
in the theory of the tetrahedral deformation of the Earth. The fact
that some competent mathematicians believe that it has no sound
physics or dynamics at the hack of it, and assert that it has been
wholly unfruitful in results, seems to me of less importance than its
acceptance by so many great geologists, and its proved utility to
geographers who approach their subject as essentially a human science.
After assuming four previous stages in the life of the Earth — a
consolidation of meteorites into a globular unit, the separation of
mineral crust from metallic core, the condensation of vapour ever that
crust, and the buckling of it into positive and negative land-forms —
we have still to account for the distribution of these forms having taken
a definite character. The essential details that have to be accounted
for, form a sequence of what Professor J. JV. Gregory calls ^^four
homologies " .* the predominance of land in the Northern Hemisphere
and sea in the Southern Hemisphere — the triangular shape of the
great physical units, whether land or sea — the alternation of aspect,
land tapering southwards and sea tapering northwards, resulting in
a nearly complete ring of land round the north and an absolutely
complete ring of water round the south — and so the antipodal position
of land and water.
Any theory which attempts to account for these facts of distribu-
tion, has to deal with an Earth exhibiting the suggestion of four
triangular faces which meet in six edges and project in four coigns ;
and such a distribution is essentially tetrahedral. Every spherical
body which shrinks owing to contraction of its core, tends to become
tetrahedral, for a sphere combines minimum surface with maximum
volume, while a tetrahedron combines maximum surface with minimum
volume ; and collapse at one point must react at the antipodal point.
But no body with a structure like that of the Earth could become a
complete tetrahedron while rotating at a speed similar to that of the
Earth. On the contrary, it must pass through alternate stages of
collapse towards the tetrahedral, emphasising vertical lines in periods
of violent disturbance, and of recovery towards the spherical, emphasis-
ing horizontal lines in periods of relative quiet.
In the case of the Earth, as long as the crust was thin, any
Preface vii
shrinkage of core could only wrinkle the whole surface into forms that
must always have been relatively " old " ; but^ as the crust thickened^
active movement would be confined more or less to lines of weakness^
which would be crumpled into forms that we may still call ^^ young "
And all the time^ though the relative positions of land and water
might change^ the water held on the EartK s surface by attraction
must always have collected where areas of crustal settlement decreased
the distance from the centre of the mass. That is to, say^ many of
the phenomena that have affected Man most — from the influence of
the Himalayan uplift on the development of turfforming grasses^ not
suited to huge mammals^ to the concentration of volcanic activity at
angular joints of great segments of the Earth's crust — have light
thrown on them by this tetrahedral theory. They thus become simply
examples of a law instead of isolated items that burden the memory.
Apart from any theory^ too., it is in practice the painful and
almost daily experience of glass-blowers that glass balls^ when almost
perfect^ collapse into forms which definitely reproduce the relations of
positive and negative land-forms on the face of the Earth ; and the
process is known in the trade as '' tetrahedral collapse."
I have, therefore, adopted the theory as a working hypothesis.
II
My use of the word wyr, perhaps, needs some explanation. A
large part of the volume was originally used in four courses of lectures
which were attended by a considerable number of practical teachers
— some 1200 in all ; and this modified my choice of both material
and method. For I took advantage of the opportunity to urge that
Geography, when studied as a synthetic and human science, is the
most valuable of all educational agents except Literature ; but that,
when it is studied as an ultra-analytical and non-human — almost an
inhuman — science, both its attractiveness and its educational value
are minimised. Indeed, public support, which is still much needed
for the subject, is only alienated by a vainglorious splitting of ultra-
analytical straws.
But it happens that most of the persons who have been most
active in this direction, have neither actual experience of teaching
nor the teacher s regard for the right use of words ; and they have
been active also in support of a reckless nomenclature. Tet, if the
Mother-Tongue and her Literature must always have the first place
in true education, no other subject — not even if it can claim the second
viii The Continent of Europe
place — may misuse that Mother- Tongue. For instance^ to claim the
exclusive use of such adjectives as high and \ow /or any one of the
several sciences in which they have a very special meaning^ is an
obvious impertinence ; and to claim further the right to use them as
nouns^ and to speak of a high and a low, is a gross prostitution of
the English language which no body of English teachers will sanction.
One's willing admission that anti-cyclone is awkward does not
lessen the offence ; nor does there seem to be an excuse for it, at all
events in Geography.
We have had in our language for the last 600 years the word
wyr. It was originally applied — e.g. by Robert Bruce and King
Edward I. — to an instrument used in the defence of a city-wall.
This machine^ heavily weighted^ moved downwards and outwards in
a circle ; and on the outskirts of its circuit it mighty and often did^
cause considerable disturbance.
Again^ whirl is more English than cyclone ; and wind-whirl
has the great advantage of suggesting — to young pupils — ^^ whirl-
wind.^^ As these words in their full meaning cover all important
^^ anti-cyclonic''^ and ''^cyclonic'" phenomena^ I have used them now for
some years in lecturing ; and I have retained them in this hook^
especially in the more general portion. I may add that even pupils
who are already familiar with cyclone and anti-cyclone, seem not
only to have no kind of difficulty in adopting the suggested alterna-
tives^ hut even to get from them an easier familiarity with the
phenomena themselves.
Ill
I am grateful to Messrs. A. 6^ C. Black for their courtesy in
allowing me in several cases to adapt material from my School
Text-Book of Geography^ and to Dr. Scott Keltic and Professor
R. A. Gregory for kind and valuable criticisms on manuscript or proof
I think that the names of all those to whotn I am conscious of debt
will be found mentioned in the text or in footnotes ; but there must be
many others to whom I am indebted without being conscious of it.
For most of the diagrams I am indebted to Dr. H. R. Mi IPs
"International Geography" and to Mr. T. Alford Smith's "A
Geography of Europe."
L. W. LYDE.
University College,
London.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
PAGE
World-Relations ...... i
CHAPTER II
Regional Relations ..... 6
CHAPTER III
Marginal and Midland Seas . . . .14
CHAPTER IV
Relief ....... 22
CHAPTER V
Relief Control, (i) Of Land Communications . 39
CHAPTER VI
Relief Control. (2) Of Distribution of Population . 45
CHAPTER VII
Climate . . . . . . .51
X The Continent of Europe
CHAPTER VIII
PAGB
Climatic Control, (i) Of River RteiME . . 6i
CHAPTER IX
Climatic Control. (2) Of Vegetation . . .69
CHAPTER X
Climatic Control. (3) Of Beast and Man . . 76
CHAPTER XI
The Italian Peninsula . . . .82
CHAPTER XII
The Scandinavian Peninsula . . . .105
CHAPTER XIII
The Balkan Peninsula . . . . .124
CHAPTER XIV
The Iberian Peninsula . . . , .160
CHAPTER XV
France ....... 191
CHAPTER XVI
British Isles . . . . , .221
Contents
XI
Belgium
CHAPTER XVII
PAGE
CHAPTER XVIII
Holland
261
CHAPTER XIX
Denmark
274
Germany
CHAPTER XX
CHAPTER XXI
AUSTR L\- H UNGA R Y
338
CHAPTER XXII
Switzerland
375
CHAPTER XXIII
Russia
402
INDEX
427
ILLUSTRATIONS
MAPS IN COLOUR
Baltic (contains inset of Denmark)
Europe
Italy
Scandinavia and the
The Balkan States
Spain and Portugal
France
British Isles .
Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxemburg
German Empire
Austria-Hungary
Switzerland .
Russia
IN THE TEXT
General plan of wind-system
Columbus' first voyage
Distribution (in hours) of bright sunshine .
Floor of Atlantic, showing feature-lines
North Sea and English Channel tides
Relation of oceanic depths to continental shelf
General relief features
Water-parting of Pennine Alps
Swiss tunnels
Swiss river-system .
Typical piece of Jura
Distribution of relief
Simple relief of France
Kiel and Hanover Canals .
Europe — density of population
Racial Europe
Currents of North Atlantic .
BETWEEN PAGES
. xvi and i
. 96
.. 97
. 112
„ 113
. 128
„ 129
. 160
„ 161
. 192
„ 193
. 224
), 225
. 256
,. 257
. 288
„ 289
. 352
.. 353
• 384
,, 385
. 416
„ 417
PAGE
2
4
7
II
17
21
23
30
32
33
34
40
42
44
46
48
52
XIV
The Continent of Europe
Atlantic storm tracks
European temperatures
Rainfall of Europe .
North-eastern France
Relations of Rhine, Rhone, and Danube
Iron gates on Danube
Contour map of Russia
Existing glaciers and ancient ice sheet in Europe
Russian belts of vegetation
Geometrical centre of Europe
Mediterranean area .
Po and Piave basins
Tectonic map of Italy
Malarial districts of Italy
Rainfall and temperature of Turin and Naples
Venice : the islands, canals, and lagoon
The Quadrilateral ....
Portion of the coast of Norway
Viking raiding-routes
Site of Christiania ....
Site of Stockholm ....
Annual rainfall map of the Baltic region
The Bosphorus ....
Isthmus of Corinth ship-canal
The Golden Horn ....
Orographic structure of the Balkan Peninsula
Dalmatian coast ....
Shrinking of Turkey in Europe
Mouths of the Danube
Lower Danube ....
Kazan or Klisura Canal, near Orsova
Site of Belgrade ....
Existing and proposed railways (Balkan)
Athens and Piraeus ....
Lower Tagus, showing the Mar da Palha .
Physical structure of the Iberian Peninsula .
Temperature and rainfall of Coimbra and Madrid
Harbour of San Sebastian .
Strait of Gibraltar ....
Structure of France ....
Peripheral distribution of French towns
Annual rainfall of France and Spain
Rainfall and temperature of Paris and Marseilles
Distribution of the vine in France .
PACK
S3
54
56
63
65
67
68
69
73
80
83
86
88
90
92
100
lOI
106
108
109
no
112
124
126
127
129
130
135
137
140
144
153
162
163
169
176
181
197
199
201
202
209
Illustrations
Railways of France .
Natural divisions of England
Midland valley of Scotland .
Structural map of the London basin
Seasonal isotherms (British) .
Winter gulf of warmth in North Atlantic
London ....
Structural map of the Hampshire basin
Map of Bristol and the lower Avon .
South Wales coal-field
The Tyne and Wear ports .
Ship-canal. Mersey estuary as far as the " Bottle Inch"
Annual rainfall of the British Isles .
Isthmian Canal routes (British)
Land area round Scheldt estuary before 1 2th century
Land area round Scheldt estuary at present day
Antwerp and its forts
Relief of Holland .
Railway and steamer routes in Denmark
Rivers of the North German plain .
Kiel or Kaiser Wilhelm Canal
Natural divisions of Germany
Temperature and rainfall of Hamburg and Berlin
Site of Hamburg
Agricultural map of Germany
Surroundings of Berlin
Ruhr coal-field
Bonn-Bingen Gorge
Industrial area of Saxony and Silesia
Rainfall and temperature of Vienna and Trieste
Austria- Hungary — density of population
Austria- Hungary, showing countries and provinces
Relations of Austria proper to Bohemia and Moravia
The Karst ....
Longitudinal routes of the Tauern .
Main surface features of Switzerland
St. Gothard tunnel .
Religions of Switzerland
Languages of Switzerland .
Site of St. Petersburg
European Russia — density of population
Rainfall and temperature of Moscow and Sebastopol
Central Russia, showing the area of over 6cx3 feet elevation
Railways of European Russia . . , .
XV
PAGE
214
223
226
228
230
236
237
239
240
242
245
248
253
253
254
264
275
284
289
292
301
303
308
316
323
326
335
345
347
355
359
363
367
376
387
398
399
404
409
412
413
418
Lydc's Continent of Europe.
ERRATA
Page 37, for " Creuzot " read " Creusot."
Page 263, 2nd line from bottom, for " affected " read " effected."
Page 286, for " Warte " read " Warthe."
Pages 309, 320, 321, for "Liineberg" read " Liineburg.
Page 404, for "Volklof" read "Volkhof"
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lowlands . O- 600 ..
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CHAPTER I
WORLD-RELATIONS
If the educational value and the economic utility of Geography, as
a " human " science, are alike concerned with the making of mental
pictures, perspective becomes at once an all-important considera-
tion ; and, if the physique and the climate of the great continental
units may — on a working hypothesis — be intimately related to the
process by which a cooling sphere is deformed towards the shape
of a tetrahedron, the first step towards linear perspective is through
a survey of World-relations.
The World-relations of Europe are both physical and climatic. Physical
As soon as the secular cooling of the Earth began to modify its Relation.
essential spherical characteristic of maximum contents with minimum
surface, causes outside the practical concern of Man decided that
the horizontal " triangle " of the tetrahedron should lie in what we
now call the Northern Hemisphere This involved a wide extension
of land -surface into high latitudes and a marked tendency to
uplift along the edges of the horizontal "triangle," such uplift in
the particular geometrical form being necessarily about two-thirds
of the distance from the common apex of the three perpendicular
"triangles" to the opposite pole of the original sphere. It was
fundamental, therefore, that the mass of the land in the Northern
Hemisphere should have a marked east -and -west lie, — that its
specific expansion should be poleward, — and that its most marked
tendency to uplift should be fully 120° from the South Pole —
actually between 37° and 45° N.
As the process of deformation matured, the sag in the centre of Sequence
each " triangle " and the uplift of the edges became emphasised ; ©^ Form*,
and we infer a natural sequence, the oldest folds of surplus crust
merging generally in areas of lower elevation towards the sag and
in lines of higher elevation towards the edge. So our World-relation
involves, in the case of Europe, a belt of old folded highland
merging northward in a vast area of lowland and skirted southward
by a line of Young Folded Mountains.
1? I B
The Continent of Europe
CH.
Comple-
mentary
Depres-
sion.
Climatic
Relation.
The inevitable reaction from this process of maximum uplift
further involves a complementary line of maximum depression — on
the side away from the older folds and more or less parallel with
the crest of the uplift. This prepares us for a considerable area
of inland sea stretching east-and-west, probably broken into sections
by old crustal blocks, such as form the core of the Iberian peninsula
and the islands of Corsica and Sardinia ; and round the margin of
the intervening sections of sea, on the side away from the uplift,
we expect the pressure of the foundered blocks to excite volcanic
and seismic phenomena, as round the south of the Tyrrhenian and
the ^gean seas.
The precise form of each belt in this sequence depends not only
on the underlying structure, but also on the forces that have been
acting on that structure, and on the time during which that action
Precipita-
tion.
General plan of wind-system.
has been felt. In other words, the World-relation of the continent
is climatic as well as physical. In the nature of things, an area
lying on the eastern side of a great ocean and poleward of 3 7 "-45° N.
must have warm wet S.W. Anti-Trades blowing normally towards
it ; and thus two fundamental conditions for the presence of ice on
a large scale — high latitude and heavy precipitation — are guaranteed.
This would be the case even if there were no permanent wind-whirl
(or low-pressure area) off Iceland — a possibility demanded by the
assumption of some geologists that there could have been no wide
glaciation unless the oceanic circulation had been interrupted by
the existence of land and the vertical circulation of the atmosphere
consequently much accelerated by " continental " influences.
We assume, then, heavy precipitation, cyclonic or otherwise,
over the north-west of our area, leading to wide glaciation — at all
events over the higher parts of the area ; and, while all the higher
ground, especially our ridge of Young Folded Mountains, may
have had more or less independent centres of glaciation, — the Rhone
I World-Relations 3
valley having been covered with 5000 feet of ice — the great centre
must have been where maximum rainfall and minimum temperature
were combined. This occurs where the great lowland is skirted, on
the brink of the Atlantic, by the Scandinavian highlands ; and from
this the ice-flow must have "radiated," and did radiate.
Again we are prepared for certain results. We are prepared BesnltB of
to find, e.g., that the great weight of ice depressed the north-west G^acia-
of the area, probably in many places below ocean-level, — that the ^^^
regular wind-wyr (or high-pressure) movement over the interior
lowland in winter would distribute glacier-silt to form loess,
especially to south and south-east of the maximum extension of the
ice-sheet, — and that the progress of the ice-sheet up-hill towards the
south would be slow and short. This last consideration would
lead us further. All pre-glacial organic forms which survived
at all, must have migrated southwards before this ice-sheet; but
the high ridge of Young Folded Mountains was also glaciated, and
sunward of it was the complementary sea-filled depression. This
double obstacle to movement southward and the narrowness of the
belt between the two areas of glaciation suggest that we shall find
relative poverty of native flora and fauna, owing to wholesale
massacre in the Great Ice Age. Naturally, this is specially
characteristic of Scandinavia.
But the question of precipitation is of supreme importance quite Swing of
apart from its relation to the action of ice. The most important "^i^^d-
single phenomenon in World-climate is probably the swing of the ^
wind-system with the sun, leading to a swing of the rain belts and
rain seasons. The northward movement of the sun in the northern
summer carries the source of the Trade-winds north of the great
tableland deserts, which lie in the broadest parts of the perpendicular
"triangles" of the tetrahedron in latitudes south of 37°-45°N.
Indeed, the deserts are largely caused by the Trade-winds, which
are not only cold and dry so near to their source, but also moving
from colder to warmer latitudes, and therefore able to hold more
moisture than they can get. We are prepared, then, for an area
of summer drought in Southern Europe ; and this must have
accentuated the poverty of the natural flora and fauna.
For, obviously, any plant or animal association must flourish Transi-
best where conditions are most favourable to it ; and, therefore, *^^
any such association must be most powerful, i.e. most difficult to
oust, in its natural zone. But in the transition area between one
natural zone and the next no natural association can be as stable
as inside one or other of the natural zones ; and thus these
transition areas must have afforded early Man special facilities for
pushing in himself and his domestic plants and animals. The
most marked of all these areas is that between the Trades and the
Anti-Trades, i.e. the " Mediterranean " latitudes ; and in the case
The Continent of Europe
CH.
Wind
ControL
of the actual Mediterranean basin, as we have seen, other causes
had already led to relative poverty of natural flora and fauna.
Outside the poleward limit of the Trades, we may expect that
the Anti-Trades should bring unfailing supplies of rain throughout
the year ; but the same kind of continental conditions which
favoured a glacial sheet in the Great Ice Age, may favour semi-glacial
conditions every winter. In that case the interior lowland will be
covered with a sheet of cold heavy air, into which it will be
impossible for the warm light air of the S.W. Anti-Trades to intrude.
Only in summer, when the interior heats up and actually attracts an
inflow, will these warm light winds be able to bring their burden of
rain inland.
Weather-
ing.
World
Site.
Stanforj S Ji-^
Columbus' first voyage.
Again we are prepared for certain results. We are prepared to
find, e.g., that wheat-growing is much encouraged on the interior
lowlands by early summer rains, — that the summer-drought greatly
favours fruit-growing in the lee of the Young Folded Mountains —
that the complementary character of the seasons north and south
of these mountains, with its necessary accompaniment of comple-
mentary crops, must have led to intercourse between the two areas
in very early times.
One other point remains. We expect that the oldest foldings
of crust will have weathered most, and that their weatherings will
have gravitated northwards. If so, the lowlands will be modified
chemically and physically owing to the distribution — by wind,
water, and ice — of the denuded materials ; and the old folded
highland will have been carved by deep sinuous valleys and other
signs of a river-system that is complex because imposed on a base
appropriate to vastly different conditions in ages long past.
So far as the distribution of land on the Earth is concerned,
the western end of this old folded highland marks approximately
the mathematical centre of all the habitable surface ; and, so far as
the distribution of water is concerned, it is the point from which
I World-Relations 5
Trade-winds carry away in summer, and to which Anti-Trades bring
back in winter, over the narrowest and most important ocean on
the face of the earth. To this the Discovery of America and
the commercial history of England are significant and explicit
corollaries ; it also involves implicitly the conditions under which
cryptogamic vegetation came to be buried under submarine mud
in the process of being converted into coal, and under which land-
locked basins came to be cut off so completely from the ocean that
they became salt enough to be the source of the great salt-beds of
Europe. Cf p. lo.
All things considered, these are the two most important minerals
in the modern development of Europe.
CHAPTER II
REGIONAL RELATIONS
Ural-
Caspian
Qap.
Asiatic
Inflow.
Within the World relation is the more intimate regional one, the
local environment ; and, in the case of Europe, the more important
aspects of the precise site and surroundings are rather climatic and
economic towards the north-west, and rather physical and political
towards the south-east. The latter was the more important histori-
cally ; for before the particularist Nomad of the ocean margin had
expanded westward in his ships, the patriarchal Nomad of the
continental steppe had expanded westward on his horse.
Oceans of sea and Saharan sand isolated the essentially European
area on the north, the west, and the south. Only on the east was
there a natural physical link with a neighbouring continent ; and across
the only part of this link which is neither mountainous nor forested,
the Caspian Sea stretches the barrier of 700 miles of water from
north to south. The character of the unforested lowland to the
north of the Caspian is due largely to its emergence from beneath
the waters of the Arctic Ocean — an emergence so recent geologically
that the seals in the Caspian still retain almost all the normal
" Arctic " characteristics. The low, smooth surface of this exposed
sea-floor, — the desiccation involved in the disappearance of the
great southward expansion of the Arctic Ocean, — and the constancy
of icy winds in the winter from the Siberian Pole of Cold, all com-
bined to preserve this Ural-Caspian gap as an easy steppe road
into Europe. Mr, Mackinder has justly called it "The Geographical
Pivot of History."
The name Asia (Asu = " Sunrise ") was originally confined to the
plains behind Ephesus, while all to the west of the vEgean might be
called Europe {£rtfi = " Sunset ") ; and, of course, the ^gean itself
made an unmistakable western frontier to Asia in this limited sense.
In the larger sense, Asia, as a great home of Man, is separated from
Europe, as another great home of Man, by this very thinly peopled
steppe. The northern route into Europe over this lowland steppe
from the " Land of the Horsemen," which was followed by the finer
types of Yellow man, — Huns and Magyars, Bulgars and Finns, —
CH. II
Regional Relations
is easier than that southern route over the plateau steppe, from
the " Land of the Camel-men," which was followed by the Turks.
But the environment of both routes was pastoral and patriarchal,
favourable only to nomad shepherds, eaters of meat and cheese,
fighters for grass and water ; and any decrease in rainfall meant not
only scantier supplies of water and grass, but also an increased
percentage of bright sunshine, such as has, by its nerve-stimulus,
largely accounted for the great movements of people over the vast
grasslands of the world, whether steppes or savanas. It was in the
great cycle of drought, between 400 B.C. and 600 a.d., that hunger
Distribution (in hours) of bright sunshine.
and actinic stimulus gave birth to the epoch-making migrations of
Goths and Huns and Vandals, and to similar movements in Arabia,
Persia, and Kashmir, of which Mahomet's was the most important.
The separation of Europe from Asia is, therefore, historic rather Independ-
than geographical, political rather than physical ; and — although, as ^^^ 0^
a matter of fact, at the summit of the two Trans-Ural railways, '"^°P®*
as on the summit of the Dariel Pass, there are sign-posts with
" Europe " on one arm and " Asia " on the other — the weakness
of any politico-historic influences is shown by the fact that the
nominal frontier in the east runs neither along the Urals, where no
continuous crest can be marked out at all, nor along the Caucasus,
where the crest is a typical piece of sierra. It is, indeed, a mere
8
The Continent of Europe
CH.
Pre-
historic
Inflow.
Mediter-
ranean
and Early
Man.
compromise between geographical and political conditions; and
where it is most important, at the Ural-Caspian gap, it is partly the
course of the Ural river, i.e. a line towards which human movement
is attracted from both sides rather than one from which human
movement is diverted in opposite directions.
At the same time that specific development of the continent
from the south to which its practical separation from Asia is due,
had its own geographical base.
The earliest debt of Europe to its southern neighbour was
incurred in prehistoric times. The initial movements of the little
brown-skinned, long-headed Gondwanas — as we may call primeval
man — must have been entirely longitudinal, or at least isothermal,
i.e. roughly east or west from the primeval race-home ; and sub-
sequent movements into Europe must have been much easier for
the African branch over the two or three " Mediterranean " land-
bridges than for any Asiatic branch across — or even round — the
Kirghiz Sea. Indeed, two of the land-bridges, the " Italian " and
the " Greek," led through a climate that was very favourable to the
progress of early Man, being too transitional to encourage strong
associations (cf p. 3), and being kept equable by the great expanse
of sea (now largely converted into steppe and desert) that stretched
north-eastward up the Aralo-Caspian depression and south-westward
over the Shari-Congo basin. It was, therefore, inherently probable
that remains of very early Man would some day be found round the
northern end of these bridges, i.e. on the Riviera, at Gibraltar, in
Croatia, and that most progress should be made in those parts of
the continent which had been earliest populated. Recent develop-
ments in the attitude of Historians to " Minoan " and " pre-Minoan "
civilisation confirm the geographical probability.
Once the surface of the globe had approximated to its present
condition, this Mediterranean area was still likely to favour progress
in many ways. Its latitude guarantees absolute freedom both from
continued high temperatures and from even occasional extensions
of extreme cold ; at the same time it involves alternate participation
in purely temperate conditions, as dependent on the rainfall regime
of the Anti-Trades, and in essentially tropical conditions, as depend-
ent on the desiccating influence of the Trades.
In this area early Man was specially favoured, therefore, by the
absence of the most adverse climatic condition, a hard winter ; for
the mountain uplift to the north protected him from the harshest
phenomena of the so-called temperate zone, while the sea to the
south preserved every year an almost tropical temperature long after
the summer drought had given place to winter rain. There was,
therefore, no frost to cut down crops, nor was there pressing need
for fatty nitrogenous food. At the same time, the rainfall was so
distributed as to check the growth of dense forest : there was no
II Regional Relations 9
" closed association," for the struggle was not so keen that no new
species could force its way in ; nor, on the other hand, had the
land been left intractable as the result of glaciation.
These two considerations are of great importance. North of North v.
the Alps, even after the forest had been largely cleared, it took South,
centuries for the ill-drained surface to become really fit for human
habitation, so that it remained a land only of hunters and foresters
long after southern Europe had been settled by tillers of the soil.
And in that southern area, as the drought came just when the heat
was greatest, and as the rainy season was cool, luxuriance of vegetation
was impossible ; for half of every year in the contest between man
and nature, nature was passive or at best drowsy, and during that
same period no tropical rain forbade man to make use of his most
deadly weapon — fire.
Even so the case is understated. Far from tropical scenes of Social
senseless competition, species are social ; and, as these social species Species.
included such food-plants as the olive and sweet-chestnut, man
could find his daily food near at hand and in great abundance.
Life thus became stationary, or at all events man had a fixed home,
in which things could be kept ; and at once savagery, with its lack
of family ties and family goods, gave place to a civilisation based on
the accumulation of wealth and the transmission of experience.
With the development of human activities in historic ages, the Drought
sea and its non-European hinterland were still favourable to progress. Control.
That hinterland included practically two areas in which the summer
drought was so much extended as to be almost permanent drought,
with a consequent imperious necessity for irrigation ; and in each
case the area was provided with a river-system the most conspicuous
feature of which was an annual and beneficent flood. The most
elementary processes of surveying the flood area — a natural and
necessary occupation — involved the discovery of arithmetical and
geometrical principles, as the beneficence of the flood involved an
absence of cloud by day and by night ; and the attraction of the
stars to those who spent the night on the flat roofs appropriate to a
rainless land, led to an early application of the arithmetic and
geometry to the study of the stars.
Again, when Egypt and Mesopotamia had thus supplied the The
dwellers on the Levantine coasts with a scientific basis both for Levant
navigation and for evolving a system of weights and measures, the
Phoenician trader was still specially favoured by the geographical
conditions of the area. Not only is the sea practically tideless,
but it is also exceptionally safe at night ; for the ordinary sequence
of "land and sea breezes" is greatly quickened by the cloudless
skies, and must involve off'-shore drift at night. Nor was this all.
In the clear air that is typical of the Mediterranean basin, the
mountain peaks of distant lands were seen so distinctly — as Cyprus
lO
The Continent of Europe
CH.
Lack of
Stimulus.
Atlantic
Margin.
Atlantic v.
Pacific.
can be seen from the Phoenician coast — that they must have
been at once a main incentive to early voyages of discovery,
and an inestimable aid to navigation in days before the invention
of any nautical instruments. The Penas de Europa, though not
actually on the Mediterranean, were for ages "The Lighthouse of
Europe."
In early times, then, the Mediterranean race lived under
conditions that did not strain their infant powers ; and those of
them who lived on the warm temperate shore had every opportunity
of receiving stimulus and civilisation from their more advanced
relations on the subtropical shore. It was an additional advantage
that the intercourse was by sea, as that — in strong contrast to the
steppe route in later times — favoured the inflow of ideas rather
than people.
The very ease of life and navigation in the south, however,
though favourable to early activities, was destined to be a drawback
with the advance of civilisation, so that within 2000 years the
centre of civilisation had moved to the north-west of the continent.
There survival was only to the strong and fearless, and the most
helpful features of the coast are the best proof of the hard conditions
of life. Thus, it is specifically where a fractured plateau-scarp is
exposed to wild storms and heavy precipitation in high latitudes
that the combined action of ice and torrents develops such a
nursery of mariners as a fiord system. Again, where the plateau
gives place southward to plain, navigable rivers can give access to
and from the ocean ; and where the tough, old, folded highland is
abruptly severed in the Armorican peninsula, abundant traces of
Viking blood still show that the ria was a good substitute for the
fiord.
But all these things are more or less subordinate to the funda-
mental fact that we have here a piece of Atlantic margin ; and the
slight variation in the width of the S-shaped Atlantic suggests,
even on a political map, that the shape bears no relation to the
grain of the enclosing lands. On the contrary, these are abruptly
cut short seaward — obviously as in Norway and Newfoundland,
Brittany and Brazil, or otherwise, as where the North European
plain drops from its submarine loo-fathom terminus. This ignoring
of essential feature-lines has two important results which react on
each other. The one is a great variety of coast — fiord and ria,
estuary and gulf, peninsula and island ; the other is access to and
from an immense hinterland.
Here is the fundamental distinction between the Atlantic and
the Pacific. The latter has had a simple history, its surrounding
mountain-lines having been folded up continuously as its floor
sank ; and so its form is simple — a vast basin the edge of which
is almost everywhere backed by mountains and festooned with
II
Regional Relations
II
mountainous islands. Tiie Atlantic has had a complex history,
in a succession of subsidences which broke across the grain of the
land ; and so its form is complex, finding its epitome and climax
Floor of Atlantic, showing feature-lines.
in Europe, a " Peninsula of peninsulas." As the two basins are of
approximately the same size, the smaller ocean must have the
larger hinterland ; and, having much the easier access to that
hinterland by reason of its varied coast-line, it must be much the
more important economically.
12
The Continent of Europe
CH.
Sea Fish-
ing.
Peninsu-
lax Dis-
unity.
Over
Popula-
tion.
The influence of such conditions on Man must naturally have
been greatest where the conditions were most emphasised, i.e. in
Europe ; and in this connection the water-forms and land-forms
are equally important. Geographically, a sea-fishery is the only
firm foundation for a mercantile marine ; and its essential condi-
tions are profoundly favourable to the rise of pure democracy, based
on the equality of man and man in the jointly-owned boat, and the
equality of man and woman in the common home from which the
fisherman is absent so often and so long that dual control must be
evolved. No doubt, the depth and other conditions make the
Mediterranean deficient in marine life of economic value, as it is
in tidal power ; but the North Sea is one of the finest fishing
grounds on the face of the globe. The Atlantic tides are so
strongly felt in the shallow enclosed area that there is great rise
and fall of water-level in the long estuaries which feed the sea with
river-mud and its accompanying fish-food, and the upper and lower
strata of the water are so mixed as to make an absolutely homo-
geneous unit ; the slightly submerged banks, especially the Dogger,
are ideal fishing centres, having deep " pits " into which the fish
can " drop " in cold or stormy weather ; and the abundance of
river-mud discharged into the sea, especially towards the south,
where the shores are most densely populated, makes the submarine
'"deltas" ideal fish-nurseries. Cf. p. i6.
The land-forms, on the other hand, are predominantly peninsular ;
and, in the nature of things, peninsulas are essentially semi-sub-
merged highland or mountain areas. They enjoy the climatic,
commercial, and strategic advantages of a sea environment ; but,
unlike islands, their apparent unity of form is negatived by the
normal presence of a mountain back-bone, which throws off human
activities, like river-systems, in opposite directions. And, as their
relative excess of length over breadth makes them difficult to govern
from a single centre in early times, and gives them considerable
difference of climate ^ and consequently of economic interests at the
extreme ends, they are found to be adverse to political unity. This
led to great variety of development between peninsula and
peninsula as well as within the limits of each ; and this variety
led in turn to natural intercourse and mutual interchange of ideas
and products.
Again, the area of the peninsulas is relatively small ; but the
climatic conditions were favourable to the growth of population in
early times. The natural result was that the population reached
" Saturation - point " somewhat prematurely, and the only remedy
was emigration. How great the facilities for this were, may be
gauged from the estimate that the development of coast is
^ The normal direction of the great peninsulas (N.-S. ) implies great latitudinal
variation of climate.
II Regional Relations 13
sufficient to give one mile of coast to every 75 square miles of
land ; and the political importance of this was greatly increased
by the fact that the chief peninsulas show very marked differences
of relief and climate, with corresponding differences of products
and their attendant occupations. The various geographic units,
therefore, not only developed more or less independently of one
another, but also on independent lines ; so that the varied outline
and the varied surface of the continent were reflected in a variety of
social and political types which was very favourable to the progress
of civilisation.
Under such conditions the Atlantic margin of Eurasia developed Atlantic
a civilisation widely different from that of the Pacific margin, — Civilisa-
a civilisation essentially based on variety, mobility, change; and
this difference has been reflected in almost all the normal activities,
e.g. the art of the two areas. Geographically, art is the child of
energy and leisure, indolence and bustle being equally adverse ;
and the prime defect of Western art reflects the peninsular environ-
ment of the artists. For the constant and rapid changes of life,
with their concomitant changes of artistic ideals and fashions, have
never given time for any one phase to develop a system of decoration
completely suited to its subject-matter. In the Orient, on the
contrary, Man's art, like his life, has known so little change that
it has slowly evolved forms perfectly adapted to their subject and
their functiona
CHAPTER III
MARGINAL AND MIDLAND SEAS
Black Sea
Circula-
tion.
The development of Europe, then, is intimately connected with its
surrounding ocean and seas ; but in this respect the White Sea and
the Caspian have been of little importance, for the exposure to icy
N. and N.E. winds in winter, the amount of fresh water sent down
into them by rivers, the shallowness of all the White Sea and of the
" European " part of the Caspian, cause them to be ice-bound for
months every year, while the isolation, by latitude, of the White
Sea, and by physique, of the Caspian, have further helped to
minimise their utility. The Baltic and the Black Sea are more
useful, but anywhere east of a line roughly joining the two great
harbours of Copenhagen and Constantinople conditions are
relatively unfavourable.
In the case of the Black Sea, for instance, there are practically
few of the fishing phenomena which are the natural basis of com-
merce. It seems that, when the original crustal convulsion opened
up the Bosphorus chink between the salt Mediterranean and the
relatively fresh Euxine, the heavy salt water rushed into the latter
and flooded its lower levels, killing off the native "fresh-water"
fauna. One result of this was that the heavy salt water was suffused
with sulphuretted hydrogen, and the lower layers have become
lifeless. On the other hand, navigation is encouraged by a warm
surface current, the ultimate result of somewhat complex conditions.
In winter the surface water reaches freezing-point, though it
does not actually freeze except near the coast ; and the reason for
this is that the temperature of maximum density in the relatively
fresh surface-water is considerably above 32° F. At this temperature,
then, the heavy, chilled water sinks down on to the still heavier,
though warmer, salt layers.
This locates the minimum deep-temperature in intermediate
levels (25-50 fathoms). But when the greatest amount of fresh
water is being discharged by the Dnieper and other large rivers,
there is such a surplus as to give rise to a strong current of cool
fresh water out of the sea. The pace and relative lightness of this
14
CH. Ill Marginal and Midland Seas 15
keep it naturally in the centre and on the surface of the Bosphorus
channel, while a counter current of warm salt water drifts into the
Black Sea along the shores and on the bottom of the channel.
This warm, salt, shore current not only keeps the strait unfrozen
except at the rarest intervals of extraordinary winter cold, but also
materially influences both the climate and the actual operations of
navigation in the Black Sea. It is already divided into two before
it leaves the Bosphorus, and this division is maintained in its
passage over the shallow "North-European" (cf. p. 22) floor of
the Black Sea, so that one branch eventually penetrates between
the outflowing waters of the Dnieper and the Dniester to Odessa,
while the other skirts Sebastopol. It is thanks to this that the
Odessa harbour is seldom frozen up for more than a few days, and
so the city is able to make full use of its position between two
rivers whose mouths are intricate and difficult to navigate, and
whose fresh waters are easily frozen.
The Baltic is still more important, especially in the history of Baltic Sea.
civilisation. Its physical boundary is the partly submerged plateau
on which Riigen and the Danish islands stand, and up to which
there is a perceptible tide, amounting to 1 2 inches at Copenhagen ;
and the somewhat similar Aland ridge cuts off the Baltic proper
from the Gulf of Bothnia. These submarine barriers have important
effects on the circulation of the water somewhat similar to those in
the Black Sea. Thus, the circulation inside the Baltic itself is
mainly superficial, the heavier salter layers being so much blocked
in as to be almost stagnant — a condition which is again adverse to
marine life ; but, as the Baltic — like the Black Sea in a less degree
— receives much more water by rain and river than it loses by
evaporation in such a latitude, over these stagnant strata there is
a fresh-water current out into the North Sea except when the S.W.
wind is blowing strongly.
Owing to the rotation of the Earth this current hugs the Baltic
Swedish coast ; and, being dependent on the summer rain and the Circula-
melting of snow and ice, it varies so much in volume that there *°^"
is an inflow of what is called " Bank water " from the North Sea
from September to April. This inflow, which seems naturally to
come mainly from the deeper northern parts of the North Sea in
late winter and early spring, and mainly from the shallower southern
parts in the autumn and early winter, — and which is independent of
a constant undercurrent into the Baltic of normal North Sea water, —
has an important relation to the fishing industry.
Of course, extremes of temperature increase to the north and Ice-bound
the east ; but, except north of the Quarken Narrows, the interfer- Coasts,
ence with traffic is less than might be imagined. Even in the
Gulf of Finland, which is ice-bound for about 150 days every
year, important traffic can be, and is, carried on by means of ice-
i6
The Continent of Europe
CH.
North Sea.
Southern
DiTision.
Central
Division.
breakers. In hard winters the island -studded Aland Strait is
covered with ice strong enough for heavy traffic ; and the coasts
between the strait and the Quarken Narrows are frozen up every
year except where, in occasional years, ports with some exposure to
Atlantic winds from the west and with salt "pits" to the east of
them, e.g. Hernosand and Oxelosand, may remain open the whole
winter (cf. Windau and Libau). Otherwise, even between Stockholm
and Visby, navigation is usually stopped from Christmas to Easter ;
and in severe winters there may be a good deal of loose, drifting ice
in the Kattegat. In the last 2000 years the entire sea has been
frozen over perhaps half a dozen times — for instance, King Charles
X. certainly marc/ied his army across the Belts in 1658 — and, with
the constant accumulation of river-borne silt, the shore-waters are
becoming so much shallower that they are more and more suscept-
ible to frost.
West of the Copenhagen-Constantinople line conditions are not
only favourable, but actually very stimulating, to human activity,
especially in the North Sea. This may be regarded as a shallow
and often stormy sea which slightly covers, and entirely surrounds,
the large low " plateau " of the Dogger Bank ; and, in the lee of
this bank, the bed of the sea, which is part of the continental shelf
having a fairly regular slope down from south to north, is scarred
with a series of local depressions such as the " Silver Pit," the " Sole
Pit," the Coal Pit, etc.
The whole area may be divided into three parts, all of which
converge on the Skager-Rak. The south is the shallowest, with
an average depth of only 20 fathoms ; and, except in the pits, no
part of the sea south of the Dogger has a depth of 30 fathoms. This
southern section is flooded, especially from the south-east, with
quantities of deltaic mud, alive with the small organisms that make
the best food for young fish. It is, therefore, an ideal breeding-
ground for fish ; and its shores have naturally become the homes
of amphibious races, such as the Frisians and Saxons, the English
and the Dutch. The Dover Strait is so narrow, and this part of the
sea Itself is so shallow, that the temperature of it is controlled
mainly by the air above it. It is, therefore, relatively cold in
winter, when there is normally a cold outflow of air and water
from the North European plain and its rivers, and so winter
trawling is largely confined to the " Dogger " ; while in summer
the shallow waters off" the continental coast are more frequented.
At all times, however, the tides so mix the upper and lower layers
and the oceanic and continental waters that this shallow section is
more or less homogeneous to the bottom.
The central section is roughly parallel to the east coast of
Scotland, and has an average depth of 50 to 60 fathoms; and,
as it is chilled towards the east in winter, and freshened
Ill
Marginal and Midland Seas
17
towards the east in summer, and as the tide moves south-
ward more slowly through the shallower Scotch waters than through
the deeper Norwegian waters, conditions are more favourable
c
i8
The Continent of Europe
CH.
Tides.
Move-
mentB of
Fish.
Mediter-
ranean
Sea.
both to the fish and to the fishermen on the west than on the
east of the Long Forties Banks. This central section, Hke the
southern, owes to the northern section its main supplies of the
Atlantic element, which fills the " pits " with denser, because Salter,
but warmer water.
The tide enters this shallow, marginal sea from both north-west
and south-west, and in conjunction with the currents determines the
site and the season of the fisheries, — the herring fishing beginning
off the Shetlands in June, and ending off Yarmouth in November, —
as well as the position of the chief harbours and the inducements to
fisL For over such a sea-floor the height of the tide determined
both the area laid bare by the ebb, with its supplies of stranded fish,
and the distance of the ports inland. And, as the southward tide
naturally hugs the British coast (cf. p. 15), while the northward tide
•works eastward, a circulatory motion is set up which is profoundly
important in the distribution of fish.
The eggs of all the more important fish except herring float, and
sea-fish begin to spawn when their food-supply begins to increase,
i.e. in late spring and early summer, when the warm, salt, oceanic
water is drifting food southward along the Scotch east coast. At
the same time the inflow of cold and fresh water is driving the fish
away from the east and towards the west shores of the sea, so that
this western area is specially the spawning ground. The circulatory
motion, therefore, carries the eggs away from England to the deltaic
muds of the Dutch coast j they are hatched on the journey, and
arrive at their destination as enormous shoals of tiny fish. Here
their numbers produce such over-population that the food-supply
(though very large indeed) soon begins to fail, with the result that
the larger and stronger fish tend to migrate westward. From time
immemorial, therefore, this must have drawn the finest fish towards
the English coast, — even adult plaice being known to travel 200
miles in one season, — a fact of prime significance in the develop-
ment of the English fishing industry and its dependent mercantile
marine.
The part played by the Mediterranean has been very difTerent.
Not only does its basin form a distinct natural region between the
Alpine uplift and the Sahara wastes ; but also the sea itself is four
times as long as it is wide, a great commercial advantage which has
made it one of the great "high roads of civilisation." Its tempera-
ture, salinity, and circulation are, therefore, of relatively little
moment, although, as a matter of fact, the tide at Venice sometimes
reaches the height of three feet. Obviously latitude and distance from
the Atlantic make the salinity and the temperature of the surface
water decrease from the south-east to the north-west, except below
the level of the sill which separates the Atlantic from the Mediter-
ranean and forms the floor of the Straits of Gibraltar. Through
in Marginal and Midland Seas 19
these straits, as through the Dardanelles, there is a current of
relatively fresh surface water into the Mediterranean, where the
excessive loss by evaporation and the small contribution from the
rivers lower the surface-level and increase the salinity. There is a
salt undercurrent outwards (cf. p. 15), but the inward surface
current is much the larger and the stronger. Indeed, it was the pace
of this current that wrecked the ill-fated Utopia off Europa Point, as
it is the weight of tlie out-current and the height of the Gibraltar
sill which prevent the deep " Arctic " waters of the Atlantic from
bringing their life-giving oxygen into the Mediterranean.
Both the north-western, warm-temperate, mountain-girt basin Two
and the south-eastern, sub-tropical, gulf-girt basin have more pro- Basins.
nounced articulation of outline and better economic outlets on the
European than on the non-European side ; and in each case there
is an island pivot. From the natural centre of Sardinia— held in
turn by Carthage and Rome, Goth and Byzantine, Vandal and
Arab, Emperor and Pope, Aragon and Austria — Port Mahon
invites to the Balearic islands and the Ebro valley, as Corsica does
to the Apennine passes and the Lombard plain, or to the great
through-route of the Rhone valley. So the natural centre of Crete
— held in turn by Greek and Roman, Saracen and Crusader, Venetian
and Turk — commands the east -and -west bridge of the Cyclades
and the north-and-south waterway of the ^2gean to and from the
Black Sea and the Morava confluence with the Danube. Sicily, oft
the shallow saddle between these two deep basins, was the natural
key to both, and was therefore held in turn by every dominant
Power — Carthage, Greece, and Rome, Saracens, Normans, and
Angevins ; and its command of both shores of Italy, and their
relations respectively to Genoa and Venice, gave it as much political
importance in ancient times as its natural fertility gave it economic
importance, especially as an exporter of grain.
Since the opening of the Suez canal and the development of Suez
prairie agriculture, however, the position has changed. For the Route,
whole produce of Sicily is absolutely immaterial to the world's
grain-market ; and, on the other hand, the Suez route is unlike most
other great water-thoroughfares, for it does not admit of Great Circle
sailing, nor is it really oceanic. It is essentially a coastal route, fed
from a number of " bays " ; and the length of these leads to the
development of a number of foci, e.g. Barcelona, Marseilles, Genoa,
Naples, etc., more or less subordinate to a few others placed roughly
on the horns of each " bay," e.g. Gibraltar and Malta (cf. Aden and
Colombo). All the Mediterranean coastlands are notably lacking in
coal, but all along the European shores there are so many heavy
cargoes out that cheap coal comes in everywhere ; for instance,
coal is carried past Algiers to Constantinople at a lower rate than to
Algiers itself.
20
The Continent of Europe
CH.
"Atlan-
tic"
Climate.
Atlantic
Winds.
The climatic influence of the Atlantic is indissolubly bound
up with its economic influence, especially its facilities for commerce.
In days when nautical instruments were very roughly made, and
when ships were so few that there was little or no fear of collisions
except in the Narrow Seas, it was a great advantage that the
continental shelf drops to abysmal depths so abruptly 200 miles
west of Land's End that there is a change of colour and of move-
ment in the surface layers of the ocean, — a change so marked as to
be unmistakable to the experienced eye. In later days, when
artificial aids to navigation were multiplied, the Faroer plateau not
only cut off" the Atlantic — by the Wyville Thomson ridge — from the
icy Arctic waters of the Norwegian Sea, but also provided a base
for such a light as that of Rockall — with its curious resemblance to
a ship under full sail, due to the dark stone of its hull-base being
covered at the higher levels with the guano of billions of sea-birds.
And, with the present development of international commerce, it
is at least equally important that where the opposite coasts (of
Newfoundland and Ireland) approach within the minimum distance
of 1750 miles, there is a somewhat similar submarine ridge, the
use of which is betrayed by its name of The Telegraph Plateau.
These advantages are emphasised by the fact that the Atlantic
is by far the saltest of all the oceans, and that the maximum salinity
in the North Atlantic occurs north of the tropic between the
Sahara edge and the Dolphin Divide — the centre of which is
marked approximately by its highest elevation in the Azores. A
drift of relatively high salinity is therefore found to the east of the
Dolphin Divide in Anti-Trade latitudes the whole way from the
tropic to the Faroer ridge ; and the influence of the Anti-Trades
themselves, of the warm Gulf Stream Drift, and of this high salinity,
cause icebergs to be practically unknown anywhere inside these
limits.
Again, in days when steamers were unknown, the circulation of
air over this same section of the Atlantic had an intimate relation to
the history of geographical discovery. For the demand for air to fill
the " vacuum " caused by the violent up-current over the heated
desert of the Ibero-Saharan plateau so emphasises the normal down-
current over the cool ocean that the wind-wyr round the Azores
is abnormally large and strong ; and the direction and regularity of
the rotating winds not only account for the excellence of the port
wine of the neighbouring coasts, but also provide that coast with
a direct and unfailing link between the outward Trades and the
homeward Anti-Trades (cf. p. 5).
With the substitution of coal for sails, and the consequent power
of going " straight " independently of all winds and currents,
the European harbours with the best access to coal are found to
stand on or near a Great Circle which makes the shortest route from
Ill Marginal and Midland Seas 21
Liverpool to Panama pass relatively " quite close " to such important
harbours as Halifax (N.S.), Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Balti-
more, Norfolk (the U.S.A. coaling station), Havana, and Kingston.
CHAPTER IV
RELIEF
Latitu-
dinal
Division.
Dividing
Line.
Longitu-
dinal
Division.
Europe is divided naturally into two distinct areas — a northern
area of lowland, blocked westward by the old folded highlands of
Scandinavia, and a southern area of old folded highlands, ribbed
southward by young folded mountains ; and the distinction is not
limited to the land forms, but applies also to the marginal and
midland seas. The North Sea, the Baltic, and the White Sea, are
all shallow encroachments of the ocean on the northern lowland,
not one of them more than 600 feet deep except in occasional
troughs or pits ; the Mediterranean, the Black Sea, and the Caspian,
are all due to subsidences, and each of them has a depth of fully
6000 feet over quite a large area.
The Caspian and the Black Sea have a special interest in this
respect, because they actually contain submerged parts of the
dividing line between the two areas. Thus, the geologically recent
foundering of the " Black Sea " has abruptly cut off the European
Balkans from their continuation in the Yaila Dagh, and the Yaila
Dagh from their continuation in the Caucasus ; and the latter
range is abruptly cut off from the Asiatic Balkans by the subsidence
of the "Caspian." In each case to the north of the divide, as in
the Sea of Azof and the northern basins of the Caspian, the depth
never exceeds 600 feet, and is typical of the northern lowland ;
and the land link of the Manych Depression between the two seas
corresponds exactly to that of the Swedish Lakeland between the
North Sea and the Baltic, as the freshness of the North Caspian
water — which is quite drinkable — parallels that of the Bothnian Gulf.
There is an equally important, but not so obvious, structural
division between east and west, the eastern half consisting of un-
folded lowlands — where even earthquakes are unknown — merging
to the north-west in an ancient mountain-system worn down into a
peneplain, while the western half (west of 20° E.) consists of ancient
"block and basin," merging to the south-east in young folded
mountains, where there are at least four centres of volcanic activity,
and earthquakes are an every-day occurrence.
CH. IV
Relief
23
The relation of this longitudinal division to the latitudinal Divisions
explains what is most significant in the arrangement of the land '" ''* ^"^
forms of the continent so far as man is concerned. Thus, we have
the North European or Swedo-Finnish peneplain flanked seaward
by the Scandinavian Highlands and merging landward in the east
European or Russian lowland, while the Mid-European or Franco-
24 The Continent of Europe ch.
German peneplain is flanked seaward by the Alpine system, and
merges landward in the Great European plain. In both cases the
relatively speedy contraction of the cooling interior of the earth
left areas of the crust unsupported, and therefore bound eventually
to tumble in ; but in the one case the crustal section was rigid and
fractured cleanly, while in the other it was flexible and crumpled
into folds. In the one case, therefore, a fractured block has been
so exposed to climatic influences as to have isolated man in the
fiord environment which is the best nursery of individualism ; in
the other, sections of the folded chain have collapsed bodily, or
odd links have been so worn and weakened as to give maximum
facilities for human intercourse — by such gaps as that between the
Pyrenees and the Alps, or such passes as those of the Simplon
and St. Gothard. Further, the rigidity of the old Mid-European
peneplain intensified the folding of the young Alpine chain to such
an extent that whole blocks on the margins of the folds subsided ;
and here we find, therefore, small but profoundly fertile plains, as
in the 20,000 square miles of the "Lombard," or the 40,000 square
miles of the " Magyar " plain.
Soils. These, however, are mainly covered with alluvial soils ; and
alluvial soils are less lasting than the glacial and more mixed soils
north of the Alpine folds. The fertility of these "strong" soils
is due to the great variety of rock from which they have been
formed in unglaciated areas, or to the direct action of glaciation in
so mixing soils. And the great Scandinavian centre was in this
respect much more influential than any of the subordinate centres,
e.g. the Alps, not only because there the ice-sheet was thickest
and most active, but also because the finest and most fertile glacial
drift could, when dry, be transported by wind over a great plain.
Loess. Obviously, the dryness could only accompany a wyr movement
of the atmosphere, in which the wind moves in the same direction
as the hands of a clock ; and, therefore, the glacial silt would
naturally be drifted all over the central plain, the burden of silt
becoming lighter and lighter as the wind moved westward. It
was inevitable, therefore, that the deepest deposits of loess would
be to the south-east of the Baltic, but that deposits might be found
as far west as Normandy.
Black Again, where the maximum southward extension of the ice
Earth. (roughly 50° N.) left a series of lake-studded hills in latitudes
where such an environment was very favourable to the growth of
deciduous forests, dried humus was carried along with the glacier
silt — to Russia, Hungary, and Rumania ; and this not only
increased its fertility and its power of holding water, but gave it the
dark colour to which it owes both its name of Black Earth and
its power of attracting heat. On the north Alpine foreland, how-
ever, such a clockwise movement of dry air could do little more
IV Relief 25
than carry the finer and more valuable material back up the slopes
down which it had come, while summer rains could do little less
than wash it away down stream. We recover some of it in the
Rhine gorge ; but the morainic areas themselves have now typically
poor and gravelly soil.
The prominent influence of the Scandinavian Highlands, apart Scandi-
from their age, is due to their area (nearly 200,000 square miles). ^^^^^
This is considerably more than double the area of the Alps ; and lands,
the surface is so well adapted to holding snow that the Jostedalsbrae
glacier has an area of 600 square miles. Farther north, where
decreased height and decreased precipitation are balanced by higher
latitude and northern exposure, the difference in climate is suggested
by the name of the Svartisan (" Black Ice") glacier, which still has
an area of 400 square miles. The lakes of the Swedo-Finnish
peneplain are correspondingly large, and lie round the edge of it,
as the Canadian lakes lie round the edge of the V-shaped archean
nucleus of the Hudson Bay area.
This Baltic edge is known as the glint line, and is due to the Baltic
differential erosion of the archean rock and its neighbours ; but in S'^^®^"-
the Swedish lake-land it is covered with fertile recent deposits, while
in Finland and Olonetz the glacial action is glaringly obvious in the
areas of thick boulder-clay, the incoherent river-systems, the bare
and scratched rock-surface, the thousands of lakes in the hollows
worn by the ice in the huge flat slabs of granitic rock of which the
country essentially consists. On the inner edge of the glint line in
the south the terminal moraines are similarly responsible for the
lake-dotted Baltic Heights.
The influence of the Ural system, though next in size to the The Urals.
Scandinavian, has been less than that of any other mountain system
in Europe. Indeed, it is only from the Asiatic side that they even
look like mountains, although both on the mainland and in Novaya
Zemlya they reach a height of 4000 to 5500 feet. But the fact
that their steeper face is towards Asia, while their westward slope is
so gentle that streams are navigable almost to their source, causes
them to be an important climatic divide, — so much so that the
ordinary European fruit trees, and such forest trees as oak and ash
and elm, stop abruptly on their western slopes. They have also
interesting climatic divisions from north to south, the northern
section being mainly tundra and the southern being mainly steppe,
while between the two the narrower and generally lower line is
both " forested " and rich in minerals ; and, as the piedmont valleys
are also very fertile on both sides of this central part of the range,
this section of it has become very important, and the continental
frontier has been moved eastwards to include the whole geographical
unit of the Government of Perm. The natural depression of the
Ufa valley, a branch of which forms the southern frontier of this
26
The Continent of Europe
CH.
Young
Folded
Moun-
tains.
Pyrenees
and Cau-
casus.
Sierra
Control.
section, gives a line of least resistance for the railway from Ufa to
Chelyabinsk.
The total area occupied by the Alps, Carpathians, and Pyrenees
is scarcely greater than that of the Scandinavian Highlands alone ;
but, instead of being a lonely block, this Mediterranean system is
essentially part of the great line of young folded mountains which
stretches from west to east of the Old. World, and played such an
important part in the early distribution and specialisation of Man.
Its influence has, however, been very different at different parts of
the line ; for instance, within the nominal frontier of Europe the
two terminal sections are widely different from the Alps.
The essential difference can be almost summed up in the state-
ment that the control exercised by the Pyrenees and the Caucasus
is specifically of a sierra type. Both are markedly straight, adhering
closely to the normal east-and-west " tetrahedral " line. Both have
a narrow crystalline axis which causes them to maintain a great
average height, the Roncesvalles Pass being about 4000 feet and
the Col de la Perche well over 5000, while the Dariel is nearly
8000, and the Marmison — between the headwaters of the important
Rion and Terek basins — over 9000 ; and in each case the approach
is complicated by the fact that on the gentler slope some of the
highest summits stand well out from the main axis of the range, e.g.
the extinct volcanoes of Elbruz and Kasbek on the north of the
Caucasus, and Perdu and Maladetta (Nethou) on the south of the
Pyrenees. In each case, too, more or less transverse spurs are so
developed as to give a series of culs de sac of the "glacier-cut
cauldron " type which is called a cirque ; and in the Pyrenean
cirques the Christians held out against the Moslems in just the
same way as, though with more success than, the Moslems held out
against the Christians in the Caucasian cirques. To-day the
Caucasus area contains representatives of very nearly every race
and every language in Eurasia, and Andorra remains an independent
republic in the Pyrenees.
Both systems agree, too, in the historic accident of having been
truncated so abruptly that even round their ends access is far from
easy, though the line from Derbent to Baku has an easier route
across the Apsheron peninsula than the western line has from
Ekatorinodar to Novorossisk, as that from Perpignan to Barcelona
via the Col de Perthus (800 feet) has an easier route than that
from Bayonne to Pamplona. Catalan speech is almost pure
Provencal, and the modern industries of Barcelona are largely
Provencal in origin as well as in character.
Further, the two systems agree even in their influence on the
longitudinal movements of population ; for the easier access round
the east end, which is partly due to the fact that both dissipate their
energies eastward in developing width — in a double line — instead
IV Relief 27
of concentrating them on a single upward growth, led to the Pre-
Roman and Pre-Russian populations moving westward for safety.
This westward movement took them into a land of so much heavier
rainfall that the soil on the southern exposure in the lee of the
range is enormously productive and largely covered with forest.
Thus, the western end of the Pyrenees has an " Atlantic " rainfall
of 5 feet, while the eastern end has a " Mediterranean " fall of
scarcely twice 5 inches. This is exactly paralleled in the Caucasus,
but the forest growth is even denser, being almost jungle, partly
because of the better shelter in the lee of the higher range, and
partly because of the greater abundance of underground water.
This, indeed, involves one of the few differences between the P3rreiieeB
two systems. Both are curiously devoid of the lakes which are so ''• ^*'^^"
. SUB.
typical of glaciated areas, and are such a protection from floods on
the lower land ; but, while the limestone in the Caucasus absorbs
the precipitation and passes it on so evenly that not only is the
range — so far as the limestones extend — forested to the very top,
but also waterfalls are practically unknown, in the case of the
Pyrenees the upper streams become so much involved in the longi-
tudinal folds of the range that they can only escape at rare intervals,
and then in the form of a cataract. This flows generally over the
edge of a cirque, as at Gavarnie, where there is a fall of 1 5 1 5 feet.
The total result is that — in spite of the typical sierra narrowness Cross
of the ranges, — in spite of the high snow-line even on the northern Conimuni-
slope (about 9000 feet), — in spite of the smallness of the glaciers,
all the 900 in the Caucasus not having a larger total area than the
Jostedalsbrae alone, — in spite of the fact than the Segre valley leads
directly up to the Col de la Perche as that of the Terek does to
the Dariel pass, — in spite of the fact that in other parts of the world
railways use passes a mile higher than the Dariel and nearly two
miles higher than the Col de la Perche — no railway has hitherto
been built across either range.
The old connection between the Pyrenees and the Caucasus has Fold
been severed so sharply and in so many places that the comple- ^ap*-
mentary areas of summer-rain and summer-drought in Europe have
always had more or less easy intercourse, such as is most
effective in the development of civilisation ; and both the gaps in,
and the varied course of, the connecting uplift are due to the same
cause — the superior toughness of the older foldings. These tough
old blocks are really just the roots of the old mountain system ; and
the pressure from the south which forced up the flexible young
folds was never great enough to overcome the resistance of the
older rock to the north. Thus, the abrupt truncation of the
Pyrenees shows that the range once extended eastward ; but the
tough, massive block of the " Cevennes " plateau kept it so far to the
south that the eastward extension was involved in the subsidence
28
The Continent of Europe
CH.
Alpine
Line.
Alpine
Loops.
Cmstal
Segments.
Alpine
Gaps.
Alps
Proper.
of the western basin of the Mediterranean, and thus the Lower
Rhone valley became the chief Hnk between central and southern
Europe.
To the east of the Cevennes plateau the absence of resistant
rock allowed the young Alpine folds to make a marked bend north-
wards ; but this was cut short by the tough " roots " of the Vosges
and Black Forest blocks, and the Alpine extension was forced east-
ward to the south of them. Once past this obstacle, another north-
ward bend was inevitable under the constant pressure from the
south, to be again cut short by the Bohemian plateau, which also
forms part of these Variscan fragments, as they are called. Still the
field was not clear, for the low platform of western Russia belongs
to the same resistant series, and obstructs rather than guides the
Alpine development, so that the Carpathian extension was forced to
bend southward round the western scarp of the platform ; and a
southward course was then maintained right up to the old block of
which the Rhodope mountains are the chief relic. This again
involved the eastward bend of the Balkans, which were abruptly cut
short by the subsidence of the Black Sea, as the Pyrenees were by
that of the western Mediterranean.
Along the western edge of this " Rhodope " block, as along the
eastern edge of the old Iberian meseta, the Alpine energy was able
to escape ; and the Nevada-Atlas remains of this movement are
looped up to the Alpine centre via the Balearic islands and the very
young Apennines, as the Dinaric-Pindus remains of it are looped up
via Crete and Cyprus and the Taurus to the Caucasus terminus.
Where the earth's solid crust is formed of angular segments
with great difference of level, as where the Calabrian and Tunisian
upfolds converge on the abysses of the western and eastern basins
of the Mediterranean, or where the Balkan and Anatolian segments
converge between the abysses of the eastern basin of the Mediter-
ranean and the Black Sea, there conditions are found favourable to
the manifestation of volcanic and seismic phenomena.
To the west of the Black Sea subsidence, as of the western basin
of the Mediterranean, there is what may be called a reactionary
westward loop of the main Alpine west-to-east line ; and at the
critical point in the course, in each case, the loop was strained to
breaking-point. Through the one gap the Danube gave a second
great link between Southern and Central Europe, and through the
other the Straits of Gibraltar gave Southern Europe access to the
Atlantic.
A short survey of the general line of the Alpine uplift suggests,
then, that the widest development of the system will be found where
the tough old blocks lie farthest north, and that within this wider
area, i.e. the Alps proper, the folds will have a short northward and
then a long eastward lie. Further, between the folds there are
IV
Relief
29
likely to be deep longitudinal valleys, which should form the main
channels of the hydrographic system ; and where the back-pressure
of the old rock to the eastward is felt, i.e. in the eastern half of the
Alps, there is likely to be such dislocation of strata that " faults "
may be more conspicuous than folds.
Captain H. V. Knox has illustrated very simply the relation of Fold k,
the Alps to the old blocks on the west and north. On a table Block,
covered by a thick cloth lay two books in the relative positions
shown in the accompanying Figure :
"A" to represent the Cevennes
and " B " the Bavaro-Bohemian
block. Place the hands flat on
the cloth at C, and push the cloth
towards D ; it will at once ruck
up into folds which are essentially
similar to those of the Alps.
These folds in the case of Internal
the Alps are of different types of Divisions,
rock, the two inner folds being of
crystalline rock and the two outer
being of sedimentary rock. The two lines of crystalline rock are
separated by a belt of mixed rock representing the older divisions
of geological time known as the Age of Fishes and the Age of
Reptiles ; and farther to the west and north the rock is Mesozoic
and Tertiary, representative of the Age of Reptiles and the Age of
Mammals. We generally divide the surface of Switzerland, there-
fore, into four belts running approximately S.W.— N.E., i.e. between
Lake Geneva and Lake Constance, and separating typically Romance
and Teutonic peoples with typically Roman Catholic and Protestant
creeds. The southernmost belt is a double band of crystalline
rock ; to the north and west of this comes a belt mainly of lime-
stone ; this is followed by the sandstone plateau of the Aar basin,
which rises to the limestone ridges and valleys of the Jura.
In the inner crystalline belt we see the short northward lie in inner
the Cottian and Graian Alps, and the long eastward lie in the Crystal-
Graian, Pennine, and Lepontine Alps ; and the double-headed Dora ®
Riparia separates the Cottian and Graian, serving the one by the
Genevre Pass and the other by the Mont Cenis, as the double-
headed Dora Baltea separates the Graian from the Pennine, serving
the one by the Little St. Bernard Pass and the other by the Great
St. Bernard, and as the double-headed Toce-Ticino separates the
Pennine from the Lepontine, serving the one by the Simplon and
the other by the St. Gothard. One of the trifles which are often so
significant, because at first sight so immaterial, suggests a comiiient
on the value of this double-headedness ; the junction of the two St.
Bernard routes on the Italian side seemed to the Romans so
30
The Continent of Europe
CH.
important that they called their military depot at that point A^igitsta
— the modern Aosta,
Outer In the outer crystalline belt we see the short northward lie in
CryBtal- the Pelvoux and Mont Blanc masses, and the long eastward lie in
' the Bernese Oberland (crystalline only east of the Gemmi Pass)
and the Alps of Glarus ; and the double-headed Isere separates the
IV Relief 31
Dauphine Alps from those of Savoy, the so-called " Mont Cenis "
tunnel tapping its Arc tributary by burrowing under the Col
de Frejus, while the sedimentary rocks along the whole northern
face of the eastward lie have been eaten away to form the great
longitudinal valley that is occupied up to the Furka-Pass divide
by the Isere and the Upper Rhone, and down from the Furka by
the Vorder Rhine and the Inn. On the sandstone plateau of the
Aar basin glacial activity has left such typical morainic lakes as those
of Geneva and Lucerne at the outer foot of the crystalline belt, and
those of Neuchatel and Biel at the inner foot of the limestone Jura.
The conditions emphasised so far are essentially those peculiar Eastern
to the Western or Franco-Italian Alps and the Central or Italo-Swiss Alps.
Alps ; and one fundamental distinction between these and the
Eastern or Austro-Italian Alps is found in the fact that in the
western and central sections there is really only one ridge to be
crossed between the northern and southern plains, while in the
eastern sections there are really three ridges, though the central one
is of predominant difficulty. It is natural, therefore, that the
eastern rivers should more often rise in glacial lakes, as in the case
of the Inn and the Adda, while the western rivers should more
often flow directly from the glaciers. Further, where maximum
exposure to the north is combined with maximum access — up the
great longitudinal valley — for the west winds, there we should find
the greatest glaciation ; and it is only natural, therefore, that all the
longest glaciers (Great Aletsch, the Unter-Aar, and the Fiescher)
should be in the Bernese Oberland.
Now, though it is contrary to nature that a crystalline crest Passes
should be easily worn down, — as witness the great snow-dome of
Mont Blanc, the buttressed wall of Monte Rosa, the square pyramid
of the Matterhorn, the triangular pyramid of the Weisshorn, — the
normal activity of glaciers intermediate in character between the
dry rigidity of the tropics and the constant fluidity of the Polar
regions, can easily pare away the sides of a crystalline range,
especially towards its ends. And it was the thinness of the ends of
the inner crystalline range that favoured the cutting of tunnels under
the Simplon and the St. Gothard to replace the carriage roads which
go over them at heights of just under 6600 feet and just over 6900.
The Simplon tunnel, though the longest (over 1 2 miles), has the
easiest gradient ; but the route in olden days involved too great a
detour between North and South, and was therefore less used than
the St. Gothard and the Brenner routes, which — like the Mont
Cenis and Great St. Bernard — have been in constant use for 2000
years. The most significant comment on the character of a
transverse section of the Simplon route and on the imperative
necessity of avoiding a detour is offered, perhaps, by the fact that
the success of the Simplon tunnel has absolutely necessitated its
32
The Continent of Europe
CH.
Hanging
ValleyB.
practical continuation (in the Lotschberg tunnel, 9 miles), so as to
shorten the route between London and Genoa by three hours.
Another effect of the old glaciation, almost equally important in
facilitating communication, is the arrangement of all the typically
U-shaped valleys in steps with broad floors. In the side valleys
Mt.Cenis
Tunnel
. Swiss tunnels.
these steps down from the overhanging lip of the valley are usually
marked by magnificent waterfalls, which in modern times are a
great source of ** power " ; and above the lip is a bench or platform
on which fine glacial silt makes a peculiarly fertile soil easily
irrigated from the still existing glaciers. This is the real alp, where
the altitude forbids any vegetation except of a lowly kind, but
makes this — on the " loess " — of the finest possible character as food
for cows. Similar alp pastures occur on the steps in the main
valley, thus minimising or localising the difficulties of the ascent,
IV
Relief
33
and providing natural facilities for the presence of houses and
supplies of food.
The origin of these discordances, or steps, is fully dealt with in Protection
Professor Garwood's article on the Protective Action of Ice ; ^ but °^ ^**'
their ultimate economic importance is connected with the fact that
they represent an old overflow of ice from an intermont basin or
valley, in the course of which the sides of the basin or valley were
so cut down that steps on opposite sides of the range were frequently
joined by a double glacier-cut gateway or pass.
The St. Gothard focus deserves a little more attention because St.
of its relation to the whole river-system. The chief rivers of the ^^l^^xd.
area follow the west-and-east valleys, but their regime has enabled
Swiss river-system.
them to cut back their heads to such an extent that the Rhone and
the Rhine have now reached opposite sides of the St. Gothard mass.
At the same time rivers are naturally thrown off northward and
southward from the main east-and-west axis of the system, e.g. the
Ticino and Reuss ; and this tendency affects even the great
longitudinal rivers directly they come between strata of different
resistance, so that the crystalline mass of Mont Blanc diverts the
Rhone across the softer limestone into Lake Geneva, as the Rhine
crosses it into Lake Constance.
The four rivers in question have now cut back their valleys to
the common centre of the St. Gothard, which has much the
heaviest rainfall in Switzerland (over 80 inches). The economic
importance of this is obvious ; and its political importance may be
^ Cf. R.G.S. Journal, September 19 10.
D
34
The Continent of Europe
CH.
gauged from the choice of Andermatt, at the crossing of the Furka
and St, Gothard roads, for a divisional head-quarters of the Swiss
army.
Jura. With increase of distance from the source of pressure in the
south-east there is a decrease of both energy and complexity ; and
in the extreme north-west the Jura present a profound simplicity,
being just a score of parallel folds, every upfold being a ridge and
every downfold a valley. This has materially hampered transverse
traffic, though the elevation nowhere reaches 6000 feet ; and there
is still need of some miles of tunnelling to "join up" the shortest
route between Calais and the Lotschberg, and avoid the detour
through the Weissenstein tunnel.
Eastern A great contrast to the simplicity of this Franco-Swiss section is
^P^- offered by the Austro-Italian Alps to eastward of the great transverse
Typical piece of Jura.
depression marked by the middle courses of the Inn and the Adige,
linked by the Brenner Pass (4470 feet). The feature-lines still run
roughly east and west ; the predominant line is still crystalline ; and
it is still flanked by a longitudinal, river-threaded depression. But
the energy, instead of being concentrated, is dissipated in a fan-like
expansion which is more pronounced than even that of the eastern
Pyrenees and eastern Caucasus, and which more than doubles the
breadth of the effective barrier ; this is naturally accompanied by
such a decrease in height that even the crystalline High Tauem
scarcely reaches 12,500 in the Gross Glockner; and the medley of
faults and fractures has greatly complicated the river-system, as the
number of comparatively small peaks complicates the foregrounds
in the ordinary summit views.
On the other hand, physical and climatic conditions are not un-
IV Relief 35
favourable to movement whether human or atmospheric (cf. p. 57). The
The furrow along the northern foot of the crystalline axis gives at Brenner,
least 250 miles of comparatively easy railway route between the
Arlberg Tunnel and the Schober ; the somewhat similar " Puster
Dal-Drave-Mur " furrow to the south of the Tauern axis gives
200 miles of good rail up to the Semmering, getting the through
traffic from Aalberg to Vienna by the easy route round the Eisenerz
(" Iron-ore ") Alps to the great steel-working junction of Leoben.
Both these routes are, of course, tapped by the great transverse
route through the Brenner, which owes much of its supreme im-
portance to its character as a " saddle," — bridging the broad double
line of the central Alps, and so giving a single pass across a two-
fold barrier, — but part of its importance to climatic causes. It is so
low and so far from the Atlantic, and so much cut off from the wet
winds by the loftiest region of the central Alps, the Bernina and
Ortler groups, that the precipitation is exceptionally light, with
consequently a relative freedom from snow impediments and
avalanche dangers. Its importance may be gauged from the
number of well-known passes which tap it, e.g. the Julier and Albula,
the Maloja and Bernina, the Stelvio and the Reschen-Scheideyck,
all carrying carriage roads.
Incidentally, too, the great valley has acquired importance from
the ease with which it gives access to some of the most varied and
beautiful types of Alpine scenery, e.g. bringing the wide lake-dotted
floor of the Engadine into close relation with the atmospheric
colour of the Dolomite pinnacles, the magnesian limestone having
a typically pearly or vitreous lustre with under-colours of red, brown,
green, grey, and even black, and weathering differentially into most
fantastic forms. The effect is accentuated by the differential
fertility of the soft marl that is found alongside the hard dolomite.
The Carpathians repeat some of the typical phenomena of the Car-
Alps, but generally on a much smaller scale. For instance, the patl^iajis.
main crystalline axis is discontinuous, appearing in the Little
Carpathians, Tatra, Central Carpathians, and Transylvanian Alps,
while the continuous outer sedimentary folds resemble those of the
Jura, and the inner belt is largely volcanic. This last is the one
point on which the Carpathians repeat Alpine features on a larger
scale, for the volcanic belt which surrounds the south of the twin
crystalline ranges of the Tatra, and accounts for the mineral wealth
of the Gran basin, is much more extensive than that which skirts the
south of the Venetian Alps, where the intrusion of the volcanic is
into sedimentary rock, and so naturally does not lead to any great
mineral wealth.
The chief points in which the Carpathians differ from the Alps Alps k.
are three in number. In the first place, their greatest width ^^'.
corresponds with their greatest height, the High Tatra reaching
36 The Continent of Europe en.
nearly 9000 feet in Franz Josef, and the Transylvanian Alps reach-
ing well over 8000 in Bucsecs, Mandra, and Negoi. Again, unlike
the rest of this Alpine system, on both sides and in all directions
they abut more or less immediately on fertile lowlands, so that the
position and height and climate of any passes became of great
importance in very early times. Above all, owing to their relative
lowness and to their distance from the Atlantic, they lack the
magnificent scenery which is typically connected with glaciation,
huge snow-fields and glaciers, bold peaks and high waterfalls being
alike absenj, while the typical Alpine lakes are replaced by the
water-filled " cups " of the Tatra granite. Only in the beauty of the
volcanic Matra group and in the grandeur of the granite Tatra can
the Carpathians at all rival the Alps.
PasBes. The outer sedimentary zone, which forms the natural frontier of
Hungary, though essentially continuous, throws off so many rivers
in opposite directions to the lowland on each side that the range is
passable at almost every point where two of these rivers diverge
from the same part of the divide, e.g. the Gran and Poprad, the
Vecsa and Opor, {i.e. practically the Vereczke Pass or "Magyar
Gate "), the Theiss and Pruth (the Koros-mezo or " Tatar Gate "),
and the Szamos and Goldene-Bistritz. In the extreme north-west
the famous Jablunka (" Apple Tree ") Pass leads down the Olsa
valley to the Oder, as in the extreme south-east the Tomos Pass
leads down the Prahova valley, and the Roteturm (" Red Tower ")
leads down the Aluta valley, to the Danube. Eastward from the
" Apple Tree " Pass the climate of the sedimentary zone becomes
more and more favourable to tree-growth. The- monotonous sand-
stone of the East Beskids is redeemed by a covering of extensive
forest ; and it merges in the Carpathian Forest, the north-western
buttress of Bukowina (Beech-Land), where the beech is the typical
tree up to a height of 4000 feet.
The The rest of the continent may be roughly described as consist-
Plains, ing of 2,000,000 square miles of plain, with great variety of soil
and considerable variety of climate. The centre and eastern areas
of the " plain " are so level that it is possible to travel by rail from
Cologne to the Urals without going through a single tunnel ; and
in the more backward eastern parts this has given exceptional value
to the rivers for navigation in the summer and sledge-transport in
the winter. The western half is undulating, but the higher standard
of civilisation has included extraordinary progress in the art of
tunnelling.
There are areas along the North Sea and the Caspian which are
below sea-level ; but in the one case they have been reclaimed by
the energy of the Dutch, and are protected by granite dykes where
the natural sand-dunes of the low and windy coast are not continuous,
while in the other they are due to the natural sinking of the Caspian.
IV Relief 37
The most valuable units are the Magyar Alfold, which was a sea in
such recent ages that Transylvania is still rich in sea-flora, and
small areas drained by man, such as the bed of Lake Copais and
much of Italy. The draining of the Pripet-Beresina marshes in
Russia, when completed, will add fully 20,000 square miles of
valuable agricultural land and greatly facilitate traffic, though it
must decrease the strategic value of this " rampart of White Russia."
The most important feature in the distribution of this vast area Plain k.
of plain is that its relation to the highlands has in no way deprived ?^^'
it of its essential character as a piece of Atlantic hinterland. For
the distribution of the highlands puts no serious obstacle to access —
climatic and commercial — to and from the great ocean, while the
character of the highlands minimises the obstacle to communica-
tion between the northern and southern units of the continent.
At the same time the intervening nucleus of ancient rock has
special economic importance because of its characteristic richness
in deposits of metal, particularly round the edge, and because of
its equally characteristic relation to beds of coal in the younger
strata that flank it ; and, of course, where the metal and the fuel
are adjacent, as at Creuzot and Libge, great metallurgical centres
were almost bound to spring up.
Three of the geological factors involved have a geographical Line of
significance. The scarp, as the actual line of cleavage, marks the Maximum
line of maximum disturbance ; and such disturbance has a definite j^gg_
relation to the distribution of mineral wealth and to the develop-
ment of natural depressions such as offer " lines of least resistance "
for human movement, e.g. the Sambre-Maas valley. Moreover, a
normal scarp gives, so to say, a section which betrays the contents
of the whole block.
But these old blocks are themselves only fragments of a great Residual
mountain system which has been weathered down in the course of ^ st-
ages into a peneplain; and in this process any residual products
must include the heaviest elements in the original mass, i.e. the
metals. These have not only survived because most difficult to
transport, but they have also been concentrated ; and they are
naturally most abundant in the outlying parts of the existing core.
Thus, iron and lead, copper and zinc, are found in the scarp above
the Sambre-Maas gorge.
Still more important is the fact that nearly all these deposits Subter-
of metal are the result of igneous or aqueous activity, the scattered ranean
atoms having been first fused or dissolved at considerable depths, ^"°?^-
then transported to levels of lower temperature and lower pressure
nearer the surface, and eventually deposited in cavities at no very
great depth below that surface, because such cavities can exist only
where there is no very great pressure. It is only by a strong, local,
exceptional agent, e.g. working chemically by heat and mechanically
38 The Continent of Europe ch. iv
by movement, that the earth's crust could have been, and still can
be, drained of the metals that form such a tiny portion of it ; for —
apart from aluminium, which forms about 8 p.c. of the crust, and
iron, which forms about 4 p.c. — no other metal seems to form more
than 0.07 p.c. (manganese).
Solvent Most of the metal deposits of Europe have been precipitated
Power. from aqueous solutions ; and — however strictly meteoric water may
be distinguished in theory from magmatic water — it is certain that
the deep waters get some of their solvent power from carbonic
acid, and that this must have been communicated to the superficial
waters — and then passed on by them — from the decayed vegetation
through which they percolated. Moreover, it is obvious that the
mechanical erosion and the chemical corrosion of subterranean
water depend largely on the pressure and the temperature, i.e.
ultimately on the depth ; and that, as the water cools and so loses
its power to solve, it loses also its power to rise, to erode, and to
carry. Consequently, as the hot spring rises by a " line of least
resistance," e.g. a fault fissure — such as is quite obvious at
Aix-la-Chapelle, where the " waters " (Aix = aqucB) still have a
temperature of from 110° F. to 136° F. — approach to the surface
must involve first mineralisation of the transported elements and
then deposition of them.
Deposi- Where this final part of the journey is through porous rock,
'^°°- e.g. the sandstone between Aix and Bonn, the metal may be
distributed all through the strata ; where it is through very soluble
rock, e.g. the limestone between Aix and Libge, it may be massed
in a *' cave " dissolved in the rock. But the essential facts are
that heat and pressure favour' solution, while decrease of either —
still more of both — favours precipitation. The peneplain is the
base of the old mass ; and the scarp not only gives a section of
the contents, but is also the place where we expect to find both
the residual metals from the higher levels of that old mass and the
fault fissures which give the easiest line of exit for the subterranean
waterways.
CHAPTER V
RELIEF CONTROL
(i) Of Land Communications.
The distribution of the chief features of relief is as favourable to indirect
communication by land, both directly and indirectly, as to com- Influence,
munication by sea. The indirect influence is based mainly on the
concentration of great variety of relief within small area, and the
consequent variety of economic development. For each natural unit
of relief has its own natural product — plant, and beast, and man ;
and, in eacli, life has depended on response to the prevailing control.
In the case of man, necessaries of sustenance in any of these Occupa-
areas have involved certain occupations, e.g. pastoral, involving tional
daily care of animals that must be milked at regular times, or
agricultural, in which there may be a rush of work followed by a
spell of holiday. Such occupations perpetuated through generations
develop certain fixed habits, which crystallise into definite character-
istics, e.g. a power of continuous application or a gift for almost
superhuman effort on an emergency ; and these express themselves
in social and political institutions, as when mere babes in Cornwall
show, in their play, a power of controlling a gutter-torrent which
only grows out of centuries of mining experience, or when con-
stitutional government seems everywhere to have grown out of the
domestic organisation of a fishing race. Cf. p. 12.
The close proximity of different economic types, then, must Supple-
have led in very early times to constant intercourse, to exchange mentary
of products (barter) and ideas, and so to the development of Typeg.
facilities for such exchange. And the position has been emphasised
by the fact that the whole continent may be roughly divided into
two supplementary areas, one of summer-rain apH ^he other of
summer-drought, with corresponding needs and products. ^
The direct influence of the relief control is also best seen in a Direc '
comparison of the two areas, for the area of summer-rain includes Influence,
practically the whole plain of Europe, while that of summer-drought
consists largely of mountainous peninsulas.
39
40
The Continent of Europe
CH.
Great
Plain
The essential significance of the great east and west plain is
implied in the statement, that it is possible to travel by rail from the
extreme south-west of France, via Paris and Berlin, to the extreme
north-east of Russia without going through a single tunnel and
without ever being 600 feet above the sea. And it is precisely
this fundamental fact that makes comparisons between Central
Europe ana J^ngi^..^ often so absurd. For instance, the nationalisa-
tion and reconstruction of our canal system have been strongly
recommended to the English public by utterly misleading statistics
drawn from Holland and Germany. The Daily Chronicle pointed out
that the Aire and Calder Canal " could be made fit for all necessary
V Relief Control 41
traffic at a cost of ^^i, 000,000 per 100 miles"; and statistics
were quoted from the canal traffic between Berlin and Hamburg.
But the Aire and Calder Canal is the levelest canal in England, and
the access to fuel and water make it the cheapest to work ; and,
while there are only 3 locks in the 230 miles between Berlin and
Hamburg, the average in England is i lock for every 1200 yards.
From the Franco - Spanish frontier at Hendaye, where the East-and-
Spanish 66-inch gauge stops, a uniform 56|-inch gauge con- ^®8*
tinues as far as Warsaw, where the Russian 60-inch gauge begins ; ^ '
and the line of through communication between, e.g. Bordeaux
and Warsaw, offers a significant comment on the relief and on its
relations to historic movements of people. By the gap of Charente
and the gap of Poitou, along the northern foot of the Ardennes
and of tlie Westphalian Highlands, crossing the Seine at the Isle
of Paris and the Elbe at the Isle of Magdeburg, it follows the
line of least resistance which, just because it is that, is marked
by a series of great towns. Thus the line of least resistance comes
to be the line of most utility.
Every one of the important rivers crossed on this route is Rivera of
navigable so far as relief is concerned. Thus, the Loire is naturally Plaui-
navigable far above Orleans, though its variation in volume, and the
power of the flood from the crystalline upper part of the basin to
choke up the lower course by debris torn from the Tertiary strata
in its middle course, have forced regular navigation on to lateral
canals; the Seine has a minimum depth of 10 feet up to Paris,
220 miles from the English Channel; ocean steamers ply regularly
to the great junction of Cologne ; the Weser is navigable to above
the Westphalian Gate, near Minden ; and all the other rivers crossed
are navigable to above the German frontier. The alternative route
through Brussels and Hanover is based on historic rather than
physical considerations, but its ease may be gauged from the route
of the great east-and-west canal system of Germany.
The great foci of this west-and-east belt of rail are Paris, Berlin, Cross
and Warsaw ; and it is important to notice their relation respectively Distances,
to the shortest distances across the continent from north to south.
Obviously, these cross routes join the Baltic to the Black Sea and
the Adriatic, and the North Sea to the Adriatic and the Lion-Genoa
Gulf. And political considerations encourage duplicate routes.
Thus, the direct distance from Odessa to Danzig is practically the
same (750 miles) as to Riga ; but the Dniester valley leads to a
route that is largely Teutonic, while the Bug valley gives easier
gradients through one that is wholly Slav. Again, the direct distance
from Stettin to Trieste is only 550 miles, while that from Lubeck
to Venice is 650; but the detours necessary on the more easterly
route make both routes actually the same distance (850), and the
gradients from Germany into Austria by the Moravian Gate are
42
The Continent of Europe
CH.
easier — and therefore strategically more dangerous — than those by
the shorter Saxon Gate route, and the Brenner Pass was really
easier than the Semmering. From the Narrow Seas the competition,
both political and economic, is still more severe ; and this gives
special advantage to the route between Calais and Marseilles via
the Rhone valley, which is both the shortest (not much more than
700 miles of rail) and all French. On the other hand, the fact
that Antwerp can approach the St. Gothard tunnel best via the
West of Greenwich East of Greenwich
Stanford^ Geog! CstabT^ londorh
Simple relief of France.
Cross
Routes.
Rhine valley minimises the loo and odd miles of extra rail from
Hamburg on the journey to Genoa, making Genoa almost an
outport of Frankfort-on-Main.
The chief cross routes, except the low 300-mile railway between
Bordeaux and Cette, utilise the same lines of least resistance.
The Orient express route to Constantinople threads the middle
basins of both Rhine and Danube, again making Frankfort im-
portant. In the west the parallel " Suez " route threads the Seine
and the Upper Rhone basins. To the east parallel routes join
Hamburg to Odessa by the Oder valley outside the Carpathians, via
V Relief Control 43
Berlin, Breslau, and Cracow, and Bremen to Constantinople by the
Elbe valley inside the Carpathians, 77a Dresden, Vienna, and Belgrade.
Obviously, the shape of the continent makes the saving of Rail v.
distance by rail over that by sea so great towards the east, saving Sea.
4000 miles between Riga and Odessa, that even very inferior
services by rail can still command the traffic ; but in the west the
saving is comparatively so small that the service must be good to
attract the traffic in anything except mails and passengers. As far
as World traffic is concerned, this is emphasised by the high dues
on the Suez Canal, which are calculated to be equivalent — for
ordinary freight — to at least 1000 miles of detour; and, on the
other hand, uniformity of gauge has almost obviated break-of-bulk
by rail, so that even in this respect sea-transport is losing its chief
advantage for long-distance work. For instance, during mid-winter
cauliflowers come into Covent Garden from Naples without break-
of-bulk, the result being that they can be sold wholesale at about
ten-pence per dozen !
The position of inland waterways is little better, even in Canal
countries so favourable to inland navigation as France and Germany. Water
For obviously the size of a lock varies with the water-supply, and "^^ ^'
the demands on the available amount are growing rapidly. In
France, for instance, about 25 per cent of the total population is
urban, and about 2 5 per cent of all the " power " used in mechanical
industry is water-power. In Germany the urban population is
nearly 30 per cent of the whole, and water-power is responsible
for about 20 per cent of the total power. The demand for water
is, therefore, increasing most in precisely those centres which the
canals would feed. In other respects, too, canals are losing ground
in the face of modern conditions and methods of carrying on trade.
They are too cumbrous and immobile, especially in the matter of
terminal accommodation ; it is difficult to maintain on them either
speed or punctuality; and the modern trader prefers a quick sale
of small lots to the warehousing of a quantity for a considerable
time. In this connection, it may be noted that in the United States
by 19 10 more than 2000 miles of the older canals had been
actually abandoned. Cf. p. 212.
Two qualifications must be added. Where relief, as in P'rance, Link
guarantees a reliable rainfall in the upper basins of rivers that are Canals,
navigable for a large proportion of their total length, there canals
may be most useful in joining the head-waters of such rivers. Thus
the navigable Saone is joined to the Loire via St. Etienne and to the
Yonne via Dijon; France has over 5000 miles of navigable river
thus joined by 2000 miles of canal. Similarly, the five chief rivers
in Germany supply 5000 miles of navigation, linked by 1500 miles
of canal.
The other qualification is in regard to ship-canals, such as the
44
The Continent of Europe
CH.
Ship
Canals.
Danube
Route.
Manchester and Kiel canals. Such canals are essentially short
links of deep water, either joining two neighbouring seas or extend-
ing one sea inland. The Manchester Canal extends sea-traffic 35
miles inland and has a depth of 28 feet; the Kiel Canal crosses
the 60 miles between the North Sea and the Baltic with a minimum
depth of about 30 feet, saving two days on the sea-route between
Kiel and Briinsbiittel.
These great thoroughfares illustrate the permanence of relief
control, for they were the scenes of great movements of people in
55°-
50
100
_l
150
_J
ZOO
__l
ENGLISH MILES
The Kiel and Hanover Canals.
early historic ages, as they have been of rail and canal development
in modern times. Apart from the evidence that prehistoric man
had settled on the loess near Krems and on the Neusiedler See,
the Danube was the most important of the early thoroughfares,
because it essentially links Europe to Asia. Huns and Avars, Slavs
and Magyars, followed it westward ; Carlovingians and Bavarians,
Crusaders and Habsburgs, followed it eastward. Indeed, the
number of sanctuaries that line its Roman bank shows how im-
portant a route it was from the days when, like the Rhine, it
formed part of the great Roman frontier against the Barbarians.
The sites of Blenheim and Traunbruck, Wagram and Mohacs, give
VI Relief Control 45
similar testimony. In fact, as was pointed out long ago, it was
precisely the constant use of the valley as a line of passage that
made it unsuitable for a political frontier ; so that, while its chief
Alpine tributaries are peculiarly prominent as frontiers — e.g. the
Iller between Wlirtemberg and Bavaria, the Inn between Bavaria
and Austria, the Enns between Upper and Lower Austria, the
Leitha between Lower Austria and Hungary, the Drave between
Hungary and Slavonia, the Save between Slavonia and Servia — the
main stream makes a great central line of attraction to which
human activities gravitate, in HohenzoUern and Wiirtemberg,
Bavaria and Austria-Hungary ; and on it now stand no less than
three political capitals.
The valley of the Rhine, before the river became the Roman Rhine
frontier, had been a great funnel for Celtic and Teutonic move- ^'^*®'
ments ; and the Romans, as Mr. Mackinder says, bequeathed to the
French the theory that it was the natural frontier of France, and so
laid the foundation of its political importance during the last looo
years. That importance is largely summed up in the history of
the strategic centres, e.g. Basel and Strassburg, Mainz and Coblenz,
which mark the essentially Roman or Franco-German part of the
river. Charlemagne's choice of Aix-la-Chapelle as his great centre
was almost a forecast of the series of battlefields that would mark
the line of least resistance between the Latin West and Teutonic
East below the northern foot of the Ardennes, and of the commercial
struggles between Rotterdam and Antwerp for the hinterland of
Cologne.
The Rhone valley was still more important in the early develop- Rhone
ment of Europe ; and the Burgundy Gate played, in the earlier ^*"**®
struggles between France and Germany, the part played by the
Lorraine Gate in modern times. On this the rivalry of Dijon and
Aries, as the shape of the old Kingdom of Lothaire and Duchy
of Burgundy, is a significant comment. And that the Ebro valley
had a similar importance in Spain may be inferred from the fact
that the river gave its name to the whole Iberian peninsula.
CHAPTER VI
RELIEF CONTROL
(2) Of Distribution of Population.
Relief control of human activities rests on the relation between the
origin and the character of the relief. It is in the Danube valley
that the earliest remains of Man in Central Europe have been
found, and they were found in loess.
46
The Continent of Europe
CH.
666.
The " Mark of the Beast " is a very good high land-mark and
low water-mark in the development of life ; for the oldest forms of
life seem to have been of marine origin and to have originated in
depths less than about 666 feet, while the great development of
land fauna has been confined to altitudes less than about 666 feet.
VI Relief Control 47
It at once becomes significant that three-quarters of the total area
of Europe may be classified as plain, and that even Supan estimated
the average elevation of the whole as under looo feet, while
Humboldt estimated it as only 675 feet. The climatic control implied
in this, we may discuss elsewhere (cf. ch. viii.) ; but the relief control
may be so far dissociated from the climatic control as to allow us
to trace a foundation for the relation, e.g. of the savage European
to mountain and plain, and of the civilised European to coal
and iron.
The general level of the continent being favourable for the Early
development of plant and beast life implied, considering the latitude, Mammals,
a minimum difficulty in Man's hunt for food ; and this was further
facilitated by the fact that the glaciation of the area had decimated
the larger beasts, i.e. those usually most dangerous to Man. Under
favourable conditions, then, large beasts would have monopolised
the food supplies, but under unfavourable conditions they suffered
most ; for a small diminution of supply pinched them soonest, and
their relatively small numbers — implying that they were unprolific
because voracious — minimised the chance of their occasional
progeny including any " freaks," whose modified structure would
enable them to survive under the changed conditions. Cf. p. 76.
Over this vast plain the soil is almost everywhere not of local SoU.
origin ; it was brought to its present location by ice or rivers. The
maximum extension of the ice covered nearly all the great plain
except in France, and the debris carried by it was deposited in
various forms — e.g. sheets of clay, layers of sand, piles of gravel, the
heaviest material being deposited nearest to the centre from which
the ice-sheet radiated (cf. p. 3). The glacial clay is naturally
heavy and impervious, hard to cultivate and water-logged, and
produces little but humble peat-producing vegetation ; so that areas
of this kind did not favour dense populations. The sand and gravel
are light and dry, but are neither rich in plant food nor tenacious
of water ; so that hills of this coarse material would produce little
but conifers. But clay flats might lie in the lee of limestone hills,
from which the solvent lime might be torn by the ice itself or might
gravitate after ordinary weathering ; and this at once would make
the clay fertile and porous. Or river-floods might spread rich and
easily worked alluvium over the clay flats, and the river-valley was
certain to attract an early population.
As the maximum effects of the glaciation were towards the Nordic
north-west, that area would be longest in becoming habitable — Bace-
except so far as the land-waste encouraged a most prolific abundance
of food-fishes, as illustrated by the superabundance of " fish "
remains in the kitchen-middens, e.g. of Denmark ; and, on the other
hand, a glance at a geological map will show how the distribution
of " limestone " ridges and rims, e.g. in Denmark, Scania, and
48
The Continent of Europe
CH.
Mediter-
ranean
Race-
Home.
Central Europe, was bound to quicken human settlement below and
within them, and how the variety of rock generally was bound to
yield a strong blended soil to the various lowlands and basins. On
the more fertile parts of this central plain, especially on the patches
of loess (cf. p. 24), the Nordic race attained its essential character;
and, as it developed and became largely urban in habit, the less
fertile and more intractable areas were taken in hand, e.g. marshes
drained and dense clay rendered pervious by lime and stable
manure and other solvents, until the whole plain has been made
fertile artificially.
South of the young Alpine system, where the Mediterranean race
Racial Europe.
Stanford's Ceogf iitabl, London.
found its area of characterisation, conditions were very different.
