Comparative geography

by Carl Ritter

Italy, embracing ¹⁄₃₅ of Europe, between the Alps and Sicily, and traversed by a mountain range.

Turkey and Greece, or summing it more strictly under one word, the Grecian peninsula, between the Danube and the Morea, a most minutely divided region of plateaus and mountain chains; in truth, the most articulated peninsula in the world, and embracing ¹⁄₁₅ of Europe.

The Crimea, a rhomboidal peninsula, turned to the south—its northern half a flat steppe, its southern a high plateau—the only peninsula of southeastern Europe projecting into the Black Sea.

Every one of these peninsulas differs from every other in shape; every one has a distinct individuality imposed upon it. Within the smallest compass on earth, relatively speaking, there is found around Europe the very largest variety in its articulations. The Grecian peninsula finds its only superior on the northwest of Europe, in the coast of insulated England.

By means of this characteristic separation of so many more or less individualized parts of the continent through the agency of arms of the sea, the coast-line of Europe has been prolonged to an extraordinary length. The areas of the three continents of the Old World are as follows in round numbers: Europe, 3,500,000 square miles; Africa, 11,800,000 square miles; and Asia, 19,300,000 square miles. Although the superficial contents of Africa are three times that of Europe, the length of the coast-line is so far from being equal, that that of Europe is much the greater, being 25,400 miles. The Asiatic coast-line is about one-third longer still, 32,900 miles; but, as the area of Asia is more than five times that of Europe, a great part of the Asiatic coast-line, that on the north, from Nova Zembla to Kamtchatka, must be considered as unimportant in relation to the development of the resources of Asia.

Europe is, therefore, that continent of the Old World which has relatively, and I might almost say absolutely, received the largest coast-line of any, encompassing a distance of 25,400 miles. That is to say, the coast-line of Europe, extended in a straight line, would pass around the globe and coincide with the equator. To this admirable feature may be added its favorable relation in situation to the various oceanic and wind currents, and its magnificent supply of harbors, the result of its articulated coast, all of which have made Europe the mistress of the seas. Within modern times, the island group of Great Britain and Ireland, the richest in harbors, is to the continent what, in ancient times, the Greek peninsula was, with its wealth of inlets, which gave it the command of the Mediterranean. A rich gift this has been to the smallest of the continents of the Old World, to equalize its condition with others. The providential wisdom which “sets one thing over against another,” is clearly manifest in this. Europe, though in the center of the great continental land-mass, becomes the most maritime of all, the most approachable of all; or, in other words, its countries and its peoples are the most closely connected with the sea of all in the Old World, because they stand in the most unbroken contact with it.

Thus we discover the characteristic type which was impressed on Europe from the very first. Its relation to the world could not be understood by the ancients, as to them half of the earth lay in unbroken darkness. Only by experience, only by the advance of civilization, and by comparison with all the other continents, could this insight be gained. Doubtless many similar relations yet remain unknown and unsuspected, which will some day come to the light. The earth, as a planet, is only a grain of seed-corn sown by the Creator, enriched with powers of unfolding to infinite perfection in the unexplored future. What we now perceive are only the elementary principles—our knowledge only a motley; but even this is not without its uses, and is worthy of patient mastery.

Europe, so broken in its coast, and rifted far toward its center by arms of the sea, has been affected in all its civil and social history to a very great extent. This is the first natural condition of its progress, the true physical basis of the fact that, upon the most limited of the continents, the greatest historical diversity has sprung up. It is not absolute size, but relative, which gives the pre-eminence; not the raw material, the mere mass, but its articulation, its form, which here, as everywhere, gives mind the mastery over matter. As in the animal and vegetable world there is, amid all the diversity of forms, a constant advance from a lower to a higher plane, manifesting itself in the complexity of the organs; so, in the so-called unorganized side of nature, we see the same characteristic as soon as we have grasped the whole mutual system of adaptations. The most general study of the differences between the continents exhibits an analogous harmony and correlation. As the simple, broad-leaved, solid cactus, or bunch-trunked euphorbia, (peculiar to the dry sand steppes of America and Africa,) appear branchless and without foliage,—the lower and undeveloped forms of vegetation,—so, too, the regions to which they are indigenous are the unbroken plains of North America, or the plateaus of still less broken Africa.

The broken coast-line of Asia and Europe is analogous to that higher development which we find in the palm and in the full, round crown of the European fruit-tree, which bears blossoms and fruit as far as the very extremities of the branches. In the animal organization, the articulation of Europe is to be compared with the complex hand of man, so far superior to the prehensile organs of lower creatures, that Buffon saw in that feature alone the manifestation of man’s place among the animal kingdom.

If we look out over the earth, we see that the limbs of the continents, so to speak, the coasts, the peninsulas, and the adjacent islands, are the most favored places of all for civilization to find its true home upon. With the degree of diversity in the structure of a country, the value of its organisms advances. In this respect, Europe may be considered as the branches and foliage of a great tree, whose trunk and root are to be traced to Central Asia, Africa being a stunted side-shoot. Or, to compare the continents to a still higher class of forms, Europe may be called the Face of the Old World, out of which the soul of humanity could look more clearly into the great and promising future.