There are great features of the earth’s conformation that are so extensive that groups of nations share them in common. Russia and Siberia occupy the same plain upon which the greater portions of Germany, Belgium, and Holland are situated. Germany and France share the central mountain system which extends from the Cévennes to the Sudeten, or Sudetic Mountains. A mere participation in a common geological feature produces such affinity and relationship as may be seen in the Alpine states, in Sweden and Norway, and in the nations of the Andes. This reminds us of the groups of nations that surround seas; but that which separates the Baltic states binds them together; and the mountains that unite the Swiss cantons also separate them from one another. Lesser features of conformation divide countries and often exhibit gaps and breaches in development, for the reason that they divide a political whole into separate natural regions. The history of the lowlands of North Germany differs greatly from that of the mountainous districts of the same country; the lowlands of the Po and Apennine Italy are two different lands. The great contrast between the hilly manufacturing west of England and the low-lying agricultural east extends throughout English history; and in like manner the highlands and the lowlands are opposed to each other in Scotland.
SCENERY THAT SHAPES CHARACTER: THE INFLUENCE OF THE MOUNTAINS
The stories of mountain peoples are very similar; the Highlanders of Scotland, Wales, Switzerland, the Cevennes, and Tyrol, have many characteristics in common, owing their rugged nature and independence to environment.
Wherever mountain formations occur largely in a country, the question arises whether, in spite of all diversity, they unite to form a whole, or whether they exist as separate, independent neighbouring parts. The elements of the surface formation of the earth are not only historically important in themselves as units, but also on account of the way in which they are connected with one another. We have in Greece an example of an exceedingly intricate mountain system in which barren plateaus are interspersed with fertile valleys and bays. Owing to the sea, such bays as those of Attica, Argos, and Lamia are to a high degree self-dependent; they became little worlds in themselves, independent states, which could never have grown into a united whole had they not been subjected to external pressure.
The reverse of this state of disunion, arising from the juxtaposition of a great number of different formations, is the division of North America into the three great regions of the Alleghanies, the Mississippi Valley, and the Rocky Mountain plateau, which gradually merge into one another and are bound into a whole by the vast central valley. Austria-Hungary includes within itself five different mountain features—the Alps, Carpathians, Sudeten, the Adriatic provinces, and the Pannonian plains. Vienna is situated where the Danube, March, and Adria meet, and from this centre radiates all political unifying power. If a still closer-knit unity is co-existent with a diversified geological formation of insular or peninsular nature, as in Ireland or Italy, it follows that this unity binds the orographic divisions into an aggregate. The discrepancies between Apennine Italy, Italy of the Po Valley, and Alpine Italy, which have been evident in all periods of history, formed, in their rise and in their final state of subjugation to political force, an example of dissimilarity of mountain features existing within peninsular unity.
The great continental slopes are also important aids to the overcoming of orographic obstacles to political unity. In Germany there is a general inclination towards the north, crossed and recrossed by a number of mountain chains and successions of valleys. It is not to be denied that the intersecting elevations have furthered political disunion. Without doubt, a gradual slope from the southern part of Germany to the sea, with a consequent partition of the country by the rivers into strips extending from east to west, would have been attended by a greater political unity. Again, but in another way, the preponderance of any one orographic element has a unifying effect on all the other elements, as we have seen in North America, where the simple, even course of development has been in conformity with the existence of geological formations on a large scale.
THE SOFTENING EFFECT OF THE RICH AND FRUITFUL LOWLANDS
Whereas mountains breed independence and rugged character in their inhabitants, the more fruitful lowlands develop a gentler race, loving the companionship of communities. The lowlands, also, are the homes of mixed races.