'

YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

Bought with the income
of the
WILLIAM C. EGLESTON FUND

HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
AN ATTEMPT AT A POSITIVE CLASSIFICATION
PRINCIPLES AND EXAMPLES

By
JEAN BRUNHES
Professor of Human Geography
College de France
Awarded the gold medal of the Geographical Society of Paris
and the Prix Halphen of the French Academy

Translated by
T. C. Le COMPTE
Professor of French, Yale University
Edited by
ISAIAH BOWMAN
Director of the American Geographical Society
and
RICHARD ELWOOD DODGE
Emeritus Professor of Geography
Teachers CoUege, Columbia University

Illustrated with 77 maps and diagrams and 146 half-tones

RAND McNALLY & COMPANY
CHICAGO ' NEW YORK

Copyright, 1920, by
Rand McNally & Company

THE CONTENTS

PAGE

The Editors' Preface . vii
From the Preface to the First Edition
From the Preface lo the Second Edition

vn ix

I. What Is Human Geography?
General Relations between Physical and Human Geography 1
II. How Are 'the Facts of Human Geography to Be Grouped
and Classified? . 28
III. The Essential Facts of Human Geography:
First Group: Facts of the Unproductive Occupation of the
Soil: Houses and Roads 74
IV. The Essential Facts of Human Geography {continued):
Second Group: Facts of Plant and Animal Conquest. Cul
tivation of Plants and Raising of Animals , 230
V. The Essential Facts of Human Geography {concluded):
Third Group: Facts of Destructive Exploitation: Plant and
Animal Devastation; Mineral Exploitation 330
VI. Special Studies of Small Natural Units:
First Example: Types of "Islands" of the Desert: the Oases
of the Suf and of the Mzab ... ... 415
VII. Special Studies of Small Natural Units:
Second Example: Types of "Islands" of the High Moun
tains: the Central Andes. The Regional Diagram, Irri
gation, Nomadism . . .... 453

vi THE CONTENTS
VIII. Beyond the Essential Facts: page
Regional Geography. Ethnography. Social Geography.
Historical Geography . 499
XI. The Geographic Spirit . . 569
Index of Subjects ¦ 623
Index of Geographical Names . . 630
Index of A uthors . 643

THE EDITORS' PREFACE
La Geographie humaine, by Jean Brunhes, gave us a new point
of view in human geography, and a new method of analysis of an
ever-appealing phase of geography. To make the new outlook
available to students in normal schools and colleges and to the general
reader has been the purpose of the editors in preparing the American
edition. This work was necessarily interrupted by war conditions, and the
volume was delayed far beyond the time originally planned.
To meet the needs of American conditions, certain sections and
chapters have been omitted, and, at the request of the author, the
regional description of the Central Andes has been substituted for
chapter vii in the original. In addition, the footnotes have been
reduced in number and restricted to sources available in a good
geographical reference library. Illustrations, footnotes, and text
have been added to bring out significant and pertinent American
facts in human geography.
Otherwise the original text has been followed faithfully. Pro
fessor LeCompte has aimed not merely to translate the idea but the
exact shade of meaning contained in each part of the original. In
case of doubt the editors cooperated in a personal discussion of the
linguistic or geographical point, in order that the rendering into
English might be faithful and smooth.
In the revision of the proofs, regional references have been changed
where necessary according to the latest information available.
Isaiah Bowman
Richard Elwood Dodge
FROM THE PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION
Human geography is not completed. It is known that much
remains to be done. This book is therefore not a "treatise," prop
erly speaking (that term would undoubtedly be too presumptuous) ;
it is rather a "manual" giving essential directions.'
After having tried, in my various works on irrigation, to pursue
the examination of a single class of geographic, economic, and social

viii THE PREFACE
problems in a small number of natural provinces capable of com
parison, I now try to bring together and make apparent what is the
ensemble of the various problems under the jurisdiction of human
geography. . . .
For the benefit of old students and beginners I have adopted this
didactic form, which seemed to me the more legitimate since human
geography is still in its beginnings, and so cannot always avoid the
risk of being somewhat disordered.
Besides, geographers ought never to forget the increasing impor
tance that is being given to geography in secondary and primary
instruction. I hope that many of the pages of this book will help
convince those whose duty it is to instruct the children of the people
even in the smallest towns and in the rural districts to what extent
the observation of the simplest human facts can give material for
ingenious and rational exercises of analysis.
I have made it a rule to adhere strictly to essential principles.
But I have not wished to treat of principles without considering the
application of those principles. Frequent examples are therefore
given throughout. All these examples here are only the means of
illustrating the principles, in conformity with the tenets of all positive
education. These are purposely unequally developed: they are
like pictures at different stages of completion; by that means is
revealed still better, it seems to me, the method of work and, as
painters say, the "manner."
To conduct researches in human geography, the "geometric
spirit" is indispensable; but is it sufficient? If possible, is there not
also necessary a certain "spirit of finesse"? And in presenting the
results, in giving a grasp of the meaning and the beaut}- of the entire
network of points and lines, of the checkered rows of those little
spots of different colors, dimensions, and unequal forms, which are
the traces and imprints by which the ingenious activitv of our kind
has transcribed itself on the outer surface of our planet, who would
dare pretend that a little art is sometimes not necessary? The
dimensions must be measured, but the color also must be inter
preted and the form brought out.
Almost all the detailed data in this volume are original and are
based upon the direct observations of my pupils or myself. As
to the illustrative material, I have made an effort to keep it
equally original. It is not overdone. It is distributed more or less

THE PREFACE ix
abundantly according to the nature of the chapters and paragraphs.
It is, as is fitting, strictly adapted to the text and commanded
by it. .
I desire to express my thanks in particular to my colleague and
friend M. Paul Girardin, professor at the University of Fribourg,
for all the suggestions and ideas I owe to long discussions on the
subject with him. I thank my colleague M. Fruh, of the University
of Zurich, for the advice and complementary information which he
furnished me, notably regarding various selections or cartographic
examples. That many analytic studies yet remain to be made before the
difficult and definitive syntheses can be attempted is one of the
conclusions that we hope will be drawn from the reading of these
pages. First, one must try to classify the facts of human geography
and to classify them according to the rules of observational sciences.
By their very nature, these facts, unceasingly renewed and of anj
endless diversity, escape a classification that is too simplified and too;
artificial. Again, it is well to arrange the facts in series with clear
ness and exactitude, that it may not be necessary afterward to show
how and why these groups of facts are far from being separated by
impassable barriers.
There can be no question of making a complete bibliography of
so vast a subject. Several volumes would not have sufficed. The
abundant footnotes in the chapters will prove, it seems to me, that
I have always been strictly careful to render earlier authors due
justice. I have limited myself, otherwise, to bibliographical refer
ences which might be useful to readers for their personal instruc
tion and to those which were indispensable as a justification for the
assertions advanced.
Fribourg
November I, 1910

FROM THE PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
The first edition of the Human Geography was exhausted in a few
months, and sufficient time has not elapsed between the two editions
to bring about any great change in my thought and text.
There are persons who make books with the books of others!
This one and that have congratulated me, but others have reproached

x THE PREFACE
me for having given the principal place to my personal observations
and those of my pupils. I am certainly far from disdaining — on
the contrary, I admire with much reason — the works of our masters
and predecessors; what has been called my erudition is proof of it.
But I fear to say too much or too little when I take the risk of com
menting upon and explaining what others have seen; since I do not
pretend to limit myself to description, and as I try to take note of
the facts themselves as well as the relations between the facts, I
do not feel at ease unless I describe what I have seen.
The book in its entirety is a reaction against the metaphysical
phraseology, mystical or political, which has so long pervaded the
geographic works of certain countries: earth harmonies, superior
rights of this or that race, or this or that empire, discussion of the
"stages" of "instinctive culture" and "animal culture," of "instinc
tive culture" and "reasoned culture," etc. Let us not encumber
ourselves in geography with such theses, with such analyses, with
such arguments. They belong to other branches of learning or
. . . other interests. Our effort in the domain of a positive
science has been rigorously subordinated to the positive method.
Of the many who have wished to read my book with conscientious
attention, to discuss it with a very friendly sympathy, and to give
it a well-analyzed review, I wish to mention particularly a Russian
-and an Englishman, A. Wocikof, professor of geography at the
University of Petrograd, and George G. Chisholm, M.A., B.Sc.
(Edin.), lecturer on geography, University of Edinburgh.
I wish also to mention and to quote Paul Mantoux for the follow
ing reasons : He is a man who is known by his works, bnt whom one
has never known personally or with whom one has never been per
mitted the privilege, through conversation and discussion, of bringing
out the subtle fine points, who takes your book, reads it through,
grasps its true aim, and expresses carefully and clearly the impres
sion he has received.
When an author tries to explain or defend his ideas, one can always
reply : That is perhaps what you have thought, but it is not what you
have written.
The article by Paul Mantoux appeared under the title "La Geo-
graphie humaine d'apr-es Jean Brunhes," in the Athena of July, 191 1,

THE PREFACE xi
a publication under the direction of Dick May and organ of the Ecole
des Hautes Etudes Sociales. What is of especial interest in his
review, needless to say, is not the too complimentary expressions,
but it is the argument in defense of the method, admirably prepared,
not by him who conceived it, but by one of those who, without taking
sides, have wished to make themselves understand it.
The expression "human geography" is new to many readers. M.
Brunhes begins by defining it. The object of human geography is the study
of the relations between human activity and the phenomena of physical
geography. The structure of the soil, climate, circulation of waters, vege
tation, and animal life on the one hand, human establishments, ways of
travel, cultivation, breeding, exploitation of natural resources on the other,
are united by bonds of causality more or less apparent, by connections more
or less close, which it is desired to search out and to throw light upon.
M. Brunhes does not pretend to give us the definite results of such research,
which is scarcely begun, but, on the contrary, to present problems, indicate
methods, while multiplying useful references: in short, to open up sys
tematically that vast, almost unexplored domain which gives promise of
such significant discoveries. That is the purpose of the book, of a legitimate
and restrained ambition. How has it been carried out, and what ought we
think of it?
The first care of M. Brunhes has been to forestall the objections of those
to whom physical geography is geography in its entirety, and who from the
moment that one ceases measuring the height of a fault, or registering ther-
mometric observations, would be inclined to cry literature. He has desired
to give to the study which he extols a basis as objective as possible. It is
thus that he has been led, not as he has been reproached, to banish from
human geography the man himself, but to hold himself exclusively to the
human phenomena which inscribe themselves on the soil, and which modify
nature at the same time that they are modified or brought about by nature.
A type of house, of city, the distribution of a cultivation, these are visible
and material: these can and should be self-explanatory, just as well as the
folding of a sedimentary deposit or the retrogressive erosion of a stream
of water. These phenomena of human activity, which leave an impression on the
face of the earth, M. Brunhes divides into three groups, of which each com
prises two subdivisions. These are, first, the "facts of unproductive occu
pation of the soil": man constructs habitations, man traces roads: houses
and agglomeration of houses; roads of all kinds, from the path to the road
of steel, must adapt themselves to geographic conditions. Then come the
"facts of vegetable and animal conquest": cultivations and breeding, which
man undoubtedly selects and directs, which he imposes in some sort upon

xii THE PREFACE
nature, but not without the consent of nature. Finally come the "facts of
destructive economy," Raubwirtschaft, according to the expressive German
term, which M. Brunhes usually quotes: animal and vegetable devastation,
mineral exploitations having this common characteristic, that they take
riches from the earth without giving anything in exchange. These are the
six essential facts, to which reverts, according to M. Brunhes, all the material
of human geography. He leaves to anthropology the study of the races, to
ethnography the study of manners and customs. Why? Because the
relation of man to his geographic environment is here less apparent, because
it can provide in every case only partial explanations and very insufficient
facts. Geography can lend its aid to the work of the biologist or the doc
tor, as to that of the sociologist or the historian: it ought not to confound
itself with them.
In each of the three chapters which he devotes to the six essential fads
M. Brunhes, faithful to the thought which guides him, makes no attempt
to exhaust his material. He limits himself to outlining it, to tracing its
logical divisions, to examples, to quotations, to which his reader could refer.
When he makes a study of the house and its form, so often modeled by
geographic forces, he takes two or three types which he has himself studied
close at hand: the wooden house of forested Europe, that of Switzerland in
which he lives, the house of earth and the house of stone in Egypt, which
he visited and carefully inspected when he was preparing his works on irri
gation. Having reserved to himself the right to eliminate and select, he
refers preferably to that of which he has direct knowledge. Most of the
illustrations which accompany his descriptions or his demonstrations, and
which so happily illuminate the text, he has taken himself. He makes use
usually of work carried on under his direction or in his immediate neighbor
hood, summing up, for the profit of everybody, the experience of the hard
working group that surrounds him. Thus, the study of the most general of
facts takes on an original and personal aspect : the exposition of the method
is illustrated, at each instant, by examples drawn from its application.
It is in that Spirit that, after having finished the survey and careful dis
tinguishing of the different parts of his subject, M. Brunhes has wished to
see them all at once, mingled in complex wholes, like those which can readily
be seen and experienced. But it was necessary that these wholes should be
clearly delimited and be relatively simple, in order to lend themselves to a
true methodical study in the present status of a science that is still in its
beginnings. That is why M. Brunhes has chosen, in order to prepare mono
graphs on them, small natural unities, veritable human islands: the island
of the desert, represented by two examples, the oases of the Suf and the
oases of the Mzab; and the island of the high mountain represented by an
alpine valley, the valley of Anniviers [for which is substituted in the English

THE PREFACE xiii
edition a study of the valleys of the Cential Andes by Isaiah Bowman,
director of the American Geographical Society]. Here, again, M. Brunhes
had the advantage of using personal studies 
We know now what M. Brunhes understands by human geography, and
how he wishes one to work with it. There remains to indicate with care
the differences of object and method which separate human geography from
closely allied subjects, and to show the services which related sciences can
render each other. This is the subject of a chapter entitled, in an enig
matical manner, "Beyond the Essential Facts." Regional geography is
only an extension of the subject of small natural unities. Ethnographic
geography is something different, because the facts with which it deals
escape, in great part, geographic determination. The same applies to social
geography, to political and historical geography. Each of them throws
light upon geography, properly so called, but nothing more ; and geography
makes use of their aid in order to discover extremely variable relations of
nature, rather than the rigorous and complete association of causes and
effects. On its part geography shares in the materials and examples which
ethnography or history provides, but without ever losing sight of those
pierres d'epreitves of true geography, the "essential facts." Thus, without
risk of losing one's self in vague dissertations, which would be neither geo
graphical nor historical, one could study complex questions like that of the
linguistic frontiers in mountain regions, or that of the influence exercised
on a country highly developed industrially, by the concentration of the
population around fields of coal. One would also see appear the purely
human and somewhat arbitrary character of certain facts: the artificial
depopulation of entire regions, like that of the county of Sutherland in
Scotland; the persistence of ethnical features in a new geographic back
ground, as among the German colonies in Russia or Roumania; the effects
of customs regimes, of economic monopolies, etc.
M. Brunhes has been reproached for having set aside too summarily
from geography facts which belong to it in the most legitimate way: is not
the distribution of human lives, for example, closely bound to geographical
causes as well as the distribution of domestic animals by man? It seems
to me that there may be found in this chapter an answer to such a reproach.
M. Brunhes does not forget that there is a geography of races, as there is a
geography of diseases, or a geography of megolithic monuments or of Uralo-
Altaic dialects. If he places them in the margin of his Human Geography,
it is because the principles of explanation which can provide for them purely
geographical causes are, not negligible, but certainly insufficient.
M. Brunhes concludes with a dissertation on the geographic spirit, by
showing how it now penetrates and transforms most of the studies of man and
society. After the historical spirit, to which it often allies itself, it has come

xiv THE PREFACE
to renew our views on human phenomena. M. Bcdier, connecting with the
routes of pilgrims the formation and the evolution of the epic legends of
the Middle Ages, M. Berard, seeking about the Mediterranean the locations of
the scenes of the Odyssey in order to reconstruct the world of the pre-Hellenic
navigators, M. Harnack, studying the geographic conditions of the diffusion
of Christianity in the first centuries, M. Ferrero, introducing into Roman
history the consideration of the economic changes caused by the conquest
of Egypt or of Gaul, are among the names and examples which M. Brunhes
takes pleasure in quoting. "What is there new in this way of treating his
tory, except looking at it and seeing on the surface of the earth the reality
and the variations of all we have called the essential facts of human geog
raphy? Here we may surely evoke that 'geographic sense' which Ratzel
declares more and more indispensable to ' observers of politico-geographical
phenomena.' There is a geographic sense which demands a more realistic
perception of all the manifestations of human activity, economic, his
torical, and political."
Such should be, at the farthest limits of its expansion, the influence of
human geography. That influence, as one has seen, has already begun.
Human geography already exists, and is developing: it suffices to read the
excellent manuals which have been for several years at the disposition of
the pupils of our lycees, to bring the conviction that M. Brunhes does not
come to preach in the desert. But we cannot reproach him with having
come to teach us what we already know. Not only has he presented us a
systematic picture, a view of the whole, where he has tried to bring together
all that can be useful to the class of students to which he has devoted him
self, but he has done it, as we have already said, in a manner which guards
it absolutely from banality; first, in making use as often as he could of
that which his personal experiences and those of his immediate collaborators
furnished him, and, at the risk of limiting himself, in speaking often of cer
tain regions better known to him, as the mountains of Switzerland, or the
countries of Northern Africa; and also in returning constantly to the ques
tion of method, while presenting problems in order that those who read may
learn to solve them. A book of observation, which tries to be a methodology
— it is thus that his work defines itself. Students will find there a mine of
subjects to treat, of which the greater part are new and suggestive; for
example, the geography of chateaux, which some worker familiar with the
countries and the history of our Central Massif could try.
It is a master who speaks, surrounded by his books, which he quotes
freely, giving references to the most recent works and articles in order to
aid his students in making a bibliography for themselves. Before us he
distributes their work to them, he guides them, he counsels them, he points
out the difficulties and obstacles, he offers them the example of his own works.