The absence of glaciation and the smallness of the river-basins make
the soil essentially residual and local ; the variety of rock and the
widespread presence of limestone guaranteed fertility, while heavy
weathering guaranteed depth. This was increased by the amount
of alluvium, for the long dry summer involves heavy weathering,
and so prepares abundance of loose material for the autumn floods
to transport down the yellow Tiber and many another river. Indeed,
when Olympia was unearthed, at the expense of the German
Government, thirty years ago, it was found to have been buried,
not under a vast volcanic outflow, but under terraces of river-borne
mud ! Again, the Alpine uplift guaranteed both shelter and un-
VI Relief Control ■ 49
failing supplies of water. These conditions were very favourable to
early Man, and suited his primitive implements ; but they had their
drawbacks. The local soil has not the " strength " of the intractable
glacial blend — so that it wears out more quickly ; and the local race
has not the Nordic tolerance of cold ahd relative immunity from
lung disease. If the Mediterranean race spread to higher latitudes,
therefore, it could only be by creeping along the mild coast-lands of
the Atlantic ; and the progressive deterioration of the local soil
would mean a relative, if not an actual, decrease in the economic
importance of the area. Such deterioration, too, if and when
matured, might be reflected in the condition of the cultivators
themselves.
Between the Nordic plain and the Mediterranean peninsulas lies Alpine
the zone of ancient crystalline cores on which the Alpine Round- ^ace-
heads found a congenial home. These crystalline rocks are rich in
metals, but naturally poor in organic materials ; and their wealth of
metal occurs along the fractured scarps rather than on the core, i.e.
along the " shores " of the primary axial peninsula of Europe,
brought there by hot springs in working their way out from great
depths by lines of least resistance. The heat to which these springs
owe their actual existence, enables them also to transport many
minerals which would be quite insoluble in cold water ; but, as
we have seen, any lowering of temperature tends to arrest the
ascending current and destroy its chemical or corrosive power.
Such lowering of temperature may be found in a subterranean
fissure or cave ; it must be found near the surface of the earth and
on approach to the outside air. In either case precipitation begins,
and the mineral is deposited in loco (cf. pp. 37, 38).
Further, when such a mineral-filled fissure is actually exposed Location
on the scarp of a fractured block, i.e. a line where resistance has 0^.
obviously been strained to breaking point, differential weathering "^^'^^ ^•
will almost certainly follow, with the result that the lode will show
as a ridge or a trough. In other words, the mineral is not only
most abundant where it is most accessible, but also is so situated
as naturally to attract attention. Thus, few useful metals are found
even in the crystalline part of the Young Folded Mountains, for their
thinness and their physical history are not favourable ; but nearly
all the useful metals are found in the rims of the old blocks,
especially in Central Europe. For instance, the scarp of the
meseta yields mercury near Almaden, lead near Linares, copper at
Rio Tinto, tin in Galicia, and zinc in the Basque Provinces ; lead
and copper occur in Brittany and round the central plateau in
France ; zinc, lead, and tin are found on the north-west and the
north-east of the Variscan fragments.
Geologically nearest to these old metalliferous rocks in time and Coal and
place are the old sedimentary rocks that contain salt and coal, and ^*^*-
E
so
The Continent of Europe ch. vi
Continu-
ity of
Control.
Density of
Popula-
tion.
iron is often associated with the coal. Salt is worked in Catalonia,
near Nancy, at Stassfurt and Spessart, at Wieliczka and Salzburg —
in each case in the " lee " of Variscan fragments. The coal has
similar associations, e.g. in the Asturias, in the Upper Loire basin,
in the valleys of the Meuse and Ruhr, on both sides of the Erz and
of the Riesengebirge, and along the eastern edge of the Russian
platform (cf. p. 28). And in each case valuable deposits of iron
were within easy access of the coal.
Special importance should be found to attach to areas where
tongues of the fertile plain intrude into the carboniferous basins that
flank the metal-bearing fragments, e.g. in Rhine-land ; and the
working of the coal and the subsequent industrial developments
could not cause in such old agricultural areas the dislocation of
population and the transference of political power that were associ-
ated with the Industrial Revolution in England. Such conditions
supply the best possible guarantee of stability and prosperity to any
new industry naturally evolved on the spot and gradually replacing
the old one. The modern supremacy of Birmingham and Sheffield
in the hardware industry is due to somewhat similar conditions of
Geographical momentum, except that in their case the iron industry
was present in very early days.
Marshy lowlands in the latitude of the North European plain
must naturally be forested — a condition adverse to density of
population, though probably favourable to the development of fine
physique in the individual (cf. p. 10); and primitive Man in
temperate forests supported life by hunting and fishing — occupations
adverse to density of population. Practically, therefore, relief
control was more adverse to dense population in Cis-Alpine
Europe than in the Mediterranean basin ; and it was equally adverse
to movements of population except where climatic control was
responsible for vast grass-lands in the eastern parts of the plain, or
along the bridge of old blocks between the grass-land and the
Alpine wall. At the same time, these conditions, so adverse to
early Man, are precisely those which have now given Cis-Alpine
Europe supremacy over Southern Europe.
CHAPTER Vll
CLIMATE
Europe occupies an essentially transitional position — between the Transi-
vastest land mass in the World and one of the largest oceans, and *^°^ Area.
between the Trades and the Anti-Trades. This, as we have noticed
(cf. p. 3), was one of the great features of the area that were
favourable to the progress of early Man ; and its influence is
essentially climatic. No equal area in similar latitudes elsewhere
on the face of the globe has such an equable climate, or is so
markedly transitional.
For instance, the average annual temperature is essentially Tempera-
" intermediate," and diminishes steadily from south to north: the J)""®^,^^
... 1 11 r iLf- Rainfall.
wmter temperature is nowhere really extreme for any length of time,
and diminishes steadily from west to east ; the summer temperature,
again, is nowhere really extreme for any length of time, — very
little of the continent having a summer season of over 68° F., —
and diminishes steadily from east to west. So with rainfall. Very
little of the continent gets more than 60 inches a year, and very
little gets less than 1 2 inches ; and while two-thirds gets summer
rain, one-third gets winter rain, the seaward end of each belt (of
summer rain and of winter rain) getting also autumn rain.
The really dominant agent in this distribution of equality is the Wind.
wind, the favourable influence of which is greatly accentuated by
the general east-and-west lie of the feature-lines and by the
extension of marine influences eastward along the Mediterranean
basin. And this wind-borne oceanic influence exercises such a
distinguishing control over the area — raising the average temperature
in the north and lowering it in the south — that, on this ground
alone, Europe may be treated as a separate continent.
Everywhere on the face of the Earth the most important single Swing of
phenomenon is probably the swing of the wind-system with the Winds,
sun ; but this is obviously of special importance in Europe, and
through European influence it affects indirectly the civilisations
of areas held, or originally colonised, by Europeans in other
continents. One of the strongest reasons for avoiding the modern
SI
52
The Continent of Europe
CH.
fashion of using the name " Westerlies " instead of the old " Anti-
Trades," is the obvious emphasis that the latter puts on the
relation between the two great manifestations of the single wind-
system, the one towards the equator and the other towards the poles
from a common starting-point. When the equator of heat cor-
responds with the equator of size — at the equinoxes, these climatic
phenomena are symmetrical north and south of the equator, and
the common starting-point in each hemisphere is near the tropic.
Summer This implies that the attractive range of the high-temperature
Drought, and low-pressure centre is considerably over looo miles; and,
Walker & Cockereil sc.
Currents of North Atlantic.
therefore, when the equator of heat is i o" N. even over the centre
of the Atlantic Ocean, and 25° N. over the centre of the Sahara,
the source of the Trades must be at least 35° N,, and may be even
higher than 40° N. In other words, all the south of the Mediter-
ranean basin must be, and a large proportion of the whole basin
generally is, in summer within the Trade-wind sphere. And as
these winds near their source, i.e. where they fall on to the surface
of the lithosphere from the upper layers of the atmosphere, are cold
and dry, and as they blow from colder to warmer latitudes, so far
from bringing rain, they can always hold more moisture than they
VII
Climate
53
can get. The mass of the Mediterranean basin is, therefore,
doomed to summer-drought.
In winter, on the contrary, this northernmost extension is Winter
equally far south of the northern tropic ; and so all the Medi- Rain,
terranean basin is brought well within the influence of the Anti-
Trades, and their essentially oceanic character is preserved far to
the eastward owing to the eastern extension of the Atlantic Ocean
in the Mediterranean Sea. The whole of the Mediterranean basin,
therefore, enjoys winter rains ; and these are heavy enough to give,
e.g., Naples a total annual fall 7 or 8 inches greater than that of
London. Cf. p. 55.
Of course the character of the wind, as a physical fact of, or Atlantic
element in, climate depends on its normal direction, as a physical I^^if*-
Atlantic storm tracks
factor in, or cause of, climate ; and its normal direction in this
case brings it across the vast area of relatively warm water which
accumulates in the north-east of the Atlantic. The so-called " Gulf"
water, as a stream, is practically not found east of Labrador or
north of the Azores ; but, as a drift, it is found as far east and
north as Spitsbergen, the average winter temperature at Mussel Bay
being not 2° F. below the average annual temperature (16^ R).
Even in February the surface temperature of the ocean as far north
as the Azores is fully 64° F., and in August the same temperature
is found as far north as the coast of Brittany.
Off such a large area of relatively warm water an equally large Atlantic
amount of water-vapour must be carried ; and the normal direction Hinter-
of the wind carries this, with the heat which it implies, to an ex- ^^ '
ceptional distance inland because the distribution of relief is that of
54
The Continent of Europe
CH.
Iceland
Whirl.
a typical Atlantic hinterland, although, of course, the actual rainfall
decreases eastwards — e.g. Athens (15 inches) not having quite half
that of Malaga. But this normal direction of the wind must be
carefully related to the "permanent " wind-whirl off Iceland and the
" permanent " wind-wyr off the Azores, the influence of each being
sensibly accentuated by the seasonal changes of pressure in the
north-east of Asia.
In winter, when North America and Northern Eurasia are
covered with blocks of cold air, the Icelandic wind-whirl is excep-
tionally active, and its gradients are very steep ; and cyclonic
storms are constantly following one another along the edges of the
Stanford^ Ceogltstob!, London
European temperatures.
atmospheric "trough," especially when the North Sea has been
flooded with warm water in the late summer. The winds in this
whirl, then, are warmed by the ocean's retention of its summer heat,
by the " Gulf " drift, and by their southern origin ; and for the
same reasons they are saturated with vapour, which they must drop
as they move from warmer to colder latitudes, or from warmer to
colder altitudes — whether up a mountain-side or up a low-pressure
funnel (cf. p. 57). In theory, therefore, strong, warm, rain-bearing
winds should be constantly rotating (in a direction contrary to that
of the hands of a clock) round the Icelandic centre of low pressure ;
and these winds would obviously reach places due south of the
centre as west winds, places due east as south winds, and places
between south and east as successively W.S.W. and S.W. winds.
Under these circumstances the whole oceanic margin of Europe
VII Climate 55
must tend to have mild and rainy winters, especially after a hot and
dry late-summer, and the isotherms over it will run as nearly parallel
to the isobars as the local relief will allow.
All along the west of the continent and along the north of the Extremes
Mediterranean extension of the Atlantic, then, we expect to find o^ Rain-
heavy rains, especially in winter, the extreme fall amounting, e.g., to TemDera-
197 inches on the summit of Snowdon and 179 on the Dalmatian ture.
scarp behind Cattaro. The same areas will have a high winter
temperature, and will be subject to cyclonic storms (cf. p. 90).
The greatest contrasts will be found, on the contrary, where high
latitude coincides with maximum distance from the ocean or with
deprivation of ocean influence, as in the lee {i.e. north-east) of the
Scandinavian plateau, and where low latitudes coincide with
minimum distance from the ocean, as in the lee {i.e. south-west) of
the Iberian plateau.
The heavy winter rainfall in the Straits of Gibraltar is due Azores
partly to the diversion of the outermost whirls of the Icelandic ^y-
system between the lofty Nevada and Atlas into the warm Medi-
terranean basin, and partly to the natural flow of the Azores wind-
wyr clockwise in the same direction. This Azores wind-wyr,
however, in winter is naturally weak, so that it does little to
supplement or reinforce the Icelandic whirl, while both of them are
powerless to push into the heart of the continent against the heavy
block of cold air that is sitting over it and in the teeth of the
outflow from the Siberian "pole of cold," which has recorded a
winter minimum of - 92° F.
Under these circumstances, the cold " continental " air must Seasonal
have a minimum power of holding moisture, while precipitation Ra"ifaU-
must be mainly in the form of snow ; and, on the other hand, the
winter storms, which cannot penetrate the continent, must be
diverted northward along the west coast or eastward along the
south coast, carrying exaggerations of the oceanic influence alike
to the English Channel and to the Adriatic. In all areas, too,
where the sea is still evaporating rapidly after the neighbouring land
has begun to cool rapidly, as roughly west of 15° E., the natural
result will be regular autumn rains as well as winter rains. But east
of that longitude a small area of shallow "fresh" sea, such as the
Baltic, is powerless to retard the time of minimum temperature, and
would be powerless even if it remained absolutely unfrozen. As a
matter of fact, very soon after mid-winter the whole Baltic basin is
cold and dry. It is characteristic that a normal range of tempera-
ture on the Scotch coast of the North Sea (21° F.) should be just
half that in the same latitude on the Russian coast of the Baltic.
The conditions in summer make the Azores centre dominant Summer
and the Icelandic centre relatively feeble ; for the pressure in the Condi-
latter is abnormally high — for a low-pressure centre, — and the
56
The Continent of Europe
CH.
Azores centre has moved north, i.e. nearer to Europe, with the whole
wind-system. In theory, then, cool, dry, and relatively gentle winds
should be constantly rotating clockwise round the Azores centre of
high pressure ; and these winds should reach places due north
of the centre as west winds, and places north-east of the centre as
north-west winds. At the same time over the heated continent
there is such a low pressure that winds off the cooler ocean are
attracted strongly inwards. Such cyclonic storms as may occur,
then, are likely to pass over the central plain, and in any case the
wyr influence is cool and dry. In other words, the typical summer
wind in North-West Europe is from west or north-west on 37
days out of 100, as against a south-west wind on only 22
days, and that westerly or north-westerly wind brings us relatively
little rain. This is more or less true also even of Eastern Europe.
For the summer rains there are mainly of local origin, the moisture
evaporated off the large areas of local water during the long calm
VII Climate 57
broiling summer days being precipitated at night oV in thunderstorms.
This may mean that the rain does not come often enough, and is
too violent when it does come.
The land being now warmer than the ocean, and its temperature Iso-
increasing with distance from that ocean, the isotherms begin to t^^^?^''^'
bend northwards directly they touch land, so that, while the winter
lowest mean was on the Finland plateau, the summer highest mean
is on the Kirghiz steppe. But, the sun being now the dominant
influence, as the sea is in winter, the isotherms never diverge much
from the sun-line, i.e. run more or less parallel to lines of latitude
instead of more or less parallel to the ocean-coast. In a word, they
are " sun-lines " in summer and '* sea-lines " in winter.
The high temperature and the low level — actually below the Summer
sea-level — in south-eastern Russia so increase the capacity of the ''*"^-
air there for holding moisture that by midsummer it seldom reaches
even dew-point ; still less is there rain. But elsewhere the high day
temperatures lead to quite a considerable rainfall associated with
local convection currents ; cyclonic rains are widespread ; and there
are heavy relief rains over all the Alpine system.
Where cyclonic and relief conditions are complicated, very
heavy rains occur in summer over Central Europe, e.g. in the Oder
basin, but they occur under what are more like winter conditions.
That is to say, a belt of high pressure covers the Great European
plain, while one of low pressure spreads southward from the Baltic
towards the nearest parts of the Mediterranean, from which a
similar low-pressure area is spreading northward. The lofty snow-
clad Alps form an insuperable barrier to this northward movement
of light air, causing a detour over the lower eastern outliers of the
system (cf. p. 34). To the east, then, the whole Sudetic system, —
which nowhere much exceeds 5000 feet, — while not an insuperable
obstacle, so intensifies the cyclonic uplift that over 2 1 inches of rain
have fallen in twentyfour hours on the top and northern slopes of the
Riesengebirge. Incidentally, too, this shows how inert a wyr is,
and how little part it usually takes in the circulation of the air
round it. It also shows how the upward movement of the air is
continued beyond, i.e. to leeward of, the actual crest of the obstruct-
ing mass, so that the heaviest precipitation is on the lee side. So
the Snowdon maximum is at Glaslyn, in the lee of the summit.
As a rule, average temperatures and average rainfalls are very Averages,
misleading, many areas never having — except for a day or two in
spring or autumn — their mean annual temperature ; but in the case
of an essentially transitional and peninsular area general or average
conditions may be emphasised.
In Western Europe generally, then, the dominant wind is from Direction
some point in " west " for 53 out of every 100 days, south-west on 25 °^ Wind,
of them, due west on 1 7, and north-west on 1 1. In Eastern Europe,
5^ The Continent of Europe ch.
on the other hand, it is from some point in "east." Again, a north
wind, like a west one, is much commoner in summer than in winter ;
and both bring cooHng influences then, especially in the west.
Consequently the range of temperature is least on the ocean margin,
especially towards the north-west.
Ezcep- To these general rules or processes of atmospheric circulation
tions. there are some important exceptions or modifications, but they are
essentially local and temporary. They are all related to one or
both of the fundamental conditions — a local area of low pressure
and a local area of high relief. And, as they are exceptional, —
to the normal paths of the air-currents, which are also parallel to
the great feature-lines, — they must obviously have a northern or
a southern component. Those with a southern component are
usually of the fohn type, and those with a northern component are
usually of the mistral type.
Fohn. The fohn, which is typically a winter and spring phenomenon,
is certainly a direct result of a local high pressure, but it is
indirectly related also to the local high relief and to a distant low
pressure. When a strong system of low pressure coming in from
the Atlantic is divided in such a way that one branch is drawn
in over the Mediterranean while the other works up the English
Channel, there seems little chance of the two being re-united except
by a route immediately west or immediately east of the main Alpine
block (cf. p. 57); but if the Mediterranean current is persistent,
local conditions of relief and pressure may combine to minimise
the obstacle of the Alpine block itself, especially in the neighbour-
hood of the great central depression of the St. Gothard, i.e. at the
northern apex of the Italian watershed in the deep Ticino valley
between the Pennine and the Lepontine Alps.
The initial movement in a fohn, therefore, seems to be a
horizontal "impulse" of the air on the higher levels towards the
north, and then a gravitation of the same cold heavy air down the
northern slopes. This gravitation at first takes it apparently over
still colder and heavier air that is lying stagnant in the valleys
below, but the moving cold air is followed by moving warm air;
and the latter is almost certainly part of the Mediterranean low-
pressure current, though the latter is not evident at first in the lower
strata of the air on the south side of the Alps. Indeed, the
temperature in the lower strata to the south often remains very low,
because the cold heavy air is " lodged." On the contrary, it seems
to be the activity of the warm current at the higher level that gives
the initial " impulse " to the cold air just below it on the heights.
The ascent of the warm current, however, is accompanied by
heavy rain, and the freeing of a corresponding amount of latent
heat ; and, thanks partly to the action of this heavy rain in degrad-
ing, the down-grade of the Reuss basin towards the northern centre
VII Climate 59
of low pressure begins at once. To the initial momentum of the
air-current is now added the attracting power of the low-pressure
centre to the north, so that the down-current is always violent ;
indeed, it has done so much harm in this way that in the Canton of
Uri there are regulations about the extinguishing of all fires on
news of the fohn's approach. But, in spite of the danger from
fire, it is hailed with joy in the spring, because not only is it
extraordinarily dry, but also its original temperature has been
increased — often loo per cent — by the compression under the heavier
barometrical pressure during its descent ; it is, therefore, so dry and
so warm that it becomes a veritable "eater of snow." It is to this
that it owes its name of fbhn (" favouring "). In the naming of the
similar " Roteturm " wind in Transylvania more emphasis has been
given to its " gap " character, as related to the Red Tower Pass.
The southerly sirocco of Sicily and leveche of Spain differ from Sirocco.
the fohn in origin and therefore in character. They are essentially
Saharan winds — hot, dry, and full of dust ; and the dust collects
so much vapour in passing over the Mediterranean that they are
almost always hazy or foggy. They may occur at any season of
the year, but are most common about the time of the spring
equinox. Then the northward movement of the sun is apt to in-
duce local areas of very low pressure in the Shott depressions in the
lee {i.e. south) of the Atlas ; and the normal anti-clockwise rotation
round these centres carries the heat and fine sand as far east as
Malta and as far west as Almeria. The terrific heat — which some-
times exceeds 93° Y. at midnight — has a deadly effect on vegeta-
tion, e.g. vines or olives in blossom ; but the area affected is
fortunately confined to the southern latitudes of the Mediterranean.
The name sirocco is, however, applied in the northern latitudes
of the basin, as solano is in Spain to the ordinary eddies in the
main air-current of the Anti-Trade. These eddies, of course, have
a southern component in them ; but they are normally mild, rain-
bearing winds, which are seldom violent and do much good.
Somewhat the same distinction may be drawn between the bora Bora and
(" North Wind ") and the mistral (" Masterful Wind "), the former Mistral,
being more of a " gap " wind. Indeed, there is no question that
it is often the ordinary north wind blowing with special force
through the few gaps which do exist in the Alpine barrier, e.g. over
the barren Karst saddle towards the Adriatic low-pressure centre.
At other times, like the mistral, it is a local movement, due to
the great differences in the day temperature on the sheltered
strip of coast and on the snow-clad Alps or Cevennes. In conse-
quence, though piercingly cold, it is essentially a healthy dry wind,
accompanied by cloudless skies and other conditions favourable to
the cleansing and warming of the soil. For the same reason, too,
it usually stops at sundown. And it is very suggestive of the
6o
The Continent of Europe ch. vii
Three
Climatic
Areas.
Supre-
macy of
Europe.
continental conditions of Spain, as contrasted with the peninsular
conditions of France, that at the mouth of the Ebro, as the cierzo,
it is mainly confined to autumn and early winter, while at the
mouth of the Rhone it is most violent in late winter and spring.
There are, then, three main climatic regions in Europe — the
Atlantic, the Continental, the Mediterranean ; and these are so
complementary of one another, and the total area of their distribu-
tion is so small, that they greatly favoured that interdependence
and mutual intercourse which were the great impulse to civilisation
in early days. The Atlantic region is specially marked by even
temperature, the mean temperature seldom falling below 32° F. fcr
more than one month in the year and seldom rising above 64° F.
for more than one month, and by evenly distributed rainfall, the
amount being everywhere greatest in autumn. The Mediterranean
region is specially marked by the absence of serious frost, 50° F.
being a typical winter temperature alike in Valencia and
Calabria, Corsica and Crete, and by the absence of summer rains
except along the northern heights, which are also specially
instrumental in excluding the cold northerly winds in winter. The
Continental region is specially marked by extremes of temperature,
at least Ihree consecutive months averaging below 32° F., and at
least three averaging above 64° F., and by scanty rainfall, very
little of the area having 30 inches and much of it not having even
20. Western Europe is, therefore, climatically complementary of
Eastern Europe, especially in the matter of temperature range, as
Northern Europe is of Southern Europe, especially in the matter
of seasonal rainfall.
Climate, therefore, like position and relief, has greatly favoured
the development of the continent as a home of Life, so that Europe
has been far ahead of all the other continents in this respect. The
scene of the most complicated mountain-building, it has the most
complicated outline ; and variety of outline and of relief and of climate
has combined with smallness of area to crowd species in such a way
as to give maximum struggle for existence under conditions where
success was not impossible. Such a concentration of stimulus
means maximum advance amongst the organisms that do survive.
CHAPTER VIII
CLIMATIC CONTROL
(i) Of River Regime.
The geographic control of river development is, of course, physical Two
as well as climatic ; but the chief features of relief are so distributed Centres,
in Europe that their influence mainly, and directly, accentuates that
of the purely climatic phenomena. Thus, it is obvious that most
of the important rivers radiate from one of two centres, the low
Valdai plateau and the comparatively high Alpine system ; and
the much greater height is accentuated by the much closer proximity
to the sea. The summit of the Valdai (1150 feet) bears the same
relation even to European Russia alone as a lo-inch brick on its
end bears to 1,000,000 acres; and it stands 1000 miles even
from the North Sea. About 160 separate peaks in the Alps
have a height at least ten times that of the Valdai, and far more
than half of them are well within 500 miles from the Atlantic
itself.
There is, therefore, an immediate relation between the size of Size of
the river-basins in Europe and their available precipitation. The Basma
largest basin on the Atlantic sea-board, that of the Loire, has an
area of about 45,000 square miles ; the basin of the Rhine is
nearly double that (86,000); the Danube basin (312,000) is
nearly four times that of the Rhine ; and the Volga has a basin
of about 565,000.
Now the annual range of temperature over the Atlantic in the Range of
latitude of these rivers is less than 10° F., and is accompanied Tempera-
by — indeed, it implies — a very high relative humidity. But the
daily range of temperature in the basins themselves seems to be
greater than anywhere else in the world within similar latitudes,
and there is a maximum variability of weather generally. Through-
out the whole area the departure from normal is towards warmth,
i.e. the encouragement of evaporation, the excess towards the
north-west being sometimes as much as 40° F. ; and this implies
an abnormal capacity of the air for absorbing moisture.
61
62
The Continent of Europe
CH.
Precipita-
tion in
Winter.
Precipita-
tion in
Sonuner.
Again, though the continent is temperate in its mean annual
temperature, both statistically and as illustrated by physiological
effects, it is essentially intemperate in many of its phenomena.
Even in England in the year 1 9 1 1 between April and August the
maximum daily temperature varied between 1 1 ° F. and 1 00° F. ;
and over the whole continent — in strong contrast to similar
latitudes in the southern hemisphere — the normal interaction of
land and sea creates maximum disturbance. This must be related
to the retardation of maxima and minima temperatures. In the
essentially continental part of the continent maximum or minimum
temperature is retarded for one hour past midday or midnight and
for one month past midsummer or midwinter, while in the marine
part it is retarded for two hours and two months respectively. And
this will ensure — amongst other results — maximum rainfall, mainly
by convection, about two hours after midnight, and mainly in
thunderstorms, about two hours after midday. It will also ensure
rather similar temperatures in continental springs and autumns, but
rather dissimilar temperatures between spring and autumn on the
Atlantic sea-board.
This, of course, instantly affects precipitation. The Anti-Trades
have come so far in winter that " they have got into their stride,"
but they are greatly interfered with by the seasonal changes of
temperature over the land. The land temperature then is not
only a most effective precipitating medium, but relief influences are
also most accentuated ; and the low temperature and consequent
high pressure force the whole air-current into lines of least resistance,
which come to be called " cyclonic tracks." We thus have a constant
succession of more or less violent storms passing up the English
Channel, forming almost as sure a line of defence for England as
the channel itself; and all the sea-board rivers, whether Atlantic or
Mediterranean, get an abundant winter rainfall, while continental
basins are starved. [See p. 53.]
The latter have their turn in summer, when the high temperature
and consequent low pressure involve a maximum capacity in the
air for absorbing moisture and a maximum tendency towards
convection. These conditions combine to give the interior an
abnormal rainfall in summer, but coupled with the disadvantage of
the fall being too heavy and too local in both time and place, and
therefore likely to cause serious floods in small or discordant basins.
Thus, the north-western basins get an average of 10 per cent (of
their total rainfall) in each of the five months September to January,
while the central basins (north of the Alps) get an average of 1 2 per
cent in each of the three months June to August, and not more
than 7 per cent in any other three-month period. Reflected in the
regime, e.g., of the German and the Russian rivers, this means that
the former get equal supplies in spring and in autumn (cf. p 55)
VIII
Climatic Control
63
and twice as much in summer as in winter, while the Russian rivers
get 3 per cent more in autumn than in spring and 130 per cent
more in summer than in winter.
There will be, then, great variety of regime, not only as between Varied
rivers in different parts of the continent, but also as between R^&™e.
different parts of the same basin, if a large one ; and a basin of
insignificant size at a considerable height near the Atlantic may
contradict a huge basin of low level in the interior in almost every
possible phenomenon. •
English Miles
20 4C 60 80
Land above 600 ffhigh shaded.
Coalfields ■■■■
Stanford^ Oeog! £sCabT. London
North-Eastem France.
In both cases, however, the proportion of the actual rainfall over Surface
the basin which actually reaches the river, depends largely on the Control,
character of the surface, e.g. whether once glaciated or not, pervious
or impervious, and on the extent to which that surface is covered
with vegetation ; and this important consideration of vegetation
itself largely depends on the character of the surface and on seasonal
changes of climate. For instance, on the bare granitic hills of
the Loire basin in winter, some 75 per cent of the total fall feeds
the river, while on the porous plain of the deciduous forests in
Russia not 1 5 per cent seems to reach the river in summer ; and
the economic effect is further emphasised by the fact that the
64
The Continent of Europe
CH.
smaller basin would in any case tend to have the more variable flow
in the navigable part of the river.
Valdai Of course, the rivers of the Valdai area must be long and slow ;
System, but no part of their watershed has a normal rainfall of more than
40 inches, over 99 per cent of their basins it is not even 30, and
over all the unforested parts evaporation is very rapid. They are,
indeed, navigable for a very large proportion of their length, but for
a relatively small proportion of the year. For instance, the Volga,
• in spite of the huge size of its basin (cf. p. 61), rises at only 550
feet above sea- level (633 feet above Caspian level) ; and it is
navigable for 2260 miles out of 2325, but is ice-bound for 139
days at Kostroma and 107 at Tsaritsyn. All these "Valdai"
rivers are ice-bound for a large part of the year ; and the time in
question lengthens towards the north and the east. This involves
peculiar dangers from flooding. In the case of the northward-
flowing rivers, their upper reaches always thaw before their lower
reaches, causing most detrimental floods in the northern part of
their basins ; and a similar phenomenon is found on the eastward-
flowing part of the Volga, the ice breaking up a fortnight earlier at
Tver than at Kostroma.
Volga. This eastward section of the Volga goes through numerous
morainic marshes, too, and spring comes so suddenly that on the vast
forested lowland the melting snow can neither gravitate away nor be
evaporated quickly enough to avoid further flooding — for miles over
its low left bank. On the other hand, over the thirsty steppe evapora-
tion and percolation are both so active that the river eventually
discharges not much more than half the amount discharged by
the Danube, which has a basin not much more than half the size of
the Volga basin. The Volga is more or less typical of the continental
part of Europe, though it belongs to the latitudes where there is
extreme heat rather than extreme cold. But they are all ice-bound
in winter, and their basins are so cold that, even where rain falls, it
does not run off; they all flood suddenly when the ice and snow are
melted in spring, and they all are fed with suflScient summer rain.
"Alpine" The rivers of the purely marine area enjoy more or less even
System. rainfall throughout the year, but low temperature increases
precipitation and decreases evaporation in the cold season ; so that
they are all normally low in summer, though small floods occur
occasionally, and all normally high in winter and subject then to
heavy floods. Such a regime, only greatly accentuated, is found
throughout all the summer-drought area, where in summer many of
the rivers become discontinuous.
Seine. The Seine is a good instance of the marine type under simple
conditions. Its basin is no larger than Scotland (about 30,000
square miles), and no part of its watershed has an elevation of over
2500 feet; but only two-thirds of the basin consists of permeable
VIII
Climatic Control
65
rock, all the Yonne feeder and part of the Marne feeder being
impermeable. Owing to the small size of the basin and the lowness
of the watershed the same meteorological conditions usually prevail
over all parts of it at the same time, and the torrential tributaries
can send flood-water from the margin of the basin to Paris in four
days. Heavy rains over the torrential tributaries imply heavy rains
over all the basin, but the non-torrential tributaries cannot send
flood-water from their basin-margins to Paris in less than a week.
The simultaneous occurrence of heavy rain over all the basin —
especially if snow is melting under the influence of the warm south-
west wind — involves, therefore, sudden floods or a succession of
floods on each of the torrential tributaries, and a certainty of a slow
subsequent rise on each of the non-torrential streams ; and mean-
time the continuous rain has saturated small subsidiary depressions
in the centre of the basin, e.g. the Brie, thus making them tem-
porarily impermeable. The simplicity of the phenomena enables
the ultimate flood at Paris to be foretold at least a couple of days in
advance, which minimises the loss of life ; but the only means of
stopping the flood, at a time when evaporation is sluggish and plant-
life is inactive, would be to divert the Yonne bodily into the Loire.
The Rhine gives an illustration of a larger basin with a more
66 The Continent of Europe ch.
Ehine. complex regime. Its upper course is fed from glaciers and
permanent snow, its middle course is among hills covered with
snow in winter, and its lower tributaries are rain-fed ; the glaciers
and permanent snow melt fastest in summer, the temporary winter-
snow on the lower hills melts in spring, and the north-western part
of the basin receives autumn and winter rain. We expect, therefore,
a summer maximum where the Rhine itself is joined by its great
glacier-fed tributary, the Aar-Reuss, at Swiss Coblenz ("The
Confluence"), i.e. opposite Waldshut. This summer maximum,
which gives a navigable depth of nearly 5 feet from Basel to
Strassburg, implies a winter minimum (of 3 feet) over the same
area, or rather as far as the mouth of the rain-fed 111. From the
mouth of the 111 northwards the minimum depth is not below 5 feet ;
and, after the "confluence" of the Moselle at the other Coblenz,
the inflow of rain gives a winter maximum of never less than 9 feet.
The spring-melting of the snow in the Neckar valley largely accounts
for the fact that Mannheim — with a minimum dredged depth of
6| feet — does an annual river-borne trade of over 6,000,000 tons ;
and it equalises the variation (20 feet) between the summer
maximum of the upper ice-fed and the winter maximum of the
lower rain-fed reaches. The total result is that, below the inflow
of the rain-fed Nahe at the old Roman port of Spires, vessels of
at least 500 tons burden can ply without difficulty, while below
the inflow of the snow-fed Main the burden rises, for at least 200
days in the year, to 2000 tons. Incidentally, too, this influx of
winter and spring floods converges on the Bingen narrows, with
a consequent current-speed normally above 6 miles an hour —
necessitating powerful tugs and stationary hauling-gear for up-stream
traffic, but supplying one reason why the estuary of the Rhine is
so much less silted up than that of the Elbe.
Rhone. The Rhone may be compared with the Rhine, if only to criticise
the prevalent misconception that it is useless as a waterway. Of
course, it has obvious drawbacks. Though its length is only 500
miles, it rises 6000 feet above the sea ; and, as it is fed from what
is at once the highest part of the Alps and that nearest to the
Atlantic, its volume and its pace must be great. No doubt, too,
the ice-fed Durance joins the main stream too near its mouth to
avoid complicating conditions in the delta, and the Ardeche joins
it too near for its melted snow to be of much use for navigation.
On the other hand, about 4700 feet of the total fall is accomplished
in the 105 miles down to the Lake of Geneva; the river is fed
from 405 square miles of glacier ; and its fall from Lyons to the
sea is only 530 feet in 230 miles. Again, while all the ice-fed
streams flood in summer, the rain-fed ones flood in winter and the
snow-fed in spring, so that the Saone and the Ain, like the Neckar
and the Moselle in the case of the Rhine, help to keep the volume
VIII
Climatic Control
67
more or less uniform throughout the year. These conditions
combine to give the Rhone almost always a minimum depth of
4^ feet — which is enjoyed by the Elbe for only 200 days in the
year and by the Oder for only 127; and the one great injury from
the ice-fed torrents, an undue widening of the bed by the heavy
floods, has been artificially corrected in such a way that the con-
centration of energy in a single channel enables the river to carry
away its heavy burden of shingle and gravel.
The Danube has a still more complex regime, as might be Danube:
inferred from the fact that it twice cuts across the great Alpine ^pper
barrier. In the upper part of its basin it is fed with winter-rain
from the Black Forest and by melted snow in spring from the
Iron Gates on Danube.
Alpine foreland ; and, as this part of its course gets little actual
supply of rain in the time of maximum evaporation and maximum
plant-energy, it has a minimum flow in summer. It suffers further,
in this section, because during drought the head stream disappears
bodily underground, sometimes for three or four months ; and, when
it reappears 8 miles to the south and 560 feet lower, it enters Lake
Constance, i.e. flows to the North Sea, not the Black.
At the first Alpine barrier the river is joined by its great ice-fed Middle
tributary the Inn, which has a length greater than that of the Course.
Danube proper above their confluence at Passau ; and the whole
river assumes an Alpine regime, showing a summer maximum at
Vienna and receiving the " Danube " as a truncated stream now
rising in Wiirtemberg, not in Baden. Once inside the mountain-
barrier, it becomes a more or less typical Steppe river, suflering great
extremes of climate ; and, as it is now fed mainly by winter-snow
and river-ice, it has a spring maximum, the melting of the ice-fields —
68
The Continent of Europe
CH.
where the river deployed in several channels (now converted into
one) on to the Hungarian plain — having caused formerly very
destructive floods, e.g. in 1838 at Budapest. But the melting of
the hill snow and the lowland ice, and the normal occurrence of
trAnfo/io's cioof esTABT, lohoon
Contour map of Russia.
The lightly shaded areas are more than 600 feet in height. The Caspian Sea is 84 feet
below sca-leveL
early summer rains, are followed by such high temperatures that
the air has a maximum capacity for absorption at the same time
that plant-activity is at a maximum ; and the river shows a late-
summer and early-autumn minimum at Belgrade,
After crossing the second Alpine barrier (Kazan — Orsova), the
IX
Climatic Control
69
great difficulty is temperature, not precipitation. In the continental Lower
climate the transitional seasons are so short that navigation is very Course.
precarious; for instance, in 1902 the winter began with such a
sudden and extreme frost that 38 steamers were frozen up between
Braila and the coast, where the river is navigable by ocean vessels
of 4000 tons register, and more than 120 loaded barges suffered
a similar fate between Braila and Rushchuk, where the barges have
a capacity of up to 2000 tons. On the contrary, the large amount
of underground water — with a normal and constant temperature
of 48° F. — received by the river between Vienna and Pressburg
creates a winter harbour that is almost entirely free from ice ; and
it was here that the old Roman road from Aquileia found a terminus
in Carnuntum.
CHAPTER IX
CLIMATIC CONTROL
(2) Of Vegetation.
We have already noticed how early Man must have had most Early
chance of intruding, with his domestic plants and animals, in a Man.
transition area, and how markedly Southern Europe is such an area.
But the mere absence of the more adverse conditions is not, by
itself, sufficient to account for the very early growth of civilisation
in the Mediterranean basin. And we may examine in some detail
both the phenomena
which account for the
absence of the unfavour-
able conditions, and
those which account for
the presence of favour-
able ones.
All organic forms, High k.
whether plant or beast ^'^
\ , . Forms,
or man, have much m
common ; and their in-
terdependence implies,
on the one hand, more
or less common climatic
conditions, and, on the
other hand, the sub-
servience of the lower forms to the higher. From one point of
view, Man had to oust the essentially " wild " plants and beasts that
were in possession of an area; from the other point of view,
Ancienl- Ice Sheet.
70
The Continent of Europe
CH.
Seasonal
Climate.
Culti-
vated
Plants.
survivors or intruders must be his servants. This was easy in
Europe, for, in the first place, the Great Ice Age had decimated the
native flora and fauna of Europe ; and survival had been easiest
where it is more or less true to say that subsequent progress was
most diflicult, i.e. in the Mediterranean basin. The evolution of
Europe as a continent has been intimately bound up with the
movements of shepherds from the grass-lands of Asia into the fruit-
garden of the Mediterranean on their way to the forests and fisheries
of North-West Europe.
Europe lies mainly in purely temperate latitudes, but also partly
in essentially transitional latitudes. In both there are seasonal
variations of temperature and of rainfall, and these are the two
essential conditions in the evolution of those plants which are most
useful to man. The greater differences of rainfall are in the south,
and the greater ranges of temperature are farther north. The net
result is more favourable to the north than to the south ; for the
absence of moisture, which is the fundamental check on the growth
of plants, comes in the south at the time when otherwise the heat
is most favourable to such growth. In the north, on the contrary,
the shortness of the summer season is more than compensated by
the length of the summer day ; and the occurrence of the rainfall
and the heat simultaneously gives to both a maximum utility. But
this could not be effective until the more adverse results of the old
glaciation had been modified or removed ; and one agent in this
process was the gradual desiccation that has been spreading over
the Old World, and that has progressively handicapped the
Mediterranean peoples.
Now, the rainfall in most parts of Southern Europe is scanty in
amount and strictly seasonal in character, and these conditions are
so adverse to forest growth that continuous forests are rare ; and
this must have left a relatively large area free for cultivation, so that
cultivated plants appeared in the Mediterranean basin ages before
they appeared on the European plain. But, though the rainfall is
adverse to continuous forest, the absence of any cold wind in the
dry season and the presence of sufficient warmth in the wet season
render the limited supply adequate for discontinuous, or " orchard,"
trees, provided that they are adapted to resist drought. The various
processes by which this adaptation is secured, include lengthening
of root, restriction of height, thickening of bark, development of
thorns, toughening of leaves, secretion of volatile oil, and other
means of resisting or evading the evaporating power of very dry air
or of drawing water from great depths. And no typical plants have
survived in the Mediterranean basin without fulfilling one or more
of these conditions. The olive, the cork-oak, the vine, and — in the
rainiest areas — the sweet chestnut are typical.
The olive is probably the most important, as it is the most
IX Climatic Control 71
typical. Like many other natives of summer-drought, e.g. the box The
and the yew, it develops a rich colour in the wood, and grows so Olive.
slowly that its wood takes a most beautiful polish, and the tree itself
attains a prodigious age (i 000-1200 years). But the greater
violence of the wind where there is no ground-friction, the more
rapid transpiration of the leaves at this higher level, and the lower
humidity of the air at that level, all combine to restrict its height
usually to under 30 feet ; and even this height seems to be reached
only by the help of man. The small size of the narrow "willow"
leaf, the hoary hue of its under side, and the fact that it is ever-
green, all combine to minimise transpiration in the hot dry-season
and to facilitate assimilation in the cool wet-season. The tree never
suffers from physiological drought, because it cannot live at all where
the temperature is too low for it to assimilate in the cold season ;
and its root-system is so enormously developed that it is able to
draw water from depths where actual drought cannot reach, while the
stem up which the water passes may have a girth of over 20 feet,
i.e. equal to the height of the tree ! And olive-oil is the milk and
cream, the butter and cheese, of this typically summer-drought area.
Plants of humbler habit, with no woody stem to defy cHmatic Humble
injury, are also largely found in the Mediterranean area ; but they Plants-
have survived only in virtue of aromatic properties or some pro-
vision for storing water, as in the case of laurel and oleander,
lavender and myrtle, garlic and asphodel. And the destruction
which man has undoubtedly caused amongst forest growths in
historic times, has probably been equalled by that caused by goats
amongst the humbler plants, so that the survivors are typically
unpleasant to handle, being covered with hairs or spines or resin, or
in some other way made distasteful to the goats.
Of course, the great variety of level involves considerable Natural
variety of temperature, and this means variety of vegetation — from Grasses,
palm trees to pines ; and, on the other hand, the most important
areas are largely alluvial floors of valleys that are surrounded by
lofty mountains, from which the alluvium has itself been carried,
and from which it is watered to an extent that bears no obvious
relation to the local rainfall. But neither the alluvial flats nor the
relatively large supplies of water in the subsoil are very suitable for,
or very favourable to, the shallow-rooted grasses, so that there is
bound to be a deficiency of natural pasture except on the fertile soil
of the glacial platforms.
The case is different with the cultivated grasses, especially Culti-
barley and wheat, both of which are natives of the Mediterranean vated
basin. Neither of them needs the great heat which is typical of
the basin in summer, but the effective value of which is lost
because the drought makes summer the time of rest for plants.
The early growth of both is encouraged by the mild moist winters.
72
The Continent of Europe
CH.
Fruit.
Northern
Europe.
"Forest"
Crops.
while the spring heat "forces" them on so quickly that they are
mature before the drought is at hand ; and by that time the
perfection of ripening depends precisely on the presence of dry
warm weather, which also facilitates harvesting. There is, therefore,
every encouragement for man to cultivate annuals of this kind on
the precious alluvial plains. In other words, he can easily provide
himself with corn and wine and oil ; and on such of the alluvial
plains as had been originally forested, and so were rich in fibrous
leaf-mould, e.g. Northern Italy, he could grow the flax which he
needed for clothing.
To these fundamental necessaries he could easily add various
pulses and flavourings, e.g. the garlic, and all kinds of nuts and
stone-fruits ; and in later times the areas which enjoy early summer
rains, were found to be as favourable to maize as those enjoying
only winter rains were to tobacco. But the typical control is seen
in the fruit-growing — with irrigation. Nearly all stone-fruits are
natives of South-Western Asia, as the various citrus fruits are of
South-Eastern Asia ; and the easy cultivation of the ordinary arable
land, and the rapid growth of the ordinary annual crops, left the
leisure that was necessary for the cultivation of fruit and for
attending successive harvests, e.g. vine, fig, olive. At the same
time, the essential problems of irrigation were the same there and
then as they are now in California, and the family was neither
capable of being, nor allowed to be, the irrigating unit of labour —
a result somewhat adverse to family life (cf. p. 74), as the relative
lack of rain was to density of population.
One of the great natural advantages of Europe in early days
was that the southern part is in climate and crops more or less
complementary of the northern. Here almost the only drought is
physiological, for every normal winter is cold enough to stop
vegetation. Under normal conditions, then, the annual plants
must be such as mature in summer, or they must be treated so
as to evade the typical winter conditions ; and this involved such
change of exposure or season as, e.g., in planting vines on hill-slopes
facing south-east or sowing wheat in spring instead of autumn.
But the ordinary succession of climatic phenomena was intimately
associated with the calm heavy air of a high-pressure centre in
winter and with the light rain-bearing inflow to a low-pressure
centre in summer ; and the absence of wind in the cold season was
as favourable to the growth of forest as the presence of rain was
in the warm season. A very large proportion of the area was,
therefore, bound to produce temperate forest.
But the summer was not long enough, nor was the temperature
high enough, for the favouring rain-supply to produce dense
vegetation ; and Man intruded without much difficulty, marking
his arrival by such encroachment on the forest as handicapped it
IX
Climatic Control
73
in its natural struggle with other forms of vegetation. Thus the
various grasses, natural and artificial, which do not need much heat,
and which do not mind more or less constant rain, were encouraged,
especially oats and rye ; and the fibrous floors of the old forests
were equally favourable to flax and hemp, as they have been in
STAHfO/iD'S GCOO!- ISTABT
Russian belts of vegetation.
later times to various root-crops that are tolerant of little sunshine
and much rain, e.g. potatoes and turnips. The flax was less
valuable than in the Mediterranean basin, however, because the
climate was so favourable to natural pasture that wool was both
abundant and more suited to the requirements of Man in the long
74
The Continent of Europe
CH.
"Social'
Forests.
Prairie
and
Steppe.
Domestic
CatUe.
Zones of
Vegeta-
tion.
" Conifer-
ous"
North.
cold winter ; and the same conditions increased the demand for
animal food, thus incidentally involving a type of occupation very
favourable to the development of family life.
At the same time life was relatively hard. One legacy of the
old glaciation was an intractable soil ; the forest had to be cleared ;
the marsh had to be drained ; and the first results of forest-clearing
increase rather than diminish flooding. On the other hand, these
temperate forests are social, a fair variety of types being combined
with a large continuous area under each type ; and under such
circumstances enormous herds of swine found abundance of food
in the continuous oak and beech forests, and the variety of the
timber was suflScient for ordinary domestic purposes.
Eastward and south-eastward of the forest area the presence of
icy winds in the winter and the absence of rain in the hottest part
of the summer were profoundly adverse to forest growth ; and the
forest gave place to prairie and steppe, the one offering as great
facilities for the cultivation of artificial grasses, especially wheat, as
the other did for natural pasture. There is, of course, strong wind
on the ocean margin of the old forest area ; but its strength is so
much lessened by ground-friction that it did little more than keep the
ocean margin usefully free from forest, while it brought abundance
of rain to replace the moisture which it carried away from the tran-
spiring trees.
The pastoral tendencies of the grasslands were far from being
annihilated as the shepherds moved westward ; but obvious changes
crept in. The lush grass of the Atlantic sea-board produces beef
of a quality unknown on the real steppe, so that the cow completely
displaces the mare from her premier position on the steppe ; and
the stabling of most domestic animals greatly facilitated that
collection of manure which has revolutionised agriculture in North-
West Europe.
These general considerations may afford ground for dividing
the continent into formal zones of vegetation, the most northerly
being the useless Tundra — the cold desert which occupies the
northern margin of the Russian lowland, and overlaps on to the
Ural and Scandinavian heights. Indeed, Russia — spanning the
whole continent from north to south — gives a fairly correct bird's-
eye view of all the zones.
The Coniferous Forest, in which the non-coniferous birch is
associated with pine and fir and larch, practically covers the whole
area southward from the Tundra at least as far as the latitude of
Christiania— St. Petersburg, the fir being specially dominant round
the Gulf of Bothnia. The subsidiary forest products include resin
and tar, potash and pulp ; but agriculture is more typical of the
deciduous forests, while the clearings are typically devoted to oats,
barley, rye, and potatoes.
IX Climatic Control 75
The Deciduous Forest remains only "in samples" except in "Decidu-
Russia, where it still covers much of the land between the latitude ^^ "
of St. Petersburg and that of Kief. The southern limit of the
area is partly physical and partly climatic. In the west it runs
along the northern edge of the Young Folded Mountains, and in
the east along the southern edge of the old glaciation ; and inside
these latitudinal extremes it is roughly bounded longitudinally by
lines within which there is a winter temperature below 32° F. for at
least two months, and a summer temperature above 64° F. for at
least two months, with a mean annual rainfall of rather more or
rather less than two feet. Where relief decreases the temperature
and increases the rainfall, as along the Vosges and the Black
Forest, the Erz Gebirge and the Sudetes, deciduous trees give place
to conifers; and where late glaciation has left a marshy and
intractable soil, as along the south shore of the Baltic, conifers and
heaths occur, as also on the windy flats that border the North Sea.
But agriculture is widely developed over the cleared parts of the
area, the chief grains being wheat and rye and the chief roots being
beet and potatoes ; and the pastures, which are largely artificial,
have been so much improved by systematic grazing and regular
mowing that they are exceedingly rich.
The Evergreens of the Mediterranean basin coincide with the "Ever-
area of summer-drought, which practically includes all the land that f^*^'?,'
drains into the Mediterranean proper. But altitude gives great
variety, the trees at the highest levels being coniferous ; and the
actual uplift gives great protection to the coastal valleys, so that —
with irrigation from the snow-capped heights — even tropical plants
can be cultivated. Not only so, but these are of unique excellence ;
for instance, the finest rice in the world is grown in Lombardy —
illustrating the general law that the farther from the equator grain
can be ripened properly at all, the more perfect does it become.
All the typical trees and shrubs are sombre-coloured, for only those
survived which were able to exclude — by means of colours from the
lower end of the spectrum — the dangerous ultra-violet rays of
sunshine ; and there is considerable localisation of type, e.g. cork
and various kinds of " alfa " being more dominant in the " African "
climate of Iberia, while olive and mulberry are more dominant
elsewhere. The various evergreen shrubs of the citrus genus are
very typical, especially oranges and lemons. Their restricted height,
the colour and texture of their bark, the shape and glossy surface of
their leaves, their secretion of volatile oils, their protection of their
green shoots by axillary spines, all make them more or less in-
different to summer drought so long as copious autumn and winter
rains come in time to " flush " their fruit with juice.
The Steppe of South- Eastern Europe is said to be a sort of "Inter-
continental extension of the Mediterranean domain, as the North- g^gp-g
76 The Continent of Europe ch.
European heaths are said to be a maritime extension of the Steppe
proper. It certainly is characterised by many typical Mediterranean
plants, especially of the bulbous habit ; but this is a natural control
of the climate. Steppe is essentially land in temperate latitudes so
far from the ocean, or so much cut off from oceanic influence, and
so much exposed to wind in winter, that its climate is adverse to all
plants except such as can evade the extremes of temperature and
drought. It is found inside the Alp-Carpathian ring of mountains
and in similar latitudes in Russia ; and the fact that its northern
limit coincides roughly with the northern limit of loess, i.e. the
southern limit of morainic deposits, has led to its being connected
with the fine character of the loess. But it is almost certainly a
joint result, with the loess, of the dry winter wind which distributed
the glacier silt (cf. p. 24). It is naturally desert in summer, in
autumn, and in winter ; but in spring the melted snow makes it
"blossom as the rose," with dark-red tulips, peach-red almond-
shrubs, pale-red woodbine. And its better-watered areas, especially
in Hungary, repay richly cultivation under grain.
CHAPTER X
CLIMATIC CONTROL
(3) Of Beast and Man.
Ice Age. The Great Ice Age scarcely affected fish and birds, but it worked
havoc among land mammals — in proportion to their size and appetites
and in inverse proportion to their intelligence and powers of loco-
motion. Indeed, the extraordinarily rapid progress of early Man
subsequently cannot be dissociated, on one hand, from the wholesale
massacre of the stupid during the glacial epochs, and, on the other
hand, from the typical agility and intelligence of arboreal mammals.
But Man is innately adaptable and omnivorous as well as intelligent,
and must have come best out of the struggle, while the purely
herbivorous beasts of the more southern latitudes must have come
out of it worst. For the advancing ice drove many typical plants
to practical annihilation in the Mediterranean ; and the smaller
and more abstemious beasts which survived must — in the process
of adjustment to new sources of food — have lost some of their old
advantage of superior strength, and have been very much at the
mercy of man. Cf. p. 47.
Social The importance of this depends partly on the fact that, far from
Species, tropical scenes of senseless competition, species are few but social ;
and the old civilisation and the dense population of Europe have
X Climatic Control 77
involved the disappearance of such species as could not be brought
into due subjection (cf. p. 69). For instance, the demand for
beech-wood of a character appropriate to — because produced by —
areas of close foresting has led in chair-making areas to the whole-
sale destruction of nut-eating animals, e.g. squirrels, whose appetites
interfered with the natural increase of seedlings. Exactly opposite
conditions have given rise to the recent law in Russia prohibiting
access for three years to certain forest-areas favourable to the sable.
As almost the whole continent may be described as natural Fauna,
forest or mountain zone, we should expect that the natural fauna
would be either of the forest type, e.g. the wolves and bears of
Russia, or of the montane type, e.g. the chamois and ibex of
Switzerland ; but the domestication of the important hoofed animals
and the cultivation of artificial grain have given special opportunities
for the spread of rodents, by decreasing the old competition on their
grass-land home, whether steppe or alp (cf. the Alpine marmot), and
increasing their artificial supplies of food.
Unfortunately for Man, from the need for fertility to discount Steppe
the appalling mortality in the times of keenest competition, many O'^gan-
of these animals, e.g. the rat and the rabbit, have inherited, as the
Negro has in his age-old struggle with noxious microscopic fauna,
extraordinary reproductive power ; and, as they are all wholly or
partly vegetarian in diet, they have become a very serious tax on
agriculture, especially where there has been foolish and wholesale
decimation of such essentially useful birds as owls. Locusts and
grasshoppers are similarly prolific steppe organisms. It was
estimated that the British operations in Cyprus exterminated in
two years 250,000,000,000 locusts — whose "music" is simply the
noise of millions of ceaselessly moving jaws.
In his war with such pests, including the few noxious reptiles Birds.
which survived glaciation — though they have never flourished since
then in Europe as they have in the hotter parts of the Old World —
Man has been greatly helped by the rich bird fauna. And this
richness is due partly to the large area of original forest, and partly
to their greater mobility in the face of glacial movement or human
hunters, but mainly to the fact that the Nile valley has provided a
unique line of migration between the breeding-grounds and the
winter-quarters of many species. There has been also a somewhat
similar migration westwards towards the Atlantic in winter ; so that
there is a zone of rich bird fauna all the way from England via the
Atlantic and Mediterranean coast-lands and the Nile valley to the
Ethiopian highlands. Indeed, the choice of the island of Capri by
Tiberius as the site of his famous palace, was due partly to the
excellence of its vineyards and partly to the fact that it was — as
it still is — a regular resting-place for quails on their northward
migration. Amongst the birds which do not migrate far southward.
78
The Continent of Europe
CH.
Han.
Arboreal
Type.
Colour
Modifica-
tioo.
e.g. ptarmigan, there is a change of colour — to white or nearly
white — in winter ; and the change is protective against radiation of
heat as well as against enemies.
Man, as the culminating product of the various controls, is of
three main types — Nordic, Alpine, and Mediterranean ; and his
dominant control is climatic, the direct influence showing specially
in colour and the indirect in physique. And we may make two
assumptions about his theoretical development and characterisation :
(i) his early progress must have been easiest where conditions
approximated to a natural evolution, but (2) his ultimate progress
should be greatest where conditions strained his powers without
overstraining them. If these assumptions are justified, the
optimum result should be found where the two sets of conditions
were combined ; and we should, therefore, find the highest type
evolved in the forested areas of cool-temperate latitudes.
Primeval man — whom, without necessarily accepting all or any
of the suggestions about a probable Gondwanaland, we might call
a Gondwana — was certainly evolved in a region of such high
temperature and high relative humidity that it was forested ; and
the Gondwana was, therefore, brunet in colour and arboreal in
habit. The brown pigment is still found in the epidermal cells of
all peoples on the face of the earth, even the blondest ; and infants
can support their own weight unaided if suspended by the fingers.
This, though obviously an anachronism now, like such other
transient infantile traits as extreme long-headedness and a concave
nose, is an appropriate and significant accomplishment in the
highly evolved descendants of arboreal primates. Man, in his
individual development, has to climb his own genealogical tree ;
and, during the Age of Fear, survival was naturally to those children
of the Tree-Dwellers that were blessed with the most prehensile
fingers. But, obviously, their forms as well as their fingers were
adapted to their arboreal environment ; and the habitual conformity
of the human skull to the general plan of the human body at once
becomes of prime importance. For arboreal environment involves
simian physique, which implies an elongated body ; and to this
the skull would unquestionably conform.
Primeval man came into Europe, therefore, from the south ;
he was brown-skinned and long-headed ; like nearly all other tree-
dwelling mammals, he was markedly social and quick in mind and
body ; and he instinctively avoided the unforested highlands. But
he arrived in days of heavier rainfall and higher relative humidity ;
and, until he had himself made effective attacks on the native
forests, he found a congenial home in the Mediterranean basin.
There were also, as we have seen, lines of easy movement from
this area into the northern forest areas, especially in the Atlantic
half of the continent. In each case the new environment must
X Climatic Control 79
have tended to arrest or to develop fundamental traits, and to do
this in different degrees and in different directions ; and the pre-
dominant factor in the differentiation was the essential contrast of
summer-rain and summer-drought with their implicit differences of
relative humidity, i.e. capacity for obstructing the ultra-violet rays of
sunlight. Summer-drought, with its high actinic power, tended to
blacken in the lower latitudes ; summer-rain, with its high opacity,
tended to bleach in the higher latitudes. For the increased activity
of the lungs, in the presence of the relatively little and feeble sun-
shine in the summer-rain area, favoured the lighter colour of the
skin ; the increased activity of the intestines, in the presence of
the relatively great and strong sunshine of the summer-drought area,
favoured the darker colour. Nordic man, therefore, became fair,
while Mediterranean man became — or remained — very dark, the
shade deepening eastward with the decrease of relative humidity.
Under these circumstances the survival of the fittest meant the Need of
survival of those who were appropriately coloured. For human I*i&™ent.
protoplasm is normal only at a temperature of about 98°— 99° F., and
even infra-red rays can disturb it seriously if it is not protected
by a sufficiently pigmented cover, i.e. skin, because the normal
temperature of the body is increased perceptibly by an increase in
the temperature of the surrounding air. The actual process is
illustrated in Europe by the distribution of freckles or ordinary
sunburn. This is a pathological phenomenon, i.e. an injury, caused
only and directly by the short actinic rays, and is therefore a sign
of incomplete adaptation to environment ; it seldom occurs in
dark-skinned persons, and can be prevented in the fair-skinned by
a slight staining of the skin. Natural skin-pigment is evolved as
a similar protection, and therefore varies with the need, i.e. the
intensity of the sunshine, as conditioned by the altitude of the sun
and the humidity of the air " blanket."
In this connection the forest was of prime importance. It Forest
meant the direct presence of tree-shade, and it implied a relatively iJ^'icnce.
high humidity ; and the relative humidity must always be high
where, as in Europe outside the Mediterranean basin, moist winds
blow regularly towards higher latitudes. Here, too, even apart
from the question of humidity, neither heat nor light is intense, so
that dark skin was not needed to increase radiation of heat and
protect from light, while fair skin was needed to minimise radiation
of the relatively deficient heat, especially in the typical gloom of
the fiords and forests of North-West Europe, which are also in the
normal path of cyclonic systems.
The southern frontier of the White man, then, roughly coincides "White"
with the southern frontier of Bear- Worshippers because it is the ^^^•
southern frontier of temperate forest. And, in view of the great
importance of the angle of ray-impact and the thickness of the
8o
The Continent of Europe
CH.
Hair.
Alpine
Man.
atmosphere, we may fix the natural limits of the normal or average
White man in Europe as such parts of latitudes 45° to 55° N. as
are maritime or forested ; south of this he is blackened, and north
of it, i.e. north of the latitude of Copenhagen, he is bleached.
This is equally true of Yellow men moving westward, e.g. the
Magyars, and of the original Brown man after movement northward.
The case of the Finns is profoundly significant, if it is a case of
the lank-haired race intruding into the domain of the wavy-haired ;
for in that case the Finns' hair has regained its original morpho-
logical wave, and lost the physiological coarseness that it acquired
in the Yellow man's intemperate climate (see Note, p. 81).
This would be strong evidence against the belief that the wavy
European hair is of secondary origin, derived from the crossing of
Geometrical centre of Europe.
distinct primary types of man. Black and Yellow ; but in any case
we would accept, as conclusive evidence of priority, the closer agree-
ment between the wavy European hair and that of other primates.
And, as the Black man is further than the Yellow man from the higher
apes in this respect, we assume that the former has suffered more
variation, i.e. degeneration, from the original type. We, therefore,
expect such foreign influences as have been really effective or civilis-
ing to have reached Europe from the east rather than from the south.
There has been such an intrusion from the east in the case of
Alpine man ; and he is still largely a Yellow or " parchment-
skinned" man. Unlike the Nordic man and the Mediterranean
man, he has his area of characterisation outside the frontiers of
Europe — on the vast intemperate grass-lands of Asia. He is, there-
fore, a man of the alp rather than of the Alps ; he flourishes only
on the grass-land, whether lowland steppe or montane alp, and dies
X Climatic Control 8i
out rapidly even on the foothills — the forested foothills — of the
Alps. But he is, of course, at home on the Russian and Hungarian
steppe, as on the Bulgarian plateau ; and in each case the park-land
between grass and forest weaned him gradually from the lower
civilisation of the pastoral nomad to the higher civilisation of the
tiller of a forest-clearing. As the domesticator of the wild ox and
the wild horse, which were natives of such park-land, this Round-
head was the greatest of all the benefactors of Europe ; and it was
mainly his artificial mobility, as a user of domestic animals, that
enabled him to impose his rule and language on the dense popula-
tion of fruit-growers in the area of summer-drought. The Achaeans
were characteristically known as "Tamers of Horses."
Access from the Danubian steppe was physically almost as easy
into Italy as into Greece, and the Italian route had the climatic
advantage of being skirted by almost continuous alp ; it was, there-
fore, more suitable to the Itali (" Cattle-men ") branch of the
Round-heads than the Greek route was to the Achaean branch.
Not only was the route suited to Cattle-men, but so also was its
destination. The alp pasture is essentially rich, and the essential
products of it are cattle, not sheep and goats; and 25 per cent of
Italy is still pastoral, the main stock being cattle. So the Round-
heads, in occupying the unforested highlands which had been
instinctively avoided by the Long-heads, possessed themselves of
an unoccupied territory which was admirably suited to their own
hereditary needs, and which commanded the best route between
the centre of the summer-drought area and the centre of the
summer-rain area. In spite, therefore, of their small numbers,
they were able to impose control — political, economic, and even
linguistic — over the far more numerous and more civilised Long-
heads of the Fruit-land ; and it is interesting to notice that the
geometrical centre of Europe, as a continent, is the original spot
where Nordic, Alpine, and Mediterranean men naturally met.
Note
Ripley's alternative to the accepted view of the Finns as Ural-Altaic in physique
as well as speech is stated in the chapter on Russia ; but he ignores the significance
of their hair being very lightly wavpd.
CHAPTER XI
THE ITALIAN PENINSULA
Central
Site.
Typical
Area.
World
Influ-
ence.
World
Centre.
The race-home of the old Romans is the centre of the most clearly
characterised natural region in the Old World ; it is " a long pier-
head of Europe," almost joining the snowy Alps to the sandy Sahara,
and almost cutting off the larger, sub-tropical, gulf-girt basin of the
great midland sea from the smaller, warm-temperate, mountain-girt
basin.
It is in several ways the most typical country of Europe, as a
" peninsula of peninsulas." For it combines within its frontiers the
three great types of land form — continental, peninsular, and insular,
and the two great contrasts of the European climate — summer rain
and summer drought ; and these advantages helped to make it the
centre from which the continent was evolved as a political unit, for
its position gave great facilities for passing on the culture borrowed
from the sub-tropical basin to the hinterlands of the warm-temperate
basin, especially via the Ebro and Rhone valleys.
In modern times the Suez Canal has enabled it to resume this
task in the economic world, and has restored to it most of the
influence of which it was deprived by the discovery of the Cape
route to India. Possibly it would never have lost that influence if
the Italians had not actually tried to prevent Atlantic expansion and
to perpetuate Mediterranean methods of navigation with their
circumscribed sphere. The World reaped the benefit of their long
experience in navigation, but only through individuals such as
Columbus and Cabot ; and Italy herself has paid the penalty of
arriving too late in the field of colonial expansion.
As the centre of the Old World, Italy acquired a World-dominion
focused at Rome : all roads led to Rome, the capital of the Republic,
of the Empire, of the Church ; and world-mastery became a tradition.
Roman citizenship, therefore, became of infinitely more importance
than race or — at first — than creed ; all races and all creeds were
tolerated ; and the one vital need was for means of reaching them
all. The control exercised by these conditions is visible on all
sides, e.g. in the self-centred egotism of the people ; the number of
82
CH. XI
Italy
^3
" foreign " emperors or hybrid marriages ; the tenacity with which
Venice and Genoa remained friendly with the Saracens while acting as
transport contractors
for the Crusaders ; the
success of the modern
Italian as a colonist —
in colonies belonging
to nations earlier in
the field.
The triple variety of Foreign
land forms must have Environ-
involved certain differ-
ences of human de-
velopment inside the
area ; and these differ-
ences of local environ-
ment were bound to be
accentuated by differ-
ences of foreign en-
vironment — French
and Austrian, Greek
and Spanish, all more
or less connected with
the Alpine uplift, or
African and Arab, in-
fluences from the de- »
sert, the Arabian in-
fluence ideally illus-
trated in the cathedral
of the ill-fated Messina.
The presence of Sea
the sea on three sides, r«>*iti«r-
as in France, gave
facilities for commerce
in three directions,
and wide commerce
is always favourable to
tolerance and cosmo-
politanism ; but it also
isolated the area in
such a way as to render
defence relatively easy
Mediterranean area.
and to encourage political unity, at least in language and creed.
The sites of nearly all the chief towns, the routes of the chief
railways, the presence of " sea-coal " everywhere, the number of
fishermen (over 100,000)— though they "fish" mainly for coral and
84
The Continent of Europe
CH.
Land
Frontier.
Frontier
Line.
sponge — all illustrate the sea control. It should be noticed, how-
ever, that the number of good harbours is very small, especially on
the Adriatic, where there is not a single adjacent island south of
Rimini nor a single natural harbour south of Venice ; even the few
that do exist have curiously limited hinterland ; except in the Po
basin, there is practically no hinterland with water-transport ; the
great excess of imports over exports in weight makes it very difficult
for vessels to get return cargoes ; and the economic position of the
country with regard to the Suez route and between the industrial
west and the raw materials of the east tends to minimise the
importance of the purely domestic and national trade, especially
since the construction of the great Alpine tunnels. Only 3 per
cent of the population is engaged in commerce and transport.
The land frontier has always been a real protection and an
isolating medium, and has encouraged unity — linguistic, if not always
political — to the south of it ; but the fact that these tunnels run
under passes that have been in constant use for centuries — the
Mont Cenis and the St. Gothard for certainly 2000 years — suggests
that the isolation has never been complete politically or economically.
The reason for this is obviously in the physical character of the
barrier. It is concave towards Italy, and steeper on the Italian than
on the non-Italian side. The early melting of the snow and ice
on the south side led to very heavy weathering, which involved a
steep climb up from the south, while the approach to the scarp from
the north, e.g. by the Brenner route, was gradual and easy — falling
nearly 1000 feet more in the first 80 miles south from the Brenner
than in the first 80 miles north from it. Further, the convergence
of the valleys on the concave side always made it easier to invade
Italy from France or Austria than vice versa ; indeed, it was
impossible for Italy to move by more than one route at a time, for
increase of distance from the base involved increase of distance
between the routes. Economically it is specially important that the
basins of the three great rivers, Ticino, Adda, and Adige, give
access almost due north and south.
The precise frontier illustrates one result of the political disunion
which we may presently associate with the internal relief of the land,
for that disunion enabled the highlanders to encroach on what was
linguistically Italian. Towards France it is approximately the crest
of the Alps ; but two things are significant. On the one hand,
barren, lonely heights can watch and control — for good or ill — the
valley roads ; and thus the position of Savoy astride of Mont Blanc
was so dominating that it enabled a Savoy king to give unity to
modern Italy by taking advantage of political trouble on the outward
flanks of the Alps in i860, 1866, and 1870. Savoy, however, was
naturally the price that had to be paid to the French for their help
towards the first great effort in i860. On the other hand, the
XI Italy 85
seaward end of the actual frontier-line should be the ridge of the
Maritime Alps which forms the water-parting between the Roja and
the Paillon basins, and which reaches the sea at C. Martin.
Similarly towards Austria the seaward end should be the water-
parting ridge of the Julian Alps where they abut on the extreme
north of the Gulf of Trieste.
The approaches to the great Trans-Alpine railway routes
introduce other factors. On the one hand, the whole of the Ticino
and the Adda basins is linguistically, and should be politically,
Italian, not Swiss. On the other hand, the Adige valley, like the
Danube valley, has been too much of a thoroughfare to give any
natural site for a frontier. The present site, where the river drops
on to the lowland at Borghetto, may be accepted physically,
especially as it crosses Lake Garda — just as the long Lake Maggiore
is crossed in the Ticino basin — along a line of minimum population
and therefore of minimum disturbance of human associations ; and
the lake, in each case, with its easy navigation, was a natural terminus
of the mountain journey. But economically the whole of both the
Adige and the Garda basins should be in Italy, and the linguistic
frontier is just north of Trent, although the mountaineers have
overflowed on to the fertile lowland of the Po.
The most important features of the internal geography are the Small
size, the shape, and the natural divisions. The small size, less than Area,
that of the British Isles, was an unmixed benefit in early historic
times ; it involved easy knowledge of the land and its people and
possibilities, it necessitated the concentration which developed a
national type, and it based this type on a civilisation in which —
owing to the restricted area for food-supply — artificial and sedentary
modes of supplying the needs of life were early substituted for
primitive and nomad modes.
As far as the shape is concerned, the fundamental characteristic Length v.
is a disproportion between length and breadth, whether viewed as a Breadth,
whole or as two areas, continental and peninsular. Its greatest length
is about 700 miles, i.e. a little longer than Great Britain, while its
average width is not a quarter of that. The continental basin alone
has an extreme "length" from east to west (350 miles) at least
three times its average " width " from north to south ; the peninsula
is normally less than 100 miles wide from east to west, and even
that is " halved " by the Apennines. The area was, therefore, too
long for its width to be easily ruled in early days from a single centre,
especially while the Po valley was still forested and water-logged.
It was this difficulty which forced on the Romans the necessity for
covering the whole land with a skeleton of great roads, properly
paved and bridged, and running — as no doubt the Tiber valley
suggested from the very first — up the great river-valleys ; and it was
not insignificant that they took their name from the roma or groma.
86
The Continent of Europe
CH.
Natural
Divisioiis.
Contin-
ental
Plain.
" the four cross roads " which crossed at the Forum, and that their
priestly kings were essentially pontifices, "bridge-builders."
Peninsular isolation with varied relief is most favourable to the
development of marked individuality in a people. And the natural
division into three separate areas accentuates the differences of
climate, with the consequent differences of occupations and interests,
that are implied in the great length of the country from north to
south ; and it was on these differences that the political disunity of
the area was based.
By far the most important division, except in actual size, is the
continental one ; and it may itself be subdivided into two parts of
very unequal importance, — the old basin of the Po, which lies west
S W I T Z j E R/iT^' N D I .-: --Sr-^^. ^A ^
hComo
'■■■ ^'- ^I?
■■■>' y
^
Longitude 8 East
Stanford's Ceog.' £sCadF, London.
The Po and Ptave basins.
of the old mouth of the river at Ferrara, being very much more
important than the " Venetian " plain. This importance is essentially
based on its character as an old gulf of the Adriatic filled with
alluvium from the mountains that shut it in on north, west, and
south ; and this in turn accounts for its low and level surface, its
fertility and ease of cultivation, and its original superabundance of
forest and marsh. The overwhelming importance of the Alps over
the Apennines in this connection depends on their greater height,
their greater exposure to the wet winds, their greater steepness ;
the Po drops 5000 feet in its first 20 miles; the rainfall on the
northern boundary of the plain is always over 40 inches, while that
on the southern boundary is sometimes only 20 ; and the average
height of the glaciated Alps is over 12,000 feet, while that of the
XI Italy 87
Apennines is under 6000. The force of the Alpine inflow is,
therefore, so much stronger than that from the Apennines that the
Po is shoved southward to the very spurs of the latter, as under
similar circumstances the Danube is shoved southward against the
Bulgarian scarp and the Ganges against the scarp of the Dekkan.
And this southward movement of the line of the river involves the
greater width of plain having a slight southward, i.e. sunward, slope
close enough up to the Alps to get the maximum of shelter.
These conditions, accentuated by the low level, the natural Its River
fertility, and the ease of cultivation, have made the area enormously Regime,
productive in modern times, as they made it enormously attractive
to round-headed mountaineers in early times ; but they imply
reasons for the late political and economic development of the plain.
For the number of rivers feeding the main stream from the north
involved a maximum number of obstacles to communication east-
and-west, while the forest and marsh were equally adverse to com-
munication north-and-south. Such an area was bound to have a
low swampy " island and lagoon " coast ; and its condition and
even its size were bound to be much changed by the banking of
the Po, east of the last spur of the Apennines near Piacenza. This
was rendered necessary by the regime of the river, which — though
nominally navigable by steamer to Valenza — is rough at high water
and silted at low water ; and the embanking was both a protection
against flood and a means of confining the low-water current so as
to give it a maximum scouting power. The consequent facilities
for irrigation account for the high value of the rice crop (over
;^2, 500,000 a year); but the fertilising floods, instead of being
naturally spread over the riverine lands, are now carried down to the
sea, extending the delta so rapidly that the Adriatic coast is now 20
miles from Adria, and the river-bed has been so much raised at the head
of the delta that the town of Ferrara is actually below the water level.
Historically, the political importance of the basin has been Its His-
greater even than its economic importance, for the Alps played a ^^ ^"
part similar to that played by the Appalachians in the early history
of North America. They were a useful check on the premature
expansion of the Romans, as in the Middle Ages on the " Roman "
claims of the German Emperors ; and when they did let movements
of people in or out, it was only in small groups and at considerable
intervals of time and place. The Po basin thus became a natural
transition area politically as well as physically. To this day purely
Teutonic features may be traced round the Italian outlet of the
Brenner route, as purely French dialects are used in Piedmont, and
as markedly round heads are found over the whole plain — thus
incidentally minimising ethnic difficulties at the various times when
the plain has been politically attached to a purely Continental
Power located in Alpine Europe. All the various elements —
88
The Continent of Europe
CH.
including Saxon, Slav, and Bulgar — even of the Lombard invasion —
were apparently absorbed by the dense population into which they
intruded; but they infused that population with influences, physical
and otherwise, which accentuated the natural differences between
Northern and Southern Italians as based on the natural differences
of geographic environment. The same essential conditions underlie
the saying that " The Po valley has been the cockpit of Europe."
Penlnsu- The peninsula is threaded by the Apennines from the Altare
lax Relief. Pass to Cape Spartivento, presenting a steep face to the nearer
32 '^^ Mile*
"\r-^ Sicily
'^^'>^^
Apennine forelands £23 Alluvium
Remnanfs of Tyrrhenian crust block.
^^ Fold system of Alps and Apennines.
Tectonic map of Italy.
coast, i.e. to the Adriatic in the northern half and the Tyrrhenian
Sea in the southern. Similarly, in Liguria, where the range is
steepest, there is practically no coast strip at all. Indeed, it is the
steepness and the increase of height eastward of Genoa — up to 7000
feet — that make the Riviera di Levante so favourable to the growth
of olive and orange, and that account for the uniformity of human
type and the purity of the Italian language to the south. At the
head of the gulf, the Altare, Giovi, and Bochetta passes facilitate
access inland — by tunnels now — from Savona to Turin and from
Genoa via Novi to Turin and Milan ; and a tunnel under the La
XI Italy 89
Cisa Pass, which separates the Ligurian from the Tuscan Apennines,
gives a good route between the land-locked gulf of Spezzia and the
Parma valley. The slopes of the range are extensively forested,
mainly with chestnut, oak, and beech ; and their upper slopes give
excellent pasturage.
The Tuscan and Umbrian sections of the range form the most Main
important part, not only because here their gentler slope opens out ^*^'"
westward — while their steeper slope is so inaccessible that it is still
the site of the independent republic of San Marino — but also
because the diversion caused by the hard old rock of the Etrurian
" remnant " gave the range its greatest eastward detour just where
the wettest winds that ever reach Italy — north of the Barbary and
Corsican heights — first strike land. Inside this great detour, then,
there are both room and rain sufficient for largish rivers, the Arno
and the Tiber ; the hard old rock is rich in mineral wealth, e.g. at
Carrara and Massa and in the Catena Metallifera ; and the Chiana
depression between the old rock and the new is so level that water
flows, according to the wind, into the Arno or the Tiber. Similarly,
in Latium to seaward of the Tiber valley there is a line of hills
independent of the Apennines ; but in this case they are volcanic,
e.g. Monte Amiata, and the volcanic action is seen all over the
undulating plain of the Roman campagna, showing itself in such
typical crater lakes as that of Bolsena.
Farther south the range is divided into three separate chains, Central
rising from 7000 feet in the west to 8000 in the centre, and to -^P®^-
nearly 10,000 in the east. Down the windward slope flow such
rivers as the Nera and the Anio, and between the western and
central ridges there are such natural basins as that of Lake Fucino
or Celano ; while between the central ridge, — where Terminillo and
Velino are snow-capped from November to May, — and the Gran
Sasso-Maiella barrier the Aquila valley is the coldest place in Italy.
Lake Fucino, which is exactly in the middle of the peninsula, is
about 2200 feet above the sea; and Aquila is 200 feet higher still.
This central belt is not so difficult to cross as it might seem at first
sight, however, because the rivers take the sudden bends so
characteristic in limestone, e.g. the Aterno between the Gran Sasso
(9560 feet) and Maiella (9170); and thus communication between
the two fertile lowlands on each side is facilitated even for railways,
as it was for the old Roman roads, e.g. the Via Salaria.
Farther south still the three parallel chains are broken up into Southern
somewhat incoherent groups, closing in on the west and opening Apen-
out towards the Adriatic. On each side there is again the appear- *^™
ance of independent heights, e.g. M. Amiato and M. Gargano,
isolated from the Apennines by lowland — the Campanian plain and
the northern tongue of the Apulian plain. But, while the latter
continues to the "heel" at Otranto, the "toe" of Calabria is
90
The Continent of Europe
CH.
Tempera-
ture.
Bainfall.
Scenic
Effects.
entirely mountainous, and from the Sila forest (6300 feet) to the
sea consists of the same ancient rocks as the Etrurian remnant.
CHmatically, the typical Mediterranean features of dry heat and
a cool rainy season are modified by local relief As in India, the
lower level and remarkable shelter of the northern plain compensate
for its higher latitude, while the higher level of the southern
peninsula is accompanied by greater exposure ; so that there is
some unity of average temperature over the whole area — the mean
temperature of Udine not differing 10° F. from that of Syracuse.
But the Po basin is so much cut off from oceanic influences that
it has considerable extremes, Milan having a normal range of
over 40"^ F. at a height of under 500 feet above the sea. On the
contrary, the narrowness of the lowland strip on each side of the
Apennines minimises the effect of the summer-drought, although
even in Tuscany camels are not unknown.
The rainy seasons are, however, not purely of the Mediterranean
type. North and east of the Apennines the rainy season is late
autumn, when the land has already
cooled and the relative warmth of
the Adriatic leads to local low-
pressure phenomena — which have
a significant relation to the unique
development of seamanship amongst
the Slavs of the Dalmatian coast ;
but south and west of the Apen-
nines there are also winter rains,
and there are even heavy summer
rains (25 per cent of the total)
along the foot of the Alps, e.g. at
Milan, while in the extreme south
there may be summer rains (3 per
cent of the total) from the Trades,
e.g. at Syracuse. It is largely the
autumn rains, acting on decaying
vegetation along the banks of silted rivers from deforested high-
lands, that account for the prevalence of malaria, to which 80 per
cent of the southern Italians are subject, and from which 20,000
of them die every year. Obviously, the disease has had most power
where the fresh south-west wind has least, i.e. in the lee of Corsica
and Sardinia, e.g. the Maremmas, the Campagna, and the Pontine
marshes ; and these are the very places where otherwise the combina-
tion of heat and moisture might be, and is gradually being made,
most favourable to agriculture.
The variations of temperature are curious, the range being
greatest where the rainfall is greatest and most evenly distributed ;
and it is this abnormality that largely accounts for the productive-
The malarial districts of Italy, shown
in stipple.
XI Italy 91
ness of the northern plain, as also for some of the scenic effects in
the Alps. For the great range of temperature, with its slight effect
on the ice and its marked effect on the soil of the heights, involves
great disintegration ; and the removal of the disintegrated material
leaves sharp peaks and ragged edges, and is said to fill the glacial
lakes at the foot of the range with the mica — in suspension — to
which their intense blueness may be attributed. It is not easy,
however, to trace the source of the said mica in the case of Lake
Como, which is the deepest lake, some 900 feet below sea level.
The question of shelter is very important both directly and Shelter,
indirectly. Indirectly, in the case of the Alps, it is dependent on
conditions favourable to the development of the fohn wind (cf.
p. 58) ; directly it is responsible for, e.g. the distribution of rice and
olive. Thus, in December, Florence is 5° F. warmer than Bologna,
and Genoa is 5° F. warmer than Florence ; and the Tuscans need a
charcoal-burning hand-stove when the Tramontano ("Wind from
across the Mountains ") blows, — as the Dutch need a peat-burning
foot-stove against their ground-damp, — and their characteristic cloth-
ing is of linen in summer and fur in winter. So, on Lake Como
the sites of Bellano looking north and Varenna looking south have
given rise to the saying : " If you wish to anticipate Hell, go to
Bellano in winter and Varenna in summer." And there is a similar
saying about Arona and Angera on Lake Maggiore. Thus, olives
are found right up under the Alps (46° N.), and then disappear, only
reappearing south of the Apennines ; for the winter cold — which
accounts for the terrible suffering of the poor in winter — in the south
of the Po plain is fatal to them, although the summer heat in the
same place is great enough for rice. The worst cold, however, is in
the intermont valleys in the east of the peninsula that are exposed to
the Bora in winter, e.g. Aquila and Potenza ; for the mountains are
covered with snow — heavy falls occurring even in June — the valleys
open northward, and the constant Low -Pressure system on the
Adriatic naturally involves northerly winds on the west of the whirl.
In Naples, i.e. the same latitude as Potenza, " cold is a word."
Everywhere, however, there is a very large percentage of sunshine. Sunshine,
from 45 to 54 per cent of the possible total for the latitude ; and
this means an average of fully three hours more sunshine every day
all the year through at Rome than, e.g. at York. Indeed, the
Roman's horror of rain — as illustrated by the fact that every other
carter, peasant, and beggar carries an umbrella, as every other horse,
donkey, and ox wears a mackintosh — is mainly due to its association
with the cold and sunless season. On the other hand, the associa-
tion of heat with the absence of rain leads to a great deal of
outdoor life, e.g. in cafe and promenade, and accounts for the
wonderful preservation of old buildings — where man has let them
alone — in contrast to their speedy weathering in climates where the
92
The Continent of Europe
CH.
r* liM In. Hu iri. :.!iT. in. in. >gc Sir. c:i. in On. 1^
80
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60
49
40
30
30
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.
__
Rainfall and temperature of Turin
and Naples.
expanding power of heat is associated with the denuding power of
rain, e.g. on the Thames Embankment, where Cleopatra's Needle has
weathered more in the last 1800 weeks
than in the previous 1800 years.
Farming. Under such circumstances, it is
not surprising that, in spite of the large
proportion of useless land (12 per
cent), more than 30 per cent of the
total population is engaged in agricul-
tural or pastoral occupations ; grain
and grass, fruit and fibres, are all
typical ; and in regard to all there are
peculiar advantages and disadvantages.
The latter are largely historical. On
the one hand, reckless destruction of
forest has led to such silting-up of
rivers and water-logging of riverine lands that malaria either makes
large areas quite useless or compels the cultivators to live at a
considerable distance from their work, involving an immense waste
of time and toil in getting to and from it ; and this is complicated
by drought in the peninsula and by hailstorms in the north — when
a cold upper current from the Alps drops into the " hot-house "
of the Po plain. The south is cursed, too, by the inheritance of
Bourbon methods of holding land, under which an absentee sublets
a large estate to be worked by hired labour ; and it was specially
in the Bourbon area that the land was deforested to pay Bourbon
taxes, — that need for mutual help against the infamous Bourbon
police led to the formation of secret societies, — and that questions
of Temporal Power made it impossible for a good patriot to be a
good " Christian," and made brigandage profitable.
Tuscany. On the other hand, much of the land is naturally very fertile,
especially in the volcanic area round Naples, on the mixed soil of
Tuscany, and in the alluvial north, where vines may be seen climb-
ing up mulberry trees which overshadow growing maize. The
climate encourages the use of vegetable rather than animal food, and
this in turn encourages a dense population, so that neither labour
nor market is lacking ; and fortunately where the average conditions
are naturally best — in Tuscany, — historically the system of holding
land has practically combined the advantages of "large" and
" small " farming. For both landlord and tenant are directly and
jointly interested in the land ; the mixed crops and the normal
rotation give work evenly distributed all through the year, e.g.
harvest varying from wheat in June, through wine, to oil in
December, and the consequent wide experience trains an adaptable
as well as an industrious type of man. Indeed, the good reputation
of the Italian colonists in the New World a generation ago was
XI Italy 93
largely due to the considerable percentage of Tuscans, driven to
emigrate by the smallness of their farms (30 acres) and the con-
sequent small demand for labour.
The most important cereal is wheat, which occupies a large pro- Wheat,
portion of the arable land (18 p.c), but averages only 1 2 bushels
per acre. This low yield is partly due to the fact that in Tuscany it
is grown as a spring crop, and is intentionally " crowded," with the
result that there is a very quick growth of the " leggy " and pliable
kind needed in the straw-plait industry of Leghorn, Pisa, and other
Tuscan towns. Somewhat similar conditions prevail in the north of
the Venetian plain, e.g. near Vicenza, the straw-plaiting itself being
a domestic and rural industry, while the making of the hats is a
factory and town industry, e.g. at Marostica. The girls (some
20,000) who plait the straw, seem also to attend to its cultivation on
the barren foothills of the Piave basin, where climatic conditions
made the grain as valueless as the straw is valuable — for its pale
colour, its elasticity, and its lustre. The hard wheat of the more
droughty areas, e.g. Apulia, is specially used in the making of macaroni
and other alimentary pastes ; and much the same conditions are found
just in the lee of the Apennines, e.g. round Parma. It is the large
industry in such pastes that accounts for the huge imports of wheat,
Russia alone sending supplies to the value of ;^9, 400,000 in 1910.
Maize is a typically summer crop of the moister lands, as wheat Maize,
(for grain) is a winter crop of the drier lands ; it occupies nearly
half as much area as wheat, but is much more widely spread.
Indeed, it is cultivated almost everywhere as an alternative crop,
partly because it can follow, e.g. hemp, so that two crops can be
reaped off the same land in one summer, — partly because it is very
prolific, giving a large return on a small expenditure, — and partly
because maize polenta is essentially stodgy, so that a little goes a
long way. The poor quality of the grain, however, in many parts
is so deleterious that it renders the peasants too weak to resist the
poisonous attacks of the sand-flies which carry pellagra.
The high spring and autumn temperatures in the Ticino Rice.
lowlands, the facilities for irrigation, and the high latitude, combine
to make the rice of supremely good quality in Lombardy and
Piedmont. Good rice is also grown round Ravenna and Salerno,
and the Italian peasant is accustomed to laborious cultivation, such
as rice needs ; but the attraction of mosquitoes to the rice-lands
and the competition of monsoon lands, where natural floods restore
the land annually after the ravages of such an enormously prolific
crop, are leading to a considerable reduction in the rice area. At
the same time, better cultivation has slightly increased the yield
per acre. Novara and Pavia are much the most important provinces
in acreage and total yield, the yield per acre being usually highest
in Pavia and Mnntua.
94
The Continent of Europe
CH.
Pasture: Pasture stands next in importance to grain-growing, and the
Cattle. relative value of the various kinds of stock — as compared with the
British — is a significant comment on relief, climate, and distribution
of population. Thus cattle, which are much the most important, —
being valued at some ^^90,000,000, — stand to British cattle as 5
to 7, while sheep are only as 6 to 26 ; and this represents roughly
the relative value of irrigated (naturally or artificially) and un-
irrigated pasture. The natural water-meadows along the banks of
the Po are mainly devoted to dairy cattle, especially in Emilia ; and
irrigated meadows both in Emilia and in Lombardy are similarly
used. The milk is everywhere made into cheese, which in Emilia
takes its name usually from the old Duchy of Parma, — though now
made specially round Lodi, — and in Lombardy takes its name from
the town of Gorgonzola, In the Tuscan and Roman maremmas,
as along the Chiana valley, the natural water-meadows are devoted
especially to the fattening of foreign cattle, e.g. from Switzerland.
In the north, too, a great deal of hay is made, irrigated meadows
yielding sometimes nine crops in as many months.
Pasture: Sheep-farming is still largely a semi-nomad occupation and
Sheep. confined to the drier parts of the country, for the flocks are brought
down to the plains in winter, falls of snow on the Apennines being
so heavy that in some villages communication between house and
house can only be conducted by tunnels through the snow. The
chief centres are the Alpine slopes of Piedmont, which are very
much in the lee of the Alps, — the Central Apennines in Umbria
and Abruzzi, — and the Southern Apennines in Apulia,
Basilicata, and Calabria, where, however, the weight of washed
wool per sheep is small. In the northern half of the country the
local supplies of wool support local woollen industries, especially in
Piedmont and Tuscany (cf. the old Banker wool-merchants of
Florence) j in the southern half — where the bright light is
particularly favourable to the bleaching of the skins — the chief
"pastoral" industry is in glove-dressing, Naples handling some
3,000,000 sheep and goat-skins a year, and converting the very
tough gut, e.g. of Foggia, into violin-strings by treating it with the
local sulphur. The number of sheep, and still more of goats, is
decreasing, however, largely owing to new forest laws ; but the total
amount of wool raised is still valued at ;;^2, 000,000 a year, Tuscany
and Latium producing the largest quantity, while Piedmont and
Venetia show the heaviest weight per sheep. In consequence of
the decreased supply at home, there is a growing import of wool
(raw, washed, and combed), mainly from Argentina, Australia, and
France ; but the best lamb-skins in the world (for gloves) still
come from Italy.
The Vine. The vine is cultivated practically throughout the whole country,
and wine is the universal drink ; but the area under vineyards is
XI Italy 1 95
relatively small in the north. The large percentage of bright sun-
light, the high September temperature (60° F. being an optimum),
the abundance of cheap labour, the cool equable cellars in the
tufa or the natural crotti in the limestone, the local supplies of
sulphur for treating the vines, are all favourable to the wine
industry ; and Italy stands second in the whole world for quantity.
But the quality is inferior. This is to some small extent due to
the latitude, which is really favourable only to the heavier type
of white wine, e.g. Marsala, and which does not guarantee a dry
harvest-time (September -November, according to locality); but
it is mainly due to bad methods. The large owners are "too
proud" to purify — they call it "adulterate" — their wines, while the
small owners are too ignorant and too poor to store the wine
properly or to treat the vines properly ; so that the wines will
rarely keep for any time. The best " export " wines come naturally
from the least backward provinces, e.g. the Asti of Piedmont and
the Chianti of Tuscany ; but some of the local growths that are
used locally, especially those of Capri and Vesuvius, have a great
reputation. Over-production was a real danger, but has been
minimised by the ravages of the phylloxera and peronospora.
Cork and vat-wood (chestnut) are local products.
The olive is more characteristic than even the vine, and — like The Olive.
the chestnut — an essential part of the people's food ; and Italy
is the first country in the world for the quantity of olive-oil pro-
duced, and equals France in quality. In the south the tree
flourishes without any shelter, and there are continuous woods of
nothing but olives, e.g. round Bari and Lecce ; and in some
parts e.g. at the shipping-port of Gallipoli, there are wonderful
" natural cisterns " in the limestone available for the clarify-
ing of the oil. Here, too, the winter rains guarantee " power "
for the mills exactly at the right time ; and there is abundance of
cheap labour, — from labourers willing to pick for nineteen or
twenty hours continuously ! But the olive, like the vine, is a
warm-temperate rather than a sub-tropical product ; and the finer
oil comes from the higher latitudes. The tree can flourish in
latitude 46° N. — right up under the Alps, but disappears from
the Po plain, where the climate is too extreme ; and even when
it first reappears, south of the Apennines, it requires some protection
in the areas which produce the finest oil. The superiority of the
Tuscan oils, e.g. from Lucca and Pisa, is due partly to the under-
ground heat, which is also evidenced by the number of thermal
springs. The finest quality is won by hand-crushing, as the finest
wine is made by foot-crushing, for machinery in each case is apt
to bring out unpleasant astringent properties. The wood of the
olive, like that of the walnut for which Italy is also famed, shows
the influence of summer-drought on colour. Cf. p. 71.
96
The Continent of Europe
CH.
Citron. The various kinds of citron, or agrumi, — all, like maize and
tobacco, relatively modern importations, but from the Old World,
not the New, — are specially important in the south ; and even
there they are largely confined to the hinterland of the Tyrrhenian
Sea, where the " intermediate " climate produces, e.g. oranges inter-
mediate in type between the insular " St. Michaels " and the semi-
continental "Jaffa." As oranges — though not lemons — are all
ripe at once, there is need for abundance of cheap labour ; so that
this industry is again suited to the country. The winter rains, too,
supply the means of irrigating ; but this is not an unmixed advantage.
It quickens growth, but tends to incomplete ripening, which makes
the fruit less palatable, or to excess of juice, which makes it travel
badly. Various processes in the citric-acid trade are centered at
Messina and Palermo. Like the almonds, e.g. of Bari, and the figs,
e.g. of Catanzaro, oranges and lemons enter very largely into the
foreign commerce of the country.
Silk— The mulberry is as wide-spread as the vine and — though also
Mulberry. ^ modern importation — as characteristic as the olive ; and Italy
holds the first place in Europe and the third place in the world for
the quantity of silk produced, while it holds the first place in the world
for quality. Both the human and the climatic notes are important.
The tree flourishes best in damp heat, but the silk-worms' eggs keep
best in dry heat ; and irrigation obviously bridges the gulf. The
shelter of the Alps, especially in the Ticino basin, guarantees the
necessary six or seven weeks of hot spring (60° F. being desirable).
The northern plain supplies an abundance of the essential cheap
labour, with the necessary qualifications of delicate fingers, patience,
and assiduous carefulness, — mainly for rearing the silk-worms, but
also for picking and cutting up the leaves, etc. The maximum
of regular showers in conjunction with perfect shelter makes
Lombardy more favourable than Piedmont, e.g. Bergamo having
an almost ideal situation ; but both provinces have had valuable
external influences, French and Swiss, and the most important area
is along the provincial frontier in the Ticino valley. On the other
hand, the summer in the Mediterranean is naturally too dry to
allow usually of more than one crop of leaves being taken in the
year, which means only one generation of silk-worms ; and this
accounts for the almost total absence of " silk " over the whole belt of
minimum rainfall which lies — in a straight line — between the south-
west of Tuscany and the south-east of Apulia, in the lee of Corsica
and Sardinia to the north-west and in the lee of the Apennines
to the south-east. These conditions limit the available time to
the spring months, i.e. precisely the time when other farm work
is most pressing ; so that the industry suits only small holdings,
especially those where most of the labour can fall on women and
children.
