Comparative geography

by Carl Ritter

Review.

The great typical forms already considered, highland, plateau, mountain, lowland, terrace, and river, which all claim so large a share of attention in studying their physical characteristics, are no less worthy of careful attention, in consequence of their influence on human culture. Our account would not be complete without devoting a few pages to the consideration of the manner in which nature and history have reacted on each other.

The most elevated highlands, the loftiest plateaus, uniform in their aspect, immense in their extent, isolated, without trees, having the thin soil characteristic of steppes, and useful only for grazing, are the home of the primitive nomadic races. Without forests and without shelter, without valleys and without water-courses, with sandy and rocky soil, covered with a scanty vegetation, they serve only to supply food for the gregarious animals which follow man, and to furnish a home to wandering tribes of herdsmen. Instances are found in Central Asia, in Toorkistan and Persia, in Central Africa, including the Galla tribes and the Abyssinians. So, too, among the high plateaus of America, the home of the primitive Aztecs. From such places came the first movements of emigration; from the high plateaus of Central Asia came the wandering Persians, Huns, Mongolians, and Turks; and the same course of emigration was witnessed among the negro tribes of Central Africa, proceeding from the Galla tribes. The lower highlands, less colossal in size, of more moderate height, and of more genial temperature, have at all times reached a certain low stage of culture, after giving a home to the nomads from the higher plateau; but have never developed that culture to any considerable extent. We find examples of this in the high terraces of Bootan, the Deccan, and Persia; in Africa, among the Atlas mountains; in Abyssinia, in the ancient Greek Arcadia, in Castile, in Arvernia, (Auvergne,) in Gallia, in Hesse, in the Eifel, and on the Valdai hills.

In the exceedingly complex, subdivided, and romantic mountain districts of the globe, the races have attained, by virtue of the variety of their resources and the energy of their stock, to the highest results of civilization, and have manifested the most independent and progressive spirit. In such regions, hunting, working in wood, the settled life of shepherds, working in metals, agriculture on such terrace lands as those of Nepaul, Cashmere, Palestine, the Lebanon, Apennine, and other ranges, fruit culture, tilling vineyards, the cultivation of all kinds of industry, as in Central Germany and in most regions of the temperate zone, develop most thoroughly and speedily the culture of a people. In such occupations men learn to lean more on each other, and grow into that diversity of occupation and division of labor, which are the latest results of civilization. The Zend, the Sanscrit, and the Persian nations which people the fertile tracts at the base of the Himalaya Mountains, from Maghada, Lahore, Nepaul, and Cashmere, as far as Persepolis and Hamadan, Susa and Shiraz, the inhabitants of the hill country of Palestine and Syria, those of the Tehama range of mountains in Arabia, those in the moderately elevated meadows of Gondar, as well as those in all the European Alpine lands, Switzerland, Tyrol, Styria, as well as the inhabitants of the mountain region of Peru and Mexico, all attain to an early and considerably advanced state of civilization. Other nations have found in mountains asylums in time of danger—the Tsherkeses and Ossetes among the Caucasus, for instance, the Basques among the Pyrenees, and the Gorals among the Carpathians.

The lowlands, as soon as the water had left them enough to make them habitable, have become, from the first, the abodes of a teeming population; and there has been the same blending of races in the most ancient as in the most recently settled, in China as in Texas, and, in truth, all North America. Often these inroads of population have been a source of injury, as has been the case in the northern Siberian plains, where the Finnish tribes have made their homes, and in the waste of Sahara, where the Barbary tribes, the Bedouins, the Tibboos, and the Tuaricks have made their retreat.

