THE ORIGIN OF SEAFARING PEOPLES
It is not sufficient to have a favourable sea-coast in order to breed a race of sea-going people. The land behind the coast-line must be fertile and productive, else no inducement exists for seafaring. This condition is everywhere present along the British shores, of which this is a typical coasting scene.
THE JUNCTIONS OF GREAT RIVERS ARE LANDMARKS OF HISTORY
Where two rivers join, two lines of political tendencies always meet, and their junction is the point whence political forces must be controlled. This is the significance of the situations of Mainz (1 at top), Khartoum (2), Lyons (3), and Belgrade (4)
Photos: Frith and Photochrome
LARGER IMAGE
Rivers as Highways of Development
Another much more evident process of development through the instrumentality of rivers was shown at the time when traffic began to extend itself over wide areas. Rivers are the natural highways in countries which abound in water, and are of so much the greater importance because in such lands other thoroughfares are frequently wanting. Taken collectively, rivers form a natural circulatory system. In America at the time of the exploration and conquest, in Siberia, in Africa to-day, they are natural arteries by means of which exchange and political power may be extended. The more accessible a river is to commerce, the more rapidly political occupation increases about its basin, as has been shown by the Varangians in Russia and the Portuguese in Brazil. The best example of a country having developed through conformity with a natural river system and in connection with it is that of the Congo State, with part of its boundaries drawn simply along the lines of watersheds. Mastery among rival colonies is determined by the results of the struggle for the possession of rivers; this has been as clearly shown by the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi in America, as by the Niger and the Benuwe in Africa. The influence of riverways in furthering the path of political development may be best seen in the contrast between South America and Africa; the colonising movement came to the latter more than 300 years later than to the former continent.