98
The Continent of Europe
CH.
Distribu-
tion of
Water-
Power.
Town
Sites.
manufactures, but has also increased the reckless use of wood. The
Government, however, is doing its best to stop the waste of wood
and to reafforest ; and the scarcity of fuel, which still involves an
annual importation of over 9,000,000 tons of coal (mainly British),
is being compensated for by the development of water-power. For
this there are quite exceptional facilities, which the reafforestation
can only increase ; and the proper utilisation of the streams at
higher levels for industrial purposes would naturally improve the
facilities for using them at lower levels for agricultural purposes. For
instance, the diversion of the river Sele from the Tyrrhenian Sea to
the Adriatic has not only supplied two droughty provinces with
much-needed water, but also led to a material improvement in the
drainage of the malarial plain of Salerno.
It is estimated that the total amount of hydraulic power available
exceeds 5,000,000 h.p., at least half of which can be supplied by
"efficient" waterfalls (numbered at over 24,000); and this is
distributed in proportions of nearly 40 p.c. in Northern Italy, and
fully 25 p.c. in Central Italy. Already the fuel question has been
practically eliminated in the cotton industry ; and similar develop-
ments are going on in all sorts of industries in all parts of the
country, e.g. at Genoa and Spezia, Brescia and Bergamo, in the
dyeing of Schio, the woollen industry of Novara, the cheese-making
of Lecco, the manufacture of aluminium from the Aquila bauxite,
the steel-works of Terni. Indeed, in Northern Italy not only all the
small cities, but groups of villages also, are supplied with power in
this way ; and it is exceedingly improbable that, in any conceivable
duration of drought, the available power would ever fall below
2,000,000 h.p., even that on the west coast between Genoa and
Naples never falling below 500,000.
One of the chief considerations in the economic distribution of
people is the proximity of this water-power to the most productive
agricultural areas, and the advantage of this has been increased by
the fact that the great historic towns are normally found on " Pied-
mont " sites between the source of power and the source of food.
For instance, the typical site in the north is above the swamp of the
old " Gulf" plain, below the mountains, where a valley deploys from
the latter on to the former, and at the lowest point in the transition
" Piedmont " area where the river, if present, could best be bridged,
e.g. Milan and Brescia, Verona and Vicenza, or Piacenza and Parma,
Modena and Bologna. At the eastern end of each line there was
an obvious alternative between clinging to the valley-mouth, e.g. at
Treviso and Rimini, or making a direct line for the sea, e.g. at
Venice via Padua or at Ravenna. Of course, towns were bound to
spring up along the line of the main river ; but there, too, the sites
show the importance of the bridge and of avoiding the swamp, all
the chief towns being characteristically east of a confluence, so
XI Italy 99
saving one bridge and avoiding the marsh between the converging
rivers. Thus, Pavia is to the east of the Ticino, Piacenza east of
the Trebbia, and Cremona east of the Adda.
Milan, or Mediolaneum, as the " Middle-plain " site, illustrates Milan,
almost every point at issue. It stands about 500 feet above the sea,
in the middle of the fertile Lombard plain, about half-way between
the 300-foot contour that edges the Po flats and the 600-foot contour
of the Piedmont terrace. It is thus between pastoral and agricultural,
montane and lowland, areas, where summer-drought is unknown,
and yet where — thanks partly to the smallness of its local stream,
the Olona — floods are also unknown. Its facilities for communica-
tion no doubt reflect the strategic dangers which in olden days made
the forging of sword-blades the typical industry, as the tallness and
relative fairness of the surrounding population reflect the ease with
which " Long-beards " pressed southward via the Rhine and Rhone
and Inn basins. It is still a great agricultural market, but silk has
become more important than flax ; and it is still a great nodal
junction, but cutlery has displaced armour, as motor-cars have
displaced the old mule transport. The causes of its slow develop-
ment in the past imply, therefore, the causes of its modern success ;
free communication and diversity of economic interest, local and
international, have raised it to a great metropolis with a population
of over 600,000.
Its natural rivals were the two " End-plain " sites of Turin and Turin.
Venice. The position of Turin upon " Piedmont " levels and
between two great converging rivers suggests at once an essential
difference of environment. With double access via Susa to the
Lower Rhone, and at the head of navigation on the joint river, it
too had a geographic nodality ; but the purity of the Alpine Round-
head type in the local population implies an isolation which made
it a safe capital for Piedmont and even for Italy during the early
struggle for unity (i 860-1 861), as its old name Augusta Taurinorum
implies a pastoral rather than an agricultural area. It is still the
headquarters of the woollen industry.
Venice presents a direct contrast to Milan, for the conditions of Venice,
its old success have been its greatest drawbacks in modern times,
though it still remains the seaward end of an important west-and-
east land route and the landward end of an important south-and-
north sea-route. Its site is 120 islands on the edge of 200 square
miles of lagoon, which once formed the central sea of the " Seven
Seas " between the famous old Roman port of Aquileia and the old
Ostro-Goth capital of Ravenna, each now 6 miles inland. These
islands are inside the incomplete storm-beach of the Lido ; for it is
precisely here that the gales from the constant Low-Pressure system
over the Adriatic in winter drive the surf against a sloping shore of
coarse shingle — rich in material for mosaic-work— while the south-
lOO
The Continent of Europe
CH.
ward trend of the tide down the western coast of the Adriatic has pre-
vented the silt of the Po and the Adige from filling up the gaps in the
beach. Three or four good channels, therefore, remain open, the best
being in the lee of the rialto (" high bank ") ; and this has now been
artificially deepened to 30 feet, while the lagoon has been joined to
the mainland by a railway bridge of 222 arches (2^ miles).
Here was a natural refuge, e^. from Hun and Lombard, with
enough tide to puzzle the dwellers round the " tideless" Mediterranean,
so protecting it by land and sea, e.g. from Pepin and the Genoese,
and to make it fairly sanitary. Made naturally healthy by the
fresh winds to which the beach owed its very existence, and rich in
shore-feeding fish, e.g. red mullet, and in the means for evaporating
Other
Plain
Sites.
Venice : the islands, canals, and lagoon.
the invaluable salt, Venice began its career early, and got an
initial advantage which it preserved for centuries. All raids on
Italy after the fifth or sixth century helped to build up Venice,
with a population of refugees devoted to personal liberty and so to
repubUcan forms. Easy access to the sea that led to the fabulous
East, and across the fertile plain to the Alpine passes, gave her
command of the greatest medieval trade-route, e.g. for transport of
Crusaders seaward, or of costly gems and spices landward ; and the
Orient trade brought such wealth and consequent leisure as to favour
the local development of artistic industries, e.g. in damask, glass,
and gold lace.
Of the other well-known cities on the northern plain, most
have had their real importance exaggerated by strategic considera-
tions which have been essentially adverse to them, e.g. Mantua and
Verona (in its river-loop) ; and the best natural site, that of Bologna,
XI
Italy
lOI
The Quadrilateral.
Knurr WftJkvr »
has suffered from the relative ease of communication between
continental and peninsular Italy, as illustrated by the absence of
" Alpine " intruders in the north-west of Tuscany and the constant
presence of them in Umbria and the Marches. In the time of the
Ostro-Goth emperors, however,
Bologna, like Ravenna, pro-
fited by proximity to Byzantine
influences, seen at Bologna in
its possession of the oldest
university in Europe, and at
Ravenna in the remains of
Byzantine architecture. The
peaceful development of
modern times involves the
manufacture of flax products
at Bologna and Ravenna, as
of hemp products at Cremona
and Mantua ; and the Poretta
Pass to the Arno valley has made Bologna an important cross-
country railway junction.
The peninsula cities illustrate the same general controls, and have Peninsu-
somewhat similar inter-relations, e.g. between Rome and Florence, ^ Sites.
Naples and Genoa ; but their history has been materially modified
by the peninsular isolation, as illustrated by the purity of the long-
headed Mediterranean race and their Italian tongue. In the case of
Florence and Rome this isolation has been accentuated by the
paucity of natural harbours both in front and in the rear, and by the
practical absence of water access, though both cities stand nominally
on navigable water, and had seaports in Pisa and Ostia.
Rome, like Venice, had an early start ; and the volcanic hills on Rome.
which it stands gave it as much protection after 400 B.C. from
destructive floods and malaria as in earlier times from fertilising
floods and political foes. It had the advantage of being on the edge
of Latium, the " Broad-plain," which meant both fertility and a
navigable river ; and the presence of islands in the river greatly
facilitated the first engineering works of the bridge-builders. The
distance from the mouth of the river (14 miles) was a great protection
against pirates and invasion, even in days when vessels drawing 12
feet of water could come up to the island on which stood the temple
of ^sculapius, the Healer. The volcanic rock was easy to quarry
and to cavern (cf. the Catacombs), the river itself protected most of
the city from attack from over the broad plain, and the position was
fairly central for the peninsula proper.
Florence, like Milan, though for a different reason, started late ; Florence,
indeed, it is scarcely mentioned before the days of Sulla, and could
not have existed before the draining of the lake which once covered
I02 The Continent of Europe ch.
the lowlands (25 miles long and 1 1 wide, and under 200 feet above
sea-level) between Florence and Pistoia. The old tramontana road,
therefore, crossed the Apennines by the La Futa Pass, not by the
modem railway route via Pistoia and the Reno valley. Nor was
the district much thought of by the Etruscans — though relics of an
old Cyclopean fortress still crown the hill of Fiesole (970 feet) —
because it is away from the metalliferous strata. At the same time
Tuscany is essentially the heart of Italy, as the Tuscan dialect is the
best Italian ^ and one reason in each case is the isolation of a fertile
area. How great this isolation is naturally may be gauged by the
sharp distinction between the Alpine Broad-heads on the Emilian
slope of tlie Apennines and the Mediterranean Long-heads in the
Arno basin ; indeed, there is anthropological evidence that every-
where north of Rome intruders normally entered the peninsula from
the north-east corner by land, as south of Rome they entered from the
south-east by sea. Florence was thus a natural site for the capital
of Italy, as it actually was in the second era of the struggle for
unity (1865-187 1) ; and Tuscany inherited something from the early
days of Etruscan civilisation, which seems to have had some relation
to the meeting of Alpine and Levantine traders round the richest
mineral deposits known on the Orbis Terrarum.
Genoa. Genoa, like Milan, as suggested by the presence of broad-headed
intruders, is a gap city ; and it owed its old supremacy to its
monopoly of the one good harbour on an inhospitable coast, to its
easy access inland, and to its local supplies of timber for shipbuilding.
But its modern development is mainly due to entirely extraneous
causes — the cutting of the Suez Canal and the Alpine tunnels ; and,
but for local obstacles, it would have been greater even than it is.
The home hinterland is not large enough (perhaps a population of
9,000,000), and its industries are not such as to supply the port
with an export trade anything like equal to its import trade ;
and while the imports are mainly heavy and bulky goods, coal and
iron, timber and grain, which — especially in view of the costly
railway transport through the Alpine tunnels — must travel by water,
the exports can afford to go by land, e.g. silk and olive-oil, eggs and
fruit. The result of this is such congestion in the port itself, and
still more on the lines through the Apennines, that the port cannot
serve its foreign hinterland properly; for instance, Russian grain
reaches Switzerland in the proportion of about 100,000 tons ina
Rotterdam, 90,000 via Marseilles, and only 55,000 via Genoa.
The same is true, e.g.^ of the cotton imports into Zurich, though
Genoa is much the nearest cotton-port. Indeed, some cotton reaches
even the Po valley via Bremen. Part of the difficulty is caused by
the opposition of the local Labour Associations to the increase of
railway facilities, especially between Genoa or Sampierdarena and the
great junction of Novi ; but the great difference in the outward and
XI Italy 103
inward traffic, — nearly 5,000,000 tons passing in, and only 300,000
coming back, — and the fact that the great coal imports arrive mainly
during the vintage, enormously complicate the question of supplying
wagons, in spite of the electrification of the traffic through the Giovi
tunnel and a funicular line for the transport of coal from Savona to
S. Giuseppe.
Naples is somewhat in the same position, except that its hinter- Naples,
land and the basis of its modern progress are strictly national, not
international. As a fine natural harbour, on the edge of a very
fertile plain, with a dense, poor, and clever population, it had many
natural advantages ; and these were increased by the recent creation
of a free zone round it. Thus, with a large local market, easy con-
ditions of export and import, and practically complete exemption
from taxation, the city has now become the largest in Italy, with a
total population (including the suburbs) of 800,000. The artificial
impulse has, however, been rather prejudicial to the old industries,
and over-production is widespread, especially in the textile industries ;
and at the same time the development of factories has completely
destroyed a useful source of supplementary earnings from home
industries, such as wood-carving and lace-making. One great
advantage is that, like Genoa, the port has practically no rival,
Leghorn being 200 miles north, Messina at least 150 miles south,
Bari more than 100 miles east, and Brindisi 50 miles farther still.
With a dense and largely vegetarian population Italy must have an Labour.
abundance of cheap labour ; and this is generally of a high standard,
with centuries of inherited skill, especially in the handling of stone —
from mosaic work and marble-cutting to road-making and bridge-
building. There is also abundance of water-power ; and most of
the actual water is of unusual purity, and therefore invaluable in
textile industries. Further, the local raw materials are of great
excellence — silk and marble, coral and sulphur, hemp and rice.
The chief drawbacks are the widespread presence of malaria and
the poverty which limits the people to two meals, of poor food, per
day, forces them to live in over-crowded houses, and drives them
abroad or into various forms of gambling and dishonesty. On the
other hand, the spread of education and commerce, and the discipline
and unifying influence of conscription, are raising the standard of
comfort and removing the old jealousies between province and province.
Industrial development has been easier in the north than the Indus-
south. Apart from the better climate, the more certain rainfall, the *"®^-
greater fertility and water-power, the north has been favoured racially
and historically. The Round-heads represent centuries of economic
and political conditions favourable to the development of indi-
vidualism without anarchy ; they have been inoculated with Northern
ideas, though the total influx of Teutons probably never reached
100,000 persons ; and they have been largely under Austrian
I04
The Continent of Europe ch. xi
control. All these conditions combined to develop a burgher
population, with business-like habits; for every 15 illiterates in
Piedmont there are 51 in Naples and 55 in Sicily; for every 13
murderers in Lombardy there are 25 in Naples and 28 in Sicily.
Textiles. In the western parts of the continental area, where the extremes
are.greatest, — Turin having recorded a temperature of 7° R, — animal
products are more suitable than vegetable products; Piedmont
specialises more in woollens, e.g. at Biella and Varillo, Turin and
Pinerolo, while Lombardy specialises more in silks, e.g. at Como and
Bergamo, Brescia and Milan. In the eastern part of the plain, as on
the Ligurian coast, animal products are still worked, e.g. the wool
and silk of Schio and Vicenza ; but the smaller range of humidity
encourages the working of vegetable products, e.g. the spinning of
cotton at Pordinone and Chiavari, and the spinning and weaving of
flax at Bologna and Ravenna.
jxtm. 1'he greatest development has, however, taken place on strictly
mechanical lines ; and in this respect the peninsula has been, if
anything, more favourably situated than the north. The import of
pig-iron, th.e import of scrap-iron, and the production of pig-
iron have all doubled in the last five years ; and there are really
important steel-works at Terni, with power from the falls on the
Nera, at Savona and Naples, and at Portoferraio ("Iron-harbour"),
and on the opposite coast at Piombino. Where both ore and fuel
have to be imported, e.g. at Savona, work is generally confined to
later processes, e.g. the conversion of imported pig-iron into steel and
the rolling of rails, etc. ; and in the neighbourhood of great harbours
there is a good deal of shipbuilding, e.g. at Sestri and Castellamare.
Other forms of transport plant are also important, e.g. the motor-
works of the Fabrica Italiana Automobile Torino (F.I.A.T.) at Turin.
Sicily. Of the dependent islands Sicily is much the most important.
It is almost entirely agricultural. A great increase in population
has entirely killed its old importance as an exporter of grain ; but
the climate and the water-storing properties of its limestone are very
favourable to the growth of oranges and lemons, which cover the
coastlands along almost the whole of the east and north coasts from
Catania to Palermo.
Sardinia. The wild granitic highlands of Sardinia are rich in metals ; but
the rugged and inaccessible character of the island, and its bad
climate, have been adverse to its prosperity. It is an island of
dwarfs — man and beast. The small area, with its small food-supply
and its bad climate, were always adverse to good physique in man or
beast ; the best of both were constantly leaving the country, man as
well as beast being for sale (" Sardi venales ") in earlier times ; and
constant in-breeding of the resultant inferior types has emphasised
such typical " Mediterranean " traits as extreme length of head and
shortness of stature.
CHAPTER XII
THE SCANDINAVIAN PENINSULA
The race-home of the old Vikings is a lonely peninsula which Scandi-
presents the most marked contrasts to the central peninsula of the ^*y* ^^
Mediterranean basin. Like Italy, it is largely mountainous, it has
a considerable proportion of useless land, and it has been hard to
govern from a single centre, especially in days of bad communication ;
but the distribution of relief is profoundly different, and the different
distribution of relief and the different latitude produce a difference of
climate which admits of very few common crops. This, again, implies
that the useless area in Scandinavia is useless from cold, not from
malaria, and that the political difficulty is connected, not with a
relative excess of length, but with the presence of a central mass of
barren highland stretching over about half of the total area.
More important than all these differences historically were the Patri-
differences of approach into the area. The early Goths of the ^chal v.
Germanic steppe, as they moved westward under the pressure of larigt.
later nomads from the east, found the steppe narrowing with nearness
to the Atlantic, until it practically disappears at the foot of the
Schleswig peninsula. On the morainic lake-studded plain, with its
fertile Baltic and Carpathian margins, these pastoral Goths had
been tempted into agriculture, and had had an apprenticeship
to boating ; and, as these conditions were bound to weaken
patriarchal ties, it was a foregone conclusion that Scania would get
energetic individuals — via the Danish islands — from the semi-
patriarchal population of the Brandenburg plain. And the most
typical features of the peninsula should throw light on the process
by which it converted this semi-patriarchal inflow into a sternly par-
ticularist outflow.
The outflow from the peninsula, especially from the 12,000 Oceanic
miles of the Norwegian coast, has been one of the greatest political Develop-
phenomena ; and its causes are still largely operative. For we
shall find here a population driven by a barren and inaccessible
hinterland to concentrate on a lonely, but relatively fertile, coastland ;
and, though this was safe enough to leave them in perfect freedom,
los
io6
The Continent of Europe
CH.
Skerry
Ouard.
East V.
West
"Fence.
Coast-
land—
East y.
West.
and isolated enough to develop in them a marked individuality, the
teeming fishing-ground in front decided the lines on which that
development should run, and made their history oceanic rather than
continental.
The most characteristic feature of the whole area is the " skerry-
guard " which fringes the coast almost continuously from the mouth
of the Tornea round to the Varanger fiord.
It is not fully developed in the Gulf of
Bothnia, and is entirely absent from the
recent formation of Scania, where it is re-
placed to windward by a line of sand-
dunes ; but it is developed to a unique
degree between Stavanger and the North
Cape, and it provides the whole coast,
except in Scania, with an almost continu-
ous series of navigable sounds, which are
at once the scene of a busy and safe
commerce and a first line of defence
against foreign attack. It is significant
that all the artificial harbours of the area
are on the Scanian coast, e.g. Helsingborg
and Malmo.
The eastern " fence " presents some
marked contrasts to the western. Both
are usually rugged ; but, while the eastern
islands are always low and often fertile enough to be well wooded, the
western ones are always high and barren. Again, the Swedish islands
increase in size towards the south, i.e. towards the mouths of the
German and Russian rivers, especially the Vistula and the Niemen,
and so formed naturally stepping-stones across the Baltic, e.g. Born-
holm and Gotland ; but the Norwegian islands increase in size
towards the north, i.e. away from European influence, Hindo (Lofo-
tens) having an area as large as Warwickshire and rising to 4000
feet. Under these circumstances it was quite natural — in the days
before the opening of Archangel, and before the Reformation had
destroyed the North European demand for fish and tallow (for
candles) — that Visby should be the metropolis of the Baltic and the
focus of all trade between Bruges and Novgorod. It was equally
natural for the Swedes to have trans-Baltic interests and even
possessions.
The contrast between the eastern and western "fences" is
repeated on the coasts behind them. For the hinterland is a block
of very old rock — too old for coal — which was tilted down to the
south-east when the old continent of Arctis sank under what is now
the North Atlantic. The western edge of this fractured block was,
therefore, elevated and exposed to storm and wave, while the eastern
Portion of the coast of Norway
70 miles by 40, showing over
400 islands.
XII Scandinavia 107
edge sank gradually into the sheltered Baltic. While the Swedish
coast is normally a " bay " coast, therefore, the Norwegian coast is a
" fiord " coast ; and while the former is tideless — though the current
out succeeded in the seventeenth century in silting up the famous
old fishing-ports of Skanor and Falsterbo — the tide in some of the
narrow sounds on the west is so strong as to be dangerous, e.g. the
Maelstrom in the Lofotens. At the same time the actual height of
the tidal wave is not great, and even in the larger fiords it is partly
masked by the huge outflow of fresh water on the surface — at least
in summer.
The human life of Norway, then, centres about a skerry-fenced Fiord Life,
fiord system, the great national waterway running northward and
southward inside the skerries, and being fed by the provincial water-
ways that run eastward and westward up and down the fiords. The
calm water of these wonderful fishing-grounds is practically never
frozen, for the submarine sill at the mouth is too high to allow the
deep current of cold Arctic water to penetrate, while there is nothing
to stop the warm air and drift from the Atlantic. The typical fiord
is so narrow that the whole mouth can be easily netted, — though nets
were not used before the sixteenth century, — and so steep that " you
have to lie on your back to see the sky " ; but at the head of the
fiord, where the glacier " took the water," and at similar places along
the sides, there are wedges of lowland which have been for centuries
the source of all home-grown food. As the various natural divisions
of these available patches were too small to be further subdivided,
they were transmitted entire to one son, the others moving off; and,
as the parents neither needed their children's help on the small farms
or in catching the fish at their door, nor were even able to support
them at home, the other sons moved off early, finding immediate
sustenance by fishing, but looking to a farm-plot elsewhere for the
future. To this day the same phenomena persist. Though the
pastoral and agricultural land does not exceed 1 1 p.c. of the total
area, it employs about 40 p.c. of the population.
These were the real Vik-ing, the " Sons of the Calm Water," Vikings,
and they settled first on the fertile patches along the fiord — for the
fishing was everywhere equally good, tlie dark-blue water of the fiords
being usefully " clouded " by the milky water from the glaciers —
where there was most forest ; and then from behind the natural
breakwater, with its teeming waters and poverty-stricken hinterland,
a nursery at once of seamen and of beggars, the Vikings poured out
to be the Sea-kings of the stormy ocean. For they were heart and
soul individualists. Young married couples, having no society but
themselves, and having no " patriarchal " obligations, had chosen each
other freely ; there was no public life or policy ; man and woman
being equal, personal responsibility was pushed to the extreme ;
they *• paddled their own canoes " literally and metaphorically.
io8
The Continent of Europe
CH.
And it is to this source that we trace the innate individuahsm
of the Saxons and -the Franks, the Frisians and the EngUsh, the
poUtical and religious " Protestants " of Northern Europe, Norway
still has the largest mercantile marine in the world for her popula-
tion, and it is actually inferior only to those of Britain, the United
States, and Germany. On the other hand, this individualism left
great opportunities, which led to great inequalities of wealth ; and,
once a particular family had become united enough and strong
enough to build a Viking ship — on a model the essential lines of
which are still followed by the Norwegian shipwrights — and seize
an island for their own, they probably enslaved a population of
Waterside
Centres.
Chief
Foci
Viking raiding-ioutes.
sts^h'^nrCcct' CsUt* t»
aboriginal refugees on the island, and they certainly doubled their
chances of making a successful raid.
The history of Italy illustrates the advantage in early days of sites
on the shore of an inland sea, and in this respect Sweden had an
obvious advantage over Norway ; but even in Norway the essential
slope of the land is down towards the south-east, and human
activities gravitated naturally towards the safer waters of the Skager
Rak — the shores of the Christiania fiord coming to be known as
" the Vik " — even from Trondhjem. At all times, therefore, but
specially when the Baltic was " the Great Sea," the coastal strip in
both countries has been the vital part ; the length of the coast and
the shape of the country have evolved foci at opposite points of the
compass ; and all towns of any size are to-day on sea or lake or
navigable river.
In each case the most important foci mark the opposite ends of
a natural depression across the country ; but in Norway the Glom-
men valley runs north and south, while the lake-studded floor of the
old strait which once joined the Skager Rak to the Baltic — as its con-
tinuation joined the Gulf of Finland via Lake Onega and Lake
Ladoga to the White Sea — runs east and west. In Norway, there-
XII
Scandinavia
109
fore, we have essentially a North Gate in Trondhjem, and a South
Gate in Christiania ; in Sweden we have an East Gate in Stockholm,
and a West Gate in Gdteborg. And the inflow of Christian in-
truders from Denmark naturally drove the heathen along the line of
least resistance, so that the last heathen capitals were at Trondhjem
and Upsala. It was because the last heathen capital had been there,
that Trondhjem was made the first Christian capital ; and it is still
the religious capital of Norway, with a population almost exactly the
same as that of Canterbury, from which it received its original
ecclesiastical organisation.
The Christiania fiord, like the Trondhjem fiord, is scarcely typical ; Christi-
but the very conditions that make them lack grandeur and inacces- ania~
sibility, because parts
of the great depression,
have increased their
economic value. Chris-
tiania does not stand
on the site of the earlier
capitals, for the site of
these was moved suc-
cessively farther and
farther up the fiord —
from near Laurvik to
near Tonsberg, and
from Tonsberg to the
still safer Oslo ; but
it obviously represents
the work, if not the site, of the others. Like the other wood-built
cities, it suffered greatly from fires, and was destroyed by fire a
generation before the Great Fire of London ; and King Christian IV.,
who rebuilt it, gave the new city his name.
Half-way by sea between Trondhjem and Christiania the Hansa Bergen,
commerce needed a depot, and Bergen was chosen. It is character-
istically not at the mouth, still less at the head, of an important
fiord ; but it occupies a central site between the great Sogne and
the Hardanger and Bukker (Stavanger) fiords. This seemed to the
Hanseatic merchants the pivot of the North Sea trade.
The same conditions obtain in Sweden. Goteborg represents GSteborg
the work, if not the actual site, of all the places that have controlled ai^^ Stock -
traffic round the Skaw and up and down the Gota valley ; and
Stockholm represents all the famous centres — generally religious or
royal capitals — on or near the seaward end of Lake Malar. Of
these, Bjorko was an island depot in the Baltic ; Sigtuna occupied a
safer position (a.d. iooo) inland on the lake ; Upsala was up a river
flowing into the lake. Stockholm itself is not an island in the sea,
nor on the shore of the lake, nor yet on the banks of the river. It
The site of Christiania.
no
The Continent of Europe
CH.
Malmo.
Contin-
ental
Develop-
mont.
ReUef.
Mountain
Backbone.
The site of Stockholm.
is on a group of islands between lake and sea, where the skerry-guard
is widest (45 m.), i.e. at the precise point where the Viking strong-
hold of the lake
emerged from the
great forest to meet
the Viking battlefield
and trading-ground of
the sea.
Malmo, unlike
Bergen, was more than
a half-way site by sea
between the two great
foci. It represented
the old mart and fish-
ing - port of Scania,
which got silted up
after its town had been
burnt to the ground by the Hanseats ; and it inherited the trade
of Lund (" Beech " town), which held the same relation to the beech-
forest of Scania as Stockholm held to the coniferous forest of
Svealand. As both conquest and Christianity came from the south,
Lund became the first Danish capital and the site of the first
bishopric ; and it is still one of the chief university centres of Sweden.
The coast-lands are as different as the actual coast-lines. The
Swedish belt gives easy land-transport and typical " land " occupa-
tions, and its climate is typically continental, especially in winter.
It made, therefore, a good base for a military and agricultural
people ; but it did not justify them in trying to hold trans-Baltic
territory, of which the vital points, e.g. Stralsund, Riga, Revel, were
isolated by ice in winter.
The cause of the great difference in climate between the east
and the west coasts of the peninsula lies in the character of the relief.
From north to south down the peninsula there runs a huge, broad back-
bone, with an average height equal to that of Ben Nevis, and peaks
of nearly twice that height, e.g. the Galdhopig (8500 ft.) and
Glitretind (8400 ft.) of the Jotunheim ("Giants' Home"). This
naturally gives peculiar facilities for holding snow, especially in the
higher and wetter southern section, where the Jostedalsbrae is
little more than 50 miles from the ocean and overhangs the broad
gully of the Sogne fiord ; but even in the northern section the
Svartisan glacier has an area of 400 square miles, and the Jokel
glacier actually drops icebergs into the Soro Sound.
Where the backbone of the relief forms the political frontier,
i.e. as far south as the northern frontier of Svealand, the steep single
scarp of the plateau is so near the sea that the Swedish frontier
below the 7000 feet of Kebnekaisse comes within 6 miles of the
XII Scandinavia 1 1 1
Ofoten fiord ; and this nearness to the sea, and the number of
peaks along the coast south of SuHtalma (6160 ft.) cause the
whole formation to look from below, i.e. from the Norwegian coast,
like a boat upside down. Hence its name of Kiolen (" The Keel ")
given by the Norwegian fishermen ; but eastward it falls in terraces.
Where the backbone ceases to be the political frontier, it is cut Political
by the Trondhjem-Christiania depression, which extends seaward rrontier.
as the Kattegat, — thus giving Norway historically a more intimate
connection with Denmark than she ever had with Sweden ; and
this cuts off the long Kiolen from the bulky mass of the Dovre-field
(" Steep-mountain ") and Jotunheim, themselves separated by the
lake-filled Romsdal and Gudbrandsdal gullies. This line of least
resistance is in Norway the " Heart of the kingdom," as the lake-
studded depression in Svealand is the heart of Sweden ;" and it was,
therefore, essential that, when the political frontier left the physical
divide, Norway should have the whole basin of the Glommen as
a natural unit, and that the political frontier should run approxi-
mately along the Glommen-Vener divide. In the very thinly-peopled
north, on the contrary, where there was no chance of disturbing
natural associations and activities, the great need was simply for an
easily recognised and indisputable line, which was provided by such
great rivers as the Tana (180 miles) and the Tornea (227 miles).
Throughout, however, the frontier is really more a belt than a line,
and that too a belt of desert ; and where it is actually habitable, it
is occupied by alien peoples, nomad Lapps, called " Finns " by the
Norwegians in the north, and real Finns in the south, who further
emphasise the political divide.
West of the great plateau backbone the climate must obviously Nor-
be marine, and its typical phenomenon is precipitation, rain and p*?^^.,
snow falling on at least two hundred days in the year. It is
specially heavy in winter and towards the south-west, i.e. where the
highest and steepest relief is combined with low latitude and near-
ness to warm Atlantic influences. For instance, in the Stavanger
and Hardanger areas there is an average fall of over 80 inches ;
but inland in the same latitudes it falls on only half as many days,
and half of the total fall is in the form of snow. In the Lofoten
islands the total reaches 60 inches ; but farther north there is a
sudden decrease, though there is still a large percentage of cloud.
On, and east of, the plateau the climate is normally continental, Nor-
and its typical phenomenon is a wide range of temperature. Even w^egian
in Norway, therefore, there is a strong contrast between the west, ij^^**^*
with its mild rainy winters and its cool rainy summers, and the
interior and east, with their warm summers and cold winters. It
is most significant that the highest mean annual temperature
(45° F.) and the highest mean winter temperature (35° F) are both
in the south-west, and that mid-winter there is in February, while
112
The Continent of Europe
CH.
the highest summer temperature (62° F.) is in the south-east, and
mid-summer comes in July. Contrariwise, the lowest mean annual
temperature (26° F.) is in the interior, i.e. the south-east of Fmmark,
—with an average 7° lower than farther north, but on the sea-coast
at Vardo, — and the same area
Swedisnh
Tempera-
tare.
Annual rainfall ntap of the Baltic region.
has the lowest wmter tempera-
ture ( - 60° F.). The winter
there is very long, 243 days
having a mean temperature
below freezing-point, and the
normal for December to
February being 4° F. ; so,
while the mean temperature
in the south-east is below
freezing-point on 120 days in
the year, the extreme south-
west is practically free from
frost. It is equally significant
that the snow -line on the
Jotunheim {c. 4000 ft.) should
be nearly 1000 feet lower than
on the less exposed Dovre-
field, and that in the lee of
both, 250 miles from the sea
in the south-west, Roros should
Indeed, on the lower levels
or 3° lower still ; and the
have a winter temperature of 1 3 F,
of the valley near Roros it drops i
gravitation of the cold heavy 'air causes the winter wind in the
Skager Rak to blow normally from N.E.
The general conditions of Central and Eastern Norway are
repeated and emphasised in Sweden within common latitudes ; but
the Baltic exercises some climatic influence, and the Kiolen system
is not broad enough or high enough to deprive Northern Sweden
entirely of Atlantic influences. Even Sweden, therefore, has not
a purely continental climate ; but latitude is as important as relief,
and continental influences are stronger than marine. For instance,
there is steady latitudinal variation throughout the 1000 miles of
extension from north to south ; the mean annual temperature on
the northern frontier is c. 27° F., and on the southern (Lund) is
45°, while Haparanda has c. 32", Umea 35°, Hernosand, on the
northern limit of orchard-fruit, 38°, Stockholm 42°. Mid-summer
comes in July (51° to 62° F. according to latitude), but mid-winter
comes in February (3° to 30° F.) ; spring begins in the north-east in
May, but in the south-west in March, while summer begins at mid-
June in the one and mid-May in the other, and autumn begins at
mid-August in the one and October in the other. The lakes in the
XII Scandinavia 113
north-east freeze in October, and remain frozen for two hundred days ;
those in the south-west do not freeze till December, and are frozen
for only one hundred days. Those close up to the foot of the Kiolen
have a shorter winter than those farther east, i.e. farther away from
the " fohn " effects of the cross-plateau winds.
The same conditions are reflected in the rainfall. The average Swedish
annual fall is about 20 inches, the amount increasing towards the Rainfall,
south and towards the west, the south-west having fully 35 inches
(Goteborg). The maximum comes in summer except in the
marine south-west, where it is typically in autumn, and the
minimum in spring. In the lee of Oland there is an exceptionally
small fall, Kalmar having less than 1 5 inches ; but the rest of
Scania may be compared with the Christiania district, each having,
e.g.^ fifty days of snow in the year.
Sweden, again, like Norway, has two centres of minimum cold. Midnight
The one is in the far north, within a few miles of the Finmark Sun.
centre, and has about the same temperature (under 4° F. in
January) ; the other, is across the international frontier from Roros,
and has about the same temperature as the latter (under 9° F. in
January). The corresponding reaction in summer is also approxi-
mately the same in the two countries, length of day compensating for
shortness of season. The sun is actually visible at " midnight " at
the North Cape from May 12 to July 29, and is not visible at
"midday" from November 18 to January 23, while at Trondhjem
there is no darkness from May 23 to July 20; and this means as
much to the navigation of the Skerry waters as it means to the
cultivators of the Swedish lowlands to have the sun visible at mid-
summer for twenty-three hours every day at Haparanda, and for nine-
teen hours at Gefle.
The character and position of the main watershed account for River
the number and the volume of the rivers, and the slope of the System,
plateau determines their general direction towards the south-east;
but, as the plateau sinks to the Baltic from the Kiolen in terraces,
the course of the chief Swedish rivers is broken by at least three
falls or sets of rapids, between which there is generally
a stretch of quiet navigable water. In both countries the rivers
flow normally in U-shaped glacier-cut valleys, in which morainic
dams have collected ; but, while these are seldom more than 400
feet above the sea in the shorter Norwegian rivers, they are at least
twice as high in Sweden. For instance, Lake Mjosen is about 400
feet above the sea, while in Sweden all the similar lakes are about
1000 feet. In each case, however, they occur typically where
archean and newer strata meet, and are typically long and narrow,
sometimes occurring in a series, e.g. on the Skellefte and the Lulea,
the series in the latter being 50 miles long with an average width
of if miles. In each case, too, there are naturally some
114
The Continent of Europe
CH.
Swedish
Bivers.
Forest.
Water-
Supply.
Floods.
magnificent waterfalls, e.g. the Harsprang ; but the Norwegian falls
are nearer the sea, and have the steadier volume.
Relatively the Swedish rivers are much the more important, and
have the marked advantage of flowing independently of one another,
but more or less parallel with one another, to separate mouths in the
Baltic. Thus, there are 60 important rivers emptying into the
Baltic between Tornea and Gefle. A dozen of these have an
average length of fully 200 miles, with a total fall of 1500 feet so
distributed that the current is normally enough for " free " floating
without being enough to cause bad " jams," the average pace being
about two miles an hour, and the total length of water being about
16,000 miles.
The unique value of the rivers is due to the fact that the typical
climatic control of the peninsula takes the form of forest-growth,
about 50 p.c. of the total area in Sweden and about 21 p.c. in
Norway being forested. In both countries the moistness of the sub-
soil, the absence of wind in the resting season, the sufficiency of
heat in the growing season, are very favourable to tree-growth ; but
these conditions are found mainly to the east of the water-parting,
where too the short summer makes the annual " rings " so close
that the wood is hard and durable, while the long winter makes it
exceptionally tenacious. That is to say, even in Norway, though
the seaward scarp is often forested down to the water's edge, all
the best forest is towards the south-east, e.g. in the Osterdal part of
the Glommen valley and the Gudbrandsdal part of the Laagen valley.
The poorness of the coastal and fiord timber is due partly to the
unfertile character of the archean rock and partly to the exposure to
wind ; but even the poorest is suitable for " pulp " industries, for
which the fiords supply unfailing " power."
The conditions in Sweden are rather different. Owing to the
smaller precipitation the timber-line is higher, and the water-supply
less constant ; but a large proportion of the big rivers, especially the
Tornea, Lulea, Angerman, and Ljusne, have their main streams
flowing through areas of very fine timber. Indeed, the Ljusne has
90 p.c. of its main stream through good' forest, which helps to
account for the large timber trade of Soderhamn ; and the Angerman
floats an average of perhaps 4,000,000 logs per annum.
The best forest is found between 60° and 64° N., i.e. Upsala
and Umea ; and the special export from the sandy debris of the
crystalline rock is naturally of pine and fir, the exporting centres
being naturally to the south of the area, e.g. Gefle and Drammen.
The total value of the timber exported from the peninsula exceeds
;;^io,ooo,ooo z. year; but 70 p.c. of this must be credited to
Sweden, which is nearly half as large again as Norway (17 : 12), and
has more than twice as much forest and less than half as much
desert. Sweden also has the best facilities for transport. For the
XII Scandinavia 115
south-easterly lie of her numerous river-valleys gives her a double
flood every year — one from the very early thawing of the snow in
the valley itself, and the other from the mountains a month or two
later. Consequently, except in occasional years of unusually
prolonged spring-warmth, when the two floods become continuous,
logs can be floated from the farthest corners of the country to the
Baltic in a single season ; and, though occasionally the rivers lack
water, there is no large area of forest in any part of Sweden which
cannot be worked from want of water. In any case, the lakes never
lack water ; and, though towing and warping involve time and
expense, these are generally compensated by the facilities the lakes
give for storing the logs and regulating the head of water.
The high timber-line in Sweden incidentally involves a large Alp
area of real alp pasture on the higher levels and a still larger area of Pasture,
useful agricultural land on the lower levels. Till about 1880
Sweden produced bread-stuffs in excess of her own needs, but she
now imports to the value of ^^3, 000, 000 a year, mainly because of
the competition of the great grain-lands of the New World and
because of the drain of her farm labour into the town industries.
This has increased the relative importance of grass-land, but has
tended towards making even pastoral industries mechanical ; and,
even where there is a seasonal migration to an alp or upland saeier,
you may find mechanical-milkers and cream-separators at work, as
well as all kinds of machinery for transmitting the precious mountain
hay down to the lowlands where the cattle are stalled in winter.
Even agriculture reflects the same tendency, e.g. in the sup- Agricul-
planting of grain by sugar-beet, especially towards the south. Thus, *^"'®-
in Sweden, 60 p.c. of the total area in Scania is cultivated, while in
central Svealand the proportion is only 30 p.c, and in the extreme
north not 3 p.c. Only half the cultivated area is now under grain, —
mainly oats and rye, except in the extreme north, where only barley
can ripen ; and even this generalisation disguises the truth. For
Scania, with only 2I p.c. of the total area, raises 94 p.c. of the total
grain-crop, barley (33 p.c.) and wheat (30 p.c.) being more
important there than rye (18 p.c.) and oats (13 p.c).
The old crystalline rock contains some rich deposits of metal. Minerals,
especially along the northern side of the Skager Rak- Svealand
depression ; but it is very unevenly distributed, the grey gneiss of
the north and east being mainly associated only with such un-
important minerals as garnets and graphite, and the red gneiss of
Gotland being devoid of mineral wealth. The special deposits are
where the crystalline rock is very fine-grained or is associated with
Umestone, as in the Kopparberg ("Copper Hill") province. There
between the different types of rock are rich beds, or layers, of
metal, e.g. the manganese of Dannemora, the zinc of Ammeberg,
the cobalt of Tunaberg. Still more important are the copper of
ii6 The Continent of Europe CH.
Falun, which has been worked since the fourteenth century, the
silver-lead of Sala, which has been worked since the sixteenth century,
and the iron of Grangesberg. Similar deposits of iron are found in
the fine-grained gneiss of Gellivara, as similar deposits of silver-lead
and copper are found respectively at Kongsberg and Roros. Cf.
the zinc of Grua.
Norway
Though Norway is quite as large as the British Isles, its popula-
tion is only 2,400,000 (1910); and the reasons for the discrepancy
are obvious. In the first place, fully two-thirds of the country is
barren, and an additional 2 1 p.c. is forested ; and the normal
occupations are farming and fishing. The densest population is
found in three places — round the Skager Rak, in the Laagen-
Glommen basin, and round the Bukken fiord. The two former
naturally have their focus in the city of Christiania, which contains
one-tenth of the whole population of the country ; and their popula-
tion represents all the activities of the country, the industrial element
being very largely associated with water-power.
The great utility of the water-power of Norway is based on three
considerations. The country is wonderfully rich in lakes which,
owing to the depth and narrowness of the glacier-cut valleys, have
often very narrow outlets ; a typical outlet of this kind in the sub-
merged part of the country has made Horten the natural head-
quarters of the Norwegian Navy. Then, in almost every case these
lakes combine the advantages of being near enough to the sea for
the power to be easily delivered at a good harbour, and being
situated in firm rock on which to build dams, etc., or through
which to cut tunnels or channels. Lastly, the waterfalls are much
more valuable than, e.g., the Alpine falls, because of the heavier
precipitation, the greater accumulation of snow during the longer
winter season, and the more rapid melting of the snow and ice
during the longer summer day.
The population, then, round the Skager Rak is becoming
distinctively industrial. On the west coast the special development,
from Drammen to Christiansund, is in the manufacture of paper and
pulp, though local deposits of iron are also encouraging electric
smelting, e.g. at Skien — also famous for its great saltpetre works —
and Arendal ; on the east coast the flour-milling of Moss and the
condensing of milk at Sarpsborg are more typical. Again, while
ice is a typical export in the west, e.g. from Porsgrund and Kragero,
granite " setts " and matches are typical in the east, e.g. from
Frederikshald and Frederikstad.
Inland, especially between Christiania and Hamar, the popula-
tion is mainly engaged in farming ; and butter has become a typical
export from Trondhjem and Christiansund. It is most character-
XII Norway 117
istic that the population in the relatively fertile thoroughfare of the
Glommen basin should be very fair and very tall Teutonic " Long-
heads." Indeed, that basin is noted as the home of the purest
type of Teuton, and the reason is not far to seek. The excessive
glaciation of the area, which accounts for the poverty of the native
flora and fauna, led to its being peopled late ; and the hard climate
and barrenness must always have been adverse to a dense popula-
tion. On the other hand, the natural " line of least resistance "
was that of most fertility, so that the Teutonic intruders had little
difficulty in ousting the natives, and no inducement to go beyond
the limits of the fertile farm-land. But geographical isolation
always tends to emphasise types, especially where a sparse popula-
tion leads to a good deal of " in-breeding " ; so that all the con-
ditions were favourable to the development of a highly individualised
people of a very pure Teutonic type.
The displaced natives seem to have found refuge in what is Stavan-
now the third centre of population, i.e. on the lowlands round the ^®^"
broad Bukken fiord ; and to-day we find the population round
Stavanger and Haugesund distinctly shorter, darker, and broader-
headed than in the Glommen basin. The coast-line is unusually
low and sandy for Norway, and so had much less attraction for the
Hanseats than at Bergen ; but the place has now obvious advantages
for trade with the countries round the North Sea, and both
Stavanger and Haugesund are acquiring an important export of
tinned provisions. This is mainly in " sardines " (sprats), and
accounts for the large imports of tin-plate and olive-oil, Stavanger
alone having imported nearly 10,000 tons of tin-plate in 19 10 and
nearly 1300 tons of olive-oil. Stavanger has also a growing dairy
industry (mainly butter), for which the peat-bogs between Stavanger
and Egersund provide a useful fuel.
Quite generally, the population is distributed in the proportion Wood and
of -^ on the coast-lands and -^-^ on the lowlands of the Glommen ^^8^-
basin ; and about 70 p.c. of the total value of Norwegian exports is
represented, in about equal shares, by " fish " and " wood " products.
Both fishing and forest industries are favourable to the development
of fine types of Man ; fishermen and foresters are essentially brave
and enduring, lovers of freedom and space, individualistic and
conservative. In each case, too, the conditions of life involve
essentially that equality of power and of sex which is the only basis
of true democracy and the only standard of real civilisation.
The absence of the fishermen from their homes, referred to on Seasonal
p. 12, is due to the site and the seasonal movement of the FisherieB.
fisheries. For instance, the cod-fishing has two particular centres,
off the Lofoten Islands and off Finmark ; and the former is naturally
the earlier (March to April), Vardo not being reached much before the
end of May. So, the herring-fishing is most important south of Bergen
ii8
The Continent of Europe
CH.
Move-
ments of
People.
Wood
Products.
Houses.
in spring (cf. the Haugesund and Stavanger " sardines "), but north of
Namsos in autumn; they come inshore in spring to spawn, they
avoid shore water while the fiords are pouring out volumes of cold
fresh water, and the subsequent inflow of warm salt water brings
them inshore again in search of food.
There are also, of course, the distant fisheries, e.g. the Arctic
whaling of Tromso and Hammerfest and the Antarctic whaling from
Aalesund and Tonsberg, while both Laurvik and Haugesund are
interested in whaling off the African coast ; and, on the other hand,
the salmon-fishing is quite local, and the mackerel-fishing almost
so, i.e. confined to the extreme south. Incidentally, the industry
has a rather adverse influence on the population statistics. It
accounts for the high mortality amongst men and so for the pre-
ponderance of women, and for the willingness to emigrate ; and
these two results practically counteract the very high birth-rate and
the very low death-rate of the country. Though Aalesund actually
sends out the largest number of " boats," Bergen is still the great
centre of the industry ; it has associated trades in barrels, salt, ice,
etc., and — like Molde and Trondhjem — has a Leper Hospital.
Only the " down " market remains in the far north — at Hammerfest ;
but the fish-eating birds which supply the down, are themselves
largely migratory, those from Finmark moving south into Finland
and those of Norrland moving down the Glommen valley to the
Skager Rak.
The principal timber- exporting towns are naturally on the
Skager Rak, e.g. Christiania and Drammen, Frederikstad and
Frederikshald, Porsgrund and Arendal ; but some is exported north-
wards, mainly via Trondhjem. But the timber itself is now less
important than the wood-pulp, mechanical and chemical (cellulose),
and the paper, for printing and packing. The mechanical pulp is
naturally centred on the best water-supplies, and the cellulose on
those with easiest access to sulphur pyrites ; but the old centres,
e.g. Drammen, are finding it more and more difficult to procure the
wood locally, especially as the small dimensions required for the
cellulose industry are very adverse to the natural reproduction of
the forest — so much so that the State has had to undertake whole-
sale re-affbrestation. At present much the largest export of cellulose
is from Trondhjem, which also monopolises the export of sulphur
pyrites from the hinterland between Mendal and Roros, while the
chief export of pulp is from Namsos, which is still farther from the
old centre of production on the Christiania fiord.
Obviously, in a country where precipitation is so heavy and
so largely in the form of snow, as in all similar forest areas, it is
natural for the houses to be built of wood and essential for them
to have high-pitched roofs with overhanging eaves to throw off" snow
as it accumulates.
XII Sweden 119
Obviously, too, in such a country inland communications are Communi-
very difficult. The lakes certainly are very useful, whether frozen cations,
or unfrozen ; but the obstacles to railways are so great that roads
and posting have become of prime importance, the skydsgut or
"post-boy" being often a woman. Under the circumstances,
Norway has the least mileage of rail in Europe — though it is
quite large in proportion to the population — and the railways are
mainly international, there being no less than four main routes into
Sweden. In the far north there is the " iron line " from Narvik,
the most northerly line in the world and built specially to give the
Swedish iron mines access to open water all the year round. The
development of Central Sweden has led to the construction of a
direct route from Trondhjem via the Storlien Pass to the Baltic
port of Sundsvall ; and of course Christiania has direct connection
both with Svealand north of Lake Vener and with Gotland south
of it.
The ice-free ocean, the inexhaustible water-power, and the Textiles,
marine climate, will some day combine to make Norway one of the
great textile -producers of the world ; and the separation from
Sweden has given an impulse in this direction. But in the mean-
time the textile industry has scarcely emerged from the domestic
stage except in relation to shipping, e.g. the making of rope and
sails.
Sweden
Human activities have a wider scope in Sweden than in Norway Occupa-
at present, and are much less connected with coastal features, tioM.
partly because so much of the coast is ice-bound in winter. Both
the area and the population are 40 p.c. larger than in Norway,
while there is 220 p.c. more forest and 300 p.c. more farming land.
Farming and forestry are, therefore, of supreme importance ; and,
while the birth-rate remains as high as in Norway, the death-rate is
the lowest in Europe. Mining and textile industries are growing
in importance, and it is roughly correct to describe Norrland as the
land of timber and iron, while Svealand and Gotland form the land
of farming and textiles.
This union of the two southern divisions of the country is Political
justified by the general fertility and natural facilities for com- '""oiib.
munication, which are so obvious that the joint area was always
difficult to split into separate political areas ; and it was these
conditions that made it so easy for the Swedes of Svealand and
the Goths of Gotland to merge in a single people as early as the
thirteenth century.
Gotland offered most advantages in early days, as might be Gotland.
guessed from the ease with which the Danes conquered and con-
verted the people in the ninth century. It has a long coast, well
I20
The Continent of Europe
CH.
supplied with little harbours which could accommodate all kinds of
shipping up to the Age of Nelson. The low latitude and the low
relief combined with the peninsular form to give an exceptionally
good climate ; and the young rock which surrounds the old core
of Svealand, gave a rich soil. So the whole peninsula came to take
its name from the most favoured portion (Scania) of this favoured
area. With its pine-clad core of Smaland, its oak-forested lowlands
in the north, and its beech-forested lowlands in the south, it still
sums up most of the life of Sweden ; and it includes the most
important pastoral and arable areas of the country, butter and bacon
being typical exports.
Svealand. Svealand was less prosperous in olden days owing to its more
difficult relief, its slightly inferior climate, and its greater isolation,
paganism lingering on till the middle of the twelfth century, i.e.
300 years after it had died out in Gotland j but it was essentially
stronger, partly because of the virile character of the Dalarne
Highlanders — who served Gustavas Vasa so well that they left
practically no one behind them to perpetuate the strain. The
Dalarne hinterland and the lake-studded foreground, which is of
such recent formation that Arctic fauna still survive in the lakes,
now combine all phases of Sweden's modern development — pasture
and tillage, mining and manufactures, intellectual and administra-
tive ; Stockholm and Upsala, Falun and Dannemora, are typical
centres.
Economic These old political divisions are now practically obliterated, in
Divisions, favour of the economic division made above — a land of mining and
forestry to the north of a line from the mouth of the Dal to that of
the Klar, and a land of farms and factories to the south of that line.
At the same time the very fact that the old divisions have been so
elastic, suggests that the area has a natural unity, which has made
the people wonderfully homogeneous. This unity was no doubt
based on the isolation of the area by tundra and mountains, by sea
and speech, from foreign interference ; and it was encouraged by
the geographical compactness of the area. In such an area it is
quite characteristic that land should be owned by both peer and
peasant, and that the Constitution should show both autocratic
and democratic features ; for the people have common interests,
common language, and common creed. About 85 p.c. of all the
arable land is tilled by persons who own it — which partly accounts
for the relatively dense rural population (100 per square mile in
Svealand and 150 in Gotland); and the nobility do not own i p.c.
of the estates or more than 25 p.c, of the area.
Forest. More than half the country is forested ; and, as in Norway,
there are very important industries subordinate to the actual lumber-
ing. The mass of the forest — i.e. all north of " Lakeland " — is con-
iferous, with pine and fir as the main stock and birch very common
XII Sweden 121
on the higher levels ; and its exploitation is bound up with the
question of water-power, for nearly all the timber ports, e.g. Umea
and Hernosand, Soderhamn and Gefle, are also engaged in the manu-
facture of pulp and other bye-products, the total export of paper
alone having reached about 150,000 tons in 19 10, while that of
pulp exceeded 760,000 tons. It is typical that northern ports, in-
cluding Skelleftea and Sundsvall, should specialise in the pulp and
cellulose, while southern ports, such as Vestervik and Kalmar,
specialise in joinery. The largest industry is that in sawn wood
(deals, battens, etc.), which is mainly confined to the north ; but this
is bound to become relatively less important, because a timber forest
requires eighty to ninety years for re-afforestation, whereas a pulp forest
can be re-afforested in thirty to thirty-five years. At present there
are only about 200 pulp and paper mills, while there are over 500
joinery factories and probably 1500 sawing and planing mills.
Heavy penalties are inflicted for excessive felling and for failure to
re-plant.
There are two main iron-fields in Sweden, the " Lapland " and Iron,
the Central or Grangesberg ; and Lulea (Svarton) and Oxelosund
are the special iron-ports, the former ice-bound for months (six or
seven) every year and the latter sometimes, as in 1 9 1 o, not frozen at
all. As the Central field is very conveniently placed for home use,
while the cost of freight debars the Lapland ore from a similar
destination, special regulations have been made about the export
trade. Thus the amount that may be exported from the Granges-
berg field is to be restricted to 450,000 tons per annum, while that
from the Lapland field may approximate to 4,500,000 tons, of which,
however, 3,500,000 must come from the Luossavara-Kiruna mines,
i.e. those least accessible from Sweden and nearest (100 miles) to
the Norwegian port of Narvik. Even the 1,000,000 tons a year at
present allowed to the Gellivara mines, which are about 130 miles
from the Baltic and therefore relatively accessible for consumption
in Sweden, are to be reduced to less than 600,000. The Kiruna
field, fortunately for foreigners, produces unusually rich ore, contain-
ing often 70 p.c. of iron; but, as it contains i to 2 p.c. of phos-
phorus, it is less useful where smelters on the basic method are
relatively few, as e.g. in Britain, than in, e.g., Germany.
The water-power of the country is being utilised in connection Water-
with both the iron and the wood industries. The total amount Power.
available is estimated at roughly 10,000,000 horse-power; but it is
not available anywhere for more than nine months of the year, and
not more than 25 p.c. is available anywhere at low water. Of the
total, however, probably 75 p.c. is in Northern Sweden, i.e. where it
is of most use, at least to the iron and wood industries. The falls
are not usually high, averaging less than 50 feet ; but the volume of
water is generally very great for a considerable part of the year.
122 The Continent of Europe ch.
For instance, the Krangede Fall on the Indals is estimated at
60,000 h.p., and the Harsprang ( "Hare's Leap" — a typical name
in a country where the hare is the most important animal found in
all parts of the area) is estimated at 46,000 h.p. Nearly all the
rivers, too, as we have seen, are dammed by morainic lakes which
act as water-heads. The famous Porjus Fall on the Lulea occupies
such a site at the outlet of Lake Lulevattnet, and is being utilised
for the new electric railway to the Gallivara mines. It is the number
of such lakes that makes yachting the typical summer sport in
Sweden ; indeed, lakes cover 10 p.c. of the total area of Sweden.
They are known as " the eyes of the Earth," and the crystalline rock
supplies them with such quantities of mica in solution that — like the
eyes of the people — they are typically blue. Cf. p. 91.
Indus- It is the presence of the large lakes in the more strictly penin-
*^*8. sular part of the country that has helped to make the climate there
more favourable for both agriculture and textile industries ; and the
facilities for transport are correspondingly great and associated with
water-power, e.g. on the Motala and the TroUhatta Falls, the latter
alone already supplying 40,000 h.p. The great industrial centres
of the country are, therefore, found closely in touch with the river-
and-canal route (180 miles) via Lake Vener and Lake Vetter
between Goteborg and Stockholm ; and the most advantageous
position is one that is at approximately equal distances from iron,
wood, and navigable water. Norrkoping, at the head of the 35-
mile Bravik fiord, fulfils these conditions best, and has become the
chief industrial centre, specialising — like its neighbour, Linkoping —
in textiles. It is also a hardware centre ; and, like the other centres
which manufacture steel and machinery, e.g. Dannemora and Eskils-
tuna, it uses charcoal as fuel, greatly to the improvement of the
smelted product. Jonkoping, with local supplies of magnetic iron
and sulphur, and easy access to the pith and potash of the Smaland
pine forests, is another important centre, with textile, iron, and
match industries ; but the climate is more favourable to the textiles
on the west of the Smaland heights, e.g. at Boras.
Along the windy coasts of the mainland and on the adjacent
islands wind-power is used as well as water-power, e.g. in the cement
and beet-sugar industries of Oland and Gotland ; but the most
typical industry round this southern part of the coast is granite-
quarrying, e.g. at Stromstadt and Halmstad, Karlskrona and Oscar-
hamn. The least typical industry here is the coal -mining of
Helsingborg, which is very conveniently situated with regard to the
cross-Sound ferries from Malmo and Trelleborg.
Communi- Malmo and Goteborg are the two great railway termini for
foreign trade, the latter being served by no less than seven separate
lines, including an important private line which taps the great col-
lection of wood-pulp factories to the west of Lake Vener. The
cations.
XII Sweden 1 23
cheapness of land and of iron and timber, and the' climatic interrup-
tion of sea-traffic, have given such an impetus to railway-construction
that Sweden has now the largest mileage in Europe proportionately
to her population. The relative length of the typical lakes gives
special importance to terminal points, such as Jonkoping and Orebro;
and strategic considerations help to keep the State lines generally
well inland. Thus, the relative deficiency of railway accommodation
in Eastern Svealand is partly due to the possession of the Aland
islands by Russia. At present the primary bases of the Russian
Navy are at Kronstadt (nearly 400 miles) and Libau (over 200),
and the secondary bases are at Sveaborg and Revel ; but — in spite
of the Aland Treaty — Russia has made several attempts in recent
years to garrison the natural harbour of Fogeltjarden, which is within
100 miles of Stockholm. In olden days this promontory of Sweden
was strong both by position and in virtue of its Viking strain along
the coast and its Dalecarlian Highlanders in the hinterland ; but
both strains have died out — largely by the decimation of war — and
the primary naval base of Sweden is now at Karlskrona, equally
distant from Libau and Danzig and with the island of Oland to
mask all movement of vessels between the primary base and the
dockyard of Oscarhamn.
The essential importance of this lies in the fact that Sweden, Sweden
unlike Norway, is a typically Baltic Power, with Baltic products and "Baltic'
Baltic needs. For instance, timber is specifically a Baltic product ;
the demand for it is growing every day ; and Sweden has better
facilities than Russia for supplying the demand. Again, dairy pro-
ducts are very closely connected with the Baltic ; and Sweden is rich
in peat, which makes quite a good fuel for dairy purposes. She can
easily import cheap machinery and cheap textiles from Germany and
bread-stuffs from Russia ; but she lacks coal and capital, and her
population grows slowly.
CHAPTER XIII
THE BALKAN PENINSULA
Rear-
guard of
Europe.
Sea
Frontier.
The Balkan peninsula had obviously special advantages for
intercourse with the early civilisations of Egypt and Mesopotamia
(cf. p. 9), and this intercourse followed lines the permanence of
wiiich is implied in the route of the Baghdad Railway and in the
proposal to divert the Suez mails from Brindisi to Salonika or Athens.
The fundamental control in this was the impassable barriers to
pressure from the south which were imposed by the parallel belts
of the Mediterranean and the
Sahara. All movement was natur-
ally east and west, and converged
either from Nile or from Euphrates
on the Balkan peninsula. This area
consequently became the natural
gateway of Europe, with one
thoroughfare joining Asia and
Europe and another joining the
Black Sea and the Mediterranean ;
that is to say, it contained a land-
route which lay N.W.-S.E., and
which is now followed by the
Orient Express, and it controlled
a sea-route which lay N.E.-S.W.,
and which gives the only easy
access to Russia by sea in winter.
The peninsula thus became the
rear-guard of Europe against the
hordes of Asia ; and this accounts
largely both for the extraordinary
mixture of race and language, of
creed and political interest, in the peninsula, and for the legitimate
concern of other Europeans in the great land-and-sea junction of
Constantinople.
In earlier days its sea-surroundings had three great advantages
— a quiet sea, a highly articulated coast, and an island front.
124
I'lie Bosphorus.
CH. XIII The Balkan Peninsula 125
Except in the purely continental part of the area, i.e. on the Black
Sea, the coast is for the most part wonderfully indented, although
the sea itself is neither very stormy nor subject to high tides ;
even dangerous promontories, such as that of Malia, made useful
" beacons " ; and the indentations are generally both small and
large, thus supplying both a number of good harbours and the
maximum of encouragement to early navigation. The latter was
further encouraged by the number of islands, tempting even timid
sailors from point to point, especially across the southern opening of
the ^gean and along the western shore of Anatolia ; and this influence
is still reflected in the distribution of the typical Greek population,
which is essentially coastal, especially on the parts of the coast that
have most commerce, e.g. along the north of the Sea of Marmora.
The character of the coast is due to the fact that the land has Character
been partly submerged. The symmetry and continuity of the °^ Coast,
island-lines perpetuate the original feature-lines of the mountain
ranges ; and it was the pressure of the sunken block of coast that
excited — on the side away from the young uplift (cf. p. 22) — the
volcanic activity of Milos and Santorin, and that is still responsible
for such hot springs as those at the Pass of Thermopylae (" Hot-
Gates ") and for the occurrence of earthquakes ^ in Greece on one
day out of every four.
The Cyclades " bridge " was specially important in early times, Island
because it extended the east-and-west Corinthian Gulf route to and ^ont.
from Asia Minor, as the Morava valley now extends the north-and-
south ^gean route to and from the Suez Canal ; and it made the
^gean practically a lake. Thus, ancient Delos, like modern Syra,
gave a fine harbour in a central position on the through route
between Athens or Corinth, and Miletus or Smyrna. Many of the
islands, too, are honeycombed with coves and caves — an ideal site
for refugees, smugglers, and banditti. It was certain, therefore,
that, if the mainland came under the control of an alien power of
Steppe-men, the bolder spirits amongst the coastal Ship-men would
migrate to the islands ; and there, with nothing to lose and all to
gain, they would develop such a net of piracy as would drive the
mainlanders off the sea altogether and even shake their hold on the
coast-land. And it is significant that to-day we find the best type
of the Greek race on these islands.
In proportion as the mainlanders retired from the coast, deserted Harbours,
farms would become nurseries of malaria ; and, on the contrary,
a fine port in a barren area would be profoundly attractive to the
islanders. Such a port, if at a critical central site, would become
exceedingly important ; and such a site was occupied by Athens
and by Corinth, for both could control the tw^o divisions of ancient
Greece — continental and peninsular. In modern times, however,
^ The action of earthquakes has greatly widened the old pass at Thermopylae.
126
The Continent of Europe
CH.
Athens c.
Ckninth.
The
Golden
Horn.
Isthmus of Corinth Ship Canal.
the great increase in the size of ships has entirely altered the relative
importance of the old harbours ; and artificial improvement has
only been justified economically where the position was otherwise
favourable for commerce, e.g. at Varna and Burgas, Gallipoli and
Volo, Patras and Mesolonggi.
And, considering the re-
latively small area, these
artificial harbours cannot
compete with the three great
ports of Athens, Constanti-
nople, and Salonika.
The harbour of Athens,
between the island of Salamis
and the Piraeus peninsula, is
larger, deeper, and safer than
that of Corinth ; and, though the latter controls what is nominally
a shorter and safer route to the Suez Canal than that via Brindisi,
the Corinthian Canal is too narrow and too much troubled with
currents to attract much commerce, quite apart from the obstacle of
heavy dues. Indeed, ancient Corinth, with its " tramway " for the
transport of ships across the isthmus, was really better off than
modern Corinth ; and it was probably fortunate that lack of labour
and fear of impiety deterred Periander from carrying out his idea
of cutting a canal. Athens had, however, the real, if not obvious,
advantage of having a poorer hinterland ; the relative barrenness
was due to a deficiency of rain — kept off by the harbourless and
mountainous bulwark of Euboea — which implied a greater freedom
from disease, and the lack of land-products forced the people into
sea commerce. It was mainly this early intercourse with outside
peoples, with its valuable exchange of ideas as well as of material
things, that gave the inquisitive and acquisitive Athenians such
pre-eminence in ancient Greece.
The site of Constantinople seems to have been never properly
appreciated until it came under the control of an emperor whose
mother — Helena of York — came of a fishing race ; but from that
date (a.d. 330) onward the place itself has been more important
than the people who have held it, as might be suggested by the
fact that the crescent moon is the crest of the city, not of its rulers.
When the people of Rome had ceased to rule the Roman world,
and the Roman empire was now on its defence, especially from the
east and north-east, the right capital for an emperor who wished
to cultivate new relations with the Christian Church, was the safest
site in that part of the area most exposed to attack. Such a site
was provided by the peninsula which divides the Golden Horn
from the Sea of Marmora, and which was itself cut off from the
mainland by an almost continuous line of lake and swamp. This
XIII
The Balkan Peninsula
127
site, with its perennial streams and its seven hills, — on one of which
the mosque of St. Sophia occupies a position very similar to that
of St. Peter's Cathedral in Rome — was a natural fortress, difficult
to approach either by the narrow fortified ^ isthmus of lake and
swamp, or by the narrow fortified straits of the Bosphorus (20 miles)
and the Dardanelles (40 miles), and impossible of investment
except by an enemy equally strong by land and by sea. It was
thus an ideal site for a people on their defence, and well earned
its name of Stamboul (" Into the City ").
Salonika has a worse harbour than the other two, but a richer Salonika,
hinterland and easier access to that hinterland ; indeed, it controls
Geog!
Golden Horn.
the shortest, if not the safest, route from Central Europe to the
Suez Canal, The fertility of the district soon attracted outsiders,
especially the Levantine Jews, so that the city — unlike Athens —
was developed from the outside, not from within ; and the actual site
is sheltered by the Chalkis peninsula, defended by the lakes and
swamps of the Chalkis isthmus, and away from the malarial estuary
of the Vardar. Commercially, the city is not only in the centre
of the European coast of the ^gean, but also occupies a position
somewhat like that of Venice, where an east-and-west land-route
meets a north-and-south sea-route.
There are three important lines of approach to the peninsula Approach
by land — the Morava valley, the steppe, the Skutari peninsula, ^y Land.
The strictly land frontier (nearly 850 miles) is very much longer
^ The landward wall in the fifth century was 200 feet thick and 100 feet high.
128 The Continent of Europe ch.
than that of Italy or Spain ; and that it is an unsatisfactory one
may be inferred from the fact that it is generally taken as running
along the line of the Kulpa-Save-Danube — in other words, a
"primitive" river-frontier. It is precisely these underlying con-
ditions that account for the international importance of Belgrade
and for the delicate relations of Bulgaria and Rumania with their
common command of the great international waterway of the Lower
Danube. The narrow gorge of the Morava, running almost due
north-and-south for over i oo miles, has further vitiated this frontier ;
in olden days it was a scene of constant political movement north-
ward, as it is now of constant economic movement southward.
It was the breadth of the continental frontier that made it relatively
easy for an essentially continental power such as Macedonia to
control the whole peninsula, and for essentially continental peoples
such as the Slavs to confine the coast-loving Greeks to the purely
peninsular area south of 41° N. So to-day the Servians are the
least effective of all the Slavs, with their contraband drifting north-
ward and German as their commercial language.
Yellow These Slavs penetrated at the north-east corner from across the
Men. Russian steppe as well as from the north-west by the Morava
valley ; and the importance of the steppe route, in the distribution
of people over the peninsula, lay in the fact that it was followed also
by the Bulgars, i.e. by Yellow men, who conquered the White Slavs.
The south-east corner gave access to another Yellow type in the
Turks ; but the latter approached the area over the semi-desert
steppe' of the Anatolian plateau, not over the rich steppe of the
loess lowlands. This Turkish inflow accentuated the political and
ethnic difficulties of the inter-continental position by a religious
complication, so that the peninsula became a transition zone
between the Crescent and the Cross, thus giving an opportunity for
the development of an indigenous Greek Church. In an area
where there has been such a mixture of race and language and
economic interest, religion is liable to become a very disturbing and
dominating element ; and, in this connection, it is significant that
their Greek Church exercises a directly unifying influence over the
scattered Greek population.
Nucleus of The character of the relief has emphasised almost every weak-
Eelief. ness due to site. The essential nucleus is a Y-shaped archean
block, pivoting on Belgrade and extending its limbs to the Bosphorus
and the Negroponte Channel. This tough old block was an
immovable obstacle to the Alpine folding, and diverted the folds in
two directions, the one continuing the normal east-and-west lie of the
system, in the Balkan range, while the other was crushed up against
the western face of the block in a N.W.-S.E. direction.
Western '^^^^ western, or Illyrian, zone may be divided into three typical
Zone. sections — Dalmatian, Albanian, and Ionian — all of which consist
XIII
The Balkan Peninsula
129
essentially of parallel ranges of folded limestone (and similar rock).
In Dalmatia these parallel folds lie N.W.-S.E., in Albania almost
N.-S., and in Ionian Greece again N.W.-S.E. ; and the change in
Albania, which is mainly due to a change in the character of the
rock, has greatly affected the relation of the interior to the
Adriatic.
Dalmatia gives an ideal illustration of the way in which the sea Dalmatia»
invades a mountainous land when it is submerged with its feature-
lines parallel to the invading sea. By every subordinate transverse
valley it invades the main longitudinal valley on the inner side of
the coast range, forming what are called L or T gulfs ; and where
^flctOoman Region
c'w^:krri-
Orographic structure of the Balkan Peninsula.
the folding has been very regular and intense, this gives peculiar
facilities for access to and from the sea. Of course, the coast itself
is generally steep and regular ; but it is protected by the long
islands that lie parallel to it, and these unsubmerged portions of the
original coastal range are separated from one another by parallel
channels that tap the main inner channel at right angles. The
strategic strength of such a coast is illustrated by the history of
such cities as Spalato and Ragusa, " the City of Freedom " ; and the
geographic control is illustrated by the fact that here alone on the
face of the earth has a Slav population become a typical fishing
population.
In the Albanian section the coast-line is so flat and inhospitable, Albania.
and the coast-land is so malarial, that the geographic control has
K
I30
The Continent of Europe
CH.
been exactly the opposite of that in Dalmatia. Not only are the
parallel ranges very numer-
ous and very close together,
especially to the west, accen-
tuating the difficulty of access
to and from the sea ; but
the succession of island and
channel down the Dalmatian
coast is here repeated as a
succession of basin and
saddle. The land is, there-
fore, pitted with tiny montane
basins and lonely glens, each
shut in by a typical Demir
Kapu (" Iron Gate "), which
have made it a typical home
of separate communities with
varied race and creed and
economic or political in-
terest. Progress has been
almost impossible, especially
in the least accessible areas,
some of which even now
have not been thoroughly
explored ; and government
has been peculiarly difficult.
Matters have been further
complicated by the " Karst "
character of the limestone,
for the long, deep, narrow
grooves of the cavernous
limestone are normally either
flooded or stone-dry, the
rivers thus being equally use-
less for navigation and irri-
gation. Where the surface
has sagged over a subter-
ranean cavern, there are
typical sink-holes or dolinas ;
where it has actually tumbled
in, the larger depression, or
polye, may reveal a section
of an underground river.
Many of these underground rivers have no visible outlet, nor are
any portions of their course itself visible except where it crosses a
polye. The few rivers which do remain continuously visible, because
ENGLISH MILES
20
40 60
Dalmatian coast
80 100
XIII The Balkan Peninsula 131
they run along geological faults, as the Drin and the upper Vistritza
and the Viosa, choke up their mouths with debris from the softer
rock.
With approach to the centre of maximum depression or total Ionian
submergence, the channels between the islands and the encroach- Coast,
ments on the land increase in size ; but the parallel lines can still
be distinctly traced, not only in the Pindus range, but also, e.g.^ the
outer line of uplift in the Glossa promontory and the islands of
Corfu and Leucas, Cephalonia and Zacynthos, and inner lines of
depression in the valleys of the Arta and Aspropotamus, the
Ruphia and the Iri. The sandstone promontory of Malia, like the
crystalline promontory of Matapan, suggests — what is actually the
case — that the system is continued through Cerigo and Crete to
Carpathos and Rhodes, and that it has the typical Alpine feature of
a crystalline axis flanked by sedimentary rock (cf. p. 29).
The eastern section of the system in Greece, while still young Eastern
and folded, has come so much under the influence of the old Zone.
crystalline block that it presents some marked diflerences. In the
first place, its up-and-down folds often run east and west, not north
and south as in the Salambria and Hellada valleys, the Othrys and
Parnassus ranges. Again, its soil is less fertile, even in the plains
of Thessaly and Boeotia ; and this greatly influenced the fate of the
Cyclades, which — excepting Naxos — are the barren rocky peaks of
the once continuous mountain-system that linked the peninsulas of
Argolis and Attica to the Ionian peninsulas of Asia Minor. And,
lastly, where this east-and-west lie has been invaded by the north-
and-south lie of the lUyrian folds a very complicated interlacing has
taken place, giving rise to a number of small intermont basins, such
as played such an important part in the history of the early City
States of Classical Greece. The knot of Pindus dominates the
transition area, with rivers draining in all directions, — Vistritza and
Viosa, Arta and Salambria, — thus facilitating access between Thessaly
and Albania, Epirus and Macedon. The Salambria basin gives
easy access by rail over the plain of Thessaly by the grain-market
of Larissa or the old battle-field Phersala (Pharsalos) to the port of
Volo.
The V-shaped archean block is a mass of mountain-crowned River-
plateau which has been carved with deep valleys by the great rivers System,
of the area. These rivers are naturally found mainly in the area of
greatest precipitation, i.e. the west ; but the position of the block
naturally sends most of them into the y^gean. We should expect,
therefore, to find the most important either along the frontiers of
the old block and its Alpine folds, as the Drin and Morava, or
towards the centre of the V, as the Vardar and the Struma. This
general tilt to the ^gean laid the richer lowlands of the area open
to Asia ; but the particular features of the highlands cut one valley
132 The Continent of Europe ch.
very markedly from another, as Thrace is isolated from Macedonia
by the Rhodope mass. The complication of a double lie in the
mountain structure developed a complicated double water-parting
in the river-system, the pivot of which lies where the great obtuse
angle of the lUyrian folds converges on the acute angle of the
Balkans and the Rhodope ; and this happens to be precisely where
Servian, Bulgarian, and Turkish frontiers meet This reflection of
geographical features in the political map suggests that the present
distribution of power might be made satisfactory ; but the com-
plicated relief, by giving each important natural area its own speech
and creed and political interest in antagonism to all the others, is
profoundly adverse.
Bulgarian There are three knots of great peaks round which the rival
Knot. interests are mainly focused. The Bulgarian knot of Muss-Alla
(9600), Rilo, and Vitosha commands the Sofia basin; and it has
rivers draining in all directions — Struma and Isker, Nishava and
Maritza — so that it is really the strategic, and may become the
commercial, centre of the peninsula. The transverse valleys are
too narrow and too steep for any natural traffic N.E.— S.W. except
actually at Sofia, and the same place stands on the line of least
resistance N.W.— S.E. used as the Orient Express route. Sofia,
therefore, is the objective of the projected Bucharest -Salonika
railway, as Trajan's Gate was the old landmark between lUyrium
and the Orient : they command the apex of the Balkan- Rhodope
angle.
"Servian" The Servian knot of Shar Dagh (8850), Shlieb, and the
Knot. Kopaonik commands the Prizren basin ; and it too has rivers
draining in all directions — the Ibar and the Vardar, the Drin and
the " Bulgarian " Morava. But the westward drainage becomes
involved in the Karst limestone, and only the Kopaonik is within
the frontier of modern Servia; so that it is a centre of intrigue
rather than political strength, and its slight commercial importance
centres on the junction of Uskub. The monasteries of Studenitza
and Ipek may perhaps be regarded as storm-centres for this area of
"Old" Servia, which the Turks call Kossovo, the Austrians call
Novibazar, and the Germans called Amselfeld. It touches Monte-
negro, Bosnia,^ Servia, Bulgaria, Albania, and what we call
Macedonia ; it drains to the Adriatic, the Black Sea, and the
JEgean ; it is mainly peopled by Albanians, Servians, and Bulgarians ;
and till lately it was owned by the Turks, but administered by
Austria.
Balkan The normal east-and-west trend of the Balkans does not
Range. materially interfere with the typical north-and-south he of the main
lines of communication, partly because so many rivers flow north-
wards to separate confluences with the Danube that there are really
^ For the Austrian part of this area see pp. 365, 366.
XIII The Balkan Peninsula 133
more obstacles to movement east and west over the Bulgarian
plateau than to movement north and south across the range.
Though typically Alpine, with a crystalline axis flanked by younger
sedimentary rock, they nowhere reach 8000 feet ; they are richly-
wooded rounded hills, rocky only towards the base ; and they are
crossed by at least thirty practicable carriage roads. On the other
hand, the important passes are all at a considerable height, the
Shipka being nearly 4500 feet; and west of that the range is high
enough to hold a good deal of snow up to the middle of summer.
The two chief passes are at the two ends of the Great Balkans, the
Shipka and the Upper Isker ; and the former has been greatly over-
rated, owing to the magnitude of Suleiman's operations in 1876.
As a matter of fact, it has a fairly easy approach both from the
south by the Tunja valley, and from the north by the Yantra valley.
The range makes Bulgaria physically almost an ideal Buffer Balkan
State between Russia and Turkey, but it does encourage movement ^°""
southward rather than northward. The reason for this is that its
" Russian " foreground is a porous limestone plateau largely covered
with loess (cf. p. 24), while its "Turkish" foreground is an alluvial
valley ; and the rivers which descend to the Danube have — in the
normally dry climate — ploughed such narrow steep-sided valleys in
the loess that they accentuate the difficulty of movement east and
west due to their flowing independently of one another to separate
confluences with the Danube. Most of the important towns in
Bulgaria are more or less hidden at the bottom of these canons, and
are placed so as to guard the approaches to the passes — Plevna and
Shumla, Sofia and Philippopolis, Tirnova and Kazanlik.
The main water-parting of the peninsula is so high and so near Double
the Adriatic — within 5 miles in Montenegro — that the westward ^at?r-
rivers would be useless for navigation, even if they did not flow
through Karst limestone ; and, as it is, even those which flow north-
ward or southward before crossing the coast range have not even
important roads up their valleys. But the secondary water-parting
between Shar Dagh and Muss-Alla is exceedingly important, not
only because it throws off rivers northward and southward, but also
because — though in the heart of the area — it has a minimum
elevation, between the Morava and the Vardar, of only 1300 feet.
It is this fact that gives such commercial importance to Uskub.
The height and position of the main water-parting put the Climate,
peninsula climatically into relations with the Black Sea rather than
the Mediterranean ; and the nearness to the vast mass of Asia so
accentuates this that, except along the Dalmatian coast, it has a
much more continental climate than Italy. This is shown in many
ways. For instance, a very large proportion of the area has a
winter temperature under 32° F. for at least two months, and a
summer temperature of over 64° F. for at least two months ; and in
134
The Continent of Europe
CH.
Relief
Effects.
Bainfall.
Regional
Contrasts,
Soil and
Vegeta-
tion.
each case the extreme is accentuated from south to north and from
west to east, the regular winds from the steppes being very cold in
winter and very hot in summer.
Athens gets these winds dry and bracing after crossing the
mountains of Eubcea, while Constantinople gets them raw and
noxious off the Black Sea, one result being that olives cannot be
grown there. The Pelion-Ossa ranges protect the plain of Thessaly,
as Eubcea protects the plain of Attica ; but such relief effects are
only local, the climate being generally "regional," and its continental
tendency being due to distance from the Atlantic, the height of the
noon-day sun in such a latitude, and the influence of Asia on the
prevailing winds.
Again, much the heaviest rainfall occurs in the west and north-
west, thanks mainly to the low-pressure system over the Adriatic
in winter (cf. p. 55), and there is a typical autumn and winter
rainfall round the Ionian and ^gean coasts ; but most of the area
has a summer rainfall, drawn in off the Black Sea by the low-
pressure centre which forms over the Lower Danube basin in early
summer.
Two economic features of the climate are specially important.
The continental exposure to the cold N.E. winds in winter, while
very favourable to agriculture, involves a heavy snowfall and great
liability to sudden frost; for instance, in 1902 a sudden frost on
December 6 froze up 38 steamers — for the whole winter — between
Braila and Sulina, and over 120 grain-barges between Braila
and Ruschuk. On the other hand, the marine exposure to the
south-west involves autumn rains after summer drought ; and this
brings a scourge of malaria both to the lowland areas and to
such montane basins as that of Monastir. Quite roughly it may
be said that the north-west has a Riviera climate, that the east
has an Asiatic winter, and that the south has an African summer,
bananas ripening in the open air round the Kalamata Gulf.
Over the old block and within reach of its influence in eastern
Greece the soil is relatively poor, while amongst the Alpine folds
it is naturally rich ; but the dry exposed uplands are everywhere
barren, while the mountains in the summer-rain area are covered
with dense forests, largely of oak and beech. Where these forests
— with their acorns and mast — are near to rich lowlands which can
produce enormous crops of maize, as in Servia and Walachia, pig-
rearing is the most typical industry, supplemented in Servia by the
growing of plums. On the higher and drier Bulgarian plateau the
typical crop is wheat, and the uncultivated parts of the steppe are
grazed by sheep and cattle, while Roumelia, i.e. lowland Bulgaria,
in the lee of the Balkans, cultivates the silk-mulberry on the
Maritza plain and roses in the Tunja valley, especially at Kazanlik,
i.e. near the mouth of the Shipka ("Wild Rose") Pass. In the
XIII
The Balkan Peninsula
135
The shrinking of Turkey in Europe.
summer-drought area typically Mediterranean crops are grown,
opium and tobacco in Turkey and olives and currants in Greece.
As the inter-continental site has produced great variety of race,
with more or less corresponding variety of speech and creed, so the
complicated relief has increased the racial, religious, and linguistic
difficulties. No other equal area in Europe is so incoherent, so
full of intrigue, so rich in
opportunities for the inter-
ference of outsiders, whether
well-intentioned or otherwise ;
and it is not easy to localise
individual interests. The
purely Turkish population,
the descendants partly of the
Ottoman invaders of the
fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries, and partly of more
recent colonists brought by
the Government from Asia,
is large and compact only
where most "at home," i.e.
on the north-east of the Bulgarian steppe and in the south-east of
Thrace ; and, though the latter has the great advantage of proximity
to Asia Minor, the conditions of life are less congenial, and the
population is small and diminishing. There are not 2,000,000
Turks in the whole peninsula. The Slavonised Yellow men of
Bulgaria, amongst whom the Turkish Yellow men are so numerous,
and who are found in large numbers in Turkey, especially on the
.^gean hinterland, are at least twice as numerous as the Turks.
The Slav population, mainly descended from Carpathian
immigrants of the seventh century, numbers at least 10,000,000;
but its influence is relatively small, partly because of its internal
disunity, and partly because of European fear of the expansion of
Slav power. The internal divisions are based on the natural gravitation
of the Adriatic provinces towards Roman creed and Latin civilisa-
tion, and the natural survival of Greek creed and Byzantine
civilisation in the mountainous interior and the Euxine-^gean
provinces. The adherence of Montenegro to the Greek influence
reflects the position of the peninsular water-parting (cf. p. 133). The
Albanians, who are descended from the primitive lUyrians, and the
Greeks are the oldest inhabitants of the area, the 1,500,000
Albanians being essentially confined to the western interior, while
the 4,500,000 Greeks are massed on the coast-lands and islands.
What we insist on caUing Macedonia is quite a typical area,
though that name is practically unknown on the spot, and though
the area is really two areas, the highland vilayet of Monastir and
Popula-
tion:
Yellow
Popola-
tion:
White.
Mace-
donia.
136
The Continent of Europe
CH.
Language
and Creed.
the lowland vilayet of Salonika. It is profoundly typical of this
dual area that in it there is no Macedonian race, or Macedonian
speech, or Macedonian creed ; there is not even any single
dominant race or dominant speech or dominant creed at all in it.
The population consists of Turks, who rule, Greeks, who trade, and
Bulgars, who till, in about equal proportions. All these types are
bilingual or trilingual, and change their speech temporarily with
their politics. And Greek, Bulgarian, Servian, and Rumanian
churches seem to be all equally busy making converts and
building schools as a basis for claiming a share of the land if, and
when, it is some day divided. The consequent internal dissensions
have been the main cause of the Turkish rule continuing, and the
only excuse for foreign interference, with its absurd subdivisions of
influence. The shepherds and wood-cutters of the highlands have
nothing in common with the lowland tillers of the soil ; the river-
valleys that link the two are isolated by malarial " fans " from the
fertile coast-lands ; and the coast-land, with its linking railway, has
been " unlinked " by successive spheres of foreign influence — British
round Drama, French round Seres, Russian round Salonika, Italian
round Monastir, and Austrian round Uskub.
This confusion of political and economic, social and religious,
elements is quite characteristic of the whole peninsula. There are
a dozen local tongues, of which five have more than local distribu-
tion — Turkish, Bulgarian, Servian, Rumanian, and Greek ; a Greek
man may belong to the Bulgarian Church, and speak Turkish.
Indeed, the latter is so soft and musical that, except for French in
Rumania and German in Servia, it is more or less the lingua franca
of the area ; and it is gradually ousting the harsh and consonantal
Bulgarian tongue from the Bulgarian theatre. There are half a
dozen creeds, of which the Greek, Bulgarian, Moslem, and Mosaic
have widespread political importance, and which help to complicate
the calendar. Thus there are four " years " in Turkey — a Moslem
civil year, a Moslem religious year, a Greek year, a West European
year, some counting by lunar months, and others by solar months ;
Turkish time is kept for natives, and East European time for
foreigners, trains being run by the latter, though the local time-
tables are printed in the former!
Three
Areas.
Rumania
Rumania, which is " included " in the peninsula only on political
grounds, is geographically a tongue of Russia ; and its threefold
division is entirely political in origin. The Walachian plain, with
its forested Carpathian background, inherited from the days of
Trajan an infiltration of South European stock which was alien to all
the surrounding races, and the influence of which is still seen in the
XIII
Rumania
137
M
^m
\w
"^^1-^
fsS
3 f^
^^
] ? ip tp 10 *p up
) Hilas.
The mouths of the Danube.
use of the French language in the country ; and, as it was protected
rearwards by the Carpathians and had the riverine swamps of
the Danube in front, the position was suitable for a Buffer State.
As the essential purpose of the Treaty of Paris (1856) was to curtail
the Russian frontier and — above
all else — to keep it away from the
Danube, it was natural to add to
Rumania the whole of the similar
Moldavian plain, with its forested
Carpathian background, up to the
river Pruth ; and even then to
secure the Danube mouth, in days
before the nominal independence
of Bulgaria, Rumania must possess
not only the best distributaries of
the Danube, but also the hilly
steppe of the Dobruja at least as
far south as Trajan's Wall, /.<;. the
shortest distance between the non-
deltaic part of the river and the Black Sea. As a matter of fact, the
frontier has been carried to the very edge of the Bulgarian plateau.
Tolerated as an independent Power, therefore only as a weak Inter-
guardian of the international waterway, Rumania realised that only national
commercial influence would be allowed to her ; and all her energies
have been devoted to developing the natural resources of the
country and to securing the political peace necessary for such
development. She has, however, considerable political influence,
not only because of the great volume of her trade, but also because
of her racial unity. Though some 3,000,000 Rumanians at various
times took refuge from the Tatars behind the Carpathian wall
(cf p. 35), and though the great schism in the Russian Church
drove a number of " dissenters " into neighbouring lands includ-
ing Rumania, more than 90 p.c of the population is essentially
Rumanian and belongs to the Orthodox Greek Church.
The commercial position is exceptionally good. The sea-coast Com-
includes the best channels of the Danube delta and the old Genoese mercial
port of Kustenje, which is seldom ice-bound in winter, and which, °8"^o^'
therefore, since the construction of the Chernavoda bridge across
the Danube, has given constant access to open water in winter. By
rail there is of course very easy access across the Pruth 77a both
Jassy and Galatz, while the Iron Gates of Orsova and the Tomos
and Roteturm Passes give relatively easy access into Austria-Hungary;
and the wide belt of riverine swamp, which has such a strategic
value, especially in flood-time, forced the main line of rail northward
on to the edge of the loess terrace, where the fertility of the loess
and the central site make it of maximum utility.
138
The Continent of Europe
CH.
Climate.
Towns.
Economic
Geo-
graphy.
The climate is markedly continental, with sudden and treacher-
ous changes of temperature; it ranges from below zero to 120° F.
— though the average range is only about 50° F. — with little or no
spring and, therefore, little or no spring rainfall. This, however, is
compensated by a very heavy snowfall, which is more valuable on
the porous loess than a rainfall double the present fall (20 inches)
would be ; and, as large areas of the loess are rich in humus, the
supply of moisture is economised to the utmost. The result is a
remarkable fertility, the crops of wheat and maize being the heaviest
in Europe, and a considerable variety of products. About one-sixth
of the country is well forested ; and on the outskirts of the deciduous
forests various kinds of stone-fruit, especially damsons, are very
prolific. The steppe, especially between the Sereth and the Pruth,
is excellent natural pasture; and pigs are very numerous in the
oak and beech forests.
The distribution of towns and their railway connections reflect
strongly the Buffer State origin. In Walachia, Craiova and
Bucharest stand facing the Bulgarian fortresses at Vidin and
Ruschuk, but well back from the riverine swamps, while Jassy and
Galatz face Russia from the high firm banks of the Pruth and the
Sereth. The great grain port of Braila (with Macin) is now more
important than Craiova, though the latter is still an important
junction ; and the junction of Ploesti, in the petroleum district,
has become more important than Jassy. But all the railways to
Bucharest — from Craiova, Giurgevo, Pitesti, Ploesti, Kustenje —
approach the city by a single trunk from the west, i.e. the " safe "
side ; and all the typical river-side towns stand on the " home "
bank with regard to Bucharest, i.e. the eastern bank in the west of
the country and the western bank in the east (cf. Craiova and
Slatina, Jassy and Galatz). It is equally typical that, except Sulina
and Galatz, no town is at the mouth of a river, because the lowness
of the left bank of the Danube and the great volume and rapid
descent of the affluents from the Carpathian watershed make their
lower courses too swampy and too much liable to flood to be either
safe or healthy. For the same reason practically all the river-side
towns are at the few points where the loess terrace actually touches
the river.
In the economic geography of the country several points are of
special importance. The first is that it is really a non-Balkan area,
and its financial position is that of an ordinary European Power ; so
that its stable finance encourages foreign capital for the development
of the area, which is about equal to England, and has a population
(7,000,000) that has increased more than 40 p.c. in the last 40
years. This development runs on three special lines — agricultural,
pastoral, and mineral. About 40 p.c. of the area is under cereals,
wheat and maize covering 5,000,000 acres apiece, with a yield in
XIII Rumania 139
each case of perhaps 100,000,000 bushels; and the wheat is not
only peculiarly heavy to the bushel, but also peculiarly rich in
gluten (cf. p. 207). The pastoral industry has been concerned largely
with export of live stock ; but the great opening is for dairying (in-
cluding the raising of bacon), for at least 3,000,000 acres of the
Danubian swamp could be converted into most valuable polders
quite free from the typical local danger of drought. The mineral
industry is concerned mainly with petroleum and salt. The oil-
zone extends over the whole anticline of the Carpathian foot-hills
(300 miles X 10); the wells are very easily bored, 400 yards being
an exceptional depth ; and the quality of the oil is excellent, that at
Bacau coming to the surface almost pure. The value of the total
yield 20 years ago was about ;^ioo,ooo; 10 years ago it was
;^5oo,ooo ; and the average for the last 5 years has been about
;^2, 000,000. More than half is raised in the Prahova district,
along the Ploesti-Predeal railway; but each of the neighbouring
districts, Dambovitza and Buzeu, produces about 40,000 out of the
total 1,352,000 tons.
The distribution of population and facilities for transport, of Distribu-
course, reflect these conditions, Walachia being in both respects *j°^ °^
much more important than Moldavia. Walachia is a typical jio^
agricultural area, even its towns being really huge villages with
typically agricultural suburbs ; and the density per square mile is
only 130 with the towns included as against 102 without them !
There are two chief zones of density — the old zone along the
Carpathian foot-hills, where both the Walachian ^ oil and the
Moldavian salt are found, and the new zone along the Danube,
where commerce gives a high density (75) considering the large
area of swamp. Forestry is an important industry at the back of
the upland zone, as fishing is on the front of the riverine zone — sea
and river fisheries being focused under Government control at Tulcea.
It is partly due to the use of oil-residue for fuel that transport both
by rail and by steamer is so good in spite of the practical absence of
coal ; and perhaps nothing could illustrate the important relations
of the water and rail transport better than the relative size of the
"great" shipping port of Sulina (7103) and the rail and river
junction of Turnu Severin (120,348), the latter being the only town
except Bucharest (292,000) with a population of more than 80,000
(Jassy).
There are several other largish river ports, e.g. Giurgevo, and River
Galatz and Braila have populations of over 60,000 ; but they are all Porta,
unimportant compared with swamp-girt Sulina, with its massive jetties
and artificial channel. In the last fifty years the deltaic channel has
been shortened, i.e. straightened, by some 25 miles, and now has its
^ Salt is also found in Walachia, e.^. at Ploesti and Campalung, as oil in
Moldavia, e.^. at Bacau.
I40
The Continent of Europe
CH.
depth maintained 50 p.c. lower (20 feet). Inside the great jetties
there is smooth water when the wildest storms are raging on the
Black Sea ; along the new channel, though 1 2,000,000 tons of mud
were estimated to be carried through it in 19 10, it was never less
than 2 1 feet deep except for four days in August ; the risks and
delays of river navigation are avoided ; and, above all things, the
International Authority guarantees absolute equality of treatment to
all vessels, and provides thirty floating grain-elevators. In the last
five years, then, about half the total amount of grain shipped by the
Danube has been trans-shipped (from lighters) at Sulina for export,
and the percentage has been as high at 57. At this swamp-girt
depot, with no exports of its own, no local industries, no possible
local development of agriculture, British interests are paramount,
460 out of its 1300 vessels in 1910 (representing 1,000,000 out of
2,275,000 tons) being British.
The reasons for the choice of the particular branch are very
KnitrfWitlktrae.
Lower Danube.
significant Though the river falls only some 120 feet in the 600
miles between Orsova and Sulina, the regime guarantees a more or
less violent current, as might be inferred from the way in which left-
bank " tributaries " between Galatz and Sulina have been dammed
back to form lakes. This suggests, too, that the Kilia branch, which
carries two-thirds of the total volume, has also the strongest current.
For that reason it was avoided, as was the main stream of the St.
George branch ; and the Sulina stream was chosen just because it
carries only one-twelfth of the volume, with less force and less silt.
The long jetties seen in the illustration, like similar ones at Newcastle
(cf. p. 240), not only ensure river-silt being carried well out to sea
and prevent sea-silt from entering the river, but also — as said above
— form a safe refuge in the worst weather.