THE PREFACE xv
Can we make his few digressions a crime? Can we say that he errs in
morality when he speaks as he does of the native woman in the colonized
countries, or in his descriptive literature when he paints the gloomy life of
the mines? Would one deny the master the right to remain a man?
This little laborious group which he has succeeded in gathering around
him — is it not his influence as much as his teaching that has formed it?
He retains his accent when writing, in the same way that he makes use of
his work, of pictures that he has taken during his travels. I see the advan
tages of that style; I do not see the inconveniences. This book would not
gain much by a more impersonal style. And it would run the risk of losing
that which makes its raison d'etre. It is not the abstract exposition of a
completed science, but rather the program of his hopes, accompanied by a
constant invitation to reflection and work.
Not only is human geography not a completed science, but is it, will it
be, a science? To answer such a question it would be necessary to know
what is meant by the word science. M. Brunhes is not of those who believe
that they can reduce the most complex phenomena to rigorous laws and
mathematical formulas. He admits that the chain of causes and effects,
in the domain of human geography, is not always comprehensible, and that
it is necessary to substitute more supple and less certain modes of explana
tion. "Between the facts of the physical order, there are sometimes rela
tions of causality; between facts of human geography, there are usually only
relations of connection. To force, so to speak, the bond which connects
phenomena with each other is scientifically false." ....
What useful information to all those who are studying the collective
phenomena of humanity! Between nature and human establishments is
introduced an intermediary of which it is well to take account, the psycho
logical element: "By what slender and subtle psychological threads is
all that which we have called 'social geography' and 'historical geography'
connected with the essential data of human geography! That is why we
cannot too often repeat the constant appeals for restraint and critical pru
dence which we have already made. The geographical spirit, once more,
could not do without a 'spirit of finesse.' "
Science or not — after all what matters the word? Human geography is
an order of methodical investigation of which the object is from the present
sufficiently determined, though the limits may have to be more or less
advanced or withdrawn. Is not a true science the science in which at first
we must feel our way, and which is formed by a succession of experiences?
It is his experience which M. Brunhes brings to his readers and which he
invites them to imitate.
I could never have better expressed, in a few words, my ideas, my
aim, my plan.

xvi THE PREFACE
I wish, finally, to thank the Geographical Society of Paris for
having awarded to Human Geography its gold medal for 191 1, and
the French Academy for having granted it one of its prizes 
Jean Brunhes
Fribourg
March 15, 1912

HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

CHAPTER I
WHAT IS HUMAN GEOGRAPHY?
GENERAL RELATIONS BETWEEN PHYSICAL AND
HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
I. The real scope of geography. Physical and human geography.
2. The principle of activity: geographical facts, whether physical
or human, are in a state of perpetual transformation.
3. The principle of relationship: the facts of geography are
closely bound together and must be studied in their manifold
relations and connections. The idea of the ' ' terrestrial whole. ' '
I. THE REAL SCOPE OF GEOGRAPHY. PHYSICAL AND
HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
The field of geographical study consists of a double zone :
the lower zone of the atmosphere surrounding our earth,
and the superficial zone of the solid crust. At all points where
these two concentric zones come in contact we find produced
three groups of basal phenomena.
A. The solar heat on our earth is the necessary condition
of all activity and of all life. Its greatest effects are felt in
the zone of contact where the atmosphere and the earth's
crust meet. It is to the lower layers of the atmosphere (because
these are more heavily charged with water vapor), and still
more to the outermost "skin" of the earth, that the solar
heat is almost exclusively communicated. Moreover, the
greater part of this heat penetrates but a few feet into the soil
and remains there but a few hours; it again passes from the
soil to the atmosphere. In short, it rebounds, so to speak, from
the solid or liquid surface of our planet, and thus reaches the
lower portions of the atmosphere. The "heating surface" of
our atmosphere is the surface of our own earth.

2 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
B. Again, it is in the zone of contact of the atmosphere
with the earth's crust that the atmospheric phenomena —
variations of temperature, rains, and winds — and especially
the geographical facts which result from these — running waters
and glaciers — are unceasingly at work to modify and destroy
the projecting relief and to fill the submerged depths. The
leveling of mountains, the development of river valleys, the
filling up of oceans — all the facts which constitute the essen
tial part of physical geography — are rigorously localized at
the surface of the earth's crust.
C. Finally, it is on the surface of our globe and in the
lower portions of the atmosphere that all the phenomena of
plant, animal, and human life are concentrated. Even the
birds which fly highest come to earth to rest or feed; the fish
and the invertebrates of the deepest seas live, in comparison
with the dimensions of the earth, at but a short distance from
the surface. As for human beings, having their feet necessarily
on the ground and drawing from the atmosphere the oxygen
needed for their respiration, they express in the highest
degree that imperious localization of life within two thin, con
centric slices — a slice of rock or water and a slice of atmosphere
— portions of the universe extremely small in comparison with
the earth, and smaller still in comparison with known space,
but portions favored above all others. There the sun con
centrates its energy; there the atmospheric agents are
constantly at work ; there, finally, life, in all its diverse forms,
develops and multiplies, indefatigably.
Now all these fundamental facts are not superimposed nor
mingled in one "locality" without precise relations of cause
and effect. We shall explain later (§2) the why and where
fore of these relations. In this introduction it is sufficient to
point out how sharply circumscribed is the geographer's field
of observation. Where all these phenomena are combined,
and there alone, lies the field of geographical inquiry.
The greater number of these phenomena are in no way
influenced by human activities. Whether man exists or not,
water will still evaporate under the action of solar heat; and
air charged with vapor, when driven against a mountain wall,
will rise, expand, and cool, causing precipitation. Whether

WHAT IS HUMAN GEOGRAPHY? 3
man exists or not, running water will still carve valleys or
wear away the brinks of waterfalls, and the land detritus borne
along by the waters of streams will still tend, as soon as the
force that carries it weakens, to spread out in alluvial cones or
deltas. Whether man exists or not, the slow-moving glaciers
will smooth their rough beds; the wind, bearing grains of
sand, will sculpture the rocks of the deserts ; the waves of the
sea will cause the cliffs to crumble; and the whole surface of
the earth, raised or submerged, will show changes due to
the physical agents that have worked upon it. Such are the
basal facts which form the essential foundation of all "phy
sical geography."
A considerable part of plant and animal life also escapes the
influence of man; the earth would be covered with vegetation
and peopled with animals, even if man did not exist. Bio
logical geography (plant and animal), part of which is often
called "natural geography,"1 is still often considered an aspect
of physical geography understood in its most general sense.
But if we cast a general glance over the earth, we soon see
a whole new and very extensive series of surface phenomena :
here it is cities, there it is railroads; here it is cultivated
fields, there it is quarries; here it is irrigating canals, there it
is salt marshes; and in all lands are more or less dense masses
or groups of human beings. These human beings are, in
themselves and by themselves, surface facts and therefore geo
graphical facts. They live on the earth. They are subject
to atmospheric and terrestrial conditions. They belong to
certain climates, to certain altitudes, to certain zones. Be
sides, they live from the earth : it is by subordinating them
selves to natural phenomena that they assure to their bodies
the necessary conditions for life and growth and to their facul
ties, development and expansion.
1The excellent Bibliographie g&ographique annudle which is published in Ann. de
g&og. (Paris), under the direction of Louis Raveneau, includes meteorology, geology,
orography, hydrography, and botanical and zoological geography under the general
title of Geographie naturelle — the equivalent of what is here called physical geography.
The Physikalischer Atlas of Berghaus (Gotha) includes among other volumes one
entitled Pfianzenverbreitung and another entitled Tierverbreitung. These two sections
of a special atlas of physical geography are. as the names indicate, devoted to the geo
graphic distribution of plants and animals. The Traite de geographie physique by
Emmanuel de Martonne (Paris, 1909; 2d edition, 1913) has a subtitle: Climat,
Hydrographie, Relief du sol. Biogeographie, and in fact, a fifth of the volume is
devoted to biogeography.

4 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
In biological geography human beings occupy an incom
parable, a unique, place! They deserve from geographers
special and careful attention, not only because of the reality
of the covering which their living bodies form at certain places
on the earth, but also because of their works. What are the
ant-hills of our country or the mounds which the termites
build in Australia, in Ceylon, in the Sudan, or in the Kalahari,
in comparison with all that which is the peculiar work of man
on our globe! In geography there is a striking difference — a
difference for which there is no common measure — between
the work of the animal species, even the best endowed and
most ingenious, and the work of man.
Men reforest the mountains which have been stripped of
their trees and thus moderate the destructive work of the
streams and indirectly affect climate. They plant trees to
hold the sands in place, and seaweed to fix the submarine mud :
the trees keep the sands from being set in motion by the wind
and the seaweed protects harbors from the capricious move
ments of the mud in estuaries.
Men do still more. Among the living beings they can
arrange and control changes in the life-conditions about
them; they "cultivate" plants and they "domesticate"
animals; they labor unceasingly in order to make both more
adapted to their needs. Within recent times, for example,
they have crossed the Enghsh horse with the Arabian, and
have obtained an equine type that possesses wonderful
resistance, a type that is capable of enduring not only the
climate of Great Britain, but also the varied climates of
America and Australia.
The ensemble of all these facts in which human activity has
a part forms a truly special group of surface phenomena — a
complex group of facts infinitely variable and varied, always
contained within the limits of physical geography, but having
always the easily discernible characteristic of being related
more or less directly to man. To the study of this specific
group of geographical phenomena we give the name "human
geography." This appellation, thus understood, can give rise neither to
ambiguity nor to any serious opposition.

WHAT IS HUMAN GEOGRAPHY? 5
2. THE PRINCIPLE OP ACTIVITY: GEOGRAPHICAL FACTS, PHYSICAL
OR HUMAN, ARE FACTS IN PERPETUAL TRANSFORMATION
Everything about us is undergoing transformation; every
thing is increasing or diminishing. Nothing is really motionless
or unchanging. The level of the sea, the universal and tradi
tional guiding mark for measuring altitudes, is a purely
fictitious mean surface ; the real mean surface is not the same
for all oceans nor even for all points of the same ocean.
The immense glacial expanses, which seem eternal in their
fixity, are nevertheless moving with a slow and silent but
powerful and continuous motion — powerful because it is
continuous. The hardest rocks cannot escape disintegration
by the atmosphere. The loftiest peaks will sooner or later
be reduced to more moderate heights. Thus, even where
the superficial testimony of our senses reveals to us only
immobility and stability, we must recognize the fact of move
ment, change, activity.
What, then, are the forces which unceasingly transform the
superficial regions of our globe?
A. The igneous center of the earth is a primary cause of
activity. The interior forces express themselves either by
very slow, almost imperceptible but lasting phenomena —
elevations, adjustments, subsidings ; or, on the other hand, by
sudden, violent phenomena, by fits and starts — upheavals,
foldings, fractures, sinkings, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions,
The first go on so slowly that they are hardly perceptible to
any one generation of men and we are tempted to neglect them.
The second surprise us by their strange unexpectedness ; hence
we are tempted to exaggerate their importance, forgetting that
they are both local and exceptional, limited in extent and in
duration. In reality, both constitute only a restricted part
of the present activity of the earth ; both play a secondary
role in comparison with the daily and unceasing changes
which are taking place everywhere and which are due to the
action of the sun.
B. Solar heat is in truth the principal and predominant
energy that causes almost all the activity taking place on our
earth. The sun constantly produces differences of temperature ;
these cause differences of weight and differences of pressure

6 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
of the air; thence arise numberless causes of instability; and
instability determines movement.
The zones of the earth on which the sun's rays strike per
pendicularly are warmed more than the rest of the globe; the
layers of atmosphere in contact with these terrestrial zones
share in the increased heating. From this double series of
phenomena arises the permanent planetary wind system of
our earth.
C. Here another series of forces intervenes which transforms,
directs, and multiplies the atmospheric movements. The
earth is not motionless in space — it has periodic movements
which are constantly changing its position with reference
to the sun. Instead of counterbalancing the disturbances
continually arising from differences of temperature, the
astronomic movements cause the sun continually to vary its
terrestrial field of action. They constantly augment the
slightest daily disturbances, and hence deserve to be con
sidered a third cause of activity. However, these transforming
forces only cause changes in the conditions of equilibrium on
our globe. It is still the sun which furnishes the energy —
it is the sun that is the primary cause of these transformations.
The differences of temperature and the differences of
pressure, associated thus with the cosmic forces, give rise
to winds and currents. And while the eolian forces in then-
own way shape certain portions of the earth's rehef, the
atmospheric currents, acting upon the surface waters, cause
to a certain degree the marine currents.
Above all, the air is a transporter of water vapor. As
it becomes heated it can absorb an ever-larger quantity of
vapor; but as it cools, its power of absorption (hminishes
and the water vapor is precipitated. Variations of temperature
cause perpetual movements of the air, and these movements
themselves modify temperature. The water, carried by the
air in the form of vapor, shares in this incessant play; it
undergoes, in turn, changes of place which determine changes
of condition, and changes of condition which bring about
changes of place. This interplay of the reciprocal effects of
temperature and movement goes on indefinitely. Through
the agency of this universal circulation, water is carried

WHAT IS HUMAN GEOGRAPHY? 7
by the air even to those parts of the continents most distant
from the sea. The smallest drop moves and acts. Here,
glaciers are formed; there, running waters unite in streams.
Glaciers and running waters produce mechanical changes the
effects of which are beyond appreciation, and of these
mechanical changes the initial cause is still the sun.
Light and heat, rains, climates, and seasons - — we owe them
all to the sun. Let us go still further: it is on the sun that
all life, plant and animal, depends; even the activity of the
human body itself depends upon that energy which the sun
dispenses in the form of heat. Nor is that all. The sun
has created on the earth reserves of force, as it were, from which
man may draw at will. It has stored up in coal an incom
parable amount of chemical energy — "bottled sunlight" —
which we may set free and utilize as we please; for coal is
only the precious remains of an earlier luxuriant vegetation.
D. On the terrestrial globe the energy of the sun is, then,
an endless cause of variation, or better, of unstable equilibrium
and consequently of movement. But this movement would
be irregular, the effects of this energy would be chaotic, if
there did not exist, to combat this incessant cause of disorder,
a general cause of order, a directing and organizing principle.
This force, which might be called the wise force of the earth
in contrast with the mad force of the sun, is the centripetal
attraction of gravity. Among the multitude of chance
groupings, of unstable complications, to which this continual
and universal agitation gives rise, this powerful centripetal
attraction imposes upon bodies of different weights, of different
densities, one order of stability, one mode of equilibrium —
that is, the order and mode of the superposition of the lighter
layers and masses upon the heavier. A unified and regular
result finally comes from this ever-renewed struggle between
an indefatigable and universal cause of activity and an invio
lable and universal cause of order.
This attraction of the heavier bodies toward the center of
the earth disciplines and organizes activity; a harmonious
order is thus introduced into the general economy of our
earth. Our minds find a unity in the midst of the com
plexity of the phenomena. We begin by perceiving mechanical

