The Ethnology of Europe

by R. G. Latham

1. The physical conditions of Europe are as remarkable in respect to their negative as their positive characters; in other words, there is a great number of points wherein Europe differs from Asia, Africa, America, and Polynesia, in respect to what it has not, as well as in respect to what it has.

These negative points will be treated first.

a. No part of Europe lies between the Tropics; so that the luxuriance of a spontaneous and varied vegetation, with its pernicious tendencies to incline the habits of its population to idleness, is wanting. The rank and rapid growth of the plants which serve as food to men and animals, and which dispense with labour, nowhere occurs.

b. No part comes under the class of Steppes; or, at most, but imperfectly approaches their character. In Asia, the vast table-lands of the centre, occupied by the Turks and Mongols, have ever been the cradle of an active, locomotive, hungry, and aggressive population. And these have seen, with a strong desire to possess, the more favoured areas of the south; and have conquered them accordingly. The Luneburg Heath, and parts of Hanover are the nearest resemblances to the great Steppes of Mongolia, and Independent Tartary; but they are on a small and beggarly scale. In Russia, where the land is flat and level, the ground is also fertile, so that agriculture has been practicable, and (being practicable) has bound the occupant to the soil, instead of mounting him on fleet horses to wander with his flocks and herds from spot to spot, to become a shepherd by habit, and a warrior by profession; for in all countries, shepherds and hunters are marauders on a small, and conquerors on a large scale.

c. Europe is narrowest in its northern parts. This has had the effect of limiting those populations of the colder climes, whose scanty means of subsistence at home, incline them to turn their faces southwards, with the view of conquest, and supply them with numbers to effect their purpose.

d. Its diameter from north to south is less than its diameter from east to west. This has kept the mass of its population within a similar climate; or, if not within a similar climate, within a range of temperature far less wide than that which separates the African, the American, or the Asiatic of the northern parts of their respective continents from the Hottentot of the Cape, the Fuegian of Cape Horn, and the Malay of the Malayan Peninsula. It has given uniformity to its occupants; since varieties increase as we proceed from south to north, but not as we go from east to west—or vice versâ.

Amongst its positive features the most remarkable are connected with its mountain-ranges, the extent of its sea-board, and the direction of its rivers.

a. In no country are the great levels more broken by mountains, or the great mountains more in contiguity to considerable tracts of level country. The effect of this is to give the different characters of the Mountaineer and the Lowlander more opportunity of acting and reacting on each other.

b. In no country are the coasts more indented. We may look in vain for such a sea-board as that of Greece, elsewhere. The effect of this is to give the different characters of the sailor and landsman, the producer and the trader, more opportunity of acting and reacting on each other.

c. Its greatest rivers fall into seas navigable throughout the year. Contrast with this the great rivers of Asia, the Obi, the Lena, the Yenesey, and others, which for the purposes of navigation are useless; falling, as they do, into an Arctic sea.