Bulgaria
Frontiers. Bulgaria includes three distinct areas — plateau, plain, and
mountain basin; and, considering its "Buffer State" origin, its
XIII Bulgaria 141
frontiers are remarkably natural. The plateau (r. 200 miles x 60),
lying parallel with the Danube, has an inhospitable water frontier,
for the sea-coast is dangerous and stormy, and the right bank of the
Timok-Danube is a steep scarp, the great fortress of Silistria
occupying a typical piece of steep-faced crag. East of the Silistrian
frontier the Dobruja is so nearly desert that one may see camel
transport ; and south of the Timok the Stara-Planina has its most
used pass (St. Nicholas) at a height of over 4500 feet. The
Roumelia plain has somewhat more artificial frontiers, but even here
there is a large proportion of natural barrier. The Stranja Balkans
(or Istranja Dagh) in the south-east are very difficult country, and
the Rhodope Balkans (or Despoto Dagh) are so compact and so
inaccessible from the south tliat Roumelia can get access to the
.^gean only via the Maritza valley. Indeed, the old block is so
much TCiortDagh (real "mountain") than Balkan'^ ("forested alp")
that it remains a country apart ; the sedimentary flanks of the
crystalline crest are covered with forests, in which bears and
numerous packs of wolves are found ; and their human inhabitants
include such interesting relics as the Pomaks, or Moslem Bulgarians,
whose log-built huts are typically Mongol in character.
The precise line of frontier, with its double row of huts and posts, Inter-
is very involved, partly because of the intricate relief and partly national
because of the interference of outside Powers in such treaties as
those of San Stefano and Berlin. But the difficulty and im-
permanence of the actual line have been compensated by the unity
and conservatism of the people. The mass of these are Bulgarians,
i.e. Slavonised Yellow men ; and the Slavonic veneer is specially
prominent in their political attitude and relations. For instance, it
was Russia that — with or without an eye to the Bosphorus — won for
them their freedom, and trained their army ; their language has
been strongly affected by Russia, and they still use the Russian
characters in writing. Again, in consequence of a political demand
for religious independence, the National Church was declared in 1870
to be outside the Orthodox Communion. And the results of the
Servo-Bulgarian war, with the subsequent interference of Austria, have
left the people as hostile to Austria and Servia on purely political
grounds as they are really to Russia by temperament and inheritance.
The climate over each of the three great divisions is more Climate,
severe than in similar latitudes elsewhere in Europe, but varies with
the relief. On the exposed plateau of Bulgaria proper the extremes,
both seasonal and diurnal, are great, and the changes of temperature
are very sudden ; the greatest extremes and the most sudden
changes are in winter, when - 24° F. may be registered. The
natural vegetation here is mainly of a steppe character, bulbous and
^ Balkan means literally " stony hills," but is always associated with wood and
pasture.
142 The Continent of Europe ch.
umbelliferous ; and the summer rains allow large quantities of
grain to be grown, especially wheat for export and maize for home
consumption. The average value of the grain crop for the last five
years has been about ^14,000,000. The sheltered Roumelian
plain is much warmer than the Bulgarian plateau, and has more or
less Mediterranean vegetation, roses and tobacco being special crops,
while even rice is grown round Philippopolis. The mountain-basins
of Samakov and Sofia in the Isker valley, and Radomir and
Kustendil in the Struma valley, are more equable than the plateau
and less equable than the plain, the temperature seldom exceeding
86° F. or falling below 0° F. ; but the vegetation in the northern
basins is sub-Alpine, while in the southern, especially the Kustendil
basin, it is distinctly richer. Extremes decrease along the sea-coast,
but the Black Sea influence is otherwise '* Euxine " (used euphe-
mistically for *' Axine," i.e. inhospitable) ; and the violence of the
winds may be gauged from the relative safety of the two ports.
Though access to the food-supplies of the plateau made Varna a
fairly good Franco-British depot in the Crimean War, it is a very
poor harbour, shallow and dangerous during N.E. storms. Burgas,
though only a roadstead, is quite safe because sheltered by the
Emineh Balkans, and is never ice-bound. The fact that Varna
is occasionally ice-bound, like the average annual temperature
(52° F.) and like the calm dry autumn, shows that the climate is
predominantly continental.
Tho The curious mixture of Slav and Mongol in the Bulgarians
Bulgars. proper, who are found mainly in the north and the west, is leading
to a very interesting development of the country. They have
assimilated many Slav traits and customs, but put virility into all of
them. Their oval faces, straight noses, and stocky frames are as
typical as their patience, perseverance, and devotion to the spade.
They are stolid and democratic individualists, who have learnt to
stand alone, and whose steppe qualities are as obvious on the moral
side as on the material, e.g. their sheepskin cloaks, bagpipes, raw-
hide boots, love of meat and cheese and butter, and the nomad
habit of wearing all their wealth in a portable form on their persons.
They are so much the best type in the whole peninsula that they
will probably outlast all their rivals. Their Slav aptitude for
combination, and the Mongol tenacity with which they pursue
national aims, appear specially in their attitude to agriculture and
transport. Agriculture hitherto has been greatly hampered by the
insecurity under Turkish rule, the ignorance of the cultivators, want
of capital, of communication, and even of population — for the
passage of Turkish armies through the country in the wars with
Austria, Poland, and Russia led to constant emigration ; but
co-operation and education are revolutionising the industry, and the
Government makes great efforts to concentrate all the trade of the
XIII Bulgaria 143
country on their own seaports of Varna and Burgas. Only at
Ruschuk and Somovit do railways tap the Danube, even river-ports,
such as Lorn Palanka and Nikopoli, and the river-side fortresses
of Vidin and Silistria being neglected. And it is partly this that
accounts for the chief textile centres being essentially inside the
long " horseshoe " of railway that runs from Varna via Shumla and
Plevna to Sofia and from Sofia via Philippopolis and Eski-Zagra to
Burgas. For instance, the great woollen centres are Gabrovo and
Sliven ; and all Government employees must wear the — really
admirable — native "homespuns."
The pastoral industry, as in Rumania, is making great progress. Pasture,
but in the direction of meat rather than dairy products, though a
large amount of sheeps'-milk cheese is made. The presence of real
" Balkans," i.e. rounded hills well forested and with large areas of
pasture, not only protects Bulgaria from severe summer drought,
but also accounts for the fine grain and flavour of the meat. The
mutton is equal to the best Welsh type, and the beef to the very
best that comes from either Chicago or the Plate ; and both labour
and stock are abundant and cheap, while the facilities for transport
to Varna and Burgas are so good that produce can be delivered in
London within ten days.
The typical industry in Roumelia is rose-growing, though it is Roses,
mainly confined to the Tunja valley, i.e. the sheltered gully between
the Balkans and the Karaja Dagh. Here nearly 200 villages, at an
average height of 1300 feet, are devoted to the work, cultivating
more than 15,000 acres of roses ; these yield some 25,000,000 lbs.
of roses, 200 lbs. of roses being equivalent to i oz. of attar. Most
of the stills are at Karlovo and Kazanlik, at the mouth of the
Shipka (" Wild Rose ") Pass.
There are innumerable distilleries and flour-mills in the grain indiis-
areas, saw-mills on the Rhodope and Balkan torrents, and tanneries tries,
between the forest and the steppe ; but the country in the meantime
is essentially non-industrial, one result of this being the entire
absence of large towns. Only Sofia (83,000) has more than
50,000 inhabitants; and it has, in addition to its enormous political,
strategic, and commercial importance, easy access to the only
coal (lignite) worked in the country — at Pernik. It shares, therefore,
practically all the little industries of the area — tanning, like Plevna
and Shumla; manufacturing the local tobacco, like Philippopolis and
Ruschuk; weaving, like Sliven and Samokov, Gabrovo and Karlovo.
The climate is much more suited to the working of wool and silk
than of cotton ; but cotton is spun as well as woven at Varna, and
— like the silk — can even be produced in the country, e.g. round
Haskovo. The same area also produces various oil-seeds, e.g. anise
and sesame, while colza is produced along the Danube, e.g. round
Ruschuk and Sistova.
144
The Continent of Europe
CH.
Servia
Site. Servia is not much more than half the size of Bulgaria, and is
greatly handicapped by want of access to the sea, the only com-
pensations being that it sits astride the Orient Express route, that a
considerable proportion (over 400 miles) of its frontier is navigable
river — Drina, Save, Danube, Timok, — and that its shape has such a
relation to that of the whole peninsula that it has a certain equality
of interest in all directions.
Access. Though so much of the frontier is nominally artificial, it is by
no means easy of access, the Western Balkans, the Rhodope block,
the Alpine region of Zlatibor all being rough and formidable. Even
The Kazan or Klisura Canal, near Orsova.
Frontien.
the apparently easy line of access by the upper valley of the Morava
is really a 50-mile gorge, in some places 3000 feet deep and so
narrow that both road and railway are hewn out of the solid rock.
This is complicated by the relief, which is largely a chaos of
mountain ends — Dinaric, Carpathian, Rhodope, Albanian — falling
into two main blocks, east and west of the Morava gorge, so that
movement north or south parallel to the gorge is almost impossible.
These conditions minimise the danger of the through-route in time
of war without minimising its advantages in time of peace ; but of
course they are as adverse to commercial development as they are
favourable to guerilla warfare.
The precise features of the frontier lines and zones are of some
interest. Thus, the high land towards the north-west is desolate
limestone, while the low land beyond — between the Drina and the
Save — is typical fen (the Machva) ; and the liability to flood which
is implied in this, and which is largely due to the windings of the
XIII
Servia
145
Save, has a real strategic value as far east as Belgrade. There the
Danube is a mile and a half wide, and the only bridge is across
the Save. The Kazan, or "Cauldron," Pass through which the
Danube cuts above the Iron Gates of Orsova, and the peaceful aims
of Rumania, are safeguards on the north-east, and even on the
Bulgarian bank of the Timok the population is strongly Rumanian,
even in blood and speech. The great difficulty, on the other hand,
is in the existence of two side-entrances to the main valley, the
Ibar valley from the west, and the Nishava valley from the east, the
headwaters of which rise well beyond the Servian frontier.
The permanence of the geographic control here is remarkable. Geo-
Pompey considered the key to the peninsula to be the confluence graphic
of the Ibar with the Servian Morava ; and, of course, the southern
valley of the Ibar basin is the famous Kossovo Polye (cf. p. 132).
The medieval tsars of Servia considered the key to be at Krushevatz,
commanding the confluence of the Servian and Bulgarian Moravas.
The two great historic lines of invasion — from the south and the
east, i.e. by the Vardar route and Leskovatz and the Nishava route
and Pirot — converge on the old routes from Durazzo and Belgrade
at the railway junction of Nish. And the only satisfactory site for ■
a capital was that occupied by the old capital of Kraguyevatz, in
the heart of the Shumadia (" Forest "), on the flank of the great
road north of all its various side-entrances and cross-routes, and
within easy reach of the navigable part of the Morava, i.e. north of
Chupriya.
The worst possible site for a capital is that of Belgrade. A Belgrade.
spur of the Avala plateau at the confluence of the Save and the
Danube, commanding the crossing of great N.-S. and E.-W. routes,
on the frontier of the kingdom, was
a good site for a Beograd ("White
Castle ") ; and it is now an excellent
site for a great rail and river junction,
as it was a great collecting and dis-
tributing centre in the palmy days of
river-trade on the Save and the Drave,
the Danube and the Theiss, all of
which pivot on the Morava -Danube
confluence. But for a capital it has
only drawbacks, being strategically liable to surprise and politically
exposed to intrigue. And so, though it is more important as a
route-centre than any other place in the peninsula, it is also more
significant than any other as a storm-centre.
The chaos of forested heights — with their plethora of wild life, Economic
e.g. bears and boars, wolves and lynxes — is threaded by innumerable ^^^^
long, deep, torrent-cut gorges, such as that on the Morava, along
the floor of which there is often a rich strip of flat land, especially
Site of Belgrade.
graphy.
146 The Continent of Europe ch.
on the Tertiary formation of the Shumadia ; and the northward
slope of the country makes the latter also less exposed than the
southern watershed to the bitter N. and N.E. winds. The lower
Morava basin, therefore, produces very large crops of maize (for
home use) and wheat (for export), and vines and plum-trees grow
luxuriantly with very little care, while the beech and oak forests
fatten enormous herds of swine. Indeed, it is said that, since the
days of Prince Milosh, the Pig-driver, the foreign policy of Servia
has always turned on pigs ; and the Austrian sanitary precautions
against swine-fever — from imported pigs — seem certainly to vary
curiously with the political tension. Cf. p. 279.
Serbs. As the only country in Europe except Switzerland that has no
sea-coast, Servia must have somewhat delicate and difficult relations
with its neighbours ; and its command of the great road might have
made it a great nation. But it has failed to use the opportunity,
mainly because its population is so essentially Slav. Fully 90 p.c
are Serbs, typical Slavs, with great gifts for co-operation and
an utter lack of initiative. They live in villages, not towns ; and
the villages are largely communal, as the political instinct is
patriarchal All sons are equal ; there are no rich and no paupers ;
there is no nobility or even middle class ; and so both natural
leaders and natural ambitions are absent. It is a nation of self-
contained, non-progressive tillers of the soil, whose women are
taught that it is more important to till their parents' land than to
find a home for themselves. Such a people have no chance against
such thrifty and industrious rivals as the Bulgarians, or against
such intellectual and adaptable rivals as the Rumanians, whilst the
overwhelming influence of Austria makes even contraband gravitate
north, and imposes German as the commercial language. Historically,
too, these Serbs are the descendants of the vanquished at the battle
of Kossovo (a.d. 1389), who were prepared to accept the dominion
of the Turk when the virile amongst them retreated into the dark
forests of Montenegro.
Indus- It is not surprising, then, that they have entirely failed to
tries. develop their land. For instance, it is rich in minerals, especially
amongst the old rock of the Pek basin. The Romans worked
gold and silver, iron and lead ; and the merchant princes of Ragusa
made fortunes out of the Servian mines. But to-day beyond the
mining — mainly by foreigners, especially Belgians — of a little lead
in the north-west (e.^. at Krupem), some iron in the north-east (e.g.
at Maidan-pek, " Pek-Mines "), and poor coal along the Danube
(e.g. at Dobra), the mineral wealth is grossly neglected. The same
is true of other industries. There is home-weaving of the local
flax and the very abundant supplies of wool — for Servia has more
sheep for her population than any other country in Europe ; plum-
brandy is distilled, and prunes are dried ; honey and bees-wax are
XIII Montenegro 147
collected ; a little wine is made, and beet-sugar is refined. But
the object is essentially to provide a minimum of necessaries and
comforts as a basis for a maximum of idleness and amusement.
The beloved myths and legends, like the picturesque costumes
and the characteristic dances, make the typical environment as
far as possible that of the Great Empire in the days before 1389.
Montenegro
This little kingdom owes its name to the dark forests that in Inter-
the fourteenth century covered the heights in which those Serbs national
found refuge who would not submit to the Turks. Like so many * ^°°^*
units within this peninsula, and so few elsewhere in Europe, it has
a considerable section of river frontier, on the Boyana and the
Tara ; and, like Bulgaria, it has only indifferent roadsteads on its
coast-line — Antivari and Dulcigno. It owes to Russia this bit of
coast and its most fertile lowlands, in the Moracha valley north of
Podgoritsa (" Mountain-Foot "), and adherence to the Greek Church
increases the influence of Russia; but Austria holds the natural
harbour of Cattaro, which gives best access to Cetinje, only 10 miles
inland, and the marriage of Princess Helena to the King of Italy
did much to weaken the Russian influence.
The bleak and now disforested mountains rise to a height of Economic
8000 feet in an area not twice the size of Lancashire, and give the ®®°"
country a very intricate river-system, characterised by profound ^ ^ ''
gorges, innumerable caves, and subterranean channels. The latter
are specially common in the Karst area, which covers nearly all
the northern half of the country, but, of course, are absent from
the schist formation of the Brda highland, where the floors of the
Tara and Lim valleys are fairly fertile. The lowlands along the
coast and in the Moracha and Zeta valleys are still more fertile,
and — with a typical Mediterranean climate — specialise in fruit-
growing. Apart, then, from the sheep and goats of the highlands
and the fish of Lake Scutari, the country is very poorly sup-
plied with food -products ; and, as the diflficult communication
inland is accentuated in winter by the heavy snowfall, hfe is
very hard.
In dress and bearing the men are typical mountaineers, pledged People.
to freedom and descended from warrior ancestors for 500 years
back. Their national dress includes all their weapons, so that
they are walking arsenals, and the whole force can be mobilised
at a few minutes' notice. But, in these days of peace, with no
possible lines of development, industrial or otherwise, they have
become little better than picturesque loafers, and their women have
become mere drudges and pack animals, while the value of imports
is three or four times that of exports {e.g. sumach and smoked mutton),
148 The Continent of Europe ch.
and emigration is inevitable. For this the acquisition of a coast
has given encouragement ; but the survival of the little State was
essentially due to its isolated position and its intricate relief.
Turkey
Site. Turkey has one great natural advantage over all the other
Balkan Powers ; it spans the whole peninsula from the Black Sea
to the Adriatic, and that in such a way that it has 1400 miles of
coast facing east, south, and west, and including at the most
critical point one of the finest natural harbours in the world. The
strength of this position may be gauged by the satisfaction with
which it has been accepted by those European Powers whose
foreign policy is adverse to the expansion of Slav influence towards
the Mediterranean.
Coast. The physical and political details, however, rather complicate
the question. The 150 miles of Black Sea coast are inhospitable,
and as far south as Midia the Istranja Dagh form a difficult
hinterland to commerce or invasion. The European shore of the
Sea of Marmora proper is scarcely better, though the Rodosto
roadstead has fairly good access inland to the Ergene valley ; but
the coastal population is so largely Greek and Armenian that there
is a distinctly anti-Turkish bias. The isolation of the Gallipoli
peninsula and the inhospitable coast of the Saros Gulf, again,
minimise the importance of the Dardanelles, as somewhat similar
conditions affect the whole northern coast of the ^gean, though
Kavala (" Horseshoe ") Bay is sheltered by the island of Thasos,
and Dede-Agach is a convenient point from which to tap the
Maritza valley. So the Peli peninsula is some protection to
Durazzo, as Cape Glossa is to Avlona ; but the coastal torrents
here bring down enormous quantities of silt into a sea that is already
very shallow, and incidentally put a premium on malaria.
Belief. The character of the relief emphasises the essentials of the site
control, for the lie of the land divides the whole belt into more or
less parallel ridge and river-valley trending practically from north to
south — Albanian, Perim, Rhodope, and Istranja crests, Vardar,
Struma, Mesta, and Tunja-Maritza valleys. Unfortunately, the
malarial estuaries make the mouths of these rivers almost useless
except in the more exposed east, where Enos stands actually on the
mouth of the Maritza and has access to Adrianople by river during
the winter rains ; but even there the shallowness of the river in
summer and the healthier site well to windward of the estuary divert
the mass of the traffic by rail to Dede-Agach, as the Arta valley
traffic is diverted — by road — to Prevesa. Durazzo was made the
terminus of the Via Egnatia just because it was rendered impreg-
nable by its surrounding swamps.
XIII Turkey 149
What may roughly be called Thrace is the most prosperous Thrace,
part of the area. Pivoting on the Rhodope, with its specifically
Moslem population, it gets some political and commercial stability
from its nearness to Constantinople, and is cut off from the in-
fectious unrest of the Vardar basin by the very difficult belt of
country immediately west of the Mesta. It is essentially agricultural,
with a very rich soil and a climate very favourable to the mulberry,
large gardens of which — interspersed with vineyards — cover the
hilly " peninsula " between the Maritza and the Arda, especially
round Adrianople, Ortakoi, and Mustapha Pasha, and the hills
west of the Maritza-Ergene confluence, especially round Soufli and
Dimotika. On the well-watered lowlands rice and cotton, opium
and madder (" Turkey-red "), are also grown, but silk is the great
product east of the Rhodope, as very excellent tobacco is west of
it, e.g. along the railway route from Gumuljina to Xanthi.
Where the confluences of the Tunja and the Arda make the Adrian-
Maritza navigable for small boats in winter and spring, is obviously <*P^®-
the most important site in the vilayet ; but Adrianople has
only the shadow of its old importance. In the days when traffic
between Europe and the Levant and even Egypt went by land
rather than by sea, it was a real commercial metropolis ; but the
annexation of Eastern Roumelia by Bulgaria, the consequent
diversion of traffic via Burgas, the critical position so near the new
frontier, the growth of other towns in the vilayet such as Soufli
and Kirk Kilisse (" Forty Churches "), and their consequent wish
to trade direct with Constantinople and Salonika and even with
the outside world via Dede-Agach, have all combined to undermine
the influence and importance of the old capital. It remains a relic
of the past, thoroughly Oriental in appearance, with its wooden
houses and crooked lanes, and in its distribution of people in
separate quarters, Turkish, Greek, and Bulgarian ; but its old
importance may be gauged from the choice of it as a residence
alike by Hadrian and by the Turkish sultans during the century
before the fall of Constantinople.
What we miscall Macedonia consists of the lowland vilayet of Mace-
Salonika and the highland vilayet of Monastir ; and the former <ionia«
includes the difficult land west of the Mesta referred to above.
The difficulty of it is due less to the Perim heights than to the
Struma and Mesta torrents. Both are typically torrential, with
profound gorges and malarial estuaries and flood-plains, and the
Struma not only expands into lakes which absolutely block normal
east-and-west traffic. Lake Takhyno being 20 miles long by 5 miles
wide, but is so torrential along the central part of its 225 miles
course that there is no continuous road along its banks at all.
But, again, the soil is very fertile, growing opium and oil-seeds,
cotton and rice, and tobacco. The tobacco of the hinterland, e.g.
ISO
The Continent of Europe
CH.
Political
Diffi-
culties.
Albania.
Isolation.
Seres and Drama, is as good as that of Xanthi, while that of the
coast-lands round Kavala Bay is the finest cigarette tobacco in the
world. The Vardar basin is also very fertile, and specialises in
silk and tobacco, the " Uskub " tobacco being quite as good as that
from Seres and Drama. Other important products are cotton and
opium ; but the latter suffers from the greater exposure to north
and north-east winds in spring, when there is no snow to protect
the plants. The cotton is responsible for a group of textile centres
along the steep face of the Kara Tash, e.g. Karaferia and Vodena ;
and on the " Kampania " marsh, between which and the Kara Tash
scarp the Monastir railway runs via the Vistritza valley, there is a
typical cultivation of red pepper, mainly round Vodena.
The progress of the area, however, is greatly impeded by its
political difficulties (cf. p. 136), which are largely due to the
predominance by character, if not by numbers, of the Bulgarians
amongst a polyglot and heterogeneous collection of mutually
antagonistic Greeks and Turks, Serbs and Albanians. These
difficulties are more or less focused at Uskub (Skoplje), which
was the Roman capital of Dardania. It still controls the routes
which guided the Roman choice — between the Shar Dagh and
Kara Dagh into Kossovo, i.e. the route of the Novibazar railway,
and round the Shar Dagh via Kalkandale to Durazzo (Dyrrachium) ;
but now the route east of the Kara Dagh via Vranja and that south
via Koprulu (" The Bridge ") are more important than the Adriatic
connection, and of course the roads are of no importance compared
with the railway.
The famous Via Egnatia ran up the Skumbi valley and round
the northern ends of the great lakes — Okhrida, Prespa, and Ostrovo
— to Thessalonica ; and this ancient thoroughfare seems to have
proved a line of relative civilisation between northern and southern
Albania, which centre respectively round the Drin and the Viosa.
As we have seen, the shallow sea and malarial coast-lands — aided
by the bora in spring — more or less isolate even the lower part of
this western coast from Prevesa to Dulcigno ; and the Akrokeraunian
scarp is quite impassable. But a few river-mouths, especially in the
lee of islands and peninsulas, are used, e.g. Durazzo and Avlona,
Hagioi Saranta and Prevesa ; and the hinterland of some of these
gives access to important routes. For instance, both the Viosa and
the Arta basins tap Yanina and the Metsovo Pass, as both the Drin
and the Boyana — which now acts partly as a distributary of the
Drin via Scutari (Skodra) — give access round Shar Dagh, and as
both the Skumbi via Elbasan and the Semeni via Berat give access
to the lake-plateau and Monastir.
These adverse conditions combine with the Karst limestone and
the heavy snowfall {Albania, i.e. apparently "Snowy Land") to
make the interior of Albania very difficult of access ; and this is
XIII Turkey 151
reflected in the character of the people, and is emphasised by their
difficult language — which is older than Classical Greek — and their
complex social institutions. Indeed, some parts of northern
Albania, e.g. the foothills of Shlieb, are to this day unexplored.
Of course, conditions are further complicated by the fact that the
physical and climatic divide from Shar Dagh to Pindus is neither
an ethnic nor a political divide, Albania proper overlapping into
Kossovo and Macedonia.
West of the physical divide the land may be subdivided into Relief,
three sections — northern, central, and southern. The northern area
is profoundly intricate, especially round the Prokletia ("Accursed")
Mountains, which are often snow-covered till August ; and it is in
this area that the least-known districts of all Europe are found, even
round relatively large towns such as Diakova (12,000) and Ipek
(15,000). The central area is much less difficult and more fertile,
especially in the Semeni valley, where the Berat district grows very
good tobacco ; but the southern area again becomes exceedingly
rough and intricate except round Yanina (22,000), where the lake-
plain, like the Arta lowland, is fertile. The Yanina lake itself
drains by subterranean channels into the Adriatic.
The natural products of the area are surprisingly important. Products,
considering its backward state politically and economically. Not
only are there valuable forests of valonia-oak ^ and beech, e.g. round
the beautiful lake of Skutari (half the size of Middlesex, and very
rich in " sardines "), but almost the entire " bread " supply of the
Dalmatian coast and islands comes from Albania I The mineral
wealth, too, is unquestionably great ; but, as communication nearly
everywhere is confined to bridle paths, there can be no development
of either mining or industry. Indeed, even the famous old industry
in arms, especially yataghans, though it still survives at Skutari and
Prizren and Diakova, is languishing owing to the import of revolvers ;
and the possibility of developing the country by railways is very
doubtful, for the relief is profoundly unfavourable to railway con-
struction.
The people call themselves Shkupetar (probably " Rock- People.
Dwellers"), and it is certainly their rocky environment that has
preserved them through the centuries in practical independence.
For they are the most ancient existing race in Europe, the Ghegs
of the north being apparently the descendants of the earliest
" Aryan " immigrants, who may be called Illyrians, while the Tosks
(or Tuscans) of the south seem to have a similar relation to the
prehistoric Epirots or Pelasgians. The number of Slavonic place-
names confirms the historic accounts of Slav, Bulgarian, and
Walachian intrusion or conquest ; but the Ghegs and Tosks proper
have maintained themselves in practical purity, as in practical
^ Valonia takes its name from the old port of Avlona or Valona.
152 The Continent of Europe ch.
autonomy, west of a line that may be roughly drawn from Mitrovitsa
via Pristina, Uskub, Monastir, and Kastoria, to Yanina. Inside
this line they remain scarcely touched by outside influence except
along the Via Egnatia, where, too, the population is strongly
Bulgarian, especially round Lake Okhrida ; and amongst their
primitive virtues is absolute fidelity.
.pjjg Even the fierce and lawless Ghegs, steeped in ignorance and
Ghegs. superstition, are "faithful unto death" ; and, as they are magnificent
soldiers, they have special value in the eyes of the Turkish rulers,
and have for ages supplied the sultans' bodyguard. But they are
Moslems and subjects of Turkey voluntarily, and only because that
is the easiest way of getting the right to carry arms — for the purpose
of "vendetta," which is often a matter of race; as a rule, they pay
no taxes, and are not subject to conscription. So deadly are these
blood-feuds still that competent observers believe that only 25 p.c.
of the purely Highland population die natural deaths.
The T^^ Tosks, though still feudal Highlanders, are not quite so
Tosks. primitive, for they have come under the influence of the Greeks
and of the essentially peaceful Walachians of the Zygos-Pindus
area, once known as "Great Walachia." They are, therefore, less
pastoral and more agricultural, less exclusive and more talkative,
just as they wear kilts,^ while the Ghegs wear trews ; and, if only
they were educated, they would take a place appropriate to their
essential character. Already their fidelity and versatility make
them much sought after as dragomans and kavasses. But want of
education is a terrible drawback, and the existing conditions only
accentuate racial troubles.
Beligion. Nearness to Italy via the less inhospitable Adriatic coast has
linked the non-Moslem portions of the Ghegs to the Roman
Church ; and, while Turkish is taught in the Moslem schools,
Italian is taught in the Christian schools, — no instruction being
allowed in Albanian and no book being allowed to be printed in it.
The more inhospitable Akrokeraunian coast of the ^'gean has
thrown the non-Moslem portion of the Tosks to the Greek Church ;
so that in the occasional times of so-called peace even the Christian
part of this " race born to arms " has no religious bond, as it has
no common sentiment or authority or economic life. The Greek
influence here, however, like the commercial importance of Yanina
(cf. Adrianople, p. 149), has decreased since the ceding of Arta and
Thessaly to Greece.
Turkish The development of such an area by railways presents very grave
^^®- difficulties, physical and political, economic and historic. On the
one hand, there is the character of the ruling race as a patriarchal
race reduced to a sedentary environment. Under patriarchal control
' These kilts are called "Greek," but the Greeks probably originally copied them
from the Tosks.
XIII
Turkey
153
sons grow up at home, and even as fathers of families remain
under paternal rule ; they thus learn to obey, but not to rule. This
may account for their self-control, their dignity, their race-pride, e.g.
they may strike, but they never squabble ; but it certainly does not
ease the political difficulty, even if it excuses them for ruling badly.
On the other hand, the proposed schemes, as represented on the Proposed
Railways.
EmeryWalker sc.
Existing and proposed railways.
illustration, are all more or less tainted with political motives.
To any one but a special pleader, it seems impossible to believe
in the commercial future of railways which, like the proposed
"Russian" line, would have a bridge of 250 feet every 6000 yards
and a tunnel of 450 feet every 1800 yards. Further, the Nish-
Medua line would serve only a " Mediterranean " climate, from
which typically Mediterranean products are scarcely likely to go to
Mediterranean markets; and it goes through a curiously marked
154
The Continent of Europe
CH.
belt of Slav population, and deviates to the centre of all the old
military and political turmoil — Prizren. Similarly, the Austrian line
taps Novibazar and the Ibar valley. The Italian line would revive
the old Fia Egnatia route ; and, if the Turkish Government would
allow the Hellenic Railways Company to complete the 70 miles
necessary to link up their line with the Turkish system, this would
give the shortest through-route from Central Europe to the Suez
Canal.
Greece
World Greece gives some exceedingly interesting aspects of Historical
Eolation. Geography, as accounting for the special development of a particular
people in a particular place. Its world-relation is best expressed
climatically, as in latitudes of warm-temperate summer-drought, where
northern intruders — Pelasgi, Achaeans, Dorians — would first be
stimulated, and then over-stimulated, by the high percentage of ultra-
violet rays in the sunlight. With accumulated energy from the steppe,
and yet less power of or need for work in the more southern latitudes,
these early intruders would combine energy with leisure, which is
the geographical basis of all art. But from 400 B.C. to a.d. 600
these were latitudes of progressive desiccation, during which hunger
and actinic stimulus gave rise to many epoch-making migrations in
Europe, e.g. of Goths and Huns and Vandals, and during which in
Greece the river-system dwindled to a series of intermittent torrents
and stagnant pools — a mosquito paradise.
Regional The regional relation of the area is best expressed in politico-
Relation, economic terms, as within easy reach of the Levant, Egypt, and
Magna Graecia ; and, as the convergence of so many subordinate
seas — Adriatic and Ionian, Black and yEgean — on the Mediterranean
made this a great trade-centre, intercourse, both peaceful and other-
wise, with land-neighbours was a natural sequel, e.g. in the expedi-
tions to Egypt (456 B.C.) and Sicily (415 B.C.). And there is
abundant evidence ^ that from the disastrous Egyptian expeditions
— on which the amount of sickness amongst the troops was
characteristically proportionate to the extent of the disaster — the
Greeks brought malaria into Europe.
Relief. The physique of the area accentuated the geographic control
exercised by the focal position on the activities of the inhabitants.
The symmetry of the feature-lines, which is so marked that it seems
to have even influenced Greek theories of art, is due to the whole
group of peninsulas and islands being a partly submerged section of
a single mountain loop of the main Alpine chain ; and this involves
a great multiplication of small geographic divisions within the one
Hellenic unit. It also implies that the inhabitants must be both
mariners and mountaineers, and that the pressure of population on
' Admirably collected and criticised in Malaria, by Jones, Ross, and Ellett.
XIII Greece 155
such small areas of relatively infertile mountain must soon have
crushed out the surplus population from their tiny homes. Again,
as we have already seen (p. 131), the complex interlacing of the
structural lines in the interior gave rise to lonely montane basins
which formed isolated political units, so that it is said that " there
is no Greek History, only the history of separate Greek States."
All these conditions favour individualism — in commerce and in
politics, as well as in philosophy and art.
The mountainous relief is further connected with the peninsular Peninsu-
forms, which are nearly always unfavourable to unity, because their ^^ FormB.
mountainous back-bone throws off the human interests in opposite
directions ; and both parts of the country have a rough mountainous
centre — the butt of Pindus and the Arcadian highland — which is
essentially infertile, and which was in early days inaccessible and
impregnable. The valleys that radiate from these two centres are
cut off from one another by mountainous spurs on all sides except
towards the sea, so that communication between valley and valley
came to be carried on by sea, the great nursery of Democracy.
Professor Myers has pointed out how these conditions, as found Crete,
in Crete, influenced the invention of writing. The varied relief,
with its consequent variety of climate and products — corn and fruit,
supplemented by alp pasture and bay fishing — made the land
self-contained ; the great height (Mt. Ida = 8000 feet) in such a
small area (c. Argyleshire) caused such heavy falls of rain and snow
that few springs ran dry in summer ; but the supreme difficulty of
oral communication between valley and valley except by sea led to
a great development of navigation and — as soon as the island came
under a single political influence, e.g. that of Cnossus — to the
development of a system of writing by which communication could
be carried between different parts of the land.
This is only one specific illustration of the general process, site and
Obviously, the smallness of the area and its isolation by mountain Size.
and sea on the margin of civiHsation favoured early growth ; with
the spread of civilisation westward, Greece, as a central focus,
collected ideas as well as merchandise ; but eventually the physical
limitations must have cramped progress at home — especially when
the outlook was no longer on to the greatest sea in the known
world, but on to what was almost a backwater on one of a dozen
ocean routes, as they must have favoured the distribution of
civilisation abroad by outflow from the over-populated focus.
As the summer drought comes on, the winter rain lies about in Climate,
marsh beloved of the mosquito, and many of the rivers become a
series of pools, e.g. the Ilissus ; and, as the winter rain comes on,
the dry loose soil is rushed down into the streams in such quantities
and with such violence as constantly to dam up the beds and
divert the whole stream. And all this, once the malaria parasite
156
The Continent of Europe
CH.
had been introduced into the country, was terribly favourable to its
propagation, though previously the even temperature had been
equally favourable to the " Eurafrican " natives, and though the excess
of food-supply had caused a quick increase of population at first
amongst the " Eurasians " who intruded from the north.
These natives, like all Eurafricans, preserved the long head of
the arboreal primate ; like all inhabitants of very sunny areas, they
were dark ; and, like all underfed representatives of over-populated
areas, they were short. They were, therefore, likely to be easily
dominated by the vigour, and strength, and unity of the tall, fair
intruders from the north, whose round heads — as evidenced by the
statues of Greek gods and heroes — say unmistakably " Steppe."
But it was precisely on the intruders that the burden of war fell,
and decimated their numbers, e.g. at Corcyra, Thebes, and Platoea ;
and the nerve of the survivors was gradually destroyed by the over-
stimulation of light, as their physique was by malaria ; and the race
died out. In the fifth century B.C. Athens alone had 35,000 citizens
capable of bearing heavy armour ; 500 years later, according to
Plutarch, "all Greece could scarcely furnish 3000!" For malaria
was fatal to these fair Northerners except in the healthier windy
islands and on the dry Attic plains, and it was precisely here that
the clear sky and dry air gave the sunlight most influence on their
nerve. So the men who fought the Persians and built the Parthenon
left no one behind them. The modern Greek is usually round-
headed, but it is thanks to a large infusion of " modern " Slav blood.
The economic vegetation is varied in character, but limited in
amount. The bare mountain sides can feed only sheep and goats,
so that the typical food of the old Eurasians — milk and butter,
cheese and meat — can never have been abundant, nor is it quite
appropriate to the climate. And the variety of crops must always
have been a " Mediterranean " variety, more or less limited to
plants with long or bulbous roots, e.g. olive and vine, narcissus
and asphodel, — with aromatic qualities, e.g. lavender and myrtle, —
or with a power of ripening quickly, e.g. barley and wheat. But in
days before the great draining schemes, especially in Bceotia (Lake
Copais) and Thessaly, the area suitable for grain was very small ;
and, the home land being therefore mainly devoted to wine and oil,
corn had to be imported. This involved both home manufactures
to pay for the imported corn, and command of the sea to guarantee
safe passage of commodities out and in.
Of course, the summer drought has always been most favourable
to the olive ; and olive-oil is an admirable food in such a climate —
with great nourishment in small bulk, easily assimilated, and so
sustaining that there is no need for heavy or constant meals. But
the tree grows so slowly, and needs so little care, that it does not
encourage dense population — to which also the lack of milk is very
XIII Greece 157
adverse ; the crop is picked so roughly (cane-beaten) by the more
ignorant peasants, e.g. in Corfu and Zante, that the fruit-buds for
the following year are terribly damaged — hence the fable that " the
climate (!) allows a crop only every second year " ; and such rash
destruction of the groves as was prompted by the demand for
currants and raisins in France (for wine-making) at the beginning
of the phylloxera scare (1877) ^^^ never be made good during the
lifetime of the destroyers. As ohve-oil is "bread and butter" in
Greece, this has increased the tendency to emigration, to which
islanders are always prone, especially when badly governed at home.
Another result of substituting the vine for the olive has been Currants.
gross over-production of currants and sultanas, especially currants,
which come mainly from the west of the Morea, while the sultanas
come — like the excellent local tobacco — mainly from the more
continental east. And this over-production is all the more regret-
table because the currant industry is very precarious, as the berries
are sun-dried, and the drying period coincides with the beginning
of the winter rains. The development of grain-growing and cotton-
growing in the north-east is, therefore, of great importance ; and
the lack of labour is minimised by th? fact that the level plains of
Thessaly and Boeotia are not only very fertile, but also admirably
adapted to the use of machinery.
Capital for this purpose is scarce, but population — which, like Popola-
the forest, has always preferred the windward west — is beginning *io^
to gravitate towards the grain-lands. In the west the density per
square mile is about 145 (300 in the Ionian Islands alone), while
in the east (including Athens and the Piraeus with their approximate
265,000) it is only 114. In the Morea the port of Patras (38,000)
is the only considerable town ; there are only four other towns with
a population over 10,000 — Kalamata, Pyrgos, Tripolitza, and Argos;
and practically every town of importance except Tripolitza, in the
centre of the valonia-oak district, is on the "currant" railway, e.g.
Vostitza and Kyparissia, Corinth and Nauplia. In Thessaly, on
the contrary, there are at least four quite large towns — Karditza,
Trikhala, Volo, and Lamia. These vary in population from
100,000 down to 50,000 ; for, though the actual township of Volo
is only returned at 25,000, the total local population is 80,000.
Here, too, largely dependent on local wool, silk, and cotton
(" Copais "), are the only important textile industries — in Trikhala
and Lamia.
The economic minerals in early days were of little importance, Minerals,
for the most abundant are silver-lead and marble ; and these are
more or less monopolised by Attica in the Laurium mines and
Pentelikon quarries. In modern times the emery of Naxos, the
sulphur and volcanic cement of Santorin, the chrome of Phersala,
and the magnesite of Euboea have some importance ; and the
158
The Continent of Europe
CH.
iron-ores of Attica, Euboea, and Seriphos would be much more
valuable if there was easy access to fuel. But in early days the
easy access to copper (the " Cyprian " metal), and the ease with
which it was melted, encouraged the use of bronze ; and this again
was adverse to the success of the Eurafrican when he came to blows
with the iron-using Eurasian.
Three historic sites have special geographic interest — Athens,
Navarino, and Lepanto, "the pivots of Greece." Athens, the
"Edinburgh of the East," is a typical "double-city," with its
Acropolis, its link of Long Walls, and its Piraeus. The height
(512 feet) of its rock-castle and the distance from the sea (6 miles)
combined with the rough surface and poor soil of Attica to ensure
safety. The advanced eastward site, with its command of the
neighbouring port, ensured an outlet, and made it easy to conquer
and then control the islands of the .^gean, e.g. Naxos, as it is easy
^^^S
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Athens and Piraeus.
for them, e.g. Syra, to supply the modem Athenian with spring
vegetables ; and the barren hinterland made it an imperious
necessity to command the rich coast-lands of Macedonia and Asia
Minor through the possession of Thasos and Samos, as it was to
command the spring shoals of tunny from the Euxine by the
possession of the "volcanic lighthouse" of Lemnos. Safety and
sea-power were the beginning and the end of her prosperity.
Lepanto is the ancient Naupaktos, on the famous "Narrows"
(i mile) of the Gulf of Corinth. A great naval-station first of
Athens, then of the Venetians, and then of the Turks, it could watch
from a safe distance inland the relations between Greece and Magna
Graecia, i.e. the Strait of Otranto. It was, therefore, a foregone
conclusion that, in a combined attack by Spain and Venice, the
Papal States and Austria, on the Turks, the allied fleet must con-
verge on the most critical point in the line of least resistance against
the foe, i.e. these "Narrows."
Navarino is the ancient Sphakteria, of little use as a harbour '
because of its poor and difficult hinterland, but a magnificent naval-
XIII Greece 159
station because of its protecting island of Sphagia (Sphakteria).
Two of the allies in the famous battle came from the west, and
their iirst aim was to cut off the Turko- Egyptian fleet from its base
of supplies in Northern Africa. It was, therefore, again a foregone
conclusion that the English, French, and Russian fleets would con-
verge on Cape Matapan ; and the nearest refuge for the Turko-
Egyptian fleet was in Navarino Bay.
Note
Since this chapter was in print, war has broken out ; and the result is evidently
going to involve changes in political frontiers. If the analysis given above of the
fundamental conditions of geographic control is correct, the organic resp)onse to the
inorganic control will be best in the areas nearest to the present territory of Bulgaria,
in which it has been best during the last looo years. So it will be worst where it
has been worst, i.e. in and around Servia. Change of political control will not
materially modify the geographic control for generations, nor is expansion of frontier
likely to make the Serbs less futile.
The great desideratum in any change is that areas which have for ages enjoyed
wide toleration should not be flung back into medieval tyranny — e.g. that the Jews
and Turks of the Bulgarian Dobruja should not be reduced to the social degradation
and p)olitical slavery of the Jews and Turks (and Bulgars) of the Rumanian Dobruja.
It is a much less important question whether — if there is to be an independent
Albania — such a centre as Diakova (though purely Albanian in population) should
be allowed to intrude as Albanian territory between great Serb centres such as Ipek
and Prizren.
CHAPTER XIV
THE IBERIAN PENINSULA
Site. The site of the Iberian peninsula may be described as practically
both inter-continental and inter-oceanic, and a comparison with the
Balkan peninsula brings out the relative importance of each
influence. Like the Balkan peninsula, the Iberian links Europe to
a neighbouring continent, and turns its back on the central peninsula
of Italy ; but the Pyrenees minimise the value of the link, and while
the south-eastward trend of the Balkan lands laid them open to all
the influences of early civilisation from Egypt and Asia, the south-
westward trend of Iberia faced a pathless desert or a pathless ocean.
While the Straits of Gibraltar were for all those centuries, like the
Pyrenees, practically a terminus, the Hellespont, like the Danube
valley, was a thoroughfare.
African The physical barrier of the Pyrenees (cf. p. 26) was so marked
Trend. and complete that it became naturally a linguistic and cultural, as
well as a political, frontier ; and this threw Iberia, by the line of
less resistance round the Nevada and across the Straits of Gibraltar,
into the lap of Africa. The peninsula has, therefore, always been
exposed to the inflow of African influence, peaceful or otherwise,
and even to domination from or through that part of Africa which
shares in the sub-tropical summer-drought of the Mediterranean
basin. The whole area may be called intermediate, in flora, fauna,
and population, between the continent of Europe and the continent
of Africa ; but there is no transition area, racial or cultural, between
the country of Spain and the country of France. The name
Cartagena still speaks of the old domination of Carthage ; it was
as the opponent of Carthage that Rome entered the peninsula ; and
it was with Roman Christianity that the Saracens fought. The
modern Spanish possessions in and round Marocco, which have
a total area equal to that of Great Britain — though the largest of
them (Rio de Oro) is only a convict-land — illustrate the same point ;
indeed, both Ceuta and Melilla stand on the sites of old Roman
fortresses. And we shall find that, while the Balkan peninsula is
European in physique and has been Asiatic in influence, the Iberian
is African in physique as well as in influence.
160
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MACMILLAN i
.. LTD.
George Ihilip c^ Son. 1'^
CH. XIV The Iberian Peninsula i6i
This fact underlies the failure of Iberian trans-oceanic adventures. Non-
For the absorbing aim of expelling the Moors concentrated all the OceaniC"
vitality of the Castilian Christians on a military development, to the
neglect alike of the industries which had been introduced by the
Moors, and of the natural advantages of their inter-oceanic position ;
so that by the time that the final expulsion of the Moors left the
Castilians free for colonial development over a newly-opened ocean,
political influence was focused in the parts of the country least
accessible from the great harbour of Cadiz and least capable of dense
population, and the nation had lost any " habit of the sea " which
they had ever possessed. Like the old Romans, therefore, they
were little better than marines, though they put their whole strength
into war ; and their over-sea exploits were only a " flash in the pan."
As in Africa, the proportion of coast to surface is very small, Poor
which is equally adverse to commerce and to climate ; and both its Coast,
immediate and its intermediate relations are bad, for an old block
that has been isolated by the foundering of a neighbouring sea-floor
has naturally neither an inviting coast-line nor a foreground of islands.
The Azores, Madeira, and the Canaries are obviously not " Iberian "
islands at all ; and before the fifteenth century, when the Azores
became a province of Portugal, they " led nowhere." The Balearic
islands did lead Aragon to Sardinia and Sicily, and still preserve
the pure Catalan speech ; but, except for the strategic importance
of Port Mahon, they have had little or no influence on Spain itself.
As in Africa, again, the relative shortness of coast-line is Lack of
accompanied by an absolute lack of good harbours. The long Harbours,
straight coast in the north, where the old block is buttressed by
young folded mountains that run parallel to the foundered shore,
is naturally steep and rocky everywhere ; and, though there are
naturally numerous small indentations between the spurs of the
range, the ocean and river currents, as in Africa, silt up possible
harbours, e.g. at Bilbao, Santander, and Gijon, with appalling
rapidity, and involve constant dredging.
Where the feature-lines of this northern coast run out across the Western
western margin, the sea-filled valleys between the folded ridges ^o^^*
widen and deepen out into well-sheltered bays or gulfs, the spurs
from each ridge giving constant protection even from western gales.
High tides, too, keep these " rias " well scoured of silt ; but the
absence of glaciation has deprived them of the typical features and
commercial advantages of fiords, with their broad floors and deep
inner waters. Of course, in olden days nearly all these rias made
admirable harbours for the small ships then in use ; and a few
of them, e.g. Vigo and Pontevedra, Corunna and Ferrol, can
accommodate even the largest of modern vessels. In those days,
too, the north coast, along which the eastward current is so trouble-
some, was relatively unimportant. But the chief trade of the country
M
1 62
The Continent of Europe
CH.
Lisbon.
Southern
Ports.
The lower Tagus, showing the
Mar da Palha.
to-day does not go through the best natural harbours, which are too
far from the coal- and iron-fields ; and it is significant that only in
Galicia is there a typical fishing population — engaged specially in
the sardine-fishing.
Along the rest of the west coast there is only one harbour of any
real value, that of Lisbon. Here, on the western side of the Tagus
estuary, in the lee of the sierra be-
hind Torres Vedras, just within the
" bottle-neck " through which the great
river has to force its way, is a large
and very beautiful harbour, safe from
all gales except those coming from due
west (cf p. 57) and commanding at
least three of the world's greatest
trade-routes. Elsewhere the exposure
to Atlantic gales, moving sandbanks^
on the old submerged lowlands, and
— possibly — the influence (on the
compasses of passing ships) of the
magnetic iron -ore in the archean
rock, combine to render navigation
very precarious (cf. the wrecks of the
Serpent, Roumania, Trinacria, etc.); and, as access inland is almost
as bad as access to the coast, movement is more or less limited
to the shipping of port wine at Oporto and the collecting of salt
in the lagoons of Aveiro and Setubal.
The south coast may be divided into two parts. From Cape
St. Vincent — the Sacrum promontorium, or Sagres, of Prince Henry
the Navigator, where the meseta runs out into the ocean — to Cape
Trafalgar, as between Cape Roca and St. Vincent, the Atlantic gales
blow over the low coast of a Tertiary basin ; and the result is a
typical sand-dune coast broken by lagoons such as that to which
" Lagos " owes its name, and by river-mouths such as that of the
Rio Tinto, on which stand the " copper " port of Huelva and
Columbus's old haven of Palos. These dunes give place round
the Guadalquivir estuary to almost unbroken marsh (the Marismas),
profoundly unsuitable for the site of a harbour, though Magellan
actually started on his great voyage from the old Roman and Arab
port of San Lucar. Where the terminal ridges of the Sierra Nevada
are truncated on the verge of the ocean, magnificent harbours such
as those of Cadiz and Gibraltar are found ; but, as the coast begins
to run parallel to, instead of across, the young folded ridges, it
becomes naturally steep and regular. Between two spurs, as at
Cartagena, a magnificent basin may be found within an island-
^ It is such shifting sands that spoil the harbour of Figueira, at the mouth of the
Mondego.
XIV
The Iberian Peninsula
163
guarded strait ; but difificulty of access inland makes it more
suitable for a naval station than for a commercial harbour.
The east coast suffers from the essential inclination of the Eastern
peninsula towards the Atlantic, and from the climatic control of the C°*8t.
stormy " Lion Gulf." In the lee of the Nevada before they run
out into the sea in the lofty Cape de la Nao, Alicante has been
made a safe harbour, and provided — with difficulty — with railway
communication inland ; and the easy access inland by the Llobregat
valley has justified similar development at Barcelona — the Gothic
capital of Septimania, the Frankish capital of Aquitania, the twelfth-
century capital of Aragon, and eventually the commercial capital of
modern Spain. Elsewhere, especially on the low Tertiary coast-lands
of Valencia, the stormy winds give a typical sand-dune coast, with
complete or incomplete storm-beaches, as in the so-called Lake of
Albufera (A/ Baheirah, " the Small Sea ") and the lagoon of Mar
Menor (" the Smaller Sea ").
It would seem probable, then, that the Iberian coast has been Coast k.
generally rather a barrier to access than a base for outlet ; and that Co'^®-
the combination of minimum of coast with maximum of core has
discounted the advantageous position between ocean and sea, while
the small outlook of the sea-face and the inheritance of Mediterranean
provincialism paralysed the large outlook of the ocean-face and the
development of world relations. Portugal, at the junction of the
great east-and-west sea-route with the still greater north-and-south
ocean-route, became the focus for trade between the camel-men
of the tropical Orient and the ship -men of the Narrow Seas ;
and to shut the Tagus
against the ocean
carriers, e.g. the Dutch,
was at once typical
and suicidal.
About three- Surface,
quarters of the sur-
face is occupied by
a high, compact,
abrupt - faced " me-
seta," the old axial
core of which runs
from north to south.
When the foundering
of the crustal seg-
ment gave rise to the
western basin of the Mediterranean, this meseta was ribbed with
parallel ridges of sierra, and young folded ranges were thrown up on
the northern and southern flanks, the Cantabro-Fyrenean and the
Nevada systems ; and it now lies between the Cantabrian Mountains
.CCnmUWATESSHEO saK3»{iCAKPMtNT<. ^^ IBtKMM PLATEAU (McSets)
Physical structure of the Iberian Peninsula.
1 64
The Continent of Europe
CH.
Isolation.
Access.
Compact-
ness.
Eastern
Lowlands.
and its own upturned edge, the Sierra Morena — both with heights
over 7000 feet — and is divided into two parts by the central ridge
of sierra, which runs from Cape Roca, via the Estrella, Gata, Credos,
and Guadarrama mountains, to the peak of Moncayo {Mofis calvus,
"the Bald Mountain"). The northern part (averaging 2700 feet)
contains the provinces of Leon and Old Castile, while the slightly
lower southern part contains Estremadura and New Castile.
The complementary gorges (cf. p. 2) on the inner sides of
the young folded ranges, i.e. the Ebro and Guadalquivir-Segura
valleys, only emphasise the obstacle of the ranges themselves to
access to the table-land from France or Africa; and thus the
essential isolation of the interior and its monotonous " table " relief
had every opportunity of blending its various inhabitants into a
homogeneous people, in an area too large for premature expansion
(such as ruined Greece) and too small for them to be incoherent.
Thus consciousness of unity made them too individualistic for
foreign intruders to have any chance of survival except by approxima-
tion to the type appropriate to the environment. How this favoured
intruders from Arabia, we may presently notice.
The parallel belts of sierra in the Pyrenees and Nevada allowed
easy access only round the ends of the range, e.g. via Tolosa and
Gerona, Seville and Murcia. Military history, therefore, centred in
A.D. 778, in 1367, in 1813, etc., round the Pass of Roncesvalles,
which gives the most central access to the meseta ; railway con-
struction has been almost entirely coastal ; and the connection
between the two is seen in the famous historic sieges of such
modern railway-junctions as San Sebastian and Gerona (the scene of
twenty-five sieges !), Barcelona and Bilbao. Indeed, it was the
enormous importance of the western end of the Pyrenees that
enabled Aragon or Navarre, when holding it, to hold also, or at
least to dominate, the whole northern flank of the range.
The essential compactness of the interior confirms its isolation, and
tends again towards a homogeneous population. A " circle " touch-
ing all the four coasts via Lisbon, Gibraltar, Valencia, and Bilbao
has a diameter of at least 500 miles ; and the climatic effect of this
may be illustrated by the fact that Madrid has 120 days in the year
perfectly cloudless. Of course, the abrupt scarp is partly responsible
for this ; and its abruptness may be gauged from the fact that the
main line from Seville to Madrid via the famous Despena-Perros
(" Dogs' Gate ") Pass rises 2000 feet in 35 miles on the Morena
scarp. And it is the relatively heavy rain against the scarp that has
attracted such a large population to the piedmont lowlands.
The inclination of the table-land down towards the Atlantic had
very important historic results, because it not only cut off the
lowlands of the Ebro valley, Valencia, and Andalusia from the
Castiles, but also made movement along the Mediterranean coast
XIV The Iberian Peninsula 165
relatively easy. Germanic hordes, therefore, moved easily down
that coast, the Goths leaving their name in Catalonia (originally
Catalonia) and the Vandals in Andalusia (Vandalusia) ; and the
Moors moved up the same route with equal ease. Indeed, it was
to this that the old port of Tarraco owed its ruin. For it stood, as
the modern Tarragona stands, on the mouth of a small river (the
Francoli) ; and during the years when it was laid waste successively
by Goths and Vandals and Moors, the port got so much silted up
that it was subsequently deserted. Incidentally, of course, the few
routes which did give relatively easy access to the plateau, became
of very great importance, e.g. the Jalon valley between Zaragoza and
Guadalajara and the Jucar valley between Valencia and La Mancha.
Similar conditions account for the importance of the Pancorbo Pass
— now threaded by the railway between Vitoria and Burgos — in the
extreme north, and of the Despeha-Perros Pass in the extreme south
— by which the Moors were eventually driven out of Castile.
The westward trend had special importance in the west. In the Weatem
first place it gave rise to such a natural extension of Leon into Lowlands.
Galicia, e.g. by the Sil valley, that in the great struggle the forested
hills of Galicia became united to Leon while the unforested western
lowlands were still under the Moors ; and, as the passes across the
Cantabrians had previously taken Leon and Castile to the " Asturias "
coast, there was easy communication by sea between all this forested
highland — with its typically " European " climate and products —
producing a unity which persisted even after the Moors had been
expelled from Portugal.
For Iberia, though isolated enough to make a homogeneous Political
people, is — like Scandinavia — large enough for more than one Division.
kingdom ; and the Portuguese unit is so much cut off from the
interior by the influence of the old north-and-south axis (cf. p. 163)
that she is still scarcely affected by her political neighbour, while
her obvious seaward and southward trend encouraged independence.
Not one river that is common to the two countries is really navigable
above the line of rapids which mark — in about longitude 7° W. —
the old core, i.e, practically the International frontier, though at
times the Tagus can actually be navigated up to the site of Trajan's
old bridge at Al-Cantara ("The Bridge "). This is by no means the
only difficulty. The two most important rivers, the Tagus and
Guadiana, approach the frontier from the Spanish side through very
barren steppe — part of it deliberately " wasted " by King Alfonso I.
to make the natural steppe a still more impassable frontier-belt
between his kingdom of Asturias and the Saracens.
Again, in passing through the actual frontier-belt of the old core, Frontier
all the chief rivers — Minho, Douro, Tagus, and Guadiana — plunge Peoples,
down off the steppe-plateau through profound gorges, such as
probably gave its name to the Tagus ("The Gash"). Indeed, the
1 66 The Continent of Europe ch.
frontier section of each valley shows an almost incredible difference
between the people living on the opposite sides, e.g. in the middle
Douro basin between Zamora and Braganza, along the Tagus west
of Al-Cantara, along the Guadiana south of Badajoz. All these
physical conditions, and the historic influence of the very gradual
reconquest of the country from the Moors, tended towards the
institution of separate political units, e.g. Aragon and Portugal, of
which Portugal had the best natural chance of continued separate
existence.
Iberia v. Comparison with Scandinavia is inevitably suggested ; for both
Scandi- ^j.g peninsulas between inland sea and ocean, with a relief and area
which justify the existence of two political units with marked unity
of human type. But Spain, of course, shared the access to the
Atlantic in the early days of ocean development ; and the Medi-
terranean ranks now as an oceanic route. It was the Mediterranean,
again, that gave Spain, as the Baltic gave Sweden, the momentum
of an earlier start (cf. Venice and Rome) ; and yet it was the
Mediterranean which gave Lisbon advantage over Corunna as the
natural meeting-place of Hansa and Orient trade, while the Atlantic
gave Lisbon the advantage over Cadiz in distance from the African
base and nearness to the Crusading nations. What this last
advantage involved, may be summed up in the statement that
Prince Henry the Navigator was the grandson of John of Gaunt,
when the Duke of Lancaster, as Hereford, controlled the Bristol
Channel.
Historic Both Spain and Portugal had special advantages in those early
Advant- days. As we have seen, they are both within latitudes from which
^ ■ Trade winds blow in summer, and to which Anti-Trades blow in
winter ; and both had their densest population on the fertile lands
below the scarp of the meseta, i.e. practically on the coast-lands. But
America brought both within grasp of sudden and excessive wealth
— always dangerous, but especially when won, as in their case, with
little or no effort ; and this wealth was largely in precious metals.
On the one hand, the old Moorish industries were despised and
dropped ; on the other, the precious metals were so much over-
rated that their export was prohibited, which was a death-blow to
any industrial progress.
Portu- Portugal, with the smaller area, the fewer people, the poorer
guese. resources, could make less of her opportunity ; and so she over-
strained herself, and overdrained herself of population. She thus
lost the best and most vigorous of her young men, and then tried to
make up the deficiency by recruiting males from the type of popula-
tion at once most suitable for her great home industry of agriculture
and most easily procured, the African negroes. The result is seen
in the physical ugliness of her people, in their moral slimness, and
in the intellectual laziness that is so typical of gross mongrels — i.e.
XIV The Iberian Peninsula 167
the children of parents representing quite different stages of civilisa-
tion — especially in the presence of a Negro strain.
The political relation of the meseta to the surrounding lowlands Water-
is, however, not confined to the division of the whole into two Parting,
kingdoms ; and the fact that the political frontier on the coast-land
runs along the Minho and the Guadiana suggests that the relation
is primitive and fundamental. The main water-parting runs roughly
from the source of the Ebro — below the famous Reinosa Pass,
which now carries the railway from Valladolid to Santander — via the
source of the Tagus to the source of the Guadalquivir — on the La
Mancha saddle between the Nevada and New Castile — and then
along the Alpujarras {Al Busherat, "The Grass-Place") and the
Nevada crest to Gibraltar; it thus marks roughly a natural frontier
between the Castilian plateau and the lowlands of Aragon and
Valencia, between Murcia and Andalusia, as for a long time parts
of it marked a political frontier between Christian and Saracen.
The central watershed runs from Cape Roca via the Gredos Water-
and Guadarrama to Moncayo ; it is a very typical granite sierra or shed,
saw-toothed ridge, with an average height of well over 5000 feet ;
and not only do the saw-toothed notches in the separate ridge-
sections make very poor passes, but the hilly parameras, or plateau-
basins, between the sections are often dotted with heights even
greater than those of the ridges. Thus, the Almanzor, in the "gap "
between the Gredos and the Guadarrama, reaches nearly 9000 feet
No railway crosses either the Gata or the Gredos, though the inter-
vening gap does carry the line from Plasencia to Salamanca ; and
the lines from Madrid to Avila and Segovia involved an immense
amount of tunnelling. The whole plateau of Old Castile was,
therefore, focused at Valladolid, and found its easiest outlets north-
wards across the Reinosa Pass and the equally famous Pajares Pass
— which now carries the Oviedo-Gijon railway — and eastwards down
the Ebro valley. Even here the central watershed is practically
continued in the Pyrenean spur which faces Moncayo across the
Ebro gorge, cutting off Navarre and the upper basin of the Aragon
river from Aragon and the upper basin of the Segre river.
These two rivers, the Aragon and the Segre, illustrate both the Sierra
essential tilt of the whole peninsula towards the west and the Control
exaggerated isolation of each valley by the parallel ridges of sierra
on each side. Indeed, the Catalan wall of Aragon contains in the
name of its chief height, Monserrat {Mons serratus, " the Saw-toothed
Mountain "), lasting evidence of the impression made, on intruders
from Alpine Italy, by the typical notched crest of these Iberian
ridges. Again, the central sierra, being the highest, has the deepest
complementary depression flanking it ; and, therefore, it offered the
most suitable site for a capital, not only by reason of its central
position, but also by reason of the relatively easy access along the
1 68
The Continent of Europe
CH.
Use of
Bivers.
Guadal-
quivir.
Tagus-Jalon depression — now followed by the main line from Lisbon
to Barcelona.
Historic The best site actually chosen was that of Aranjuez (the Roman
Capitals. Ara-Jovis, " Altar of Jupiter "), where the Tagus plunges down to the
1200-foot contour, in the very heart of the country. The site of
Toledo, also a Roman centre (Toletum), is equally central (25 miles
from Aranjuez), and its river-girt crag is stronger strategically.
Madrid has only the advantages of being nearer Old Castile, and of
avoiding the steep climb up (from Toledo) out of the Tagus valley.
The morbid egotism of Philip II, found in the gloomy valleys of the
Guadarrama a disused graveyard for the site of his Escorial {Scoriae,
" Rubbish-heap").
The value of this river- system for navigation is practically
negligible, except for the Tagus and the Guadalquivir, though the
other chief rivers can actually be navigated, e.g. the Guadiana up to
Mertola (42 miles) ; but their value for irrigation is almost incalcul-
able. In Murcia and Valencia unirrigated land has a value never
more than one-twelfth of that of irrigated land in the same neigh-
bourhood; and it is said that the whole cost of the Imperial Canal
(Tudela to Zaragoza) was defrayed by the increased harvest of a
single year.
The Guadalquivir owes its special importance and so its name
( Wadi al Kebir, " The Great River ") mainly to the great contrasts
of relief in its basin, which includes the Veleta ("Watch-Tower")
glacier at a height of over 9300 feet in latitude 37° N. From this
section of the Nevada it is fed, by the Genii and Guadiana-menor,
with unfailing supplies of melted snow and ice in summer ; in winter
all its upper basin is rain-fed by the S.W, winds ; and it drops on to
the Andalusian lowland more than 200 miles from the sea. It was,
therefore, the "Great River" commercially, though 200 miles
shorter than the Tagus (565 miles) and with a basin 17,000 square
miles less than that of the Ebro (38,600), It is, however, not
continuously navigable from Andujar; for a spur of the Sierra
Morena is responsible for the Montoro rapids, and the bed of the
river has been so much choked with silt that boats cannot be
regularly used above Cordova, Indeed, only extensive dredging
enables large ships to reach Seville, at the limit of tide, 70 miles
up river. On the other hand, the volume is more or less constant,
though floods occasionally raise it as much as 8 feet; and it is
concurrence of flood — due to and accompanied by strong S,W.
gales — with high tides that causes the wide submersion of the
estuarine lowlands, the Marismas. These, though providing fine
cattle-pasture, are very unhealthy, an additional deterrent to the
rise of any important town on the mouth of the river.
The climate, like the racial traits and the normal occupations,
may be roughly classified as Cis-Cantabrian and Trans-Cantabrian ;
Climate.
XIV
The Iberian Peninsula
169
and the difference is illustrated by the two ends of the Pyrenees
(cf. p. 27). The Atlantic end has an evenly distributed rainfall,
giving a typically marine succession of cool summer and mild
winter, with European products, and so the Galician, Asturian, and
Basque occupations are fishing and forestry, mining and cattle-
rearing, while the Mediterranean end has only winter rain and
" African " products, e.g. cork and esparto. South of the Canta-
brians, then, the climate is extremely continental, with great range
and quick changes of temperature, as the daily or seasonal low-
pressure centre succeeds the high-pressure. Unfortunately, when
the low-pressure centre over the heated plateau in summer is active,
it has a serious rival in the still stronger centre over the Sahara,
so that there is a minimum of inflow ; and, when the high-pressure
centre over the chilled plateau in winter has once settled down, it is
such an effective obstacle that then, too, there is a minimum of inflow.
Obviously, then, there must be great deficiency of rain except Drought,
round the edges of the plateau ; and even on these, except to the
north-west, there is no excess. Of course, as the mass of the
precipitation falls in winter, the snow-
fall is relatively heavy ; but not enough
falls to guarantee any water-supply for
more than half the year, and the rivers
usually dwindle away to mere " wadis "
in summer. These conditions imply
great extremes of temperature, especi-
ally of heat : and it is the activity of
the dry air in the hot season that is
responsible for the vast areas on the
table-land and even in the Ebro basin
that are absolutely treeless, there being
no means of replacing any moisture
transpired by leaves and carried away by the wind — a condition
fatal to tree-growth. There is also an enormous amount of dust,
which accounts for the prevalence of haze (caligo) in the dry season
and of mist in the wet season. It also increases the radiation,
especially off the reddish soil of the Ebro and Granada steppes.
The total result is that Iberia, like Australia, with one of the most
insular positions, has one of the most continental climates ; skating
is quite common in Madrid in both December and January, while
the Solano may give the city a summer temperature of 100° F. in
the shade ; and temperature diminishes regularly with distance from
the sea in winter and from the interior in summer.
From the detailed examination of the climatic phenomena it Climatic
has been suggested that the whole area might be roughly divided ^®J*°;.
into four belts, of which the Atlantic belt stands apart. Indeed,
in some parts of it the rainfall is excessive, reaching normally
F* IM fi>. Mm »i >br. Jgii. Jai. Inc. Sip. Oci. Iov Die \u\
eo
76
70
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eo
6S
BO
4S
40
10
a
s
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6
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4
3
2
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r
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^
\
s.
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^
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"?'
CoiMBRA Madrid
Mean monthly temperature and
rainfall of Coimbra and Madrid.
lyo The Continent of Europe ch.
about 4 feet at Bilbao and 6 J feet at Santiago, perched up on an
exposed shoulder of the Galician highland. Both places have an
average January temperature not below 45° F. and an average July
temperature not above 70° F. This Atlantic belt extends down
through Portugal into the north of the province of Estremadura.
Oporto and Coimbra both have an average annual temperature
just under 60° F., with a range of 20° F. at Oporto between
January and July and one of 21° F. at Coimbra. There are thick
fogs on the lowlands and along the coast, and extraordinary varia-
tions in rainfall. Most rain falls in winter, when 16 feet has been
recorded ; Oporto has nearly double the rainfall of Coimbra (34
inches) ; and the Estrella and the Traz-os-Montes heights are
covered with snow for several months in winter.
Meaeta This Atlantic belt impinges on to the " Meseta " belt, the
Belt. transition being very obvious even inside the Portuguese frontier ;
and the " Meseta " belt includes the greater part of the Ebro basin.
This is the belt of greatest extremes and most sudden changes of
temperature, changes of even 50° F. within a few hours not being
uncommon. At Leon the mean temperature varies from 37° F.
in January to 73° F. in July, and at Madrid, from 39° F. to 76° F.,
the former having 19 inches of rain and the latter having 15, of
which only half an inch falls in July. From the greater part of
the area trees are entirely absent ; and the vegetation otherwise,
though of Mediterranean type, is peculiarly specialised, many of
the species not being found elsewhere. The north-western part
of this belt, especially round Palencia and in other parts of the
Pisuerga basin, is the great wheat-growing area of the peninsula;
and still nearer to the Atlantic belt, e.g. in the Minho basin, rye is
grown. The south-eastern part is the great esparto-growing area;
and the intermediate area is typical steppe, largely saltish and
producing the stimulating aromatic herbage which developed the
famous cattle of the Guadarrama and the merino sheep of the
Toledo highlands — the sheep migrating in April to the higher and
in September to the lower lands, i.e. towards the north-east in
summer and the south-west in winter.
Roman It is significant that the Romans conquered the country via
Conquest, ^j^g yi\^Q and tame Douro basin, not via the narrow and savage
Tagus basin ; and their route can still be traced by such names as
Zaragoza (" Caesar Augusta "), Pamplona (" Pompeiopolis "), Leon
(the depot of the faithful Vllth Legion), and Badajoz ("Pax
Augusta "). This took them, between the wheat - fields of the
plateau and the cattle-pastures of the coast-lands, to Estremadura
{Extrema Dueri, " The Farthest Points beyond the Douro ") ; and
their Emeriti, or discharged veterans, then found a peaceful home
in Merida.
The natural hinterland of the eastern coast north of Cape Palos
XIV The Iberian Peninsula 171
forms a " Mediterranean belt," with relatively small range of Mediter-
temperature and a high average, the annual mean being 6i° F, at ranean
Barcelona and 64*^ F. at Alicante ; and there is a typical winter
rainfall of 23 inches at Barcelona, dwindling to 14 in the south.
It was this specifically Mediterranean climate that made the crescent
of lowland between Lerida and Zaragoza such a suitable base for
the Romans in their conquest of the peninsula, and it is this area
that contains the famous huertas {hortus, " a garden "), Practically
all the native plants here, whatever their Botanical family, have the
fleshy and leathery foliage of summer-drought environment; and
the typical cultivated plants are fruits — nuts and olives, mainly to
the north, oranges and lemons, mainly to the south, and vine and
mulberry, mainly in the centre. Everywhere the basis of prosperity
is irrigation, though vine and olive are largely " dry " crops ; and
much of the water, as it gushes from the base of the limestone
scarp, is led over artificial terraces on its way down to the floor
of the valley. And, as the increase of population demands increased
food, e.g. garlic and onions,^ chick-peas and lentils, artesian wells
are being dug to supplement the natural supply. This is true of
nearly all the Trans-Cantabrian area, so that now 80 p.c. of the
whole is registered as productive, and over 10 p.c. is under
irrigation.
The rest of the country forms an African belt, with a curious African
intermixture of luxuriance and desert. In Portugal south of the ^®^*'-
Tagus the mean annual humidity in many places is as low as
30 and in others as high as 80 ; and the great heat of summer and
the winter floods make the climate very trying. In the exposed
parts, e.g. at Cintra, tree-ferns are as typical as cacti are in the
sheltered parts. But rice is a typical product even on the Valencia
coast, and dates actually ripen at Elche, while the Sierra Morena
(" Sombre ") is said to take its name from the forests of olives along
its southern face, especially near Cordova. It would seem, there-
fore, that the more typically " African " climate is only found within
the area exposed to the leveche (cf. p. 59). That is to say, fertility
on the Murcian and Almerian lowlands is in oases, while in Malaga
and Granada it is typically tropical. It is in the southern belt that
cane-sugar is a typical product.
As with most irrigation areas, the conspicuous feature in the Variety of
economic geography is the variety of products ; and of those which Products,
enter into commerce, the most typical are the olive-oil of Andalusia
(Seville and Cordova) and Catalonia (Lerida and Tortosa), the
oranges of Seville and Denia, the raisins of Valencia and Denia,
the almonds of Alicante and Denia, the cork of Catalonia and
Alemtejo (" Beyond the Tagus "), the wine of Oporto and Jerez.
Most English imports of oil come from Spain, but the sub-tropical
^ Onions are exported to the value of over ;^53o,ooo per annum.
172 The Continent of Europe ch.
climate yields an inferior oil (cf. p. 95) ; the other fruits are
excellent, and the cork is the best in the world for champagne
bottles.
^^ne. Most wine is grown in the Ebro basin, and much is exported to
France 3 but it is inferior to that of the Douro and the Guadalete
basins. In the south the rains of the late winter and early spring
are followed by a very dry summer and autumn which, in the
marine exposure of Jerez, produce a wine peculiarly rich in organic
ethers, the best sherry almost rivalling cognac in this respect. The
port vines are grown specially on the northern slope — which is the
broader as well as the sunnier — of the deep Douro valley, in the
lee of the Sierra de Marao (4665 feet); and here they get the
"roasting" in summer which develops their "resinous" qualities
(cf. p. 208). The high-pressure centre off the Portuguese coast in
summer, however, usually results in August rains, and these just
save the Oporto wines from the natural results of " roasting " as seen
in those of Tarragona from similar latitudes on the east coast. In
this relatively advanced area, too, where a number of British firms
— including the Cockburns, Crofts, and Grahams — actually own
" quintas," every legal protection is enforced against deterioration of
product, e.g. protection against planting vines on low (under 165
feet) alluvial soils, which produce large quantities of wine, but poor
quality. The real " port " area, therefore, now lies practically
between the Tua-Douro confluence and the western frontier of
Traz-os-Montes and between the latitudes of Villa Real and Lamego.
Popula- The uniformity of relief and climate, which thus becomes
tion. apparent in the vegetation, is reflected also in the population, and
has evidently been emphasised by the isolation and compactness of
the area. The pre-Roman " irreconcilables " retreated up the Ebro
valley into and across the Cantabrians ; and after the Roman empire
was broken up, the movement of Barbari down the east of the
peninsula from the north, and subsequently of Arabs up the east
from the south, tended to concentrate refugees towards the same
north-western corner, with its Atlantic climate. Here, then, the
Mediterranean natives were isolated, in an "Atlantic highland,"
where less precarious food-supply developed stature, and where
other conditions — possibly, the mountain environment — broadened
the head. Here, at any rate, they became typical Highlanders
(using the bagpipe) ; and those nearest the ocean margin developed
into a typical fishing race, holding their women in honour and
supplying nurses to all the richest families in Spain,
"Cas- The safest part of this rugged highland was the central section
tilian" between the sea and the watershed, west of the great Pehas de
Europa (8700 feet), and here the Kingdom of Asturias remained
independent even after retreat from its old capital of Astorga. The
new capital of Oviedo commands the one great route, via the Pajares
XIV The Iberian Peninsula 173
Pass, from Leon to the port of Gijon. The Kingdom of Leon
occupied the continental face of the same highland, and had less
chance of expansion than its eastern neighbour, Castile. The
latter had easy access by the Pisuerga valley to Valladolid and
Madrid, by the Ebro valley to Navarre and Aragon, and by the
Reinosa Pass to Santander and the ocean ; and it probably owed its
name as much to the natural rock-castles of its environment as to
the actual castles built by the Christians.
Within the Atlantic belt of climate, Basques, Galicians, Asturians, Portu-
and Portuguese, all have the same folklore ; and Galician is simply ^f^^
a dialect of Portuguese. But the geological change from the fertile
Devonian rock of Asturias to the barren Cambrian rock of Galicia
doomed the non-fishing population of Galicia to a life of constant
poverty and hardship. And, while the famous nurses of Spain
come from the fishing Galicians, the non-fishing population has
made " Gallego " a term of general contempt (" Knock-about ")
throughout Castile.
All round the plateau, however, population is now increasing at Minerals.
the expense of the interior, especially where the scarp is richest in
mineral wealth (cf. p. 49) and in water-power. Fine iron is
abundant along the sea-face of both the Cantabrians and the
Nevada ; and, though at present it is only worked properly in the
neighbourhood of coal, i.e. in the north, the better quality in the
south is already attracting attention. Other minerals are abundant.
Indeed, owing to the variety of rock, Spain has a great variety of
mineral wealth, including copper and lead, mercury and silver, and
rock-salt. And, where the most important minerals are lacking, e.g.
at Barcelona, which is near neither coal nor iron, there commerce is
easiest.
On the other hand, want of fuel or water-power, constitutional The
or climatic lethargy, poor transport, and other drawbacks are very Arabs,
adverse to progress ; and the country has never recovered from the
expulsion of the Arabs. For the Arab was peculiarly useful to
Spain. As a native of desert and barren steppe, he knew the value
of water both for pedigree stock and for plants with cooling
astringent juices. He irrigated the lowlands into "gardens," by
means specially of the Jenil and Guadalaviar, the Segura and
Sangonera, thus incidentally minimising the chances of malaria ; he
introduced the orange and the mulberr}' ; he drew wine and oil
from what the Christians had called desert ; he gave Spain her
famous mules and merino sheep. He also changed the old Roman
games into chivalric contests, in which mounted lancers showed
coolness and dexterity rather than brute strength and ferocity ; and
to his religious influence Spain owes — perhaps, the Inquisition —
certainly that sense of brotherhood which makes the Spanish
peasant the most democratic in Europe.
174
The Continent of Europe
CH.
Social Even the unsatisfactory relations between employers and
Relations, employed are a legacy from the Arabs. For Arab cultivators lived
on, despised and ignored, amongst their conquerors for generations
before their final expulsion from the country ; and during this time
the attitude of indifference and irresponsibility became so ingrained
in the employers that it has remained as their permanent attitude
towards their employees. And the results would have been worse
than they actually are if so many factors had not otherwise made for
unity — the compactness and isolation of the area, the uniformity of
relief and climate, the common religion and common language,
and the artificial centralisation. These have been strong enough
to minimise the natural antagonism between the arid and sparsely
peopled, but united, Castilian plateau and the fertile and densely
peopled, but disconnected, units of the coast-land
Popula-
tion.
Primitive
Condi-
tions.
Spain
No other country that is at all comparable with Spain in natural
advantages, is so sparsely populated. The population on the
Meseta, i.e. in Leon and Old Castile, New Castile and Estremadura,
does not reach 65 persons to the square mile; in Aragon it
is less, and in Navarre it is not much better (76). Indeed, the
average for the whole country is about the same as for Connaught,
the poorest part of Ireland, And this seems to be wholly due to
war at home and to drain of population to America. There is
evidence that the population 2000 years ago was three times what
it is now ; and things would be much worse than they are but for
the provinces which have been, and still often are, considered the
most backward, the Basque (220) and Galicia (176), Catalonia
(158) and Asturias (149). Even in the specifically Moorish
provinces the only one with an average appreciably over 100 is
Valencia (180). Area, however, must be considered as well as
density ; and the total result is that natural antagonisms, e.g. of
mobile herdsman and sedentary gardener, are accentuated between
the meseta and its outlying neighbours, Galicia having more people
than either of the Castiles, while Andalusia has as many as both of
them put together.
Though war and emigration have been the great influences in
the past, there are now other influences at work. Communications
and education are still .both more or less primitive. It is not
very long since (1909) there were 5000 villages in the land which
could not be reached by wheeled traffic ; and where, 1 000 years
ago, Arabs were teaching geography from globes in free schools
to children of both sexes, 75 p.c. of the population is now said
to be unable to read and write. Pack-mules and ox-carts are still
quite common ; and the recent development of railways has done
XIV Spain 175
a minimum of good because, for strategic reasons, the Spanish
gauge is different from (wider than) the French. Again, heavy
taxation unfairly distributed has been very adverse to farming, in
which the implements are still often of the most primitive kind,
while the stock has deteriorated terribly. Here, too, the national
pastime of bull-fighting adds to the difficulty. For, except on the
" deltaic " islands of the Guadalquivir, the bulls not only are given
the best land, but also need a very large area/(?r caput — to prevent
them from fighting one another. Still another adverse influence
is the competition of what is almost the "forced labour" of the
convent industrial schools, e.g. in laundry work, with the labour of
non-clerical adults.
For various reasons these adverse influences have had least Northern
effect in the northern provinces. As compared with the rest of "o^^ices.
Spain, these provinces are specifically mountainous and forested ;
coal and iron are abundant in the Cantabrian section, and can
easily be imported in Catalonia ; both the Basques and the
Catalans are naturally enterprising, as the people of Navarre and
Galicia are naturally industrious ; and the climate is favourable to
the development of textile industries, while the position favours
access to and from the great markets of Western Europe.
The Cantabrian provinces specialise in mining. Of course, Galicia.
the staple industry in Galicia is still fishing, mainly for sardines ;
but the reckless methods employed, e.g. the (illegal) use of dynamite
on dark nights, and other causes, e.g. change of temperature ^ in the
coastal waters, are making the fish scarcer and scarcer. Vigo still
has a large export industry (valued at ;^5oo,ooo a year), and heavy
catches are made off Marin (the port of Pontevedra) and Villagarcia ;
but it is significant that the two ports of Vigo and Corunna account
for nearly half the emigrants from Spain. On the other hand, the
mineral wealth of Galicia is being developed, the tin being in
special demand {e.g. for tinning sardines, Vigo alone exporting yearly
over 4000 tons of tinned sardines) ; and the growth of the Asturias
coal-mining makes a regular demand for pit-props, e.g. from
Villagarcia and Corcubion. The fertility of the Minho valley,
especially between Orense and Lugo, " the hub of Galicia " — which
it certainly was in Moore's retreat — is extraordinary, the sides
being devoted to vine and olive and the plain to maize.
Asturias was never completely subjugated even by the Romans, Oviedo.
and half the " Transmontane " mountaineers still reveal, in
physique and language, their purity of race and independence ; but
their historic struggle for independence was fatal to commercial
enterprise, and this largely accounts for the slow development of
the area in modern times, though it contains the best coal-field in
Spain. The field is in the basin of the Nalon (or Pruvia), and has
^ The sardine is a delicate fish, and avoids water approaching 68° F.
176
The Continent of Europe
CH.
Canta-
brian
Provmces.
made Oviedo the most important coal-producing province in the
country. The high humidity causes such heavy falls of snow in
winter that transport inland is much impeded, but there are good
ports at Gijon {via Musel) and Aviles. The climate favours
textile industries, e.g. at Aviles, as the coal favours glass-working,
e.g. at Gijon. The city of Oviedo, besides commanding the Royal
Road to Madrid via the Pajares Pass — which cost so much that
Charles V. asked whether it was paved with silver — is the centre of
a thriving agricultural district, raising a considerable amount of beet-
sugar.
As the province of Oviedo is specifically a coal-mining area, so
that of Santander is specifically concerned with the mining of iron
and zinc ; and the town of Santander, a large smelting centre, is
growing faster than any other town in Spain. The mountain
pastures support an important dairy industry, and sugar-beet gives
a good yield. In Vizcaya, on the other hand, farming is rather
neglected ; but Bilbao has very important shipbuilding and other
industries along the Nervion river. Much of the local ore is shipped
from cantilever piers dotted along the rugged coast. Iron ore is
also worked — with lead and zinc — in Guipuzcoa, but here again
agriculture becomes important, both the apples and the chestnuts
being famous. Irun commands the frontier bridge across the
Bidassoa, and Pasages is a rising port, San Sebastian — in spite of
its old strategic importance — having now become little more than a
summer resort.
The Pyrenean provinces, like the Cantabrian, illustrate the
Provinces, adverse influence of extreme isolation, for the two seaward areas of
Navarre and Catalonia are far ahead of the central Aragon ; but,
while the sea influence in Navarre is specifically
climatic, in Catalonia it is more economic.
Indeed, as the Cantabrian area tends to mining,
so the Pyrenean tends to be industrial, especi-
ally outside the Ebro basin proper. In the
upper part of the basin the mountainous land
of Navarre is rich in forest and park-land, and
therefore its special product is live-stock of all
kinds, especially coarse-woolled sheep ; and its
apple orchards are famous. The position of
Pamplona, on the flank of the Ebro and com-
manding the Roncesvalles Pass, made it a very
important fortress; Tudela is at the head of the Imperial Canal.
The lower part of the Ebro basin is less favourable. There are
great extremes of heat and cold, and nearly all the rain falls in
frequent thunderstorms ; much of the parched chalky soil is saturated
with salt, and many streams are brackish ; and the only hope is in
irrigation. Even Zaragoza itself, a typical "oasis" city, with a
P3rrenean
The harbour of San
Sebastian.
XIV Spain 177
range of temperature often varying 50° F. within a single month,
is important now only as a railway-junction.
Catalonia, with a central watershed in the Sierra Llena, is in a Catalonia,
much better position. The climate is still rather extreme and
subject to sudden changes of temperature, and the amount of dust
in the air favours mist and fog ; but it is quite favourable to
agriculture, and gives a great variety of crops, tspecially wine and
nuts. The people are frugal and industrious as well as enterprising
and energetic ; and careful cultivation and irrigation have made the
agricultural part of the province more or less able to support the
manufacturing and industrial part.
The old province is now divided into four new provinces — (Jerona.
Gerona, Lerida, Barcelona, and Tarragona. As a frontier province,
Gerona has had rather a chequered history. The town of Gerona
itself has been besieged twenty-five times — though only taken four
times — and the fortress of Figueras is still considered the key to the
frontier either by Port Bon and the Col de Perthus or round Cape
Creus and by Rosas Bay. Unfortunately, the best agricultural land
is the Ter plain between Gerona and Figueras, so that agriculture
is backward ; but the province is well forested, the cork being
specially good, and there are profitable sea fisheries. A great many
sheep are reared, and the wool is manufactured locally, especially at
Gerona ; cotton and linen industries are also scattered over a
number of little towns ; Port Bon is one of the most important
commercial outlets of Spain ; and the Trans-Pyrenean railway to Aix
will greatly aid commercial development.
Except for a few tracts of lowland, mainly along the Llobregat, Barcelona,
the Barcelona province consists of forested mountains, generally
rich in minerals (lignite, lead, zinc, salt) ; and, as both the Llobregat
and the Ter supply considerable amounts of power, and as the
import of coal and raw materials by sea is very easy, the province
has become the chief centre of Spanish industry and commerce,
and population is strongly drawn to it, Barcelona (560,000) rival-
ling even Madrid in size. All the typical industries of Spain are
found here, including woollen, cotton, and silk textiles, worked iron,
fancy leather, art furniture, etc. ; and the easy access inland round
Monserrat by the Llobregat valley has carried the textiles up-stream
to water-power. Barcelona city is thus a real industrial metropolis,
specialising in textiles ; and its relations with its hinterland are very
ancient. It seems to have taken its name from the Carthaginian
general, Hamilcar Barca, who preferred the hill-girt open beach,
with its access to the Llobregat, to any site on the troublesome
river-mouths of Catalonia; and, though the union of Castile and
Aragon, and the contemporaneous discovery of America, trans-
ferred the balance of power elsewhere for a time, Barcelona
has long ago regained the prominent place— by providing a
N
178
The Continent of Europe
CH.
Lerida.
Tarra-
gona.
Levante.
Moorish
Aspect.
fine artificial harbour — though the people still "owe the Castilian
a grudge."
Lerida is the most backward of the Catalan provinces, again
largely for historic reasons. The town itself, on a height overlooking
the Segre and the famous Llanos de Urgel, is the key of both
Catalonia and Aragon ; and, as such, it has been a constant scene
of warfare since the time of the Punic Wars. The Llanos themselves
are redeemed from their natural barrenness by irrigation, but the
rest of the province is very mountainous ; and the abundant water-
power is neglected, except for saw-mills. A very large number of
sheep are raised, and leather and woollen industries are carried on
in Lerida town.
Tarragona, though mountainous, is very fertile, and produces
quantities of wine and oil, the wine specially round Tarragona
itself and the oil largely from round Tortosa. Almonds are also a
typical product, especially round the junction of Reus. The typical
Catalan people have, however, developed more or less all the natural
resources, e.g. silver and lead, marble and china-clay ; and manu-
factures include leather and all kinds of textiles. The old city of
Tarragona occupies a typical cone-hill (550 feet) overlooking the
sea ; the new one, which has been provided with a good artificial
harbour, is famous for its underground wine-cellars, one of the
typical exports being the " Grand Chartreuse " liqueur.
The Levante provinces have a strip of very fertile lowland
running along the coast, the site of the famous huertas or t^egas,
so that they are predominantly agricultural. Behind the lowland
the relief rises in terraces to a height which accounts for the very
large number of sheep and goats, especially sheep, raised in
Castellon and Valencia, and which guarantees a large amount of
water for irrigation — though the Turia feeds so many huertas that,
except in flood-time, it is a very scanty stream when it reaches the
sea ; and in front of them the low level and the exposure to the
" Levant " wind have raised a series of sand-dunes, which in places
completely block the movement of river-water seaward, and are
very favourable to salt industries, e.g. at Torrevieja. These conditions
are also very favourable for irrigation, and the Turia and the Jucar
are invaluable for this purpose; indeed, all the typical crops are
irrigated, e.g. the rice of the Valencia vegas, the dates of Elche —
which exports over 20,000 tons of dates annually — the oranges of
Castellon and Valencia, the raisins of Valencia and Denia, the
almonds of Alicante, the onions of Gandia.
Rice and cane-sugar are important *' home " crops, but the
special work is the raising of sub-tropical fruit for export ; and for
this the warm, dry, equable climate is as favourable as it is for the
rearing of bees and silkworms and for the curing of " Valencia "
raisins and tobacco (at Alcoy). Some of the soil is naturally very
XIV Spain 179
fertile, especially along the Segura ; but the prosperity of the area
is based on the Moorish irrigation-works, and in appearance and
industries {e.g. weaving of esparto) the land is typically Moorish.
Both Valencia and Alicante are typically Moorish towns, with white
flat-roofed houses ; and Alicante, with a citadel perched on a hill
400 feet above the sea, has its houses arranged in the typical
crescent and approached through avenues of palm-trees. Valencia,
as a central harbour, e.g. attracting the almond-trade of Palma (de
Mallorca), has become the third city in the country, with a popula-
tion of over 200,000.
The Segura valley, especially at the confluence with the Murcia
Sangonera, continues the typical Moorish horticulture into the
province of Murcia ; indeed, both Lorca, the old key to Murcia in
the Moorish wars, and the city of Murcia have typical huertas,
specialising in oranges and silk, and both suffer greatly from
occasional floods.^ But the line of the Nevada-Balearic uplift
makes the area specifically a mining one, and the large export of
esparto is a significant comment on the climate generally. Iron,
copper, silver -lead, sulphur, and saltpetre are all abundant,
especially round Cartagena. The mines near the city are very
productive, and have materially helped to revive its old prosperity.
This was based on its importance as a naval station, with the
largest harbour in Spain except that of Vigo ; and, therefore, the
city not only suffered greatly from the results of the Spanish-
American war, but also lost some of its commerce in the meantime
to the neighbouring " iron " port of Porman. The relatively
greater development of "iron" ports, e.g. Garrucha and Aguilas,
is a feature of this southern coast, and is connected with the use
of cables for bringing down the ore from the sierra ; for instance,
Aguilas ships as much iron-ore to Great Britain alone as Cartagena
ships altogether. Even where other ores, e.g. silver-lead and zinc,
are of importance, as at Mazarron, the chief progress is in the
shipping of iron.
The Murcian province of Albacete is the pivot of S.E. Spain. Anda-
It contains a part of La Mancha, and is drained via the town of liisia.
Albacete (famous for saffron) to the Jucar basin, by Hellin to that
of the Segura, and by Alcaraz to the Guadalquivir. Westward from
this point, roughly marked by the boss of La Sagra (8000 feet), the
" Andalusian " area combines the characteristic features of all the
other areas already referred to. The lowland in many places
resembles that of the Ebro basin in its saltish soil and brackish
lakes, though the area of rich land is much greater ; the coast-lands
repeat the horticulture of the Levante ; the mountains rival the
Cantabrians in their mineral wealth. Its physique and climate,
* During the War of the Spanish Succession, Murcia was even defended by the
intentional flooding of the huerta.
i8o
The Continent of Europe
CH.
however, set it apart. Its scenery is unique in the peninsula ; the
winter dimate of Seville is almost ideal ; its great river — the Roman
Boetis, which gave the area its old name of Boetica — and its
isolation combined to " force " an early civilisation ; that civilisation
produced such world-famous monuments as the Alcazar of Seville,
the Mosque of Cordova, and the Alhambra of Granada ; but it
implied an alien domination which accounted for the mixture of
race and the differentiation from the Castilians in earlier times,
and accounts for the backward state of the area in agriculture and
industries in modern times.
Almeria. Each province of the area tends to have stretches of lowland
and mountain — in different proportions. For instance, Almeria
has a great ridge of sierra (8000 feet) rich in iron and silver-lead,
and fertile gorges and coast-lands that produce all kinds of sub-
tropical fruit, especially almonds and the white " keeping " grape.
Thus Adra exports almonds from the coast-land and lead from the
Berja highland; the town of Almeria exports 2,000,000 barrels of
grapes a year and large quantities of almonds, and its export of iron-
ore (and manganese) is increasing very rapidly. A quantity of iron-
ore also goes by the line from Baza to Lorca for export via Aguilas.
Granada. Granada presents still greater contrasts. It faces to the
Guadalquivir, and its strip of harbourless coast is so much isolated
by the loftiest part of the Nevada — including the Mulahacen and
Veleta peaks — that there has been little encouragement to develop
such roadsteads as that of Motril ; and the only railway connection
with the coast at all is via Loja (the old key to Granada in the
Moorish wars) and Malaga, or via Guadix and Almeria. This in
turn has retarded mining, though the sierra is rich in iron and
other minerals, e.g. alabaster. At the same time these adverse
relief features give the province a unique river-system, including
the Genii and Guadiana-menor, the chief feeders of the Andalusian
plain. As the soil is exceedingly fertile, the area was practically
self-contained ; and, as the Guadalfeo gives access by the chief
valley of the Alpujarras to Motril, it made an impregnable refuge
for the Moors for many centuries.
The loss of Cuba has led to a revival of the old Moorish
industry of sugar-growing, and it is quite typical of the climate that
both beet- and cane-sugar can be raised, e.g. at Loja and Granada.
The latter, which may take its name from the pomegranate
(granada), occupies a magnificent site 2200 feet above the sea, on
the "peninsula" between the Genii and its Darro tributary, in a
vega of almost incredible fertility ; and its hinterland has been for
ages famous for its fine wool.
Malaga. The greater proportion of lowland in the south of Malaga has
caused the latter province to develop seaward ; and this has been
further encouraged in two ways. The famous Penarrubia gorge
XIV
Spain
i8i
cut by the Guadalhorce has greatly facilitated railway access to the
coast — at the city of Malaga ; and the quantities of silt, rich in
organic matter, brought down by the Nevada torrents on to the
coastal sill in the lee of the Gibraltar peninsula, has led to an
important fishing industry. These two conditions have attracted
foreign capital in a unique degree ; so that while the city stands
next to Seville for the export of olive-oil, and has also a large export
of wine and fruit (raisins and almonds), there has been a great
development of industries on the spot, e.g. textile, metallic, ceramic,
etc. The hinterland is characteristically rich in iron, especially
near Marbella, and in lead ; and even textile industries flourish, e.g.
at Antequera, also famous for its beet-sugar industry. Cane-sugar
is cultivated on the coast ; and, as the spread of viticulture in
Argentina is checking the export of typical " sherry " wines and so
leading to a contraction of the area under vines in the Malaga
province, the sugar industry will probably continue to increase in
importance. The very mild and equable climate makes canary-seed
another typical product.
The province of Cadiz has a magnificent bay in a most com- Cadiz.
manding position on one of the greatest trade-routes in the world ;
but various causes are adverse to its prosperity. The only mineral
wealth of importance is the salt evaporated along the coast, e.g. at
Cadiz and San Lucar ; and the special product inland, the sherry of
Jerez, is one for which the demand is decreasing, though it happens
to be one of the most wholesome wines in the world. Further, the
Spanish-American War dealt a great blow to the Naval Station —
which is on the island of San Fernando (Isla de Leon) — as to those
at Cartagena and Ferrol ; and the continuation of the direct line
from Ronda ^ to San Roque (for Gibraltar) and Algeciras, and the
popularity of the latter as a winter resort, have taken away from
Cadiz much of its old importance as the terminus of the trans-
continental railway-route.
At the same time, the
facilities for ocean traffic at
Gibraltar have far outstripped
those at Cadiz, though even
the inner harbour at the
latter has now been dredged
to a depth of 40 feet.