8 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
phenomena side by side; then we see that these phenomena
are really subordinate one to the other; finally we discover a
principle that gives unity; we can legitimately arrive at the
idea of relation, and strive to define laws. Instead of Umiting
ourselves to the simple observation of phenomena, we are
led to study them in series and to seek the very principle of
their succession. Every succession has causes and laws.
The material phenomena thus acquire a sort of personal
life — they have no longer merely minima and maxima, but
a birth, a maturity, a decay; and we arrive at a conception
of an organic development, as it were, of the physical facts,
and establish a law of evolution even of the material forms
of the earth.
This is one of the newest and most interesting parts of
geography. Three quarters of a century ago we gave up
classifying mountains according to their secondary or acci
dental characteristics, such as their direction or their altitude.
We recognized that their formation dated back to different
periods of the earth's history, and for the first time the notion
of age was introduced into orography. But even then it was
still a question only of relative age. Mountain systems, by
comparison, were either more ancient or more recent ; geologists
and geographers dared go no farther.1
In a group of houses one can, from the style or by the
aid of documents, decide which are the more ancient, which
were more recently built; but we do not claim that these
houses necessarily show the characteristic architecture of
their age. We can, if we please, construct a building in
Renaissance style, but, as soon as the stone has lost its bright
ness and freshness, our building will and must appear more
ancient than a house of modern style. From material things
let us pass to living beings and we shall at once be struck by
the difference. No one of us would expect to find a child
with the face of an old man, nor an old man with the face
of a child. There are, of course, exceptional cases; but the
exceptions themselves never go beyond certain limits. We
affirm — and our affirmation has a universal import —
JRecently orogenic theories have been further developed: Suess, Das Antliia der
Erde, translated into French by Emmanuel de Margerie and published under the title
La Face de la terre. An English edition by Sollas is entitled The Face of the Earth

WHAT IS HUMAN GEOGRAPHY? 9
that each age has its characteristic features. Why? Because
the development of the living being is of necessity subject
to the laws of growth.
Now let us come back to our mountain systems and we shall
understand what a change there has been in the ideas asso
ciated with age, under the influence of the new geographical
ideas. Mountains are no longer merely structures of different
dates and. origin; in their evolution they are comparable to
living organisms. They are no longer young or old with refer
ence to each other — ¦ they are young or old with reference to
their past forms and to their future forms. Age in orography
is expressed' by a topographical appearance. No continental
mass can escape erosion, the progress of which is inevitable.
The existing stage of erosion allows us to give the present
topography a definite place in the necessary series of successive
stages. It goes without saying that, for phenomena the
regular succession of which demands thousands of centuries,
the apparent exceptions are much more numerous and striking
than for living organisms whose evolution is accomplished in
less than a hundred years. ...
Then, too, the outcroppings of the earth's crust are not
homogeneous in character; they, consist of rocks of unequal
hardness and of unequal resistance. But, whatever be the
number of abnormal cases, and whatever be the importance
of the accidental differences, we have none the less the right to
speak, in the full sense of the word, of the age of topographical
forms. And the idea is still more felicitous than the word.
All mountains pass through successive stages of development ;
the different stages are represented by different surface
features. It follows that a large number of existing moun
tains can be referred to a common type. Orographic systems,
formerly regarded as having no similarity whatever, are thus
connected in a common family; they show this common type
at different stages of its evolution.1
In regions of recent folding, young mountains arise with
steep and rugged forms; their birth is of too recent date for
'For the development of these ideas and the works on which they are based,
consult A. Philippson, "Die Morphologie der Erdoberflache in dem letzen Jahrzehnt,
1885-1894," Geog. Zeitschr., 1896, pp. 512-527, 557-576, and 688-704; W. M. Davis
and G. Braun, Grundziige der Physiogeographie.Teubner, Leipzig and Berlin. 191 1.

10 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
their modeling to be far advanced. Old mountains, on the
contrary, have a softened relief; they have been leveled by
erosive agents. Thus, we establish a relationship between the
forms of the Alps, mountains which are still very young, and
the aged forms of the plateau of the Ardennes or of New
England. In the last two cases time has done its work — old
age has come. The Alps likewise will doubtless some day
in their turn be a slightly undulating plateau; they will finally
become what we call a peneplain.
The geographer strives thus to group and classify all the
types that he observes. He forms, for example, a common
family of all the glaciated countries, and, because their surface
features have had a common origin, he puts into this family
Canada, Finland, Scandinavia, Scotland, and other countries
which long ago were freed from their continental icecaps, and
ice-covered Greenland, which has been aptly called one of
their "backward brothers."
He who speaks of the age of topographical forms must also
speak of the age of water courses. Rivers, like mountains,
are more or less aged ; all pass through different stages of which
the succession forms a cycle, the cycle of erosion, which Davis
calls the life-cycle.1 They pass from infancy, which is dis
tinguished both by an indefinite drainage system and by rapid
streams, to old age, which is characterized by wanderings and
bifurcations of every sort. During maturity the river flows
in a well-defined bed, which it has itself excavated, and the
slope is such that the water is easily and regularly conducted
to the mouth. These stages, of course, pass into each other by
imperceptible gradations. A river that is still young, hke
the Rhone, must pass through numberless stages (which it is
as difficult to specify exactly as it would be to number) before
resembling a very old river like the Mississippi or the
Amazon. Finally, a river that has already reached old age
may suddenly, as the result of the lowering or displacement
of its base-level, begin its work of deepening all over again
JA11 these ideas are presented with clearness in A. de Lapparent, Lcfons de
geographie physique; see in particular Lesson VIII and Lesson X. See also W. M.
Davis, " Rivers and Valleys of Pennsylvania." Nat. Geog. Mag., I, 1889. pp. 183-254;
Practical Exercises in Physical Geography, Ginn and Co., Boston, 1908; Geographical
Essays, Ginn and Co., Boston, 1909; Emmanuel de Martonne, Traiti de geographic
physique, Paris, 1913.

WHAT IS HUMAN GEOGRAPHY? 11
in the opposite direction. It will thus again display the vigor
of its early years, though retaining to a certain degree some
of the forms of the earlier cycle. The river that had been
growing increasingly heavy and slow, as if in a long sleep, can
suddenly reawaken, but without putting off entirely the "old
man." Thus it is that in a thalweg of a slightly undulating
country of softened relief, where one would expect to see the
feeble flow of a slowly-moving stream, one may sometimes dis
cover a river, intrenched in a new channel, robust and active.
With all the more reason, therefore, is it permissible to
compare with living beings series or groups of geographical
facts of higher complexity — -that is, geographical facts which
concern the living beings themselves. Every day we make
such comparisons. We say that the flora or the fauna of a
country is growing young or old; and when they are being
transformed, we say again that they are becoming enriched or
impoverished. The population of a region or the development
of an urban center is marked by successions of changes which
resemble the characteristic phenomena of beings endowed
with life.
And we must, above all, investigate the causes to which
these phenomena owe their origin, and whether the point at
which they have arrived indicates maturity or heralds decay.
What matters it whether a city have 50,000 or 52,000 inhab
itants? That is not the important question. What is the
past of this city and what is its true age? At what point in
its evolution is it ? Has it reached or passed the flower of its
maturity ? Such are the problems to be set and to be answered.
Is it an ancient city which formerly counted 300,000 inhabit
ants and which to-day has not more than 50,000? Is it a
Ravenna or an Aigues-Mortes ? Or is it, on the contrary,
a very young city, born yesterday, in full tide of growth
and destined to grow still more, like Pasadena or Seattle,
or like those cities of South Africa, some of which after only
twenty-five years of existence had reached a population of
more than 200,000 inhabitants?1
1The town of Johannesburg, which was established September 20, 1886, had
102,078 inhabitants according to the census of July 15, 1896, and a population of
237,104 by the census of 1911. Winnipeg, Manitoba, with a population of 7,98S »n
1881, had grown ten years later to 25,642 and to 163,000 by 1916.

12

HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

What more striking than the march of Paris, as it can be
approximately established from historical documents!1

Number of

Years

Historic Periods

Inhabitants
(in thousands)

363

Under Julian

8

510

Under Clovis

30

1220

Under Philip Augustus

120

1328

Under Philip VI

250

1596

Under Henry IV

230

1675

Under Louis XIV

54°

1788

Under Louis XVI

599

1801

Under the Consulate

548

I817

Under Louis XVIII

7H

183I

Under Louis Philippe

786

1851

Under the Republic

i,°53

1856

Under Napoleon III

i,i74

l86l

\ /

1,696

1866

I |

1,825

I872

/ (After the annexation of \

1.794

I876

\ the suburbs within the /

1,989

1886

/ circle of the fortifica- \

2,345

I896

\ tions) /

2,436

I906

I 1

2,763

I9II

/ \

2,888

At the beginning of the twentieth century all Europe con
tained about 160 cities of more than 100,000 inhabitants, of
which 55 exceeded 250,000. The cities of a half million
numbered 23, and the cities of a million, 6. A. de Foville
rightly concludes: "Present-day Europe thus supports more
cities of five hundred thousand inhabitants and above than
the Europe of a hundred years ago supported cities of a
hundred thousand inhabitants."
Have we even a clear notion of the growth of the world's
population during the last century ? In Europe it has at least
doubled. "There exist at present," says A. de Foville again,
"1,500 millions of men. If each century were to double the
number, there would be 3 billions about the year 2000,
6 billions about 2100, 12 billions about 2200, 24 billions about
2300  We have already reached the impossible.
Let us go on, however. In a thousand years it would be
the mad sum of nearly 2,000 billions of human beings that
our planet would have to support and feed  And
lAfter A. de Foville, "Les Grandes Villes au XIX1' et au XXe siecle," Economiste
francais, June 13, 1908, p. 877.

WHAT IS HUMAN GEOGRAPHY? 13
will some one say that we are looking too far ahead? But
what is a thousand years in the history of the world ? Thirty
generations ; the time from Hannibal to Charlemagne, or from
Charlemagne to Napoleon."1
What differences, besides, between two masses of human
beings numerically comparable, such as the 268,000 inhabit
ants which the census of 1 9 1 1 gave to the whole department
of Lot-et-Garonne, and the 261,000 of the city of Bordeaux
according to the same census! Not only are these groups, in
one case massed and in the other scattered, attached to the
soil in a wholly different manner, but, what is still more
important, 70 years earlier, in 1841, Lot-et-Garonne had
78,000 inhabitants more, while the city of Bordeaux had
162,000 fewer.
Retrogression and progression: These human phenomena,
like all terrestrial phenomena, never remain stationary; we
must study them in evolution, catching them on the march
and seizing them, so to speak, in full activity. They are
animated by a definitely determined movement. We must
study them as we study bodies in motion : we must determine
definitely the point of space and the moment of time at which
they are produced, then point out the direction and observe
the speed of the movement itself. Such must be one of the
dominant purposes of those who observe geographical facts,
for progression is as true of human facts as of facts of the
physical order.
Thus to put in the foreground the idea and the fact of
activity will be to produce a real resurrection of the idea of
Hfe in a study particularly concerned with the present life
of the earth.
3. THE PRINCIPLE OF RELATIONSHIP: THE FACTS OF GEOGRAPHICAL
REALITY ARE CLOSELY BOUND TOGETHER AND MUST BE
STUDIED IN THEIR MANIFOLD INTERRELATIONS.
THE IDEA OF THE "TERRESTRIAL WHOLE"
It is not sufficient to study by themselves these different
series of phenomena. In reality they are not isolated; they
depend upon each other.
JA. de Foville, "L'Avenir des populations humaines, " Economiste franfais,
November 30, 1907, p. 768.

14 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
The evolution of water courses is related to the evolution
of mountains, and vice versa. These two phenomena are so
closely interrelated that in very truth they form but one
study. The first course of a stream over a section of country
is determined by the superficial conformation of the surface;
but as the river develops, it modifies the relief of the region
through which it flows. The liquid element removes the solid
element; but the solid element directs and often stops the
liquid element. The hydrographic systems and the basins
of different water courses are thus associated in a common
destiny. One may say that they make each other.
As a country ages under the attack of streams and weather,
even its climate will be changed. The air will not have to
rise so high to cross the subdued mountains; it will therefore
undergo less expansion and be cooled less, and a smaller part
of the contained water vapor will be precipitated. The in
fluence of the climatic regime being thus transformed, its
effects will be apparent upon the natural vegetation. Further,
if the annual rainfall is diminished because of the modified
relief, it follows that the flow of running water is diminished
and the work of erosion will be slowed up. This in turn
modifies the drainage by diminishing the precipitation.
Finally, the water vapor which formerly was precipitated over
this basin will be carried farther, to the benefit of another
section of the earth's crust.1
Nothing shows more clearly than such examples the general
interactions of phenomena, and nothing reveals more dis
tinctly the importance of the idea of relationships in geography;
this suggestive idea must dominate every complete study of
geographical facts. One cannot be content with the observa
tion of a fact by itself or of an isolated series of facts. After
this initial observation, it is important to place the series
back in its natural setting, in the complex ensemble of facts
in the midst of which it was produced and developed. We
must investigate the manner in which it is connected with
the series of facts which are its neighbors; we must ascer
tain in what measure it has determined them, and in what
1J. B. Woodworth, "The Relation between Baseleveling and Organic Evolution,"
Amer. Geol., XIV, pp. 209-235.

WHAT IS HUMAN GEOGRAPHY? 15
measure, on the other hand, it has been affected by their
influence. Of course, certain groups of facts were long ago observed
and studied in their relations. Under the heading of climate,
for example, a whole group of closely connected phenomena
were brought together; but that was only an instinctive
application of the principle of relationship. To-day this
principle, clearly perceived, must be methodically introduced
into geography as a whole.
In meteorology, in zoology, in botany, it is possible to
isolate certain facts, to study them by themselves. In
geography one cannot stop there. And the principle of
relationship, the application of which is especially fruitful
in geography, has penetrated even into these individual
sciences. We have seen phytogeography created by the side
of botany; zoogeography by the side of zoology. Now the
end proposed in these new scientific branches is the study
of the relationship of facts whose analytical study is the
purpose of the mother branch.
Systematic botany collects and classifies plants, genus by
genus, species by species; it also draws up catalogues and
makes herbariums, country by country, province by province.
We cannot dispense with this primary study; but it must be
recognized that, even if the specimens are sought out, chosen,
and examined with the most conscientious care, the region
itself, as a natural vegetal region, may be somewhat neglected,
as demonstrated by the importance given a rare plant though
it be represented by only two or three individual specimens.
Yet, when one looks at a picture one does not limit himself
to counting the strokes of the brush and to classifying the
tints; one must consider the harmonious whole produced by
the mingling and opposing of the colors and shades. One
can of course notice an isolated, peculiar touch of only
secondary importance; but how can one neglect the impression
produced by the picture as a whole? It is necessary to take
account of those dominant color effects which, by their arrange
ment, give the key and, by their combination, determine the
artistic impression and give character to the work.
It is the same with the vegetal carpet of a natural region

16 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
as with a picture. This carpet has dominant traits, a physiog
nomy. Likewise, for the geographer, the significance of the
combination and relative value of the more abundant plants
(vegetation) has an interest entirely different from that of
the complete list of morphological types (flora). The vegeta
tion reveals to a greater extent the general conditions of life
and has a biological value besides. When we travel over
the heath of Brittany, the purple foxgloves, the broom, all
the vegetal carpet which we trample under foot, recall to us
similar natural regions such as the heaths of Wales or of the
Central Plateau of France. Any one group of plants acts,
in fact, in the same manner with reference to the same group
of connected natural causes- — subsoil, light, humidity, etc.
That is another reason why in every vegetal region we should
try to see, above all, the main features, the large masses.
Such are the first principles of botanical geography. We
are no longer interested in isolated individuals or floral species,
but in groupings and in two main categories of groupings:
the plant formations and the plant associations.
The forms of vegetation, ov plant formations {die Vegetations-
formen), include plants which, while very different from the
morphological point of view, are similar in appearance, and
present themselves to us in similar attitudes. The most general
of these classes correspond to empirical definitions ; for example,
trees, bushes, herbaceous plants, epiphytes — that is, plants
which develop on other plants — etc. To make use of the
expression often used by the true founder of botanical geog
raphy, Alexander von Humboldt,1 these are properly "physiog
nomy" categories. We are already close to geographical
reality. We may leave together plants which systematic
classification separated and scattered, but which, however,
are united and mingled in nature, such as those two species
of rank plants which we find associated in dry regions : the
aloes, with succulent leaves, and the cacti, with succulent stalks
but without leaves. In the same way the larches, which lose
their leaves at the end of autumn, conifers though they are,
will fall in with the deciduous trees of northern regions. On the
t Von Humboldt is the author of De distribuiione geographica plantarum secundum
cceli temperiem el aUUudincm montium, Paris, 1817.