On the fruitful terraces, along the middle course of rivers, the earliest fixed habitations and ripened culture have been attained. Through the traditional handing down of past results, and by the habits of peace, their inhabitants have more thoroughly subjected nature and advanced to a higher state of civilization than the dwellers in the interior, away from the rivers. It has been the same, in a great measure, with the lower course, as, for instance, in Egypt, Mesopotamia, China, and Bengal; and in Europe, in Lombardy, Holland, and the Netherlands, where, to the efforts to recover land from the sea, have been added fishing and commerce. On such fruitful tracts as the mouths and middle courses of rivers water, nations could find a permanent home, and pass quickly to all liberal and refining arts and occupations. This is clear, from the instances of the eminent monarchies of the East, Meroe, Thebes, Memphis, Babylon, Nineveh, Bagdad, and Mosul. So, too, on the Indus and Ganges, in the domains of Taxila, Maghada, Benares; and later in the great empire, whose centers were Agra and Delhi. China has arrived at its highest civilization in the fertile district between its two greatest rivers. Greece and Rome are marked exceptions. Their progress they owe, not to great river basins, but to their peninsular form in the middle of the coast of a delightful sea, full of islands and surrounded by lands in a greater or less advanced state of civilization. England’s peculiar maritime position has given it its wonderful vantage-ground for progress in all human culture.

In the east of Europe, the basins of rivers have exercised the same influence, to a certain extent, that has been hinted at above; and Moscow, Kiev, Cracow, and Warsaw remain the seats of a civilization which, rude as it was, owed its existence to the physical conditions of the great Sarmatian river systems. In western Europe, the less marked features of the country have contributed to the peculiar historical development of the continent. The rich deltas have become the granaries for a large part of the population, allowing industry to flow into other channels besides agriculture. The sea-faring habits of the people along the coast have broken up and done away with what is special and provincial, and have conferred a cosmopolitan manner of living upon the entire population. It was the same with the Phenicians in ancient times, with the Portuguese in the middle ages, as it has been with the English, Spanish, and Dutch in modern days. Fishing, navigation, and trade have become permanent necessities of civilization. In the heart of continental Europe, the rivers have had a great influence on the progress of nations; the North German streams have extended their effect from the abode of the ancient Saxons along the Baltic as far as the home of the Salic Franks on the Scheldt, Seine, and Loire; the Danube, with its complex and important system of terraces and lowlands, has opened communication between South Germany and Hungary, Wallachia, and the East. The Vistula, Oder, Elbe, and Weser have connected the homes of the old Sclavic population with the Scandinavian coasts and the land of the Angles and Saxons at the neck of Denmark, to the equal advantage of both. The great terrace system of the Rhine, embracing the Odenwald, Hardt, Spessart, Taunus, Hundsrück, Eifel, and the Siebengebirg, has thrown into the most active industrial and commercial relations the whole district which it waters. It opened a way to the Romans in their conquering advances before it did to the tribes of Helvetia, Gallia, Germania, or the Lowlands: it sundered those tribes, and kept them from preying upon each other; but, in the advance of civilization, it has become one of the strongest bands to knit together the central countries of Europe.

The Danube, with its extensive terrace lands, faces the east, and has, therefore, very different relations to European history from the Rhine. It is a double-headed river, and one of its head-streams, the one which bears the name of the river proper, extends almost to the Rhine basin; while the other, the Jura, has its source in Grisons, and hard by the head-waters of the Rhine. As the Danube connects the Caspian and Black Sea basin with western Europe, and the largest part of the Asiatic immigrations have followed its course, the Danube has become the great avenue between Europe and Asia. Celts, Teutons, and Romans were mingled even before Christ, in Noricum, Vindelecia, Bavaria, and Suabia. How many tribes may have been crowded westward by these, is unknown to us. The same fate has happened to the people who settled there before Christ, and the inroads of the Huns, Goths, and other tribes of similar origin, scattered the older inhabitants over all Central Germany. We know, too, that Sclavic, Hungarian, and Turkish incursions followed, each one dispossessing wholly or in part the one which preceded it.

All great rivers and river systems have had a similar influence on the course of civilization. There is not a single type feature in the world which has not contributed its part to the advance of the human race; no one is without its place and its function.