Site, relief, and climate Gibraltar,
combine to give Gibraltar
almost unique advantages —
strategic and economic. The old importance of the site, as separat-
ing Cadiz from Cartagena and Brest from Toulon, is a fair index of
its modern importance, as linking the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic
^ Ronda has the finest bull-ring in Spain and a most famous breed of horses.
's^
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The Strait of Gibraltar.
1 82 The Continent of Europe ch.
and the Old World to the New. Most of the native inhabitants are
of Genoese descent ; about 3000 steamers call at the port every year,
and half of them coal there. The site is a link site in other
respects ; for some of its flora and fauna are not found elsewhere
in Europe, e.g. the Barbary apes, and its caves have yielded mammal
remains of the greatest interest, including a human skull at the
lowest stage of evolution above the " Missing-link " of Java.
"The From the sandy coasts of old sea-floor, which makes the
Rock." neutral ground — with its unclimbable iron fence — a natural frontier
belt, the Rock rises almost sheer to a height of 1200 feet, and then
runs — with a typical sierra crest — for a couple of miles due south to
O'Hara's Tower (1400 feet), only to drop by precipitous terraces to
the Europa Flats, which at Europa Point drop again precipitately
into ocean depths. From the crest of the sierra, with an elaborate
system of range-finding, the great guns command the Straits (12
miles wide) strategically, as the Signal Station (1255 feet) commands
them commercially. Between the La Luna heights (2600 feet) in
the west and the Rock itself the Bay of Algeciras gives safe access
to an enclosed harbour in which a whole fleet can anchor secure
from torpedo attack, with facilities for coaling every vessel and
docking seven or eight of them. Again, the caves — so typical of
limestone — which, like similar ones at Ronda, have produced such
valuable remains, seem to have suggested the tunnelling operations
that have such an important relation to the defence. Indeed, the
precipitous eastern flank of the sierra is scarcely approachable except
by tunnels, e.g. above Catalan Bay.
The From this abrupt eastern flank the sierra sinks more gradually
westward, so that the natural site for the town was facing the open
Atlantic ; and this, with the north-and-south direction of the sierra
(cf. p. 162), accounts both for the mild, even climate, and for the
relatively heavy rainfall. The average temperature is only 65° F.,
with a mean maximum only 12° F. higher; and the average rainfall
is about 34 inches, but varies from about half that up to nearly
twice it. This guarantees enough to supply the whole community,
from carefully constructed underground tanks, with pure water for
drinking and cooking purposes in spite of the small area (3 m. x | m.).
This smallness and historic isolation from, if not actual hostility to,
Spain made the place dependent on Marocco for supplies ; and it
seems to have been the threat of a sultan to withhold supplies,
unless full freedom of trade were granted to his ships, that converted
Gibraltar into a free port as early as 1705. It is curious, there-
fore, that it is very largely the political difficulties which centre on
Marocco nowadays, that prevent Gibraltar from reaping the full
advantage of its economic position.
Morena The Sierra Morena bears somewhat the same relation to the
Andalusian plain on the north as the Sierra Nevada does on the
Town.
Provincea.
XIV Spain 183
south ; and along its face and spurs mineral wealth of various kinds
is abundant. In the province of Huelva it is specially copper, the
Rio Tinto mines having been worked for 2000 years, and the Tharsis
mines almost as long; but iron and manganese are becoming
steadily more and more important. At the other end, in the
province of Jaen, Linares has produced silver- lead also for 2000
years ; and the hinterland of Jaen is as famous for wool as the fore-
ground of Palos is for fishing (sardine and tunny). In the inter-
mediate area, i.e. the province of Cordova, the Sierra Morena is
rich in both copper and silver-lead ; it produces fine wool and very
large quantities of olive-oil ; and in recent years the Belmez coal-field
has had an annual output of fully 500,000 tons of good coal —
30 p.c. of it being anthracite — actually on the direct line of rail
north into the Guadiana basin.
The focus of all Andalusia is the province of Seville. Though Seville,
there is a large export of minerals (mainly iron and copper ores)
from the port of Seville, the province is essentially agricultural, the
most important local minerals being the marble and chalk of Moron,
and the china-clay of Lebrija and Osuna. Except along the hilly
frontier of Cadiz and Malaga and north-west of the Guadalquivir,
where the spurs of the Sierra Morena reach Lora, the province is
very flat and exceedingly fertile. There is a large production of
wheat and barley, and of wine (Manzanilla and Amontillado) ; but
oranges (both sweet and bitter) and olives are the special crops,
and the yield of oil is very large- — twice that of Cordova (50,000
tons), which has about the same area under olives (560,000 acres).
Still more typical is the stock-farming, horses and cattle, sheep and
goats, all being of fine quality ; and this accounts for the typical
*' animal " industries of the province, e.g. the famous historic shoe-
making industry of Ecija (noted also for its woollens) and the
fancy leather of Seville itself and Utrera. The latter is one of the
centres where fighting bulls are bred, between the " Mesopotamian "
marsh-lands of the Guadalquivir and the Nevada moorlands.
Seville itself, the fourth city in Spain, has always been one of the city of
great tidal ports of the country ; and the river is now being dredged Seville,
and canalised to admit vessels drawing 25 feet of water. It is also
a great industrial centre, specially famous for its cigar and porcelain
works ; the patron saints of the city are said to have been potters,
and the gipsy suburb of Tirana has manufactured porcelain for
many hundreds of years. The low level (30 feet) and the consequent
windings of the river have exposed the city to constant floods, and
that perhaps accounts for the Romans preferring the site of Carmona
for their great stronghold. Crowds of visitors flock to Seville at
Easter, when the orange-trees are in flower, the bulls "spring-ripe"
for fighting, and the religious services almost unique for colour ;
but its real beauty is best seen at Christmas, when the oranges are
1 84
The Continent of Europe
CH.
The
Castiles.
Burgos.
Palencia.
ripe, and the violets and carnations in flower, and tlie white lines of
the typical Moorish houses are not glaring.
The ancient kingdom of Castile includes a typical piece of the
Cantabrians in the province of Santander (cf. p. 167), and an
exceptionally fertile piece of the Ebro valley in the province of
Logrono — where the Rioja plain raises quantities of good wine,
especially round Logrono ^ itself ; but the mass of it consists of
the most characteristic part of the meseta. On every side of this
except towards Leon and Murcia there is a natural frontier of
mountain, e.g. the Demanda, the Cuenca, and the ISIorena sierras,
giving rise respectively to the Douro, the Tagus, and the Guadiana ;
and the Guadarrama system divides Old Castile, i.e. the part freed
first from Moorish rule, from New Castile. The latter, as the
more cut off from oceanic influence, has the severer climate, though
even in Old Castile the extremes of heat and cold are very great.
In both, however, the plateau itself is so fertile that, after rain,
quite a luxuriant vegetation springs up ; and where a heavy sub-soil
is capped by a very porous and friable material, i.e. a very bad
conductor, percolation is so rapid and evaporation so slow that the
land is extraordinarily productive, as in Palencia and Toledo.
Elsewhere the land is useless except for sheep, and even these have
to emigrate in winter to the lower levels of Estremadura. The
typical scenery is like that of La Mancha ("The Droughty Land"),
described in Don Quixote.
Old Castile, as the upper basin of the Douro, pivots on the
Sierra de la Demanda, between the provinces of Burgos and Soria.
The latter is a land of austere mountains, so barren and poor that
the population does not reach 38 per square mile ! Burgos, though
less rugged, is scarcely more fertile, except in the Ebro basin ; but
it has two advantages. Its large area gives great facilities for sheeph
rearing, though the town of Burgos is no longer famous for its
cloth and woollens — for which a normal winter, with perhaps 20° of
frost, still makes demand ; and the Pancorbo Pass controls all
the natural movement between Madrid and Paris to such an extent
that it is called "The Iron Gate of Castile." It also offers an
obvious way of escape from the poverty-stricken Arlanzon basin,
and there is constant emigration to the more prosperous centres in
the Basque Provinces and Catalonia. The strategic importance of
the town of Burgos, where the Arlanzon suddenly turns south-west-
ward, was increased by its situation on a hill protected by the broad
and swift river.
The province of Palencia presents a great contrast to its
neighbour. Not only is the rainfall heavier, accounting for the
forest and park-land below the Cantabrians, but the heavy sub-soil
^ Logrono is a typical hill-town, overlooking the Ebro plain from a height of
1 200 feet.
XIV Spain 185
of the Pisuerga basin yields large crops, e.g. of wheat and ilax ;
and, as the northern park-land makes famous pasture, the province
has important old industries in flour-milling and leather-working, in
linens and woollens, especially rugs. The campos of Palencia
extend into the province of Valladolid ; and, as there are increased
facilities for irrigation, especially along the Pisuerga, the province
shares — in spite of its low rainfall (12 inches at Valladolid itself) —
with Palencia in the title of "The granary of Spain." Stock-rearing
is also important, but the old woollen and linen industries cannot
compete with more favoured centres. The political importance of
Valladolid city, once the capital of Spain, was based on the same
control of great cross-routes as has made it in modern times an
important railway-junction ; but Medina (del Campo), though off
the line of the Douro, is now more important in this respect.
The two southern provinces of Old Castile, Avila and Segovia, Avila and
though drained to the Douro, are essentially mountain rather than Segovia,
plateau areas ; and the relatively heavy rainfall, which also accounts
for the extent of forest on the Credos and Cuadarrama slopes, gives
great facilities for irrigation, i.e. in the superb gardens of the Royal
Palace at La Cranja. Avila is as famous for its merino wool as
Segovia is for its grain, and in both the rugged granite sierras
contain valuable minerals. Segovia is the more interesting town,
mainly because of Trajan's magnificent aqueduct, built of the
Cuadarrama granite ; but Avila occupies the more important
position, commanding the gap between the Credos and the
Cuadarrama and so the main line from Madrid to Corunna.
The eastern provinces of New Castile, Cuadalajara and Cuenca, New-
are much poverty-stricken. Both suffer from drought and from Castile,
great extremes of temperature, so that their population is very thin
— only slightly above or below 40 per square mile — and the rearing
of stock (mainly sheep and goats) is their typical industry. There
is some floating of pine-timber down the Tagus, but most of the
area is literally Guadalajara, "Valley of Stones."
The western provinces are rather more favoured. For instance, Madrid,
in Madrid the presence of considerable tracts of clay and the
precipitation on the Cuadarrama heights encourage the growth of
timber, such as is characteristic of the Royal domains of the
Escorial and Aranjuez ; there are valuable quarries in the sierra
itself ; and quantities of live-stock are reared. Above all its central
position made it the site of the national capital, and so all the
great railways converge on it. The city of Madrid is almost the
mathematical centre of the country ; and, as such, it has a certain
amount of commercial and industrial importance, e.g. in the manu-
facture of tobacco and leather. But it has an unpleasant climate.
Its height, its distance from the sea, and its lack of shelter make
it liable to very sudden and extreme changes, the daily range of
1 86 The Continent of Europe ch.
temperature sometimes exceeding 50° F. In winter icy air —
" which will kill a man without blowing out a candle " — gravitates
from the Guadarrama heights ; and these again in summer take all
the moisture out of the normal N.W. wind, leaving the city a prey
to fiery dust-laden gales from the barren plateau or to a brazen sky
that sometimes allows a shade temperature of over 108° F.
Toledo. The " oasis " of Aranjuez, at the Tagus-Jurana confluence in
the sheltered valley, was therefore really a better site for a capital ;
and the tongue of land along the Tagus on which the Royal park —
with its famous elms and sycamores — extends, ought to be politically,
as it naturally is, part of the " valley " province of Toledo. The
"valley" lands are well watered from the Toledo Mountains, which
were densely forested till recently ; and the Alberche, besides its
value for irrigation, gives a direct line of approach to or from
Madrid which can be tapped from Salamanca at Talavera, now
famous only for its pigs — descendants, doubtless, of those that fed the
hungry army in 1809. The valley pastures feed dairy cattle, draught
oxen, and fighting bulls ; but the prosperity of the area has been
hindered by war, for the valley is the most important " line of least
resistance " in Central Spain, as may be judged from the fact that
to-day it carries both the main line southwards to Cadiz and the
main line westwards to Lisbon. The site of Toledo city, on its
granite boss, guarded by the Tagus on all sides except the north,
recalls — on a grim and larger scale — that of Durham. Its arch-
bishop is " primate of all the Spains," and it was the scene of
innumerable Synods between the fifth century and the sixteenth.
Ciudad What the Tagus is to the province of Toledo, the Guadiana is
Real. to Ciudad Real ; but the latter includes a considerable part of the
La Mancha steppe, with its severe droughts and plagues of locusts.
To the west and south, however, the land is much more fertile,
and the climate encourages considerable forests of oak and beech,
in which large herds of pigs are reared. Alcazar and Valdepenas
are important railway-junctions, and the line from Valdepenas to
the great mercury mines at Almaden passes through a valuable
little coal-field at Puertollano.
Leon. The old kingdom of Leon had very marked frontiers on all
sides except the east, and its natural drainage by the Esla and the
Tormes gave it supreme control of the Middle Douro. The
modern province of Leon represents the strongest part of the old
kingdom, strongly guarded by its mountainous frontier on the
north and west, and pivoting on the Montanas de Leon, through
which there is easy communication between the Minho and the
Esla basins only at Munzanel — on the main route from Astorga to
Corunna and Vigo. Sir John Moore could easily have checked
Soult here, but wished to entangle him in the Galician glens ; and
Moore's life was sacrificed only because his men could not resist
XIV Spain 187
the wine-cellars of Ponferrada. In the north-west of the province
the Vierzo is semi-Atlantic in climate, and has rich wooded pastures
on its hills and rich grain-lands and vineyards in its valleys. In
this part, too, the people, while less Castilian, have few Moorish
traits. Indeed, the Maragatos are even said to be a remnant of the
old Celtiberian natives.
The province of Salamanca is also strongly placed — against the Sala-
Gata heights ; but there is relatively easy access into Portugal both °iajica.
by the Douro valley and via Ciudad Rodrigo and Fuentes d'Onoro
and into the Tagus basin by Beja and the Alagon. These con-
ditions imply both the rainfall which accounts for the wealth of
forest and pasture, famous for its live-stock, and the nodality which
made the capital the site of a great university, of a most critical
battle, and of one of the most important railway-junctions in Spain.
Indeed, it was only the scourge of war that arrested the natural
development of the area ; and, on the other hand, it was bad
transport along the actual valley of the Douro that kept the
intervening province of Zamora free from war, and now condemns
it to poverty — through neglect of its forests and its mines.
The feature-lines of Estremadura have a very marked east-and- Estrema-
west trend, the middle courses of both Tagus and Guadiana — dura,
separated by the Guadalupe sierra — lying parallel to the Gata-Gredos
barrier in the north and the Morena barrier in the south. The
heights, especially near the ocean, are so well forested, with beech
and oak and chestnut, that the area is very famous for its pigs ;
but the lowlands are drought-stricken, viper-haunted steppe, liable
to locusts and seasonal floods, so that almost the only important
industry is sheep-farming. Historic disadvantages have also handi-
capped the people. Their natural outlet has been usually through a
foreign, if not an actively hostile, country ; and landward they were
far from, and much cut off from, the important centres of national
life, while the success of Cortes and Pizarro encouraged the best
of their fellow-countrymen to copy their example, and so robbed
Estremadura of her finest citizens.
The province of Caceres has fared rather better than that of Caceres
Badajoz. It is rather more fertile, especially on the Arroyo plain ; *^^
and, as the Tagus valley is more difficult than that of the Guadiana, ^
the southern route was the more troubled by war (cf. Badajoz and
Albuera). On the other hand, though Badajoz is rather the less
healthy, especially along its great river, it had — until the construction
of the Tagus-valley line from Lisbon to Madrid — more commercial
opportunity ; and this compensated to some extent for lack of
industrial development, and has made most of its modern centres
more or less important railway-junctions, e.g. Merida and Zafra.
The precise historic outlet of the Caceres basin was by the Via
Lata which ran from Gades to Rome, and which is carried across
1 88
The Continent of Europe
CH.
the Tagus at Al-Cantara by "The Bridge" — 20 yards higher than
the Forth Bridge, with central arches wider than the dome of St.
Paul's, 1800 years old, and still bearing Trajan's hexameter :
Pontem perpetui mansurum in saecula mundi.
Relation
to
Atlantic.
Relief.
Popula-
tion.
Portugal
Within a well-defined frontier-belt of sparse population along
river-gorge and mountain-crest, Portugal forms a more or less natural
unit, profoundly influenced by the Atlantic climatically, but curiously
independent of it otherwise. Traz-os-Montes was the only one of the
six old provinces which did not touch the Atlantic, and yet access
to the ocean is very poor. All the estuaries of the larger rivers are
used; but the Minho and the Guadiana are frontier rivers, while
the Vougo and the Sado empty into lagoons. There are valuable
salt-pans, and in the north the salt has encouraged for ages a busy
glass industry, e.g. at Figueira and Leiria ; but even the mouth of
the Mondego is little used, and the ship-canal from Aveira to the
ocean has probably never paid even the cost of its construction a
century ago.
The relief of the country is varied, though it nowhere reaches
a height of 7000 feet ; and it may be roughly described as
mountainous to the north of the Tagus and lowland to the south,
though there are valuable vegas (or veigas) on the Minho flood-plain
and crinas (plateau-basins) in Traz-os-Montes, while in the south
Algarve is almost entirely mountainous. The Estrella sierra is the
natural divide both physically and climatically, and so ethnically.
Exposure to the Atlantic gives the country the richest flora in
Europe, and numbers of plants have been imported — from the
New World and elsewhere, e.g. the agave ; but the Estrella flora
is Alpine, while that of Alemtejo is almost Saharan, and that of
Algarve is tropical, while that of Traz-os-Montes is almost Mediter-
ranean (cf the olive and silk industry of Braganza). The onion
is as typical of the north, e.g. Ovar, as the carob is of the south.
About six-sevenths of the total population is found north of the
Estrella, the density round the Paiz de Vinho, i.e. the port wine country,
exceeding 400 to the square mile ; and the type there is largely
" Galician," with Roman and Suevic and Visigoth elements, while
to the south it is largely Arab and Berber and Negro and markedly
shorter in stature. Everywhere, however, there has been a great
mixture of blood ; and this perhaps accounts for the relatively high
standard of character and intelligence amongst the half-breeds in
Portuguese areas abroad, e.g. Brazil. And perhaps no other country
in Europe could have produced a " Mozarabic " type — Portuguese
by birth, Christian by creed, Berber by speech, and Arab by
custom. On the other hand, no other country in the world, with
XIV Portugal 189
equal advantages, has 45 p.c of its area uncultivated; and even in
Oporto 70 p.c. of the population is illiterate.
Southern Portugal has three typical features, the lowlands of Southern
Estremadura, the upland plains of Alemtejo, and the mountains of ProvinceB.
Algarve. The Sierra de Monchique, which runs out into the ocean
as Cape St. Vincent, gives Algarve a relatively heavy rainfall and
rich copper-bearing beds (cf. Tharsis) ; cork and almonds are typical
exports from Faro, and copper from Villa Real de San Antonio,
and the osier-work (baskets) of Louie is very famous. But com-
munication inland is difficult, the coast is inhospitable except for
the refuge of Lagos — famous in war rather than peace, and the
hinterland is unhealthy. This is the essential drawback of Alemtejo
to-day, at all events south of Beja ; but historically it has suffered
from the fact that its most fertile areas are along the Spanish
frontier, really fine olive-oil coming from round the frontier fortress
of Elvas, only a dozen miles from Badajoz. The mineral wealth
is considerable, especially copper between Aljustrel and Beja and
gold between Beja and Evora ; but it is little developed, mainly
owing to lack of transport.
The unhealthy marsh-lands of Estremadura are specially devoted Lisbon.
to the raising of bulls, while the drier parts raise good wheat.
Lisbon, on its terraced hillside, had its approach from landward
guarded of old by the fortresses of Abrantes and Santarem, and from
seaward by the fortress of Cascaes, now one of the summer resorts
of the Portuguese Riviera (south of Cape Roca), where the people
of Lisbon take refuge from their mild but oppressive atmosphere
with its very high average humidity. There is an important sardine
fishery off the coast, which has its headquarters at Setubal.
Northern Portugal pivots on the province of Beira, astride of Northern
the Estrella ; and, as the Mondego flows right round the eastern ^ovinces.
end of the sierra, the ancient stronghold of Guarda has become the
most important railway-junction in Portugal except, possibly, that
of Abrantes. Sheep-farming is important to the south-east, e.g.
near Castello Branco, where there are busy woollen industries ;
better access to the sea encourages mining to the north-west, e.g. at
Viz^u (tin and wolfram ^). In the extreme north the wide cultivation
of maize and the presence of forests account for the importance of
pig-rearing, e.g. at Lamego, famous for " Lisbon " hams. But the
most typical industry is the salt-making along the low sandy shore,
e.g. at Aveiro. To the south the inroads of the sand, e.g. at Leiria,
have been stopped by wide planting of pine-trees on the lines
followed on the French Landes ; and land is being reclaimed for
cattle-pasture and rice-growing — a typical industry between Bussaco
and Aveiro and between Coimbra and Figueira. But historically
^ Both minerals are found widely distributed in the province, e.g. at Guarda and
Castello Branco.
IQO
The Continent of Europe ch. xiv
Oporto.
Economic
Outlook.
the blown sand was another line of defence in front of the granite
ridge of Cintra, for the sand extends practically as far south as
Peniche, and from there to Cape Roca — i.e. the foreground of
Vimiera and Torres Vedras — is a line of sheer and lofty cliffs.
The balance of commercial power, however, is on the Douro,
Oporto holding to Lisbon somewhat the same relation as Barcelona
holds to Madrid. 'The river itself is crowded with small steamers,
— though large boats cannot even reach Oporto, but have to use
the artificial harbour at Leixoes; and the hardy and industrious
peasantry are the best part of the Portuguese population, live-stock
and fish, maize and olives, and — above all — wine being the typical
products. Textile industries are found in the older centres, e.g.
Braga (cotton) and Braganza (silk) — though Oporto itself is the
great textile centre — while mining is developing new centres as
Moncorvo (coal and iron).
The general outlook for Portugal at present, however, is not
very bright. Beds of coal and lignite are worked at Cape Mondego
and Coimbra, and the country is- certainly rich in copper and iron,
tin and wolfram ; but it is essentially an agricultural area, two-fifths
of the population being engaged in agriculture, and yet — except in
occasional years — it cannot feed its own people. This is largely
due to the extraordinary amount of land which, though reasonably
good, is left uncultivated from lack of transport ; and one result is
persistent emigration (40,000 a year), especially from the Oporto
district. In the meantime, Portugal " monopolises " only two
products, the natural forest output of corlc (half the world's supply)
and the wolfram, which is collected by country people ; and, as long
as the colonies are such a financial burden on the Mother country,
the essential need for improved transport is not likely to be met
except where foreign capital is interested, e.g. in the wine area of the
north and the copper area of the south.
CHAPTER XV
FRANCE
All things considered, France has the most favourable position PoBition.
of all the great Powers in the world ; and the early history of her
expansion over-seas reflects alike the imperial value of being in
the centre of all the land on the face of the earth, the climatic
value of being half-way between pole and equator, the economic
value of being the land gateway between continent and ocean.
The regional relations of the country are of special interest in Regional
political geography, partly because her influence has been so much Relations,
stronger landward than seaward ; and this difference was only
accentuated by the Revolution. For in earlier days the Navy had
been essentially an aristocratic service ; and the utter decimation
of the aristocrats cut off" the supply of officers with hereditary
instinct for the sea, so that Nelson had to fight a type of officer
essentially different from — and inferior to — the type with which
his predecessors, e.g. Hawke, had had to deal.
The most conspicuous characteristic of the frontier features is Varied
their variety ; and, as this is equally true of seaward and landward Frontier,
features, any attempt to classify all the coastal features together, e.g.
as " Marginal Lowlands," only conveys an absolutely false idea
of physical uniformity, and divorces the interesting differences
between the coastal people, e.g. Breton and Gascon, from their
legitimate geographical base. Further, this variety of coast is seen
both in detail and in outlook ; for instance, there are ports on
the English Channel which are naturally only cracks in a steep
chalk scarp, e.g. Boulogne and Dieppe, while others stand on dune-
fringed alluvium, e.g. Calais and Dunkirk, and still others are bays
between granite promontories or cut out of other ancient rock, as
Cherbourg. Cf. Brest.
The triple outlook of the coasts has been of profound signi- Coastal
ficance in the story of French maritime relations. French routes O^Wook.
to the west and north-west are better now than any others in
Europe except the British, as in the early days of trans-Atlantic
expansion they were better than any others except the Iberian ;
and the French routes to the south and south-east are better
191
192 The Continent of Europe ch.
than those of any other " Atlantic " Power. On this the historic
influence of the French in Canada and India, and the possession
by France of such islands as St. Pierre and Reunion, are obvious
comments. More than half the frontier is sea-coast, and the
fronting waters include such natural nurseries of fine seamanship
as the stormy Bay of Biscay and the Gulf of (Roaring) Lions,
while the paucity of good natural harbours was at once an impulse
to seamanship and a check on commerce.
Strategic Further, one early result of spanning Europe from north to
Ports. south on the Atlantic seaboard was the tendency for the best
natural harbours to be more or less monopolised for strategic
purposes ; for, obviously, the best strategic positions were those
which would otherwise have had most facilities for commerce.
Thus, the fine advanced sites of Brest and Toulon, with their
incidental advantages of Viking and Phoenician blood in the
local populations, were sacrificed to strategic needs ; and the first
inferior harbours to be "improved" were those on the Narrow
Seas, i.e. "inside" the Cotentin peninsula, which commanded the
two ends of the sea-approach on Paris — Cherbourg and Dunkirk.
Cherbourg — only 70 miles south of the Isle of Wight — betrays by
its name (Caesaris Burgum, " Caesar's Castle ") its strategic im-
portance in very early times ; and it was the strength of the position
between dune and marsh or floodable " carse " that attracted Crom-
well's attention to Dunkirk (" the Church amongst the Dunes ").
Port Dues. In days of small ships — when, too, roads were bad, and piracy
favoured an up-river site — France had a number of useful little
harbours, some of which are still very useful for local harbours, e.g.
Caen on the Orme and Dieppe on the Arques ; and, with the
development of internal wealth and external commerce, the French
were rich enough to develop estuaries, such as those of the Seine
and the Loire, and cracks in the chalk scarp or gaps in the sand-
dunes, as at Boulogne and Calais. The inevitable result, however,
is that port dues at such places are very high, those at Havre,
Cherbourg, and Dunkirk, being from four to five times as high as
the corresponding dues at, e.g., Rotterdam, and more than double
those even at Hamburg.
Sea The variety of coastal features referred to above is likely to
FisMng. prove of great value in the modern development of fishing, with its
double relation to food supply and naval power ; for the parts of
the coast that are naturally least useful for commerce, are often
most useful for the propagation of fish. For instance, the short
south coast is divided by Cape Couronne into two approximately
equal {c. 200 miles), but very distinct parts. The rocky eastern
half is broken by beautiful bays, such as those of Hyeres and Nice,
and by deep gulfs which make admirable harbours, especially
those of Marseilles and Toulon ; but the west is a line of dune-
Channel !«
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XV France 193
fringed lagoon, e.g. Vendres and Leucate, the outcome of
centuries of struggle between the silt-laden floods of Pyrenean and
Cevennes torrents and the westward gales and drift of Rhone
mud. Where the coast is high and rocky, the continental shelf is
narrow, and vice versa; and, where currents meet or part, there
plankton accumulates, and fish follow it. Cette is the chief
fishing port here only because its commercial importance, as the
outlet of the Canal du Midi, causes it to be kept free from sand ;
and it is mainly the importance of the salt industry that handicaps
the fishing industry in the more typically lagoon ports.
Precisely similar conditions obtain on the Atlantic except that Ocean
the salt industry there is relatively unimportant — because it Fishing,
cannot compete with the natural advantage of " summer-drought "
possessed by the Mediterranean coast — and that the Atlantic coast
is not only double the length of the Mediterranean coast, but has
also typically oceanic advantages, e.g. of tide and oxygen. The
Landes district has a characteristic lagoon coast ; but the strength
of the rivers is small, and that of the west wind is very great.
Only the largest river, the Leyre, has been able to make any real
struggle, and its estuary is the Arcachon basin, off which the
surface temperature of the water varies 20° F. (52° F.-72° F.).
Between the great oyster - market of Marennes and Sables
d'Olonne river mud is abundant, and the islands of Oleron
and Re provide shelter from western gales ; and, as the outport of
La Pallice is monopolising commerce, the old landward harbour
of Rochelle is specialising in fishing. Farther north, where the
east-and-west folds of the old mountains dip seaward as rias, the
coast becomes bolder, though still there is some island-shelter,
e.g. Belle He sheltering the Morbihan Gulf; and, though there are
important fishing-stations both on the mainland and on the islands,
e.g. Lorient and Croisic, the native people are deep-sea men rather
than alongshore fishermen. Of course, the special products of this
west coast are sardines and tunny. From Camant to Sables
d'Olonne the sardine is supreme, and the fishing has been the
cause of much trouble at Douarnenez and Concarneau.
But the north coast is the most important in the fishing industry, Channel
mainly because it does not confine itself to any one or two kinds of Ports,
fish, or any one or two fishing-grounds, boats from Dunkirk and
Gravelines being as common off Iceland as boats from Fecamp and
Granville are off Newfoundland. The "sea-meadows" off Brittany
and the " Calvados " bay are famous — or notorious — alike for their
cunents and for their rich mud, while the eastward ports have easy
access to the North Sea. The western ports, e.g. Morlaix and St.
Brieuc — if not St, Malo — are somewhat " out of the way," while
other industries make great demands on available labour in the
Calvados ports ; and, on the other hand, the excellent railway service
194
The Continent of Europe
CH.
Land
Frontiers.
Burgundy
Y. Lor-
raine
Gates.
Frontier
Lines.
has given special advantages to cross-channel ports, especially the
"cracks in the chalk." Boulogne and Dieppe, the two greatest
fish markets in France, have direct services of their own to Paris ;
and Fecamp, which shares with Boulogne in control of the distant
fisheries, has very easy access to the Havre and Rouen connections.
The total value of the industry — which directly employs 100,000
men afloat, and 60,000 persons on shore — approaches ^^5, 000, 000 a
year; and of this Boulogne is credited with nearly ;!^i, 000,000,
while Boulogne and Fecamp are responsible for one-tenth of all the
herrings landed in European ports.
The land frontiers are largely of a mountainous character ; but
the various sections are so distinctly marked off by strips of lowland
or, at least, by a river gorge, that the mountain obstacle nowhere
imprisons, though it forms a very real protection. Further, traffic
is concentrated on these river gaps, and any possible danger-zones
are defined by them. Thereby the danger is lessened, and the fact
that different gaps face different nations again minimises risk of
invasion ; but, unfortunately, the two most important gaps face the
least friendly nation.
In days when the Danube was more important than the Rhine,
and the Rhone than the Seine, the Burgundy Gate was also more
important than the Lorraine Gate, partly because it joined Danube
and Rhone, and partly because it was essentially central. In those
days, too, its narrowness (18 miles) made it very easy to defend ; and,
in any case, it was rather a route for French expansion, e.g. Richelieu's
seizure of Alsace, than a dangerous inlet into France. It is significant,
however, that the main line of railway from Dijon to Lyons keeps to
the west bank ^ of the Saone, and only crosses the waterway south
of Lyons. The Lorraine Gate now is much the more important of
the two, mainly owing to the modern importance of Rhine and Seine,
but partly to its greater breadth. It carries the Orient-Express route
eastward, and is marked by such memorable sites as those of Sedan
and Metz, both on rivers which — unlike the Doubs — lead outwards,
not inwards.
The precise frontier line is very varied in feature, and its political
importance is not in all parts obviously related to its physique. For
instance, the " permanent " neutrality of Belgium and Switzerland —
which is not likely to be violated by France — minimises the import-
ance of the physical frontier. In the case of Belgium it is a purely
arbitrary line (cf. p. 250), which immensely increases its economic
value ; in the case of Switzerland, the arbitrary link between the
Jura and the Alps has a high economic importance, especially as it
crosses such a natural meeting-place of peoples as a large navigable
lake. And the Jura (cf. p. 34) are sufficiently high and wide and
continuous to make an excellent natural barrier between peoples.
^ The main lines to Paris along both Somme and Seine do the same.
XV France 195
The Pyrenees and Alps are an absolute protection without Pyrenees
absolutely prohibiting peaceful intercourse ; and the latter is as ^Jid Alps,
much encouraged wiih Italy by the Alpine tunnels as it is dis-
couraged with Spain by the change of railway gauge. While the
sierra character of the Pyrenees, however, afforded minimum
temptation to French aggression into Spain, the convergence of the
Alpine valleys on the concave side offered maximum temptation to
aggression into Italy (cf. p. 84), especially as the French language
■ — like the Kingdom of Burgundy — had crept down the Little St.
Bernard Pass as far as the great road-junction of Aosta (cf. p. 30),
thus laying the foundation of a natural political bond between Savoy
and Piedmont.
The 200 miles between the Belgian and Swiss frontiers are the Lorraine
vital part, and here both physical features and political or military Frontier,
distributions are of profound significance. The racial differences
are strongest approximately along the water-parting between rivers
flowing into the North Sea and rivers flowing into the English
Channel or the Mediterranean ; but the geographical features
between the basins of Rhine and Seine offer no real barrier,
scarcely even an obstacle, although Lorraine had been for ages
before 1871 roughly divided between French-speaking and German-
speaking people. And the difference of attitude on the part of the
two nations towards the fundamental problems may be judged more
fairly from deeds than from words. It is, therefore, of profound
moment that the French side of the frontier is held on a system
which is of real use only for defence, while the German system
is one which is meaningless or ridiculous except for purposes of
aggression.
The French have fortified the whole line — at some distance Military
from the actual frontier — which should guard them against any very Organisa-
sudden surprise, but the scattered garrisons are obviously incapable ^°°'
of making any concerted attack ; the Germans have concentrated
an estimated 1,000,000 men at two foci — Metz, 30 miles south of
the Belgian frontier, and Strassburg, half-way between Metz and the
Swiss frontier. Each of these is a great railway-junction inside
a huge ring of fortifications, capable of easily holding half a million
men apiece, and with extraordinary facilities for transporting troops
between the two foci. Strassburg itself is not very threatening,
however valuable it was in olden days as a base for the French in
crossing the Rhine ; and the nearness of Metz to Paris and the
trivial obstacle of the Argonne are so obvious that surprise might
have been thought impossible. But the cause of perennial unrest
on this frontier is the fear of surprise through violation of neutral
territory, Belgian and Swiss. And historians who remember the
fate of Silesia or the events preceding the battle of Pima, may
justifiably wonder what products known to Economic Geography
196
The Continent of Europe
CH.
BeUef.
Nnclens.
Volcanic
Gentry.
could possibly be served by the " heavy " railways to Malmedy —
a mile and a half from the Belgian frontier — and to Pfirt, not very
much farther from the Swiss frontier (cf. pp. 273, 285).
The relief of the country is fundamentally simple, the various
natural regions being so grouped and related as to form a very
complete, compact, and comprehensible unit. There is a highland
core of old crust-block girdled almost continuously by lowland of
'varying width ; and this is flanked southward by the young folded
mountains of the Alps and the Pyrenees and northward by the
old plateaus of Brittany and the Ardennes. Traffic round this core,
therefore, must always have been physically easy, though it might
be interrupted by political accidents, e.g. the possession of Guienne
and Gascony by England ; and, if such foreign intrusion were
maintained for any considerable time, it must have given special
importance to the Paris basin, as the natural link between all the
parts of the country that were not held by foreigners. On the
other hand, once the foreign control was withdrawn, physical condi-
tions would distinctly favour the obliteration of racial differences,
e.g. between Iberian and Kelt or Kelt and Teuton ; and the
supremacy already acquired by the central Paris basin would make
it very difficult for outlying areas to combine against the centre, i.e.
for provincial vassals to threaten their king. It was quite character-
istic, however, that determined opposition to the central authority
should come from the Counts of Toulouse, — individualists and
"aliens" in politics and creed — and equally significant that its
punishment in the vile Albigensian " Crusade " should mark a
great step in the unification of France.
The nucleus of the area is the peneplain of the Central Plateau,
or Massif, a rugged block of old crystalline rock, flanked by younger
sedimentary formations and broken towards the centre by recent
volcanic action. This peneplain slopes down more or less gently —
by way of the intermediate levels of Limousin and Marche — to the
west and north-west from a height of nearly 5600 feet in the
Cevennes, so that it drains naturally to the Garonne and the Loire ;
and, as its upturned margins in the Cevennes, Lyonnais, and
Beaujolais " mountains " form a steep riverless scarp to the Rhone
valley, i.e. the funnel by which civilisation entered the country, it
became — like the similarly unattractive and inaccessible recesses of
Brittany and Savoy — a refuge for the conquered natives, with their
typical round heads, short stature, and dark complexion. In each
case, too, the unattractive and inaccessible area was likely to
perpetuate social and religious individualism long after the unity
and solidarity of the rest of the country had been firmly established.
The volcanic action has left its traces in such hot springs as
those of Vichy and Chaudes Aigues (" Hot Waters ") as well as
in the typical puys of Auvergne ; and it is in these puys that we
XV
France
197
find the culminating peaks of the massif, those of Cantal (c. 6100
feet) and Dore (c. 6200). To leeward of the main heights any
depressed areas are likely to suffer from drought and dust ; and
the great importance of the Limagne plain in early days was largely
due to the intense fertility of the wind-borne volcanic dust. It is
equally significant that the name of its capital, Clermont {Clarus
Mons, " Clear Mountain ") should be taken from the neighbouring
Puy de Dome — that the local cathedral, in which Peter the Hermit
preached the first Crusading sermon, should be built of lava — and
that the permanence of the local control should be illustrated by
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r old -
ranges
such typical " agricultural " industries to-day as biscuit-baking and
fruit-preserving. Even the wind-borne dust is still prominent — in
causing mist and fog.
The nearness to the Atlantic, the considerable height within Crystal-
such a small area, and the details of relief, have combined to give the li^©
massif special significance in the hydrography of France ; but, owing I^gj*''
to the local distribution of rainfall (over 70 inches in the highest
and most exposed parts) and to differences of rock-formation, the
fate of the northward rivers has been very different from that of
the westward rivers. The impervious crystalline rock of the north-
ward slope, with its quick "run-off" of rain and even of surface-soil,
has developed more or less parallel streams flowing independently
198 The Continent of Europe ch.
of one another from areas of maximum rainfall, e.g. Loire and Allier,
and separated by a marked ridge, e.g. the Forez mountains. The
pace and volume of these rivers, and their heavy burden of silt,
have — aided by the physical history of the area — enabled them to
cut down their valleys in the areas of lighter rainfall — to leeward of.
the summit — into almost canon form ; and population was attracted
to these valleys in very early times owing to their value as trade-
routes as well as owing to the fertility of their wind-borne soil.
Roanne is a town as old as Clermont, and Le Puy has a name as
significant.
Earst The westward rivers have also eroded canon valleys, especially
Liine- the Tarn ; but the conditions of flow are quite different, for the
^®' massif is flanked here by limestone which is not only porous,
but even easily soluble. Here, then, we have typical *' Karst "
phenomena. The originally continuous plateau has been carved
— by rivers that rise close to the Loire and the Allier, e.g. the Lot
and the Tarn — into a series of limestone promontories called
Gausses {calx, "lime"). The surface of each block is a weird
wilderness pitted with sink-holes, some of which reach a depth of
700 feet, while below it is honeycombed with caves — rich in
stalactites and even in the relics of early Cave-dwellers — and
tunnelled by a network of rivers. In the course of about 30 miles
the Tarn receives thirty subterranean tributaries and not one on
the surface ; and sheep and mules are the typical products of the
Aveyron valley, the Roquefort cheese being made of ewes' milk.
Hydro- This old block, from its extreme northward extension in the
graphic granite plateau of Morvan to its extreme southward extension in
the Montague Noir, completely dominates the river-system of
France, isolating the Saone- Rhone basin and feeding — generally
with flood-water — the three other great basins. Except the Loire,
all these basins are approximately of the same size {c. = Ireland) ;
and, as the water-parting is well towards the east of the country,
all of them except the Rhone have more or less equal exposure
to wet winds off" the Atlantic. But the varying volume of the
Loire and the rapids on the Garonne (" The Rough ") force traffic
on to lateral canals — the Loire needing also to be protected by
levees ; and, therefore, their adverse physique and regime have
again increased the relative importance of the favourable physique
and regime of the Seine (" The Tranquil ").
Loire v. There is a further distinction between them. For the physical
Garonne, relation of the Loire and the Garonne to the massif, and their
climatic relation to the area of summer-drought in the south-east,
cause them to draw the great proportion of their water-supply from
the massif, i.e. their great tributaries are concentrated in the one
case on the left bank and in the other case on the right bank ;
and the valleys of these tributaries lead up into those areas of hard
XV
France
199
old rock which are so typically connected with populations in-
dividualistic alike in creed and politics. And the Loire, though
fed by several large tributaries from the Norman Heights, e.g. the
Loir, the Sarthe, and the Mayenne, enters again near its mouth
an area of old rock and individualistic population in Brittany and
the Vendean Bocage. As the clay flats of the Sologne within the
great bend at Orleans became naturally a vast expanse of forested
marsh, traffic from the Paris basin was forced to keep to the right
Stanford's CeogI ^stabf, London-
Peripheral distribution of French towns.
bank between Orleans and Tours, and special importance was given
to the Gap of Poitou, as the only link between the two great Tertiary
basins of Bordeaux and Paris. Poitiers and the Vienne have,
therefore, strategical importance precisely similar to that of Aldershot
and the Kennet between the Hampshire and London basins in
England.
The Seine and the Garonne basins have, as great Tertiary basins, Seine v.
much in common ; and, except in regime, even the rivers show Gaxonne.
curious similarity. In each case the basal channel, which controls
the direction and outflow of the whole basin, is on the extreme left —
200
The Continent of Europe
CH.
Two
Areas.
Climate.
Climatic
Regions.
the Aribge-Garonne and the Yonne-Seine ; and, as all the great
tributaries enter from the right and across the general line of advance,
their flood-water is particularly troublesome. Thus, it is the Marne
that is most blamed — in Paris — for floods which are mainly due to
the inflow from the Yonne on the one side and the banking-back of
the whole current by the Links of Seine on the other side ; and it
is in passing the Gausses that the right bank of the Garonne is pro-
vided with a lateral canal — from Toulouse to Agen.
A line drawn from Agen via Angouleme and Troyes to Sedan
divides the whole country into two well-marked areas — the western
being generally low and level, while the eastern is generally high
and hilly. In each case there is an obvious exception, for the
Rhone valley is, like the Breton highland, a separate unit ; but
Brittany is too much isolated to affect the political unity of the
western lowlands, while the lowness of the Cote-d'Or and Carcas-
sonne Gaps — respectively looo and 625 feet — would have prevented
the isolation of the Rhone valley even if it had not been the natural
gateway of civilisation into France.
The climate is essentially temperate, partly because of latitude
arid general level, but chiefly because the position of the main water-
parting gives free access to Atlantic winds almost everywhere ; and
the one exception — in the lee of the eastern Pyrenees — would be
essentially " Mediterranean " even if there were no physical obstacle
in the shape of the Pyrenees. Even as it is, the average rainfall of
Perpignan (23 inches) is as great as that of Paris. The climatic con-
trasts of the country are, therefore, as in England, mainly due to
differences of exposure, the north-west quadrant corresponding
closely to our south-west quadrant, while the north-east quadrant
corresponds to our south-east quadrant (cf. p. 230); rainfall varies
mainly with height and Atlantic aspect, about two-thirds of the area
having some rain at all seasons, while temperature varies mainly with
height and latitude, the isotherm of 70° F. in July following the line
from Agen via Angouleme to Troyes.
From a comparison of the various influences, five types may be
distinguished. The lofty central massif (i) has cold winters and
hot summers, with a mean annual temperature of 52° F. and a
maximum annual rainfall of over 5 feet, most of which falls in
summer ; but, while under such circumstances the Millevache granite
gives good pasture for cattle as well as sheep — the latter exceeding
200 per square mile — the Gausses limestone can support only sheep.
Brittany (2), with the same average temperature and rainfall — though
most of the rain falls in winter — has a mild winter and a cool
summer ; and, while the massif has discontinuous heavy rains,
Brittany has frequent fine rains — of great value in dairy farming.
The Bordeaux basin (3), with the same mild winter as Brittany, has
a higher summer temperature, accompanied by a higher average
XV
France
201
temperature (nearly 54° F.) ; and the summer temperature would be
still higher but for the regular cool N.W. winds (cf. p. 56). The fact
that these winds owe much of their value to their coming from a high-
pressure centre, accounts for the relatively low ^ rainfall (28 inches).
The greatest extremes of mean temperature are between the Paris
Stajifords Ceog! Estab^, London,
Annual rainfall of France and Spain.
basin and the summer-drought basin, the mean of the former being
only 50° F., while that of Languedoc and Provence is above 57° F. ;
but in each case there is a marked modification with distance from
sea and ocean. The Paris basin proper (4), with a rainfall slightly
less than that of the London basin, has a slightly colder winter and
slightly hotter summer ; and the extremes increase up to the Vosges
foothills, where the winter mean is only 48° F., while the summer is
* The Pjrrenees rainfall behind Biarritz, however, sometimes exceeds 70 inches.
202
The Continent of Europe
CH.
Rain aud temperature lines.
hot enough to be distinctly rainy. The purely Mediterranean area
(5) is so much exposed to Atlantic influences that its typical Medi-
terranean winter is made exception-
ally mild ; but, with movement north-
ward into the lee of the massif, there
is a marked change — up to the Vosges
foothills. Indeed, the mean temper-
ature of the Saone basin is only
52° F. ; the winters are still wet —
because all regular winds have to
follow the narrow valley northward
or southward — but they are also cold,
because easterly winds work through
the Burgundy Gate ; and the same conditions reversed account for
the heat of the summer.
Physique When the chief physical features of the country, with their
V. Climate, variety of relief and of structural character, are related to this variety
of climatic types, we seem to have almost an epitome of each of the
great areas of Europe which have been associated with marked indi-
viduality of human type — Nordic, Alpine, and Mediterranean. But
the fertile Nordic plain works southward right up to the young Alpine
folds, while the barren plateau belt works northward right up to the
Narrow Seas, leaving valley gaps between itself and the Alpine up-
lift. Movement into the area being normally dependent on ease of
access and such attractions as obvious fertility, and success in intru-
sion being reasonably limited to vigorous peoples, fair, long-headed
foresters from the Nordic plain flooded the fertile lowlands from
Belgium to Bordeaux, and dark, long-headed fruit-growers from the
Mediterranean coast occupied the "summer-drought" portion of the
fertile Rhone valley, while the Alpine Roundheads were isolated in
areas that were specifically unattractive — to primitive man — and
inaccessible or easily defensible.
Savoy can claim to be all three. The massif, if more favoured
with fertile patches, is equally defensible and inaccessible, especi-
ally from the south-east, i.e. the point nearest to the long-headed
intruders. Brittany, in actual physique less defensible and more
accessible, if not also more attractive, was so much more remote
that intruders never penetrated it until they came by sea ; on the
landward side it was, like its rock, quite impervious — even to the
insinuating French tongue, and to this day " Cornish " is spoken
in Cornouaille. When isolated under these adverse conditions,
the stocky-framed Alpine peoples often degenerated, especially in
the somatic quality most dependent on food-supply, i.e. stature ; for
these " islands of (agricultural) misery " exercised a control similar
to that exercised by real islands in dwarfing fauna, and their typical
peoples now are notorious for shortness of stature and badness of
Ancient
Cores.
XV France 203
teeth. Where very different conditions are found in close proximity
— as where the granitic Morvan plateau overhangs the rich Tertiary
soil of Burgundy, or where the granitic rock of the upper valley
of the Aveyron merges in the limestone plain of the lower valley
— the contrasts are still most glaring; and, again, the 666-foot
contour is significant (cf. p. 45). The plains certainly got the fertile
rock-sweepings from the hills, and possibly the hills got the feebler
human-sweepings from the plains.^
On these plains, then, we should expect to find the most Roman
important of the old provinces and great fiefs of France; but all Settle-
subsequent subdivision was somewhat coloured by the original
Roman settlement, with its conscious emphasis on strategic points
and its unconscious response to climatic control. For the Roman
hold on the country was essentially based on a thorough occupation
of the area of summer-drought, with the climatic phenomena of
which they were entirely familiar. This took them at least as far
north as Vienne, the old capital of the Allobroges, and at least as
far west as Toulouse, afterwards the capital of the Visigoths. In
each case command of a climatic divide, with its supplementary
products on opposite sides, made the site naturally a commercial
and political centre, so that for some time — while " Gaul " included
both Britain and Spain — Vienne was made the capital of "all
Gaul." This limited area, as Gallia Narbonensis, roughly marked
out Provence (the first Pro-vincia, "Advanced Conquest") and
Languedoc, the one roughly east and the other west of the Rhone.
It was characteristic that the Romans reached the area, not by Romans
sea like the Phoenicians and the Greeks, but by land via Augusta a^^ \j»3i&.
Taurinorum (Turin) and Tarraco (Tarragona). By the Durance PP™*<^ •
valley they " arrived at " the rocky headland of Avignon {Advenio,
" I arrive ") on the " Roman " bank of the Rhone, thus giving that
place a connection with Rome which was significantly revived by the
Popes in the fourteenth century ; round the Pyrenees they arrived at
Narbo Martius on the " Roman " side of the Aude. In the advance
from each centre important posts were kept inside the best possible
river-front, as Valence between Rhone and Isere and Carcassonne
in the great bend of the Aude ; and, as the Spanish connection was
at first much more important than the Italian, the first colony was
established at Narbonne — a fine strategic site, protected by lagoon
and sea and river on every side except the west — and the place was
made the capital of Mediterranean Gaul, with highroads to Toulouse
and Avignon. With the political separation of France from Spain,
and the political union of " Atlantic " France and " Mediterranean "
France, Narbonne, like Orange and Vienne, lost its importance ;
Avignon and Valance, though still commanding Alpine routes, could
^ Dr. Newbigin gives an admirable illustration of this from the Limousin district
in Afan and his Conquest of Nature.
2o4
The Continent of Europe
CH.
Gallia
Lugdun-
ensis.
Loire
Flank.
Seine
Flank.
not compete landward with Lyons or seaward with Marseilles ; and
the Gard-valley route on to the massif made Nimes more important
than the old " Gallic " capital of Aries at the head of the Rhone
delta.
Gallia Lugdunensis, as its name implies, pivoted on Lyons, but
included also all the land between the Seine and the Loire ; and
the relatively narrow " neck " of the province was held from three
stations — Lyons, Autun, and Sens. Lyons, on its river-girt penin-
sula, in the centre of the great north-and-south route of the Saone-
Rhone depression, had good connection with Rome by the Upper
Rhone, and commanded the best short route up into the Loire
valley (just north-west of St. Etienne). Augustodunum held the
Cote-d'Or Gap between rivers draining to the Atlantic and the
Mediterranean, occupying a river- girt hill on a tributary of the
Loire ; and the choice of the site- — to the exclusion of the old
capital of the Aedui at Chalons on the elbow of the Saone — like
the building of a temple on it to "Janus of the Two-Faces," was
entirely justified. The amount of traffic through the gap may be
gauged by the corruption that the original name has suffered, or by
the survival to this day of such a significant industry as the making
of horse-cloths. The capital of the Senones had only temporary
importance ; for the confluence of the Vanne with the Yonne, where
the latter leaves the plateau, was bound to yield place to other con-
fluences farther down the Seine, as the North Sea and the English
Channel became more important than the Alpine passes and the
Mediterranean.
With the " neck " of the province thus held, the two great rivers
were made the key to the rest, and at first the Loire was thought
the more important. Two sites were of paramount importance, the
political capital of the Turones and the strategic point at which the
broad,^ shoaly, rapid Loire swerved nearest to the Seine. The latter
was well protected by the forested Sologne marsh on the south and
by the marshy ** Fontainebleau " forest on the east, while it was
within easy reach of the rich grain-lands of Beauce. Tours, on the
Cher-Loire peninsula, was in an equally defensible site and in an
equally fertile area ; but its essential value — from the days of Martel
onwards — was as the key to the Poitou Gap. The poor navigation
on the Loire, the relative decline of agriculture, the practical absence
of coal, and external causes such as the centralisation of the circular
lowlands on Paris and the opening of the Suez Canal, have all
combined to decrease the relative importance of the Middle Loire
valley. But it was to Tours that the seat of Government was
moved from Paris in 1871.
On the Seine, as on the Loire, only two centres seem to have
been very important, the old capital of the Parisii and Rotomagus
^ The bridge at Orleans ("Aurelian's Camp") has nine arches.
XV France 205
(Rouen). The development of the latter has depended largely on
"modern" advantages, e.g. (i) the fact that the great north-east
bend — which attracted the attention of the Romans through being
at once the most pronounced feature on the river and at a safe
distance from the sea — put it into close relations with Dieppe; (2)
objection to — or original impossibility of — bridging the river any
farther north ; (3) the suitability of the site and the climate for the
import and the working of textile fibres. The position of Paris,
on the contrary, has always been one of supreme importance.
About half-way in the course of the Seine across its fertile basin, at
its confluence with its chief tributary, the Marne, islands in the
river were first a refuge and then a means of bridging the river.
Forested marsh and " Barbarians " on the northern bank caused
the first expansion to be on to the southern " Roman " bank, thus
giving " Versailles " its initial relation to Orleans and Blois ; no
place farther south could rival it, because the critical point is
obviously where the three great waterways — Yonne and Seine and
Marne — unite ; no place farther north could rival it, because there
were fatal strategic objections to being involved amongst the
intricate " Links of Seine," where one bank or one part of a
"link" is always commanding or being commanded by another.
The network of waterways led to a network of roads, and the
latter to a network of railways, until Paris became " a river, road,
and railway star " ; and these conditions reacted on one another
until, five years ago, Paris could claim a larger trade as a port
than any seaboard harbour, and ranked next to Marseilles and Le
Havre even for foreign commerce.
Belgica and Aquitania were simply the flanks of the other two Belgica.
provinces, but were organised on the same principles. In Belgica,
which was practically all the land between the Jura Mountains and
the Dover Strait, the two foci were at opposite ends — Visontio
(Besangon) and the old capital of the Remi. The river-girt rock
in the loop of the Doubs was, in those days, unquestionably the
" Gate-post," though modern artillery and political control have
deprived it of its old importance, — its military role having been
moved outwards to Belfort, while its political role has been moved
inwards to Dijon, which faces the Burgundy Gate, but is in the
rear of the Saone and has its back against the Cote d'Or, and so
commands all the best passes to Yonne and Seine, to Marne and
Meuse. The adoption of Reims as the other focus, no doubt, had
the advantage — seldom ignored by the Romans — of keeping up
old associations in the minds of conquered people, as at Paris and
Tours ; but it was justified otherwise, though the justification was
not obvious at first. For the town stands between the Champagne
clays and the Argonne chalk, i.e. between wine and wool, and
between Aisne and Marne, i.e. between the latitudes of Sedan and
2o6 The Continent of Europe ch.
Metz ; and, from the time when the Holy Roman Empire fronted
directly on to the Meuse and the Saone, Reims challenged the foe
from a safe proximity to the frontier, much as Scone challenged the
Highland frontier beyond Dunkeld.
Aquitania. Aquitania, which was all the rest of the Gallic area, stood four-
square — the Pictones dwelling round the rocky hill of Poitiers, one
branch of the Biturges round the modern Bourges, another branch
round Burdigala (Bordeaux), and the Arverni on the plateau ; and
the real foci were the lowland Bordeaux and the highland
Augustonemetum (Clermont), the home of Vercingetorix. The
AUier valley is still the best natural route across the Auvergne
plateau, though the presence of coal and iron has made the Loire
valley more important economically ; and Bordeaux is still much
the most important place on the lowland. Without a rival along
miles of dune-fringed coast, protected by Landes and lagoons
seaward and by the river landward, the effective meeting-place of
five great river- valleys, and at the lowest point on the largest river
at which it could be bridged, the city had every opportunity of
monopolising the commerce of the whole basin, and of specialising
in shipping the products of the mild Medoc peninsula to the Severn
ports of England. In modern times it has come to control
typical South American imports, such as rubber.
Brittany. Seaward of i" W. and 47" N. there is a land of ancient rock
and even rainfall which enable the Bretons to raise, especially on
the more fertile northern coast-lands, market - garden and dairy
products that are much in demand in the neighbouring English
market, especially early cauliflowers and potatoes from Cherbourg
and Sl Malo. The old rock extends into Anjou and Maine,
where it is worked at Angers and other places in the Mayenne
basin for such a typically Cambrian product as slate ; but the
area is specifically Breton — in history, politics, and creed. Storms
and strong tides, fog-haunted islands and crumbling coasts — worked
for such a typically Cornish product as china-clay, e.g. at Quimper
— have isolated it seaward except to mtruders of the Viking type ;
impervious rock, heavy rains, and salt winds have encouraged
bogs inland and discouraged forest on the exposed parts, while
remoteness from Paris has emphasised the isolation due also to
unattractiveness. Internally, parallel belts of rugged upland and
water-logged lowland divide it up into such isolated strips that
even now three or four dialects can be distinguished. Along each
coast facilities for fishing ^ and for access inland raised little towns
such as Quimper and Vannes, Morlaix and St. Brieuc ; but —
except for the recent rise of Foug^res as a great shoemaking
centre, using mainly English leather — the only inland centre of any
^ Hemp-growing and making of ropes and sails are typical of Morbihan, but
Lorient is too typically a naval station to progress commercially.
XV France 207
importance is Rennes, where the relatively modern east-and-west
route between the Noire and d'Arree heights crosses the old north-
and-south route of the Vilaine valley between Redon and Dinan,
the Vilaine being navigable for the whole distance over which its
valley forms the route, i.e. for the 90 miles from its sudden south-
ward bend at Rennes. The town has a typical " confluence " site ;
it is built of granite, and is a very important butter market — for
London via St. Malo.
'l"he less fertile archean rock of southern Brittany extends Vendue.
southward into Vendee, where it rises in the forested terraces of
the Socage (" The Woodland ") to the Gatine Hills, and sinks
seaward beneath the " Breton " salt marshes — now largely drained
and reclaimed. Protected by the scarp of the Gatine and by the
marshes, amid a labyrinth of heaths and woods, the Vendeans
had every opportunity of developing the political and religious
individualism appropriate to — perhaps a product of — this hard and
rugged rock, of resisting invasion by land or sea, and of affording
an unbreakable line of communication between Nantes and La
Rochelle. In modern times, owing to the existence of a small
coal-field on the edge of the old rock, industries have been
developed in La Roche, as under similar circumstances at Laval
and Segre ; but the chief industrial centre is Nantes.
The group of islands in the river, which have caused the Nantes,
transfer of so much commerce to the outport of St. Nazaire because
they break the scouring power of the Loire, had an admirable
strategic and commercial position in days of small vessels ; and the
oceanic influence is so strong climatically that the town is a very
busy textile centre. Standing between the coast and the archean
rock, it has also a typical industry in the tinning of iron-plate and
the making of tin boxes — both for sardines (" Le Croisic") and for
the preserving of vegetables ; but the most important industry is
the smelting and working of iron, e.g. at Nantes and St. Nazaire
(ships). Coal is easily imported, and there is a small coal-field and
a considerable iron-field north-east of Nantes, the iron extending as
far north as Redon and as far east as Angers.
Eastward and southward from the edge of the old rock, right up Wheat
to the foot of the Ardennes and the Vosges, of the massif and and Wine
the Pyrenees, stretch the great wheat and wine lands of France. *'*'^°^-
Throughout the area the presence of early-summer rains and late-
summer heat on the lowlands is favourable alike to the quantity
and the quality of the wheat, though the proportion of gluten — like
the capacity for effervescence in the grape — seems to have some
obscure connection with low, winter temperatures, and therefore
increases towards the north-east ; and the warm, dry slopes that
flank the lowlands, form ideal sites for raising " wine," varying in
character from the claret of the marine climate to the champagne of
208
The Continent of Europe
CH.
the continental. The dividing line is found in the " waist " of
limestone and chalk lowland — pinched in between the granitic
heights of Vendee and Marche — which gave wealth and military
importance to the Counts of Poitou. To the north the sparkling
wines of Saumur are inferior — except in rare years — because the
marine influence is too much felt just before vintage, while to the
south the juice of the Cognac grape is unrivalled on the face of the
earth.
Charente. No doubt the care and skill of the Charente people have been
developed by generations of experience ; but equal care and skill,
on similar soil with similar vines elsewhere, do not yield the same
result. For, though the rainfall is not heavy, the Atlantic influence
so " filters " the sun's rays that the carbides of hydrogen are not
oxidised, and the grape juice is matured in perfection — neither
vinegary nor resinous. It is due to the organic ethers thus pre-
served that real brandy is " a Water of Life " in emergencies. The
development of the industry was, no doubt, much aided by the
river itself, which is navigable up to Angouleme, and which — by the
relation of its upper course to the upper course of the Vienne —
made Angouleme, on its river-girt height, important as a military
post and Rochefort as a naval port. It was the clearness of the
Charente stream and easy access to the decomposed granites of
Limousin that gave Angouleme its fine-paper industry ; and it was
the partial monopoly of Rochefort for naval purposes that led to
the development of Tonnay, farther up the river, as a brandy-
shipping port. The old strategic value of the marsh-girt hill at
Rochefort has, however, been discounted by the winding channel
and shifting bar of the Charente estuary ; and, on the other hand,
the deepening of the La Pallice harbour must direct old-established
currents of trade to Rochelle both from Bordeaux — where the
difficulty of river-navigation causes delay, and from St. Nazaire —
where delay is caused by frequent fogs.
Aquitaine. All Poitou was within the frontiers of Aquitaine, but the typical
part of Aquitaine was the great Tertiary basin of Guienne and
Gascony. This suggests at once a division into a rich agricultural
belt in the north and a poor pastoral belt in the south, the one
ending seaward in the Medoc peninsula and landward in the
tobacco-fields that stretch from Perigueux (famous for its patds and
its truffles) to Montauban, and including the prune orchards of
Agen and Cahors (also famous for truffles), while the other ends
seaward in the Landes and landward in the valley of Toulouse,
famous for its draught-oxen. But the old poverty and the debatable
position between France and Spain which made the "Gascon,"
like his Beam kinsmen, an adventurer, are alike things of the past.
About four-fifths of the total area of dunes (250,000 acres) has been
made productive, and now forms the largest continuous forest in
XV
France
209
France. Inside the natural dunes is a wall of artificial dunes, planted
with sand-binding grass ; and then to leeward of the double fence
the maritime pine flourishes, forming an absolute protection to
the interior, e.g. the Graves vineyards — though the growth of the
trees on the windward side is rather stunted — and yielding a
fine supply of turpentine and timber {e.g. pit-props and telegraph-
poles). The great fan of calcareous clay from the Pyrenees, which
once favoured an independent Armagnac, is now famous for its
" brandy " ; and tourists have brought prosperity to Bayonne and
Dax, Tarbes and Pau. The generic name for all the torrents that
built up the fan is Gave; but the one on which Lourdes and Pau
stand is known specially as The Gave. Toulouse, as the landward
focus of Aquitaine, held the
r^-" I .- -.'•^^- " ^ ^ '^ I [ -s, 'S^ ^ balance between Gascony and
fer ' I I i _ . j — [ Quienne, and became a great
wheat and wine (and tobacco)
market ; and its position be-
tween the Albi and Rodez
coal-fields and the iron and
manganese of the Pyrenees
is reflected in its foundries
and metal industries. Its
position on the left bank of
the river gave it originally the
protection of the marsh which
accumulated within the con-
cave curve.
The wheat and tobacco of
Distribution of the vine.
Bor-
the upper basin of the Garonne ^^^^^ '
give place to wine and maize
in the lower basin, the area supplying a large proportion of the
wine — only 2 or 3 per cent of the whole — which can be classed
above vin ordinaire. Soil and situation are of prime importance,
the Garonne wines being better than the Dordogne wines. The
Medoc is slightly more marine in climate than Graves and Sauternes ;
and the Haut-Medoc clarets are grown on the slopes of Margaux,
Lafite, Latour, etc., while the Graves wines are grown on the flat
sandy lands (" Landes "), and Sauternes are grown landward of the
Graves. These southern vineyards are equally famous for red
wines and white, and the best of each, e.g. Haut-Brion and Yquem,
are equal to the " first growths " of the north ; but the latter are all
red. The Dordogne wines, e.g. St. Emilion, are *' hill " wines of
cheaper varieties ; and for 1,000,000 gallons of "classified" there
are 4,000,000 of "bourgeois" and 100,000,000 oi vin ordinaire.
Like the Tertiary basin of Bordeaux, that of Paris is flanked —
though much more continuously — by rings of chalk and limestone,
p
2IO The Continent of Europe ch.
"The both covering a much larger area in the basin of the Seine than in
Garden of that of the Loire. But between the two great northward bends of
'^*°*^* the Loire, near Orleans and Angers — shut in by the dry limestone hills
of Maine and Berry — the Cretaceous and Tertiary elements are so
well mixed, and have been so much enriched for centuries by river-
floods, that the area has come to be called " the Garden of France."
To leeward of the ancient rock, which reaches in the forested
Monts des Avaloirs of north-west Maine the highest point in all
north-western France {c. 1400 feet), as to leeward of similar rock
in Cornwall and Wales, the " garden " begins as a fruit-garden, the
valley of the Mayenne being famous for its apples and its cider.
The corresponding valley of the Indre in Berry is almost as famous
for its chestnuts. In each basin, below the hard ancient rock, there
are bare limestone hills, which make admirable sheep-pastures ;
indeed, parts of Berry carry 200 sheep to the acre, and Chateauroux
has an old, but still busy, cloth industry. All the rest of the area
in question is very fertile, especially in the " Champagne " between
the Cher and the Indre, and it formed the great bread and wine
land of Medieval France. As it also gave one of the most
important lines of movement, and as the most important part of the
route — between Orleans and Tours — was exceedingly picturesque,
e.g. the riverside cliffs between Blois and Tours, it came under
close settlement in very early times, though large patches of forest
still survive. It seems mainly due to these conditions that it is so
markedly "old-fashioned" in many ways, e.g. in its typical "old"
textiles (linen and wool) — linen specially at Le Mans and woollen
at Chateauroux — and in the survival of antiquated methods of
farming, so that the yield of the various crops is relatively low.
Anjou. The survival of these industries in modern times has been
helped by the distribution of patches of coal near the edge of the
old rock, e.g. between Angers and Cholet and near La Fleche. Le
Mans — with a typical bell-foundry industry, dependent originally on
the tin and copper of the old rock — has more importance than La
Fleche only because, as the head of navigation on the Sarthe, it was
the capital of the old province of Maine ; Angers makes linen and
woollen fabrics like the challies which take their name from Cholet,
but is better known for its slate-quarries and market-gardens. Its
economic development was, however, retarded by its political and
strategic importance as the capital of the Counts of Anjou — which
exposed it to serious danger from invasion up the Loir, as well
as in later times from Huguenots and Vend^ans. So far as one
may press a connection between the hard old rock and militant
individualism in creed or politics, it would be significant that Angers
is within reach of slate-quarries and that a typical industry at
Saumur, as at Nantes, is the making of tin-plate. Saumur — an
island town at the confluence of the Thonet with the Loire — had
XV France 2ii
been an isle of refuge for centuries before it became the metropolis
of French Protestantism ; indeed, its name is probably a corruption
of Salvus MuruSf and the sides of both river-valleys are honey-
combed with caves.
The Seine portion of this " Paris " basin may itself be divided Seine
into two areas by the line north of which climatic or economic Basin,
reasons make the cultivation of the vine unprofitable. This line is
marked very clearly by the water-parting between sea-ward and
Seine-ward streams, e.g. between Somme and Oise ; and south of it
there is the same succession of Tertiary basin, chalk scarp, and
limestone scarp, from west to east of the Seine basin, as there is
from east to west of the Thames basin, making it naturally an area
of wheat and wine, pasture and stone-quarries — the freestone being
specially important just north of Paris itself and just south of
Fontainebleau (cf. the " Bath " stone of Caen and Bayeux). The
chalk downs are naturally as favourable to sheep ^ as the heavy
" bottoms " are to cattle, and the ovine population is very large ;
but the distribution of both sheep and cattle is practically determined
by economic considerations, e.g. the demand for milk and mutton in
the densely peopled " Isle of France." Both are, therefore, largely
stall-fed, and so the mass of the sheep are found, not where the
pasture is really most favourable, but where there are most agri-
cultural bye-products {e.g. trefoil, lucerne, etc.), i.e. in the famous
wheat -lands of Beauce and Brie. The best cattle area in the
heavier rainfall is to windward of the sheep — in Perche.
As in the Thames basin, the steep scarp of the chalk uplands "Cham-
faces away from the centre of the basin ; and this has important papie "
results, strategic and economic. Those near Paris, like somewhat
similar positions near London, offer special facilities for defending
the metropolitan area from attack from the continental side ; those
farther away, especially in Champagne, supply the two great require-
ments of the vine in the northern hemisphere: (i) a slope of 30°
to 45° between the actual terraces on which the vines are mostly
planted, and (2) a south-eastern aspect, so as to catch the maximum
of sunshine in the late autumn. Laon — itself on a hmestone hill
— and Soissons (Augusta Suessionum), Reims and Epernay, control
gaps in the inner chalk ring, the Aisne gap being the most important,
while Sedan and Verdun, Chalons (sur-Marne) and Troyes control
gaps in the limestone ring, the Seine gap giving an important
commercial connection via the Langres plateau with Dijon, while
the Marne gap leads to the "Toul Gate" of Lorraine. Here, as
beyond the Cotswolds, we have an industrial area — specialising in
hardware to the north, where Longwy and Briey have rich deposits
of iron, and in textiles to the south, where Epinal and St. Die have
^ These are of " English" breeds in the north of France, and of merino type in
the south.
212
The Continent of Europe
CH.
Moselle
Iron-field.
Canal v.
Bail.
water-power from the forested Vosges. Between the two areas,
which are linked together naturally by the navigable Moselle, Nancy
has the additional advantage of rich beds of rock-salt, and has
developed very important industries, in iron and textiles, chemicals
and glass (cf. the Dombasle chemicals and Baccarat plate-glass).
The industrial development in this district has been very
marked in recent years, partly in connection with better use of
water-power, but mainly in connection with the mining and smelting
of iron, the output of Meurthe-et-Moselle in 191 1 being two-thirds of
the total for France ; and the latter involves some difficult problems.
For the only ore used till lately was of a silicious type found on the
Luxemburg frontier, e.g. at Longwy and Villerupt, or round Nancy
itself; and, as a matter of fact, the geological expert who reported
on the proposed frontier-line before the Treaty of Frankfurt, included
" the totality of the ferruginous basin " in German Lorraine. But
recently quantities of more calcareous ore have been found in the
marshy area round Briey and Hornecourt, i.e. immediately in front
of Metz. Like the rest of the Lorraine ore, it is rather " rich " in
phosphorus ; but it is also rich in metal (40 p.c), and the amount
of lime (up to 16 p.c.) makes it easy to work and to fuse. The two
great difficulties are fuel and transport. Neither France nor Belgium
can spare any coal, and the supply from the German mines in the Saar
basin is very precarious, both for purely political reasons and because
of the control of the German Colliery Syndicate by the German
Metallurgical Syndicate. For strategical reasons, too, the means of
communication on the French line of approach to Metz are naturally
limited. These are the conditions underlying the regular exchange
of fuel and metal between the Tyne ports and French Lorraine.
Obviously, canals have not the strategic disadvantages of
railways ; and this consideration underlies the relative importance
of the two in north-eastern France, and must be kept in mind
in comparing relative cost of transport. The State maintains all the
waterways free of toll, but admits that the total net cost of water
transport is higher than that of rail transport. At the same time,
encouraged by relief and rainfall, it has spent infinitely more on
canals in the two great centres in the north and north-east than on
any others ; and the result may be seen in the percentage of *' first-
class" navigation on the rivers. Comparison of total length of
navigation with total length of " first-class " depth (6| feet) shows : —
Northern :
Lys, 45 out of 45 miles
Scarpa, 41 ,, 41 ,,
Scheldt, 39 „ 39 M
Aa, 18 „ 18 „
Western :
Loire,
Vilaine,
35 out of 452 miles
31 » 91 ,.
North-Eastern :
Saone, 234 out of 234 miles
Marne, 114 ,, 114 ,,
Aisne, 37 „ 37 „
South-Western :
Garonne, 96 out of 289 miles
Dordogne, 26 ,, 167 ,,
Adour, 21 ,, 72 ,,
Charente, 16 ,, 108 ,,
XV France 213
It is not possible, however, to press the figures — for two reasons.
On the one hand, France is so largely self-supporting that her
internal trade cannot fairly be compared either with her external
trade or with the internal trade of a country like our own ; and, on
the other hand, relief and structure account for some of the glaring
contrasts. For instance, precipitation on the central massif is
" held up " for weeks in winter as snow and ice, and does not escape
to the Loire until it receives the warmth that is brought by rain-
bearing winds, so that the river practically gets two floods at once.
Contrariwise, in months of maximum plant-energy and maximum
evaporation, the fissured limestone above Orleans "masks" a flood
altogether ; and in August the river is sometimes a series of practic-
ally stagnant and actually discontinuous pools.
The Channel lands, eastward of the old rock, while having Channel
marked unity of climate, may be roughly divided into an eastern ^s^ds-
area of agriculture and industries and a western area of pasture and
commerce ; but there are obvious exceptions — economic and
otherwise, and they are increasing. For instance, Normandy is as
famous for its apples and cider as for its cattle and horses, its butter
and " Camembert " cheese ; Bayeux and Alengon have been famous
for lace for centuries, while recently the Orne basin has been one of
the chief French sources of iron-ore. On the other hand, the
amount of waste-products in the east, e.g. from beet-sugar and oil-
crushing works, has enabled the demand for milk for the dense
population to be supplied by stall-fed cattle; and the commercial
centres on the Seine, e.g. Rouen and Elbeuf, have had every
opportunity for maintaining — in a climate favourable to all textile
work — old woollen industries (cf. Lisieux and Falaise) or developing
new cotton industries (cf. Louviers and Evreux), both based on
easy import of coal and raw materials. Similar, but slightly
inferior, facilities on the Somme have made Amiens also an
important textile centre, its modern development being based on its
old wool industry — the principle of " pile "-weaving (for carpets)
being applied to both silk (velvets) and cotton (fustians, i.e.
corduroy) ; but the city has always had political importance,
commanding the great bend on the Somme half-way between Paris
and Calais. It was this, added to its safety — protected on islands
in the river and by the surrounding peat-bogs — that made it a
suitable capital for Picardy, as it was the inferiority of the Somme
that prevented it being superseded by Abbeville seaward or by any
town landward.
Rouen was in a very different position. No doubt the island- Rouen.
centred site in its amphitheatre of hills, 70 miles from the mouth of
the river, made it a place of great importance by sea and land in
early days ; but the deepening of the Seine up to Paris and the
deep draught of modern vessels have ruined it as a harbour, though
214
The Continent of Europe
CH.
it must always — apparently — be the seaward focus of the great
railway and canal systems of the whole Paris basin, and therefore
attracts such a stream of colliers that it returns a very heavy
tonnage for vessels entering the port.
Le Havre. The Lower-Seine Department is a sort of neutral ground, with
the arable land of the Caux and the pastures of Bray, the
industries of Rouen and the commerce of Le Havre, " the Harbour "
of the whole Seine basin. But even here modern development has
depended on the river, because the river means Paris. Purely
seaside places such as St. Valery and Dieppe may have packet-
THE RAILWAYS
OF
F R A MC E
The width of the lines indicates their relative importance.
Influence
of Paris.
stations and export flints,^ but their prosperity comes from being
— like Trouville — bathing-resorts for Paris. As nearness to the
ocean became important, Harfleur was bound to give place to Le
Havre ; and the value of the trade from the coal-field — in this only
reflecting the overwhelming superiority of the right-bank over the
!eft-bank tributaries of the Seine — was so enormously greater than
that from the west that Harfleur had no chance from landward, nor
had it the same chance as Havre seaward for " anticipating " trade
on its way to Antwerp and other ports farther east.
But everything was controlled by Paris. Mr. Mackinder has
pointed out how the influence of Paris effectually prevented the rise
of any other really large city in the basin, but directly encouraged
* About 350,000 tons were exported from Caen in 191 1.
XV France 215
the growth of good - sized towns at '* equal " distances in all
directions, e.g. Havre and Rouen, Amiens and Reims, Troyes and
Orleans. Nothing is more typical of the modern aspect of this than
the importance of Paris as a railway-junction, on the one hand, and,
on the other hand, the concentration of the cotton industry on the
Lower Seine. In early days, no doubt, the variety of minor natural
regions, e.g. the chalk hills of Artois or the fluvial basin of Picardy,
favoured the existence of several small political units ; but the
variety of relief over the whole area is too small, and the unity of
climatic control is too marked, to have allowed these units to
survive. In such a geographic environment, Roman ideas of
centralisation could only flourish profoundly, and so exaggerate the
natural tendency of it, as focused at Paris. The history even of
small towns, such as the Beauce grain-market of Chartres and
Fontainebleau on its famous " glass "-sands (worked also at Nemours),
yields convincing evidence of the overwhelming influence of Paris ;
and, farther afield still, Crecy and Agincourt flank essentially " the
Paris road," while the whole i8 miles of navigation on the little Aa
from St. Omer to the sea below Gravelines has been made " first-
class."
The damp climate of the eastern Channel lands, with its even LUie Coal-
rainfall, is more favourable to roots and " grasses " than to fruit and field.
grain, though the hardier cereals* flourish ; mangolds and potatoes,
flax and colza, are largely grown, but sugar-beet is the great product.
This is partly because of the large demand for sugar in the more
" Teutonic " parts of France, but mainly because of the relation of
the coal-field to the treatment of the roots whether for sugar or for
alcohol ; and it is important that the waste-product guarantees the
milk-supply of the area, and that the large number of dairy cattle
guarantees abundance of manure for the beet-fields. The coal-field
lies partly in the Pas de Calais, north of Arras, e.g. at Lens and
Li^vin, Bethune and Brouay, and partly in the Nord, especially
north-west of Valenciennes and south-east of Douai, e.g. at Anzin
and Aniche. Sugar-beet is largely grown in both departments, but
still more largely where land is slightly less valuable — in the
department of the Aisne.
The textile industries are based on a favourable climate, Textile
abundance of coal, hereditary skill that is as typical of French Indus-
Flanders as of Belgian Flanders, and excellence of local raw '"®°-
materials (wool and flax), though the mass is now imported, e.g.
both wool and linseed coming from the Argentine. There is
great division of labour, e.g. Calais and Arras, like Douai and
Valenciennes, specialising in lace, — Cambrai and St. Quentin in
table-linen, — Fourmies and Croix, Roubaix and Tourcoing, in
woollens. Lille is the great centre, with a population of well over
200,000 and with all the typical industries, especially cotton
2i6 The Continent of Europe CH.
(cf. St, Quentin) and linen (cf. Armentieres), and metallurgical
(cf. Vimen) and chemical (cf. Chauny) ; and Dunkirk — about 50
miles from Lille — is the great outlet, being now only below
Marseilles and Havre amongst the real seaports of France, with a
harbour able to accommodate ships up to 20,000 tons (cf. p. 205).
Burgundy. Once over the Langres plateau — by one of the limestone
valleys, e.g. via Chaumont and Langres or Auxerre and Avalon —
the Cote d'Or scarp has the south-eastern exposure so favourable
to the vine ; and here, where the sheltered Saone basin gets
" baked " in summer, the famous Burgundy wines are produced,
especially between Dijon and Chalons, e.g. at Beaune. The
Beaujolais wines, e.g. from Macon and Villefranche, are of the
same type. Here, too, the oolitic limestone contains — on the
side away from the frontier — both coal and iron round Le Creusot
(cf. the Langres cutlery). The coal was worked here long before
the iron, and even drew for a time the famous Sevres works from
Paris ; but a century ago the place changed its name from
Charbonni^re to Le Creusot, and now has the largest iron industry
in France, including both ordnance and locomotives. In the Jura
oolite there is no coal, but the industries there are mainly of
" Swiss " character, e.g. the watches and clocks of Besangon and
Montbdliard and the mathematical instruments of Morez and St.
Claude, though heavier work is done along navigable water, e.g. at
Dole.
Lyons The essential conditions of the Saone basin are more or less
Gor:ge. repeated between the narrowing of the valley just below Lyons
and its opening out again just above Montelimar ; for the lowland
strip is flanked westward by the mineral-bearing scarp of the
massif, rich in coal and iron round St. Etienne, and eastward by the
Savoy Alps, with their abundance of water-power. The latter,
especially along the Mont Cenis railway in the Arc valley, is
being largely used in the manufacture of aluminium ; but it is
also available for the textile industries of Grenoble and Chamb^ry
(cf. Briangon and Annecy), though kid gloves are a more
characteristic product of these hill towns. The typical textile is,
of course, silk, the Rhone valley supplying France with about one-
seventh of the silk which is used in the country, and the water being
of a quality admirably suited to the dyeing of silk. Hitherto Lyons,
the great centre — with a total product valued in 191 1 at about
;;^i 6,000,000, mainly pure silk tissues and gauzes — has depended
on the coal of St. Etienne, itself a large producer of silk ribbons
and trimmings ; but now a great deal of electricity is being trans-
mitted to Lyons by overhead wire from Alpine waterfalls. Indeed,
one of the chief features of modern development in the area is the
utilisation of water-power, especially in the Savoy and Dauphine
Alps — both locally, e.g. in mines and quarries or chemical and
XV France 217
metallurgical industries, and for transmission to distant textile
centres.
The whole land from the Maritime Alps to the Poitevin marsh Old
once was called Provence, and all its people spoke what was Provence.
essentially the langue tToc. This implied, and actually involved, a
unity of political sentiment and a unity of religious development
which were based on a rich variety of influences — Greek and
Roman, Spanish and Saracen — unified in passing through the
funnel by which they entered the area, as the Mohawk-Hudson
valley unified the medley of races that rushed into the United
States in the early days of colonisation. The heart of the old
Provence, in its widest sense, like the perfection of the langue {foe,
was in the limited area of this funnel to which we still give the
unofficial names of Languedoc and Provence ; and to a historic
unity of political and religious influences they add a climatic unity
— of summer - drought — which gives them a further unity of
economic interest. The total result is that naturally the region is
extraordinarily self-contained ; it produces nearly everything that
is characteristic of France, and scarcely any industry is limited to
any one part of the region, the only vital distinction being that
Languedoc is a lowland backed by highland, while Provence is a
highland backed by lowland. This means that, as we have seen,
the best harbours must be in Provence, so that such an industry as
shipbuilding may be confined to, e.g., Marseilles and Toulon (La
Seyne) ; and that the narrow coast-land of the Riviera beneath
the overhanging scarp of the highland must be well protected
climatically, e.g. from the mistral, so that typical invalid resorts, e.g.
Hyeres and Cannes, Nice and Mentone, may also be confined
largely to Provence.
The whole coast-line produces salt, e.g. at Hyeres, on the fitang Provence
de Berre, in the Pyrenean lagoons ; and, where the salt-works are ^^^
very conveniently placed for transport, as along the main branch j^^^'
of the Rhone in the Camargue below Aries, there are very
important chemical-works, producing e.g. carbonate of soda for the
soap-works or caustic soda for the aluminium-works. Bauxite
actually takes its name from the Baux hills above Aries ; and the
bauxite and aluminium industry is making enormous strides, not
only amongst the lignite mines of the Bouches-du-Rhone between
Aix and Marseilles, but also on the Alpine torrents between
Draguignan and St. Raphael. Metallurgical progress in Languedoc
is less rapid, mainly because the mineral-bearing scarp there is
inland, and so transport is dearer; but there is an important
coal-field between Alais and Bessbges, where the Gard basin
yields both iron and zinc, and the Eastern Pyrenees are a very
valuable source of iron-ore. Languedoc has also, — with great
facilities for transport westward (by the Canal du Midi) as well as
2i8 The Continent of Europe ch.
northward, — a large area of lowland, so that its agricultural output
is larger than that of Provence. The two together are essentially
a " land of wine and oil " — the wine mainly in the west and the oil
in the east, the one merging southward in the market-gardening of
Roussillon while the other merges southward in the flower-grow-
ing of the Var ; and both are famous for their poultry ^ and for
their fruit — grape and olive, peach and apricot, mulberry and
almond.
Provencal The connection of the olive with the flower-growing, as that of
Olives. tj^g market-gardening with the wine-making, is by no means accidental.
Both the olives and the flowers need a light and fertile soil, with
shelter from the cold north winds and exposure to the southern sea ;
but the character of the soil otherwise, the latitude, the altitude, even
the distribution of rainfall, are relatively of no moment. For instance,
the northward limit of the olive has no connection with latitude,
little with altitude — up to 2500 feet or more, and not much with
seasonal rainfall, for it flourishes outside the limits of normal " Medi-
terranean " rainfall ; but it must be protected against N., N.W., and
N.E. winds. The centre of the olive trade of all France is the
centre of the flower trade — Grasse, though the actual market has
been moved to Nice ; and it is most characteristic that the Parma
violets — which " open the season " — are raised under the shade of
olives and "citrons," that the most important single product is
orange-blossom, that the delicate perfume of the roses (the next in
importance) is due to the pollen carried by the bees to the rose-beds
from the orange-groves, and that the olive — which "ends the
season" — should be the basis, with the vine, of the whole scent
industry. For no animal fat seems to be as " pure " as a vegetable
fat, and no scent can be trusted to remain " true " unless the alcohol
used is of grape-origin. When true essence of violets is quoted in
Grasse at 100 guineas an ounce, it becomes obvious why such an
enormously more costly product as attar of roses is seldom made in
the Var valley, but only in countries where the value of human life
is more or less at a minimum (cf. p. 143).
Langue- The wine industry in Languedoc is more related to soil than to
doc Wine, climate directly, and is more noted for quantity than quality, whereas
exactly the opposite is true of the olive-oil of Provence. As a rule,
more than one-third {c. 360,000,000 gallons) of the total wine-crop
of France comes from H^rault and Aude, the former producing
twice as much as the latter ; and, while the typical Provencal culture
is on a sheltered terrace, that of Lower Languedoc is on an open
plain of pebbles and clay mixed with the " lagoon " sand. The
effect upon the distribution of population is most marked, especially
between Montpellier and Beziers. The density approaches 300
per square mile ; and landward of the fitang de Thau, 95 p.c.
^ The poultry of the Bresse, e.g. round Bourg, are said to be the best in France.
XV France 219
of it is "continuous," only the odd 5 persons in every 100 living
" scattered."
In both provinces there are important textile industries, mainly Textiles,
silk — Montpellier having an Institute of Sericulture — but also
woollen, the sheep of the reclaimed plains of Crau and Camargue
producing a very fine quality of wool. Relatively more attention is
paid to wool in the west, e.g. at Nimes and Beziers, with their easy
access to the sheep-pastures of the Pyrenees and Cevennes as well as
of the Crau and Camargue,^ and to silk in the east, e.g. at Avignon
and Montdlimar. There is also division of labour between various
centres ; for instance, while St. Etienne and St. Chamond specialise
in ribbons and trimmings, and Lyons is at once the great market
and the maker of " broad goods," Avignon and the " Alpine " towns
specialise in " light goods." Gloves are a typical product on both
sides of the valley, e.g. at Annonay and at Romans.
The two great foci of the whole Rhone valley, Lyons and Mar- Mar-
seilles, are, therefore, no longer rivals. Both owe their specific seilles.
industries, in silk and oil, to natural products of the Rhone valley,
the mulberry and the olive ; but the industries of both have long
ago outgrown the home supplies of raw material, and Marseilles has
thus become a large importer of raw silk for Lyons and of oil-seeds
and copra for its own soap, candle, and allied industries. Other
imported raw materials, e.g. hides and sugar, are the basis of import-
ant industries in and near Marseilles ; and the great port controls
the export of all the typical products of its hinterland except the
wine, which is attracted to Cette by the Bordeaux canal.
The essential prosperity of these industries in modern times has Central
depended on the coal-fields that skirt the old rock of the massif, but Plateau,
these are not confined to the eastern scarp. Those at Creusot and
Blanzy, St. Etienne and Bessbges, are specially rich and accessible ;
but others are found on almost every side and along the line of
recent disturbance. The largest fields are where this line of disturb-
ance emerges from the massif northwards and southwards, and in
each case the field is eastward of the line, e.g. between Commentry
and Moulins, Aubin and Decazeville ; and there are small lateral
fields, e.g. that of Ahun, which supplies the carpet-factories of Aubus-
son, and that of Beaune, which supplies — via the Allier — the rubber-
works of Clermont (Ferrand). There are, therefore, busy industries
on several parts of the plateau outside the St. Etienne district, e.g.
textiles at Moulins and Roanne, hardware at Montlugon and Camaux,
and — on the more exposed aspects, where the granite is more quickly
decomposed — porcelain, e.g. at Limoges and Nevers. The quality
of the stone on the outskirts of the massif is reflected, e.g., in the
lithographic industry of Issoudun, the cutlery of Moulins and Chatelle-
^ A large number of the sheep are migratory — moving in summer up to the
Cevennes.
dualism.'
220 The Continent of Europe cu. xv
rault, as the vegetation and fauna are reflected in, e.g., the woollens
of Chateauroux and the gloves of Tulle.
Industrial Except for the motor industry at Clermont — a typical modern
J ^°,^I^"„ industry for an old transport centre that has easy access to a rubber-
port — these are mainly old industries of an area with a fertile agri-
cultural valley and rich pastures on the rainy volcanic land below its
highest peaks. The more modern industries sprang up on the richer
coal-fields in the low fertile valley to the east. But both valleys
were old lines of movement, and drained the surplus population
from a relatively barren area to greater opportunities, seasonal or
otherwise, elsewhere. Such opportunities were more and more of
an industrial kind ; and the whole basis of French industries is
individuality. The manual skill and the natural taste of the people
enable them to specialise in the production of artistic and highly
finished products, the high price and the " personal " individuality
of which keep them more or less outside competition, and so give
them a constant, if somewhat limited, market. When the distribu-
tion of the coal-fields is related to the sources from which the typical
industries have drawn their supplies of extra labour, the inference
seems irresistible that this individuality has a direct relation to the
area of archean core and to the influence of the old langue doc.
CHAPTER XVI
BRITISH ISLES
Mathematically, the British Isles are in the centre of all the land World-
on the face of the earth ; climatically, they occupy one of the most Relation.
temperate areas ; commercially, they are on the edge of the busiest
ocean ; geologically, they are on the shelf of the most advanced
continent. But their world-relation is perhaps best expressed
historically ; for their history represents a continuous series of
adaptations to a progressively widening environment. At the
beginning of historic times they were on, or even just outside of,
the margin of civilisation, while to-day they are in the centre of it ;
and thus they were the last important unit to be included in, and
the first to be excluded from, the Roman Empire, while they are
now the nodal objective of all the transcontinental railways that
thread the vast Eurasian plain, and of all the Great-Circle routes
that form the shortest links between the areas of densest population
on the opposite sides of the North Atlantic.
In this development the controlling influence has been the Ocean
ocean, and herein lay a unique opportunity. For the ocean is Influence,
the one great physical unit on the face of the earth ; it implies the
nearest approach to climatic unity ; and so it made possible the
political unit of the British Empire. As it is also the ocean that
has brought about the economic unity of the earth, and yet the
mass of economic products are from the land, a site essentially
between ocean and continent offered special facilities for its people
to control the commerce of the world and to further the Brotherhood
of Man. In an unprejudiced survey it is scarcely possible to deny
that England, in spite of all her faults, has been the mother of
Modern Civilisation ; nor is it a mere accident that practically the
whole world measures longitude from Greenwich.
The most important consideration in the regional relation of the Insu-
islands is probably the physical character of the Narrow Seas, and ^^^^7-
then the insular freedom from extremes of climate ; and the latter —
so far as it can be regarded as independent of the former — has been
historically the less important. Indeed, it is scarcely possible to
222 The Continent of Europe ch.
exaggerate the political importance of an island unit in early historic
times ; for the same conditions which guarantee strategic strength
against external aggression, greatly favour both internal unity and
that consciousness of race which is the basis of true patriotism,
while insular inbreeding always tends to develop a plastic organism
likely to present wide variations (cf. insular dialects), and therefore
to make quick progress in civilisation. In the case of England, too,
traffic on the mainland of Europe was so hampered by forest and
marsh that in very early days it was driven on to the rivers or coast-
wise ; that is to say, even the continental traffic was conducted by a
medium in which an island race could most easily share (cf p. 262).
The The most important feature of the Narrow Seas historically was
Narrow their narrowness. England is closely akin in structure and relief to
®*^' the neighbouring continental lands, and was likely to produce a
similar type of people ; but insularity was bound to cause some
diflferentiation, and the one racial danger would have come from
isolation. From this she was saved by the narrowness of the protect-
ing seas, for she was always near enough to feel the full influence of
her neighbours without becoming dependent on them. This was true
in almost every side of her national life. Economically, English
farmers could keep sheep — and so lay the foundations of the
industrial development of the country — in days when war made
sheep-farming almost impossible on the continent. Again, epidemics
have — even in recent years — reached the opposite coasts, but have
not crossed the sea ; or, if they have crossed it, it has only been in
a relatively feeble form. So, when the sea could not quite stop
invasion, it delayed it considerably — in days when ships were too
small for any large army to be suddenly transported across it ;
and it thus led to a useful variety of inflow and influence, distributed
from different foci, e.g. Scandinavian from the north, Saxon and
Danish from the east, Roman and Norman from the south.
Sea V. The progressive narrowing, eastward and southward, on Dover
i^^ narrowed the strategic front in such a way as to give maximum
facilities for naval concentration ; and it is this that has justified
enormous expense in quite modern times on the construction of a
great naval and commercial harbour on one of the worst natural sites
for a harbour along the whole coast. The progressive widening to the
Atlantic gave every encouragement for expansion over-seas, resulting
in an extraordinary inflow of wealth and development of power ; and
much of the wealth from the wide ocean was spent across the Narrow
Seas — in costly wars which kept the balance of power in Europe —
while the rest of it fed home industries which had almost a monopoly
of the world-market as long as our possible European rivals were hope-
lessly handicapped by the constant war. The greatest market for
English wool in earlier days was within a few miles of Waterloo !
The narrowness of the British seas is due to causes which
XVI
British Isles
223
practically also involved shallowness, and the latter has in turn Shallow-
involved several great advantages. For instance, it is the shallow- Seas.
ness that protects our coasts from the influence of the deep, icy
currents from the Arctic Ocean ; it is the main cause of the great
fishing industries, on which our whole naval power has risen ; above
all, it is responsible for the high tides which visit our estuaries. And
these high tides were as useful for their motive power in the days of
sailing-ships as they are now in carrying huge steamers far inland.
The actual coast-line is of a character which enables almost Coast-
maximum use to be made of these conditions. It is so long and lui®.
so much broken that
there is no place in the
whole country much
more than 7 o miles from
tidal water ; it is so
varied, in relation both
to the land behind it
and the sea in front of
it, that it has encouraged
useful — supplementary
or complementary —
variety of human activity ;
and it is so developed
as to give a maximum
of good harbours vis-a-
vis, as the Clyde and the
Forth, the Mersey and
the Humber, the Severn
and the Thames. More-
over, where a lowland
has been submerged
under a shallow en-
croachment of the ocean,
there must have been originally a complete river-system ; and its
remnants are apt to be symmetrical, as the Thames is to the Rhine
and Scheldt, the Humber to the Elbe and Weser, and the Solent
to the Seine. It is not merely the particular feature that is repro-
duced ; the whole area is strictly comparable, e.g. the Paris basin
with the Hampshire basin or the polders of Holland with the
*' Holland" fen of Lincolnshire (cf. p. 211).
Isolated, then, from Europe by a shallow and narrow waterway, island
the British Isles were able to maintain their political independence ; Group,
their safety not only kept them free from fear of invasion, and so
from any need for military tyranny, but also so minimised the cost
and amount of men and material needed for home defence as to
leave a maximum of both for trade and empire over-seas. The
Natuial divisions of England.
224
The Continent of Europe
CH.
Snrface K.
Coast.
Fish.
Physique.
definite frontier and small area compelled their people to recognise
limitations, to realise themselves, to develop a national type, and
that a plastic insular type. The fact that their unit was a group of
islands, not merely a single island, greatly encouraged individuality,
independence, initiative ; and these were strengthened by the fact
that the natural divisions of relief favoured the existence of three
separate kingdoms in the largest island. The culminating advantage
was that the kingdom nearest to Europe was large enough and of
the right physique to make eventually a homogeneous, firmly knit,
strong leader, while the incoherent units of featureless plain in
Ireland and intricate heights in Wales were in the background.