WHAT IS HUMAN GEOGRAPHY? 17
other hand, from this new point of view, the old divisions into
species are broken up. The powerful and very abundant family
of graminaceous plants, which includes the rice and the gigantic
bamboos of tropical regions as well as the maize and the rye grass
of temperate regions, is entirely dismembered, and the genera
and species are distributed among several forms of vegetation.
The second unit of botanical geography has a yet greater
value : it represents still more clearly the facts of natural con
nection. The plant world, we have said, gives to certain
similar countries a like physiognomy: very different plants
have, in fact, analogies of temperament, as well as affinities;
the ensemble of the plants which live together and whose
natural grouping is expressed to our eyes by a characteristic
landscape, constitutes a plant association or Pflanzenverein.1
Thus the forests include many different associations, and
if some are due to almost a single plant formation like the
association of the littoral tropical forests (forests of mangroves),
there enters almost always into any single association a large
variety of formations. The great trees of our region, beeches
and firs, develop into great forests. Each of them is accom
panied by the same group of bushes, grasses, or mosses which
gives to it everywhere the same underbrush. It is a sort of
necessary retinue which shares its fortune, which is associated
with its Hfe; and all this living group is collectively designated
by the tree or by the species which predominates, as the fir
association, the beech association, etc.2 Thus an entirely new
botany has been created which gives more attention to the
real grouping of Hving forms.3
1Warming, Oecology of Plants: An Introduction to the Study of Plant-Communities
(English adaptation by Groom and Balfour), Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1909; F- E.
Clements, Plant Physiology and Ecology, Henry Holt and Co., New York, 1907;
Coulter, Barnes, and Cowles, Textbook of Botany, Vol. II, Ecology, American Book
Co.. New York, 1911.
2 See Ch. Flahault, "Au Sujet de la carte botanique, forestiere et agricole de
France, et des moyens de l'executer," Ann. de Geog., October 16, 1896, pp. 450-451;
cf. also Warming, op. cit.; and Oscar Drude, Handbuch der Pfianzengeographie, Engel-
horn, Stuttgart, 1890; geographers are directed also to the more recent work by R.
Chodat, Principes de botanique, Paris and Geneva, 191 1.
3These natural associations are so well established that botanists are enabled to
reconstruct the ancient vegetal coverings of regions. "The dominant species of a
primitive association having died out, other species belonging to the same association,
characteristic forms accompanying the dominant species, live on, often unnoticed and
neglected, but trustworthy evidences of the past and sure signs of the plant associa
tions that once nourished there. Thus the botanist restores a country as the archae
ologist restores the temple of Epidaurus or the Acropolis. He discovers forests
of beeches under areas covered with myrtle: foiests of cork-oaks and chestnuts under

18 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
We might, in addition, show manifold relationships between
the same natural conditions, soil and climate, and the animal
world; between the plant and the animal world — between the
different types of the animal world.1 But we need only
note here this general necessary orientation in different kinds
of investigation. In a work published in Germany, Domestic
Animals and Their Relations with the Economic Life of Man,
the author is not satisfied with studying domestic animals
one by one, or with describing their organs, or with seeking
their origin. He takes them in their geographical setting;
he examines the relationships which exist between the animals
and the cultivated plants, and determines with what methods
of exploitation of the soil, with what sorts of cultivation,
and even with what forms of economic organization they
are generally associated.2
The study of the origin of the terrestrial faunae is becoming
more and more geographical. If one consult such a weU-known
book as that of R. F. Scharf , on the faunae of Europe, one finds
that the only two factors which are to-day introduced to explain
the distribution of animal population are, first, the continental
continuity (present or past), and, second, the intervention of
man — factors which are both of a distinctly geographical
character.3 Through these facts of plant and animal distribution,
through these forms of economic organization, we come to
the brush of Corsica. A few species surviving an association are our touchstone"
(Ch. Flahaut, "Le Devoir des botanistes en matiere de geographie humaine," Compte
rendu du IX" Congres geog. internal., Geneve, IQ08, I, Geneva, 1909, p. 290). Further,
botanical geography understood in this way furnishes a suggestive principle, both posi
tive and critical, to paleobotany, or the study of the flora and vegetation of different
geological periods: "In all of these investigations, consideration of the general char
acter of the flora one is studying, of the climatic conditions in which it seems to have
flourished, would naturally result in useful bases for interpretation; for example, that
the presence of types belonging to warm regions would be unlikely in a setting of types
belonging to cold ones, or vice versa. But that is a sort of argument that must be
used with greater discretion the farther one gets from the present time, it being
quite possible that species different from those of our era, however like they may be,
did not have exactly the same needs" (R. Zeiller, "Les Problemes et les methodes
de lapaleobotanique," Rev. du mois, December 10, 1909, p. 654).
^Arnold Jacobi, Tier geographie (Sammlung Goschen), Leipzig, 1904.
2 See Eduard Hahn, Die Haustiere und Hire Beziehungen zur Wirtschaft des Men-
schen. Eine geographische Skizze, Leipzig, 1896. Cf. Maurice Caullery, "Animaux
domestiques et plantes cultivates," Ann. de geog., January 15, 1897, pp. 1-13;
A. Hettner, "Die Haustiere und die menschlichen Wirtschaftsformen nach Eduard
Hahn," Geog. Zeilschr., March, 1897, pp. 160-166.
3 More and more the tendency is to explain such facts as due to other causes than
marine currents or migratory birds. Sec R. F. Scharf, European Animals: Their
Geological History and Geographical Distribution, London, 1907.

WHAT IS HUMAN GEOGRAPHY? 19
man. Our endeavor finds its entire raison d'etre in the great
geographical principle of relationships. For men themselves,
like the plants and the animals, are closely bound to a certain
number of phenomena. Man has need of water both for
himself and for the animals which live near him; he naturally
fixes his dwelling about springs, and the distribution of springs
often explains the distribution of groups of habitations. Com
pare the Champagne and the Morvan. In Champagne
pouilleuse the soil is very permeable and springs are not
numerous, though they have in general considerable volume;
the houses and farms are therefore found huddled together in
groups far from each other. In the Morvan, on the other
hand, in nearly all localities slender threads of water gush
out and flow; as a result the houses are isolated and scat
tered widely (Fig. 7). In Lorraine a line of springs follows
the line of contact between the permeable lower oolite and
the impermeable clay of the Lias; cities and villages are
strung along this line.
At other times men grouped themselves on the border line
of very dissimilar natural regions because this border line was
a natural place of exchange. The pasture lands of volcanic
Auvergne are bordered on the northeast by the rich agricul
tural plain of fertile Limagne, and are surrounded elsewhere
by crystalline regions, poor lands covered with moors, and
chestnut groves; the most influential cities are placed on the
border of old volcanoes and form a belt which never leaves
the geological boundary line (see Fig. 1).
A striking example of the geographical importance of a
geological boundary line is found in the line of significant
cities that have grown up at the Fall Line between the Pied
mont Belt and the Coastal Plain in the- eastern United States.
Where the streams of the strong rock Piedmont pass by a
series of small falls and rapids to the Coastal Plain area, they
furnish power for manufacturing. The presence of the falls,
at or near the head of navigation of the Coastal Plain streams,
necessitated a change in the form of transportation. Cities
situated at the falls drew their sustenance and goods for trade
from two contrasted soil areas. The geological boundary still
continues to be the basal cause of the important cities

20

HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

Tertiary and
^Hf|f| Quaternary eruptive rocks
Tertiary and
Secondary sediments
rchaean schists and
Primary eruptiue rocks

Fig. 1. General Relations Connecting Physical Geography and HntiM
Geography: the Distribution of the Principal Urban Centers on the
Border of the Volcanic Regions of Central France
It is most often at the point of contact between the eruptive areas and the quite
different surrounding lands that small cities (Saint-Flour, Mauriac, Pleaux, etc.) are
situated. Here the extremities of the ancient lava flows terminate and the base
of the_ very poor Archaean soil appears. Clermont-Ferrand, Riom, Aurillac, etc.,
more important cities, are found where the eruptive rocks meet the richer soils of
the great Oligocene basin of the Limagne or the small Aurillac basin.
From tho 1 : 1,700,000 geological map accompanying tho lino monograph (givon tho award by tho Acadoray of
Scioncoa) of Maruolliu. Boulo, ou tho ami of tho last volcanos io central Franco, L; O, ooraphie, XIII, 1906, p. 179.

WHAT IS HUMAN GEOGRAPHY? 21
that are to-day found at the Fall Line from New Jersey
to Alabama.
The importance which we attach to Quaternary glaciation [writes
one geographer1] comes from the fact that in Savoy, as in high
mountains elsewhere, physical geography and human geography
are in greater part the . work of the ancient glaciers. They it is
that have at least broadened, deepened, and shaped the Alpine
valleys; they it is that, after the erosion of the bordering rocks and
the grinding of the harder elements in the complex of the deep
moraines, have made habitable the mountains by leaving this
erratic drift either in the depressions of the valley thus hollowed,
or on the gentler slopes, or on the bottoms of the preglacial valleys.
In fact, these erratic deposits, being impermeable (especially the
glacial silt of the deep moraines), make, along the sides of the valleys,
a line of springs at contact with which the water absorbed by
the slope reappears, a characteristic which allows us to recognize
them in the landscape. On the other hand, these glacial banquettes,
as they are termed by W. Kilian, formed from material of different
origin, include elements of every nature — calcite in a granite country,
flint in a calcareous country — always very finely ground ; these are
cultivable soils par excellence, and often the only available ones of
the valley. Hence they are selectedifor human habitations.
Lowl2 had noticed previously that, in the tributary valleys of the
Oetzthal, the greater part of the, population lives on the alluvial
cones; in the Langtaufererthal the figure amounts to 84 per cent, in
the Valserthal to 94 per cent. In the high mountains we shall show
that the population on moraines surpasses this.
These Quaternary moraines touch human geography still more
closely. Lateral moraines, in particular, keep the slope of the
ancient glacier, a slope hardly stronger than that of the valleys
which they dominate, but weaker than that of the present glacier.
They unite above with what remains of the ancient glacier, habitu
ally in the form of hanging glaciers. Thus there are continuous
projecting banks, fully prepared to conduct irrigating canals over
the impermeable soil of the glacial mud. These canals, called
bialets or bialieres, ramify into the complex of frontal moraines,
covering sometimes the entire bottom of a valley, such as the valley
of Polset above Modane, or the valley of Chavieres-sur-Pralognan.
The proprietors of the chalets of Polset, at an altitude of 5,935
feet, have thus been able to utilize the multitude of small inter
secting crests of the recessional moraines for the distribution of
ditches in the form of a checkerboard; a more important canal leads
to Villars, above the Praz; the same distribution is found in the
aPaul Girardin, "Glaciation quaternaire," Rev. de geog. ann., II, 1908, pp. 691-692.
2" Siedlungsarten in den Hochalpen," Forschungen zur deutschen Landes- und
Volkskunde, Vol. II, No. 6, 1888, pp. 408-409.

Fig. 2.

Connecting Relations between Physical Geography and Human Geography: The Part Played by
Glacial Deposits in a High Valley of hie French Alps

View of the chalets of Polset (valley of Polset, above Modane) at an altitude of 5,900 feet (1,800 meters). It is the
highest group of chalets in this region. The pastures in the foreground arc on a thick uneven mantle, representing the terminal
moraines (Daun period) of the Chavieres glacier, now reduced to the state of plateau-glacier. Every moraine-crest forms a slight
ridge which interrvipts the slope of the declivity, and carries an irrigation canal diverted from up the stream. The verdant
area corresponds exactly with the irrigated, and the contrast between the meadow and the rubble (in the limestones of the
Triassac) is particularly clear on the left. On the wooded eminence (7.175 feet or 2,193 meters) to the right are the Inst
trees (upper limit of tree-growth).

WHAT IS HUMAN GEOGRAPHY? 23
Lavoir, south of Modane, and in the valley of Bonneval is the canal
of Vallonet, which carried water to the mills or mulinets, situated
near tht, falls of the torrent of Vallonet ; these were the mills of the
former town of Bonneval, buried, tradiuon tells us, beneath the
Clapier de Fodan. Above Bonneval, again, a bialet not kept in
repair comes from the glacier of the Fonds Valley and waters the
Lenta and Grande Feiche; at Gliere-de-Pralognan an abandoned
canal follows in the same way the crest of the lateral moraine below
the Morion. These last three canals, like many others in Savoy,
are not kept up. ¦ They testify to the fact that here, as elsewhere,
later generations are more grudging of time and trouble. What
remains of these old canals suffices to show the bond which unites
irrigation to the moraines of" ancient glaciers.
Some relationships are of a still more delicate complexity.
An eminent geologist thus formulates the relations between
natural conditions and human life observable in the Armorican
peninsula :
The natural regions of Brittany show certain common character
istics; all are remarkably long and narrow, presenting a streaked
structure in slender, parallel bands of different composition. . . . The
inhabitants have had to adapt their lives to the structure of their
soil, which is full of ridges with narrow furrows between them.
Each of these grooves has been occupied by breeders who have found
themselves shut in and self-sufficient, and not obliged to have dealings
with their neighbors. Brittany has thus become, as a result of its
climate and the structure of its soil, a country of pasture- grounds not
used in common. Thus, it is against his neighbor's cow that the
Breton peasant defends his property by planting around his patches
of ground, walls of thom-broom and girdling them with ditches like
fortresses.1 The situation, the configuration, the structure, or the climate
of a country helps to explain the historical development of a
people as a social organization. As far as certain countries,
such as England, are concerned, that is a current truth. But
even for political facts which have long been considered some
what surprising and abnormal, we can discover real natural
foundations. Professor Theobald Fischer, in a very remark
able work on the Iberian Peninsula,2 explains clearly why
Portugal has been able to preserve her historical and political
autonomy. Portugal is nothing more than a peripheral zone
Charles Barrois, "Des Divisions geographiques de la Bretagne,'' Ann. de geog.,
March 15, 1897, pp. 103-104.
2"Die iberische Halbinsel," in Landerkunde von Europa, edit, by A. Kirchhoff,
Part 2, second half, pp. 519-754. Tempsky, Vienna, 1893.

24 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
such as the plains of Valencia or Andalusia, which border on all
sides the central Spanish plateau; but Portugal alone is sepa
rated from Spain by the deep canyons of three great water
courses and their affluents — a natural frontier more effectual
than many mountain chains. In the second place, much more
than any other region of the peninsula, Portugal is closely
connected with the sea, and through her great estuaries the
tide penetrates far into the land. And, finally, Portugal has
lived a life of her own because, having the same products as
certain other parts of the peninsula, she has had to turn away
from Spain and toward the sea. Professor Fischer happily
compares the geographical situation of Portugal, independent
of Spain, to that of Holland, independent of Germany.
Do we wish examples still more simple, more decisive, and
incontrovertible? Let us recall the attraction exercised over
man from remotest antiquity by certain natural products; let
us recall the commercial activity of which the spices of India
alone have been the determining factor. Salt has played a
greater role in history than has gold: how much trade it has
brought about, how many regular exchanges it has estab
lished between far-off countries ! In our times coal has been
a prodigious creating and transforming cause. Farther on we
shall have occasion to show in some detail to what extent it
has attracted men and brought them together.
We may now see what part the investigation of causes may
play in human geography. Human facts and natural phe
nomena, .cannot be separated.
This method, followed by the eminent geographer and
teacher, P. Vidal de la Blache, is clearly set forth in the preface
to his Atlas:
The political map of the country to be studied is accompanied
by a physical map ; they throw light upon each other and find their
complement in the maps, or diagrams, for which geology, climatology,
the science of statistics, have furnished the subject. The collection
of material, more or less complete according to the case, aims at
placing before us the ensemble of the features which characterize a
country, in order to allow the mind to establish relationships between
them. In fact, it is in this relating of parts that the geographical
explanation of a country consists. Considered by themselves, the
features which compose the physiognomy of a country have the
value of a fact; but they take on the value of a scientific idea only

WHAT IS HUMAN GEOGRAPHY? 25
when we put them back in the chain of which they form a part and
which alone can give them their full significance.
Is the word explanation, which we use here, legitimate?
Certainly we do not claim to give, in geography, the primary
reason for everything which now exists or is being produced on
the earth's surface; but to endeavor to connect the phenomena
with each other, and thus to reduce the part that must be
assigned to pure chance, is to explain.
In trying to show in this way a country under different aspects
[P. Vidal de la Blache continues] I have had no other end in view than
to emphasize the principle of relationship which unites geographical
phenomena. I have had to borrow from neighboring sciences, not
of course for the sake of focusing the attention on different subjects,
but in order to draw from them useful proofs. I have not tried, for
example, to elucidate the science of statistics by a set of selected
maps, but rather to develop geography by means of statistics. I
have not sought to imitate the scientist who follows step by step
and figure by figure the evolution of an economic or social phe
nomenon, but only to establish from these figures the averages upon
which geography may base a principle. Whether it be a question of
climatic, botanical, or economic facts, it is the relation that I have
sought to point out. Where certain phenomena of climate are
localized, we find certain forms of vegetation, a certain distribution
of crops — that is the geographic element, the element which allows
us to grasp the relationship between climate, vegetation, and soil.
The characteristic quality of a country is thus a complex thing
resulting from the delicate and varied interactions of many factors.
It follows that we must not restrict our study to a single
order of phenomena. Even the least ambitious geographical
study, to be complete, cannot be limited to mere observation
of isolated facts; the earth's surface cannot be divided into
isolated areas; there may be broad natural divisions, but
there are no small closed fields. A single mountain does not
form a whole; neither is a city an independent unit area, for
it depends upon the soil on which it rests, upon the climate
which plays upon it, upon the whole vast contributing area
from which it draws its sustenance and life; nor is a river an
individual thing which can be considered apart from the land
through which it flows.
The great meteorological phenomena, such as the trade-
winds, monsoons, cyclones, are striking manifestations of the
close interdependence of the different parts of the earth.

