A MOUNTAIN PASS: A NATURAL FACTOR OF VAST IMPORTANCE IN HISTORY
Mountain passes have been of great importance in history. The Romans established their military colonies in the neighbourhood of passes, and there are political territories practically founded on mountain passes. This is a picture of an entrance to the famous Bolan Pass, through which, and through the Khyber Pass, lie the shortest overland routes from Persia to India.
LARGER IMAGE
NOMADIC PEOPLES OF THE NEW WORLD
Wherever there are vast lowland countries covered with grass, nomadic peoples are found moving from place to place with their herds. There are many such peoples in the Old World and a few in the New World, notable among the latter being the Gauchos of the Pampas, types of whom are here seen.
In comparison with plains and prairies, forests are decided hindrances to historical movements. Peoples are separated from one another by strips of woodland; the state and the civilisation of the Incas ceased at the fringe of primeval forest of the east Andes. Thickly-wooded mountains present the most pronounced difficulties to historical movements. The appearance of the oldest large states and centres of culture on the borders of steppes, in the naturally thinly-wooded districts at the mouths of rivers, and on diluvial plains, seems natural enough to us when we think of the difficulties presented by life in a forest glade to men who had only stone implements and fire at their command.
A description of the difficulties encountered during Stanley’s one hundred and fifty-seven days’ journey through the primeval woods of Central Africa gives us a very clear conception of what are termed “hindrances” to historical movements. The early history of Sweden has been characterised as a struggle with the forest; and this description is valid for every forest country. The forest divides nations from each other; it allows only small tribes to unite, and creates but small states, or, at the most, loosely bound confederations. It is only where a great river system forms natural roads, as in the regions of the Amazon and the Congo, that great forest districts may be rapidly united to form a state. In other cases settlements in forest clearings and road-breaking precede political control.
In this way the Chinese conquered the races of the western half of Formosa in two hundred years; in the eastern half the land is still under forest and the natives have also retained their independence. The existence of small states, with their many obstacles to political and economic growth, still continues in forest regions alone; and the roaming hordes of hunters inhabiting them belong to the simplest forms of human societies.