The character of the surface has an intimate relation to the
variety of coast-line. From a belt of hard old rock in the west,
overlooking the Atlantic from a considerable height and carved by
glaciation and exposure to the Atlantic into a bold and angular
coast, largely of fiord type, Great Britain slopes down to an expanse
of soft young rock in the east, which disappears gradually under a
shallow and narrow sea. Through this eastern coast, with its
smooth and rounded outline, many rivers from the western heights
carry out immense quantities of silt, with the accompanying
organisms that make welcome food for fish. And where there is
no lack of fish food, there food-fish are not likely to be lacking.
In these Narrow Seas the nature of the "ground" is equally
favourable to the habits of the fish and the operations of fishing ;
the nature of the water — especially its temperature and saltness,
its shallowness and the action of the tides — is as favourable as that
of the air above it, to a variety of fish life, e.g. migratory cold-loving
cod and herring and delicate sedentary sole and plaice ; and their
latitude coincides with the natural limits of most of the valuable
food-fishes — cod and haddock not being important in Euiopean
waters south of 50° N., soles and turbot being more or less confined
to So°-55° N., and mackerel being negligible north of 50° N. The
latter was peculiarly important in early days owing both to its
normal distribution south of 50° N. and to its rapidity of movement.
" Fast fish, fast boat," they say ; and it must never be forgotten
that Drake and his Sea-Dogs came from the mackerel ports !
In structure and relief the islands show great variety without
undue complexity, the variety being emphasised by the small area ;
they epitomise the geology of the world, and yet continue the
simple feature-lines of Europe. They thus present a variety of
scenery and resources under conditions favourable to human activity,
but have a structural unity which almost justifies their forming
politically a united kingdom ; while the fact that they continue
the feature-lines of Europe, facilitated the inflow of intruders and
their movement across the whole group in the normal direction
of those feature-lines, i.e. from north-east to south-west.
XVI British Isles 225
The nucleus of the whole area, if not actually the oldest part, "Silur-
is the rim of slaty "Silurian" rock which is the base of most of the **^"
land — in all the four kingdoms — that shuts in the Irish Sea. This N"°^®'^
is, historically, the real British area ; its physical features, e.g. the
Cambrian and Cumbrian Mountains, have Cymric names ; its people
are still typically Mediterranean — long-headed, but short and dark ;
its " native " languages show how its soft oceanic climate and
relatively low relief favoured a uniform Mediterranean type of
people at the expense of the more vigorous Roundheads who
intruded from the "Alpine" grass-lands of the continent, but —
like similar Roundheads elsewhere (cf. p. 80) — died out, leaving
no traces except in their vigorous Keltic languages and in the
round skulls of the pre-Christian burial barrows. As these
languages are in no sense " native " either to the people or the
place, and— like the minor Slav tongues of Eastern Europe (cf.
p. 348) — are useless for purposes of world-commerce, it seems as
futile to encourage them artificially on so-called patriotic grounds
as it is certain that they will die out naturally on economic
grounds.
This hard old rock is practically bounded northwards by a line "Silur-
from Armagh to Dunbar and eastwards by one from the Bass Rock **""
to the Wrekin. It is typically slaty, as in the peaks of Skiddaw "**'"^®^'
and Saddleback and the Mourne Mountains, and is actually quarried
for slate in Wales and Cumberland ; it is rained, especially for lead,
e.g. in the Lead Hills and the Isle of Man ; its impervious strata,
considerable height, and windward position combine to give it
grand or beautiful " lake " scenery, e.g. in Cumberland and Wicklow
— though in the latter except for Wicklow Head, which is slate, the
rock is mainly igneous ; the scenery is finest where there have been
volcanic upheavals, as in Scafell and Helvellyn, Snowdon and
Cader Idris ; and the volcanic action, which was probably due to
the amount of water embedded in the sedimentary " Silurian " rock,
seems to have played some part in the damming of the glacial
valleys, as in the case of Derwentwater and Windermere.
Almost all round this slaty nucleus, and penetrating through it Carboni-
in some places to the Irish Sea, there is a belt of rock of carboni- ferous
ferous age. It is mainly millstone grit (sandstone) and limestone ; ^^^^
and, though south of the Bristol Channel and west of the Irish Sea
there is little or no coal in it, the corresponding area in Great
Britain has been the basis of all our modern industries and com-
merce. Particular significance, therefore, must be attached to the
fact that — before the development of the coal — it was one of
the most backward parts of the country, as illustrated e.g. by the
support given by its people against Constitutional Government in
the Civil War; and, where it is entirely devoid of coal, it must be
expected to be somewhat backward even now.
Q
226
The Continent of Europe
CH.
Bed Sand-
stone.
The actual coal-fields are closely associated with a ring of red
sandstone, which is specially developed in three places — ( i ) on both
sides of the Severn, almost from its source to its mouth ; (2) on both
sides of the Pennines from the Tyne round (southward) to the Eden,
St. Bees' Head being a mass of New Red Sandstone ; and (3) in the
depression of Lowland Scotland north of the (Armagh)-Girvan-
Dunbar line. This red sandstone, whether " Old " or " New," and
whether coal-bearing or not, is very fertile ; thus the Old Red is
equally fertile whether associated with coal in the Clyde-and-Forth
plain or dissociated from it in Strathmore, and the New Red is
The midland valley of Scotland.
equally fertile whether associated with coal round the South Welsh
and the South Pennine Mountains or dissociated from it in the Vale
of York or the Vale of Taunton. Moreover, as its special value is
for the production of milk (cf. Devon and Cheshire), our dense
populations sprang up in places which were — or ought to have been
— within easy reach of abundant supplies of good milk.
Coal- The coal-measures themselves are largely sandstone -flags and
Measures, fire-clay, and industrial development has been greatly facilitated by
their relation to deposits of salt and iron. The richest coal-mines
are found where the coal-measures are ranged round millstone grit,
as in South Wales and the South Pennine counties ; at important
points in the line of the New Red Sandstone, e.g. Droitwich and
Stafford, but especially along the Tees (Port Clarence and Middles-
XVI British Isles 227
borough) and the Weaver and Wheelock (Northwich and Middlewich),
there are most valuable salt-beds ; and the richest iron-fields are,
or have been, found where the upper part of the so-called New Red
Sandstone is represented by ridges of limestone, the source of flux
for smelting purposes.
Roughly parallel with the eastern edge of the New Red Sand- "Young"
stone from the Tees to the Exe run alternate belts of plain and ^<5^-
ridge, of varied formation, but all "young" — lias, limestone, and
chalk. The lias is rich in alum, e.g. near Whitby ; and its marlstone
portions are equally rich in iron, e.g. in Lincolnshire and Northampton-
shire ; the limestone contains, e.g. in the Bath " freestone," a building
stone of great beauty, easily quarried and cut, and yet hardening on
exposure to weather ; the chalk encloses, and holds in basins, the
clays and more recent deposits which have been the basis of English
agriculture. In this connection it is important that all these young
ridges present a steep scarp to the north-west, i.e. the quarter from
which they get much of their summer rain (cf. p. 56), but slope
down gradually on the south-east to the Tertiary deposits.
But, as the sandstone ring merges south-eastward in softer and Ancient
richer rock, so it merges north-westward, i.e. north of a line lying ^'^^■
roughly between Londonderry and Montrose, in older and harder
rock. This is not only the oldest and hardest, but also the highest
and most northerly, formation in the whole country ; and, except for
the Old Red Sandstone round the Moray Firth, it has little wealth
other than its granite, and that has value only within easy access of
water-carriage. This north-western oceanic quadrant, therefore, is
also likely to remain backward, except so far as its water-power may
be developed ; and in any case it must always present a marked
contrast, with its moors and mountains, to the corn and cattle lands,
the woods and orchards, of the south-eastern continental quadrant,
which — in the days when " Agriculture was King " — was the gateway
of civilisation for the whole country.
As the area north and west of the Exe-Tees line consists of very Western
old and hard rock, it has weathered very slowly ; and, therefore — in Heights,
spite of its age — it remains as the highest part of the country, broken
by small areas of lowland which have been fertilised largely at the
expense of the highlands above and around them. Its natural
advantages would, at first sight, seem to be limited to easy access to
the sea, abundance of water, and mineral wealth, especially in coal ;
but these are conditions which have become progressively more and
more favourable to density of population. "
The ridged land south and east of the Exe-Tees line owes its Eastern
low level to the fact that it consists of rock so young and soft that Lowlands.
it has not been able to resist the various weathering agencies, even
though these have been less violent than on the western margin of
the country. This would have pushed the water-parting of the
228
The Continent of Europe
CH.
country westward, even if the hard old rock had not had the higher
elevation originally ; and so the longer rivers must have flowed east-
ward towards the continent, and the larger amount of alluvium must
have been distributed over what was naturally the more fertile rock.
The more resistant parts of this, however, have survived as ridges of
limestone and chalk between the expanses of clay and other newer
material ; and they have a more or less uniform steepness of scarp
towards the north-west and a more or less uniform height. The
Cotswold scarp has the same relation to the Avon as the Lincoln
Heights have to the Trent ; and it is the ends of the main limestone
and main chalk uplands that, in the Cleveland moors and Yorkshire
wolds, have carried the coast-line out eastward between the Humber
and the Tees. The Trent and the Ouse meet so far inland, not
Tertiary
Basins.
E3yinuuium ^
W^*^ Saashot Sanda
London Clay
Woolwich Beds &c
Chalk
9....S V> iji MUes
Structural map of the London basin.
because the Trent is controlled by the Lincoln Heights, but because
both are following — the one southward and the other northward —
the New Red Sandstone plain; and evidence of the eastward
extension of the coast -line through the break in the main chalk
upland, between the East Anglian Heights and the Lincoln wolds,
is found in the silting up of the old harbours of Boston and King's
Lynn.
The glaciation which provided e.g. the boulder clay of the heavy
wheat-soils in East Anglia and the lime which lightened and enriched
that clay, was not extended south of the Thames ; and in this
southern unglaciated area the chalk uplands have a normal west-and-
east lie, not south-west and north-east. And from the pivot of the
Wiltshire upfold the two chief downfolds have been filled up with
Tertiary materials to form the London and Hampshire basins. The
acute-angled fan of " London clay " that spreads out eastwards from
XVI British Isles 229
Newbury represents the Tertiary estuary of the Thames ; the obtuse-
angled fan of " Bognor clay " that spreads out southwards from
Andover represents a similar formation of equal agricultural value.
The climate is of the most favourable "Atlantic " type (cf. p. 53), climate,
but the "insular" freedom from extremes is not due to insularity
per se. In the first place [see diagram on p. 231], the low-
pressure systems which reach the islands about every ten days, on
an average, the whole year through — though the interval is actually
less in winter and greater in summer — follow frequently one of two
tracks ; one is the " bay of warmth " which marks the beginning of
the continental shelf, i.e. north-west of the Outer Hebrides, and the
other is the English Channel. Obviously, when the Icelandic centre
is dominant, t'.e. in winter — when, too, the high pressure over Europe
deflects warm winds northward (cf. p. 55) — this must mean very
heavy rain in the British Isles, especially on the higher western
parts. But as winds in a low-pressure system occupy in turn
every point of the compass, rain can be brought by any wind ; the
east coast may get purely cyclonic rains from an east wind. Indeed,
the surest sign of rain over the Thames basin is the S.E. wind that
marks the advanced "shoulder" of a low-pressure system that is
working up channel.
High-pressure systems, on the other hand, do not "follow a High-
track " at all ; they do not even " travel " as a rule, but only spread, pressure
In summer high-pressure influences may spread, at all events to the ^° ®°^^"
south of the islands, from the Azores centre ; and then the air is
refreshingly cool, both because it comes off" the ocean and because
it comes from a high-pressure centre. In winter high-pressure
influences may spread, at all events to the south-eastern quadrant
of Great Britain, from the cold block on the continent ; and, if very
cold heavy air sinks down then into northward-looking valleys, e.g.
even the Clyde valley, it may lie there for weeks — skating having
continued occasionally even in Glasgow for three consecutive
months.
Again, in the "continental" quadrant of England, which by Contin-
structure and soil has been made predominantly agricultural, there ^^^^^
is a typical " continental " acceleration of maxima and minima ^"* '^^^ '
(cf. p. 55); and this involves, amongst other things, a relatively
heavy rainfall on the limestone and chalk uplands in /uly, i.e. the
month immediately preceding normal harvest.
The freedom from extremes is specially a matter of temperature ; Tempera-
and in this connection elevation is an important factor. For *'"^®-
distance from the Atlantic and proximity to Europe cause
temperatures in summer to decrease from south-east to north-west,
i.e. from the lowest elevation to the highest ; and the actual
temperature in July over the north-west of Scotland averages under
54° F., when that in the Home Counties is over 63° F. The
230
The Continent of Europe
CH.
height, however, is not great enough to materially affect the
isotherms, which are "sun-Hnes" in summer and "sea-lines" in
winter ; in summer, therefore, they run normally east and west, the
Stomow«^
i
•Wick
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April
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October
-v
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January
Seasonal isotherms.
temperature falling northwards, while in winter they run normally
north and south, the temperature falling eastwards.
Climatic Extremes are greatest, therefore, in the south-east quadrant ; and
Regions, this implies several advantages to agriculture, including a hard
winter and a hot summer, with a low but well-distributed rainfall.
XVI
British Isles
231
In these respects the north-eastern quadrant is in most agreement
with the south-eastern, but it has a slightly higher rainfall and a
slightly smaller range of temperature (20° F. v. 23° F.). As this
area includes a considerable amount of low and fertile land, e.g.
the Old Red Sandstone of Strathmore, agriculture is again pre-
dominant. Similar conditions are also found on the limestone plain
of East-Central Ireland ; and it is significant that Ireland sometimes
has a higher return per acre on her grain crops than either England
or Scotland. A statistical return a few years ago was —
Wheat — Scotland, 37 bushels ; Ireland, 31 ; England, 30.
Barley — Ireland, 39 ; Scotland, 36 ; England, 33.
Oats — Ireland, 43 ; England, 41 ; Scotland, 37.
Jan.isanomalous lines-
Annual Minimum---^-- Annual Extreme Kange-
Winter gulf of warmth.
The western parts both of Great Britain and of Ireland are Cattle-
those most free from extremes of temperature — largely because they Reaiing.
are less free from extremes of rainfall ; and it is in this combination
that the secret lies of their predominance in cattle-rearing, which has
hitherto depended on the growth of lush grass for a maximum pro-
portion of the year and the minimum need for housing the beasts
during the rest of the year. In Ireland — outside the area mentioned
— the range of temperature scarcely exceeds 16° F., while in the
north-west of Great Britain it is 18° F. ; but both level and latitude
are greatly in favour of Ireland. Indeed, Western Scotland is
negligible as a cattle-rearing area. The south-western quadrant of
England, however, is the most favoured area. With a range of
232 The Continent of Europe ch.
19° F. it has quite a warm winter, heavy rainfall, and a most fertile
soil, largely red sandstone. Along the whole of the British west
coast, too, the high relative humidity is exceedingly favourable to
textile industries, although the northern half of the country is too
narrow to have a low humidity even in the east
The chief industries of the country may be ranged under five
heads — commerce, manufactures, farming, mining, and fishing ; and
in each case geographical conditions have concentrated activity at
certain foci. The bases of the commerce and manufactures are, of
course, the fishing and mining. The former, apart from its value as
supplying food, is the only school for a navy, mercantile or other-
wise ; and it is the mineral wealth that has led to such congestion
of population — adverse to, and largely drawn away from, rural
industries — that the country must import food as well as raw
materials for manufacturing purposes. In each case, too, the chief
foci present interesting points of contrast, which justify their separate
existence, and throw light on their historical development. It is
only on the causes underlying these contrasts that emphasis will
here be laid.
For instance, for the small area of 120,000 square miles there
are at least ten great commercial harbours, i.e. more than all those
— comparable in character and importance — found between the
mouth of the Guadalquivir and that of the Elbe ; and they represent
what may be called parallel belts of hinterland from south-east to
north-west, decreasing in fertility and ease of access from the Old
World and increasing in mineral wealth and ease of access to the
New World. On the continental margin of the agricultural area
the two clay basins contain the two oldest ports, largely concerned
historically with the trade of the opposite parts of the continent, of
which their basins once formed part. On the inner margin of the
agricultural belt the two most important river-basins of the country
have found outlets at Bristol and Hull, both related to the sandstone
plain and the limestone upland, but the ocean-port much older than
the seaport. The coal-fields " behind " the agricultural belt have
their great outlets at their extreme ends, but here the seaport is
much older than the ocean-port ; indeed, Cardiff is only a creation
of the last fifty years. Windward of the coal-fields are the two
great textile harbours of Liverpool and Manchester, both command-
ing the Cheshire Gate to and from the centre of the slate-girt Irish
Sea. Isolated on the northern margin of the same sea, at once
farther away from privateering in days before the Industrial
Revolution and nearer to America in later days, Glasgow and
Belfast owe their existence on the banks of natural " creeks " to the
experience in dealing with a sand-choked creek in the Cheshire
Gate, though in the latter case the Dee was actually replaced by the
Mersey.
XVI
British Isles
233
The outlets of the two clay basins agree in their natural Tower
advantages of nearness to the continent, fertile hinterland, and ^^^^•
^ oj o
HO c
double tide ; but, especially in relation to the " double " character
of the tide, they present marked contrasts. Tower Hill was the
spot on which — in prehistoric times of land travel — all tracks con-
234
The Continent of Europe
CH.
"Roads"
V. Water-
ways.
Tranship-
ment and
Market.
The
Thames.
verged to get round the estuarine marshes which made the river
itself unapproachable, and so made it an appropriate and impassable
barrier between glacial and non-glacial England ; and it was the
permanence of this "control," on a smaller scale, that made the
river above Tower Hill a boundary between so many counties.
Even at Tower Hill the ford was so often inaccessible that a village
— for detained traders — sprang up on the shoulder of the hill,
guarded by a fort on the summit ; and the ford was soon replaced
by a ferry, as the ferry was subsequently replaced by a bridge, on
which all roads converged.
When waterways supplanted landways, this focus of roads
became an objective of navigation ; and the consequent power of
distribution was only increased when again traffic became land-traffic,
but carried on by canal and rail. The smallness of the area made
the whole of it more or less the railway-hinterland of London, so
that London grew at the expense of other ports, especially Bristol ;
but the development of the provincial ports, with their local
advantages, is now taking the provincial trade away from London.
At the same time, London never had any local competition, for the
marshy nature of the alluvium on the shores of the estuary prac-
tically forbade the existence of any towns, though useful forts could
be built where the chalk approached the river on both sides, e.g. at
Tilbury and Gravesend, and great castles could be pile-reared
amongst the treacherous swamps, as at Sheerness and Queenborough.
The mere accident that whole fleets collected* in the Downs
during easterly or north-easterly gales, helped to make London a
great port of transhipment, thus increasing its " nodal " value ; and
the consequent growth of population made it an enormous market —
with an immediate demand now from 7,000,000 people — which
encouraged the growth of transit outports, such as Harwich and
Dover, but effectually prevented their becoming centres of population
(cf. p. 214). It was under such circumstances that London de-
veloped into the greatest port in the world, which it has been for
the last 200 years; and much modern criticism of the port implies
some ignorance of its geographical conditions.
Quite apart from the absurdity of comparing its hinterland with
that of its great rivals, e.g. Antwerp, Rotterdam, and Hamburg (cf.
p. 265), there is practically no comparison between the Thames and
the rival rivers. London has much the best channel of the four.
Not one of the others has anything like a 30-foot minimum low-
water channel up to its lowest docks, as London has approximately
up to Tilbury ; still less has any one of them a maximum high-water
channel of 50 feet This 20-foot range, which gives the largest
vessels a chance of reaching the Royal Albert Dock, is due to the
meeting of two tides — one twelve hours behind the other — which com-
plement each other in flowing up the Thames ; but the same two
XVI British Isles 235
tides counteract one another eastward — where crest meets trough
instead of crest meeting crest — giving Rotterdam a tidal range of
only 5 feet, and incidentally causing the Rhine to deposit a delta.
The Scheldt, and still more the Elbe, are certainly more favoured
than the Rhine in this respect; but the Elbe is much troubled
by ice.
The Thames has, however, two great drawbacks, one historical Historic
and the other natural. The latter is that the tide — being double London,
in the sense that two tides go up the river at the same time — is too
strong ; the former is concerned mainly with the predominance of
the city in very early times. For London was a great market looo
years before railways were thought of, and all that time she was a
great port; and so her river-front had come to be occupied by
wharves, etc., and the land behind it had been covered with ware-
houses, etc., with the obvious result that the centre of the port was
practically closed to the intrusion of railways. Further, as ships
increased in number and in size, they could not all or always moor
at the wharves, but had to lie out in the middle of the river or not
come up to the heart of the city. New docks were built farther and
farther down the river, but their value was in inverse ratio to their
distance from the " Pool " ; and the alternative of working the traffic
by barges higher up the river was not only the more suitable, but
also already established in practice. London, then, is a barge port,
with a fleet of fully 12,000 barges ; and the strength of the tide prac-
tically dispenses with any other source of motive-power.
There is nothing in all this in itself adverse to shipbuilding on Thames
the river ; and the disadvantages urged against the river, e.g. distance Ship-
from coal and iron, are becoming continuously less important. For <*"*e'
the materials now used are made of mild steel, not iron, and are
largely worked " cold " ; and this minimises the need for coal —
especially as the machine tools are mainly actuated by electricity —
while the steel-plates, etc., are delivered by the great producers in
North-East England at the same price everywhere in the country,
whether Poplar, Barrow, or Belfast. The removal of yards, then,
from the Thames to the Clyde is due mainly to the better and
cheaper labour, involving a saving of 12-15 p.c. at Scotstoun over
Poplar, and partly to such subordinate considerations as access to
a good " measured mile " for speed trials.
In some small points, e.g. healthiness and scenery, Southampton South-
has natural advantages over London ; and it had obvious historical hampton
advantages so long as Winchester was the "English" capital, or ''' **^ °°'
England was governed by Norman dukes, or civilisation was west
of the Rhine, or the export of *' South-Down " wool was still legal.
With the loss of these advantages, and after the political isolation of
the country from the continent had led to great internal develop-
ment, Southampton had no chance against London ; but the very
236
The Continent of Europe
CH.
Double
Tide.
advantages by which London won her monopoly, eventually reacted
in favour of Southampton. Once cargoes from the Atlantic for
London had to be trans-shipped on to rail, it was a matter of little
importance whether that was done far down the Thames or far up
the Itchen ; and the latter saves the long detour by the foggy and
crowded Dover Strait — no small advantage in the saving of insurance
and in the quick transport of meat and vegetables, fruit and dairy
produce. These conditions, with the possession of very good docks,
have more than doubled the traffic in twenty years.
The essential advantages of the harbour, however, are its double
front and its double tide. It has a double front because it stands
on the peninsula between the Itchen and the Test ; its tide is
double, not because two tides come in at the same time, but because
the same tide comes in twice. The obtuse-angled basin has
naturally a very broad base, 23 miles of which (east and west) is
,^^7^2'-''"'"^-^ ^V^r^ej.:
Clff\
rine a
' . . . fi ^
Chalk
Grcensand:
PorilantiStore/^i
Structural map of the Hampshire basin.
occupied by the Isle of Wight ; and this gives the port a double
tide, the first by way of the Solent and the second — two hours later
— by way of Spithead. While this regime never involves a violent
current, such as troubles the Thames, it effectually prevents there
being a normal low-water minimum ; and the strategic and climatic
shelter afforded by the Isle of Wight are reflected in the old saying
that " The Solent might make a Queen's chamber." The shelter
and safe anchorage, the easy entrance by day or night, and the
four tides a day combine, therefore, to give the port exceptional
advantages on the great route to the New World and the Suez
Canal from London and all its rival harbours.
On the inner margin of the great agricultural belt, commanding
the outlets of its two chief river-basins, and with easy access on or
along Avon and Stour to what were — before the reclaiming of the
Fens — the richest corn and cattle lands of the country, Bristol and
(Kingston-on-) Hull have been our two great agricultural ports.
Even the slave trade, which was so profitable to Bristol, was looked
upon in those days as a trade in " agricultural implements " ; and
XVI
British Isles
237
the oldest streets in the city still bear such names as " Wine Street "
and "Corn Street." Indeed, the strategic importance of both
places was largely as outposts of the civilised agricultural area,
though it was based fundamentally on their " peninsular " isolation —
between Avon and Frome, between Humber and Hull — and on the
protection of the Avon Gorge in the one case and of the " Holder-
ness " swamps in the other case. It was these swamps that attracted
the attention of Edward I. when he was securing his route to
Scotland ; and he gave the title of " King's-Town " to the mihtary
station which he founded between Humber and Hull — on a site
exactly comparable, e.g. in its pile-foundations and protecting ^
sluices, to that on which his grandson built Queenborough.
Map of Bristol and the lower Avon.
Contour-lines at intervals of 100 feet.
Historically, Bristol had the advantage — locally in nearness to Bristol.
the Roman station of Bath and the lead-mines which the Romans
began to work in the Mendips, and regionally, in nearness to London
landward and to Ireland (for wool) and France (for wine) seaward.
Later on, with the opening up of the Atlantic, these advantages
were increased ; and, as long as trans-oceanic shipping depended on
wind-power, no port on the north-east coast could compete with one
on the south-west coast, with its shorter and more direct, less foggy
and less crowded, access to the ocean. Even now Bristol's main
chance of enlarging its sphere lies in the fact that it is nearer to
America than either Liverpool or Southampton, and nearer to London
flats.
^ In the Civil War Hull was protected by deliberate flooding of the surrounding
238 The Continent of Europe ch.
than either Liverpool or Fishguard. And it is this that has en-
couraged — if it has not quite justified — the creation of very fine
docks at Avonmouth and such improvement of the eight miles of
river up to Bristol that vessels 325 feet long and carrying nearly
6000 tons of cargo can thread the whole gorge — under the Clifton
Suspension Bridge — up to the heart of the city.
Hull. Even this, however, cannot compensate for its thinly-peopled
and limited hinterland ; and in this respect Hull claims an enormous
advantage, with a hinterland population of perhaps 10,000,000
persons and with excellent means of transport inland by rail, river,
and canal. It may lose its timber trade — a typically " Baltic " trade
— to Grimsby and Immingham, as it has lost much of its old fish
trade ; but it must remain an exceedingly important food-depot for
both man and beast,^ and it is mainly the size of its trade that
accounts for the cheapness of the port. This is its one great
advantage ; for instance, in sending food to Birmingham, it has an
advantage over London in cost varying from perhaps 2 p.c. for
meat and 9 p.c. for butter up to 25 p.c. for apples and over 30 p.c.
for eggs.
Mineral Behind the agricultural belt comes the mineral belt, and the
Ports, exploitation of the latter largely depended on — or actually consisted
in — the working of the coal-fields. At the two seaward extremities
of the belt Newcastle and Cardiff are the most important coal-ports
on the face of the earth — " Newcastle " being understood to include
all the Tyne ports, as "Cardiff"" includes Barry and Penarth; but
some of their geographical conditions are widely different, the recent
development of Cardiff" being more or less based on the possession
of a monopoly. As a matter of fact, both Newport and Port Talbot
are in some respects better natural harbours ; and Newport is likely
to become a very serious rival. It taps that part of the coal-field
which has been least exploited ; the Usk is the deepest tidal river with
floating docks in the British Isles ; and it has the largest single dock
in the world. These are the conditions which account for the recent
removal of several very large works to Newport from the Midlands.
But Port Talbot, like its neighbour, Swansea, is specifically interested
in metal industries — though coal, including anthracite, is a dominat-
ing feature ; and Newport was, and still is technically, " English."
CardifiF. Cardiff" owes its predominance to that convergence of valleys
which, ages ago, made it the capital of the British kingdom of
Gwent. For the coal-deposits of Glamorgan and Monmouth lie in
a series of narrow valleys, e.g. those of Taff" and Rhymney, which
converge on the lowland behind Cardiff" and Newport, and Cardiff
was the nearest outlet to the part of the coal-field first worked. A
number of quite independent circumstances favoured the growth of
^ It has the largest oil-seed industry in the world except that of Memphis
(U.S. A.), and its river-system drains one-sixth of England.
XVI
British Isles
239
South Wales coal-field.
the port — including the displacement of clippers by tramp-steamers
and the opening of the Suez Canal ; but the fundamental advantage
was in the superiority of the coal for bunkering purposes. Fifty
years ago the South Wales coal-field exported only 10,000,000 tons
a year; twenty-five years
ago the export was
25,000,000 tons; and it
is now nearly 50,000,000,
i.e. 40 p.c. of the whole
export of the country.
Like all other great coal-
exporting harbours, Cardiff
has great facilities for im-
porting cheaply, because
steamers can always get
a return cargo ; and this
is reflected in, e.g. the
great flour-milling industry of the town. But its growth has been
more or less of " mushroom " character, guided by the wise
expenditure of locally-won wealth on local needs, e.g. fine docks ;
but that wealth was essentially based on the " monopoly " of steam
coal and anthracite.
Newcastle has had a very different history. Its importance in New-
early times was almost entirely strategic, the "new castle" of the castle.
Normans only replacing an old one built on the same site by the
Romans ; and the occupational control of its strategic period seems
to have favoured a political type, both of individual and of group,
which has been largely responsible for its economic importance in
more recent times. From the time when the Romans built their
great wall, the Tynesiders, whether lead-miners in the South Tyne
valley or the fishermen of Jarrow port, became typical frontiers-
men, alert and independent, adaptable and not afraid of taking
responsibility. Presently these frontiersmen became an important
factor in the staple trade of their age and country, the wool trade,
for which the relatively high winter temperature is so favourable
that Northumberland ^ is still the most important sheep-rearing
county in England, though Newcastle is no longer one of the chief
wool-markets of Europe. The export of the wool was obviously
associated with England's greatest historic industry, that of fishing ;
and, when the Tynesider began to handle another great staple,
coal, it was one of world importance. As miner and fisherman, he
had only continued the strenuous life and constant danger of the
frontiersman ; and, as wool-raiser, as fisherman, as coal-miner, he
1 The neighbouring county of Durham is the home of the Shorthorn cattle, the
most famous breed in the kingdom and by far the most numecous [c. 4,500,000 out
oft". 7,000,000 in 191 1 ).
240
The Continent of Europe
CH.
had had for centuries his finger on the pulse of the commercial
world of his age.
The Tyne. About half-way between the present head of navigation at
Newburn and the probable old head of navigation at Wall's-End —
an appropriate place, therefore, for the great wall to end — the low
southern bank rises to the level of the high northern bank ; and
where the twin heights close in on the river, there the Great North
Road dropped to the river at Gateshead (" Road-Head "), and the
opposite end of the ford was guarded by a castle. Both above and
below this point — now marked by the High and Low Level Bridges
— the bed of the river was deep clay ; and the constriction of the
banks at the " Bridges " increased the natural scour until Newcastle
became the normal head of navigation, while similar constriction at
Contour'- lines at intervals of 100
feet. Dotted areas are between low-
and high-water mark.
Develop-
ment of
Trade.
the mouth of the river made the intervening section of the river
almost a natural dock. With such a population and such a river-
bed (clay), it was comparatively a small thing to canalise the whole
river up to Newburn, giving fully 30 feet of depth as far as the
upper constriction, and to extend the lower constriction by running
out great walls to the 5-fathom line, so that sand could not accumu-
late and vessels could enter straight from the sea.
The mineral wealth justified and defrayed the expense of these
great enterprises, and the distribution of it was exceedingly favour-
able both to export and to the development of local industries.
The mines first worked were so near the river that, even with
pack-horse transport, it was possible and profitable to export the
coal ; ^ the height of the banks makes it equally possible and
^ It began to be worked in the thirteenth century, and went to London by sea —
hence its old name of " sea-coal."
XVI British Isles 241
profitable to work the transport to-day mainly by gravitation, the
loaded trucks pulling the empty ones back up the hill. The
growth of the export implied more cheapness of import, e.g. of
timber for pit-props and of ores to replace the exhausted home
ores ; and, as a huge export of heavy iron goods came to be added
to that of coal, increase of tonnage out encouraged increase of
other materials in, e.g. food-stuffs. Meantime, the Tyne Gap had
been becoming more capable of use, e.g. deforested and drained ;
and, once it was threaded by a railway, Newcastle had obvious
facilities for distribution westward. And the typical frontiersman
seizes an opportunity when he sees it. It is significant that it was
on the Tyne that the first steam collier was built, and that a Tyne
tug was the first steam " trawler."
The modern development of textile industries depended South
absolutely on the coal — the value of which was greatly increased I^ca-
by its proximity to salt, as a basis of chemical industries, in both
Yorkshire and Lancashire — and the two great textile ports are to
windward of the coal-belt, i.e. in what was in earlier times the most
backward part of the country, isolated by marsh and mountain, by
forest and glacial clay. At one point in the forested marsh at the
foot of the mountains, " a hard rock of stone " cropped out ; the
whole formation, of which it was the most conspicuous point, caused
four streams to converge here, and the rock ^ offered a site for a
fort, while the current offered a source of "power" that was pre-
sently utilised. Along these and other streams tracks converged
on the rock from the watershed, t.e. past the sites of Bolton, Bury,
Rochdale, Oldham, etc., the Irwell valley leading to both Bolton
and Bury ; and, once a busy industry and a correspondingly large
population had sprung up on the eastern flank of the watershed,
the rock was bound to become the focus for all roads westward.
In this way the woollen industry was extended, mainly by Flemish
weavers, into Lancashire in the thirteenth century ; and it is still
an important industry in the area. But when — 200 years later —
Levant " cotton-^oo\ " was introduced into England, it soon be-
came evident that Lancashire could handle this new material better
than any other part of the country ; and, though the germs of
plague were introduced by the cotton, and epidemics paralysed the
industry at least twice, geographical conditions were so favourable
that it was bound to recover.
Eventually Manchester became the natural focus of fully Man-
8,000,000 people — with obvious results. The greatly increased cheater,
value of land, capable of being covered very cheaply with houses
of brick made of the local clay, drove many mills and works across
the Irwell into Salford and farther afield ; and Manchester became
more important commercially than industrially, thus attracting
1 The place still bears the significant name of " Castlefield. "
R
242
The Continent of Europe
CH.
(1830) the second railway in the kingdom, "The Manchester and
Sheffield." The ship canal — 35 miles long, with a minimum depth
of 28 feet, and a bottom width of 40 yards — was the natural sequel,
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forecast by the success of the Duke of Bridgewater's great work ;
and now, as the nearest port to 150 towns, Manchester stands
fourth of all British ports in the value of her total trade, importing
XVI British Isles 243
her staple, cotton, and such significant other products as oil, lard,
fruit, timber, and grain, and exporting coal, cotton goods, and
machinery, including machine tools.
As Manchester owed its start to the growth of the Yorkshire Liverpool,
woollen industry, so Liverpool owed its start to that of the Lancashire
cotton industry ; and, therefore, it started relatively late, Bristol and
Plymouth, London and Southampton, having an immense advantage
in this respect. But its great rival, London, was severely handi-
capped — at the critical time in the development of Liverpool — by
the plague and by the constant danger from Dutch fleets. And the
topographical details of the Liverpool site saved it from the fate of
Chester, which originally monopolised the sea-trade of the *' Cheshire
Gap," but which dare not — for fear of Welsh raids — move its port
farther down the river, i.e. away from the Castle rock, as the river
silted up. For Liverpool stands at the sea end of a bottle-necked
estuary which runs at right angles to the prevailing wind, and there-
fore could be entered or left by sailing vessels with equal ease ; and
the windy exposure, added to the dry subsoil and the good
" drainage " slope ^ of the red-sandstone block, made the site
exceptionally healthy. This narrow neck has other advantages, two
of which decided the fate of Liverpool. The one is that the
concentration of the broad " Sloyne lake " on the narrows gives the
current exceptional scouring force, which maintained a good depth
in spite of the great volume of sand ; the other is that the facilities
for coming alongside the natural bank, even before it was lined
with 10 miles of fine docks and nearly 40 miles of level quays, were
greatest at the very place most suitable for the rise of a city.
Incidentally, too, these conditions have greatly facilitated dredging,
for they have focused the main trouble on a definite and quite
limited bar, and so have not caused difl5culties such as exist on the
Thames, e.g. the " slipping " of banks. On the other hand, they
have evolved the famous landing-stage. Owing to the great
difference of tidal level, the docks can be open only for a short
time (at high water) ; but the landing-stage (over 800 yards long) is
built on floating pontoons which rise and fall with the tide.
As the " Home of Ship Owners," Liverpool's interests are world- Man-
wide ; but the special commodities handled are raw cotton, food- ^^^s*^'^ ^•
stuffs, and tobacco inwards, and cotton goods and iron and steel
goods outwards. Typical industries, therefore, are flour-milling and
the making of marine engines, while the typical attitude is a broad
outlook. This will probably always put the port beyond the fear of
serious competition from Manchester. For the dense population of
the natural hinterland of Manchester has one absolutely dominant
economic interest, and that in a product which can, under no
circumstances, be grown in this country ; nor are its best customers
* The name almost certainly means ' ' The Pool of the Slopes. "
244
The Continent of Europe
CH.
for cotton goods found in this country. Its outlook is, therefore, at
once narrow and not typically British ; and yet its economic
interests can be pushed by sheer tyranny of numbers.
Glasgow. Glasgow and Belfast were still later in developing, and both
were made by strenuous effort. Isolated on the ocean margin, both
were secure from privateers and nearer to the sugar, tobacco, and
cotton of the New World than any of their rivals ; and both had
chances of monopolising the foreign trade of their respective
countries. Glasgow, however — once the Act of Union was
passed — was in much the stronger position, e.g. having both a much
larger hinterland without " break of bulk " and the essential bases of
industry in rich fields of coal and iron ; and, until Glasgow had
perfected the steam-dredger, Belfast could not be reached through
the " sloblands " of the sluggish Lagan. Within a century and a
half from the time when Smeaton reported (1740) that the depth
of water just east of the Kelvin-Clyde confluence was 15 inches^
there was a high- water depth of over 33 feet at the same place.
Under the guidance of Telford and Watt and Galthorne — whose
experience of the sands of Dee was invaluable — the Clyde was
first narrowed to produce a scour which would remove loosened
silt and prevent new silt from accumulating very quickly ; then it was
systematically dredged to a minimum of 22 feet ; and so "the river
made the city when the citizens had once made the river." This
has been true in a remarkable sense ; for the deepening of the river
has had a profoundly beneficial effect on the tidal wave, which reaches
Glasgow now in 2 hours less than it did a century ago, while the flow
of spring tides has been lengthened from 4^ to 6 hours and their
ebb shortened from 8 to 6^ hours.
Woollen 1 The commerce of these great ports reflects especially two
Industry, supremely important industries — textiles and hardware, the one
almost as clearly connected with the climate now as the other was
originally connected with the structure of the country. The develop-
ment of the wool trade with Flanders, in the days when Norwich
was really " Norwich by the Sea " — and she is still no farther than
Glasgow from the sea — made the city the natural home of the
woollen industry, as also the natural asylum for refugees from the
continent. But, even before the use of coal — with the silting up of
the Norwich bay and the need for removing a staple industry to a
safer site farther inland — Norfolk began to give place to Yorkshire ;
and the latter still has special advantages, e.g. in water-supply,
climate, and access to fuel and machinery, to markets and raw
materials. Hand-work survives in the islands only in remote places
where neither fuel nor machinery is accessible, e.g. the Hebrides and
Connaught ; and these two essentials affect machine work even in
places that are not remote. Thus, climate, hill-pastures, and soft
water are favourable along the Cotswolds and the Cheviots, e.g. at
XVI
British Isles
245
Frome and Bradford, at Hawick and Galashiels, the Cotswold water
— like that of the Leven at Alexandria — being very suitable for dye-
ing "grain" colours; but the distance from fuel and machinery is a
drawback. On the contrary, the Leicester coal is coupled with a
more continental climate, which is more suited to hosiery than to
Orlmey /a.^^
Rainfall ia iuches
Plymouth P b <* " ^ ^ '
I i s h
tnQ
Walker&Cockerellsc.
Annual rainfall of the British Isles.
Based upon a map by Dr. H. R. Mill.
general woollens. Yorkshire, then, has the most advantages. It
has easy access to home and foreign supplies of wool, and to
countries with winters cold enough to cause a demand for woollen
clothing ; water of the right quality is abundant ; up under the water-
parting, the " muggy " air that lodges in the valleys, e.g. in those
of Aire and Calder, is almost ideal for the various manufacturing
246
The Continent of Europe
CH.
Cotton
Industry.
Hard-
ware:
Birming-
ham.
Railway
Trans-
port.
processes ; and the presence of the necessary coal has also involved
multiplication of means of transport.
The localisation of the cotton industry round the ring of torrent-
scarred hills on the windward side of the Pennines is purely climatic.
Access to fuel and machinery or to markets and raw materials is no
easier than in Yorkshire, but the relative humidity is higher ; and
this makes the climate much more favourable to a vegetable product,
as illustrated even by the division of labour on the spot. For the
spinning is monopolised by the towns with the most humid climate
and the best water ; and, even so, the finest spinning goes to the
seaward towns, e.g. Bolton, while the coarse spinning goes landward,
e.g. to Oldham. In the areas of still lower humidity, e.g. the Ribble
basin, weaving is more typical than spinning (cf. Preston and Black-
bum) ; and in still drier areas, e.g. in the lee of the Welsh mountains,
the work is largely confined to secondary processes such as lace-
making and hosiery -knitting, as at Nottingham.
The iron and steel industries illustrate the same permanence of
geographic control with the same progressive variations in the
manifestation of the control. The permanence is most conspicuous
in the case of Birmingham and Sheffield. Both have historic in-
dustries of at least 1000 years' standing; both had, to start with,
local supplies of ore and of fuel — from the Forests of Arden and
Sherwood ; and both had *' local " supplies of coal, and were within
easy reach of imported ore, whether of home or foreign origin. But
their non-local relations were different, for Birmingham is in the very
heart of England. No doubt, the fact that it stands at about equal
distances from navigable water on Trent and Severn and Avon
encouraged the construction of canals ; but it was essentially on a
site the full value of which could only be realised by railways. Both
climate and relief are responsible for this. For obviously the size
of a canal lock must bear some relation to water-supply as conditioned
by rainfall, and the demand on this supply is greatest where popula-
tion is densest, as round Birmingham and Wolverhampton ; and
long stretches of the natural routes in this district are at least 400
feet above the sea, and are so covered with buildings that land has
a prohibitive value. Even if the deficiency of local water-supply
could be made good, e.g. from the Elan Valley, so that in the driest
season large locks could be assured uniform and sufficient depth,
the cost of improvement — at such an elevation and in such a densely
populated and deeply undermined area — would be so great that an
improved Grand Junction Canal could not afford to go through the
Black Country.
Obviously, under such conditions, development depends on
railway transport, and this controls local industries in two directions.
In the first place, such districts must specialise in goods which
demand much labour for little raw material, e.g. pins, pens, needles,
XVI British Isles 247
screws, watch-springs, etc. ; and in the second place, amongst such
there must be specifically transport media — from bicycles to railway
stock. Apart from such neighbouring centres as Coventry and
Wolverhampton, at least three suburbs of Birmingham — Handsworth,
Oldbury, and Saltley — have a world-wide reputation for the pro-
duction of railway rolling-stock. Firms wishing to do typically
" heavy " work for other purposes than transport have recently been
migrating, e.g. to Newport and Pontypool. Of course, early canals
and railways made Birmingham their objective, because its essen-
tially central position had already raised it into a very important
transport centre — associated with horse transport ; and it was this
question of the transport medium that — coupled with the presence
of fine casting-sand — gave the district its original industry in
iron -castings for harness (cf. the important harness industry of
Walsall).
In the case of Sheffield the local advantages included crucible- Sheffield.
clay and water-power, but the determining factor was the presence
of fine grinding-stone, which directed the local energies into cutlery
and so predestined them to import of fine iron and specialisation in
steel. "Birmingham" ore ^ yields only 35-36 p.c. of metal, with
1-07 p.c. of phosphorus, and -04 p.c. of sulphur; the Furness
hematite, though yielding 66-67 P-C- of metal, practically free from
sulphur and phosphorus, was less accessible than Scandinavia from
Sheffield even in Plantagenet times ; even now quantities of pig-iron
are produced in the " SheflSeld " area, e.g. at Rotherham and
Chesterfield, to which the blast-furnaces were removed 150 years
ago, and fully 95 p.c. is used at home — but not by Sheffield.
On the Sheaf and the Don only steel is used, made of Swedish Sheaf k.
or Spanish and Cumbrian iron. Along the Sheaf there are many ^°"'
crucible steel makers, the "descendants" of the old cutlers, still
engaged in light products and still using Scandinavian metal ; and
along the navigable Don there are many makers of heavy products
{e.g. armour plates), but using for their new work the newer sources
of supply from Furness and Spain. As everything except the fuel
has to bear transport, mainly by rail, the determining factor here is
the human one. Not only is the weight of material used trivial
compared with the labour spent on it, as at Birmingham, but
centuries of experience have bred in both masters and men an
instinct which no theoretical knowledge can hope to rival. For the
men can " divine " by the eye the quality of a piece of metal —
which metallurgical analysis can only confirm — or the amount of
smoke necessary ^ in a flame for reheating steel — which no
mechanical process yet invented can decide ; and the masters seem
to have a similar genius for seizing on new ideas or new methods,
^ The corresponding percentages for Cleveland are 33-34, i'24, and •03.
^ The amount, unfortunately, is not favourable to amenities of climate.
248
The Continent of Europe
CH.
e.g. the Bessemer and Siemens patents or the driving of machinery
by electricity.
To the south-east and north-east of the great steel centre are two
areas which again present interesting contrasts. The agricultural
belt was bound to develop industries in agricultural machinery at
such places as Lincoln and Grantham, Ipswich and Colchester ; and
the cheapness and abundance of labour — and that, too, unorganised
— were favourable to the extension of such industries where special
facilities existed for access to fuel and metal, as the tin-plate
Isthmian canal routes.
Sian/vrdt ^eoyJ' SsiaiS; ZojtdarU'
industry of South Wales has been supplemented by industries in
galvanised and corrugated iron. And, no doubt, the opening of the
Doncaster coal-field and the local supplies of iron-ore, e.g. at
Frodingham, will develop the industry in Lincolnshire.
Cleveland In the north-east the industry is based partly on the Cleveland
K.Durham, ore, which yields over 40 p.c. (6,000,000 tons) of the total output
of the country, but mainly on the Durham coke. For the Cleveland
ore is getting poorer in percentage of metal, and more costly to work
in other ways too ; but the Durham coke possesses precisely those
mechanical qualities ^ required in fuel for modern blast-furnaces,
^ The "splint " coal of Lanarkshire has somewhat the same value to Coatbridge
and Motherwell.
XVI British Isles 249
being large enough not to choke the furnaces and strong enough to
bear great weight of ore. This, of course, is another asset for
Newcastle ; and it is the sum of advantages concentrated there that
favours the construction of a great ship-canal from the Tyne to the
Solway.
Such a canal would not only shorten the distance between our
great west-coast ports and the Baltic by 300 miles or so, but would
enable a fleet to be concentrated with maximum ease and safety at
the very centre of our North-Sea coast, and that, too, where there
are exceptional facilities for repairs, etc. An alternative route would
join the Forth and Clyde, possibly via Loch Lomond ; it would have
the same commercial advantages, e.g. the avoidance of the stormy
and crowded Pentland Firth or the foggy and still more crowded
Dover Strait, and its only inferiority strategically would be that the
repairing base would be on the west coast. In neither case is the.
difficulty or the expense prohibitive.
CHAPTER XVII
BELGIUM
The geographical interest of Belgium is mainly historical and
economic, but its geographical importance is mainly political ; for
it is as a Buffer State that it has any national existence at all, and
it illustrates nearly all the characteristic phenomena of a Buffer
State, especially the difficulties. Even such a trivial detail as the
printing of a railway ticket becomes significant, for it is printed
in two languages ; and one of the two is always '* foreign," French
in the west and German in the east.^ That is to say, it does not
represent the Belgians as a nation, nor the commercial part of the
population, which is made Flemish by Antwerp, nor yet the
industrial part, which is made Walloon by the Mons-Li^ge coal-field ;
it does represent one of the two great political antagonists between
whom Belgium is a Buffer State.
It has been pointed out, too, that Belgium is an area of
geographic, as well as of political, transition, e.g. its great rivers
both rising and emptying beyond the Belgian frontier. Its frontiers
are, except on the sea-coast, far from being well-marked physical
features ; its surface features and even its mineral beds are largely
extensions from other countries ; its peoples and languages are
equally transitional, for the " Latin " Walloon stands between the
Romance tongue of western Switzerland and the Romance tongue
of northern France, while Flemish bears a similar relationship to
Dutch and Deutsch ; and its political history ^ has been largely the
history of other countries, France and Holland, Spain and Austria.
The frontier features are very varied, and some of their details
are peculiarly significant. For instance, the Franco-Belgian frontier
is a lasting memento of the many wars between France and Spain,
when peace was often purchased at the cost of some choice bit of
Spanish Belgium, e.g. the "bay" of Lille, with its river-frontier on
the Lys, or the somewhat similar " bay " of Valenciennes. So, the
extension of the French frontier down the Meuse valley as far as
^ The internal racial division is latitudinal, not longitudinal, the north (of
Waterloo) being Flemish and the south being Walloon.
' Cf. the battlefields of Fontenoy and Jemappes, Oudenarde and Raraillies,
Ligny and Quatre Bras, etc.
250
CH. XVII Belgium 251
the natural fortress of Givet has an obvious strategic value ; but,
as a matter of fact, except in crossing the deep narrow valley of
the river itself and of its Semois tributary, the course of the actual
frontier eastward of the Sambre adheres fairly well to a line of
maximum elevation and minimum population.
The same is true of the frontier towards Luxemburg and Eastern
Germany, which is roughly marked by the water-parting between Frontier,
the Semois and the Sauer in the south and that between the Ourthe
and the Roer in the north, though the difficulty of drawing a line
through the densely populated mining (lead and zinc) area in the
heart of the Moresnet commune has led to the defining of a neutral
zone held in common by Belgium and Prussia; but directly the
Ardennes plateau is left for the Meuse lowland minimum population
has no obvious relation to "maximum" elevation. Here three
things are significant — the Meuse, the Mesopotamian, and the
marine lines respectively. On the primitive river - frontier the
significant feature is the detour to disconnect Maastricht, as it were,
from the left bank of the river — on which it actually stands — and
to perpetuate its historic connection with the right bank. This is
the point at which the river Geer joins the Meuse, and on which,
therefore, in very early times it directed the " Rhine " overland
traffic (for London via Ghent and Bruges) ; the confluence is just
below the great sandstone block of Pietersberg, which was worked
by the Romans, and which provided material for castle and bridge
at this " Maas-traject " (" crossing-place," first by ford and then by
bridge) ; and the only guarantee of a safe crossing was to hold the
farther, i.e. the western, bank. Incidentally, this was associated in
sentiment with the " Dutch " refugees from the political and religious
tyranny of Spain, because the subterranean labyrinths in the quarries
became a recognised refuge for both man and beast.
The Mesopotamian line is a meandering compromise between Northern
two similar considerations : it was necessary to avoid the great Frontier,
arteries of movement, whether by river or road ; and the overland
route led by the Demer-Dyle-Senne valley, while the dreariest
and most desolate areas, e.g. central Limburg, were almost bound
to have the least population, even if they had not also been —
previous to the cutting of the S. William's and Campine canals —
devoid of natural highways.
The marine line represents a determined effort to exclude the
weaker partner from the polders and tidal water, and it is profoundly
significant of the fundamental causes which separated Holland from
Belgium in 1830. For, though the Belgian population {c. 3,500,000)
was almost double that of Holland, and French in sympathy and
Roman in creed, the King was a Dutch Calvinist, the capital was-
in Holland, representation was so unequal that the Dutch minority
had a permanent majority for all important legislation, and official
252 The Continent of Europe CH.
posts were monopolised by Dutchmen, only one minister out of
seven being Belgian in 1830.
Coast. The one stretch of sea-coast left to Belgium had a minimum
value, except as an obstacle to invasion, for its shore-waters are
shallow and the coast-line consists of typical sand-dunes. Indeed,
the sands slope so gradually that the regular winds have thrown
up a natural barrier of dunes, but for which — supplemented now
by artificial " dykes " — the land would be submerged at every tide ;
and it is to this that the coast owes its popularity as a bathing-
resort. Of course, gaps have been left for drainage — one at each
end and one in the centre. The estuary of the Yser offers a site
for a fishing-port at Nieuport, — the " Old Port " of Ypres being
now 20 miles inland ; the central gap obviously commands mail
and passenger traflic for Brussels and the busiest fish trade, and
the packet-station of Ost-end was naturally placed as far as possible
inland, i.e. on the " East End " of the gap, thus increasing the
facilities offered by the good railway service for the distribution of
fish ; the northern gap, at the fishing-port of Heyst, has been made
the terminus of a ship-canal from Bruges, and its new harbour is
now known as Zee-Brugge.
Zee- Much care and money have been expended on this new port,
Brugge, and many advantages have been claimed for it, e.g. that it is entirely
Belgian, — that the port itself, the canal, and the Bruges basin,
all have a minimum depth of fully 26 feet, — that it is on or very
near the greatest steamer-routes of Northern Europe, — that three
great express railway routes converge on Bruges (from Berlin,
Vienna, and Basel), ^that the canal is only one-fifth of the length
of the Scheldt below Antwerp. But the eventual survival of the
port, let alone its success, is very doubtful. Its natural hinterland
is small in both population and area ; and the fundamental difficulty
which even in the palmiest days of Bruges necessitated an out-port
at Damme, and which by 1488 had caused all foreign merchants
to move their headquarters to Antwerp, is still operative.
Silt. That difficulty was the superiority of the mighty Scheldt over
the little Zwin, not only in such obvious commercial advantages as
length and volume, but also in its consequent power of pouring
out silt. The success of efforts to reclaim land in the "West"
Scheldt estuary, i.e. the rapidity of the historic narrowing of the
waterway, is the best proof of the difficulties which faced ports on
the old margin of the waterway. Bruges is " La Morte " ; the
battlefield of Sluis is a meadow ; and half a dozen dredgers (c.
30,000 horse-power), at a cost of ^20,000 a year, have failed to
maintain that 26 feet at Zee-Brugge over an area with a diameter
equal to the normal length of modern merchant vessels. It is
obviously useless for a large vessel to come alongside a quay if
she cannot turn round there and get away again !
XVII
Belgium
253
The historical development of Antwerp has been rather Antwerp.
chequered, mainly because its economic importance, as based on
the river, was kept subordinate to its political importance, as based
on the strategic value of the marshes which for centuries surrounded
Bruges
Land area before 12th century.
Neuzen
Q Bruges
Emery Walker sc.
Land area at present day.
it ; but its indisputable popularity with " skippers " is based on its
essential commercial advantages, and several of these are obvious.
Fully 50 miles from Flushing, it is absolutely safe from storms —
though it was the work of storms in opening the estuary in the
fifteenth century that gave it its first chance — and yet has tides that
254
The Continent of Europe
CH.
Antwerp and its forts.
bring up the largest vessels ; it is as near as London to the centre
of the world's ocean highways, and nearer than London to the great
network of railways and canals that converge on the Atlantic from
central and northern Europe ; and it is exceedingly cheap. The
result is a popularity which has actu-
ally outpaced accommodation, so that
there is now often risk of delay or
confusion, especially during fogs — the
one real drawback to the harbour ;
but extra accommodation can be
secured, and is already projected, by
a scheme which will not only get rid
of the angle at Austenweel {i.e. just
opposite the north end of the city),
with its capacity for accumulating
silt, but also give a continuous concave quay on a wide-radius
curve such as makes an ideal frontage for a tidal river.
Surface. The surface is partly plateau and partly plain, with a general
slope from the south-east (over 2000 feet) to north-west, the two
areas corresponding strikingly with the basins of the Scheldt and
the Meuse. In Flanders there is a large area of polder, at little
above sea-level, which is valuable pasture, famous for its horses ;
the south of Hainault and most of Brabant, at a height of 300-500
feet, is fine agricultural land, with a chalk ridge separating the
Scheldt and Meuse basins ; the Sambre-Meuse valley is flanked
southwards by uplands averaging perhaps 800-900 feet, the
picturesque Famenne and Fagnes ; and the forested plateau of the
Ardennes varies from 1200 to 2000 feet. It is peculiarly interesting
that the physical division is directly paralleled by, and associated with,
the racial division. Where the primitive rock of the Ardennes plateau
gives place to the young strata of the Flemish plain, there the short,
dark, round-headed Walloon gives place to the taller, fairer, long-
headed Fleming; there, too, the French-speaking and individualistic
peasant-proprietor gives place to the tenant-farmer who tolerates no
tongue akin to that of the accursed Spaniards, once the tyrants of the
plain. In view of historic events, therefore, it is surprising that the
one bond of unity for this dual little people is found in their creed.
Plain. The plain is practically the basin of the Scheldt, so that it
naturally gravitates on Antwerp ; and it is ribbed with undulations
which collect the abundant water in tributaries that flow more or
less parallel with one another before converging on the Scheldt,
thus creating a waterway out of all proportion to the length of the
river (270 miles). Except for the marshy north and a somewhat
sandy centre, most of the basin is distinctly fertile, especially
towards the south-east, and grows a great variety of crops, about
a quarter of it giving two crops a year.
XVII Belgium 255
The real dividing line between Upper and Lower Belgium is the Meuse
Sambre-Meuse valley, equally important by relief and by structure. Valley
Fertilised from the limestone and other young rock that flanks the
old hard rock of the Ardennes, rich in coal and iron, and giving a
line of least resistance in peace or war, it divides the nearly un-
disturbed Tertiary and cretaceous beds which cover the plain, from
the worn-down stumps of the ancient mountains to the south, the
coal being found where the younger strata are involved in the
relics of the ancient folds. This is obviously along the northern
foot of the Ardennes, where the Sambre-Meuse has worn a trough
along the geological fault ; and the scarp of the old rock is
characteristically rich in metals, especially znc, between Huy and
Verviers.
The coal occurs in three basins, separated by intrusions of the Coal-
older rock. The most important is the " Meuse " field which Fields,
stretches from Namur to Li^ge : but the " Sambre " field contains
the chief coal-mining centre, Charleroi, and the " Hainault " field
has a very important centre in Mons. Coal is found as far south
as Dinant ; and recently a new coal-field has been discovered in the
north, the Campine, which seems to stretch as far west as Antwerp
— another asset for the port. The strata in the south are much
disturbed and contorted, with the result that the seams are thin,
discontinuous, and at very high angles. This almost implies that
the mines must be difficult to drain and very deep — which is actually
the case : and, therefore, the working is dangerous and expensive.
The climate approximates to that of East Anglia, but has Climate.
slightly greater extremes, the winter in the Ardennes being distinctly
severe. The rainfall, too, is heaviest on the Ardennes ; but there
are two clearly marked and parallel belts of heavy rainfall, separated
by a wide belt of much lighter fall. The one is an area of mainly
cyclonic rains in Flanders, eastwards of the dunes ; and the other
is where the cyclonic fall is more obviously accentuated by relief, i.e.
east of the Sambre-Maas trough.
The river-system is exceedingly useful, providing valuable Eiver-
waterways and water of first-rate quality for retting, bleaching. System,
dyeing, etc. ; and it is scarcely an exaggeration to say that the dense
population of the country (650 per square mile) is based essentially
on the development of the inland waterways. The fundamental
advantage is that a small area {c. 11,400 square miles), forming
practically the basin of a single river, is flanked by two concave
curves of waterway, a sea flank from Nieuport to Antwerp and the
river flank of the Sambre-Meuse between Mons and Maastricht.
This was made the basis of a network of additional waterway —
canalised rivers and canals — which is worked at a considerable
annual loss, but which has enabled Belgium to meet the fierce
competition of Holland, Germany, and France (cf. p. 212).
256
The Continent of Europe
CH.
Canals :
Western.
Canals:
Eastern.
Transit
Trade.
Two
Areas.
Flanders.
The whole system has its morphological, if not its geometrical,
centre in Antwerp ; and it may be divided into two areas by the
great route from Antwerp to Charleroi via the canalised Rupel and
Brussels, which is reached by small ocean steamers {e.g. from
London). The western area, besides having direct communication
with the sea, e.g. at Heyst, Ostend, Nieuport, and with Holland, e.g.
at Terneuzen and via the Lower Scheldt, has at least seven good
routes into France, the best being by Termonde and the canalised
Dender, by Charleroi and the canalised Sambre, and by the Mons-
Conde canal. The last is the most useful for the export of coal,
because at certain seasons of the year all the Sambre, like the
Upper Meuse, is difficult to navigate ; and the least useful in some
ways is the canalised Lys, because during the retting season (whole
summer) no steam traffic is allowed on it.
The eastern area has a much smaller proportion of waterway,
but has one very important feature, i.e. that the main line forms a
continuous ring — Antwerp, Brussels, Charleroi, Namur, Li^ge
(Maastricht), Turnhout, Antwerp — serving both the old Brabant
and the new Campine coal-fields, and enclosing the most fertile
area in Belgium, i.e. the Hesbage plain round Waremme. This
communicates with Holland towards the north (for Bois-le-Duc) as
well as at Maastricht, and has the same sort of competition from the
Rhine as the Flemish canals have from the sea. For large barges
(carrying fully 1500 tons) ply regularly from Antwerp, via Dordrecht
and the Waal, to Cologne and Mannheim, reaching the latter within
a week ; and in summer they ply even to Strassburg, which needs
another week.
The total length of inland waterway in the whole area (not =
twice Yorkshire) is well over 1200 miles, which gives an average of
I mile of waterway to every 9 square miles of surface ; and this is
supplemented so well by railways {c. 3000 miles) for quick transport
and by light railways {c. 3000 miles) for agricultural development,
that 7,000,000 tons of goods converge on Antwerp every year by
inland waterways, and there is a total transit trade through the
country valued (1910) at about ;;^9 1,500,000 !
The waterway between the heart of the coal-field at Charleroi
and the great port of Antwerp roughly divides the country into two
industrial areas, the western one being prominently concerned with
textiles and the eastern with hardware, thus complicating the
friction of racial and linguistic differences ; and while the Flemish
plain is much less picturesque than the forested Ardennes, it has
much more historic interest.
The alluvial soil and the damp climate of West Flanders are
very favourable to the growing of flax, and the price of labour is not
prohibitive, while the absence of " salts " from the river-water is
invaluable in the " cleansing " of the fibre. The Lys above
XVII Belgium 257
Courtrai is the special scene of the flax retting ; and Courtrai itself
and its neighbours, especially Oudenarde ^ and Tournai, are
engaged in the linen industry. But the great spinning centre — for
hemp and cotton as well as flax — is in the higher humidity of the
Lys-Scheldt confluence ; and this site, at about equal distances from
the three great lace-making centres of Bruges, Brussels, and
Mechlin, and at the limit of tide on the Scheldt, has made Ghent
the textile metropolis of Belgium.
The decay of the old historic cities, Bruges and Ypres, was "Dead"
mainly due to the silting up of their waterways, accelerated by Towns,
neglect of them during times of constant war — civil and otherwise ;
but there were other causes at work. For instance, the Orient trade
had been diverted from the Rhine valley to the Atlantic ; this gave
special advantages to the better harbours of Rotterdam and
Amsterdam ; and, in any case, the Flemish trade had been carried
by Hanseatic rather than by Flemish vessels. It was the in-
heritance of Roman civilisation that gave Flanders its first
start ; it was the revolt against the Roman Church that gave the
Flemish ports their most formidable rivals ; and the most
prosperous of all the old Flemish centres, Lille, is now outside the
frontier of Flanders.
Once access to the sea had to be sought northward, not west- Brabant,
ward, Brabant was bound to flourish at the expense of Flanders ;
Antwerp became the obvious sea-gate of the country; and sites
commanding the approach on Antwerp from landward at once
became important. The natural approaches were by the Dyle
valley or the Senne valley. The Romans seem to have built the
first castle on the hill beside the Dyle that made Louvain a good
site for the capital of the Brabant dukes ; but the island in the
Senne at the foot of the "hill" country (cf. p. 254) gave a better
relation to the great War -and -Trade route of the Sambre-Meuse
valley, besides holding the balance between Bruges and Li^ge, the
Rhine and the Ardennes, and so Brussels displaced Louvain as the
ultimate site for a capital. Both cities, like Mechlin, were interested
in the early import of English 2 wool via Antwerp ; but Mechlin,
still the ecclesiastical capital of Belgium, was not only nearer the
port, but also commanded the approaches both of the Dyle and of
the Senne.
Eventually, the balance of power was not a question between Liege.
east and west, but between north and south, the great port and
the coal-field, with the language-line marked by Waterloo except
for the French "island" of Brussels; and the coal-field had the
advantage of imposing an economic importance on a previous
^ The first workmen for the Gobelin tapestries came from Oudenarde.
2 Tournai is one of the few old towns, originally dependent on local wool, that
still maintains an important woollen industry (carpets).
S
258
The Continent of Europe
CH.
Verviers.
Belgian v.
British
Hard-
ware.
strategic importance. Long before the mineral wealth was of any
importance, the convergence of the Vesdre and the Ourthe valleys
on the narrow Meuse valley — at the precise point where the
Meuse works suddenly away from, i.e. north-west of, the historic
line of movement between Arras and Aix-la-Chapelle, — had made
the site of Liege of very great political and strategic importance ;
and other influences were focused there as the eastern outpost of
French civilisation. With the development of the mineral
wealth, it had also exceptional advantages. Iron and lime-
stone were found almost throughout the whole lie of the coal
{c. I GO miles) ; and to the east, where the coal was nearest to the
surface, there were lead and copper as well as one of the richest zinc
areas on the face of the earth. And before the local supplies were
exhausted, as they practically are now — not i per cent of the iron-
ore being " domestic " (1910) — the Seraing suburb of Li^ge had
come to rank with Essen and Creuzot as a metallurgical centre, and
had access to a system of inland waterways second only to, and
copied from, that of their Dutch neighbours.
The zinc deposits were also near old historic towns, Huy and
Verviers — the former where the valleys of tributaries to opposite
banks of the Meuse have carried a great north-and-south road for
over a thousand years, and the latter on the flank of the direct road
from Aix to Li^ge. South of the Huy- Verviers line the Ardennes
highland makes the best sheep-rearing area in Belgium ; and all
these towns began their career when wool was much the most
important textile in use in Europe, and when the only other of any
practical importance was flax. Verviers still has a large woollen
industry, especially in washed wool and yarn ; and the special
advantage of the site is that the Gileppe tributary of the Vesdre flows
over only slate and sandstone, and so its water is peculiarly free
from lime and other impurities. To guarantee a constant supply
a huge dam was built across the valley, which is kept heavily
timbered to economise the rainfall.
As the progress of the hardware industry in Belgium has been
partly at the expense of that in England {e.g. Libge guns v. Birmingham
guns) — quite apart from any question of the colourable, if not fraudu-
lent, imitation of trade-marks, etc. — and as the Belgian conditions in
themselves are by no means wholly favourable, it is worth while
examining the question a little further. For instance, there are obvious
reasons for traffic by rail or river or canal following what is at once
a direct east-and-west route and a natural depression along the
northern foot of the Ardennes highland, and the only one wide
enough to carry road and rail, river and canal ; but there is no
obvious geographical reason for westward traffic going to Antwerp
instead of Rotterdam, unless the former is the cheaper.
Now the Belgian coal has been worked for a long time, it is
XVII Belgium 259
quite limited in area, it is only found now at great depths — except Coal v.
in the new Campine field, t.e. along 51° N. — it lies in very narrow 'Wages,
seams and in distorted strata, necessitating much unproductive
work, and it is liable to violent discharges of firedamp, which hampers
the use of explosives, etc. ; and the development of it has,
therefore, involved incessant care and skill, — qualities which have
become quite characteristic of the Belgian miners — and has been
"expensive." Till lately, however, no fiscal or other barrier has
been raised to the import of coal because of the recognised necessity
of keeping a cheap basis of industry. The position could only be
met by very low wages and long hours of work — a possible
solution where the standard of comfort has been measured by
"black bread"; and it is almost entirely this that gives Belgian
goods advantage over British. For instance, at the present time
about p^soo more is paid as wages in the construction of a British
locomotive than in the construction of a Belgian one of exactly
similar type ; turners in Belgium are content with ^^d. an hour,
and fitters with 5d. ; and in most other industries common to the
two countries, 4.^6. an hour in Belgium corresponds to 9|d. an
hour in Britain. Only the superior workmanship of the British
mechanic and the entire absence of slackness on the part of
British manufacturers have saved the situation so far.
Cheap labour, therefore, is the most significant feature in the Home
typical industries of Belgium, e.g. the glass of Mons and Liege ; Supplies,
and perhaps the next most important feature is the variety of the
home products, especially those dependent on agriculture. Two-
thirds of the area is cultivated, mostly in small holdings and by the
spade; and nearly a quarter of the population {c. 7,400,000) is
occupied in agriculture. Oats are grown on the rainy highland,
rye in the sandy centre, and wheat on the Hesbage limestone ;
Flanders is famous for its horses and cattle, and grows the finest
flax in the world, as well as tobacco and chicory, potatoes and
flowers (especially azaleas and orchids, near Ghent). So, the clay
of the northern plain makes as good bricks, e.g. at Turnhout, as its
peat makes good fuel for the Campine dairies ; and, besides the
minerals already referred to, the Ardennes highland is rich in good
stone, e.g. the " Dinant " marble.^
The dense population can, therefore, draw much food and raw imports
materials from the highly-cultivated small holdings of their own ^^^
country, from fenny plain or forested highland ; but they are *'^P°"'^-
mainly dependent on imports for both food and raw materials,
partly because it is profitable to export, e.g. their very fine flax, and
to import Russian flax for the Courtrai mills. And it is typical
that the most important imports should be akin to those products
^ The Lesse valley is famous for all kinds of limestone products and phenomena,
e.g. the Grotto of Hans.
26o The Continent of Europe ch. x\ ii
which are, or have been, the main domestic sources of the
country's wealth. Much the lai^est imports in quantity are (191 1)
coal {c 7,350,000 tons) and iron {c. 5,680,000 tons), while the most
valuable import, except wheat, is wool (c ;;^i 5,300,000). At the
same time the largest export is also coal (^. 5,000,000 tons), and much
the most valuable is wool (c. ;;^i 4,000,000), wheat coming second.
Costomsn. As wheat is such an important import, in both quantity
and value, Belgium has naturally a busy trade with such a
rising exporter of wheat and wool as Argentina ; but more than
half her wheat comes from Eastern Europe, and most of her wool
comes from France. Indeed, the closeness of her links with her
immediate neighbours is seen in the fact that about 70 p.c. of her
exports go to four countries — Germany (26 p-c), France (2 1 p.c.),
Britain (13 p.c), Holland (10 p.c).
Luxemburg
The Town. The sovereign Grand-Duchy of Luxemburg grew up round the
river-girt crag and town of Liitzel-burg (" Little Castle "), which
became an important fortress as early as the days of Otto the Great,
and came to be considered not only very like Gibraltar, e.g. in its
rock galleries, but also as the next strongest fortress in Europe.
rhe Land. The hilly surface of Ardennes spurs and Lorraine plateau drain
by the fertile valleys of Sauer and Moselle into Germany, while the
iKirren and sparsely-peopled north makes a natural frontier towards
Belgium ; and so after Waterloo the area became part of the German
Confederation, thus entering the ZoUverein, to which it still belongs.
It is mainly pastoral, and has busy tanneries and glove factories in
the Alzette valley ; but the great wealth of the land is in the ex-
treme south, where the Moselle valley grows excellent wine, and
where the Lorraine plateau is extremely rich in iron-ore, especially
round Esch. Though the mass of the people speak a Low-German
patois mixed with Walloon, the business community speaks mainly
the French tongue of Lonaine.
CHAPTER XVIII
HOLLAND
Holland, like Switzerland, is one of those political units the
position of which can scarcely be considered apart from the *'*•*'-
physique. For, if Holland is compared with other areas which are
low and level, or which have very good or very iKid access to the
sea, or which have serious problems of irrigation or of drainage,
everything else sinks into insignificance beside the two considerations
— (i) that, in physique and climate, it is a temperate delta, and (2)
that, pohtically, it is a Buffer State. And these two are funda-
mentally related, because the delta is that of the greatest German
river — the Germans are the more numerous, the stronger, and the
more aggressive, of the two nations between which the Belgo-Dutch
" Buffer " is thought necessary — and it is precisely Holland that
blocks the expansion of Germany seaward.
The very existence of the delta depends on the position of the The Delta.
area at a comer of an ocean " pocket " where tidal crest and trough
so far neutralise each other as to allow the deposit of deltaic silt ;
but it is only where the coast-line Ues more or less due north and
south, z>. in Holland proper, that it is continuous. Where it lies
more or less east and west, as in Friesland and Zeeland, it is
incomplete and discontinuous. The Frisian and Zeeland islands,
therefore, helped to isolate the central nucleus; and this was
greatly emphasised by the marshy character both of the coast-line
itself and of the Ems basin which forms its natural limit eastwards.
The dominant influence seaward has been that of wind, and it Sand-
is shown in the characteristic sand-dunea These do not usually dimes,
reach a height of more than 30 feet, but in the centre of the
continuous coast-line, e.g. near Haarlem, they reach 200 feet ; and
they tend to widen northwards, i.e. with increase of width in the sea
over which the winds blow, especially in summer (cf. p. 56), the
maximum near Alkmaar being considerably over two miles.
Their extension now is controlled by the planting of bent-grass,
etc., the long roots of which so bind the sand that it can no longer
drift landward; but some of the most famous Dutch bathing-
261
262
The Continent of Europe
CH.
Arms of
Sea.
centres, e.g. Scheveningen, owe their importance to migration of the
dunes landward within historic times.
Dune and The whole coast, then, alike on the islands and on the main-
Beach, land,^ consists of a " double " line of beach and dune, the broad and
sandy beach sloping very gently under the sea, while the dunes
have a very steep seaward face, due to the erosion of tide or wind
or both. The dunes themselves are obviously porous and dry,
but drain into marshy depressions ; and they thus offered sites
for early settlement, with conditions to leeward favourable to the
growth of timber or to reclamation for agricultural or pastoral
purposes. It was under such circumstances that the Hague — still
famous for its park — and Leiden sprang into early importance ;
ports such as Amsterdam and Flushing still procure drinking water
from the dunes ; and the same control makes Haarlem equally
famous for bleaching and dyeing, for brewing and bulb-raising.
Where the coast has been deeply breached, as by the Zuider
Zee and the Lauwers Zee, the inland seaboard is generally formed of
marine clay at or below sea-level ; and it is here that the great need for
dykes arises, there being nearly 200 miles of dykes round the Zuider
Zee alone. These arms of the sea were actually made or greatly
enlarged by storms in the thirteenth century ; and it seems to have
been the very unfavourable weather at the same time that led to
the sudden and final decay of the old Roman roads, e.g. in the
Rhine valley. That is to say, the same cause which forced traffic
on to waterways inland, provided sites such as those of Amsterdam
and Zwolle with exceptional facilities for traffic on the larger
waterway from retired and easily defended positions. In those
days, too, Zwolle or Kampen was as safe as Amsterdam, because
the Bourtanger morass had not been drained ; and the early
influence of the ports landward may be gauged by the subsequent
projection seaward of international frontier-lines in the valleys of
the Vechte and the Rhine. Amsterdam was " built on herrings,"
and it was the marsh-land between the Zuider Zee and the Dollart
that preserved the human type and the peculiar tongue of the
"Free Frisians" in such marked purity (cf, p. 222).
Deltaic I^^ the nature of things the delta of a large river is a thorough-
Control, fare, giving access up the river and out to sea ; and in early times
its importance varied with the smallness of the sea in front and
the length of navigation on the river behind. It is also naturally
an area of march, all the typical deposits of Rhine and Scheldt
and Maas being below normal sea-level ; and the very existence of
the delta implies a deposit of silt which must be constantly raising
the beds of the rivers. The choking up of any one distributary,
however, only led to the opening of others, until there was a perfect
^ The dunes form only a single line, being absent on the mainland where it is
fringed with islands.
XVIII Holland 263
network of channels ; and the natural foci must always have tended
to be the corners of the A, i.e. the extreme seaward point of the north
bank of the north branch at the Hook, — the similar site on the south
shore of the most southerly island at Flushing, — and the landward
apex of Dordrecht. Obviously, with the development of civilisation,
the safer position on the shallower waters up the river would tend
to decrease in importance ; and, in this case, Dordrecht had —
before the year 147 1 — the additional advantage of being actually
on the mainland. It was, therefore, the natural site for the capital
of the Counts of Holland ; and it was from Dordrecht that the
Declaration of Independence was issued in 1572. But the
economic position was impaired by the disturbance which left it an
island, and so involved trans-shipment for the mainland.
Obviously, too, canals make the only " cheap " and practicable Canals,
roads through natural marsh-land ; and many of the most important
canals in Holland were originally natural waterways of some kind
or other, e.g. a small stream or the distributary of a large river.
They are also the safest kind of road in a Buffer State. Roads
on piles would only have opened the door to invasion, whereas
the opening of " doors " on canals had a precisely opposite result,
as the French discovered in 1670; and the one danger — from
frost — offered little help to invaders such as the Spaniards, who
were certainly not expert skaters. It is peculiarly significant,
therefore, that the senior branch of the Dutch Army should be the
Engineers, and that they should have their headquarters at Utrecht,
i.e. the farthest point eastward from which, at equal distances from
Amsterdam and Dordrecht, the whole lowland can be flooded.
The essential problems of the water-control are to arrest, to Drainage
imprison, to lead off, especially in the islands of Zeeland ("Sea Problems.
Land ") and the " hollow land " of Holland proper. The existence
of the country depends on sea-dykes, and its prosperity depends
on river-dykes. One-quarter of the land — practically all west of
a line through Dordrecht and Utrecht — is actually below sea-level,
and a considerable additional area is not one yard above sea-level,
and would be submerged by any high tide if the dykes and dunes
were removed ; and, therefore, not only are large sums spent on
strengthening and extending the barriers, but stringent laws are
passed against the destruction of birds (such as storks) which prey
on burrowing animals. The vast expense is now being lightened,
because artificial dunes form round the dykes, making them at
once more effective and less costly to maintain ; the ravages of the
pile-worm can be completely kept in check by electricity ; and
experience has greatly improved the methods of reclamation.
The first step in reclamation is to " impolder," i.e. dyke in and Impolder-
then drain ; and the drainage is affected by natural or artificial ^"S-
means according to the position and character of the land. For
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The Continent of Europe
CH.
the western part of the country is distinctly lower than the eastern ;
the former is low fen or sea clay, while the latter is sand and gravel
with stretches of heath ; and the whole slopes down gently from
the south-east — where the chalk hills of Limburg reach 1000 feet
— to several feet below sea toward the north-west. As the surface
of the clay in the north-west averages 14 feet below the Amsterdam
" zero," the water has to be raised before it can be discharged ; and
this has been greatly facilitated by the substitution of steam-power
for wind-power — greatly to the disfigurement of the landscape, —
and the greater regularity of the pumping engines has increased the
Distribu-
tion of
People.
wiuuaj CMS. CO.
Relief of Holland.
value of the drainage canals for navigation. At the same time, the
temporary storage of the drained water in basins, e.g. in Friesland,
guarantees the polders absolutely from drought even in the driest
parts of the country ; and it has led to a great development of butter-
making in Friesland, the province producing about one-third of all the
" factory " butter made in the country, i.e. one-fifth of the total output.
The distribution of people is intimately associated with these
schemes. Marsh-land must be drained before it can be lived on ;
and, as the drainage is difficult and expensive, alternatives and
compromises are sought. In Holland the alternatives are to live
on the water in a barge, or to drain the minimum area, and simply
cover that with houses. These are built of imported wood and
XVIII Holland 265
stone, and run naturally in thin lines along the narrow drained
streets ; and when the houses stop, their places are taken by long
lines of tall trees, whose roots help to bind together the friable
edges of the raised causeway. To-day, therefore, the presence of
Barge-life and the absence of what we mean by Village-life are alike
typical of the area; while the historic pre-eminence of Flanders
over Zeeland and Holland was based precisely on its greater
suitability for settlement because of its higher level and drier soil.
About one-tenth of the population live on barges ; and one Barge
reason for the cheapness of barge-transport in Holland is because Trans-
the barge is a house as well as a conveyance ; but such life is ^
purely nomad, and interferes so much with the proper care of
children, e.g. attendance at school, that some 30,000 grow up as
little better than beasts of burden on the tow-path. For the
salvation of the children, they must have a fixed home on shore,
which means that barge-life is doomed ; but barge-transport is an
inevitable sequel to the site of Holland, as a great ocean-gate for
the water-borne traffic of Central Europe. And, under such
circumstances, the tendency in modern times is for all the traffic
to concentrate on one or two great ports.
The influence of this tendency is important. On the one hand, Uses of
it has led to the extension of all the typical centres, e.g. Rotterdam, Canals.
over the river-dyke on to the actual bank of the river ; on the other
hand, it has decided the relation of the various waterways to their
districts and to one another. Thus, amongst the sea -isles of
Zeeland the canals connect inland towns with ports, e.g. Middelburg
with Flushing ; in Holland proper they connect river-ports with the
sea, as Rotterdam is connected with the North Sea by the New
Waterway and Amsterdam by the North Sea Ship Canal ; away
from the sea and the great rivers, they are themselves the main
arteries of traffic ; in the drier parts of the country they are even
used for irrigation, e.g. in Drente and Overysel. As the competition
of Belgium and Germany came to be felt, rivers and canals in
Holland became practically " free " ; and this again increased the
tendency for traffic to move in the line of least resistance on a
single great port. This line of least resistance is dictated by the
Rhine itself, for the Rhine coast is coherent, while the Scheldt
coast is incoherent ; and, while the Maas threads the straits of the
South Holland archipelago, it also joins the Waal — at Gorkum —
on its way to the Lek. The great focus, therefore, must be on the
common mouth of Maas and Waal and Lek, where Rotterdam is
the landward terminus of the great New Waterway.
The obvious rivals are Antwerp and Amsterdam, The former, Antwerp
as we have seen, has access with the Rhine by semi-artificial water- ^- hotter-
ways, as Amsterdam has by the Merwede Canal ; and Antwerp not
only got the start of the Dutch ports, but also commands the
266
The Continent of Europe
CH.
Amster-
dam Y.
Rotter-
dam.
Belief and
Climate.
Scheldt as well as the Rhine, and has the additional advantage of
a large " heavy " traffic of its own from the Belgium coal-field. But
as ocean rates for long distances are exactly the same to all these
ports and their neighbours, imports in bulk take the most direct
route, i.e. via Rotterdam ; and it is very significant that two-thirds
of the imports at Rotterdam consist of ore, coal, and grain. Out-
ward goods are much more general in character, and do not travel
in ship-loads, so that they prefer Antwerp.
Amsterdam, too, has historic links, e.g. with Dutch colonies ;
but its two ship-canals, though neither is more than twenty years
old, are scarcely equal to the newer vessels, and the pace over the
Merwede Canal is so slow that the extra 15 miles of distance (over
Rotterdam) to the upper Rhine really count as 50. The city
retains, then, the partial monopoly of, e.g. tobacco and coffee in
bulk by the North Sea Ship Canal (31 feet), but it has even less
chance than Antwerp in the competition with Rotterdam for the
real Rhine trade. It is almost true to say that the main value of
the two canals is that they have made the Zuider Zee useless as a
waterway, and therefore admit the possibility of its being drained
and, reclaimed. At the same time, the city is a world-market of
first rank — for colonial products; and 40 p.c. of the tonnage
imported into Holland by sea for home use enters the country by
the North Sea Canal. Indeed, so great is the national importance
of the canal that steps are now being taken to deepen the Ijmuiden
entrance to at least 40 feet.^
There is so little variety of relief that, in an area only twice
the size of Yorkshire, there are 5000 miles of navigable river and
canal ; and the small size and the uniformly low level minimise
climatic variations. But marked differences of physical structure
and distinct seasonal changes of climate give rise to some variety
of landscape and considerable localisation of natural and cultivated
vegetation. For instance, the most effective medium of precipitation
is the line of sand hills, while we find the lowest levels of the
whole country to leeward of them in the polders ; on the other
hand, conditions tend less towards heavy rainfall, which scarcely
exceeds 28 inches, than to high humidity, which is usually over
80 p.c, and which is associated with constant mist in the
more dusty parts of the country. Again, wide exposure gives
greater extremes of temperature than, e.g. in East Anglia, — canal
traffic being largely ice-borne in winter — and heavier rainfall than
in, e.g. any other part of the Great European plain ; but the average
temperature (50° F.) is essentially temperate, S.W. winds raising
the temperature for nine months and N.W. winds lowering it for
the three months of summer.
* When the canal was originally opened (1896), the large locks at Ijmuiden
were the largest in the world.
XVIII Holland 267
These conditions are reflected in the economic vegetation. The Economic
minimum of waste land is in the west, and the maximum is in the Vegeta-
east, reclaimed lands being won mainly from the sea in the one ^*"^ '
case and mainly from the barren heaths in the other. The heavy
land makes admirable meadow, and raises also flax and wheat,
while the light land raises rye and potatoes, and is being gradually
planted with trees ; and cattle are as typical of the heavy lands in
the west as sheep are of the heath-lands of the east. Rather more
than one-third of the whole area is pasture, while rather more than
one-quarter is cultivated, and another quarter is water or waste.
The fundamental consideration is the cost of drainage. In the Pasture v.
"Low Fens," where the foundation is clay, it is comparatively Tillage,
easy and cheap to drain the top 15 or 16 inches ; and this is not
only sufficient for cattle — though they may need to wear "blankets"
— but produces a fine saltish grass which induces a large yield of
milk. But for tillage it is necessary to drain at least twice,
generally three times, as deep ; and the cost in many places is
quite prohibitive. Agriculture, therefore, is relatively much more
important in Gelderland and Brabant than in Holland and Zeeland ;
and the slightly more continental climate eastward is an additional
advantage, especially for the raising of cereals. Where the balance
is held most evenly, as in Friesland and Groningen, there most pro-
gress is being made, especially in market-gardening ; but the export
goes rather to Germany via Delfzyl than westward via Harlingen.
The horticulture of the west stands by itself, but it is significant Horticul-
that the typical products are all of a bulbous kind and humble *"re-
habit. The dunes supply the necessary sand, the pure water, and
the protection from salt-bearing winds, which are the essential needs
of the black peaty soil for the production of spring flowers ; and
Haarlem is the most famous centre because it is far enough north
to feel the climatic benefit of the Zuider Zee, and because it
possesses an ideal site in other respects in the 70 square miles of
the drained floor of its old lake.
Civilisation comes from the sea, and therefore the standard of Standard
comfort falls inland. The poorest and most backward elements in °^ ^°™-
the population are in Drente and Overysel, in Brabant and Limburg.
The cleanest and most independent are in the Frisian Islands, the
home of De Ruyter and Van Tromp. The grimmest and harshest
elements are the real Hollanders — the raisers of grass and ha}',
butter and cheese, under the leaden skies of the dyked polders,
the heroes of centuries of war against the grey North Sea. There
is the clearest possible distinction between the " Free Frisians," the
heroes of a hundred historic fights on the sea, and the dour
Hollanders, who have fought an equally heroic and still unended
war with the sea. There is a similarly clear distinction between the
taller western people, with their red-tiled or rye-thatched houses of
268
The Continent of Europe
CH.
brick or wood, and the dwarfed eastern people, with their peat-
roofed huts of raw clay. For it was only near the sea that — in
earlier ages — the clay became the basis of industries, some of
which, e.g. the clay pipes of Gouda and the earthenware of Delft,
are still amongst the most prosperous of Dutch industries.
Colonial The outward trend of the delta always promised colonial
Empire, empire, still illustrated by the Dutch control of the coffee and
cocoa, the sugar and tobacco trades ; and this was emphasised and
accelerated by the need for maintaining a large fleet and the
voluntary destruction of home supplies by the flooding of the
country in the struggle for national independence. The precise
direction of the colonial development was also wrapped up in the
same problem, for it depended on the subjection of Portugal — after
200 years of pre-eminence in geographical discovery — to the great
enemy of Holland, Spain. It is still maintained because the
Rhine, Maas, and Scheldt form the busiest network of waterways
in Europe. Holland still has 36,000,000 colonial subjects, and
perhaps only the Dutch could have coped successfully in early days
with the river-floods and the shoaly seas of Sumatra and Java ; and
Holland still collects colonial produce, and distributes it inwards.
But the East Indian demand is small, and the local freedom of
trade allows it to be met by direct imports from the cheapest
sources, while political pressure practically compels, e.g., German
exports to go by " national " routes, so that Dutch ports and
steamers lack return cargoes.
Political To this economic problem there is a very important political
Sequel, sequel. In the days of wooden navies, when easy access to the
sea and to Rhine-borne timber gave the Dutch their chance of
Colonial empire, they were brought into special conflict with
Imperial Spain ; and, when Continental empires rose in rivalry of
the oceanic empires, access to the Rhine valley made these Delta
people also a Buffer State. Still, where the land is most deltaic, i.e.
Zeeland, there are two racial types, Dutch and Spanish ; and, where
it is most continental, i.e. Limburg, there are two more, Flemish and
German. But the vast improvement of land traffic in modern
times, and the size and cost of modern navies, exclude from
Naval Power a small State, especially if it is hampered by " deltaic "
absence of coal and iron. And so there are diflficult political
problems associated with this Buffer State delta. For the " habit
of the sea" still counts for much, and the Dutch are the best
sailors along the whole European coast between Brittany and
Norway ; and these fine estuaries are safe for shipping, secure
from naval attack, and easily linked to Europe. This seaboard is,
therefore, becoming of enormous political importance now that
the centre of naval strategy has moved from Cape St. Vincent to
the Dogger, i.e. from a point commanding the relations of the
XVIII Holland 269
Atlantic and the Mediterranean to one commanding the relations
of the North Sea and the Baltic.
Under such circumstances it was not surprising that Western Dutch
Europe was somewhat disturbed by the recent Dutch Defence Bill, Defence
providing for a remarkable strengthening of the seaward defences
and ignoring the gross and admitted deficiencies of the landward
defences. The difficulty in the latter case was the systematic
assertion in recent years by German strategists that " Germany
may find herself compelled, for military reasons, to disregard the
neutrality of Belgium." The difficulty in the former case was the
extraordinary natural strength of Holland seaward. Holland lies
on the flank of any naval movement between the Elbe and the
Thames or the Seine and on the flank of any military movement
across Belgium. Naval attack on Holland itself is inconceivable.
Across the Zuider Zee it could only be conducted by boats drawing
less than lo feet of water, which no doubt justifies replacing the
Helder, as a naval port, by Ijmuiden or the Hook ; the coast from
the Texel to the Hook has a shelving foreshore, which would greatly
hamper disembarkation ; the Hollandsch Diep and Volkerak, like
the West Scheldt, — quite apart from the forts of Helvoetsluys and
Willemstad — are only suitable for vessels of the coast-defence type,
such as are found in the Dutch Navy, and could not even be used
as a naval base by vessels of the type now normal in the British and
French navies.
On the contrary, invasion of Holland from the land side would Landward
seem to be perfectly simple. Only Holland proper and small Defence,
portions of the adjacent provinces are protected at all ; and even
this " Holland Fortress," as it is called, depends mainly on three
lines of defences or prepared positions — those of the Ysel, the
Grebbe Line from the Rhine to the Zuider Zee at Spankenburg,
and a line joining Amsterdam to Gertruidenburg vz'a Naarden
and Muiden, Utrecht and Gorkum. The great weapon relied on
is inundation ; and, even if an enemy were to divert all river
water from the Grebbe Line, it could be flooded by salt water from
the Zuider Zee via Muiden.
Smallness is typical of Buffer States, and is eminently Small
characteristic of Holland. The land itself is very small, its Size,
features are all in miniature, and its human products — except for
the Free Frisians — are correspondingly diminutive. " It is a
chessboard land, in which the average school-class numbers seven
children ! " As its international position is also delicate, some of
its political and economic phenomena are peculiarly interesting.
For instance, the importance of the transit trade in foreign goods
has involved a need for — which has developed into a gift for —
learning foreign tongues and practising economic cosmopolitanism ;
and these two considerations make Holland a most appropriate area
270
The Continent of Europe
CH.
for International Conferences of all kinds, political, religious, etc.
On the other hand, politics are merely academic, much discussion
about patriotism being as typical as the difficulty in recruiting
soldiers ; the small physical horizon seems to be reflected in a
small political horizon, and the most important political questions
are of a parochial character. Again, the small size and the rich
soil encourage spade labour ; but the high rent of reclaimed lands
and severe agricultural competition depress wages, which means
poor housing and under-feeding. Under such circumstances, the
poorest agricultural workers are greatly attracted to the industries of
Belgium and Germany, as the high pay offered to soldiers in
Holland attracts adventurers from Belgium and Germany, thus
causing some international friction — a typical phenomenon in a
Buffer State — with two nations neither of whom relishes losing
good soldiers.
National The one great advantage of the geographical control is that
Unity. gregarious instinct of a dense population within a closely limited
area, which cannot fail to draw out national feeling ; and this has
been wonderfully intensified by the religious unity of the people
and by their political history. Mixture of race is still reflected in
differences of customs and costumes, of diet and dialect,^ but unity
of control has ruled out all vital differences. Unfortunately this
control has been associated so largely with barge-life and constant
fog that it has over-emphasised every tendency to caution and
deliberation — in word and deed — already emphasised by a delicate
international position ; and the greatest political failing of the
people is the habit of thinking too slowly and acting too late. It
is, no doubt, the same influence that makes them still live mentally
in the days of Rembrandt and Erasmus, De Ruyter and Van Tromp,
all natives of the misty islands and the hollow lands for which they
fought Spaniard and Pope and grey North Sea.
Industries. The distribution of towns and industries, and the character of
both, largely reflect these geographical conditions. For instance,
though the polders raise a good type of horse in Friesland, their
value is specially for cattle ; and dairy industries are specially suited
to a country like Holland, with important colonies to attract its
male population into commerce. The success of the dairy products
in Holland is largely due to the care with which quality is guaranteed
by " Control Stations " in all parts — Leiden and Goes, Eindhoven
and Maastricht, Deventer and Assen, Groningen and Leeuwarden.
Slightly easier access to salt and slightly slower changes of
temperature make cheese rather more important than butter west
of the Zuider Zee, e.g. at Edam and Gouda, so that Alkmaar is
the great cheese market, while Groningen is the great butter market.
^ The Hague and Rotterdam and Amsterdam, though so near together, all have
quite distinct dialects.
xv'iii Holland 271
Quantities of margarine are also made, e.g. at Gouda. Again, rye
is the typical grain, being most important in the more continental
climate of Gelderland ; and it is the base of the typical food and
drink of the people, the bread being made mainly of rye — mixed
with wheat — and both the " Hollands " gin of Schiedam and the
cura9ao liqueur of Rotterdam having a rye base. A large amount
of alcohol is also made from potatoes and sugar-beet, and the
country is one of the chief refiners of beet-sugar, Rotterdam and
Amsterdam being the two great centres. The associated vinegar
industry is supplied with onions, gherkins, and cauliflowers — for
pickling — from the market-gardens of Holland proper, e.g. between
Alkmaar and Hoorn.
The deltaic formation being naturally devoid of minerals except
such as peat and clay, and the only coal in the non-deltaic part
of the land being in Limburg (Heerlen) and very limited in
quantity, manufactures depend largely on imported coal ; and this
tended to localise them on the seaboard or where there was easy
access to German or Belgian coal. A low standard of comfort,
implying a low wage, e.g. in Overysel and Limburg, was another
factor ; and the more modern manufactures sprang up, therefore,
along the Westphalian frontier, especially in the Twente and the
Peel districts. The former specialises in cotton, e.g. at Enschede
and Almelo, and the latter in mixed cotton and wool, e.g. at
Roermond and Helmond. The older industries were in flax and
wool, e.g. the " brown Holland " of Tilburg and Eindhoven, in the
great flax-growing area, and the carpets of Deventer, on the seaward
edge of the great sheep-raising area. The typical " colonial "
industries in tobacco and chocolate, quinine and diamonds, are in
or near Amsterdam ; but this old centre of national activity is now
only hampered by the isolation — between shoaly Zuider Zee and
natural moat of marsh which could be flooded from the dam on
the Amstel — which once baflfled Spain and attracted the Hebrew
jewellers who fled from less tolerant lands.
The distribution of racial type, as discussed by Ripley, has, Racial
perhaps, more relation to physical conditions than he seems to Type and
think. For the country may be divided into two regions by a line
similar to a large figure 3, the upper curve surrounding the Zuider
Zee and the lower one running from the mouth of the Gelders
via Nymegen to the south-west of Brabant. This line marks
approximately the edge of a more or less continuous stretch of
diluvial, i.e. coarse and imperfectly stratified, sand and gravel, an
area of bleak moor and heath, on which the typical industries are
the raising of rye and buckwheat, the rearing of sheep and bees,
the digging of peat and — recently — the planting of woods. Sea-
ward on all sides of this diluvium are the fertile clay-lands, on
which the typical industries are the rearing of cattle and horses —
272
The Continent of Europe
CH.