26 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
Let us consider facts which are constantly to be seen right
at hand. A great aerial current from the west brings damp
and relatively warm air into parts of all western and even
central Europe and constitutes one of the essential elements
of European climates. If a cyclone has formed within this
current, far from the European coast, over either the Atlantic
Ocean or even on the coast of America, the result will be a
storm which may eventually reach the shores of Europe. If
it approaches Iceland, and shows its presence naturally by
strong barometric depression, the English Channel is beaten
by violent winds from the southwest, and the North Sea by
winds from the south ; rain falls in abundance over the British
Isles and the coast of France. But suppose the whirling move
ment proceeds toward the Scandinavian Peninsula, instead
of advancing to central Europe; the winds and rains over
western Europe diminish and the barometer rises. Suppose, on
the other hand, that the current bringing the barometric depres
sion strikes Europe obliquely and passes from the North Sea
to the Mediterranean; when the low-pressure center is over
the Gulf of Lions the mistral is let loose in the Rhone Valley.
One might attempt to follow this storm into all its distant
effects ; but where could one stop ? It is a center of influence
without limit, which establishes relations more or less direct,
more or less variable, more or less visible, but always effective,
between countries that seem totally unrelated.
We thus reach the highest thought, the thought of the
terrestrial whole — the conception of the terrestrial unity.
The different forces do not act upon each other only under
fixed conditions, nor do they exert a reciprocal action only in
a few definite instances. The very opposite is true, for, in a
manner more or less remote, in a form more or less discernible,
all these forces are closely bound together because of the
endless interrelations of the conditions they bring about.
'The idea that the earth is a unit, the parts of which are
coordinated, furnishes geography with a working principle of
method, the value of which is more evident as its application
is extended."1

'P. Vidal de la Blache, "Le Principe de la geographie generale," Ann. de geog
January 15, 1896, p. 129. * *'

WHAT IS HUMAN GEOGRAPHY? 27
Activity andjrelationship : these then are the two principles
which-4o=day mu^t dominate geography'/
The forces of physical natufe^are" bound to each other in
their consequences, in their relations, and in the consequences
of these relations. Man does not escape the common law;
his activity is included in the network of terrestrial phenomena.
But, if human activity is thus circumscribed, it does not follow
that it is fatally determined. Because of its connection with
natural phenomena it is, without question, included in geog
raphy in two ways: it responds to the influences of certain
facts and, on the other hand, it exercises its influence on other
facts. For this double reason it belongs to geography. That
is why we must add to the group of material forces, whose
incessant interplay we have seen, this new force — human
activity — which is not only a material thing but which also
expresses itself through material effects. That is why, as
geographers, we are led to study man's part in nature — with
out ever separating it from the study of physical geography.

CHAPTER II
HOW ARE THE FACTS OF HUMAN GEOGRAPHY TO
BE GROUPED AND CLASSIFIED?
i. The antecedents and beginnings of human geography. The
orientation given by Ratzel.
2. The facts of human geography classified according to their
increasing complexity. From the geography of the first vital
necessities {fundamental physiological needs: eating, sleeping,
clothing, defense) to political and historical geography.
3. An attempt at a positive classification. The three groups and
the six types of fundamental facts. The small natural units:
the- "isles''1 of the sea, of the desert, of the forest, of the high
mountain, and of the plains.
4. The natural forces. Water and wind. Human beings.
The first maps: rainfall and population maps.
I. THE ANTECEDENTS AND THE BEGINNINGS OP HUMAN GEOGRAPHY.
THE ORIENTATION GIVEN BY RATZEL
Modern geography aims at the comparison and classification
of phenomena, and at their explanation in the widest sense of
the word. The geography of yesterday was defined as the
description of the earth; by contrast the new geography is really
the science of the earth.1 It does not content itself with merely
1Geography is the science of the earth as it is to-day, while geology deals with
the earth's past. These two sciences come in contact but are not merged. H. J.
Mackinder, in comparing and contrasting the new points of view and methods of
geology and geography, has said very truthfully that geology is the study of the past
in the light of the present. But this general definition cannot be understood literally
as the chief difference between geology and physical geography. On this point we
cannot do better than refer to the thoughtful remarks with which Sir Archibald Geikie,
the eminent English geologist, summarized and closed an instructive discussion at
Nottingham on September 15, 1893, between Sections C (geology) and E (geography)
of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. For a complete account,
see "The Limits between Geology and Physical Geography," Geog. Jour., December,
1893, pp. 518-534. The same number contains an interesting discussion concerning
"The Present Standpoint of Geography," presented November 13, 1893, to the
Royal Geographical Society of London, by its president, Sir Clements R. Markham.
All this is less excluding than the statement in 1883 by the eminent geographer, F. von
Richthofen, in his Aufgaben und Methoden der heutigen Geographie. a statement, which
doubtless he would not have made in the same form later: "The surest basis for
geography is geology in ilirein ganzen Umfang." Geology is no longer the only indis
pensable foundation for geography, and geologists are to-day the first to recognize it.
2S

CLASSIFYING FACTS OF HUMAN GEOGRAPHY 29
describing the phenomena — it explains them. It studies
the development of the different forces which act upon the
earth, their processes, and their consequences. In the second
place, it studies these different forces in their relation to
each other, and the consequences of these relations. As
has already been stated, scientific geography — modern geog
raphy— is_doxoiriai^__by^_two leading ideas: the id_ea_of
activity on^jthe-Qne hand and the idea of relationship on the
qther.^ It is no longer luiinventory, it is a history.- It is
no longer an enumeration, it is a system. It has the double
purpose of observing, classifying, and explaining the direct
effects of the acting forces and the complex effects of these
forces working together.
For centuries two conceptions of geography have been
opposed to each other; by generalizing and perhaps stretching
the facts a bit, one might be called the Greek conception, the
other the Roman conception. The Greek conception was
loftier and truer. The Greek geographers, Thales of Miletus,
Eratosthenes, Hippocrates, and Aristotle, were philosophers;
they had a general, philosophic conception of the physical
universe and they songht_beJgre_jvery thing else to work out
the_riatural succession of phenomenaTand how~tiiese"phenom-
ena were subordinated to each other. Then came the Romans
with their utilitarian spirit; their geography was practical.
They established itineraries, and composed topographical
dictionaries; they were especially dominated by commercial
interests, by administrative problems, or by ambitions of
conquest.1 From that time general and speculative geog
raphy was neglected; the spirit of geographical science and
the taste for it were lost. Only a few men, as rare as they were
farseeing, strove to preserve the scientific point of view in
geography. Long after the marvelous period of the great discoveries
(1492-1523: Christopher Columbus, Vasco da Gama,
Magellan) Bernhard Varenius, by publishing (in the first
half of the seventeenth century) his Geographia Generalis,
iStrabo, who was the first to develop regional or descriptive geography, and
Ptolemy, who represented a reaction in favor of general geography, were the lead
ing geographers of the Roman period; but neither of them was a Roman and they
both wrote in Greek. See the volume on Strabo by Marcel Dubois.

30 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
really inaugurated modern geography.1 But we must come
down to the nineteenth century to see in Europe the true
renaissance of geography. At the beginning of the last cen
tury two men, whose work was complementary, set forth
the guiding conceptions both of that part of the science which
was to become physical geography and of that part which
was to become human geography. One was the great scientist,
Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859), the author of the
Cosmos; the other was Karl Ritter (1779-1859), the author
of the Allgemeine vergleichende Erdkunde, who, more historian
and philosopher than scientist, was always dominated by
teleological ideas which, in spite of certain exaggerations,' led
him to seek everywhere the affinities and relationships between
man and the earth. To these two great names joint homage
must be paid at the beginning of every modern attempt to fix
the method of geographical study.2
In France the renaissance had been slow. Before that
profound and penetrating transformation to which the name
of Vidal de la Blache will always remain particularly attached,
our teaching for a long time had been faithful to an unfortunate
routine. Children and young people were taught geography
in manuals without illustrations and without maps; atlases
were for them unknown and sometimes even forbidden books.3
JSee G. Gunther, "Varenius," Klassiker der Naturwissenschaften. Bd. TV, Theod.
Thomas, Leipzig; and M. Kiessling, "Varenius und Eratostenes," Geog. Zeitschr., XV,
1909, pp. 12-28.
2If one should write a complete history of geography, and especially German
geography, it would be necessary to include also Oskar Peschel, author of the Xeue
Probleme der vergleichenden Erdkunde: see Kirchhoff, "Uber Humboldt, Ritter und
Peschel," Deutsche Rev., January, 1878, whom he calls the three "Hauptlenker der
neueren Erdkunde." See also the inaugural lecture at the University of Tubingen
by Alfred Hettner, "Die Entwickelung der Geographie im 19. Jahrhundert," Geog.
Zeitschr., IV, 1898. Also note Oskar Peschel, Volkerkunde, Leipzig. 1881, and
Alfred Vierkandt, Naturvblker und Kulturvolker, Ein Beilrag zur Social psychologic
Leipzig, 1 896. To follow the subject even further, note must be made of Rougemont's
La Geographie de Vhomme, ethnographique, arlislique et historique, translated into
German in 1843, and the work of Arnold Guyot, whose relation to American geog
raphy is of especial interest. A native of French Switzerland, he settled in the
United States in 1848, in his forty-first year. While intimately associated with the
scientific life of his adopted country for the remaining thirty-six years of his life, he failed
to create a following in the field that was his specialty, human geography. The time was
not ripe at this stage of our national development for the doctrines of this disciple of
Karl Ritter; when it was, the teleological principle had been displaced and discredited
by the doctrine of evolution. See especially his The Earth and Han: Lectures on
Comparative Physical Geography in Its Relation to the History of Mankind, Boston, 1849.
3The two great works of Elisee Rectus, who for a quarter of a century devoted himself
to the reorganization of geography, must not be overlooked: La terre. Description
des phenomenes de la vie du globe (perhaps needing some correction), and the great work
in nineteen volumes, entitled Nouvelle giographie universcllc, La Terre et les homines.

CLASSIFYING FACTS OF HUMAN GEOGRAPHY 31
Until recent years, both in our classes andour examinations, what
a singular importance was still attached to subpref ectures ! A
very insignificant fact apparently, but a significant example.
Pupils were led to put in the same rank in their minds cities
such as Douai and Murat, Brest and Puget-Theniers, and to
consider as analogous, as almost identical, a host of cities
which have nothing in common except the tinseled uniform
of a public official. Moreover, it was all too often in alphabeti
cal order that the pupil had to recite the names of the
subprefectures of all our departments, and even of the de
partments themselves — a sorry list, as instructive as might
be an alphabetical list of the metalloids or of the kings of
France. Let such tables be inserted, if one wish, in a
supplementary chapter on administrative geography, but
let them no longer form an essential part of even primary
instruction. Such an ill use of time is in itself proof of a
wrong conception of geography. It would doubtless be an
error to judge of the development of a science merely by
the instruction currently given in it; but the type of instruc
tion is at least a revealing picture which furnishes us sure
information. It is important to recall briefly this almost contemporary
past in order better to understand the import of Ratzel's work.
In 1882 Ratzel published the first volume of his Anthro-
po-Geographie.1 To be sure, he was not the actual originator
of this manner of viewing and analyzing human facts. Even
in the writings of the greatest Greek historians and philoso
phers, whose work has already been noted, we find illuminating
1Friedrich Ratzel, who died August 9, 1904, professor of geography at Leipzig,
is especially known as the author of Die Anlhropo-Geographie, the first volume of
which appeared in 1882 and the second volume, with the title without a hyphen, in
1 891. A second edition of the first volume, much expanded and extensively reor
ganized, appeared in 1899. His Polilische Geographie was published in 1897. Among
his other important contributions to human geography should be noted the second
volume of his Die Vereinigten Staaten von Nprd-Amerika, first edition 1880, second
edition 1893. Note also his "La Corse, Etude anthropogeographique, " Ann. de
geog., VIII, 1899, pp. 304-329. For a complete study of the development of human
geography in recent years, see Ernst Friedrich, " Die Fortschritte der Anthropogeo-
graphie (1891— 1902)," Geog. Jahrb., XXVI, 1903, pp. 261-298; XXXI, 1908,
pp. 285-461; XXXII, 1909, pp. 3-68. For an interesting discussion between
Ratzel and one of the leading German geographers, H. Wagner, at the time of the
appearance of the second volume of Ratzel's Anthropogeographie, see H. Wagner,
"F. Ratzels Anthropogeographie II, oder die geographische Verbreitung der
Menschen," Zeitschr. der Ges. fiir Erdkunde zu Berlin, XXVI, 1891, pp. 465-478;
and F. Ratzel, "Erwiderung auf H. Wagners Besprechung der Anthropogeographie
II," ibid., XXVI, 1891, pp. 508-512.

32 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
and judicious suggestions which, in spite of their fragmentary
and sporadic character, would allow us to invoke the old
authority of Herodotus and Thucydides, of Hippocrates and
Aristotle, in favor of this very recent geography. Ratzel
chiefly followed tradition and developed, of course with more
precision, the brilliant sketches of the celebrated Karl Ritter;
he was inspired besides by excellent works of less known
authors, G. B. Mendelssohn and J. G. Kohl.1 But, by creating
a word which should serve as a name for the new studies, he con
tributed more than anyone else to the great progress of this line
of investigation. And to Ratzel's influence are due, in large
part, the works on "human geography" which have multiplied
in France and the United Kingdom in the last few years.
By his two-volume work, Anthropo-Geographie, by his
Politische Geographie, by a whole series of other works, shorter
and less synthetic, and by numerous investigations which his
pupils have undertaken under his direction, Ratzel has in
truth revivified the method of understanding humanity and
human activity as geographical facts. He saw men as realities
covering portions of the earth's surface, a living covering as
worthy of study by the geographer as the plant covering or the
animal population. He saw human groups and human societies
developing, always within certain natural limits {Ralunen),
occupying always a certain definite place {Stclle) on the
globe, and needing always, in order to nourish themselves,
to subsist, to grow, a certain space {Raitin). History of course
cannot be entirely explained through geography, but in the
evolution of history, men, who are its actors, do not cease for
a single day to tread the soil, and to make the resources of the
earth serve for their maintenance. The most peaceful economic
life as well as war2 can be understood only if one never loses
sight of these real "foundations" of all human activity. Be
sides, this activity finds expression in "visible and tangible"
works, in roads and canals, in houses and cities, in clearings
and cultivated fields. There is everywhere evidence of man.
'See G. B. Mendelssohn, Das germanische Europa, Ztir geschiehtliche Erdkunde,
Duncker u. Humblot. Berlin, 1836; J. G. Kohl, Der Verkehr und die Ansiedelttngen
der Menschen in Hirer Abhdngigkci' von der Gestallung der Erdobcrflache, Arnold,
Dresden and Leipzig, 1841.
2The second edition of the Politische Geographie has the following subtitle: Geo
graphie der Slaaten, des Verkehrs und Kriegcs.

