A coast is more favoured than an interior in all things relating to commerce and traffic; yet neither may enjoy permanent life alone without the other. The French departments of the Weser and of the Elbe were among the most ephemeral of the political results achieved by the short-lived Napoleonic era. With the sea at their backs it is easy for the inhabitants of a coast to become detached from their nation, and but a simple matter for them to spread over other coasts. Ever since the time of the Phœnicians there have been numerous colonists of coasts and founders of coast states. The Normans are most typical in European history. The expansion of coast colonies towards the interior is one of the most striking features of recent African development. Thus coasts are to be looked at from within as well as from without. To many races—such as Hottentots and Australians—the coast is dead compared with the interior; for Germany the coast has been politically dead for centuries. A river-mouth is best suited to carrying the influences of the coast inland.
All ancient historians supposed that the Mediterranean Sea, with its many bays, peninsulas, and islands, schooled the Phœnicians in seamanship. This, however, is not so. Nautical skill is transmitted from one people to another, as may be seen from some of the most obvious cases in modern history. No maritime people has become great through its own coast alone. It is not the coast of Maine, with its numerous inlets and bays, that has produced the best seamen, but the coast of Massachusetts, naturally unfavourable for the most part; and it has produced the best seamen for the reason that the inland districts bounded by it are far more productive and furthering to commerce than are the interior regions of Maine.
The Place of the Coast in History
Nature has forced races to take to the sea only in such countries as Norway and Greece, where the strips of coast are narrow and the inland territory poor. In order to have political influence it is sufficient to have one foot on the sea-coast. Aigues-Mortes, with its swampy environment, was sufficient to extend France to the Mediterranean during the reign of St. Louis; Fiume sufficed for Hungary. Forbidding desert coasts have had a peculiarly retarding effect on historical development. It was necessary to rediscover the Australian mainland, to touch at more favourable points, one hundred and thirty years after the time of Tasman; thus the history of the settlement of Australia by Europeans originated, not with him, but with Cook.
As portions of the general water area, rivers are branches or runners of the sea, extending into the land—lymphatic vessels, as it were, bearing nourishment to the ocean from the higher regions of the earth. Therefore they form the natural routes followed by historical movements from the sea inland and vice versa. A solid foundation of truth underlies those rivers of legendary geography that joined one sea with another. The connection of the Baltic and the Black Sea via Kieff is not that described by Adam of Bremen; but Russian canals have established a water-way, following out the plan indicated by Nature, just as the Varangians also realised it in a ruder way by dragging their boats from the Dwina to the Dnieper. By uniting the Great Lakes to the Mississippi by means of the Illinois River, the French provided a waterway from the North Atlantic Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico, a line of power in the rear of the Atlantic colonies. The latter fell back on salt water, the former on fresh. The Nile, flowing parallel to the Red Sea from Tanasee in the Abyssinian highlands, shares with the Red Sea even to-day in the traffic between Eastern and East-central Africa. The railway from Mombasa to Uganda completes a western Mediterranean-Indian line of connection, as a road along the Euphrates to the Persian Gulf would an eastern, each following the direction of rivers running parallel to the Red Sea. We can clearly see the transition of the functions of oceans to fresh, shallow water, to sounds and lagoons, in which sea traffic is furnished with smoother, quieter routes under the shelter of the coasts.
THE OCEANS OF THE WORLD
This map, on a projection used by mariners, shows the relative sizes of the great oceans, viewed from above. The natural advantage of the position of the British Isles for communicating with the ocean’s highways is clearly seen, and the vast area of the Pacific is strikingly indicated.
In truth, only portions of the lines of traffic follow rivers; for rivers flow from highland to lowland, watersheds breaking their course here and there. In comparison with the oceans, rivers are but shallow channels, the continuity of which may be broken by every rocky ledge. Thus different regions for traffic arise at various points in the same stream. Only that part of Egypt which is situated north of the first cataract is Egypt proper; the territory to the south was conquered from Nubia. The farther we travel up a stream the less water and the more rapids and falls we shall find; therefore traffic also decreases in the direction toward the river’s source. It may be seen from this that there is but little probability of truth in the analogy drawn between the flowing of rivers from elevations to plains and the migrations of nations and directions in which states expand. History shows that migration and development follow a direction contrary from that in which rivers flow.
Maritime and terrestrial advantages are concentrated where a river joins the sea; especially characteristic of such districts are deltas, at an early date rendered more efficient for purposes of commerce through canals and dredging. The fertility of the alluvial soil, the lack of forest occasioned by frequent floods, and the protection afforded by the islands of the delta, may have had not a little influence on the choice of such regions as settlements for man. At all events, estuaries and deltas, both small and great, were in the earliest times centres of civilisation. Egypt and Babylonia both testify to this; the colonising Greeks also showed a preference for river mouths. Miletus, Ephesus and Rome were states situated at the mouths of rivers, and so were the ancient settlements on the Rhone, the Guadalquivir, and the Indus. It would not be possible, however, to deduce from this proofs of a potamic phase of civilisation and formation of nations preceding the Thalassic, or Mediterranean. Estuary and delta states are far more a result of the Mediterranean culture. The latter led to the settlement of favourable districts on various coasts, all of which were finally swallowed up into the Roman Empire during the period of its northern and eastern expansion.