Racial
Type and
Speech.
Homo-
geneity.
Fishing
Ports.
especially cattle except in the north — and the raising of wheat and
barley, of flax and sugar-beet, the latter specially in the south-west,
e.g. round Bergen-op-Zoom. The distinction is very well marked
in Gelderland, where the diluvium is called Veluwe (" Bad Lands "),
while the rich "apple" land south of the Rhine and west of the
Gelders — which, but for river-dykes, would still be, at high water,
a distributary of the Rhine — is called Betuwe ("Good Lands").
This was the home of the Batavians.
Practically all over the diluvium the characteristic dialect is
Low German, Saxon north of the Rhine, and Frankish south of it,
except for the Walloon infiltration down the Maas valley. In the
Frisian Islands the native tongue is a " continental Lowland Scotch,"
gradually giving place southward along the seaboard until the
Belgian influence brings in almost pure Flemish. The Frisians
are unmixed Teutons, long-headed and oval-faced, tall and fair;
and Teutonic characteristics are common over all parts of the land
that are in direct communication with the North European plain.
But in those parts originally most isolated, i.e. amongst the swamps
of Holland and on the central islands of the delta, the broad-
headed, dark, stocky-framed people show how Alpine refugees
found safety in inaccessible " misery spots " ; and their rather
unexpected survival (cf. p. 80) may be related to the infusion of
Teutonic blood, evidence of which is seen in the typical disharmonic
face — which is of pure Teutonic oval shape.
It has been noticed, too, that, while the intermixture is
commoner in towns than in rural districts, there is very little
difference of type between different social classes. This reflects
the influence of (i) small area and uniform relief in producing
political homogeneity, (2) a natural refuge in excluding a ruling
class of alien type, and (3) spade-culture in keeping rural areas,
both in density of population and in standard of comfort, compar-
able with urban areas. The only qualification is that areas with
superior facilities of communication, e.g. those on the seaboard and
along the great rivers, reflect this advantage in their human standard,
especially in the two respects which are most closely associated with
stature — food and housing.
Various conditions, however, have been adverse to the most
typical seaboard industry, i.e. fishing. It is curious that the
islanders, whether Frisians or Zeelanders, are more interested in
the " inner " fisheries, e.g. the flat fish and " sardines " of the
Zuider Zee and the Wadden, or the oysters and mussels of the
East Scheldt, while all the deep-sea fisheries are worked from
Holland proper, Ijmuiden being the great centre, and the others
being clearly connected with Amsterdam and Rotterdam, e.g.
Katwijk and Scheveningen, Vlaardingen and Maasluys. Old ports
on inner waters, such as Zaandam — where Peter the Great served
XVIII Holland 273
as a shipwright, — have quite fallen behind ; and new ports on the
seaboard, such as Flushing, have been converted into "mainland"
ports by railway bridges. Walcheren and Beveland are no longer
famous for fisheries ; the one is the " garden," the other the
" granary," of Zeeland.
The influence of the great rivers is also relatively less than it Riverside
was. Towns such as Moudyk and 's Hertogenbosch, on the sites "o^"^-
of old Roman camps, or Bergen and Breda, on the navigable Aa,
had immense importance in early days as " Maas " fortresses — on
the bank or the flank of the Maas ; and scarcely less importance
attached to similar sites on Waal and Lek and Ysel, e.g. Nymegen
and Tiel, Arnhem and Zutphen. But even Maastricht (cf. p. 251),
the fortifications of which are now dismantled, could not take full
advantage of its position till it was supplied with railways {c. 1 860) ;
and in modern times such artificial control is still more prominent,
especially in the backward diluvial areas. For instance, all the
local streams are collected at Groningen, and then discharged by
the Reitsdiep to the I^uwers Zee or by the Ems Canal ^ to Delfzyl
and the Dollart. So, in Drente, which also slopes towards the
Dollart, all southward streams are collected at Meppel and Koeverden,
as in Overysel they are collected at Zwolle. The controlling factor
here is the strip of rich low-fen which runs along the western edge
of the diluvium, i.e. along the west of the railway from Zwolle to
Leeuwarden, and which supports the busy pastoral industries that
are supplied with such admirable " dairy " fuel from the Assen and
other peat-bogs of the interior. The famous mat-plaiting of this
dairy district is a home industry, based on the natural abundance of
the sand-reed ("sand-vats") of Drente and Overysel.
^ As German map)-makers — following the German Staff Map of igii (sheet 172)
— are deliberately printing the Dollart frontier seaward of the Reide promontory as
a land and not a water line, thus making the whole estuary Prussian instead of
International, it may be useful to emphasise the facts in International law and
usage. The frontier is the centre line of the fairway, — the Dutch paying exactly
half the total cost of lighting and buoying the whole waterway as far as Rottum and
Borkum. The estuary is, therefore, an International " arm of the sea," open in time
of peace to all nations without restriction. Of course, this minimises the value of
Emden as a naval base, and the value of the Ems- Rhine Canal as a means of divert-
ing Rhine trade from Holland (cf. p. 292).
CHAPTER XIX
DENMARK
Strategic
Position.
EanBeat
Influence.
The
Straits.
The Danish islands were not only stepping-stones to Scandinavia,
but also a pivot from which the whole Baltic area was more or
less controlled for centuries ; for in earlier times they were on the
margin of civilisation, while in later times they commanded all
intercourse between the two " Hanseatic " seas. The safety of this
refuge on the margin of civilisation might be inferred from the
persistence of paganism in the central island of Fiinen {Odense,
" Odin's Island ") or from the fact that the " Danes " have maintained
continuous possession of this Sealand^ ("Sea Land") for 2000
years. The strength of the strategic position may be gauged from the
ease with which the Danes '* inherited " the Hanseatic claim to charge
a toll for entry to the Baltic — a charge abolished only in 1857, or
from the fact that Copenhagen to-day exercises a direct control over
several typical Baltic products, e.g. Swedish and Russian butter.
There was, however, a time problem involved. Geographically,
the Danish islands have somewhat the same command of relations
between the North Sea and the Baltic as the British Islands have
of relations between the North Sea and the Atlantic ; but histori-
cally, as civilisation moved westward, the Baltic became only a
"pocket" of the North Sea, and the influence of Denmark was
bound to fall as that of England rose. Nor could Denmark itself
become influential as a political unit until the politico-economic
unit of the Hanseatic League had broken up. Then, however, her
chance came ; for her greatest rival, Holland, was occupied in a
life-and-death struggle with Spain, which effectually crippled the
commercial activities of both the belligerent powers.
The construction of the Kiel Canal has affected both the
strategic and the commercial importance of the Danish site, but the
increased size of modern ships has almost compensated for this ;
for Denmark dare not have used her strategic position against
either Germany or Russia, while larger vessels have to use the
Drogden channel through the Sound, i.e. the one between the
' Zealand is a mis-spelling, due to confusion with the Dutch.
274
CH. XIX
Denmark
275
island of Saltholm and Copenhagen, and even then some have to
lighten at Copenhagen. Further, the Sound is sometimes rendered
dangerous for navigation by ice, though it has not been actually
frozen up now for nearly a century (1836) ; and the fact remains
that the Great Belt, which is only about 10 miles wide and
entirely " landlocked " by Danish territory, is the only one of the
Straits deep enough for large
,r^-^^<'o
Railway and steamer routes in Denmark.
men-of-war. Even merchant
vessels are influenced by this,
and the chance of fog in the
Belt is far more than compen-
sated by the dues on the Canal.
In any case, however, the very
large vessels for which the
Great Belt and the Canal are
suitable, are of relatively little
use in the Baltic.
Commercially, too, the Railway
competition of the Kiel Canal Ferries,
and the demand for quick
transport without break-of-bulk
have been met by the develop-
ment of steam railway-ferries, which carry the loaded trains across
the various straits between Malmo and Esbjerg via Korsor and
Nyborg, Strib and Fredericia, or between Malmo and Rostock via
Masuedo and Orehoved, Gjedser and Warnemiinde. This is one
of the chief reasons for the great development of Danish commerce
(100 p.c.) in the last thirty years, especially at the "free port" of
Copenhagen ; and it is significant that Great Britain takes 60 p.c. of ,
the exports, while Germany takes only 18 p.c, and that the Danish
mercantile marine is largely occupied in carrying for foreigners,
e.g. carrying Russian butter to Copenhagen for re-export.
The frontier features have had considerable political importance. Frontier.
Danger in early times came only from the Baltic side, for the North
Sea coast was very difficult and inhospitable, and the direction of
the Sound enabled vessels to use the prevailing wind very easily
for either entrance or exit. The dues collected by the Danes at
Helsingor, on the narrowest (3 miles) part of the Sound, were
nominally paid for protection from pirates ; and Copenhagen was
the first Danish capital on the Sound at all, earlier capitals being
in less exposed places, e.g. at Roskilde. The isthmian frontier
involves different considerations, for the fact that civilisation came
from the south gave special importance to the Little Belt (not
I mile wide at Fredericia), as it made Viborg the first capital of
Jutland and the first Christian centre.
With the development of German nationality, it was inevitable
276 The Continent of Europe CH.
Schles- that Denmark should be dislodged from the right bank of the Elbe
^S- estuary, for long before 1864 rivers had ceased to be appropriate
dividing lines in Central Europe. For the same reason the Eider
valley, though a scene of constant struggle between Danes and
Germans for nearly 1000 years, and partly because of that,
could not be utilised as a frontier ; and Bismarck's astute suggestion
to leave the actual decision to the " free vote " of the Schleswig
people only involved such a determined Germanisation of the
Duchy that its inclusion in Denmark became practically impossible.
Under the circumstances the best compromise was to have the
frontier where the " German " influence died out because of the
barren heaths of Ribe ; this happened to be almost the narrowest
part (36 miles) of the peninsula ; and the seaward ends of the
frontier dip southward far enough to include on the North Sea coast
the old port of Ribe, the great rival of Schleswig as a port, and on the
Baltic the approach to the narrow Fredericia Strait. Incidentally,
this diplomatic trick helps to account for the extremely " French "
attitude of the Danes in social life and politics. Cf. p. 322.
North Sea The dangerous character of the North Sea coast, though now
Coast. minimised by coastal engineering and provision of lighthouses, is
due to its structure and its climate. For about 200 miles north-
and-south lies a belt of sand-dunes, averaging perhaps 2 or 3 miles
in total width, the most northerly of them forming the Skaw spit,
while in the extreme south they form part of the North Frisian
Islands. Everywhere these are more or less discontinuous and
liable to be broken through by the sea, the resultant inundations
leaving permanent lagoons behind the dunes, e.g. the Ringkiobing
and Liim " fiords " ; and the submerged dunes are exceedingly
dangerous, even where the channels into the lagoons do not shift.
The danger is increased by the fact that the dusty air greatly favours
the development of fog, thick sea-fogs being a constant phenomenon,
at all events in summer.
Plaice The Liim fiord, which was joined to the North Sea as lately as
Fishery. 1825, is of special importance in the Danish fishing industry. It is
a network of salt lagoons, linking the North Sea to the Baltic and
making Northern Jutland an island group ; these lagoons have a
total area of about 600 square miles, with very narrow entrances at
both ends, so that they form a lake-like strait with a depth seldom
more than 1 2 feet. This has been converted into a " nursery " for
young plaice from the North Sea, and rivals the North Frisian
waters as a source of supply for the plaice market. Obviously, the
best harbour between the two nurseries was likely to become a very
important fishing centre ; and Esbjerg is that harbour, with huge
floating cages to keep the fish in till they are wanted, and served by
a large fleet, 700 of which are motor boats.
There are a number of safe little harbours both elsewhere in
XIX Denmark 277
Jutland and on the islands, especially on the so-called " fiords " ; Difficult
and, while these were a great incentive to movement by sea in the Naviga
days of small ships, the conditions of navigation were such as to ^°^'
demand and evoke a fine type of seamanship. For the main
current out of the Baltic is rapid and strong ; in windy weather it soon
becomes rough ; in calm weather there is a good deal of fog ; there
is a fringe of ice generally in mid-winter round most of the coast
except on the North Sea ; and quantities of ice are carried by the
current itself. Indeed, the steam-ferry between Korsor and Nyborg
was so much interrupted at first by bad conditions that it was
seriously proposed to drive a tunnel under the Great Belt.
Under these circumstances special importance was bound to be The
attached to the two ends of the straightest and easiest entrance to Sound.
the Baltic, the toll-gate of Helsingor on the narrow entrance and
the trading haven (Copenhagen, " Merchant's Haven ") on the
broad entrance. The trade was almost entirely in herrings, and the
fish systematically used the deeper Drogden channel ; this was
flanked by the Middle Ground shoal and the Saltholm flat — between
which Nelson attacked Copenhagen in 1801 — on the east and the
two islands of Sealand and Amager on the west, i.e. the windward
side. The channel between these two made, therefore, an admirable
natural refuge ; and here the city of Copenhagen sprang up.
The surface features are almost entirely due to the glaciation Surface.
which spread over the basal cretaceous limestone from the
Scandinavian ice-centre, for the melting of the ice, and the action
of water otherwise, left the rougher material to form morainic hills,
while the finer material was distributed over the lower land within,
i.e. to the north of, the terminal moraines. All the highest elevations,
therefore, are of this boulder sand and gravel, and lie towards the
south and east both in Jutland and in the islands ; and the whole
area tends to slope very gently down towards the west, thus tending
to expose the limestone base — to form the better coast — towards
the east. Where the chalk or limestone lies in a favourable position
with regard to the clay, an important cement industry has sprung up.
Over such a small area ( = twice Wales), however, there could General
not be — under the circumstances — much variety of relief; and no Uni-
point in the kingdom much exceeds 500 feet. This maximum is °^ ^*
found in the Himmel-bjerg district, near Aarhus, and gives birth to
the only considerable river in the country, the Gudenaa (80 miles),
which accounts for the early rise of Randers as a port. Similarly,
the Odense river, draining from the Svendborg hills (about 400 feet),
helps to account for the early rise of Odense as a port. In Sealand
the maximum elevation is only some 350 feet; and the lower
elevation and the greater distance from the Atlantic combine with
proximity to the Sound to make the " Faxo " hills more famous as
a source of cement than as a watershed.
278 The Continent of Europe ch.
Variety of Though tlie general level is uniformly low, however, its glacial
Detail. history is not favourable to conspicuous uniformity ; on the contrary,
there is a considerable variety of detail — dead level and swamp
being as rare, except in the west, as hills and lakes are common.
This makes the problems of farming very different from those in e.g.
Holland, as it gives a " Buckinghamshire " effect to the scenery —
corn-fields, meadows, beech forests ; indeed, the scenery is typically
" pretty," as is implied by the name Fiinen (" The Pretty Land "),
and the small islands, e.g. Langeland (sixteen times as "long" as it
is broad) or Moen, are as favoured in this respect as the large ones.
Jutland The great exception, of course, is in the west and north of
"Deserts." Jutland, where the morainic hills slope down to morainic lowlands,
and the undulating farm-lands give place to moor and heath and
then to peat-bog and sand-dune. Even here, however, — thanks
largely to the organising genius of the numerous Jews, especially in
Copenhagen — a great change is coming over the landscape, so great
that it is actually altering the relative proportions of urban (38 p.c.)
and rural (62) population. In olden days the oak was the typical
tree in Jutland, but the supply seems to have been exhausted for
shipbuilding. In the process of natural re-afforestation, soil and
climate were more favourable to the beech than the oak ; and
probably the demand for a " domestic " wood and charcoal further
favoured the beech. But in the meantime the destruction of the
old forests had exposed the western parts of the country to encroach-
ment by wind-blown sand, thus impoverishing still more a land of
bog and moor. Within recent years, as on the French Landes, all
these adverse conditions have been fought successfully. The sands
have been planted with mountain pine and red fir, the windiest
exposures have been isolated by scrub fences, the bogs have been
drained, and the moors have been fertilised by top-dressings of marl.
The total result may be best summed up by the statement that the
old "deserts " of Viborg, Ringkiobing, and Ribe have been growing
in population faster than any other part of the kingdom.
Climate. The chmate is something like that of Eastern England, but with
a slightly warmer summer and slightly colder winter ; and it is
characteristic that extremes do not increase eastward, the purely
insular environment giving the east an average temperature slightly
higher than that of Jutland. There is a distinct four-months' winter
(December-March) at about 32° F., in spite of the normal S.W.
wind ; and the three-months' summer (June-August) has an average
of 59° F. The average rainfall is about the same as in Middlesex
(25 inches), most falling in the west and least falling in the lee of
the chief heights, e.g. only 15 inches falling in the lee of the Himmel-
bjerg on Anholt. The dry and keen east wind in April is ex-
ceedingly favourable to farm operations ; but, as it works round
by the north into the normal due-west wind of summer, it exposes
XIX Denmark 279
the north of Jutland to a "skai" influence which is equally unfavour-
able to vegetation of all kinds.
The one great advantage which Denmark possesses over her Advan-
typical Baltic rivals with regard to the typical industry of dairy tages for
farming is the greater length of her summer and the marine curtail- ^^
ing of her winter, thus minimising the need for indoor feeding of
stock and giving a maximum growing-time for pasture-grasses. This
advantage and the facilities for commerce gave the Danes an
opportunity for developing an industry for which their economic
system was- admirably suited. Most of the land is freehold and
farmed by the owner, about equal quantities being devoted to
tillage and to pasture ; and the soil is fertile enough to foster a
dense population (averaging no per square mile in Jutland and
275 in the islands), while the climate allows its fertility to be used
for products so useful in the dairy industry as oats and barley,
beet-root and potatoes. The value of the grain crops (including the
straw) in 1910 reached nearly p{^ 17,000,000, while that of roots
was over ^9,000,000 and that of hay not much under ;^5, 000,000.
The personal cleanliness of the people was equally favourable Human
to success, while the smallness of the holdings compelled a wide Note,
development of co-operation, by which — especially in the matter of
buying, e.g. fertilisers or feeding-stuffs — enormous economies have
been secured. Butter is, of course, the great product, the yearly
export having a value of some ^£^10,000,000; but the utiHsation of
the waste-products of butter-making obviously involved pig-rearing
and poultry-farming.
The number of live-stock in the country provides much of the Live-
raw material for the glove industry, e.g. of Randers and Copenhagen, Stock,
and for the woollen and leather goods, e.g. of Odense and Copen-
hagen ; and there is a considerable export " on the hoof," e.g. pigs
being exported even to Austria-Hungary when there is " swine-fever "
in Servia (cf. p. 146).
The country is naturally deficient in mineral wealth, except for Minerals,
clays ; but between the chalk and the boulder clay in the south-west
there are beds of lignite, and the peat makes an admirable fuel for
dairy purposes. The china-clay, which forms the basis of the famous
porcelain industry of Copenhagen, comes from the primitive rock of
Bornholm, which is typically Scandinavian, not Danish, in structure.
The economic geography of Denmark has a special interest to Icelandic
foreigners, owing to the particular lines on which the country has WWrl.
developed and to the inclusion of Iceland within its nominal
frontiers ; for the one gives a profound lesson to farmers, especially
in Britain, while the other has a unique interest for meteorologists,
especially round the " British seas."
The excellence of the grass which feeds the famous ponies and
sheep of the mountainous island of Iceland, is due mainly to the fact
28o
The Continent of Europe
CH.
Danish v.
British
Fanner.
Pasture v.
Plough.
Organisa-
tion.
that the island is, like the Azores, close to a great centre of atmo-
spheric action, and partly to the amount of underground heat, as
evidenced by the ubiquity of volcanoes and geysers. The relation
of the permanent Low-Pressure centre off Iceland to the permanent
High-Pressure centre off the Azores seems likely to enable the weather
in N.W. Europe to be forecast successfully for long periods ; for
when pressure is above normal in the Azores, it seems to be below
normal in Iceland. Now, when the difference of pressure is greater
than usual during winter months, warm oceanic winds are stronger
than usual in the north-east of the Atlantic, and the west of Central
Europe is likely to have a spell of high temperature ; and, on the
other hand, when the difference is less than usual, the oceanic
winds are weakened, and the west of Central Europe is likely to have
a spell of hard frost.
The development of Danish farming has upset almost every
Shibboleth of British theorists ; and, therefore, both the facts and the
interpretation of them are of profound importance. As far as all
the Danish exports to the United Kingdom are concerned, the British
farmer, as a potential producer, is at no natural disadvantage ; his
soil and climate are equally good, and he is actually nearer the
market But he has an invincible superstition that cows can be
kept only on good grass-land, and that scientific dairy-farming is only
possible where soil and climate are peculiarly favourable, e.g. in
Cheshire or Devonshire. Indirectly this has led to the poor in
England more or less giving up the use of milk and eggs !
Now the Danes have proved that more cows can be kept "on "
plough-land than on pasture ; and, as the proportion of cattle to
arable land in 1888 was exactly the same in Denmark and in Britain
(214 head to each 1000 acres of tillage), any comparison of recent
development must be significant. To-day, the Danish proportion is
264 head, while ours is only 239 ; and the increase is accompanied
by a similar development in secondary products of the dairy industry.
For instance, in the same period, the quantity of margarine has
risen from under 40,000 cwts. to over 350,000, the number of pigs
from under 775,000 to nearly 1,500,000, the value of the butter
exported from about ;^2, 500,000 to about ^^10,000,000. For
these products we now pay Denmark something like ;^2 0,000,000
a year — 47,000 tons of Danish "pork" out of a total 48,000, and
98 p.c. of the total 20,000,000 score of Danish eggs,^ coming to us.
Now when the Danes first entered on this development, they
had a practical monopoly of the British market ; but since then
there has risen keen competition amongst producers, and consumers
have been educated — by the Danish products — to be more critical.
There must, therefore, be more in the problem than the mere
influence of personal cleanliness and the taking of pains, scrupulous
' Germany, however, is now the largest importer of poultry and eggs.
XIX Denmark 281
maintenance of standard, and the economies of co-operation. There
is absolutely scientific organisation. This is shown in various ways ;
for instance, the yield of milk per cow has been increased during the
last dozen years — by keeping careful records and breeding only from
good milkers — from 450 gallons per year to 585, so that they have
been able lately to export annually over 15,000,000 kilos of cream
without decreasing their output of butter, and, of course, the mechanical
" separation " of the cream immediately after milking minimises the
chance of infection ^ and saves the expense of transporting the milk.
The essential point, however, is the growing of green crops, especially
lucerne, acres of green crop surrounding each strip of the real grass-
land which is still absolutely necessary for summer use. This means
that a well-organised dairy industry is the best possible method of
keeping people on the land — the proportion kept in Denmark being
73 (per 1000 acres of tillage) as against under 37 in England and
Wales ; it is also the most profitable way of using land, as evidenced
by the fact that — incidentally to her production of roots for cattle-
food — Denmark has found that she can provide all her own sugar.
The only apparent limits to production are the small total area Area k,
of the country and the considerable proportion of it that consists of I^PO'^'
moor and " landes." And this difficulty is met, as far as possible,
by imports of grain (maize, rye, and barley) and oil-cake (cotton,
soya, and sunflower). In the list of imports, with almost wearisome
iteration, two stand alone — " coal and feeding-stuffs " ; and this is
true of all parts — Aalborg, Esbjerg, Horsens, Kolding, Randers in
Jutland ; Nyborg, Odense, Svendborg in Fiinen ; Nykobing in
Falster ; Nakskov in Laaland. This concentration of economic
interest on a single industry is not dangerous, because that industry
is concerned with a wide number of products all of which have
become normal necessaries of life; and the neighbouring waters,
supplemented by the Iceland and Faroe fisheries, supply the only
other necessary food.
On the other hand, such concentration on a rural industry implies Towns,
an absence of large towns and a considerable import of manufactures
and minerals. Copenhagen is responsible for 560,000 people out
of the total of 2,760,000; and Aarhus (60,000) and Odense
(42,000) are the only other centres of any size. Aarhus is one of
the chief railway-junctions of the country, for the lake-studded
Gudenaa valley, which forms its hinterland, is as important as it is
picturesque ; and Odense has been rescued, by a ship-canal, from
the seclusion which gave it safety in olden days and made it a suit-
able site for the shrine of St. Canute.
' One of the great economies of this absolutely sanitary method is that the milk
keeps so well that it need not be delivered more than once a day.
CHAPTER XX
GERMANY
Germany is essentially a continental, i.e. a military, area,
pivoting on a confined Alpine foreground in the south and ex-
panding to an exposed coastal lowland in the north ; and it is
significant that the home of her rulers should be the double
principality of Hohenzollern, the drainage of which — like the Pan-
Germanic ambition of a considerable section of their people — works
its way out to sea by both Rhine and Danube.
Central The essentially continental character of the area has an intimate
Site. relation of course to its essentially central site, the controlling
influence of which has probably been at least as harmful politically
in the past as it is helpful economically now, and has been equally
evident in the racial elements of the area, in their strategical
problems, and in their modern economic development. Relief
control led various groups of Teutonic nomads westward up the
neck of steppe which lay between the Carpathians on the one hand
and the Baltic lagoons, the Lithuanian forest, and the Pripet marsh
on the other hand ; and they emerged, from between forested
highland on the south and forested lowland on the north, on to a
central treeless plain. This position proved to be exposed to
various influences — Keltic and Slavic, Scandinavian and Roman, the
Roman being based on the old Roman occupation of the great north-
and-south waterway of the Middle Rhine, which empties towards what
are now the chief industrial and commercial nations of the world.
Political This was likely to lead to great mixture of races and of political
Variety, units — of which twenty-six still exist separately — and this mixture
was largely responsible for the internal incoherence which delayed
union inside the German area ; but eventually self-preservation
demanded definite union of kindred units against the various
foreign influences and powers. State consciousness, as opposed to
Imperialism, is still widely dominant in the area ; for instance,
Alsace-Lorraine is German, not Prussian ; there is strong State
patronage of art and drama ; and there are more than a score of
rival universities. But the very variety of relief and race which
2S2
CH. XX Germany 283
impeded unity in early days, has been a main source of strength to
the nation since it was united.
The pohtical frontiers are varied and suggestive. The mere Political
fact that Germany touches seven foreign Powers lessens any Frontiers.
political danger, but the frontiers are least safe where they face
those neighbours who are at once the strongest and the least in
sympathy with the Germans, i.e. France and Russia. In the east
the frontier-line has some natural protection, and in the west there
are the Dutch moors and disjointed hills ; but the position was
bound either to obliterate or to accentuate nationality, weakening
the weak or strengthening the strong ; and while Germany might
have become — and has become commercially ^ — a link between the
kindred peoples of Austria and Holland, she must have become a
barrier between the alien peoples of France and Russia, or have
disappeared from the political map. A military organisation was,
therefore, necessarily imposed on her, at the same time that her
great length from west to east forced her to be involved in both
Western and Eastern political problems.
But economic union was as much a matter of imperial strategy Economic
as the political union ; and it was greatly encouraged by the central Unity,
site and the access to the Atlantic. The central site gives unique
facilities for trade with the whole of continental Europe without
" break of bulk " ; and it is significant that, though there is a
difference of gauge between the German and the Russian railways,
the gauge does not actually change till Warsaw, thus throwing the
inconvenience of the change entirely on Russia. The access to the
Atlantic was of little value in early times, and therefore little was lost
by the fact that it was neglected — though the reason for the neglect
is an obvious comment on the character of the southern frontier.
For from the tenth to the sixteenth century Germany, as the
heir of the Roman Empire, was drawn to Italy so strongly that she
never became the heir of the Hanseatic League. And the very
lateness of her development on the Atlantic is one cause of the
rapid progress which her mercantile marine has made recently, and
which — for the same reason — can scarcely be expected to continue.
At the most liberal estimate, Germany has only about 1200 Sea-
miles of sea-coast, of which more than 900 are on the Baltic ; but Coast,
the relative unimportance of the Baltic is suggested by the fact that,
while perhaps ;^2o,ooo,ooo have been spent on the improvement
of the Elbe estuary, and ;^7, 000,000 on that of the Weser, only
;:^2, 000,000 have been spent on that of the Oder, a river twice as
long as the Weser. The obvious defects of the Baltic are its
shallowness, its liability to ice in winter, and its relation to the
German rivers, which are deprived — by their curious eastward trend
' Cf. the way in which modem Germany "anticipates" Austrian eggs on their
intended way to the British Isles.
284
The Continent of Europe
CH.
Land
Frontier.
French
Frontier.
in their lower courses — of their natural hinterland in modern times ;
so that, since the Baltic ceased to be one of the great inland seas
of the " world," trade has tended to concentrate westwards, where
the sea is never frozen, and where there is easiest access to the
greatest markets. The relation of this sea frontier to the land
frontier, and the relation of both to the central position, are made more
obvious by a more detailed analysis of the precise frontier features.
The land frontier (cf. pp. 194, 251) has the great advantage of
including no less than four areas that are occupied by Buffer States
whose neutrality is beyond suspicion, for their future existence
depends on it ; and, though the Swiss frontier is partly marked by
a river, the particular conditions neutralise the typical defects of a
river frontier — the riverine lands being marshy eastward and
including the Schaffhausen gorge westward. It is true that the
Alpine valleys lie rather north -and -south, as evidenced by the
The rivers of the North German Plain.
different political units northwards ; but in front of the wild wooded
limestone of the Alps proper there is an expanse of peat-bogs and
morainic lakes, such as made the site of Munich one of great
strategic importance in early days. The frontier towards Austria is
equally safe — river gorge and mountain crest; and, again, any
balance of power is in favour of Germany, the slope on the Austrian
side being much the steeper, especially in the Erz Gebirge, while
the Riesen Gebirge have an extreme height (in Schneekoppe) of
well over 5000 feet. The admirable Silesian railways, too, threaten
Vienna via the Moravian Gate (1000 ft.) in a way in which no
Austrian railway — still less several — can threaten Berlin. Only in
Lorraine, where the old Roman dominion was so firmly established
that the native speech has been Romance ever since, and on the
Slav frontier in the east, is there any real difficulty ; and in both
cases the trouble is due to extension of frontier from within.
With regard to Lorraine, it has been urged by German authorities
that the distance to Paris from Metz (200 miles) is more than 60
miles less than that from Aix-la-Chapelle, and that the route via
XX Germany 285
Verdun is as easy as that via the Sambre-Meuse valley ; and this
is true of the physical character^ of the route, however false the
suggestion as to its strategic character. Further, behind the wide
wooded Vosges a dozen railway bridges and a score of pontoon
bridges cross the Rhine, all linked to the twin objectives of Metz
and Diedenhofen. Similar considerations are urged about the
" Swiss " route into France via Porrentruy and the Upper Doubs
compared with the legitimate route via the Burgundy Gate (1350
feet) and the Middle Doubs ; and, again, as far as the physical
character is concerned, the legitimate route is the easier. So, in the
north, there is ample justification for the extension of ordinary
railways to the frontier ; for, since the peat was stripped off large
areas of the Aremberg and Boutanger moors, and the subsoil began
to be cultivated, there has been a large increase of population. And,
though the drainage canals provide quite good transport, the growth
of the Dutch textile industry has raised a growing market for
agricultural produce across the frontier. Still the whole argument
and the insistence on it, like the character of the railways, are
significant ; for, logically, it has only one meaning — that the
possession of Lorraine obviates to some extent the " moral necessity "
for violating the neutrality of the Buffer States in order to lengthen
the front available for the concentration of a huge force.
Any charitable doubts must be dispelled by the character of the Belgian
railways. South of Malmedy,^ though the normal traffic does not Frontier,
average half-a-dozen small trains in the twenty-four hours, there is a
heavily metalled and double track running parallel to, and within
a mile of, the Belgian frontier. Along this track there is a station
every three miles ; and at these stations there is sufficient " loop "
accommodation to allow from half-a-dozen to a dozen long troop
trains to be side-tracked, and — without blocking the through-traffic
on the main line — from 5000 to 10,000 men to be detrained, with
all their immediate impedimenta. In each case, too, the sidings
are provided with high platforms and all other necessary apparatus
for detraining horses, guns, and wagons. These stations are close
to the admirable roads which the Belgians have run through the
Ardennes to encourage tourist traffic.
The eastern frontier winds through a low plain which once made Russian
a reasonable unit for Poland, but which offered no marked relief Frontier,
features to justify its partition ; and all the sharers of the spoil suffer
in consequence, if not comparably with their guilt. The eastward
extension of Prussia over the Baltic lowland, though it exposes to
special danger, is a legitimate inheritance from the Duchy of Prussia ;
and the movement of the frontier since Napoleon's time so as to
^ The parallel route from Strassburg via Toul is c. 80 miles longer than the
Verdun route from Metz.
^ Quite recently linked up to the Belgian line at Stavelot.
286 The Continent of Europe ch.
include Thorn southward and Posen eastward has made it fairly
easy to secure connection between East Prussia and Silesia. Still
East Prussia is undeniably " hugged by the Russian bear " economi-
cally, if not politically ; for it is cut off from its natural hinterland by
hostile tariffs, and its economic progress has been hampered by its
strategic dangers. These are obvious, but over-rated. The total
length of frontier from north of Memel to east of Konigshutte is
about 750 miles, the width of the Prussian tongue from east of
Thorn to the Baltic is about 75 miles, and the distance from the
Russian frontier in the VVarte valley to Berlin is little more than
175 miles. But the fact that the frontier was deliberately run
directly across all the chief rivers and through all the areas of
scantiest population is based on geographical conditions which
minimise the dangers. For the narrow trans-continental route
between Odessa and Pillau (800 miles) approaches the "Haff"
coast only through an intricate maze of woods and waters, e.g. in
Masuria, the most critical points in which are fortified, e.g. at Lotzen ;
and this forested lakeland, with its poor soil and a climate which
kills out the beech, has reared a most sturdy population. The same
is more or less true of Posen, though the soil is more fertile, this
being compensated by the fact that the lakes run systematically
north-and-south, and thus offer maximum obstacle to invasion from
the east, while the roads on the Russian side are appallingly bad.
Danger- These physical conditions limit the lines of approach more
Zones. Qr less to the main river-valleys, and even here the danger-
zone is minimised. For instance, the " narrows " at Tilsit are
almost the only point where the broad, marshy, often-flooded valley
of the Memel can be crossed with any ease ; and, on the other
hand, longitudinal reaches of the great river are systematically
fortified, as that of the Lower Vistula at Thorn and Graudenz and
Elbing. So the Pregel is defended by the fortresses of Pillau and
Konigsberg, the latter being one of the famous Quadrilateral (the
others being Danzig, Posen, and Thorn) which control the whole of
and the approaches to the Lower Vistula, with its floodable delta.
Over and above all this, two — in some places three — separate, but
parallel, lines of railway, capable of carrying the heaviest trains at a
high speed, run all along the frontier ; and this is justified by the
assertion that in times of danger offensive measures may be the best
form of defence. Logically, however, this assumes that Russia is
more or less equally well equipped for delivering troops in large
masses on the German frontier — an assumption which cannot be
justified in face of her notorious lack of proper railway facilities even
for ordinary purposes. It certainly adds a piquancy to the position
to note that the political pressure which caused the change of
railway gauge, which theoretically takes place on the frontier, to be
moved eastward as far as Warsaw, gives Germany the strategic and
XX Germany 287
economic advantage of being able to run right across the frontier *
from all her internal bases without " break of bulk " or detraining ;
and, on the contrary, Russia, besides having to cover very great
distances which would greatly delay mobilisation, would have to
detrain and " break bulk.'"'
The northern frontier involves other considerations, for — though Baltic
Germany now stands second in the world with her mercantile marine Frontier
— her maritime position is naturally worse than that of any other
Power in Western Europe, for her Baltic coast is of quite secondary
importance, while her North Sea coast is very small. The Baltic
coast may be divided into two parts, roughly described as " La-
goon " coast in the east and " Bay " coast in the west ; and in the
former direction German ports are less favoured climatically than
even Russian ports, e.g. Libau and Windau. For while these are
faced to windward by so many miles of sea that they often remain
practically ice-free the whole winter, the German ports are so much
landlocked that they are always — naturally — blocked by ice for some
weeks. Even on an open gulf like that of Danzig, too, the ports
— unlike the Russian — suffer from excess of river-water, the harbour-
water at Danzig being fully 50 p.c. below normal saltness, and conse-
quently frozen for nearly three months every year ; and, of course,
inside the Haffs, or lagoons, matters are still worse, the approach to
Memel from the Baltic being blocked for less than 14 days in
the year, while the approach from the Haff is blocked for more than
140. On the "Bay" coast conditions are much more favourable,
Liibeck being closed for only one month ; and still farther west
they are still better. For here morainic deposits cut off the natural
outlet of the older and larger rivers, e.g. the Eider, leaving the old
river-valleys without rivers of any size in them ; and as the sub-
merged parts of these old valleys are — climatically — very near the
Atlantic, and have no rivers depositing silt in them, they make the
best harbours along the whole coast, except for the purely fishing
operations which flourish on the more intricate coast farther east-
ward. The most southerly of them, Kiel, happens also to have a very
narrow entrance at Friedrichsort ; and the strategic value of this
caused it to be chosen as the terminus of the isthmian canal
These western ports have a further advantage of being in Haffs.
the lee of the land as far as wind-action is concerned, and this
is the determining influence in the formation of the Haffs. For the
surface movements of the Baltic along this coast are either a west-
ward overflow into the North Sea (cf. p. 15) or an eastward drift
before the Anti-Trade winds ; and as the latter is usually the stronger,
debris of various kinds gets drifted eastward along the coast. Thus
Nehrungs, or sand-bars, are built up along the general line of the
^ The German rolling-stock is provided with adjustable wheels capable of actually
working on the Russian 5-feet gauge.
288
The Continent of Europe
CH.
Eonigs-
berg V.
Danzig.
Stettin.
coast, cutting off particular articulations and converting them into
Haffs, or lagoons ; and a large river soon converts one of these into
what is practically a fresh -water lake. The river silt speedily
reduces the size of this lake ; and, though the reclaimed land may
be exceedingly fertile, as on the deltaic dam with which the Vistula
has filled the western end of. the Frische Haff (" Fresh-Water
Lagoon "), the value of the site as a port is ruined.
Where there is no important stream emptying through the coast,
the effect is much less marked, but identically the same in char-
acter ; for instance, the 200 miles of the Pomeranian coast have been
converted into a monotonous series of bars backed by tiny lagoons.
But the presence of an important river, especially where the coast bends
northward and so is more exposed to the west wind, at once makes
the feature pronounced (cf. p. 261), the Frische and the Kurische
being the most pronounced. In neither case is the bar less than
60 miles long ; in neither is the lagoon practically open except at its
extreme north-east, i.e. leeward, corner — where the drainage of the
Pregel and the Niemen maintains a channel at Pillau and Memel ;
in neither case has the natural harbour survived — e.g. Elbing having
had to be connected with Konigsberg by a canal, and Konigsberg
itself having been provided with a ship-canal to Pillau.
The commercial importance of Konigsberg, once based on
amber, is now connected mainly with its strategic site between the
two Haffs ; but that of Danzig is more directly commercial, based on
the Vistula. The whole valley of the river in Germany is rich, and
its dyked deltaic lands are exceedingly so, very fine wheat being
raised north of Marienburg on the high right bank of the Nogat dis-
tributary. Moreover, only two distributaries — and both minor ones
— now enter the Frische Haff at all, the main body of water entering
the sea near Danzig in the lee of the Hela peninsula. Consequently,
by means of a ship-canai to its outport of Neufahrwasser, Danzig has
maintained its position not only as handling large quantities of
agricultural products, but even as a shipbuilding centre. The
strategic importance of the city rests on the complete facilities for
flooding the dyked lands and on its value as a base for supplies as
long as Germany commanded the Baltic, while it is supported on
the home side by several little ports, e.g. at Stolp, Riigenwalde, and
Kolberg, all fully equipped for the accommodation of transports
and troops.
Stettin is in a still better position for trade, because its position
farther inland is at once safer strategically and nearer to the great
inland centres, especially Berlin. It is, indeed, the most southerly
of all the Baltic ports ; and, as it is also at the mouth of the greatest
Prussian river, it has become the chief Prussian port, specially
interested in shipbuilding (cf. the Vulcan yards) and agricultural
products (sugar and grain). It handles over 3,000,000 tons of
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XX
Germany
289
merchandise by river and canal alone, and has a fairway of fully 23
feet to Swinemiinde, which is kept open by ice-breakers even in the
severest winter. In a very mild winter the breakers may only be
needed for perhaps a fortnight (in February).
The relation of these three important towns to the river-basins, Bays,
from which they have more or less drained population, suggests
another contrast between the eastern and western parts of this coast ;
for in the west there has been no similar concentration except at a
very few points. On the contrary, between the Lower Oder and
the Schleswig peninsula no river of any size enters the Baltic — one
ENOLISH MILES
Stanfbrdi Oeog.' £stait, Uindont
Kiel or Kaiser Wilhelm CanaL
reason perhaps for the fish having deserted this part of the sea — so
that no particular point had any special control over a large special
hinterland. A number of towns, however, sprang up here, some on
the " dead valleys " referred to above and others on the " Boddens "
or intricate bays formed farther eastward, i.e. less under the lee of
the peninsula, by the debris caught between the westward overflow
and the eastward drift and deposited round the outlines of existing
land, as in Riigen. The numerous towns were originally all more
or less rivals and yet joint-members of the Hanseatic League ; and
Stralsund and Rostock were as much favoured in early times by
their nearness to Falster (for Copenhagen) and the Baltic proper, as
Kiel and Liibeck are now by their nearness to the North Sea and
the Lower Elbe.
290 The Continent of Europe ch.
Lubeck. It was the little river Trave (70 miles) that made Liibeck the
head of the League, largely by encouraging the cutting of the
Stecknitz Canal — the oldest in Germany {c. a.d. 1400) — to the Elbe
and by giving it a definite hinterland ; but even the deepening of
the Trave, the modern Elbe -and -Trave Canal, and the excellent
railway facilities, have all failed to compensate for the advantage
given to Kiel by the Trans -Isthmian Ship-canal. Liibeck does
retain, however, so much of its old influence in the Baltic that it
carries on a larger Baltic trade than any other German port.
North Sea The North Sea coast is much more important, the Elbe and
Frontier. Weser ports alone owning about 85 p.c. of all German shipping;
and the interaction of strategic and economic considerations makes
a virtue even of its shortness, which offers minimum exposure along
with maximum facility — since the construction of the Kiel Canal —
for concentration on interior lines that are quite out of reach from
the sea. For the approach to the coast is so shallow that navigation
is far from safe even for moderate-sized vessels in time of peace,
and the prodigious fortifications of Borkum, Heligoland, and Sylt
(now being connected with the mainland by a railway embankment)
would greatly increase the difficulty in time of war. Apart, too,
from possible developments in air-navigation, it would be exceedingly
difficult to cut the canal by a raid from Biisum or any similar
railway terminus on the " North Frisian " coast or from the mouth
of the Eider. For the shore-waters and the coastal-plain are two parts
of a single homogeneous unit, the ubiquitous shoals seaward being
the counterpart of ubiquitous marshes landward. The latter, like
the moors behind them, have no doubt been largely reclaimed,
especially in Oldenburg and in the Ditmarsh and East Frisian
areas ; and the estuaries of the great rivers have been greatly
improved. But the dyked polders can easily be flooded, and
dangerous shoals extend — even on the best estuary — 20 miles
seaward of Cuxhaven. In time of war no enemy would have the
slightest probability of reaching the coast, even if it were free from
the fog under which it is normally hidden.
Hambnrg. The relative advantages of the chief centres illustrate the relation
of strategic to commercial considerations. Hamburg owes its
importance to the fact that 60 miles up the Elbe the dyked marshes
come up against a strip of relatively high " geest " ; and in crossing
this the river not only concentrates its power on a narrow front
which makes it at this point narrower than for many miles farther
up-stream, but also cuts characteristically into its right bank, thus
deepening its bed on the " Baltic " bank. Here, too, it is joined
by the Alster, amid a group of islands, which thus became the
natural objective of a land route from Liibeck (cf the Elbe-and-
Trave Canal) and of a river route which taps, via the Imperial
capital of Berlin, the farthest frontier towns on the Oder and the
XX Germany 291
Vistula. The damming back of the Alster to form a moat, and
the development of the British Isles and of Atlantic commerce,
converted this junction into an industrial and commercial centre ;
and its strategic importance only waited on the acquisition of
Heligoland by Germany.
Bremen was an older port, nearer the Atlantic and farther from Bremen,
the competition of Liibeck, but on a much smaller river ; and the
position 50 miles up the smaller river could not compete with that
only 10 miles farther up the larger river. Even the development of
an outport at Bremerhaven, 5 miles nearer than Cuxhaven to the sea,
and the deepening of the river up to Bremen itself, have failed to
enable the city to keep pace with Hamburg. Its one advantage —
reaped specially in the early days of emigration — is that it is nearer
to the Atlantic, and so it has come to control the trade in such
typical Trans-Atlantic products as cotton and tobacco. The cotton
trade is of special interest, because the hinterland of the port in
this connection stretches from Scandinavia to Italy and from
Lorraine to Russia — in spite of the fact that Hamburg and the
Elbe intervene eastwards.
The explanation lies in what are apparently the very dis- Its
advantages of the port. With a depth of 50 feet seaward on the Hinter-
" improved " river, its immediate hinterland is curiously poor and *"
useless, and its landward navigation is not half that of the Elbe.
But the imports of cotton are crowded into less than six months,
thousands of bales being sometimes discharged within a few days ;
and this means a demand for very large wharfage and store-rooms
for sorting. Bremen can provide these just because of the poorness
of its immediate hinterland and of its river navigation ; and, there-
fore, it has come to rival even Hamburg as a sea-port, though as a
river-port it is insignificant, falling far behind such ports as Duisburg
and Mannheim. Indeed, Hamburg's river trade alone exceeds the
total outward trade of Bremen by sea, river, and rail. It is equally
significant that, while the North Sea coast generally is superior in
its wharfage, the Baltic coast — with its deeper shore waters — is
superior in shipbuilding, no North Sea port except Hamburg
rivalling in this respect Kiel, "Stettin," Danzig, or even Elbing
(cf. the Schielau " yard ").
If the Weser, in cutting to the right, had not deserted the Jade Wilhelms-
Bay, the great Weser port would have been at Wilhelmshaven ; but haven r.
the bay is now a sort of backwater into which the Weser current, ®^'
and the fierce tides that are typical of the coast, drift so much
silt that approach by sea is exceedingly difficult, even on the rare
occasions when there is neither fog nor rough water. However
useful as a naval station, therefore — and it is one of the three
finest naval bases in the world — the place is useless for commerce ;
and, as the commercial development of Westphalia has been com-
292
The Continent of Europe
CH.
raensurate with the growth of the national resolve to handle their
own commerce, and has far outstripped the Dutch willingness to
deepen the Rhine in Holland, there has been a strong demand for
a seaport in German territory at a minimum distance from the
Ruhr valley. The obvious solution of the difficulty was suggested
by the fact that the Ems, after flowing within 50 miles of Dortmund,
empties into the DoUart at the extreme west of the German coastal
plain ; and, as nearness to the Dutch frontier is no longer really
a political qt strategic obstacle, the Dortmund-Ems canaP has
found an adinirable sea-terminus at Emden [see p. 273].
It may be doubted whether, in spite of its commercial success,
this route is the best possible between the Rhine and the Dollart,
for the relief just along the Dutch frontier is exceedingly favourable
to a deep canal without locks from Wesel to the Lower Ems ; but
there is a strategic problem involved, which also has a bearing
on the development of Emden. For the reasonable intention to
guarantee co-operation between army and navy has led to the
conversion of Emden — in lee of the great naval base of Borkum —
into a great naval station 7Vtf^ large military barracks^ in direct
rail and canal communication with the Krupp works at Essen, and
with enormous wharfage for the accommodation of transports.
Natural The 200,000 odd square miles of Germany include two very
OMsions. distinct areas, a northern lowland and a southern highland, the real
dividing line being the
mineral-bearing scarp of
the old " A'^ariscan frag-
ments" between the
Ardennes and the Mor-
avian Gate. The northern
lowland has a uniformity
of relief and structure
which involved a vast ex-
panse of forested marsh
in early days, but which
— once the forest was
cleared and the marsh
drained — gave Prussia
every chance of establish-
ing a single political unit
MT^&'lMr-'Mv
Natural divisions of Germany.
The southern highland, which is slightly the smaller of the two
(3 : 4), is also so varied in relief and structure that its political
destiny was to be partitioned amongst several political units, as its
economic destiny was a minute subdivision of labour dependent on
water-power; and there is as much difference between the vivacious
' The traffic on the canal (coal=7S P-c. down, and ores = 5o p.c. up) increased
nearly 27 p.c. in 1910 over 1909.
XX Germany 293
vine-dresser of the Rhineland and the heavy practical Bavarian
shepherd or the untidy independent Saxon miner, as between any
one of these and the bumptious orderly Prussian official.
Politically, there is further complication, because these highland National
units include three " Napoleonic " monarchies, which in origin and Unity,
development were essentially anti-Prussian ; and the lowland plain
is somewhat Dutch in its political character towards the west and
markedly Slav towards the east, the " Polish Question " being an
outward and visible sign of the inherent antagonism between Slavish
Teutons and Teutonised Slavs. This anti-Slav attitude is by no
means confined to the Prussians, but is equally strong amongst the
Saxons. Economically, there is also some complication, not only
in the somewhat antagonistic interests of the agriculturists of the
plain and the industrialists of the mineral-bearing scarp, but also
because of the variety of structure and physique in the highland.
The linking rift valley of the Rhine (200 miles x 20) is a bit dropped
out of the once continuous Vosges- Black Forest uplift, and so
the outer slopes of the two ranges, like the opposite sides of the
rift itself, are identical in structure and physique ; but, as the sides
of the rift obviously face steeply towards the river, and as its
structural floor — once the crest of the whole uplift — is now
covered with a deep alluvial carpet, its climate and vegetation mark
it off distinctly from the rest of the highland, whether Variscan
fragments or Jurassic scarp-lands or Alpine foreland.
Both lowland and highland in early times felt the pressure of Frontier
Slavs from the east, the one via the steppe, and the other via the Marks.
Danube valley ; and in both directions Frontier Marks arose to
meet the danger. The Eastern Mark, or Austria, arose with its
back against forested Alp, while the Northern Mark of Branden-
burg arose in forested marsh, boldly pivoting on the Brenni-bor
(" Wooded Hill ") which was the sacred capital of the Wends.
Austria, being the better placed both strategically and economically,
grew the faster; and, as the danger from Hungary increased, a
strong Duke was always sent to Vienna, and the need for being always
ready to meet sudden danger enforced a military tyranny and so
only increased his strength. Brandenburg by itself, as an "Arch-
Grand-Sand-Box," had no wealth or other attractions ; but it got
its chance when Frederick of HohenzoUern used the wealth
accumulated as Bar- Graf of the Rhine- Danube metropolis of
Niirnberg, to purchase the Elbe-Oder link-lands along the Spree.
This was a commanding position for tapping the two relatively
fertile belts which edge the steppe on the north and the south, and
which converge where the steppe narrows westward because of
nearness to the Atlantic. And, as a military unit, its very sterility
was in its favour.
The fertile northern belt runs through Prussia, Pomerania, and
294 The Continent of Europe CH.
Fertility Mecklenburg, up to Liibeck and Schleswig, and is formed by the
of Plain, sunny southward slopes of the Baltic ridge ; but, except along the
great rivers, the soil is not fertile enough to discourage constant
care and toil. The fertile southern belt runs through Galicia,
Silesia, and Saxony, up to Hamburg and Holstein ; and the great
rivers join the two fertile belts across the unfertile one, and are
themselves practically linked by the Havel-Spree. Obviously, as
pasture gave place to tillage on the narrowing steppe, patriarchal
control was bound to weaken, and individualism was bound to be
encouraged ; but the nomads would settle in very small units, and
it is significant that still nearly 60 p.c. of the total holdings are less
than 5 acres, while nearly 90 p.c. are less than 50 acres. It is
mainly owing to this that fully 90 p.c. of the area has been rendered
productive by the spade.
Gravita- While movement inside each belt, therefore, was naturally from
*^°°^°'^^' east to west, all the belts had a common gravitation northwards to
the coast ; and so it was easy for little sea-fishing centres at the
mouths of the great waterways to drain potential artisans from their
agricultural hinterland, and by their help build up little local
industries. With the wealth thus gained, it was again easy to buy
royal protection and other liberties ; and, though at first no single
centre was equal to undertaking a large contract by itself, the whole
Trade Area of the Baltic had even in those days common interests.
From occasional and informal co-operation with immediate neighbours
for a special purpose, to a formal league for all purposes between all
the coastal foci and their bases inland, was a short and natural step.
The only marked exception was in the maze of moor and marsh
between Elbe and Ems. There an isolated and self-contained people
perpetuated their fiord instincts as typical fishermen : the rivers
teemed with fish ; the facilities for water-trafific were so excellent in
the milder " Atlantic " climate that they long retarded the building
of roads and other " urban " developments ; and these fishermen
even avoided one another except when they brought their accumulated
goods to some shrine which they were bound to attend at the great
religious festivals — thus " catching two fish on one hook." Cf. p. 320.
Glaciation The detailed topography of the lowland plain is intimately related
^r f n ^ '° ^^® action of ice in the Great Ice Age. Not only are very large
* areas, especially in the north-east, covered with morainic lakes, but
the successive frontages of the ice, in advance or retreat, left a
series of concentric arcs of morainic hills more or less parallel with
the Baltic coast. The most northerly of these, which reaches a
height of nearly iioo feet in the Turmberg above Danzig, is known
as the Baltic Ridge, and shut in the first natural hinterland of the
Hanseatic League. It runs from Flensburg to Lotzen, with deep
d'jtours landward round the Lower Oder and the Lower Vistula, the
detour in the latter case providing a background of morainic heights
XX Germany 295
for the Prussian frontier east of Thorn, while there is a subordinate
ridge along the Pomeranian coast. Landward of this Baltic Ridge
is the valley of an old " glacial " river — represented now, e.g. by the
Netze-Warthe and by Lake Schwerin — which offers an admirable
line of least resistance for artificial waterways, e.g. the Bromberg
and Eberswalde or Finow canals, and which was so swampy that
for ages it made a natural boundary, e.g. between the original political
units of Pomerania and Posen or Mecklenburg and Brandenburg.
The reclaiming of the swamp, which has yielded at least 500 square
miles of good land along the Oder alone, and regulation of the
waterways, have removed all the old obstacles to communication
and political union.
The second ridge forms the northern boundary of another old Glaciation
"glacial" river — represented by the Upper Warthe and the Spree — ^^^,
which has played a similar part ; but its political importance, e.g. as ^ ''
a Brandenburg frontier, was infinitely less than its commercial
importance, as linking Liibeck via Berlin and Frankfurt to Posen —
the political importance of this to-day being as great as its commercial
importance. A third ridge forms the northern boundary of a similar
" glacial " river, represented now, e.g. by the Bartsch and the Lower
Elbe, and connecting Glogau via Potsdam with Hamburg ; and this,
like the Baltic Ridge, has a short " parallel " complement — over-
looking the " Black Elster " trough between Breslau and Magdeburg.
This southern valley was the least favourable to movement east-and-
west, because it was the most marshy ; but its ridge — which ends
up against the Liineburg Heath — is relatively low and discontinuous,
so that it favoured movement north-and-south. And the most
important centres were bound to be those commanding routes round
or through the swamps, e.g. Glogau and Brandenburg, especially
when these stood where the present northward waterways cross the
old westward waterways, e-g. Frankfurt and Posen. Both these are
in the central valley, but their importance is now dwarfed by the
overwhelming importance of Berlin as occupying the centre of the
whole plain both latitudinally and longitudinally. So, westward all
the ridges and valleys merge in the dune-girt expanse of moor and
marsh beyond the Liineburg Heath, where Hamburg monopolises
attention.
The distribution of fertility over the triple formation of coast- Glaciation
land, ridge, and valley, is itself also related to the action of ice, as an^
seen in the fertile stretches of boulder clay or the infertile stretches ® * ^'
of lake or sand, the rich sugar-beet lands and the poor potato lands ;
but the preponderance of the infertile — heath and marsli in the
west, and sand and forest in the east — over the fertile caused the
political and economic unity of the plain to be retarded, waiting
for the rise of agricultural and engineering science. So we have
now in Prussia, as over the whole German Empire, a more or less
296
The Continent of Europe
CH.
Southern
Highland.
Political
Distribu-
tions.
Alpine
Foreland.
voluntary association of units whose internal rivalry is no bar to
unity against external powers. And it is significant that the pre-
dominance of Prussia should be associated with the stimulus of a
sterile land which could be made fruitful by toil and care and science.
The uniformity of the northern plain under the action of ice
finds a strong contrast in the varied relief of the southern highland,
which lies as persistently S.W.-N.E. up to the Harz as the plain lies
S.E.-N.W. down to the North Sea. This variety of relief, like the
economic value of the various areas, is due mainly to structure : the
Variscan "fragments" from the Eifel to the Ore Mountains are
rich in mineral wealth, the rift valley of the Rhine is equally rich
in agricultural wealth, and both are cut off by the real obstacle of
the Jurassic ridges from the Alpine foreground, where alone the
relief of Germany approaches a height of 10,000 feet (fn the
Zugspitze). South Germany, therefore, is not physically, and was
not politically, a natural unit ; but the natural pivot of HohenzoUern
does something to unify the Alpine foreland and the Jura terraces
with the Rhine valley, while the large proportion of the South
German frontier which faces a Neutral State has favoured commercial
union by the peaceful development of industries.
The great Lake of Constance, too, which ought to have been
a natural focus for commerce (cf. p. 85), has an obvious relation to
present political distributions, for Bavaria, Wiirtemberg, and Baden,
all front on its navigable waters. But Bavaria is naturally a Danube
area, cut off westward by the Swabian Jura near the head of
navigation at Ulm, and penetrating across the Franconian Jura only
in virtue of the historic continuation by land, via Niirnberg to
the Main, of the essential «<?rM-westward trend of the Danube from
below Ratisbon. Expansion was easier to than from the north-west ;
for, though the Danube runs along the south face of the Jura
limestone, as along the south face of the crystaUine Bohemian Forest,
the gradient on the south side is much the gentler, the altitude
20 miles from the water-parting between Ulm and Stuttgart being
800 feet lower on the northern than on the southern side. Further,
where the cave-pitted Jura were bent northwards by the resistance
of the older rock, the special strain caused such weakness at the
curve that volcanic action and rapid weathering developed the pass
(1300 feet) which divides the Swabian from the Franconian Jura,
and by which the Ludwig Canal follows the Regnitz and Altmiihl
rivers between Bamberg and Kelheim, dropping nearly 400 feet
below the Danube level before it reaches the Main.
The Alpine foreground is a high plain of largely morainic
character, its southern belt being an area of morainic hills and
lakes, which merges northward in a belt of gravel so porous that
it can support only deep-rooted plants (e.g. trees) ; and, where the
gravel gets thin, i.e. northwards again, the underground water comes
XX Germany 297
so near to the surface as to cause real swamp, as along the Amper
and the Isar north of Munich. A safe and healthy site was thus
found for Miinich between the forested background of the Alps
and the swampy foreground of the lakes {e.g. Ammer and AViirm),
commanding east-and-west routes both over its own gravel belt
and on the rich alluvial lands along the Danube, and north-and-
south routes converging on the Seefeld Pass and the Brenner.
Political distributions, however, were decided more by the old north-
and-south valleys than by the east-and-west ridges or rivers ; and,
as the Alpine rivers are mainly unnavigable torrents, — though useful
for floating timber, — they made convenient political frontiers in
early days, as the Lech did between Swabia and Bavaria. The
fortunes of Bavaria, too, were associated with the sequence of land-
forms in the Upper Danube valley, which — like the Alpine Foreland
— slopes from forested hills, past the marshy gravel flats of, e.g.
Ingolstadt, to the alluvial plain of Ratisbon. And the natural
continuation of the general trend from the south-west on this reach
had access through the Bohemian Forest at the Pass of Fiirth
(c. 1500 feet) to Pilsen and Prague.
The water-parting of the oolitic ridges would in any case "throw Oolitic
off"" human activities, like river-water, in opposite directions — to Ridges-
Rhine and Danube ; but their influence as an obstacle is increased
by the somewhat incoherent character of the Umestone rims and
ridges that shut in isolated clay plains, and by a harsh climate
which has given the name of Rauhe Alb to the central part of the
Swabian Jura. This was specially effective in isolating the basin of
the Neckar, so that Wiirtemberg forms naturally a separate political
unit on the east of the Black Forest, as Baden does on the west.
Originally, too, the Franconian Jura formed the natural frontier of
the Franks, the heart of Francia being the fertile lowlands that
focus from east and south on Mainz ; and, though the Rhine valley
led Baden south-eastward through the gap between the Swiss and
the Swabian Jura, the essential continuity of physique made the
Swabian Jura the natural northward boundary of the Suevi, as the
thinly-peopled highland of the Odenwald is the natural northward
boundary of Baden to-day.
The northern end of the Franconian Jura abuts, like the Erz Fichtel
Mountains and the Bohemian and Thuringian Forests, on the focus.
Fichtel (" Fir Tree ") pivot, which forms an ethnic and hydrographic,
as well as an orographic, focus ; and the basins of its radiating
rivers — Saale and Naab, Eger and Main — have had intimate relation
to the formation of political units, e.g. Bohemia and Thuringia.
The whole region between the Thuringian Forest and the Harz is
a succession of trough and ridge, through which the Saale-Weser
valley gives easy communication more or less east-and-west, and
from which there is easy communication northward round tlie
298
The Continent of Europe
CH.
Thurin-
gian
Boutes.
German
Race
Home.
Harz, e.g. by the Leine or the Saale valley ; but southward the
Thuringian Forest stretches a barrier much longer than the Harz
{c. 50 miles, E.— W.) and rising to a height of over 3000 feet. Here,
too, obviously the easiest gradient was found round the ends of the
range, via Eisenach and Coburg,^ and this increased the importance
of the great east-and-west road via Eisenach, Gotha, Erfurt, and
Weimar (cf. Jena). But various tributaries of the Saale, e.g. the
Gera and the Ilm, give direct approach to the range from Halle
and Leipzig via Naumberg ; and their valleys encouraged the
multiplication of routes and so of petty States.
The most important of these valleys, at all events in early days,
was that of the Gera, the " Garden of Erfurt," because it has the
advantage of a mild climate, with Fohn winds (cf. Quedlinburg,
N.E. of the Harz) and a very fertile red-marl soil. Eisenach, with
the harsher climate and the infertile soil of the Werra plateau, still
commanded the north-and-south route of the Werra valley, as well
as the east-and-west route round the north end of the range.
Better known than either are Weimar and Gotha, with their famous
literary and geographical associations. There was a somewhat
similar result on the northern side of this belt Here, in the southern
lee of the Harz, another tributary of the Saale, the Helme, not only
gives an easy route along the foot of the Harz between Halle and
Gottingen, but also enjoys a peculiarly mild climate, so that its
valley is known as the Goldene Aue (" Golden Meadow "). And
the importance of this fertile area was greatly increased by the
mineral wealth of the wooded Harz, especially the silver of the
Upper Harz — now of no importance compared with the iron of the
Lower Harz. The political importance of the towns here, however,
is much less than on the Thuringian slopes, because there are no
cross-routes, and the Helme valley itself is only one small piece
of the great Unstrat- Leine route that deploys in front of Hanover.
Between the Thuringian Forest and the Rothaar Mountains,
the Harz and the Vogelsberg, the Teutoburger Forest and the
Rhon, lies the core of Germany and the racial home of the Germans.
For these wooded Hessian highlands were never held by Roman
or Frenchman or Slav, and have always held the balance, and
controlled the natural routes, between North and South Germany,
between the Thuringian States and the Rhenish Palatinate. For
the volcanic mass of the Vogels separates the Fulda from the
Wetter and the Lahn, as the volcanic ridge of the Rhon separates
it from the Werra ; and the seclusion and safety provided in olden
days by the mountain-girt and forested valleys of the Fulda and
the Werra, were compatible with facilities for movement between the
Vogels and the Westerwald or the Spessart which only needed
railways to be of maximum utility. Thus Frankfurt sends main
^ Now less important, in this respect, than Lichtenfels.
XX Germany 299
lines of rail round the Vogels by both the Wetter and the North
Kinzig valleys, and the great strategic route via the Lahn and
Moselle between Marburg and Metz is very nearly a straight line.
Northward, again, Eder and Fulda and Werra converge on Kassel ;
and Kassel in turn has wonderful facilities for movement eastward
and northward, by the Unstrut, the Leine, and the Weser. The
final exit from the highland is via the Westphalian Gate and
Mindcn or along the Teutoburger to Osnabriick. Both Osnabriick
and Hanover, therefore, have become great railway junctions where
longitudinal and latitudinal lines cross ; and, as Hanover has the
advantage of a local coal-field and less distance from the North Sea,
it has now far outstripped its old rival Brunswick, which is practically
the same distance as Hanover from the Baltic. So, Osnabriick
occupies somewhat the same relation to movement westward from
the Leine valley, as Goslar used to occupy to movement eastward.
The Rhineland consists essentially of two oblong blocks of old Rhine-
rock, both lying generally S.W.-N.E. — both graved deeply by the l^jid.
Rhine, the northern block across the " grain " and the southern
one along it — and both giving a natural route S.W.-N.E., by
the Moselle- Lahn and the Rhine-Kinzig valleys. The Rhine
and the Lahn-Moselle gully divide the northern block into four
sections, of which the north-eastern is much the most important.
Along the whole of the northern scarp of the block the old rock,
as in the Ardennes — of which the Eifel is actually a continuation,
— is rich in metal, and it overlooks a " bay " of fertile lowland
underlaid and flanked by coal. The southern scarp, though
characteristically rich in slate in the Hunsriick, where it overlooks
the Saarbriicken coal-field, is generally much less rich than the
northern both in metal and in fuel ; but it has some compensation
in the greater area of volcanic formation, the bleak Eifel being
much less important than the fertile Taunus, as the hot-springs of
the latter, e.g. at Wiesbaden, Ems, and Homburg, are more
numerous than those in the north, e.g. at Aix.
North of the Lahn-Moselle gully conditions are exceedingly The Ruhr
favourable to human activity, for the land slopes down — from the I^istrict.
breezy, healthy highlands of Eifel and Westerwald — both to the great
waterway and to the North Sea through an ore-bearing scarp and
a fertile lowland flanked by coal, and for ores and fuel and crops
alike there is easy movement to all points of the compass. As the
highland rises eastward, the rainfall is as heavy there as in the
west ; and the great cities that have risen along the lines of
movement draw excellent stone and timber from the wooded
heights that also give them health. The basins of the Ruhr and the
Sieg are specially important, not only because they are exceedingly
rich in minerals, but also because they are fed from the highest
and most northerly, i.e. most exposed, part of the highland, and
300 The Continent of Europe ch.
yet give very easy access round it, e.g. by the Sieg to the Lahn and
the Eder, and by the Ruhr to the Eder and the Diemel In the looo
square miles that form the immediate hinterland of the " 50 " miles
during which the Ruhr is cutting through coal, there is a population
of over 3,000,000, including a dozen cities that reach or exceed
100,000 :
Dusseldorf, 360,000.
Duisburg-Ruhrort, 230,000.
{Elberfeld, 190,000.
Barmen, 170,000.
Crefeld, 130,000.
Recklinghausen, 110,000.
Essen, 300,000.
Dortmund, 215,000.
Gelsenkirchen, 180,000.
Bochum, 140,000.
Mulheim, 115,000.
Hagen, 100,000.
And just outside this ring are Cologne {520,000) and Aix (160,000).
Eift The southern block of the whole area dropped a central strip
J^?y to form a rift valley parallel to its axis, but was not broken across
transversely, so that the outer edges of the block present a different
appearance, and have had a different history, — sinking, not in an
abrupt scarp as in Westphalia, but in more or less gentle terraces
somewhat similar to those in which the Swabian Jura sink to the
Danube. But, while the old hard rock extends much farther in
the Black Forest than in the Vosges, and falls — in the lee of the
range — to the relative poverty of the Upper Neckar valley, the
windward western terraces fall to the fertile flats of the Moselle
and the rich iron-fields of Lorraine. Here was the irresistible
attraction in 1871 — of a warm, sunny wineland, with rich deposits
of iron along the west bank of the river and of salt along the east
bank (Chateau Salins), and even with the Saarbriicken coal crossing
the political frontier to Forbach. But the Romance tongue of
Lorraine, like its political inheritance, is firmly based in the Roman
occupation of the land behind Treves (Augusta Trevirorum), and
cannot be displaced in a generation.
Its Exits. The general direction of this southern block, as shown by the
rift valley which ends northward at Frankfurt, is from south-west to
north-east, i.e. as distinctly towards the Baltic as the direction of
the Bingen Gorge through the northern block is towards the
North Sea ; and this gave additional importance to the Burgundy
Gate (it 50 feet) below the frowning heights of the Jura {c. 5000
feet), as the direction of the Lower Rhine gave additional importance
to the Main connection with Ratisbon. The dip between the
Vosges and the Hardt is not much higher (1325 feet) than the
Burgundy Gate — though the Rhine and Marne Canal goes through
a tunnel — and so the valley of the Zabern gives an easy route
between Strassburg and Lorraine, while movement eastward finds a
fairly easy route up the valley of the South Kinzig to Ulm, and a still
easier one round the north end of the Black Forest at Karlsruhe.
The climate is more or less continental everywhere, but reflects
XX
Germany
301
accidentally the fundamental S.W.-N.E. trend of the old rock of Tempera-
the country, extremes increasing towards the nortli-east. Thus, *'^^®-
the average annual temperature is 53° F. in the south-west, 49° F.
in the centre, and 43° F. in the north-east ; and the range of
temperature shows the same general tendency, increasing more with
distance from the sea than with distance from the equator. The
actual range is due to excess of cold rather than of heat, for the
warmer latitude is counteracted by the higher altitude except in
the Rhine valley; and uncongenial springs — due to the amount
of snow and ice that have to be melted — greatly shorten the
summers in the Baltic provinces. The average range is 42° F. in
the north-east, and 30° F. in the north-west ; in the centre of the
north it is 35° F., and in the centre of the south 38° F. — distance
from the sea being in the latter case the predominant influence
in winter, while latitude is predominant in summer. The mean
January temperature varies from 22° F. near Insterburg up to 34° F.
near Cologne ; and Cologne has also the highest mean temperature
in July (68° F.), while the lowest is on the Schleswig peninsula.
The extreme January temperature is in the extreme north on the
Russian frontier, e.g. Konigsberg having 7° F., while the extreme
July temperature is on the Rhine lowland at the end of the Black
Forest, e.g. Heidelberg having 93° F. There are, therefore, two
exceptional areas — the north-west and
the rift valley. West of the Elbe the
mean summer temperature is not much
above 60° F., while the mean winter
temperature is above 30° F. — west of
the Weser even above 32° F. ; and in
the rift valley shelter and latitude and
altitude combine ^ to give the highest
average temperature for the year, in-
cluding both the highest summer
temperature and the highest winter
temperature. It was these conditions,
coupled with the unfailing water-
supply and the fertile soil, that made it the Palatinate (" Land of
Palaces "). Roughly, then, we may note four climatic areas — one of
warm summers and cool winters in the north-west, one of very warm
summers and very cold winters in the north-east, one of very warm
summers and cold winters in the south, and one of hot summers
and cool winters in the rift valley. The last, of course, intrudes
through the previous belt, for the Lorraine plateau practically
corresponds to Upper Bavaria (a winter extreme of 25° F.), as the
Vosges correspond to the Jura.
^ This is also true of the lowlands of Main, Moselle, and Neckar, with an aver-
age summer temperature above 66° F. and an average winter temperature above 32° F.
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Hamburo Aerun
Mean monthly temperature and rain-
fall curves for Hamburg and Berlin.
302
The Continent of Europe
CH.
Rainfall. The range of rainfall, as of temperature, is modified by the
fact that the lower latitudes have the higher altitudes ; it is also
modified by the fact that no uplift in the west is sufficiently high
or continuous to cut off the wet west winds entirely from the
eastern part of the plain. The rain is not limited to any season,
but most falls in summer (cf p. 56), only the extreme west
having any appreciable winter rains, and only the coast-lands having
any considerable rains in autumn — when the sea is still warm,
but the land has been chilled. The fall generally may be com-
pared with that in the south-eastern quadrant of England. On
the higher parts of the west, from the Harz southward and including
the Alpine foreland, it averages 34 inches; on the intermediate
levels in the west and the higher parts of the east (Erz and Sudetes),
as on the lower levels in the extreme north-west, it averages 31
inches ; on the exposed lower levels of the north-east it averages
24 inches, decreasing southward even on the slightly higher levels,
e.g. in Brandenburg and Lusatia, Saxony and Silesia ; and it
reaches a minimum of 16 inches on parts of the sheltered wine-
lands in the Middle Rhine " basin," with a maximum of over 80
on the Vosges heights which give the shelter. Here, too, the fact
that vintage-time is remarkable for the absence of rain and the
presence of warmth is of prime importance to the vine-growers, as
the high percentage of bright sunshine is to the beet-growers
between the Oder and the Elbe.
The relation of these climatic conditions to the general relief
is more favourable to communication by canal than by river ; for
while the relief is very favourable to the construction of canals link-
ing the great rivers together (cf. p. 295), the climate is scarcely
favourable either to continuous navigation or to uniform volume.
Rhine, Elbe, and Oder, all have a course of nearly 500 miles in
Germany ; but only the Rhine is free from serious interruption
by ice or by low water, and the regime of even the Rhine has
been affected adversely by the clearing of the old forest.
The Oder. The Oder is relatively the least useful of the large rivers,
mainly because of its exposure to frost and because of the nearness
of its channel to the " Giant " Mountains in its upper course. It
rises only some 2000 feet above the sea, and has a total length of
560 miles; but it has a rapid fall in its Austrian course, and
receives a number of mountain torrents, e.g. the Neisse, through
its left bank in Silesia, so that there are frequent floods. Its right
bank tributaries, on the other hand, e.g. the Warthe-Netze, have
relief conditions which would be very favourable to transport,
if they were not unfavourable to precipitation, so that the main
stream suffers normally from lack of depth in summer. The
floods carry with them quantities of silt, which have contributed
to the fertility of the riverine lowlands, e.g. the Oderbriich below
River v.
Canal.
XX
Germany
303
the confluence of the Warthe, but which are constantly obstruct-
ing the waterway.^ Important works have been undertaken to
improve the conditions, e.g. (i) canalisation to enable barges
"always" to reach Ratibor and larger vessels to reach Breslau ; (2)
link -canals, such as the Oder -Spree canal from Fiirstenberg
to Fiirstenwalde (cf. the Finow Canal to the Havel, and the
Bromberg Canal to the Vistula) ; and (3) regulation of the mouth
in order to concentrate the whole force of the current on the
Swine channel, so as to make it available for large ocean vessels to
Swinemiinde. In its picturesque upper course the river acts as a
political frontier between Prussian and Austrian Silesia; and its
chief " flood-foci," e.g. Glogau and Klistrin, in early days became
important strategic centres, and are now heavily fortified. Frank-
furt is the natural pivot of the basin.
The Elbe has obvious advantages over the Oder in length and The Elbe,
climate, and over the Rhine in having its lower as well as its
Site of Hamburg.
middle course in Germany. Indeed, its historical associations are
as Teutonic as its name. Its upper course is dotted with strategic
crags such as those of Lilienstein and Konigstein, and with battle-
fields, such as those of Magdeburg and Dessau, Dresden and Pirna ;
its middle course has acted as an important frontier to various
political units past and present, e.g. Hanover and Prussia, Mecklen-
burg and Brandenburg ; and its lower course has had profound
political and commercial importance since the days when it was
a bulwark against Slav and Viking. The strategic importance of
the gorge through the Mittelgebirge basalt and the Saxon sandstone
is focused at Pirna, and the commercial importance of its middle
course begins where it drops on to the lowland north of Meissen,
Dresden holding the balance ; and from Dresden, where the river
is nearly 1000 feet wide, it has a total fall of only 280 feet in the
whole 430 miles of its course to the sea. One adverse result
of this is that in the last 100 miles, during which it has to struggle
^ The spring and summer floods on the Vistula cause precisely similar trouble.
304
The Continent of Europe
CH.
The
Weser.
The
Rhine :
Historic.
with the tide, its bed is much troubled by sand ; and its meander-
ing course over the plain leads to the dissipation of strength in
numerous branches, especially in the Hamburg reach. But the
fact that these reunite at Blankensee, and careful artificial regulation
of the river, minimise the difficulty ; and the construction of link-
canals, e.g. between Elbe and Havel, between Elbe and Trave, the
canalisation of tributaries such as the Saale, and the laying of a
towing-cable from Hamburg to Aussig, have helped to give the
river the largest fleet of river craft in Germany, in spite of its lack
of depth and its liability to periodic floods.
Historically the Weser has been even more interesting than the
Elbe (cf. p. 291), but its conditions were adverse to its progress, for —
before 1866 — the joint stream (Weser-Werra-Fulda) passed through
no less than thirty-five separate political stages, representing the rival
claims and rights of a number of separate States. Its course as far as
Minden is picturesque, but has a rapid fall, while in its lower reaches
it is sluggish and shallow, uninteresting and subject to drought. But
here again Prussian organisation has made vast improvements, — by
canals, e.g. to Elbe and Ems, by canalisation, e.g. near Cassel, and
by very extensive works on the estuary, where — before 1894 — the
depth at low water did not reach 2 feet.
The Rhine was for centuries, and still is, the chief natural
waterway of Europe ; and the causes which made it predominant
in early days, have more or less justified the improvements which
account for its predominance to-day. Besides its natural advan-
tages, it inherited a Roman organisation, and eventually took the
place of the Roman roads as the great Mid - European link
(cf. p. 262); and even the discovery of the New World, which
affected so greatly most transport routes and foci, scarcely affected
the Rhine at all except that supreme control of the through
route passed from its southern termini in Venice and Genoa
to northern termini in Antwerp and Amsterdam. That is to say,
traffic began to go up-stream rather than down-stream ; and to-day
it is predominantly "up-stream," four-fifths of the traffic down-
stream from Mannheim going empty ! Again, its traffic in early
days was essentially a " road " traffic, and so it suffered in the same
way as the Roman roads from bad weather. Now boats are towed
both up and down, because drifting down-stream is both too slow
and too dangerous ; but then, in the less crowded state of the river,
they drifted down-stream, and were only towed up-stream — with or
without the help of sails in each case. But, while towing is now
done usually by a tug, it was done in those days from the tow-
path ; and, as only small boats were used, lowness of water was a
trifle, and the one trouble was from flood. Here, again, all is
changed. And it was profoundly fortunate that, at the critical
time in the history of the river, it was so specifically French that it
XX Germany 305
received uniform attention throughout both in improvement of
waterway and in simplification of tolls, etc. At the same time, in
the transition, towns which owed their importance to staple rights
and rights of transfer,^ e.g. Mainz, sank into relative insignificance ;
thus Mainz became less important than Frankfurt northwards and
than Mannheim southwards.
The river is now open to boats of all nations, and no tolls The
are exacted for ordinary navigation on the main stream ; the latter Rhine :
is kept wholly for navigation, no dams or sluices being allowed ; and
enormous improvements have been made in the waterway itself,
especially by Prussia. Moreover, from its very position and
direction, the river deals specifically with foreign trade, which
accounts for two -thirds of the total movement on it, the one
great exception in the list of important articles being the coal that
is carried up-stream from the Ruhr basin. Another feature is that
the trade is largely in bulk, especially towards the north, e.g. grain
and ore, building material and coal ; and this has an important
relation to the size of boat and the method of transport. Boats
carrying less than c. 600 tons do not pay on the main stream, and
yet they can seldom be used on the tributaries. Indeed, the latter
seldom can take boats of more than 400 tons, and this limit is not
nearly reached on the normally navigable portions of the Lahn or
the Lippe, the Ruhr or the Moselle. Traffic, therefore, tends to
come to the main stream by rail, and this involves at once other
considerations, e.g. of transfer and of limit of draught. Barges of
as much as 4000 tons burden are actually used, but the standard
is c. 1500; and the reason lies in the character of the river-bed.
For 80 miles of gorge separate 220 miles of rift valley from 230
miles of lowland plain; and, while a width of 200-300 feet is
easily provided in the valley or on the plain, scarcely 80 can
be obtained in the gorge. This means that real safety forbids
the regular use of boats more than 40 feet wide; and this
practically implies a length of not much more than 300 feet, a
draught (loaded) of 9 feet, and a capacity of 2000 tons. Of course
big boats pay best even at low water, because the variation in
draught is relatively less than that in capacity, and rates are then
highest ; and the rough loading of coal from " tips " soon proved
so destructive to the old wooden barges that they have been re-
placed by steel ones, which of course are lighter and draw less water.
But it is stated that transfer from rail to river pays only when River and
the goods are in bulk and going a long way (at least 50 miles), R*^^-
unless the relations between rail and river media are very close and
' "Staple" right prevented goods being carried past the town without being
exposed for sale, and ' ' transfer " right prevented them from being carried past in a
boat not owned by the town, the only and occasional exception being at fair-time.
Cf. Clapp's Navigable Rhine.
X
3o6
The Continent of Europe
CH.
Condi-
tions of
Naviga-
tion.
very friendly. This is the case in South Germany, where goods for
or from Rhine-transport receive the minimum rate on the railway
before or after transfer ; but on the Prussian railways the case is
different, for the interests of rail and river here are often antagonistic,
as those of Hamburg and Bremen are to those of Rotterdam and
Antwerp. The only obvious exception is in the case of Rhine
sea-trafhc ; but that is only open permanently to steamers drawing
not more than about 7^ feet when loaded, and they can only reach
Cologne, e.g. from London. Even if the depth were permanently
increased and curves were widened, these small steamers are
relatively costly to work (cf. p. 66).
The traffic is, therefore, predominantly river-traffic and done by
barge ; and the typical barge-trains (4 or 5 barges, aggregating
c. 6000 tons) are a response to the conditions of navigation. The
Rhine being an ice-fed river, low-water is not a trouble except in
autumn, when, unfortunately, there is most traffic ; but ice, fogs,
and floods do cause trouble. The low-water and the flood troubles
will be removed by the canalisation of the river from Basel to
Lake Constance, for the lake can easily be made into a reservoir
which will regulate the flow ; but any attempt to regulate the pace
of the river, which is the great drawback above Mannheim, will
only increase the ice-trouble. A tug which has brought four or
five barges from Rotterdam to Mannheim (350 miles) in four or
five days, and can take them back in three or four days, can only
take two of them on to Strassburg (80 miles), and requires two
days for the journey ; and the journey is only possible at all for
five or six months in each year, while the total load must not exceed
c. 2000 tons. From Strassburg to Basel {80 miles) the difficulty
is still greater, the load limit being c. 700 tons, and the time limit
three or four months. North from Mannheim, however, conditions
are very different, and the river is a scene of very busy traffic.
Indeed, the largest port, Duisburg-Ruhrort (including the railway
harbour of Hochfeld), which does specially a "bulk" trade,^ has
a water traffic greater than the whole ocean traffic of Hamburg ;
and Mannheim (including Ludwigshafen and the railway harbour
of Rheinau), which does specially a " piece " trade, has a water
traffic twice that of the whole ocean traffic of Bremen. Of course,
Duisburg, which is only 130 miles from Rotterdam, is the port of
the "Black Country"; and Mannheim, though 350 miles from
Rotterdam, has, as natural head of navigation, an enormous
hinterland stretching from France into Austria and as far south
as Italy (cf. p. 328). But obviously the natural resources and needs
of the area must be such as are well served by river traffic.
Two points deserve special attention. One is that four-fifths
' Duisburg lists only a dozen special articles, while Mannheim lists four or five
dozen. Between them they do c. 75 p.c. of all the Rhine trade. See Clapp.
XX Germany 307
of the up-stream trafific is in iron ore {c. 60 p.c, of Germany's total Political
import), grain, coal, and timber, and that about half of the down- Rivalry,
stream traffic is coal, and nearly one-sixth is building materials, e.g.
bricks from between Mannheim and Speyer, or stone from
Badenheim. The other is the influence of political rivalry. This
is seen both in the inter-relations of the various river ports and in
the relation of all of them to outside seaports. Thus political
rivalry on the river itself has led to the development of rival ports
on opposite banks and on every natural reach of the river; and
the rivalry has led to continuous progress both industrial and
commercial. This is not confined to purely political rivalry, e.g.
between Strassburg (Alsace) and Kehl (Baden), or Ludwigshafen
(Bavarian Palatinate) and Mannheim (Baden), or between the
Wiesbaden ports of Frankfurt and Kastel and the Hessian ports
of Offenbach and Mainz, but is also found inside the Rhine
Province, e.g. between Cologne and Miilheim or Neuss and
Diisseldorf.
The outside rivalry works by rail and canal, and is focused Northern
on the North Sea coast, where the great shipping companies of Relations.
Antwerp and Bremen and Hamburg have a great lever in their
large fleets and their old-established trade relations, and are all as
jealous of the Dutch ports as the Prussian State Railway is of the
river. Thus, the Rhine- and -Marne canal gives Antwerp more
hold on the upper part of the Middle Rhine than the Dortmund-
Ems canal gives to Emden on the lower part ; and the Midland
Canal from Ruhrort to Hanover will serve Bremen as well, via
Minden, as the Dortmund-Ems canal serves Emden. Under these
circumstances, Emden seems to have little chance against Antwerp
or Bremen ; but the Rhine trafific has an obvious advantage.
With the railways the case is rather different. Rhine barges
usually travel from Rotterdam to Mannheim as fast as any
ordinary goods trains ; but, when all transfer charges and deteriora-
tion risks {e.g. of coal in " tipping ") are taken into account, it
seems that railway transport is always normally cheaper than
transport by inland waterway. The two together have enabled full
advantage to be taken of the central site, and have greatly helped
to unify an area where complex highlands and radiating rivers in
olden days were the main causes of political division. Cf. pp. 212, 255.
The different attitudes to the transport problem in North and Southern
South Germany are based on a geographical foundation. In the Relations,
north the rivers flow uniformly, and more or less parallel to one
another, northwards ; and some of the chief towns are specific-
ally between two great rivers, e.g. Berlin. Economic needs and
physical features, therefore, alike encourage the construction of
link canals, — though the " Agrarian " party are hostile to any
development which in their opinion would be adverse to the
3o8
The Continent of Europe
CH.
interests of local agriculture, and prefer congested railways to the
cheap import of grain by canal. In the south, on the other hand,
rivers flow in various and opposite directions ; and the torrential
character of many of them is more favourable to the development
of "power" than of navigation, while the relief is less favourable
to the construction of canals. Political influences also are at work.
For instance, the Neckar, though essentially a Wiirtemberg river,
empties through Baden, and the Bavarian Main empties through
Prussian territory; on the contrary, Augsburg and Niirnberg,
Agricultural map of Germany.
Mulhausen and Esslingen, are noted for their electrical machinery
and apparatus.
Fanning. About half the total area of the country is under cultivation,
while fully a quarter is under forest ; and there is a natural
antagonism of interest between the purely agricultural and purely
industrial areas, based largely on the demand for labour and on
the fact that Germany cannot provide herself with all the food she
needs. Indirectly, the lack of labour for farm-work has led to a
wide use of machinery ; but it has also led directly to a large
import of foreign (Polish) labour. There is also a natural
antagonism between the less fertile lands of the north and the
XX Germany 309
more fertile lands of the south, distinguished generally as grain
lands and wine lands ; and it is in the Elbe valley that the
potash deposits exist which are " the sheet-anchor of German
agriculture." The most important crops of the northern plain are
wheat and rye, sugar-beet and potatoes ; and it is mainly the root
crops that have been responsible for the wide manufacture of
alcohol and starch and for the decrease of sheep compared with
cattle, fed on the "refuse." The number of sheep has dropped
since 1871 from 25,000,000 to 7,000,000; and, on the other hand,
there are 300 potato-starch factories in Silesia, Brandenburg, and
Mecklenburg. To the north-east, too, flax becomes a typical
product — wherever the Scotch fir is abundant, as sugar-beet is
associated with the beech. Alsace and the Palatinate are much
the most important wine-growers, while Bavaria is the great wood-
grower, being the only part of the empire which — with 95 acres
for every 100 persons — can supply all its own needs.^ Obviously,
areas with abundance of soft-wood and water-power, e.g. the Harz
and Thuringian forests, have special advantages for the manu-
facture of paper in all its forms, including pasteboard toys, etc. ;
and Bavaria still has the largest "paper" centre in Germany,
Aschaffenburg.
Again, the northern part of the country is specially associated Mining,
with mineral wealth, e.g. the coal and iron of Westphalia and
Rhenish Prussia, and the metals of the Harz and Silesia. But the
most typical product is the potash. A large area, including the
plains on every side of the Harz, contains enormous beds of rock-
salt above or amongst deposits of potassium minerals, held in place
and so preserved by an extensive sheet of impervious clay. To
the east of the Harz is the famous Anhalt district with its centre
at Stassfurt, where the " Rubbish-salts " — as they were called fifty
years ago — were first found ; to the north are the Brunswick and
Hanover districts, the latter a scene of great activity; to the
south is the Nordhausen district ; and less important deposits
exist in the west of the Thuringian Forest. These give Germany
easily accessible supplies of what is almost a world-monopoly ; and
they are the definite link between agriculture and industries. For
they consist mainly of carnallite and kainite — the former easily
soluble and therefore naturally suited for industrial purposes, the
latter ready for use as a fertiliser.
The northern plain has a unity of relief even on a rainfall map, Unity of
the slight elevations, e.g. of the Liineberg Heath, the Flaming or Prussian
the Baltic Heights, being faithfully reflected in a slight increase of
rainfall ; but it contains a considerable variety of political units
with considerable variety of geographical conditions. For instance.
^ The limit for this is said to be eighty-five acres for loo persons ; in the British
Isles the proportion is not eight acres to the loo persons.
3IO The Continent of Europe ch.
while East Prussia is a typical morainic lake-land, West Prussia is
a fertile carse ; while Pomerania includes the less fertile lower
" basin " of the Oder, Silesia occupies its more fertile upper " basin."
So, Brandenburg pivots on the flood-lands of Spree and Havel, while
the Province of Saxony includes the Golden Mead and other
fertile valleys. The unity of relief and climate has, however,
outweighed all other influences, — religious, linguistic, and even
racial, so that to-day there is marked unity of national type and
even some approximation to a German physique.
"German" No doubt the type on the ocean border is distinctly different
Physical from that on the forested heights of the Vosges and the Black
Type. Forest, the tall Longheads of the north-west being of very pure
Teutonic type, while the stocky Roundheads of the south-west
are purely Alpine ; but these extreme types are exceptional, the
normal type being an intermediate one — seen at its best in that
most typically German area, the Weser highlands. This inter-
mediate type is intermediate specially in height and head-form, the
mixture of race in it being betrayed by the disharmony between
the round Alpine head and the long Nordic face ; and the fact
that the one influence came in from the north while the other
came in from the east, is still reflected in the regional variations.
The natural route for the Teutons to move south by was the Weser
basin, which brought them into the " basin " of the Middle
Rhine ; and the relative tallness and fairness of the people in
the rift valley and the Main and Neckar basins must be attributed
to this influence. Naturally, too, the older inhabitants — real
Alpines, of round head and stocky frame — were pressed up
into the less accessible and less fertile heights, in the Vosges, the
Black Forest, and the Jura, where pure Alpine types are still
normal. The natural route for the Slav (Alpine) people to move
west by was the unfertile plain ; but the infertility was always
favourable to speedy, if not premature, " saturation " — as well as to
limited rights of inheritance, e.g. to primogeniture — and the over-
flow had easiest access to the fertile south by the Saale basin. In
this case, however, it was the Slav people who were pressing ; and
here, therefore, it was the older Teutonic people that were pressed
up into the highlands, e.g. in Thuringia, leaving permanent traces
of themselves in the relative tallness of the modern Thuringians.
In both cases the influence spread along lines of least resistance,
Slav influence spreading via the Oder through Brandenburg and
Mecklenburg, while Teutonic influence spread vm the Rhine to the
Burgundy Gate. The darker colour of the real Alpine grass-lander
is reflected in the more Slavic areas even of the north, e.g.
Brandenburg, as the lighter colour of the forester- fisherman is
reflected in the more Teutonic areas even in the typically Alpine
climate, e.g. in Hohenzollern ; but colour is relatively transient, and
XX Prussia 311 .
so we find blonde colouring everywhere within reach of the sea, even
to the Russian frontier, and wherever else humidity — with or
without much shade — is high. Thus, even amongst the short,
stocky Roundheads of the Vosges or the Black Forest — with the
maximum rainfall in the empire (a mean of 80-83 inches) — in the
most secluded part of the forested heights one person in three is
distinctly fair.
Prussia
Fully three-fifths of Prussia belongs to the Great European
Plain, forming a wedge of lowland that narrows westward until
at the Westphalian Gate it is only 100 miles wide. The total
population is about the same as that of England, the non-German-
speaking element not being more than 10 p.c. of the whole; the
local density is greatest in the mining and manufacturing part of
the Rhine area, closely followed by the similar areas in Saxony
(where the density is less "local," cf. p. 335) and Silesia.
The railway mileage, though very high (5 miles per 10,000 Strategic
persons), has little or no relation to this dense population, as its "Control."
fundamental principle is strategic ; that is to say, an enormous
proportion of the total mileage represents trunk lines radiating from
Berlin impartially in all directions or running along the political
frontiers. Indirectly, however, this has a valuable economic influence.
For the surface qualities of the area are very diverse, rather less than
one-third being good, rather more than one-third being fair, and just
one-third being simply sand ; and, apart from strategic considera-
tions, there was little in the barren sands of the north-east or in the
barren heaths of the north-west to attract railways. But the spread
of railways through these districts has been of real service, e.g. to
the great rye and oat lands of the north-east. Agriculture generally
has also profited by the — more or less consequent — spread of beet-
growing for sugar, for the deep cultivation necessary leaves the soil in a
magnificent condition for succeeding crops, e.g. barley and chicory.
At least equally valuable has been the influence of compulsory
military training, e.g. on habits of obedience, punctuality, attention
to detail; and both in agriculture and in manufacturing industries
the Prussians came into the field so late that they were able to
make a fair start on lines dictated by the previous experience of
other nations, who have been handicapped in their subsequent
competition by the difficulty of getting rid of estabhshed procedure
which that experience has proved to be inferior.
Physical history, climate, and position have all been somewhat East
adverse to the progress of East Prussia. Though one of the Prussia,
largest provinces, and sharing in the general character of the
great plain, it has only one important town, Konigsberg (cf. p. 288).
It is a morainic lake-land, sloping down to a dune-fringed and
312 The Continent of Europe ch.
Haff-fronted coastal plain from the lake-strewn plateau of the Seen-
platte, which rises in the south-west to looo feet. About one-fifth is
covered with coniferous forests, which support wood industries, e.g.
at AUenstein, and in which wolves are still found ; there is a
large area of barren sand or bog ; and the climate is the coldest
in Germany, the mean January temperature of Tilsit being only
25° F. At the same time, thanks to the alluvial lands along the
Niemen, Pregel, and Passarge, about half the area is under cultiva-
tion, mainly with rye, potatoes, and flax — the last specially in the
Passarge basin, which is specifically Roman Catholic in creed.
But the two characteristic products of the province are the amber
of Samland and horses, the chief Government stud-farm of all
Germany being near Gumbinnen.
West West Prussia resembles East Prussia in several fundamental
Prussia, features. A large portion of it is occupied by the Baltic plateau,
which again rises to 1086 feet (in the Turmberg) ; there is a large
area of moor, especially in the west (cf. the Tuchel Heath) ; fully
one-fifth is covered with coniferous forest ; and the pastures are good,
another Government stud -farm existing at Marienwerder. But,
though rye and potatoes are still the chief crops, the proportion
of arable land is higher, and there is much more variety of crop,
including sugar-beet. The reasons for this are that, just because of
the wide -spread floods on the Vistula, there is a much larger
proportion of fertile alluvium than in East Prussia ; and the climate
is less harsh. The cheap labour which has helped to develop the
industries of Danzig and Elbing, is due to the fact that Poles spread
down the Vistula valley so easily that they now occupy a very large
proportion of the centre of the province, numbering n 35 p.c. of its
total population. Thorn was originally made a stronghold by the
Teutonic Order ^ because it was the lowest place where the Vistula
was capable of being permanently bridged in those days ; and the
same cause made it a Hanseatic centre. Modern bridge-building,
by giving a bridge "control" to Dirschau and Grandenz, made
them great railway junctions.