CLASSIFYING FACTS OF HUMAN GEOGRAPHY 33
All this takes on a new meaning under Ratzel's pen, for it is
grasped and interpreted by him in a new manner. He pos
sessed to a very high degree the sense of terrestrial reality. He
perceived the human facts on the earth no longer as a phi
losopher or historian, or as a simple ethnographer, or as an
economist, but as a geographer. He distinguished their
manifold, complex, and variable connections with the facts
of the physical order — altitude, topography, climate, vege
tation. He observed men peopling the globe, working its
surface, seeking their livelihood, and making history on the
earth; he observed them with the eyes of a true naturalist.
It^woukTllfe-tocflong" tcTpoint out all the subjects which
Professor Ratzel has treated in the course of his very produc
tive career; and besides, how can one analyze a mass of obser
vations which have filled no less than 24 volumes and 100
monographs or articles? But it is important to recall some
of his works which, though less generally known, are yet
perhaps as important as his Anthropo-Geographie, and to
indicate what precise knowledge and what natural gifts explain
the intellectual range of his human geography and the scien
tific light that it sheds.1
If Ratzel, as we have just said, subjected geographical facts
to the keen observation of a true naturalist, we must not
forget that he began not only his works but his studies with
the natural sciences. It was by travel, by direct contact
with realities,2 that Ratzel came to geography, like some of
the best known geographers of contemporary Germany —
Baron von Richthofen, Theobald Fischer, etc.
Some months before his death, in January, 1904, Professor
Ratzel himself summarized the evolution of his career as
follows: "I traveled, I sketched, I described. I was thus
led to Naturschilderung. In the meantime I came back from
America and was told there was need of geographers. I then
IRatzel's field of scientific production was exceedingly broad; his writings deal with
the natural sciences, general geography, ethnography, anthropogeography and biog
raphy, physical geography, the Alps, snow, history of geography, pedagogical geog
raphy, etc. At present the best authority to consult for a full list of his works is Victor
Hantzsch, Ratzel-Bibliographie 1867-1005, published in 1906 as Appendix to Vol. II
of the Kleine Schriflen. These Kleine Schriften, published as a posthumous work under
Ratzel's name, are edited by Hans Helmholt and published by R. Oldenbourg, Munich
and Berlin, 1906.
2See one of the last works published by Ratzel: Uber Naturschilderung, 1904.

34 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
gathered together and coordinated all the facts I had myself
observed and collected on Chinese emigration to California,
to Mexico, to Cuba, and I wrote my inaugural dissertation
on Chinese emigration." He became in 1876 Privat-Docent
in geography and from the following semester professor of geog
raphy in the Technische Hochschule in Munich. In 1886 he
was called to succeed Ferdinand von Richthofen at the Univer
sity of Leipzig. There for eighteen years he generously spent
his energy, training many pupils and exercising a scientific
influence that passed far beyond the boundaries of Germany.
By a monograph on human geography the future author of
Anthropo-Geographie had caused university professorships to
open to him ; but he was of those who are convinced • — and
rightly — that all serious and- substantial human geography
must rest on physical geography. In this- field he brought
his contribution of observations to the solution of divers
problems, fiords, lapiaz, etc. ; and published a very important
work, Die Schneedecke besonders in deutschen Gebirgen.1 The
snow, said he, is not merely a meteorological phenomenon —
it is a geographical fact, a surface fact; and in this properly
geographical spirit he studied all the questions connected with
the Schneedecke. Friedrich Ratzel was the organizer and
editor of that very valuable collection of geographical hand
books "Bibliothek Geographischer Handbiicher," to which we
owe the Gletscherkunde of Heim, the Ozeanographie of Bogus-
lawski and Krummel, and above all the Morphologie of Penck
and the Klimatologie of Hann. Those are high services. Ratzel
never forgot the fundamental importance of physical geogra
phy, and it was to making more clear this union of natural
facts with the geography of man that he especially devoted
his last great work: Die Erde und das Leben ("The Earth
and Life"), Eine verglcichcude Erdkunde.2
It is a difficult matter to observe and explain natural facts;
it is far more difficult to observe and analyze facts of human
geography. The gift of observation, indispensable though it is,
no longer suffices. It is impossible to be a good human geogra
pher without a thorough historical, economic, and philosophical
iForschungen sur deutschen Landes und Volkskunde, IV, 3. Engeihorn, Stuttgart, 1889.
2Bibliographisches Institut, Leipzig and Vienna, 1901 and 1902.

CLASSIFYING FACTS OF HUMAN GEOGRAPHY 35
training; and in these fields Ratzel's mind was incomparably
trained. Prepared for human geography not only by an
extensive experience, but by special studies in ethnography
and comparative ethnography, absorbed by the thought of
never forgetting that, back of political and historical geog
raphy, peoples are still far more closely bound to their natural
setting by all the acts of their material and daily life, he found
before him all the fundamental problems of humanity, which
remain the most obscure of philosophical problems.1 Far from
failing to recognize under what a complex and diverse form geo
graphical reality reveals them to us, Ratzel, for these questions,
always extolled the geographical method, thus opposing some
of the most notable ethnographers and philosophers.2
Ratzel was fond of quoting Karl Ritter and of referring to
"comparative geography." The name of the former deserves
to be placed close beside the name of the latter. One cannot
too often repeat to what an extent Ratzel was an originator
of ideas, and justice should be done to him without reserve.
It is nevertheless true that he had ideas in abundance rather
than methodical discipline. His works, especially the later
ones, do not sufficiently avoid dissertations foreign to geography.
Those who have followed or still follow the teachings of Ratzel
must help fill the principal gaps in the work of this founder
of human geography : the pursuit of practical principles of ob
servation and the establishment of a method of classification.3
'After keeping, for several years, a bibliographical record of the principal works
on ethnography, in the periodical Archiv fur Anthropologic (1878, 1879, 1880), Ratzel
- published several memoirs: " Uber geographische Bedingungen und ethnographische
Folgen der Volkerwanderungen," in Verh. der Ges.fiir Erdkunde zu Berlin, 1880; " Die
Stellung der Naturvolker in der Menschheit," in Ausland, 1882, Nos. 1, 2, and 4; then
his three volumes of Volkerkunde, 1885-1888, reedited in two volumes, 1894-1895.
2See, for example, "Die geographische Methode in der Ethnographie," Geog.
Zeitschr., 1896; "Der Ursprung der Arier in geographischen Licht," Seventh Inter
national Geographical Congress in Berlin, 1899.
3As early as 1899, in his presidential address, J. Partsch, to-day the successor of
Ratzel at Leipzig, then head of the University of Breslau, compared Ritter's method
and that of a pupil of Ritter's, Neumann, who was Partsch's master, with the method
of Ratzel, and reproached Ratzel with not being sufficiently careful about overstating
facts. He wanted long, precise works, like Die Vereinigten Slaaten, rather than great
syntheses (Die geographische Arbeit des 10. Jahrhunderls, Breslau, 1879). For the
desiderata and for the method of human geography, see also Otto Schliiter, Die Ziele
der Geographie der Menschen, Munich, 1900; Alfred Vierkandt, "Entwickelung und
Bedeutung der Anthropogeographie," Zu Friedrich Ratzels Geddchlnis, Leipzig, 1904,
pp. 378-409; and especially Alois Kraus, Versuch einer Geschichle der Handels- und
Wirtschafts geographie, Frankfurt a. M., 1905. Finally, see A. J. Herbertson and
F. D. Herbertson, Man and His Work, An Introduction to Human Geography, London,
1899; Ellen Churchill Semple, The Influences of Geographic Environment, Henry Holt
and Co., New York, 1911.

36 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
2. THE FACTS OF HUMAN GEOGRAPHY CLASSED IN ORDER OF IN
CREASING COMPLEXITY. FROM THE GEOGRAPHY OF THE
FIRST VITAL NECESSITIES (FUNDAMENTAL PHYSIOLOGI
CAL NEEDS: FOOD, SLEEP. CLOTHING, DEFENSE)
TO POLITICAL AND HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY
Certain needs of human life are so general and so uniform
that they must be constantly satisfied. Thus men, wherever
they live and whatever be their mode of existence, have need
of air to breathe ; similarly, as a result of gravity, they need a
material and solid support, whether that support be the earth
itself or, on occasion, the deck of a ship or the car of a balloon.
These are conditions which from the very beginning have
imperiously confined the inhabited portion of the earth to
that zone where the solid surface and the atmosphere join
and touch.
But there are other material conditions indispensable to
human life which in different parts of the earth may be satis
fied in many different ways. Merely to mention them is to
indicate what are the causes and what are the chief forms of
those unceasing relations that men are obliged to establish
between themselves and surrounding nature. As human
demands become more complex we shall see offered for our
examination groups of geographical phenomena more and more
complicated and confused. If, beginning with the humblest
and most elementary facts, we first take a cursory glimpse of
this crowded and heterogeneous domain, we shall then have
to try to determine in the most careful manner what are the
essential primary facts which human geography requires us
to observe first.
i. Geography of the First Vital Necessities
A. Man has constant need of nourishment ; several times a
day he must renew his strength by eating and drinking. It
is in the "thirsty countries," in regions poor in water, that
we understand the imperative subordination of men to water;
in the Sahara as in the Gobi, in the ' ' arid region ' ' of the Far
West of America as in Arabia, all manifestations of human life
follow the lines of the distribution of water. Those who seem
to be the most independent of local conditions and who escape
the geographical imprisonment of our sedentary life- — the

CLASSIFYING FACTS OF HUMAN GEOGRAPHY 37
nomads, the shepherds — do not escape the tyranny of water.
All their travels, all their roads and trails, all their raids, must
above everything else take account of water-holes; to renew
their supply of water daily is the most constant and the gravest
of all their problems.
Eyerywhere _water^j^igns_suprerne over human activity.
As for our nourishment, it is formed of plant or animal prod
ucts, products which all come from beings occupying a place
at the surface of the globe. More than that, the terrestrial
animals from which human beings draw their nourishment
feed upon plants or other animals which themselves feed upon
vegetables. The geography of alimentation is connected not
only with the general geography of life, but with the special
geography of vegetation. Reduced to lowest terms, we find
in almost all human nourishment a portion of the vegetal
covering of the earth; the representative of a herbivorous
species — ox, sheep, rabbit, camel, antelope, or elephant — crops
each day for food the grasses of a small part of the earth's
surface. Man's daily attitude is more exalted; his head and
his tongue are farther from the soil ; the food which the civilized
man, or even the savage, assimilates has often been not only
prepared but transported a long distance from its place of
origin. And yet, if one looks closely, the meals of a human
being represent, directly or indirectly, the "cropping" of a
more or less limited expanse of the vegetal carpet, natural
or cultivated, and show clearly that each person requires a
"sustenance space" as he requires a "house space" in his hours
of rest and sleep. Without the vegetation the cannibals them
selves would not be able to live on our globe. And in the
same way men who live on fish levy more or less indirectly
for their daily repasts on a larger or smaller portion of that
organic sea food, the plankton.
Every time that men slake their thirst or feed themselves
they profit, then, by surface facts which they modify. The
cumulative effect of these minor changes produces in the course
of time extensive modifications in the distribution of the plants
and animals that are the main sources of human energy. Thus
man's regular periodic need for food and drink binds him closely
to surface facts of plant and animal distribution which are

38 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
themselves dependent upon general and local conditions of the
soil, the ocean, the climate. As a result of this levy by over
sixteen hundred millions of human beings, the surface of the
earth undergoes endless, immeasurable changes.
B. Every healthy human being loses consciousness in sleep
for a part of every twenty-four hours. The lives of civilized
men are so organized that the satisfaction of essential needs is
assured by simple and normal means and we can hardly realize
what the periodic tyranny of sleep means to the savage. We
must think of the tramps of the highways, and the shelterless
of the great cities — the victims of our social organization — in
older to understand what an inexorable master sleep is, and
what insistent cares it places upon man. Man, when uncon
scious, is an easy prey for those who wish to attack him, for
his fellow men as well as for animals. Not being able to escape
sleep except for a time and by abnormal means (the Fangs or
Pahouins of the Belgian Congo, for example, make use of the
kola nut to combat sleep), all men of all countries are led to
seek shelter. This may be as rudimentary as can be imagined
— interlaced boughs and vines in the thick tree crowns of the
equatorial forests (dwarfs of central Africa), shelters under
rocks (numerous prehistoric and existing peoples) , holes in the
snow (Eskimos). But, however rudimentary, the sleep shelter
is still a definite point at which man installs himself for some
hours and to which he is naturally inclined to return. Such
is the origin of that very important fact of human geography,
the habitation.
C. The human body must be kept at a certain temperature,
about 370 C. (980 F.); too low temperatures eliminate all
life. Because of this organic necessity, very high latitudes
as well as very high altitudes are natural limits of human
habitation. The human body, however, has a marvelous
power of reaction against climatic conditions, especially if it
is aided by clothes in its struggle against loss of heat. For
the population of a great part of the earth, clothing thus
serves a vital need, protecting the human body from the
effects of low temperatures in the colder regions of the habitable
world, and counteracting the effects of extreme heat and of
rapid and great diurnal changes of temperature in the deserts.

CLASSIFYING FACTS OF HUMAN GEOGRAPHY 39
It goes without saying that man can go naked in the hot,
humid regions. Although the need for clothing is far from
being as general and compelling as the need for food
and sleep, yet, geographically speaking, this need has still
a great significance. Man clothes himself almost every
where with some animal or plant product — wool, cotton,
linen- — and thus, in his clothing as in his need for food and
shelter, he depends in a certain measure upon his natural
environment. j*^xL_habitation, clothing, these are the three essential foun
dations of all econrjmirrgeo]*raphyr~ThT1^
tme~nioT^~«r-ress—sptrriteiieou^5_satisf action of primary needs,
they form a first series in human geography.
Of the human facts enumerated, clothes are the least de
pendent upon the geographical environment, for they do not
have to be renewed every day as food does; once manufac
tured, they last for some time. Further, clothes are by their
very nature movable and transportable; they are not, like the
usual habitation, attached to a given spot on the earth.
Escaping the double servitude of incessant renewal and of
localization, they also escape in a certain measure the strict
tyranny of immediate natural conditions.
Eating must be constantly repeated and foods are, as it
were, material bonds between man and the earth, which
must be established at fixed hours. Many foods, however,
are easily transportable and can be made available for use
far from their place of origin. The people of western Europe
consume large quantities of coffee, tea, and cacao, while
the cow's milk from European mountain pastures is con
sumed by the inhabitants of Shanghai and South Africa.
Although the ordinary food of certain human groups, especially
primitive peoples, the Naturvblker, has a simpler and more
expressive geography, yet it is none the less true that increased
facilities of transportation tend more and more to intermingle
all human foods.
The permanent habitation, occupying a fixed place, has the
added interest, from a geographical point of view, that it is
generally built of local natural materials. A movable habita
tion, the nomad's tent, shares in the ease of transportation

40 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
that characterizes clothing, and, geographically, it is a sort
of clothing.
Of all the phenomena involved in the satisfaction of essential
human needs, the habitation is to the highest degree geo
graphical and hence must be given special consideration. A
further reason for its exceptional place in the study of human'
geography is the fact that every form of human labor on the
earth's surface is accompanied by human dwellings, if not
permanent, at least temporary or intermittent. Eveiything
leads to the house or groups of houses, villages, towns, or
cities, so that at the end of the study of any phenomena of
human geography, we shall be compelled to consider how
these phenomena find further expression in houses scattered
or massed together.
D. Mankind has a fourth fundamental need suggested
by the primary purpose of the habitation as a protection
during the hours of sleep, and that is for defense. Man must
be protected, not only in his hours of repose, but in his hours
of labor, if he is to work to the maximum advantage. The
making of a clearing, at least "an arrow's flight" in radius,
about a stockaded town, so characteristic a feature of colonial
times in America, was for purposes of defense and served the
same purposes as the tree houses of the Fijians or the cliff
dwellings in prehistoric America.
Health laws in urban and rural communities, regulations
in reference to the common towel or drinking cup, are means
of defense against more insidious enemies than wandering
savages or prowling animals.
The modern requirements in many communities that
dangerous machinery shall be covered so far as possible to
avoid accident, that employers shall be liable for damages
to employees during working hours, are but refinements of
the more primitive defense needs to meet the conditions
imposed by current industrial conditions and practices.
Confidence due to a realization of adequate defense is an
attribute of life essential to all progress. The means of
securing that defense may be simple or complex, crude or
refined, but the need always exists and man, either directly
or through depending on others to whom the responsibility