Pomer- The long straggling province of Pomerania (" On the Sea ") well
deserves its name, and in the early days of its history it stretched
even farther along the coast, including Pomerellen or West Prussia
eastward and Slavinia or Mecklenburg westward. But its position
between Sweden and Brandenburg and its old division into Vor-
pommern (or Nearer Pomerania) and Hinterpommern (or Farther
Pomerania) involved it in such constant hostilities with the Bran-
denburg Electors, such devastation in the Thirty Years' War, and
such endless redistribution of territory between its two native
dukes, that its progress was terribly hindered. Nor did its phy-
sical conditions help. Though it includes a typical belt of the
^ Marienburg was the headquarters of the Grand Master.
ania.
XX Prussia 313
Baltic Lake Plateau, it is one of the flattest areas in all Germany
and correspondingly marshy ; and even where there is neither lake
nor marsh, the soil is thin and sandy. Its typical activities are,
therefore, in four directions. The enormous original expanse of
" bog " is now represented by very extensive peat-bogs ; the great
portion of "lagoon" coast-line and of lake (2V of the area) is very
favourable to fishing — the lampreys being famous — and to the
rearing of aquatic fowl, especially geese ; and a busy commerce
centres on the Lower Oder.
The latter was the centre of early civilisation, Christianity
reaching the area — characteristically — via the island of Wollin
(John), as the commercial centre is now divided between the island
of Usedom (Swinemiinde) and the head of the estuary (Stettin).
The " Bodden " coast farther west was equally favourable to civilising
influences from the sea. Both Stralsund, which is still a flourishing
harbour, and Greifswald, with its famous old Church-reared uni-
versity, were important Hanseatic centres ; they are both typically
on the mainland side of the Strela Sund ; and the island of Riigen,
the capital of which is at a little railway junction called Bergen, was
even in heathen times a Holy Island.
For practical purposes Posen is the " basin " of the Middle Posen.
Warthe, the general low level being broken by low lines or wedges
of disconnected hills between the main stream and its Netze and
Obra tributaries ; and the natural result is a labyrinth of swamps
and bogs, e.g. the Obrabriich, which is the old course and therefore
the natural link — now canalised — between the Warthe, as it leaves
Poland, and the Oder, as it enters Brandenburg. Though much of
the soil is light and sandy, the reclaimed lands are distinctly fertile ; '
and over 60 p.c. of the total area is under cultivation, even hops
and tobacco being grown, while nearly 60 p.c. of population is
returned as rural. The majority are Poles and belong to the
Roman Church, and the relations between them and their Prussian
rulers have been not only a great obstacle to progress, but a
notorious scandal. Even within the last 10 years Polish parents
have been imprisoned for withdrawing their children from religious
instruction given by Prussians (apparently Protestants) in German,
and the children have been thrashed for refusing to say the Lord's
Prayer in German. This is a natural sequel to the Partition of
Poland, and a comment on the folly of having a river (the Prosna)
as a frontier in an area where international relations are not easy.
Even Posen, the old capital of Great Poland, illustrates the
racial and political tension, for the river flows due north through
the district, and the old Polish town, like the modern Polish quarter,
is on the east bank, while the Prussian town, which arrogates the
title of Alstadt (" Old Town "), is on the west bank. The site in
the centre of a wide sandy plain was quite suitable for the capital of a
3H
The Continent of Europe
CH.
Silesia :
Mineral.
Silesia :
Textile.
kingdom which included also the upper " basin " of the Warthe ;
but both trade and industry have been cramped since it became a
first-class frontier fortress near to a great tarift' barrier. As a fortress,
on the other hand, it is strongly defended by the marshy banks of
its sluggish, navigable river. Bromberg, the great industrial and
commercial rival of Posen, has a somewhat similar position to the
west of the Vistula ; and, as the great westward elbow of the Vistula
at the confluence of the Brahe, makes the town the natural terminus
of a canal to the Elbe via the Netze, so the southward drainage
of the Netze from the Baltic Lake Plateau gives it easy access
northwards (cf. the similar position of Schneidemiihl — at the head
of navigation — on the southward draining Kiiddow).
Silesia is the largest province of Prussia, with an area half the
size of Ireland. A straight line — called the Langental — ^joining
the course of the Malapane to the general course of the Black
Elster, and followed by the railway from Oppeln via Breslau and
Liegnitz to Bautzen, divides the province into parts, lowland and
highland, the latter subdivided by the Upper Oder into two sections.
Between the Malapane and the southern frontier the Tarnowitz
plateau, which is an outlier of the Carpathians with an average
height of c. looo feet, has the richest zinc deposits in the world, one
of the largest coal-fields in Europe, and very large quantities of iron.
The coal lies in almost horizontal strata ; and, as the Oder valley is
only c. 500 feet above the sea even at the natural head of navigation
at Ratibor, it was easy to canalise the river for large barges up to
Kosel, the terminus of the Klodnitz-River canal from the coal-field at
Gleiwitz. Beuthen and Zabrze are the greatest mining and smelting
centres, while Konigshutte — with its " suburbs " of Kattowitz and
Myslowitz — is specially connected with zinc, and Gleiwitz with
glass. The frontier site, with its strategic problems and its foreign
tariff, has been naturally adverse to prosperity ; but the mineral
wealth is great and so easily won that the plain has become the
" Black Country " of Eastern Germany.
In the valleys of the Sudetic system there has been almost
equally great development on the textile side ; for not only is there
a rich coal-field in the Weistritz basin, but the wooded heights are
almost everywhere supplied with abundant water-power. The con-
fined coal-basin of Waldenburg has very important mining, smelting,
and chemical industries (cf. the Bunzlau glass), which account for
a population of nearly 40,000 per square mile ; and local production
of flax and wool helps to supply raw material for textiles on both
sides of the basin, though wool is the more important in the Lausitzer
Neisse and Katybach valleys, e.g. at Gorlitz and Liegnitz, and linen in
the Glatzen Neisse, e.g. at Neisse. The need for access to " power "
causes this industrial part of the province to show very high density of
population even at very considerable altitudes ; and this, of course,
XX Prussia 315
affects the average temperature, some villages in the Riesengebirge
having the lowest mean (below 40° F.) of any in Prussia. A typical
"mountain" home industry of lace-making centres round Hirsch-
berg ; but the great historic industry is the weaving of linen (cf. the
splendid damasks of Neustadt and Glatz).
The foreground of this industrial " mountain " zone happens also Silesia:
to be very fertile, especially between Ratibor and Liegnitz; and, 5^^
as the rainfall is also heavy (cf p. 57) — heavy enough, indeed, to
account for forest ^ covering nearly 30 p.c. of the area — agriculture
is greatly favoured, the crops of wheat and rye sometimes giving
a surplus for export after feeding a local population of 5,000,000,
while hops and tobacco, and even wine and silk, are typical products.
North and north-east of the Langental, especially along the Bran-
denburg frontier, the soil is much less fertile, and the density of
population decreases from 300-500 per square mile to scarcely 100.
Brandenburg rivals Silesia in size, but not in population ; for, Branden-
though its infertility is exaggerated in its old nickname of " Sand- burg.
Box," it does consist essentially of a sandy plain, interspersed with
large areas of coniferous forest and small areas of fertile soil. Timber
and sheep are its two typical products, the wool being the finest in
Prussia (cf. the excellent woollen mills of Rummelsberg and Nieder
Schonweide). Barley and rye, hemp and flax, and even tobacco and
hops, are widely cultivated, and the large production of honey and
wax may be associated with the wealth of aromatic vegetation ; but
the excessive number of swamps, lakes (700), and rivers — supporting
quite a busy fishery, especially for carp, and making the punt a
common transport medium — causes the climate to be unusually raw
in winter, while the absence of shelter and the loose, easily-heated
surface expose it to violent winds both in winter and in summer.
Commercially, however, the abundance of navigable water and the
central site have made it the pivot of inland navigation in Prussia,
as the low level and central site have made it the pivot of the
Prussian railways. And where the chief waterways converge, by
a chain of lakes, on the " mathematical " centre of the Prussian
railway-system, Berlin, Spandau, and Potsdam have an aggregate'
population of 4,000,000.
Berlin itself, with over 2,120,000, is historically a typical island- Berlin,
bridge centre, half-way between Elbe and Oder, half-way between
Hamburg and Breslau ; and it is significant that some of the
largest " new " cities in Germany, e.g. Charlottenburg, Rixdorf, and
Schoneberg, are simply decentralised suburbs of Berlin. The
metropolitan area, in which special districts, e.g. that of Teltow or
of Nieder Barnim, have populations of 500,000, is now the chief
manufacturing centre in Central Europe, its great industries — as in
^ It is significant that the densest forests are in the lee of the ' ' Giant " Mountains,
e.g: south of Liegnitz, or of the Sudetes, e.^. south-west of Oppeln.
3i6
The Continent of Europe
CH.
Mecklen-
burg.
so many foci of dense population, e.g. New York — being in clothing
and machinery, including scientific instruments. Its two outposts
on the west of the Havel represent "war and the chase." The
unhealthy, marsh-girt fortress at the confluence of the Havel and the
Spree is now the chief military arsenal of Germany, while the
relatively healthy lake-girt hills to the south offered beautiful sites
for the palaces of royal fishermen, e.g. the Sans Souci. Potsdam now
has busy industries, but only in such products as silk, chocolate, and
furniture. Spandau is an older centre than Potsdam, but was
hampered by its unhealthy marshes.
Outside the metropolitan area the towns have been characteristic-
ally dwarfed by nearness to the metropolis (cf. p. 214), even Frankfurt
and Brandenburg not having populations of 70,000. As the Mark
The surroundings of Berlin.
developed eastward, the *' wooded hill " (Brenni-Bor), in its girdle of
forested marsh, that had been the old sacred capital of the Wends,
was bound to give way to some place farther east ; and the Oder-
Spree Canal similarly deprived Frankfurt of its old commercial import-
ance as the natural head of " sea " navigation on the Oder, while
its strategic importance passed to the marsh-girt fortress of Kustrin.
The other centres are still less important, most being engaged in
the typical wool industry, e.g. Kottbus and Forst (" shoddy ").
Eastern Prussia is separated from Western Prussia by the double
Duchy of Mecklenburg, which is a typical Baltic plateau area
between the Oder and the Elbe ; but the plateau is unusually low,
not reaching 600 feet even in the Helpter or the Ruhner hills, and
its seaward drainage is less important than its southward drainage,
i.e. to the Elbe. Indeed, its only important Baltic river is the
little Warnow (80 miles), which is navigable from Butzow for small
XX Prussia 317
vessels, and which made Rostock an important Hanseatic port, with
a University that dates back to Hansa days. On the other hand,
there are at least 400 lakes scattered over the plateau ; and the
rivers which are connected with them, are navigable for long
distances, e.g. the Elbe and the Havel, the two being connected by
a canal via the Miiritz See. These lakes are very rich in fish, and
the Miiritz — like the Baltic coast of the State — even produces amber.
The history of the area — under Vandal, Slav, and German
rulers — has also been adverse to its progress ; and its industries are
still backward. It is one of the typical instances of a population in
which the nobles are mainly of Teutonic, and the peasants of Slav
origin, the Slav element being still prominent even in speech. The
two capitals of Schwerin and Neu-Strelitz occupy very beautiful
sites in wooded lake-land ; but they have very different histories.
For while Neu-Strelitz is quite a modern town, built in the form of
an 8-pointed star, Schwerin is one of the oldest towns in the whole
area. Its modern appearance is due to the destructive fires which
utterly wiped out the old wooden houses of the forest-settlement
{Schwerin, "Game -Preserve"). Commercially, it is overwhelmed
by the old Hansa ports of Rostock and Wismar, both admirable
harbours from the Hanseatic point of view, and both still doing a
busy commerce, though some of the " Rostock " commerce is now
done through its outport of Warnemiinde.
Western Prussia includes the large and fairly coherent areas of Bruns-
Schleswig-Holstein, Hanover, Westphalia, Rhenish Prussia, and ^°^ ^^d
Hessen-Nassau ; but these are grouped round a confused nucleus of
small States, whose territory is generally dotted about in a number
of incoherent fragments. For instance, Brunswick consists of 3
large and 6 small areas, scattered along the banks of Aller and
Ocker, Leine and Weser, including such diverse units as the
Liineburg plain, the Dromlin marsh, the Harz Mountains. The
city of Brunswick, on the fertile Ocker plain, with rich surrounding
forests, was very important as a Hanseatic inland centre ; but, now
that traffic does not move normally between the Middle Rhine and
Liibeck, it has only local importance, e.g. as a manufacturer of
sugar and sausages. In the northern part of the duchy, where the
climate is most favourable, scientific agriculture is very productive,
especially of sugar-beet ; the Harz is, of course, a very busy mining
area ; and in the intermediate area timber - cutting is a typical
industry. The Duchy of Anhalt, with its Harz foothills, the reclaimed
pastures of its Elbe marshes, and its fertile Saale plain, is in a very
similar position ; its agriculture is excellent, sugar is a typical
product, and mining is a typical industry (cf. the famous salt-works
of Leopoldshall, on the left bank of the Bode, opposite Stassfurt).
The Thuringian States form a more coherent unit in spite of Thu-
their subdivisions, for these correspond more or less to the opposite ringia.
3i8 The Continent of Europe ch.
slopes of the Thuringian Forest. Generally speaking, Saxe- Weimar-
Eisenach lies across the north of the area, and Saxe-Meiningen
across the south, while Saxe-Altenburg is to the east, and Saxe-
Coburg-Gotha runs from north to south towards the west ; and the
Thuringian Road — via Eisenach, Gotha, Weimar, and Jena — bridges
the base of the angle which is formed by the Upper Werra and the
Middle Saale, and which has its natural apex at Coburg. To the
forest and mineral wealth the mountain environment has given a
special direction, the subdivision of territory being reflected in a
subdivision of labour — occupied in making articles which demand a
vast amount of work on a tiny quantity of raw material. Glass-
making is the typical industry along the crest of the range, including
such products as thermometer tubes and glass eyes ; on the eastern
slope the special product is various kinds of porcelain, terra-cotta,
and earthenware ; on the western slope it is toys — of glass, wood,
paper, china, metal ; and the metal industry is also prominent in
the north, where, too, Ruhla has an unique industry in pipe-making
— using wood, amber, and meerschaum.
The toy industry is associated at Gotha with the making of all
kinds of instruments — mechanical and mathematical, surgical and
musical ; in the extreme south Coburg shows " Bavarian " influence
in its typical brewing industry, as in the extreme east Neustadt
shows Saxon influence in its population. Saxe-Meiningen, with a
less fertile soil and mainly to the south, has long specialised in
wooden toys, e.g. at Sonneberg, and papier-mache, e.g. at Hildburg-
hausen ; but the industry has now reached such proportions that
it is " international."
Thurin- Saxe- Weimar-Eisenach is much the largest state {c. 1400 square
gianBoad. miles), and has the most varied physique and resources. The
Eisenach area is renowned for its natural beauty — of forest and
mountains, the former specially " Thuringian " and the latter specially
" Rhon " ; the Neustadt area is specially " Saxe," being physically
a slice of the Vogtland and racially Slav ; the Weimar area, though
not rich in minerals, has important industries in such typically
" Saxe " products as woollen hosiery, e.g. at Apolda, — porcelain,
e.g. at Ilmenau, — scientific instruments, e.g. at Jena (optical). Jena
is also in a very fertile district, famous for its fruits ; and, as the eastern
road round the Thuringian Forest was originally more important
than the western, Jena was always the most important of the towns
at the angles of the great triangle — Eisenach, Coburg, and Jena.
More important than either of the north-and-south roads was the
great " Thuringian Road " from east to west, linking Dresden to
Cologne via Gera, Jena, Weimar, Erfurt (not politically Thuringian),
Gotha, and Eisenach. Weimar and Gotha, "the Holders of the
Gates " where the road crossed the Ilm or branched north-westward
to the Lower Werra, were intimately interested in Itineraries and
XX Prussia 319
Road-plans centuries before they won their most honourable place
in the modern world of Geographical publishing.^
The province of Saxony is divided by Anhalt into two main Province
areas, pivoting respectively on Magdeburg and Halle, and the o^ Saxony,
southern area is flanked by a chaotic intrusion of scraps of
territory belonging to Anhalt, Brunswick, and the Thuringian
States. The determining influence on this side was the Harz,
diverting all roads along their north flank to Magdeburg or along
their south flank to Halle. The northern roads diverged over an
area that was largely moorland, while the southern ones threaded
fertile mountain-girt valleys, e.g. that of the Helme ("The Golden
Mead "). At the same time a certain unity is given to the province
by the fact that yV^^ of it belongs to the " basin " of the Middle
Elbe, the flood sediments of which have for centuries manured it
so richly that it is now the most fertile province in Prussia, with
a very large output of wheat and sugar-beet.
The special wealth of the province is essentially underground —
in brown coal and salt, to the west and south-west of Magdeburg.
Though the oldest salt- workings were along the Saale ("Salt
River"), e.g. at Halle ("Salt"), the richest deposits are now found
along the Bode, e.g. at Stassfurt, and along the Elbe itself, e.g. at
Schonebeck ; and a ring of brown coal — almost continuous along
the west — surrounds the salt, e.g. at Oschersleben, Aschersleben,
Weissenfels (where the Saale is canalised), Bitterfeld and Witten-
berg. Below the old Salziger See near Eisleben there are the
richest copper mines in Europe — at Mansfeld ; and both this
district and the similar copper area in the Harz are rich in silver.
Magdeburg, which is the smallest of the eight great cities of Magde-
Germany, might have been the largest. The site is certainly the barg.
natural centre of Prussia, — a central position on the central river
of the plain, where the great westward bend comes so near to the
Harz that the hilly foreground of the mountains enabled a German
population to hold its ground and divert the Slav flood north-westward
over Hanover, and where the Elbe is put into close relations with
the AUer and even with the Westphalian Gate as well as with the
tributary Saale. Here the presence of islands, in a stretch of the
river otherwise devoid of islands for many miles, offered facilities
for a defensive position and for building a bridge. On the
western, i.e. the non-Slav, bank the city was a valuable outpost of
German strength, and then a base for German expansion, while its
importance as a market made it an inland member of the Hanseatic
League. But its old salt industry, like that of Halle — which was
worked in the sixth century — was its political ruin, for it gave it
such a value {e.g. for preserving fish) that Otho gave it to his wife,
^ Road maps of Central Europe were quite common by A.D. 1500, and the present
house of Justus Perthes was founded in 1785.
320 The Continent of Europe ch.
Edith, and she gave it to the Church. From that time its industries
began to be stifled; and, when eventually reaction came at the
Reformation, the city suffered terribly under Tilly, By the time
that it recovered, the old Thuringian Road was becoming less and
less important, while Berlin had the advantage of being nearer
to the Baltic, which was becoming more important. Now the
north-eastern bend of the Elbe to the Havel confluence has not
only no importance as far as Baltic trade is concerned, but has even
lost a considerable portion of trade gravitating north-westward, the
latter now often leaving the river at Magdeburg and proceeding direct,
e.g.^ via Hanover for Bevergern on the Dortmund-Ems Canal.
Hanover, Practically the whole of the rest of the Prussian plain south and
west of the Lower Elbe and north of a line joining Osnabriick to
Hildesheim is included in the province of Hanover, which stands
next in size to Silesia and Brandenburg, with an area half the size
of Scotland ; for the total area of the Grand-Duchy of Oldenburg
and the Free Territory of Bremen is not much larger than Norfolk,
and the most important strip of the old Duchy — the "Jade
territory" round AVilhelmshaven — was purchased by Prussia in
1873. The province slopes gently down from the Harz to the
North Sea, but may be divided into two areas. The greater portion
is a sandy plain crossed from north to south by the moor and fen
of the Liineberg Heath, through which shallow valleys join the city
of Hanover to the port of Harburg, now joined to Hamburg by a
tunnel under the Elbe, The most fertile parts of this are the
water-meadows along the Elbe frontier and the dyked lands along
the North Sea. In the south a generally hilly area — broken by
Lippe and Brunswick territory — slopes up to the Harz, and — like
the eastern part of the plain — is densely forested, mainly with fir
and larch, though there are also fine oak and beech woods. The
chief artery of the whole province is the Leine-AUer-Weser, i.e. a
river line wholly isolated eastward by the Heath ; and this fact,
coupled with the rich river fisheries and with the poor soil, resulted
in the area, which was originally peopled from the Norwegian fiords,
being always somewhat backward in agriculture. The same condi-
tions were more or less responsible for the rural type of civilisation,
e.g. the making of roads being discouraged by the excellence of the
waterways, and so the rise of real towns being delayed by the
practice of accumulating goods at home until successive Christian
Fasts or Festivals necessitated attendance at some shrine which
became for the time a fair-ground. They are also reflected in the
fact that in Hanover alone of all the German provinces there is a
typically "Viking" preponderance of male over female births, and
that 85 p.c. of the population are Protestants, the Roman Catholics
being practically confined to the neighbourhood of the old episcopal
cities of Hildesheim and Osnabriick. Cf. p. 294.
XX Prussia 32 1
The Heath — famous also for honey and wax — has a fine Pastoral
breed of native sheep ; the " polders " of Aurich and Stade, like ^^
the water-meadows of Celle, are renowned for their horses ; and ■v^ealth.
the number of cattle (1,250,000) and pigs (1,500,000) is exceed-
ingly high per head of population. The marsh-lands are also the
home of enormous flocks of geese, while the chief fishing-port of
Germany is still appropriately in the "Viking" province — at
Geestemiinde. The chief mineral centre is, of course, the Harz,
and there is a well-known Mining Institute at Clausthal ; but fuel is
widely spread in different forms, e.g. coal, lignite, and petroleum —
mainly between Osnabriick and Celle — and enormous beds of peat
— mainly in the north and the south-east. Salt was partly responsible
for the early rise of Hanover and Liineburg ; and the province is
now a main centre of the potash trade of Germany, exporting very
large quantities of chemicals, dyes, medicines, etc.
More or less robbed, by Free Town and -other " foreign " Towns,
territory, from her proper development on the coast, or induced to
sell points of vantage, e.g. Bremerhaven, Hanover has her most
important centres in the south ; and here they have special oppor-
tunities of controlling movement north-and-south, e.g. by the Leine
and the Weser valleys. Even Osnabriick, like Bielefeld, owes much
of its importance to the command of a pass across the Teutoburger;
but the older lines of communication led by the two great valleys,
via Mlinden (and the Westphalian Gate at Minden), via Gottingen
and Hanover. And, as more or less local movement round the
Harz was in olden days more important than trans-continental
movement along the southern edge of the plain, Hildesheim and
Gottingen were more important than Hanover. Even Gottingen,
however, is a modern creation ; for its old woollen industry is quite
forgotten, and the University was only founded by King George
II. (of England). So, Emden only sprang into importance as a
cable terminus ; and the great opportunity before Harburg has had
to wait for modern congestion of traffic, especially coal, at Hamburg.
Even the old towns, including such important Hansa markets as
Celle, Hildesheim, and Liineburg, were remote from the sea, most of
them being at the natural head of river navigation. For instance,
Celle is at the natural head of navigation on the Aller, and so became
an old seat of water traffic with Bremen and the site of the Ducal
residence ; and it still possesses, as a legacy of this, the supreme Court
of Appeal for the whole province, while its relations with its episcopal
neighbour survive in its wax (and honey) market. Hildesheim itself,
as a great cattle and linen market, was an original member of the
Hansa League ; and Liineburg still exports its lime and gypsum (or
cement) and salt by the Ilmenau,— faithful to its old motto of Mons,
Fons, Pons, i.e. the quarries of the " Kalkberg," the salt " springs,"
and the conditions which made it a suitable place for a " bridge."
Y
322
The Continent of Europe
CH.
Schles-
wig-
Holstein.
West-
phalia.
Schleswig-Holstein gives an interesting epitome of the Prussian
plain and a significant illustration of Prussian domination. Its eastern
coast is skirted by the Baltic Ridge, which reaches 500 feet on the
mainland behind Fehmarn ; the centre is practically a continuation
of the Liineburg Heath ; and the west coast is fringed by dune-ribbed
islands, such as Sylt, and by dyked polders landwards. The centre
is, therefore, of little value except, e.g. for bee-keeping ; but the
glacial soil of the plateau raises good flax, while the polders raise
rape, and give excellent pasture. For these products the marine
climate is very favourable, for the width of isthmus even in Holstein
— i.e. south of the Eider — does not reach 100 miles, while in the
narrower parts of Schleswig it is under 40 ; and in the small area
( = Wales) there is very little variation of temperature or rainfall.
Exposure to wind is reflected in the tiny percentage of forest (6 p.c),
and yet fogs are very common (cf. p. 266). The obvious advantages
of the area are -for rearing cattle — large numbers of which are
exported^ — and for sea-fishing or sea-trading; but provincial
interests are of slight importance. Kiel is wholly an Imperial
interest, and Altona is practically part of Hamburg. Only in
Schleswig, e.g. in the old Danish capital of Flensburg and the great
fishing-port of Eckernforde, is there any real provincial strength ;
and even Eckernforde is very Prussian. Schleswig is, however,
largely "Danish," 47 p.c. of the people in the north speaking
Danish, which is the commercial tongue in Flensburg ; and oflScial
persecution, as in Posen, so far from Prussianising the area, has
only embittered a racial antagonism which was in existence before
the Angles had left Angeln. But for a shameless equivocation by
Bismarck in 1864, — which encouraged Denmark to hold out
against Prussia and Austria — it is practically certain that a
European Congress would have confirmed Denmark in her historic
possession of Schleswig, while giving to Prussia the Holstein fief of
the old Germano-Roman Empire. Cf. p. 276.
Westphalia is a rough oblong, which lies N.W.-S.E., and its
south-western frontier runs generally parallel to the Teutoburger at
an average distance of about 20 miles from the Rhine, while its
south-eastern frontier runs along the Rothaar mountains generally
parallel to the Dutch frontier. Political influences, mainly
Napoleonic, took its natural limits north of the Teutoburger to
include the Westphalian Gate and east of the Egge mountains to
tap the Weser waterway between the territories of Cassel and
Hildesheim. Within the natural limits the province is divided into
two contrasting areas. The north, i.e. essentially the Ems-Lippe
drainage, is really Westphalia ("Western Plain "), while the Sauerland
(" South Land ") is a roughly slaty plateau drained by the Ruhr ;
and there is a corresponding difference of climate, the Munster
* The proportion per head of population is 65 per 100, the largest in Prussia.
XX
Prussia
323
lowland having an average annual temperature of about 49" F. with
a rainfall of only 25 inches, while the average annual temperature
of Sauerland is only 41° F., but the rainfall approaches 40 inches.
The northern area is, therefore, predominantly agricultural; and,
though the constant outcropping of rocky beds, the wide area of fen
in the Vechte basin along the Dutch frontier, and the dry sand of
the Senne below the Lippe frontier, minimise the available land,
this is to some extent compensated by the great number of peasant
proprietors and by the fertility of the heart of the province, i.e.
a belt running along the south of the Lippe (the " Hellweg ") and
continued beyond the Egge mountains to the Weser, where
Beverungen is an important grain market. Hardy cereals and
roots are the typical products except in the north-east, where flax is
very largely grown, and where there has been a flourishing linen
industry for at least 500 years, e.g. at Bielefeld, the old "hill"
capital of the Countship of Ravensberg. As at Dundee, the old linen
industry has attracted a modern jute industry ; but this is mainly
confined to Bielefeld, the other towns, e.g. Herford and Warendorf,
being specifically engaged in linen. Below the Egge heights
Paderborn is a busy wool market ; but away from the hills the
typical live-stock are pigs (cf the famous Westphalian hams).
The southern area of Sauerland, in the widest sense of the "Sauer-
word, presents a very great contrast, being monopolised by mining la^d-"
and manufacturing interests (hardware), the rougher work mainly
between the Ruhr and the Emscher and the finer in the Ruhr-Lenne
valley. The production of coal is the largest in Prussia (62 p.c),
and that of iron ^ is second only to the production in the Rhine-
land. The chief mining and
smelting centres are on the
north bank of the Ruhr, e.g.
at Dortmund and Gelsenkir-
chen, at Bochum and Reck-
linghausen, with some special-
isation in the manufacture of
tools, armour, and ammuni-
tion, and a very large output
of coke ; but the more dis-
tinctly manufacturing indus-
tries are to the south of the
river, e.g. Hagen and Iser-
lohn, interested respectively in
" Birmingham " goods and " Redditch " goods (" cutlery," including
needles and fish-hooks). The use of surface gases for "power"
^ Of the total 10,000,000 tons of raw iron produced in Prussia, the "Dort-
mund district " is credited with about 5,400,000 and the " Bonn district " with about
3,300,000.
Su^fonis Ccag.' tsub^
Ruhr coal-field.
324 The Continent of Europe ch.
and of slag for cement have become so important, e.g. at
Gelsenkirchen, that it is said — not altogether in jest — that "iron
is the great by-product of the industry."
Hesse- Hesse-Nassau is a small and hilly, but densely-peopled province
Nassau, which lies between the Rhon and the Rothaar heights, and between
the Bingen-Coblenz reach of the Rhine and a rather longer reach
of the VVeser - Werra beyond Cassel, entirely surrounding the
Oberhessen province of the Grand Duchy of Hesse and roughly
divided by it into two main areas, the basin of the Lahn and the
basin of the Fulda. The northern, or Hessian hills, are more or
less isolated, while the southern, or Taunus, and western, or
Westerwald, form a continuous block. The most characteristic
features of the province are the very large proportion of forest
(40 p.c), the volcanic sheet that clothes the slopes of the old
Taunus core, and the mineral wealth (iron, manganese, and lead) of
the Lahn valley. The ore goes — via Oberlahnstein — almost entirely
to the Krupp furnaces opposite Duisburg-Ruhrort ; and the influence
of the forest (largely oak and beech) is reflected in the important
tanning industry, e.g. at Hamburg and Fulda, Marburg and
Hersfeld — in the history of the old educational centres of Cassel,
Fulda, and Marburg — in the fairy tales of the Grimms, whose
home was at Hanau, now famous for diamond-cutting. But the
volcanic area is much the most important, with its characteristic
springs, e.g. at Ems, Homburg, and Wiesbaden, and its magnificent
vineyards — in the shelter of the Taunus, on rich volcanic soil, and
facing full on to the Rheingau " lake," off" which sunshine is
reflected or mist is sent up to the slopes of Hockheim, Johannisberg,
Geisenheim, Rudesheim, Rauenthal, etc.
Frank- The province is administered from Cassel and Wiesbaden — the
^'"^- transport centre typically associated with locomotive and rolling
stock works, and the fashionable centre with the manufacture of
furniture ; but much the largest centre is Frankfurt (420,000),
famous alike in industry and finance, historically and commercially.
As the natural head of the rift valley, and the natural junction of
great routes from all points of the compass, it became an enormously
important political, financial, and commercial centre ; and, though
its political importance was rather bound up with the Holy Roman
Empire, and its financial importance has passed to the new political
capital of Berlin, its commercial importance remains, based on the
conditions of relief and climate which originally enabled the Franks
of the Ford on the Main to dominate the Saxons of the Weser plain,
the Swabians of the Neckar valley, and the Bavarians of the Danube
plateau.
Rhine- The Rhineland is in several ways the most important province
land. jj^ Prussia — politically important because of its great length from
north to south along the French, Belgian, and Dutch frontiers.
XX Prussia 325
commercially important as containing 200 miles of the navigable
Rhine and exceptional railway facilities, and industrially important
as containing great mineral wealth both of coal and of metals, and
as having the most favourable climate in Germany for textile work
and the best access to foreign markets. The province contains a
typical North German lowland, and a typical South German high-
land, and has a great variety of rock and soil, while the average
temperature is about 50° F., and the rainfall varies from 24 inches
in the Rhine valley to 37 inches on the Eifel, and 36 across the
Moselle on the Hunsriick. The division between northern plain and
southern highland is roughly marked by a line from Aix to Bonn,
which is almost the direction of the isotherm of 68° F, in summer.
To the north the land is very flat, and so low that towards the Dutch
frontier it is largely marshy ; the highland exceeds 2200 feet in the
Eifel, with its cones ^ and crater-lakes (maare), and 2500 in the
Hunsriick ("Dog's Back"), with its busy slate quarries. But, in
spite of marsh and mountain, there is a large proportion {c. 70 p.c.)
of really fertile land in the province, and about 50 p.c. of the
whole is under tillage. On the higher land, which is heavily wooded,
little but rye, oats, and potatoes can be grown : but the various
river valleys are not only, like the northern lowland, exceedingly
fertile, but also, unlike that, blessed with a climate which favours all
kinds of valuable crops, e.g. hops and tobacco, fruit and wine, the
last specially in the valley of the Moselle (at Berncastle, Zeltingen,
etc.). The northern lowland makes rich cattle pasture, but the
draining of rivers to make canals, e.g. the Lippe for the Dortmund-
Ems Canal, has done damage to the water-meadows.
The great value of the province, however, is in its mineral Mineral
wealth, which lies all round the old rock, e.g. coal in the Saar and the Wealth.
Ruhr basins ; the Moselle valley, even after it leaves Lorraine and
Luxemburg, is fairly rich in iron-ore ; the " Meuse " scarp above
Aix is rich in zinc, and overlooks a valuable coal-field; and the
name Bleiberg ("Lead- Hill") speaks for itself. But the coal is
much the most important, and — with the favourable climate — has
made the province the most important manufacturing district in
Germany. Facilities for transport have tended to increase the
relative importance of the two northern coal-fields at the expense of
the southern ; and the eastern, or " Diisseldorf," field is more
important than the western, or " Aix," field. The great iron and steel
works are at points where transport and access to the coal are best,
e.g. Essen and Oberhausen, Duisburg-Ruhrort ("Ruhr Mouth") and
Miilheim-on-Ruhr. Farther afield there is more attention to smaller
ware, e.g. the cutlery of Solingen and the tools of Remscheid ; and
glass is a special product on the Saar, though iron is also very
^ The trach)rtic cones are repeated in the Siebengebirge ("Seven Hills") across
the Rhine.
326
The Continent of Europe
CH.
Textiles.
Colog^ne
and
Cobleuz.
important at Saarbriicken and Neunkirchen. The great hardware
centre is Diisseldorf, the seat of the Steel Syndicate and other
similar bodies, andi the site of hardware works of all kinds — from
blast-furnaces to bridge-building, and with the largest glass-bottle
factory in the world ; the great transport centre of the hardware
district is Duisburg-Ruhrort, the largest river harbour in Europe,
with nearly 500 acres of water, nearly 600 acres of wharfage, and
fully 1 60 miles of railway.
The textile industry is more scattered. The cotton centres on the
Wupper valley, where the climate encourages weaving and " open-
work " rather than spinning Both Barmen and Elberfeld specialise
in laces, ribbons, braids, etc. ; and there is a great deal of calico-
printing, Elberfeld having the largest chemical works in Germany,
where over 200 chemists are employed on dyes, especially Turkey-
red. The woollen industry centres on the Belgian border, at Aix ;
the linen is on the old flax-lands farther north, at Gladbach ; Crefeld
spins cotton, but specialises in silk. These west-bank industries are
all largely worked by Roman Catholics, while on the east bank the
population is mainly Protestant. Cf. p. 329.
The great centre of the whole province is Cologne ("The
Colony"), with a population of 520,000, engaged in all the typical
industries of the area — textile, chemical, glass, etc., with special
interest in scent and chocolate.
As an old Roman " Colony,"
it is naturally on the " Roman "
bank of the river — at the
normal head of " ocean " navi-
gation (180 miles from the sea),
between plateau and plain,
where — below the scarp of the
old metal-bearing rock — high-
land and lowland routes cross
between Paris and Berlin,
Strassburg and Rotterdam. It
has also, with Deutz, become
an important fortress ; and
a number of industrial^
" suburbs " have sprung up
across the river, e.g. Miilheim.
Coblenz ("the Confluence"),
however, is the political capital
— itself on the " Roman " bank, but with the Ehrenbreitstein fortress
on the opposite bank. The Romans attached great importance to
this "confluence," where the narrow and tortuous Moselle route
^ The lignite field round Cologne (cf. Aix) is some 45 square miles in area, and
has some very thick seams (an extreme of 300 feet !).
10 15 £0 English Miles.
The Bonn-Bjngen gorge.
XX Prussia 327
round the Eifel from Metz and Treves, and the narrow and tortuous
Lahn route round the Taunus from Thuringia converge on a fertile
basin in the very centre of the easily defended Bonn-Bingen gorge.
Alsace-Lorraine is essentially a double area, with the crest of Alsace-
the Vosges as the natural division. Lorraine falls in more or less Lorraine,
gentle terraces westward, while Alsace falls abruptly eastward, and
the average temperature to leeward {e.^. Strassburg) is slightly
higher than to windward (e.g^. Metz), while the average rainfall is
slightly lower — this being reflected in the greater area of forest on
the Lorraine slopes of the Vosges and the greater area of vineyards
in Alsace. The Saar valley, with some coal of its own (at Forbach)
and easy access by water to the Saarbriicken coal-fields, has specialised
in glass and earthenware, e.g. at Saargemiind (cf the Hagenau
earthenware) ; and it also benefits from the Marne-and-Rhine Canal,
which crosses the river at Saarburg, — the permanence of the control
exercised here by the Zabern Pass being reflected in the series of
historic battles fought round the old site of Pfalzburg (pfalz = Latin
palatium). Between the Saar and the Moselle the barren plateau,
which includes the valley of the Seille, contains the valuable salt-
bed of Chateau Salins (cf the chemical industry of St. Avoid) ;
the soil and climate in the Moselle valley itself have greatly
encouraged intensive agriculture ; and the " Luxemburg " plateau
on the left bank is exceedingly rich in iron. The subdivisions of
Alsace are very different. The western part includes the mass
of the Vosges, with an important " alp " dairy industry (cheese) ;
the east is a typical part of the Rhine valley-plain, largely forested ;
and the 111 valley, which separates forested plain from forested
heights, is rich in water-power, it has a relatively high humidity
favourable to textile work, and it has always enjoyed certain com-
mercial advantages from its position between France, Germany,
and Switzerland, and from its easy access to the Rhine. Miilhausen
and Colmar are textile centres on the Rhine-and-Rhone Canal at
the foot of the Burgundy Gate.
Strassburg ("The Castle by the Road" — from Paris to Vienna) Strass-
has a very typical site, and has had a very typical history. It is ^^^Z ^^^
not on the " turbulent " Rhine, but a few miles up the III, at its ® ^
confluence with the Breusch, and only 2 or 3 miles west of the
Rhine ; and, as this strong military position happens also to be
just opposite the Zabern Pass across the Vosges, the French were
able to bind the city to France by the Rhine-and-Marne Canal to
the Seine as well as by the Rhine-and-Doubs Canal to the Rhone.
The Romans had used the same position for the collection of
tribute — at Argentoratum, thus laying the foundation of the banking
interest in the Middle Rhine basin ; during the latter Middle Ages
it was one of the most influential cities in the empire ; and to-day,
with improved access to the Rhine, it is a really important industrial
328 The Continent of Europe CH.
and commercial centre, with a busy trade in agricultural products
(including the famous /a/A defoie gras). Metz, too, was a Roman
centre, and was provided by the Romans with the system of military
roads (radiating to Treves, Verdun, Rheims, Toul, Langres, and
Strassburg) to which it owed much of its subsequent importance,
under its bishops and as a free imperial city. Its site, like that of
Strassburg, is on a fertile carse — between the Seille and the Moselle ;
and, as a fortress, down to 1870 it had never been taken in battle,
— hence its title of La Pucelle.
Baden. The Grand Duchy of Baden is essentially a Rhine-bank State,
though it stretches round the Odenwald to the southern bend of
the Lower Main, and round the Swabian Jura to the north of the
Upper Danube. A very large proportion of the area is mountainous
(nearly 80 p.c.) ; but the average height of the Black Forest does
not much exceed 3000 feet except south of the South Kinzig
valley, and the lowland is exceedingly fertile, growing quantities
of fruit (almonds and walnuts) and wine, hops and tobacco. The
large proportion of highland and of forest (nearly 40 p.c) have
forced the people into industrial lines, and there are now very
important industries in typical articles, e.g. light machinery, china
and glass, clocks and jewellery, toys and small articles especially
made for sale to the numerous visitors who patronise the medicinal
springs to which the State owes its name, and of which the best
known is that at Baden town. Naturally, the physical character of
the area has greatly influenced communications, and most of the
chief centres of population now are river-side railway junctions ;
but fully 50 p.c. of the population is purely "rural," though engaged
in industries. These centre on little towns in the neighbourhood,
e.g. textiles round Constance, where water-power is near to a main
line of rail, — making of clocks and toys round Furtwangen, in the
heart of the Black Forest, and round Villingen on the Kinzig-
Brigach line, — manufacture of tobacco and chicory along the Rhine-
valley railway, e.g. at Rastatt and Freiburg. At each end of the
country there is a famous University, i.e. at Heidelberg and Freiburg ;
the capital, Karlsruhe, is on the line of least resistance round the
north end of the range between the Rhine and Neckar valleys ;
and on the same line French refugees started, at Pforzheim, an
industry in cheap jewellery which has now become the most
important of its kind in the world.
Mann- -^^^ ^^ ^^^ supremely important centre in the Duchy is
heim. Mannheim. It is the confluence of the Neckar that decides the
normal head of navigation on the Rhine ; and, therefore, — though
in years of exceptionally high water, e.g. 1 9 1 o, Kehl and Strassburg
and even Basel may profit at the expense of Mannheim — the latter
must, in the long run, have a great advantage. As the northern
terminus of the Baden railways, as well as the southern terminus
XX Prussia 329
of normal navigation, it has a literally enormous hinterland; and
as four-fifths of the traffic down-stream goes empty, rates for export
are exceedingly low, while those for import are not high, and there
are no dues. Besides this direct aid, the State has been most
careful to maintain absolute harmony and co-operation between
river and rail ; it has provided a special coal-port at Rheinau, where
land is cheap, although it lies just along the main lines of rail to
the south via Schwetzing and to the east via Heidelberg ; and it
has thus made the city the great wholesale depot of South Germany,
especially in grain, coal, and petroleum. No ordinary regulation
of the river higher up in the future can do Mannheim much harm
— for two reasons. During the natural low-water stage no place
farther south dare take much advantage of an accidental and
temporary rise of level, e.g. a few days' flood, to send barges up the
river ; and no normal regulation can affect the pace of the river on
the steeper gradient to the south, even though it made it always
navigable. Like Pforzheim,^ the city owed its rise to French
refugees, who found safety in the marshy peninsula between the
Rhine and the Neckar, i.e. on the non-French side of the river,
after the massacre of St. Bartholomew. Over 20 p.c. of the total
artisan population of Baden is centred in Mannheim.
The Grand Duchy of Hessen is divided into two approximately Hessen.
equal parts by the Prussian territory round Frankfurt. The eastern
area, both north and south of the river, is mountainous (Vogelsberg
and Odenwald) ; but the western is part of the Rhine plain. The
soil is very productive, excellent wine being produced in the west,
e.g. round Bingen and Openheim ; and the large proportion of oak-
forest and the valuable cattle-pasture account for the importance
of the old leather industry. Darmstadt, the political capital, is a
route-centre at the north-west corner of the Odenwald, the steep
western scarp of which (the Bergstrasse) is famous for its wine ;
Giessen (" By the Rivers "), at the Lahn-Wieseck confluence, is the
educational capital, the School of Organic Chemistry in its University
having been made famous by Baron Liebig, who was born at
Darmstadt ; and Mainz is the commercial capital. Like Worms,
also an old Roman centre, it stands on the " Roman " bank of the
river, where the inflow of the Main tends to keep that bank free
from sediment. Under purely natural conditions this was a
position of very great importance, and it was long maintained by
exercise of " transfer right " (cf. p. 305); but the loss of transfer
right (in 1831) began what artificial regulation of the river has
completed, i.e. the displacing of Mainz by Frankfurt for eastern
traffic and by Mannheim for northern traffic (cf. p. 305).
^ Amongst the typical products of both places is celluloid.
330
The Continent of Europe
CH.
Its Char-
acter.
Its
Centres.
WURTEMBERG
Wurtemberg is a little kingdom the size of Wales, shut in by
Bavaria on the north and east and by Baden on the south and
west in such a way that it has only inferior connection with the
great east-and-west or north-and-south highways of South Germany
except at one point. But for the same reason it is fairly compact,
and the fact that it still contains many miles of Roman roads
suggests an early civilisation. A further advantage is in the relief,
which is hilly rather than mountainous, and has the Rauhe Alb
(Swabian Jura) as its natural centre. On both sides of the S.W.—
N.E. backbone the land falls in fertile terraces, the northern (Lower
Swabia) having a more genial climate than the southern (Upper
Swabia). The latter still has a typical Swabian (Suevi) population,
while west of the Neckar the population is Alemanni, and east jof
the Neckar it is Franconian. The natural centre of the country
is at Stuttgart, where the Neckar is navigable^ after its great
northward bend ; and the neighbouring town of Esslingen is a
great transport centre. The country is specifically agricultural,
with rich corn-fields, vineyards, and orchards (apple and pear),
and lush meadows which were so famous for their horses that they
gave its name to Stuttgart ("Stud-garden"); and over 30 p.c. of
the area is forested, paper-making being a typical industry, e.g. at
Ravensburg and Heilbronn. The mineral wealth is small, being
mainly confined to iron ; but the industry in this is probably as
old as the Romans, and the people have a traditional skill in
metal-working (cf. the pianos of Stuttgart, the engines of Esslingen,
mathematical instruments, etc.) ; and, as the abundant water-power
compensates largely for the absence of coal, old textile industries
in woollens and linens still flourish, e.g. at Esslingen and Goppingen.
The most important centre politically is Stuttgart, with an
industrial bulwark at Esslingen and the State University at
Tubingen. Though it is rather isolated from the outside world,
the compactness of the kingdom and the energy of the people
have combined to attract to it all the typical activities of the
country, including the clock-making of the Black Forest ; but it
is relatively modern — the old capital having been Cannstatt — and
owes its architectural beauty and artistic treasures to royal patrons
attracted to the place by its fine climate and beautiful surroundings.
The most important centre strategically is the old city of Ulm.
It stands where the confluence of the Iller makes the Danube
navigable, and marks the terminus of the long Alpine valley by
which the Suevi originally moved northwards. It thus guards the
approach from the east to the Burgundy Gate, and is still a fortress
^ The actual port is at Cannstatt, c. 900 feet above sea-level.
XX Bavaria 331
of first rank, the base of operations for the German army behind
the Black Forest, and capable of accommodating a force of fully
100,000 men. Its grand old cathedral, which is said to be able to
hold 30,000 persons, suggests its importance in the Middle Ages ; and
the city still retains its old leather and cloth trades. The most
important centre commercially is Heilbronn, on the site of a
Roman settlement. It is a very old town ; and much of it — like
Ulm, but unlike Stuttgart — looks old, with its turreted walls and
gabled roofs. Old industries, too, in delicate metal-work (gold and
silver) still flourish. But it is so far north that it has become a
great rail and river junction, the natural head of steam navigation
on the Neckar and commanding railway traffic round the end of
the Black Forest.
Bavaria
In Bavaria, except for a fringe of Longheads dotted about its Char-
the main lines of movement, e.g. along the Danube or on the acter.
approaches to the great Alpine passes, we are in a land of Round-
heads. No doubt, there is a considerable mixture of influences,
e.g. Germanised Slav in the north-east, Swabian in the centre, Frank
in the north - west ; but the dominating strain can probably be
traced back to times before Odoacer's troops swept the country,
and its physical qualities and mental activities are very significant.
.Indeed, it seems to represent an approximation to that original
stock which found its highest expression in the ancient Greeks,
and from which the Slavs have degenerated. The geographical
conditions were favourable to the survival of such a stock — at
least, off" the line of the main routes ; for the core of the area is an
old " Variscan fragment " with a Steppe climate. It may be
divided into five natural regions — (i) the high plateau between the
frontier streams of Iller and Salzach and south of a line joining
Ulm and Augsburg to Miihldorf, (2) the riverine lands north of
that up to the Danube, (3) the constricted valleys of the Naab and
the Regen between the Bohemian Forest on the one hand, and the
Franconian Jura and Bavarian Forest on the other, (4) the basin
of the winding Main from the Fichtelgebirge, and (5) the alien
Palatinate. It is, therefore essentially a highland area walled in by
mountains, for the Bohemian Forest (4800 feet) falls abruptly on
the Bavarian side, and the Noric Alps have, in Zugspitze (9700
feet), the highest peak in the German Empire. The most
characteristic feature of the high plateau, which is simply a
continuation of the Swiss plateau, is the number of important
streams which cross it at short and regular intervals, and which flow
more or less parallel with one another in deep gullies that form
natural barriers to movement east-and-west. The section of the
332
The Continent of Europe
CH.
Economic
Geo-
graphy.
Industrial
Divisions.
Jura that faces the riverine lands has been so much denuded that
there are relatively easy valleys across it, e.g. those of the Wornitz
and the Altmiihl, while to the north the uplift becomes an expanse
of hilly land rather than a consecutive scarp — thus facilitating the
construction of the Ludwig Canal. Cf. p. 296.
Agriculture and forestry are the natural occupations of the area,
and the importance of the forestry is intimately related to the relief
and to the lack of mineral wealth, for much of the hilly country is
not favourable to agriculture, and there is an almost total absence
of coal. These conditions have re-acted on a poor population of
pronounced artistic leaning in such a way as to account for some of
the typical modern industries. For instance, the very important
glass industry, although now centred at Fiirth, flourished at least
500 years ago on the forested sandstone of the Spessart ; and to-
day the great paper industry of Aschaffenburg gets, not only much
of its raw material, but also the whole of its workmen from the
same poverty-stricken highland. Cheap labour, again, accounts for
the huge ready-made clothes industry of the town. The crochet
and glass-bead embroidery, the basket-work, the polishing of cedar-
wood for pencils, were all at first home industries undertaken by
the women to eke out the earnings of the men in the quarries and
as navvies or foresters. The largest forests are in the south, but the
best timber comes from the north, e.g. the Spessart oak. About half
the area is cultivated, and a sixth is pasture. The latter is most
important in the extreme south, where the alp pasture is very
favourable to cattle, especially in the Algau. The riverine lands
produce barley, rye, oats, and wheat in large quantities, each of the
first three in 191 1 having a value of over ;!^7, 000,000 ! Hops are
widely grown, especially in the Regnitz basin, the finest coming
from the Halledau and Spalt districts ; and the same area grows
the best tobacco in Germany. Wine is a special product in the
Lower Main valley, e.g. round Wiirzburg, and in the Palatinate;
and the sandstone of the same two areas grows famous potatoes.
The position of the three Universities of Munich, Wiirzburg,
and Erlangen, almost suggests a three-fold industrial division of the
kingdom. The Erlangen, Fiirth, and Niirnberg area is the centre
of the hop and tobacco trades and of the glass and toy industries —
Niirnberg being the " capital of toy-world " in all materials except
felt (which is cheaper in England), and having local supplies of
wood, paper, and celluloid. The Munich centre is specially con-
cerned with chemical and electrical work, having abundance of salt in
the Inn and the Salzach valleys, e.g. at Rosenheim and Traunstein —
abundance of water-power, used near Traunstein for nitrogen works
— and some coal or lignite both south-west and south-east of the
city, providing both Munich itself and Augsburg with perhaps one-
third of their supply. The Wiirzburg centre is more interested in
XX Bavaria 333
wine and " wood " products. The genius of the people seems
specially developed in the working of metal, from gold-leaf and
spun silver (for trimmings) to various transport media, both Munich
and Niirnberg having important locomotive and motor works, and
both Munich andWiirzburg having important industries in surgical and
mathematical instruments. Water-power is largely used in textile as
well as in mechanical works, especially on the Lech, e.g. at Augsburg,
and on the Upper Main valley, where Hof and Beyreuth, Bamberg
and Lichtenfels, are important centres, the "textile" industry of
Bamberg and Lichtenfels including basket-weaving. The most
widely-distributed industry is the brewing ; and the best known
breweries, e.g. those at Munich and Kulmbach, Erlangen and
Niirnberg, have special advantages of nearness to the best barley or
the best water or the best hops. The best known product is
probably the pencils of Niirnberg, — the lead of which comes mainly
from the graphite mines near Passau — or the lithographic stone of
Solnhofen. The great lack of coal is largely compensated by the
abundance of water-power and the facilities for importing fuel by
water, e.g. Rumanian petroleum to Ratisbon.
In many ways the Palatinate is more favoured than Bavaria The Pala-
proper, but it produces much the same products, e.g. tobacco and *"^**'
wine, wood and grain. Its special products are the chemicals of
Ludwigshafen and the boots and shoes of Pirmasens ; and the
military routes westward from Ludwigshafen and Spires (the capital)
have given facilities for transport which have encouraged a great
development of textiles in the humid forested valleys on the wind-
ward face of the Haardt, e.g. at Kaiserslautern.
Four towns are of special interest. Munich — on the central Munich
river of Southern Bavaria, on the north edge of the Alpine foreland, f^^ Augs-
between moor and forest, in the rear of the Danube, controlling the
junction of the Brenner route with the great " Piedmont " road
from Vienna to Basel (cf. Hohenlinden, Blenheim, Miihldorf, etc.) —
was the natural south-eastern outlet of Southern Germany, and so
the natural political centre of old Bavaria, as it is the natural
economic centre of modern Bavaria, and the largest city in Southern
Germany. It " inherits " the old university first founded in the
fortress-town of Ingoldstadt, and then moved to the industrial centre
of Landshut, where textiles and scientific instruments are as typical
products as in Munich itself. Augsburg, on the western river of
Southern Bavaria, had a somewhat similar position ; but the Lech
does not lead so directly to the Brenner as the Isar does, and the
importance of the place was specifically local, as a fortress between
the Lech and the Wertach. Indeed, the fact that the Lech still
divides Swabia from Bavaria and Alemannian from Bavarian types,
is sufficient comment on its torrential character — shown in its
endless arms, its rush-grown islands, its terrific floods, or the
334 The Continent of Europe ch.
recent progress in textile industries with power from the curbed
torrent.
Ratisbon Ratisbon and Niirnberg represent the lowland rather than the
and Num- hjorhland control. Both are on the line of least resistance between
the Middle Danube and the Middle Main, t.e. a more important
route in olden days than the direct north-and-south route via the
Wornitz or Altmiihl valley ; and the change in the relative value of
these routes has been compensated, as far as Ratisbon and Niirnberg
are concerned, by the increased importance of the routes by the
Naab valley into the Eger valley, and by the Regen valley into the
Beraun. Ratisbon (Regensburg) had, and still has, easy access via
Landshut to the Brenner, and the advantage of being on the
northerly bend of the Danube, at the limit of " deep " navigation ;
but, though once the meeting-place of the Imperial Diet, it is too
near the frontier to have permanent political importance other than
in war. Niirnberg, though more important even politically and
owing its rise to the command given by its castled rock over the
sandy plain, was essentially a commercial centre in the Pegnitz gap ;
and it still is one of the most important junctions (rail, river, road,
and canal) in Germany.
Saxony
Its Char- The triangular kingdom of Saxony, from its base on the
acter. Erzgebirge (" Ore Mountains "), intrudes so far into the great
European plain that its apex, at Leipzig, has had for ages special
facilities for tapping trans-continental trade, while the abundant
water-power and the mineral wealth of the Ore Mountains made
it an industrial as well as a commercial area. The actual amount
of lowland is not great, but the soil is exceedingly fertile ; and, on
the other hand, the Erzgebirge nowhere reach 4000 feet, while the
Lusatian heights do not reach even 3000. The mountain base,
however, lies S.W.-N.E., throwing off its water-supply naturally
towards the north-west, i.e. parallel to the course of the Elbe ; and
one important result of this is that very few of its numerous rivers
flow directly to the Elbe, thus providing the area with a succession
of separate arteries more or less parallel with one another. The
sub-tributaries converge, however, on the tributaries, e.g. the Mulde,
the Pleisse, and the Elster, within the frontiers of the kingdom,
thus making the "apex" site of Leipzig almost deltaic. Saxony,
therefore — since it got rid of the futile Slav subdivision of its land
into microscopic fragments — has become one of the most advanced
agricultural States in the world, the richest grain- lands (rye and
oats) being just where these rivers drop on to the lowland, e.g. at
Bautzen, Meissen, and Grimma ; and, though its climate is
somewhat severe, it grows enormous quantities of hardy fruit,
XX
Saxony
335
especially cherries, plums, and apples, e.g. round Grimma, while
the Vogtland grows equally large crops of potatoes.
The prosperity of the kingdom, however, is based essentially on Mineral
the mineral wealth and water-power of the mountains, thanks to Wealth,
which the population is the densest in Europe, the total of nearly
5,000,000 for an area of under 6000 square miles giving an average
of well over 800 per square mile. The Erz have a steep southward
fall to the valleys of the Eger and the Biela, but a gentler slope
northward, i.e. on the windward side ; and the varied course of the
rivers, through open " bay " or narrow gorge, betrays the alternation
of hard old rock with soft sedimentary rock. The hard old rock is,
or was, characteristically rich in metal, e.g. silver and tin ; and the
neighbouring sedimentary rock (cf. p. 49) is rich in coal. There
are still nominally four ore-mining districts — round Frieberg, where
POLAND
Sanford'a CeogI Estabf^ London.
The industrial areas, Saxony and Silesia.
silver has been worked for 800 years, round Scheeberg (cobalt and
nickel), round Johann-Georgenstadt (silver and iron), and the
Miiglitz valley round Altenberg (tin); but the metallic wealth
is largely exhausted, and the economic life of the area has
gravitated to, or been entirely remodelled by, the coal-fields of
Zwickau, Oelsnitz, and Chemnitz. There is also a small field
between Dresden and Freiberg, and both Dresden and Leipzig
have fields of brown coal. With this wealth of coal, and enough
water-power elsewhere to run almost as many factories as are
worked by coal, Saxony has come to monopolise more than one-
fourth of all the textile industries of Germany.
There was, however, a third influence at work — in the "after- Industries,
results" of the old tin and silver mining. This had attracted
population almost to the very crest of the Erz, e.g. at Annaberg and
Altenberg ; and, when the mining began to fail, the inhabitants did
not desert their mountain homes, but sought employment in other
336 The Continent of Europe ch.
directions. As agriculture was out of the question at such altitudes,
and as forest industries were limited, home industries sprang up in
" textiles," e.g. lace and straw-plaiting, or toys (Vogtland) and fine
metal work, e.g. the gold lace of Freiburg and the watches of the
Altenberg-Glashiitte district. Climatic conditions are more favour-
able to secondary than to primary processes, and cotton is naturally
more suited to the windward than to the leeward range of mountains.
The great cotton district is in and round Zwickau and Chemnitz,
e.g. at Meerane and Glauchau, Werdau and Krimitschau — Chemnitz
being the metropolis, and the special product being hosiery. Nearer
the mountains, e.g. from Reichenbach to Plauen, lace is more
typical, Plauen being specially known for its white embroidery
and muslin (cf. Falkenstein and Auerbach), as Annaberg is for
passementeries. In the drier east, wool takes the place of cotton.
The other chief industries of the kingdom are in hardware and
stoneware, e.g. all kinds of "machinery" (mining, textile, printing,
locomotive), especially at Chemnitz and Dresden, and of " china,"
especially at Meissen (porcelain) and Pirna (earthenware).
Towns. Pirna, with its famous sandstone quarries, stands at the exit of
the Elbe from the Saxon " Switzerland." Though very far from
being typically Swiss, the district is exceedingly picturesque, owing its
beauty to the deep gorges and quaint isolated peaks easily worn by
water and ice in the soft sandstone ; and it was this gorge that gave
such political importance to a site within easy access of the fine
building-stone and the beautiful scenery that the capital was moved
to Dresden ("The Forest") from Meissen ("The Frontier,") — the
latter placed, typically for a frontier fort, on the west bank of the
Elbe. Dresden still has a strategic value, and its industrial import-
ance has grown with the development of the coal-field to the west ;
but, except for Dresden itself, the whole balance of power has moved
to the west of the kingdom, and Dresden (like Halle) never had a
tithe of the non-local importance possessed by Leipzig. For Dresden
was too far south, as Halle was too far north, to be the natural
meeting-place of the Thuringian Road from the west with the road
that skirts the Lusatian plateau from the east, and crosses the Elbe
at Riesa — still a busy river-port, on the " German " bank of the
river.
Leipzig. Leipzig, too, had the commercial advantage of being at the great
bend on the Elster and the strategic advantage of the Elster-Pleisse
marshes within the bend. As far as internal commerce is concerned,
it has the most central site in the Empire, and has thus come to be
the seat of the Supreme Law Courts of the Empire ; it has also
the most central site strategically in what is called the "cockpit of
Germany " ; it has one of the oldest Universities in Germany and
one of the most important printing and publishing^ trades in the
^ As a bookselling centre, it is more important than either Paris or Londoa
XX
Saxony
337
world. A fishing village, between forest and pasture and marsh, it
had natural facilities for local collection of .skins and furs ; and it is
now one of the most important fur and leather markets in the world,
with a very large book-binding industry. The substitution of metallic
for wooden type did it no harm, for it had easy access to practically
all the necessaries for modern type-founding (copper, tin, lead, bis-
muth, antimony, etc.) ; and the substitution of "wood" for textile
materials in paper-making only gave it a new use for its forests. Its
two greatest fairs are held at Easter and Michaelmas, and the chief
articles sold (to the value of perhaps ;^i 0,000,000), are still furs,
skins, leather, wool, hair, and bristles. But the city has very im.-
portant industries of its own, including scientific and musical instru-
ments (cf. Dresden), artificial flowers (cf. Dresden), and chemicals —
the last founded on the salt of its old rival, Halle, which provided
its earliest cargoes.
The city illustrates specifically the process referred to above
(p. 283), by which the central position of Germany enables her
more or less to monopolise many of the markets that she can reach
without " break-of-bulk." As a proof of this the following figures
may be quoted from The Times : —
Iron and Steel Exports (in Thousands j£)
To European Countries
(without " break -of-bulk ").
To all other Countries
(with "break-of-bulk").
From IPe-^cent-
E„gland.| f^^^l
From
Germany.
Percent-
age of
Total.
From
England.
Percent-
age of
Total.
From
Germany.
Percent-
age of
Total.
1908
1909
I9I0
I9II
10,109 ' 27
8,353 22
9,400 22
10,916 25
24.475
24,230
27,777
33.626
69
68
66
67
27,279
29.839
33.577
32.814
73
78
78
75
10,951
11.332
14.273
16,238
31
32
34
33
Note. — The figures for Germany include hardware, cutlerj-, implements, and tools, and other
goods not included in the English figures. These goods were valued at 6J millions sterling in
1908, and for 191 1 may be estimated at about 9 millions.
CHAPTER XXI
AUSTRIA-HUNGARY
16° E. The empire occupies a very significant position, which may be
*^ ^' indicated by longitude 15° E. and latitude 45° N., the one linking
the Adriatic to the Baltic, and the other linking the Adriatic to the
Black Sea. All the important political relations of the empire are
implied in this. Many of its most important historical relations are
also suggested by it. For north and west of 15' E. and 45° N.
was the " Land of the Cross," while south and east of it was
the " Land of the Crescent," so that it afforded routes alike for
Crusaders moving towards Asia and for Asiatic hordes and Ottoman
armies moving into Central Europe. West of 15° E. is still
typically European, in its manufacturing industries, its Teutonic
civilisation, its adhesion to the Roman Church, while east of 15° E.
is still somewhat Asiatic, a land of raw materials, of predominantly
Slav interests, and of adhesion to the Greek Church. But, as the
whole area touches more foreign lands than any other Power in
Europe, internal differences have been to some extent mitigated by
one bond of union — hatred or fear of outside Powers, of Asiatics up
to the eighteenth century and of Europeans since then.
Frontier: The actual frontier is far from satisfactory, its underlying
Physical, principles being often contradictory in different parts. In the
Bohemian Forest, the Erz, and the Riesen ranges, it is practically an
elevated water-parting — with strategic conditions less favourable on
the Austrian than on the non-Austrian side ; but except on the
Bohemian Forest, population rises to such an elevation (cf. p. 314)
that the frontier can scarcely be said to cause minimum disturbance
of natural associations. Between the Adda and the Adige, as
between the Upper Aluta and the Bistritza-Sereth, it is an elevated
and very sparsely peopled water-parting that is not unfavourable
to Austria or Hungary, while between the Tagliamento and
the Drave it is an elevated and unpeopled water-parting that is
distinctly favourable to Austria. But a large proportion of the
frontier is marked by rivers ; and, except in places where population
is densest, i.e. north of Aussig and south of Trent (cf. the Upper
338
CH. XXI Austria-Hungary 339
Eger valley), the chief rivers are not crossed directly. Thus, the
frontier crosses the Inn and the Danube in the west, the Oder and
the Vistula in the north, the Dniester and the Sereth in the east,
the Drina and the Danube in the south ; but in each case it runs
along the river before or after crossing it. Again, it runs along the
Salzach instead of along the line of minimum population to the
west of the river, along the Oppa instead of along the crest of the
Gesenke ; and it adopts, instead of avoiding, stray bits of minor
rivers, e.g. the San and the Bug, the Zbrucz and the Pruth. Only
towards Rumania does it follow a line of minimum population,
crossing the only main artery, the Aluta, directly ; and only on the
Vistula is there any obvious excuse. There, between the Austro-
Prussian and Austro - Russian reaches, the Austrian frontier is
projected across the river as a foreground to the great fortress of
Cracow, itself on the north bank as the old capital of Poland ; and
the dense population of Silesia has practically come into existence
since the frontier was drawn. Cf. p. 251.
The apparent reasons for this primitive type of frontier are Frontier:
partly the somewhat primitive condition of the area, as a typical Strategic,
piece of Oriental Europe, and partly the fact that inside the
unsatisfactory Imperial frontier is the admirable Hungarian frontier
of the Carpathians. This is, indeed, crossed by half a dozen lines
of rail, leading to the various centres outside the ring, e.g. Cracow
and Tarnow, Przemysl and Lemberg, Stanislau, and Czernovitz ;
but the practical impossibility of Russia violating the neutrality (?)
of Prussian territory, and the actual impossibility of transporting
a large army across the Carpathians, make Cracow the key to the
whole frontier. And, as on the eastern frontier of Prussia, there
are lines of rail running " parallel " with the frontier and related to
the Vistula. In this case the outer line is part of the through-route
from Odessa to Breslau via Lemberg and Przemysl, Tarnow and
Cracow, while the inner more or less skirts the Carpathians, tapping
the various lines which cross them, and which are all connected on
the inside of the barrier by a third line running from the Upper
Theiss to the Jablunka Pass. Two lines from Russia tap the
Moravian Gate, but neither runs via Cracow, and only one of them
(from Warsaw) is double -tracked and standard gauge, while the
Vistula throughout the 100 odd miles of its frontier course is
unbridged. Approach on Cracow from the east would be equally
difficult, for — though neither Lemberg nor Przemysl is fortified in
the same way as Cracow — there is a great area of swamp in the
Bug basin, and the chief rivers, e.g. Bug and Sereth, San and
Zlota Lipa, offer an almost continuous obstacle from north to south.
The detached provinces which involve all this length of artificial Detached
frontier, are all Austrian ; and their political influence on Austria '^^"'^"^ces.
has been consequently adverse. For it was essential that outlying
340 The Continent of Europe ch.
centres should be strong — strategically strong against attack in war,
and politically strong against foreign influence in time of peace ; and
the decentralisation necessary for this has accentuated the internal
difficulties of the kingdom — many of them focused at the typical
" fortress-universities " of the outlying areas, e.g. Innsbruck and
Prague, Cracow and Czernovitz, Kolozsvar and Agram.
Sea-coast, The sea-frontier is a deceptive one. Its actual length, in detail,
is nearly one-fifth of the whole frontier ; and the maritime progress
of the empire has been considerable in recent years, the commercial
marine having increased by 50 p.c. (100 vessels) since 1901, with
an increased tonnage of nearly 100 p.c. (180,000 tons). But an
enormous proportion of the coast and most of the natural harbours are
in Dalmatia, which is one of the poorest and least accessible areas
of Europe, so that even a magnificent harbour like that of Cattaro
is of little use ; and, on the other hand, at the points nearest to the
internal centres of population the coast is not only curiously
deficient in natural harbours, but is also troubled by a barren and
riverless hinterland, across which access inland is difficult and
expensive. Of course, to a " land " empire even ports like Trieste
and Fiume are indispensable; and the annexation of Bosnia and
the Herzegovina opens some prospects for Spalato and Ragusa ; but
climatic difficulties and Slav speech are great drawbacks.
Trieste Trieste has one great advantage in being the natural terminus of
^^ the most easterly Alpine railway ; but, as a port, it has only a
narrow foothold on a strip of lowland below a steep scarp. Here,
it is between the strong southerly gales from the Adriatic Low-
Pressure centre (cf. p. 55) and the stormy Bora,^ which at times
makes the harbour inaccessible even for large steamers. In spite
of fairly good railway facilities, therefore, traffic from the interior
tends to gravitate down the Elbe or down the Danube ; and only
the most determined support from Vienna, especially in providing
direct railway communication with Central Europe via Salzburg, has
enabled Trieste to become an important centre of American trade.
Even this it has to share with Fiume, which has been similarly sup-
ported from Budapest ; indeed, Fiume (" River ") is almost entirely
an artificial creation — where the "little river," Fiumare, enters the
stormy Quarnero Gulf from the last ridge of the Croatian " karst," the
one with a typical fishing industry (sardine and tunny) and the other
with an equally typical Pilgrims' Church, hung with thank-offerings
from rescued mariners and approached by a " ladder " of 400 steps.
The North The future of the mercantile marine depends largely, however,
^p^i*"*' *^" ^^^ firmness with which the government insists on Trieste getting
a fair share of Central European traffic as against the mere 4 p.c.
allotted to it by rival German interests. The " Tauern and Kara-
wanken " access to Innsbruck, besides attracting many tourists,
1 The Bora is a cause of great danger, even to foot-passengers, in Trieste.
" Pool"
XXI Austria-Hungary 341
provides Trieste with facilities which have been negatived only by
an extraordinary manipulation of rates on the German State Rail-
ways to North Sea ports. This has included persistent encourage-
ment of emigration from Austria, which has been carried to such
an extent that the deficiency of labour, especially agricultural, has
greatly raised the cost of living. As similar emigration is fiercely
discountenanced in Germany itself, and as the interests of Trieste
have been entirely ignored, the government has recently granted a
■ concession to the Canadian Pacific Railway for a new service between
Trieste and Canada, the Company undertaking (i) to use all its organ-
isation in America to keep the government in touch with Austrians
who have emigrated, and (2) not to encourage any further emigra-
tion. If this arrangement is maintained, in the teeth of the German
bureaucratic machine, it may revolutionise the traffic of south-eastern
and east-central Europe — greatly to the advantage of Trieste.
Pola is marked out by site and character for a naval station, Pola and
while its intensely unhealthy climate is adverse to the growth of a Cattaxo.
commercial centre. It is on an almost landlocked bay, with an
entrance less than 800 yards wide and defended by islands ; so it
became one of the chief naval stations of the Roman Empire, and
still has the finest remains of a Roman amphitheatre in Europe.
Its only characteristic trade is in the glass-sand which was originally
worked by the Venetians, who built (in the sixteenth century) the still
surviving town walls. This inner station is supported by an outer
station at Cattaro, the geographical conditions of which enabled it to
maintain itself till a.d. 1420 as an independent republic. It is at the
head of a gulf shut in on all sides by mountains — now covered with
fortifications — and the entrance is through a succession of straits,
varying in width from i mile on the outermost to ^ mile on the
innermost. The latter is known as the Canal Le Catene (" The
Chain Channel "), because the Venetians used to close it by a chain.
However valuable this position may be for " watching " Montenegro,
it obviously has little or no commercial possibilities.
Spalato and Ragusa (also once an independent republic), however, Dalmatian
have such possibilities, the one in connection with the Bay of Salona, Ports,
which was a terminus for the old Roman roads, and the other in
connection with the Bay of Gravosa. In both cases progress
depends on railway facilities inland ; but Ragusa owed its greater
safety in olden days to the very fact that the Herzegovina is largely
barren "karst," and its railway access inland now is via Metkovit,
i.e. the head of navigation on the Narenta. The peninsula of Zara
and the bay of Sebenico also have obvious advantages ; but Zara
has been overrated because of its convenience to conquerors who
came from the north, e.g. Venetians, and neither of them has a
valuable hinterland. The whole coast, however, has good fisheries,
and supplies all the best sailors to the navy and the commercial
342
The Continent of Europe
CH.
General
Belief.
Peoples.
Racial
Divisions.
marine ; and the climate and soil of the coast-lands are favourable
to the growth of stone-fruit (cf the maraschino liqueur of Sebenico).
The nucleus of the Austro-Hungarian area is a natural unit of
lowland lying between Vienna and Munkacs, Budapest and Belgrade ;
and, as the geometrical "centre " of the whole area, between Vienna
and the old Hungarian capital of Pressburg, is the morphological
"centre" of the lowland, it has obvious political and strategic
advantages, while the lowland itself has obvious commercial and
agricultural advantages. This natural unit is surrounded by a
barrier of forested mountains, through which the passes are numerous
enough and easy enough to encourage communication without
seriously affecting the strategic value of the barrier (cf. the Jablunka
and Vereczke, the Tomos and the Roteturm) ; and it was the
distinctively Alpine portion that made the rampart which enabled
Austria to save Europe from Asia. Unfortunately, the mountain
area is profoundly heterogeneous, and is flanked towards Asia by
detached lowlands which have involved serious decentralisation in
an area specially needing centralisation. For the variety of relief,
in the Alpine and Carpathian ranges, the Bohemian and Tran-
sylvanian plateaus, the Dalmatian coast and the Hungarian plain,
implies a variety of occupations and consequently a variety of
economic, if not political, interests ; and there are also racial differ-
ences between the most marked types, e.g. the Tyrolese highlanders,
the Austrian foresters, the Magyar " nomads " of the plain.
The constant warfare to which the area was condemned in
early times, was adverse to agriculture or any other fixed occupation
and to the accumulation of wealth ; but highlanders, foresters, and
nomads do not naturally accumulate wealth, while they are naturally
devoted to personal liberty. But in this case personal liberty and
national existence were alike involved in successful resistance to the
swarms of Asia in their expansion up the broad Danube and over
the vast plains of its middle "basin." In later times, too, the varied
interests — often emphasised by variety of creed — have encouraged
healthy racial rivalry as some compensation for the political in-
coherence ; at all events, they have helped to perpetuate old customs
and costumes, old languages and literatures, in the attempt to
"express racial patriotism in racial emblems."
The great difficulty is that no one race is sufficiently strong or
numerous to attract or dominate all the others, though the finest
type — the Magyar — has much the most influential position. There
is, therefore, no common language or literature, just as there is no
common creed, and little unity of political aims. Most of the
people are neither Austrians and adherents of the Roman Church,
nor Hungarians and Protestants, but Slavs who are devoted to the
Greek Church, and whose name is ignored in the title of the
empire. The natural bond here might reasonably have been
XXI Austria- Hungary 343
between White race and White against Yellow, i.e. between Roman
Church and Greek Church, Teutons and Slavs, Germans and
Russians, against the Protestant Magyars. But the political
tendencies are rather in favour of linking the Greek Church Slavs
with the Protestant Magyars ; for there is no outside Magyar Power
which either threatens or attracts, while common jealousy of the
outside German Power is a very real bond.
The purely Alpine area, as we have seen, presents normal Alpine
Alpine features in the most favourable form — lower crest, easier Area,
passes, wider valleys, so that the percentage of absolutely barren
land is small (lo to 20 p.c), and the means of communication are
good. Of special importance are the great longitudinal valleys by
which the central crystalline zone is cut off from the limestone zones,
and lines of movement radiate eastward from the Brenner — by
Salzach and Enns, by Drave and Save. This Alpine area is separated
by the karst saddle from the Dinaric area and by the Danube
valley from the Sudetic area, with its enclosed Bohemian plateau ;
and the Sudetic area is separated from the Carpathians by the
Moravian Gate, while the Austrian provinces beyond the Gate and
the Carpathians are more isolated externally, if more accessible
internally, than the Austrian provinces behind the Dalmatian coast.
Austria, therefore, is very far from homogeneous. Its straggling Austrian
provinces make it physically less regular and compact than Hungary ; ^?^'
and the decentralisation involved in this has drawn the German
population to Germany and the various other elements to congenial
neighbours, e.g. the Tyrolese to Italy by the Brenner and the
Ruthenians to Russia by the Dniester valley, thus increasing the
natural difficulty of governing the various isolated units. Further,
the political and historic geography of the area has made the typical
Austrian peculiarly exclusive and self-contained — apt not only to
depend on himself, economically^ and otherwise, but also to fight
for his own hand ; and, though these conditions are changing as
agriculture becomes less and less able to support and employ the
increasing population, surrounding peoples are not likely to be
attracted by or to the Austrians.
Hungary, on the other hand, is not only very markedly compact, Hungar-
but is troubled by fewer minor races; and the Magyar, on the i^°^.Co°--
central Alfold, is dominant both by position and by character. The ^°^'
large proportion of steppe, the small proportion of forest, and other
economic factors, e.g. lack of stone, have tended to make the
Magyar nobleman less self-sufficient than the Austrian nobleman,
and the Magyar peasant more self-reliant than the Austrian peasant,
so that the nation reaps the double advantage of internal unity and
individual strength.
* Agriculturally, he is so autarchic that a fall in "World " prices scarcely affects
him except so far as he needs cash to pay taxes.
344 The Continent of Europe ch.
Tte S^T». Tbe Sfatvs of tlie north are divided firom those of the sooth by
the Genuan-Mvgjsr bdt which stretches across the coontiy firom
vest to east, occnp^wg the ridiest gain and nuneral areas ; and it
seems to have been die oiigpnal Magyar settloDent that made a
great Star empire impoeaable in the Bfiddle Danube basin. The
two bodies of Slavs are also veaty &r firom being cohereat in them-
selves; £«- variety of rdief and **iaoe''and rei^ion are voy serious
bairiet^ e^, between the Slovak h^ghlandos of the Hungarian Ore
Mountains, die Caedis of the Austrian plateau, and the Ruthenians
of die Pdfeh plain. And, as geqgiaphic variety and varied creed
have beoi accmtuated hf hstoric jealousies based on the variei^ of
**noe^* there k no conodvaUe pn^nbility of sudi an evolution as a
Fan-SfaiT North,
■aiaaai The Slovaks are the descendants of refv^ees who rdused to
^^''^**- accept die creed or dominion of the conqoerois in the Battle of
White Hin (jlix 1620)^ and idio took rduge in die mountainous
recesses of Hui^;aiy under die dominion of the Protestant Magyars.
Here diey were safe and free ; but the conditions of safety involved
bad communication and poverty, whidi have hem r^ected in the
backward condition, educationally and otfaowise^ of die area. The
typical product is a sheeps'smilk dieese made under exactly the
same conditions as die Roqu^iart product of the Aveyron ** crater "
pastures. The Czechs became adheroits of the Roman Church
under the compulsion of the Thirty Yeais* War, and so remained
on their ridi plateau — rich in fertile snl and mineial wealdi, wboe
small hoMii^ could be suf^iorted by industrial eainii^s. With
natmal lamparts of mountains and a small area, they have devdoped
a sdfoontained and exdusive l^pe, suffideotly united to have proved
a Strang obslacfe to German influences. In the stiu^^ the
maintenance of the Caedi bi^iage and die great effisrts made to
devdop intdlectnal supremacy, in place of the p(4itical sapamacy
diat is foibidden, have been of prime importance. The Ruthenians
of Eastern Galida and Bukowina are Litde Russians^ £e. pnwtjcally
Cossacks — t^fpically brave^ devoted adherents <^ the Greek Church,
and wiDii^ to make Russian a Fan-Slav speech ; but constant war,
Slavic subdivision of land, and Sbivic subjection to Jewish middle-
men, have left them as poor as they are unintdkctnaL Nor is there
any hope for their imprafvement so kx^ as Aey can get education
imdf in the hated Pcdish tot^;ue^ or the whole access into Austria b
baned by the definitely Polidi population of Western Galida and
the MocavBoi Gate^
SoaChwm The so ulhe iu ^avs are not <Mfy ^vided bom dieir northern
*•■■■■ relatians by the Geiman-Magyar wed^ but also — like the northern
Slavs — made incoherent and impotent by intmnal differences,
political and rejjgyins. The Slovenes (or Wends) are poKticaIfy
Amirians, and dieir natural gravitatiiMD to the Adriatic has kept them
XXI
Austria-H ungaiy
345
ja. lUc %r ler «» ftic
Roman in creed. The Croats^ with similar gnmtatioa to the Adri-
atic, are also Rcnnan in creed ; but pcdilicallj thejr are Hai^;ariaii&.
The Slavcmiaps are also Hnngarian, bitt their land gravitates eastward,
and their creed is Gredc AO diree are mainljr Servian bf race, and
all are politically attracted to Senria ; but, so long as tfaef are con-
tent to make "pattiotian" depend cm creed, and made the diflfer-
ences in eveiy posnUe way, e^. by costmnev by script and "fbmit''
of type, etc, thoe is no conoeivaUe piobaiMlify of any Fan-Sbr
SoatL Economical^, too^ they are foredoomed victims of the
middlemen in virtue cxT dieir perfectly nsdess bngnages — iwriess
that is, for Worid markets. The one great difietence is that, wbSc
Austria has — since 1866 — forced her Slav subjects to m a intain tfaeir
own Slovene speech, Hui^;aiy guaranteed theiis to die Croats and
Slavonians, thus condemning them to a useless eocmomic medium and
sacrifidi^ the opportnnitjr for consolidating the Hungarian trinfldom
which would have been given by the spread of the Magyar fanguage.
The climate varies greatfy in d iflfe ren t parts of the empire^ the
greatest oontiasts beii^ between die "Meditenanean" phenomena
(jiihe Adriatic roastlands and the "continental" phenomena of the
eastern and north-eastern lowlands. The mountains aoe not h%jh
enough to exclude ccid winds ficom
Russia; the distance 60m the sea or
the intervening h^land prevents any
part except in the Adriatic horn having
a heavy rain≪ and the total area
(240,000 square miles) is oonsidetable.
On the Adriatic the dimate is mild
and equable, Fiume havii^ an aveia^
rain£dl of 70 inches, with temperature
langii:^ from 44° F. to 73" F. ; and, as
the rainfidl is practically confined to
winter, fruit -growing is greatty en-
couraged, even tropical fruits ripenmg
out oi doors in Southern Dalmatia. ^^
In the continental area the lainlEdl
is practically confined to the summer, die
in off the Black Sea to a low^xessure centre . „ : ^
of Hui^^ry; and it varies ftran 20 inches on the drie:
the lowland to 40 inches on the Carpathians, Boda{>e
just over 24 indies and Debreczin just under 23. The
temperature averages from 29° F. to 70° F., but even at V
actoal extremes lai^ie from z" F. to 94° F. The diyne
winds over the sandy plains is main^ responsible for the :
evaporation of lakes — not only the '* White Lakes* of t;
whidi leave their beds encrusted with ** sal^" but even the N
See, whidi is occasionally completdy dry.
EC^
Ivs
346
The Continent of Europe
CH.
Hungary
Frontier. In spite of nearly lOO miles of coast on the Adriatic, Hungary
is essentially a continental area, and its land-frontiers are largely so
obvious as to be called " natural " — a great proportion of the southern
frontier being marked by rivers, Unna, Save, Danube, and almost
the v^rhole of the northern and the eastern frontiers being marked by
the crest of the Carpathians.^ In the west it is not quite so satis-
factory ; but in the most important direction use is made of the
March (instead of the Little Carpathians) and the Leitha, and south
of the Leitha it corresponds roughly to the foothills of the Alps.
Nucleus. The great lowland which forms the nucleus of the kingdom, is
divided into two very unequal parts — the Little Alfold or Pressburg
basin (6000 square miles = Yorkshire) and the Great Alfold or Pest
basin, which is half a dozen times the size of the other; and, in spite
of areas of barren sand, e.g. between the Danube and the Theiss,
the proportion of rich soil is very large, while the average elevation
does not exceed 350 feet. The arrangement of the higher land
round this nucleus enables us to divide it into 3 areas — (i) the
great encircling highland of the Carpathians from Deveny to Orsova,
(2) an Alpine outlier, rising in the Bakony Forest to over 2300 feet,
in the Mecsek to over 2200, and in the Bergland to over 3000,
and (3) a karst region in Croatia.
Bivers. The relation of the river-system to this arrangement is obvious,
running water being as abundant in the north and east as it is
deficient — except in the main arteries — in the south-west. These
arteries, again, have an obvious parallelism, e.g. the Danube below
the west end of the Matra with the Theiss below the east end of it,
the Drave on one side of the Croatio-Slavonian Bergland with the
Save on the other side, the Waag and the Gran on opposite sides
of the Neutra range, the Toplya and the Hernad on opposite sides
of the Hegyallya, the Eipel and the Sajo on opposite sides of the
Matra, the Waag and the Hernad on opposite sides of — and giving
wonderfully easy access round — the whole " Ore " group. Again,
there is a double convergence of rivers on the central meridian of the
kingdom, all the drainage from the Tatra area converging in front of
the Matra, while all this converges, with the Alpine and Transylvanian
drainage, on the west of the Banat. Though some of the Transyl-
vanian feeders, e.g. the Aluta, do not reach the main river through
Hungary, practically all the drainage is Danubian, so that the
Danube is the only river-link with foreign countries ; and its system
(9000 miles) gives such excellent links internally that canals ^ are
^ Even above the easy Jablunka Pass the West Beskids rise to well over 4000 feet.
On the other hand, the river frontier is mainly inside the Imperial frontier.
^ The chief canal, the Franz Josef, from the Danulx: below Mohacs to the
Theiss, is only 70 miles long ; and the Bega, from Temesvar to the Theiss, is less.
XXI
Hungary
347
few, and those few are largely to drain marshy areas or relieve the
rivers during floods.
The total length of navigable waterways is considerably over 3000 Naviga-
miles, of which five-sixths is navigable by steamers — a much larger *i°^-
proportion than in Austria. One peculiar feature is due partly to the
institution of " zone " traffic on the railways, and partly to the relief
of the area. With four exceptions — on the part of the March that
forms the Hungarian frontier, on the Drave and Mur above Bares
Stanford's Geoy! £stab*, Londwit
Austria- Hungary : Density of Population.
Less than 100 per sq. mile
100 to 200 ,,
200 to 300 ,,
300 to 400 1^1
More than 400 per sq. mile, Vienna and district.
or Zakany, on the Save above Sissek, and on the Koros above
Gyoma — there is almost immediate transition from steamer-traffic to
nothing except rafts. Thus, the Theiss is navigable by rafts, but by
rafts only, from Tisza-Ujlak (Szathmar Nemeti on the Szamos) to
Tisza-Fiired, the head of steamer navigation ; and Maros-Ujvar and
Arad have much the same relations on the Maros. This drop in
the level marks the line of weakness where the lowland was abruptly
fractured, and detached from its rim ; and it accounts for the hot-
springs of the Blocksberg at Buda and for the volcanic vineyards of
Tokay. Cf. p. 351.
348
The Continent of Europe
CH.
Popula-
tion.
Racial
Elements.
Agricul-
ture.
The total population (20,000,000), does not really represent the
capacity of the kingdom, which is very fertile and exceedingly rich
in mineral wealth. Historically, Turkish invasions, civil wars, and
" Asiatic " plagues, were very adverse to prosperity and to density of
population ; and in modern times the spread of Magyar influences
in the Slav areas has led to heavy emigration. However question-
able the methods used to spread that influence, the fact of it was
based on the exclusive occupation by the Magyars of what was at
once the central and the most fertile part of the kingdom ; and the
resentment against it was similarly based on the concentration of
each minor race in a compact and relatively large group, fully con-
scious — in speech, costume, creed, etc. — of its own racial personality.
Only in the Banat, the great focus of the waterways of the kingdom
and the part of the kingdom latest freed from the Turks, is the
population not segregated in ethnic groups, but thoroughly blended
into a unit of which the items can scarcely be differentiated.
The Magyars number more than half the total population, and
are increasing, while every other race except the Rumanian is
decreasing, and not one of them numbers one-sixth of the total.
In the case of the Germans, who are mainly in the towns and
seldom in concentration, the cause is largely absorption in the
Magyar population ; but in the case of the others, it is largely
emigration — either to America or to kindred neighbours, e.g.
Rumanians into Rumania and Croats into Servia. Of these minor
races the Rumanians are the most numerous, and the Jews are
the most important, monopolising a large share of the trade and
industry of the kingdom, controlling finance and politics, and
becoming more and more the owners of the land. They, too,
however, like the Germans, are apt to become nominally — as
converts to Christianity — absorbed in the Magyar population.
Hungary is essentially an agricultural country, considerably over
40 p.c. of the area in Hungary proper being under tillage, especially
for wheat and maize, and nearly 70 p.c. of the population finding
occupation on the land ; and extraordinary progress has been made
in scientific farming, arable and pastoral. The wide stretches of
pussta offer special facilities for rearing cattle and horses, while the
huge production of maize and the extent of oak and other forests
(over 25 p.c. of the area) are very favourable to the rearing of pigs
and poultry. With the spread of intensive agriculture, sheep-
farming is becoming less and less important, though wool is still
exported ; but both pasturage and forest areas are increasing in the
hilly areas. This does not imply any reduction in the arable area,
for there is full appreciation of the need for tillage to supply stock-
food (maize, beet, lucerne), to counteract drought, and to expose
the deep rich loam to the beneficial action of frost. Nor is
cultivation in any way restricted to grain. There are at least two
XXI Hungary 349
dozen distinct crops of economic importance ; and the Ministry of
Agriculture is justifiably regarded as one of the chief Government
departments. Amongst the typical products are wine and tobacco,
the finer wines coming from the more northerly latitudes, e.g. Tokay
and the Sopron district of the Hanvag (round the Neusiedler See).
The mineral wealth, though great, is as yet little worked. It Minerals.
includes large quantities of fuel (coal, lignite, oil, and gas) and of
iron-ore. The coal is in the Banat and at Pecs, the lignite in the
Bakony near Budapest and in the Kords and the Szamos basins
(cf. Zalatna and Nagy-Banya), while oil and gas are in the same
area {e.g. near Klausenburg and Meramaros Sziget). The iron-ore
is most abundant in the Gomor and Szepes sections of the Ore
Mountains, round the head-waters of the Gran and the Hernad,
e.g. in the Vashegz ("Iron Mountain"); but very large quantities
also exist in Transylvania, especially in the Krasso Szorony and
Hunyadi hills. Gold and silver are still raised, e.g. at Kreranitz
and Schemnitz, at Nagy-Banya and Zalatna ; but, especially in the
northern area, they are relatively much less important than they
used to be. On the other hand, salt is increasing in importance,
especially in the Szamos and Maros basins. The kingdom contains,
at Vorosvagas, the chief opal mines in Europe ; and there are
famous mineral springs, especially in the valley of the Waag.
With the exception of iron, all the chief industries are more or Industries
less " agricultural," e.g. flour-milling, brewing and distilling, tobacco- ^^
curing, sugar-making, while the most typical iron products are
agricultural implements and machinery. And, under the circum-
stances, urban centres are few and far between. The real " towns "
are mostly of German origin, for " the Magyars founded the State,
but the Germans built the towns " ; and this accounts for the large
proportion of towns with the affix Nemet ("German") or Szasz
("Saxon"). The largest centres are, however, Hungarian, and
are simply enormous villages, in which the isolated farms are dotted
along a bush-road or round a Steppe fair-ground. For instance,
Debreczin does not number a population of 100,000, and Szegedin
only just reaches that limit; but both have an area of c. 350 square
miles, i.e. the size of Huntingdonshire. The position of such towns
is equally typical. The most important, Szegedin, stands at the
confluence of the Theiss and its chief tributary, the Maros ; and
two other important places. Hod Mezo Viisarhely and Tokay are
also on the Theiss, Tokay at another important confluence. All
the others are at the limit of the Theiss lowland, — the western ones,
Szabadka (Maria Theresiopel) and Kecskemet, on the western limit,
where naturally there are no rivers, and the eastern ones, e.g. Arad
and Temesvar, Bek^s and Grosswardein (Nagyvarad), where rivers
drop from the 350-foot level on to the lowland. The level of the
various towns rises slightly from south to north, Arad being slightly
350 The Continent of Europe ch.
higher {c. 30 feet) than Temesvar, and Grosswardein than Arad,
while Debreczin, the largest of them {c. 80,000), though not on
a river, is slightly higher than Grosswardein.
Sand- Most of these are subject to either floods or sandstorms. The
storms sand is, of course, naturally worst away from the great rivers, e.g.
^^ j^ mid- way between the parallel Theiss and Danube, north-west of
Szegedin, t.e. half-way between Kecskemet and Szabadka, and
north-east of Debreczin ; but persistent efforts, e.g. in planting
acacia, etc., have checked the movement of the sand, and enabled
agriculture to be firmly established (cf. the Debreczin vineyards).
The floods are also being mastered, but very slowly. The great
difficulty is the very small fall of the Theiss after it reaches the
lowland, e.g. 1 foot in 10 miles south of Szegedin. Though the
Theiss basin is fed essentially from forested sandstone, it is flooded
by melting snow, like the Danube ; and the increased pace of the
latter, due to its greater fall, is emphasised by greater volume, with
the result that heavy flood on the Danube blocks back the Theiss.
This accounts for the entire absence of important towns on the
Lower Theiss. Indeed except for Zenta, with its "accidental"
historic importance, there is no place of any importance below
Szegedin, which — at the Maros confluence, not much more than
250 feet above sea-level — has been practically swept away time
after time. Since the last great catastrophe, in 1879, however, its
dykes have been materially strengthened.
The other Hungarian centres are little transport centres, such
as Miskolcz and Kaschau or Mohacs, on the great western bend of
the lower Danube, — modern or ancient mining centres, such as
Pecs (Funfkirchen and Schemnitz), — strategic centres, such as
Neusatz and Semlin, Orsova and Komorn, all closely related to the
Danube ; and the Danube is also the key to the old and present
capitals of Pressburg and Budapest.
Press- Pressburg combines almost all these conditions. The Danube,
burg, cutting into its right bank under the influence of the earth's rotation,
as it leaves the Theben gorge, makes Pressburg a frontier fortress,
upon a low platform (250-300 feet) to the east of the gorge and
the north of the river, where it thus controlled communication
into the old mining area of the Waag valley. Eastward, instead
of a gorge, there is the sudden expansion of the river round the Schiitt
islands, which ofiers maximum obstacle to crossing until the main
stream collects the Raab and Waag drainage at Komorn. From
the time that the Magyars accepted Christianity, and became at
once a " bastion of Latin Christianity against Oriental barbarism "
and a wedge to split the Slavs in two, the inevitable community of
interest between German and Magyar in opposition to the Slavs
favoured the concentration of Magyar influence on the old Roman
site of Posonium, in touch with the old civilisation and the new
XXI Hungary 351
religious focus. The fertile Little Alfold made this also a great
market for grain and wine, as now for tobacco ; and it became
the terminus of the first railway in Hungary (up the Waag valley).
To reach the still more fertile Great Alfold the Danube has Buda-
to cut through the linking uplift between the Bakony and the ^^^^
Matra by the Waitzen gorge ; and in the days before their con-
version to Christianity the Magyars found a more appropriate
and safer capital at the eastern end of the Little Alfold, on the
precipitous rock of Gran, commanding the Gran valley northward
and the land passage southward round the "Ofen" highland to
Buda. But the ultimate capital was bound to be on the Great
Alfold ; and undoubtedly the best place was where hard rock on
each side of the river and an island in the channel offered special
facilities for bridging the river before it deploys in its full natural
width on to the plain. This, too, was the natural objective of
traffic from the south-west along the Balaton Lake ; and it was
here that the old Roman road reached the Danube. On the
" Roman " bank there are several steep hills from which hot springs
flow — minimising ice in winter; and the Romans chose the site
for their great camp of Aquincum {J Aquae Quinque)^ which
has grown into Buda (" Oven "). Here, too, was the natural
meeting - place of the agricultural and pastoral industries, the
mining and forestry, along with abundance of good stone for
building purposes. The one drawback was that the town could
only spread on the " Roman " bank by leaving the hills to which
it owed its essential character; but on the opposite bank there
was unlimited room for expansion over the flat sandy plain and
a fine frontage on to the broad river (averaging 500 yards).
Pest ("Stove"), therefore, is essentially the commercial and
industrial centre, while the official centre is cramped amongst
the Buda hills, of which the Blocksberg (770 feet) rises 400 feet
above the river-level. Obviously, too, the population of Buda
remains more or less stationary, while that of Pest has grown
enormously (1000 p.c. in the nineteenth century). The population
is typically heterogeneous, but absolutely permeated by Magyar
influence, energy, and national ideals — illustrated by the entire aboli-
tion of German names from streets and buildings ; and, thanks mainly
to the patriotic co-operation of the exceedingly important Hebrew
element (fully 20 p.c), the Magyars have made the city the one
great centre, intellectual and economic, of the kingdom. It is the
seat of all the typical industries — milling, brewing and distilling,
leather, a