CLASSIFYING FACTS OF HUMAN GEOGRAPHY 41
is delegated, must be adequately defended against danger of
all kinds. 2. Geography of the Earth's Exploitation
Thus far we have purposely spoken of the material facts
which respond to the satisfaction of the first demands of human
life, without examining the ways and means by which men
arrive at the satisfaction of these demands. Men do not
always rely for their food upon the mere picking of wild fruits
(simple gathering), nor upon the killing of wild animals
(hunting and fishing). They anticipate their needs perhaps
months in advance and supply themselves with vegetable,
animal, or mineral products. We thus distinguish a second
series of more complicated facts into which the organized work
of man enters as an essential factor.
The slightest cultivation of the soil shows an effort and a
plan, a looking ahead to the morrow. Likewise, foresight is
seen in cattle-raising, even in its most elementary form, and
in washing gravel for gold, however crude the process. Let
us note here that such facts have a geographical interest
exactly in so far as they express themselves on the surface in
material forms. It is not the psychological fact of the fore
sight which is important and which should claim our atten
tion, but the material, the geographical expression of this
foresight. The cultivation of cereals expresses itself by a
field and a granary ; primitive cattle-raising, by a more or less
regular change of place ; the labor of the gold or salt miner, by
"works." The field and the granary of the cultivator, the
itinerary of the nomad, the gold-seeker's installation, or the
salt-mine, are the phenomena by which these human facts
express themselves in the world of geography, and which serve
to differentiate the second series of facts, involving organized
work, from the first, which do not involve organized work.
From the order of facts that are spontaneous, or almost so,
implying only impulsive and often immediate movements
under the spur of vital needs, we come to an order of facts
which is dominated by work for the future. All these surface
phenomena can be grouped under the general head of exploita
tion of the earth. Agricultural geography, pastoral geography,

42 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
and industrial geography correspond to this second more com
plex series of facts. 3. Social Geography
One of the instincts and primal needs of man is to perpetuate
his kind. It is not because of philosophical considerations
that we have here to discern whether or not' man is Z^ov
ttoKitikov. Everywhere we see the human species assuring
the transmission of life and everywhere we find at least embryos
of families and of society. Man is everywhere gregarious; it
is an exceptional thing for an individual to live alone. If a
person becomes a hermit, he is no longer a part of geographical
humanity. It is only the chances of shipwreck or the dreams
of mystics or idealists that make Robinson Crusoes or Stylites;
the abstract systems of the philosophers or lawmakers alone
can speak of man by himself as an isolated being. It is by
an abstraction that we use ' ' man " as a generic term to include
all humanity. The truth is that human beings everywhere
live in groups on the earth. This is one of the fundamental
facts of human geography, which determines a third and
very extensive series of phenomena. The simplest results of
this grouping of human beings at all points of the earth are
exchanges. Almost from its beginning and at least in one of
the two individuals involved, exchange represents an effort
and a plan — a foresight for the morrow; and this fact of
exchange is especially important for us as soon as it expresses
itself by that significant geographical reality, the market.
But men are not only compelled to distribute the products
of the earth among themselves; they are obliged more or less
clearly and conscientiously to regulate the conditions of pro
duction, the distribution of work, and, above all, the division
of the soil. Generally speaking, the man who tills the earth,
or he who raises a herd, does not work for himself alone but
for a family or social group; the two men involved in an
exchange are not individually isolated, but both belong to
groups. All exploitations of the earth's resources are multi
plied and perfected toward this social end. Children so young
that their parents must support them, and old people no
longer able to secure the necessities of life for themselves,

!
CLASSIFYING FACTS OF HUM^N GEOGRAPHY 43
depend upon the able-bodied adults for their food, shelter,
and clothing. Hence result more or less complex facts of
organization which in a degree depend upon the conditions of
work and yet in a measure react upon these conditions.
As soon as men wish to utilize natural resources and riches,
they must solve not only technical problems — cultivation,
mines, etc. — but further problems involving the coordination
and subordination of their own efforts. Whether the owner
ship of property shall be communal or individual is a typical
example of a large group of social facts which, by a more or
less direct and happy adaptation, are the outcome of the
exploitation of the earth.
According as human beings are placed in this or that geo
graphical setting they are led to cultivate the palm tree, rice,
or grain. Similarly they raise horses in the semi-arid steppes
of central Asia, cattle in the mountains of central Europe or
on the islands of Lake Chad or on the shores of Lake Rudolf,
sheep on the lofty and dry plateaus of Spain or New Mexico.
These different forms of activity bring about still different
types of social organization. The conception and the limits
of property are not the same for a farmer who every year
tills the same field and for a herdsman who drives great herds
of horses or camels across vast spaces almost treeless and
without a fixed population.
We may group all these facts under the term "social
geography," but we should not forget that, though these facts
are associated with a given geographical environment, they
depend especially upon human freedom and will. The analysis
of them will, then, from the geographical point of view, be a very
delicate matter, demanding both prudence and critical insight.
4. Political and Historical Geography
Finally the coexistence, in a given area of the earth, of
numerous groups which are obliged to secure the necessities
from the soil, creates certain necessary relations, now pacific,
now violent, some of which are also connected with general
or local facts of a geographic nature.
Still more critical and prudent must be the criticism of this
fourth and last series of facts belonging to human geography :

44 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
"historical geography" — that is to say, political, military,
and administrative geography. Such facts, it is easily
seen, depend especially upon human vicissitudes and do not
always have a truly geographical value or meaning. How
ever, certain fundamental geographical conditions, such as
topographical situation, altitude, orientation, proximity to
the sea, size of the space occupied or conquered, etc., play
such a r61e in the destinies of cities, provinces, or states that
their history cannot be discussed without due consideration
of the geographical surroundings. Far more, human history
is deeply rooted, if one may so express it, in the material
things of the earth.
Does that mean that all history can be explained by geog
raphy? Assuredly not. Historians at one time considered
only those artificial labels on the earth's surface, the proper
names — names of mountains, of water courses, or of cities.
At another time, reacting against this entirely abstract view
of terrestrial reality, they endeavored to establish general
relations between the geographical character of a certain
country and its historical destiny; they approached human
geography at its end and unfortunately endeavored to solve
first its most obscure and difficult problems. History evolves
upon the earth, but it is made up of complex and involved
elements that are removed as far as possible from elementary
geographical conditions. It is by means of the intermediary
facts of the second series — cultivation, grazing, etc. — and by
facts of the third series — of social geography — that the
profound echo of geography in the evolution of human
societies is chiefly explained.1
'While such historians as Gibbon, Prescott, Motley, and Guizot have recognized
the influence on human history of geographical conditions, the systematic study of
this subject is of more recent date. A work of which the underlying conception is
the relation of history to geography, is the Weltgeschichte. by numerous contributors,
edited by H. F. Helmholt, 9 vols., Bibliographische Institut. Leipzig, 1899-1907,
second edition in course of publication (see especially Lord Bryce's introduction to
the English translation, 8 vols., Dodd, Mead & Co., New York, 1901-1907). A simi
lar work, the labor of one man, is Elis£e Reclus, L' Homme et la terre, 6 vols., Libr.
Universelle, Paris, 1905-1908, a geographic interpretation of history, the master's
last work. Cf. also H. B. George, Relations of Geography and History, third edi
tion, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1907; and A. P. Brigham, "Problems of Geographic
Influence," Annals Assoc. Ainer. Geog., V, 1915. pp. 3-25. The two leading geo
graphic interpretations of American history are Ellen Churchill Semple, American
History and Its Geographic Conditions, second edition. Houghton Mifflin Co.. Boston,
1913, and A. P. Brigham, Geographic Influences in American History, Ginn and
Co., Boston, 1903.

CLASSIFYING FACTS OF HUMAN GEOGRAPHY 45
Through a strange illusion, "historical geography," which
is the most complicated phase of human geography, is at the
same time the boldest, most adventurous geographical under
taking and one that has often appeared the easiest. He who
glances at a map of the British Isles, and recalls vaguely the
history of England, establishes so quickly a bond between
the insular position of these lands and their historic destiny
that he at once invokes geography as an explanatory cause of
history ; and he is not wrong. But these first general relation
ships are so obvious and so true that anyone with an open
mind can perceive them ; there is no need of laborious training
in observation to see the general influence of the ' ' insularity ' '
of England upon the policy and destiny of Napoleon. But
have we the right to stop with such easy comparisons? Can
the true archaeologist content himself with perceiving the
general relations between a Gothic cathedral and a certain
period of Christian history? Can the true botanist content
himself with perceiving some relation between climate or
altitude and the development of great forests of pine or firs?
Is the literary critic satisfied with establishing a relation of
simple "contemporaneousness" between the works of Boileau,
of Racine, and of La Bruyere? Should the geographer alone
be the one to declare himself satisfied after having indicated
some large and obvious relationship, exact though it be,
between the general geographical situation of a country and
its general historical destiny ?
Likewise, if the analysis is not more precise, we run the
risk of often reaching superficial or erroneous conclusions:
witness how many of Michelet's eloquent generalizations!1
On the other hand, if it is proper to go farther, numerous
difficulties arise. The task is too delicate to be accomplished
at the first attack. The first consequence of this more scientific
conception of the relations between geography and history is
that we must begin with the more modest work of building
our approaches.
In human geography, as in all the observational sciences, it
is important to proceed by first classifying all the facts in
series, by separating out a precise category from the crowded
'See Jean Brunhes, Michelet, Perrin, Paris.

46 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
whole of which it forms a part, and by continuing the com
parative observation of these facts in a series of analogous,
or similar, or progressively distinct, cases. Of this plan of
procedure it will now be our first and most important care
to point out with exactness the essential steps.
3- AN ATTEMPT AT A POSITIVE CLASSIFICATION. THE THREE GROUPS
AND THE SIX TYPES OF FUNDAMENTAL FACTS. THE SMALL
NATURAL UNITS: THE "ISLES" OF THE SEA, OF THE
DESERT, OF THE FOREST, OF THE HIGH
MOUNTAIN, AND OF THE PLAINS
We can now comprehend in what numberless ways, and
under what very general conditions, the actions of men are
influenced and sometimes even controlled by the physical
world. This introduction to human geography is a sort of
necessary preface.
The truly geographical point of view has been emphasized
constantly in these earlier pages and attention has been given
to the types of facts which form the field of investigation of a
geographer. For instance, in speaking of farming, the raising
of animals, or trading, it has been pointed out with much
emphasis that, as geographers, we are not primarily interested
in the psychological fact of foresight for the morrow, but
rather in the results of this foresight as indicated by fields
and granaries, by roads that pass by wells or pools, or by
market centers. What are the world expressions of these
scattered suggestions and can this definite point of view be
used as the basis of a systematic classification that shall be
truly geographical ?
Human geography is first of all geography, and not psychol
ogy, sociology, or history. In the formative stage of its
development, human geography was easily diverted from its
proper field and thoughtlessly confused with the many other
sciences dealing with man. It was easily accused, and not
without reason, of "touching everything" without having a
definite field and an organizing principle of its own. It is
time to check all these haphazard wanderings, and the tendency
of geographers is now to define their proper field of study and
to confine themselves to it.
To consider first the physiological needs of man, as we

CLASSIFYING FACTS OF HUMAN GEOGRAPHY 47
have done, is to explain how, from his earliest hours of exist
ence, the human being, whatever he be, comes inevitably into
contact with the physical world. These necessities once in
mind, is there not urgent need of abandoning not only every
a priori notion, every preconception, but every special fact
concerning the human organism? Is there no way of putting
less acquired knowledge of man and more geography at the
beginning of all human geography? Is it not our duty as
far as possible to free ourselves from every psychological,
ethnological, or social conception and to devote our attention
to the actual observation of the human facts on the earth
with the least possible mingling of the subjective human
element? Suppose we rise in a balloon or an aeroplane some hun
dreds of yards above the ground, following practically the
same idea as that expressed by the geologist Suess at the
beginning of his great work, Das Antlitz der Erde ("The Face
of the Earth"), and, with our minds freed of all that we know
of men, let us try to see and note the essential facts of human
geography with the same eyes and vision which would dis
cover to us and distinguish the morphological, topographical,
and hydrographical features of the earth's surface. From such
a supposed observatory, what is it we see? Or, better still,
what are the human facts that a photographic plate would
register just as well as the retina of the eye? (Fig. 3.)
In the first place, we see men themselves, as a movable cover
ing of the surface, but as a covering of very different density
at different points of the globe. Yet this mobility is more
restricted and this inequality of distribution is much more
persistent and constant than one might at first suppose. Each
individual, each little group, may move -separately, and in
fact does move; still it is none the less true that on the map
of the world the large blots of hving humanity appear for a
long time in the same places. The general distribution of
the. larger human masses seems subject to a fixity, of course
relative, and yet a fixity that is certain and surprising. The
Siberian tundra, the Saharan hamadas, or the Amazon forest
are almost devoid of men, while men are densely crowded
on the moist and fertile deltas of the Orient, in certain districts

HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

of western and central Europe, and along the northeastern
shore of the United States.
With and besides men, and varying in numbers with the

tocraph I,y Spelterini

Fig. 3. The Limmat and the City of Zurich
This photograph, taken by the aeronaut, Captain Spelterini. from the car of a bal
loon at about 656 feet (200 m.) above Zurich, indicates clearly to what a degree the
houses, streets, bridges, etc., as truly as a river, can lay claim to recognition as
distinctive surface features of the crust of the earth.
population, appear other concrete surface facts which may
be referred to six essential types:
1. Pacts of the Unproductive Occupation of the Soil
{a), and {b). Houses and roads.— First of all, one of the
most visible facts, a sort of superficial excrescence, is the
house, or, if one prefers, the shelter or habitation or human-
construction. All these innumerable and varied structures
that dot the earth's crust with thousands of little points, red

CLASSIFYING FACTS OF HUMAN GEOGRAPHY 49
with tiles, gray with slate, white with marble or lime, dark-
brown with old thatch, or yellow-brown with dried leaves —
all these facts, no matter what their size or permanence, and
regardless of how they are spaced, we group under the general
term of "houses." This title includes all human structures,
from the humblest straw huts of the savage to the most
elaborate mansions of our cities, the cupolas of observatories,
or spires of cathedrals, and from the isolated huts or cabins
of the arid steppes to those compact clusters of houses, so
closely placed as to seem continuous, that we see in the large
areas of dense population.
A second fact nearly always accompanies the first, that is,
the "road," or the line of passage devoted and, if one may so
speak, sacrificed to movement. The road includes the half-
beaten paths that lead to the "chalet" or the shepherd's hut
of the high mountain, great city streets paved or asphalted,
white roads winding up the sides of the Alps, the Cevennes,
or Mount Lebanon, railroads lined with parallel rails, and
"flowing roads" — diked rivers or canals. With the "road,"
thus understood, are associated bridges and tunnels, strong
holds or ports, and all the other concrete things that are the
necessary complement or outgrowth of traffic and human
communication. From the car of our balloon we note at
the first glance how intimately, from the geographical point
of view, the road and the house are associated and how they
mingle still more closely where population is more concen
trated. The city, geographically speaking, both in appearance
and in reality, is made up of empty places as well as full- —
that is, of streets, crossways, and squares as well as houses
and monuments.
"Houses" and "roads" are then closely associated over the
inhabited earth and represent the two essential human facts
of what might be called the "sterile or unproductive use of
the land." 2. Facts of Plant and Animal Conquest
(c) and {d). Cultivated fields and domesticated animals.- —
Still other surface spots appear, more numerous as the popu
lation is more dense ¦ — ¦ spots with rather regular and seemingly
4

50 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
definite outlines, of tints varying with the seasons, now the
dull color of the bare earth or the warm, rich color of the plowed
ground, now the tender green of springing grass, the deep
yellow of ripened grain, or the dazzling white of cherry blos
soms or cotton bolls— spots corresponding to parts of the sur
face where the soil is scratched, turned over, or worked. In
a general way, to use a term that summarizes what is actually
seen, this is the "field" or the "garden." Such is the geo
graphical and material expression of cultivation - — that is to
say, the subordination of the plant world to the human will.
Whether it be wheat fields of the plateaus of Beauce or of the
"black earth" of Russia, the terraces of lofty vine arbors or
of old, twisted olive trees on the Mediterranean slopes, the
closely aligned beds in the market gardens of the Paris suburbs,
checkerboards of muddy rice fields in China or Java, thin
forests of eucalyptus of the "oases" of the Roman Campagna,
or old Saharan palm groves, sheltering under their slender
shade, figs and pomegranates, barley and beans — all these
' ' fields " or " gardens ' ' are to such a degree marks of human toil
that the photographic negative would record them, even when
we remained unaware of the efforts that brought them about.
A fourth fact is to be noted, now associated with the "fields"
or the "garden", now, on the other hand, often strong and well
developed where cultivated spots are rare, but always hnked
with the presence of men. Scattered dromedaries and camels
that feed on the stiff, hard tufts of the desert ; groups of cattle
that crop the short, sweet-smelling grass of the Alps; long,
crowded processions of sheep that browse on the stalks and
leaves of the dry steppes of the Mediterranean world; or Arab
horses, each guided by human hands; reindeer drawing sleds
over the snows of Lapland; Egyptian buffaloes dragging the
plow under the goad of man and tracing the furrows of his
field — all these form an animal population which is clearly
subordinate to human will, a fact indicated by our common
expressions, the "herd" and the "beast of burden."
It is through the definite forms of "fields" and "gardens,"
of "herds" and "beasts of burden," that we are led to intro
duce into geography the many varied facts included under the
terms "cultivated plants" and "domesticated animals." In

CLASSIFYING FACTS OF HUMAN GEOGRAPHY 51
one place they may date from an age so remote that their origin
is a matter of tradition, and in another they may have been a
sudden innovation of yesterday, but they comprise all that
from the time of prehistoric man until to-day may be called
"facts of plant and animal conquest."
3. Pacts of Destructive Economy
{e) and (/). Exploitation of minerals and devastation in
plant and animal life. — It remains for us to note from our
point of vantage two other types of facts, both of which repre
sent though in different degrees, " destructive economy , " or, to
use the forceful German term, Raubwirtschaft — that is, "eco
nomic plunder."
Here and there over the earth, and often near the house or
the road, the soil is removed. Gaping holes mark the points
where men, without restitution, have taken rocks for their
own uses: "Sand pits," "gravel pits," " sulphur pits, " marble,
granite, or rock salt quarries, etc. — all these facts, minute
or imposing, are, in a word, the "quarry." Geographically
speaking, we pass, by imperceptible stages, from the quarry
to the mine, from the earth that has been cut away on the
surface to the earth hollowed out beneath. In the iron
mines of Minnesota or in the copper mines of Chuquicamata
(northern Chile), the pits are open, while in Westphalia, in the
copper mines of Keweenaw Point, and in the Pas-de-Calais,
the mines are developed some hundreds of yards or even
thousands of feet below the surface. In each case the "hole"
is made by man to remove once for all mineral substances, such
as silver, diamonds, coal, salt, or plaster; and the "hole" is
literally a mark of "destructive economy."
The sixth and last type of surface facts are closely bound up
with the facts of "plant and animal conquest." We have to
do here with all those acts, often brutal and violent, almost
always short and quick, always decisive and final, which, in
the vegetal order, are seen in wild fruits seized and eaten, trees
felled and forests burned, and, in the animal order, in animals
hunted and killed or fish caught. Devastation and pillage of
the cultivated oasis by the nomadic Tuaregs and the senseless
and ill-considered exploitation of the rubber vine in the Congo

52- HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
are facts analogous to the excessive hunting that tends to
exterminate certain species, such as plume-bearing birds and
fur- o"i; ivory-bearing animals.
4. The "Islands" or "Islets" of the Inhabited Earth
Later ,we must consider the general reaction of facts upon
one another and not neglect that "geography of the whole"
which is in truth the highest goal of geography study. It is
difficult to make out at first glance what is really and strictly
geographical in the manifestations of human life in vast,
dissimilar settings, each corresponding, for example, to a
"whole" as complex as France or the United States. Only
by the careful study of a small unit can one learn to discern
and evaluate the strictly geographical relations between
physical facts and human destinies. Among those points of
our inhabited planet that are isolated enough to form separate
and therefore simple unities, five types of little geographical
worlds, five types of islands or islets of humanity, seem espe
cially marked for our observation. They are:
the islands of the sea;
the oases which are "islands" of the desert;
the populated "islands" or "oases" of the boreal or of the
equatorial forest;
the high closed valleys of mountain regions;
the isolated mountain areas that rise in the midst of exten
sive plains.
4. THE NATURAL FORCES. WATER AND WIND. HUMAN BEINGS.
THE FIRST MAPS: RAINFALL AND POPULATION MAPS
Among the natural facts and forces to which man is geo
graphically bound almost as closely as he is to the air, water
deserves a place in the first rank. Water is preeminently the
economic wealth: it is, for men, more truly wealth than either
coal or gold.
Not a house or human shelter has been built without some
attention being given to the availability of a water supply; the
humblest chalet in the high mountains is situated first of all
near a spring or a stream; every village must have its spring
or its well. In some countries where the climate brino-s a

CLASSIFYING FACTS OF HUMAN GEOGRAPHY 53
prolonged period of dryness, the roofs and terraces are arranged
so as to catch all the rainwater in cisterns. (Figs. 4 and 5.)

Fig. 4.

The Upper Terraces of Bellver Castle, near Palma
De Majorca, Balearic Islands

Everything on these terraces is so arranged as to collect even the
smaEest drops of rain that fall.
We have already compared Champagne and the Central
Plateau of France from the point of view of the distribution
of human establishments; we might in the same way compare
Beauce and Biittany. Better still, let us choose districts
almost adjacent, such as a portion of the Central Plateau and
a portion of Burgundy with fissured limestone;1 or two agri
cultural plains in the immediate neighborhood of Paris —
Beauce and Brie.
In Beauce, where the plateau is covered by grain fields as far as
one can see, trees are very rare and are found only a few in a place ;
iSee Paul Girardin, "Le Relief des environs de Dijon et les principales formes
topographiques de la Bourgogne," Ann. de geog., XI, 1902, pp. 43-53.

54

HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

the large villages are far apart and always situated about a large
well equipped for furnishing water quickly. One rarely finds a
well used by one farm alone. It is just the opposite on the plateau
of Brie, lying at a lower level on the right bank of the Seine. This
area, with a more varied surface than Beauce, is well supplied with
living springs and streams. And so, beautiful estates, recognized
from a distance by a girdle of great trees as well as by all the signs
that accompany isolated farms, are scattered over this verdant

Jean Brunhes
Fig. 5. The Well of the Great Cistern in the Interior Court of
Bell ver Castle
The rain is gathered and stored, even to the smallest drop, in the great
cistern that extends below the large central interior court.
country, the surface of which is agreeably divided between Teat
woods and cultivated plains.
Often, as is clear from Figs. 6 and 7, page 57, the human map
rigorously follows the lines of the hydrographical map.
In studying the formation of the citv of London, Prestwich showed
that, for centuries, the population had unconsciously located itself
exclusively within the boundaries of the water-bearing layers so

CLASSIFYING FACTS OF HUMAN GEOGRAPHY 55
that the plan of the capital and its suburban parishes reproduced
exactly the distribution of the ground- water.1
One of the largest problems of great cities is that of water
supply — a problem of public hygiene and social life of primary
importance, and worthy of examination as a whole from an
especially geographical point of view. Thus, whether it be
the humblest chalet or the largest dwelling, the human house
is necessarily bound to a certain quantity of water.
Streets and the road are also surface facts that must have
water. The historic routes of travel of the desert nomads,
the buffalo trails of the Great Plains, are almost as rigorously
subject to the distribution of water-holes as our trains are
subject to stops at fixed stations. These stations are always
watering-points, and the fastest expresses of our most highly
developed roads, with means of locomotion seemingly most
independent of the detailed facts of the geographical environ
ment, must make stops to supply the boilers with water.
The facts of destructive economy are somewhat less depend
ent upon water than the two types of facts of sterile occupation
of the soil, but here again, through the relations that exist
between the plant world and water as well as between wild
animals and water, it would be easy to show that real relation
ships exist between these less systematic forms of human
activity and the '¦ distribution of water. With regard to
fishing, the relation is obvious. As to quarrying and mining,
they demand a large quantity of water either for the work
itself or for the lives of the employes. The huge hydraulic
works that have developed in the exploitation of gold in the
deserts of western Australia are well known.2
But if, from this group of facts, we pass to a consideration
of plant and animal conquest, the geographic necessity of
water appears to be still more imperious. All raising of
animals is based upon water; even the camels of the Sahara
as well as the sheep of the lofty plateaus of the Barbary States
must slake their thirst. As for cultivation, it is preeminently
a question of water.
1A. de Foville, Introduction a I ' enquete sur les conditions de Vhabitation en France,
Les maisons-types, I, p. x.
2See Paul Privat-Deschanel, "Le Probleme de l'eau a Coolgardie" (Western
Australia), La Geographie, XIV, 1906, pp. 13-18.

56 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
Some of the fundamental facts with reference to the water
demands of our crops are worth noting. According to Haber-
landt, a very green leaf evaporates in an hour a quantity of
water equal to its own weight. This chemist has calculated
the amount of water evaporated per acre during the growth
of different grains: Quantity of Water Evaporated per Acre
Cereals Pounds
Wheat  997,570
Rye  743,723
Barley  1,101,880
Oats  2,028,987
For the production of a pound of dry matter, wheat requires
515 pounds of water; rye, 365 pounds; barley, 543 pounds;
oats, 1,001 pounds. Experiments at Akron, Colorado, in 191 1,
gave a requirement for wheat of 507 pounds of water per
pound of dry matter, of 724 pounds for rye, 539 pounds for
barley, and 614 pounds for oats.1
Evaporation is more rapid in regions of abundant sunshine,
and in dry climates water is most needed for cultivation.
This fact emphasizes, in a word, to what extent artificial
watering or irrigation will be for man the most efficient method
of plant culture in arid, semiarid, or desert countries (Fig. 8).
It is therefore in considering the garden and the irrigated
field that we see the true relations between man and water;
and of our six essential facts, this is the one that must be the
foremost geographical reality and which serves, so to speak, as
introductory to the examination of the more general problem.2
It is also in connection with the field carefully worked that
we shall meet with dry farming. By repeated tillage to prepare
the ground to absorb and husband even the slightest rain, dry
farming especially expresses, so to speak, all that water is worth.3
!Lyman J. Briggs and H. L. Shantz, The Water Requirements of Plants, I, Investi
gations in the Great Plains in iqio and 1911, U. S. Dept. Agr., Bureau of Plant
Industry, Bulletin No. 284.
2J. Brunhes, L Irrigation, ses conditions glographiques , ses modes el son organi
zation dans la Peninsule iberique et dans VAfrique du Nord, Paris, 1902- F. H. Newell
Irrigation in the United States, The Macmillan Co., New York! 1902!
3"Dry farming" is one of the oldest and richest traditions of the Mediterranean
world. See "A Majorquo et a Minorque, esquisse de geographie humaine," in the
Rev. des deux mondes, November 1, 191 1; and Augustin Bernard, "'Dry Farming'
et ses applications dans l'Afrique du Nord," Ann. de geog., XX. pp. 411-430 See
also J. A. Widtsoe, Dry Farming. The Macmillan Co.. New York, 1911; and W Mac-
Donald, Dry Farming, The Century Co., New York, 1909.

CLASSIFYING FACTS OF HUMAN GEOGRAPHY 57

jFavcrollcs

Fig. 6. The Distribution of Human Settle
ments in Regions of Fissured
Limestones

Water is, then, associated with all human life, and, if Ratzel
could say at the beginning of his Politische Geographic.
"Jeder Staat ist ein
Stuck Boden und
Menschheit" ("Every
state is a bit of soil and
humanity"), let us take
his phrase and complete
it : every state and even
every human group is
a blend of a bit of hu
manity, a bit of soil,
and a bit of water.
That is why all hy
drography, terrestrial
or marine, has had a
very great influence
upon humanity from
the beginning. The sea
attracts men because it
is at the same time a
road and a fishing
ground. When the
mighty tide swells the
estuaries and ascends
the streams of the Brit
ish Isles, it increases
enormously the line of
contact between the sea
and the land and the These map-sections represent areas of the same
size in two regions quite near one another: those
intensity Of movement of Chatillon and the Morvan. This part of the
j + „fl2;„ fr f Chatillon, calcareous and very permeable, has only
anQ TxamC Xnat Can re- a tew riverSi on which the inhabitants are grouped;
cult tliprpfrnm-l trip there are neither hamlets nor farms. The Morvan.
SUlt tnereirom, tne formed of crystalline rocks and well watered, has
flood-tide Which makes numerous streams; water is present everywhere;
, farms, hamlets, and villages are scattered throughout.
pOSSlble the entrance Maps from La France el ses colonies, by H. Busson, J. Fevre, and
h -, . r , H. Hauser. Paris, F. Alcan, 1910, p. 33.
and departure of great
vessels is like a drawbridge thrown across a moat, reestablishing
!To the detriment even of inland navigation. See A. Demangeon, " La Navigation
interieure en Grande Bretagne," Ann. de geog., XXI, January is, 1912, p. 41, last
paragraph.

Goix ] — — ^Y

/^_ MunlntX/ Yiaiiges*

^__V Les Gayots \
t*\ ~~^r
"¦1 Palaizot ^y

tEffimrs I / N £
\ VilluL- ( y^\ *
\ \ I Ll1 TlIllGric* )l

J ?\ Bli

\ y """"-¦•^ Lc Quart A
\ j^ X Meniu-Tliiroux,

La Flainc. .ValUizc
Yausscry • Lalrr

',. f Puntnmervt .Savilly_^__^ R

Le Larrey^
YcrpilluTc •
•Ruibsrllc
Faye*

/Chibsey-cnN1,'orvan / ,F. V"1

*\Lc Guidon / X^ \
I Petit- Vauccllcs ,
\,, Mont-Regard
^•pouvcrt

.Le Crapissot \ Visigneux ,
' MorlaiNs, •/ Barnay
. M"? Bourgoux \ M .gran^aucelles.
\Morcy y Barnay-Dessus •

Fig. 7. The Distribution of Human Settle
ments in a District of Imper
meable Rocks

58 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
the continuity of the road of approach. And, as a foster-
mother, the sea, in spite of the efforts by some states at
limitation, is the most extensive common of the world.
Looking at this group of facts from the truly geographical
standpoint, it is evident that they depend on some one of the
six types of essential facts. Whether he will or no, consciously
or unconsciously, every writer who attempts an exact discus
sion arrives necessarily — with more or less clearness — at
this elemental analysis. A page from Vallaux will furnish
us the proof:
Boysen has remarked that the English Channel, because of its
traffic, has permanently a population as dense as the province of
Yakutsk; would it not be then, as well as the province of Yakutsk,
a part of the inhabited world which geographers must study ':
Boysen's remark is interesting, but, taken literally, it would
bring about certain misconceptions that we must take care to avoid.
Of course, if we consider the Channel as a continental shelf (it
is one since its depth does not exceed 300 feet [100 meters] except
in the narrow trench or deep of Alderney), and if we consider it
consequently as a fishing zone, it is an inhabited zone, less populated
in fact than any other similar zone, such as the Dogger Bank or
the Vendean coast of Brittany. If we consider it as a region of
constant and uninterrupted passage between France and England,
it is again an inhabited region. But, however interesting these two
characteristics of the Channel may be, it is not to them principally
that it owes the numerous population which plows its waters and
which Boysen has in view. It owes its population above all to its
position as an outlet from northwest Europe toward the Atlantic
and as a way of approach from the entire Atlantic to continental
Europe. Under this title, which is its chief title, the Channel is
not an inhabited region, for the population of the passenger and
merchant boats across this sea, for the most part, is without stop
or stay upon its shores. To this mobile and traveling population
the Channel gives no geographical environment; it serves simply as
a means of connection between numerous fixed environments from
which the men who pass through it separate themselves in groups,
masses, or unities.1
But water is something more than this for man. Obeying
the pull of gravity and descending the mountain toward the
sea, it is a force that can become a source of energy. For
centuries it had set in motion mill wheels and saws (Fig. 10).
Then came the hour of the almost indefinite increase and
1C. Vallaux, La Mer, pp. 8-9,

CLASSIFYING FACTS OF HUMAN GEOGRAPHY 59

perfection of methods of utilization of the "white coal" and
"green coal."1 "This water so rebellious," says Gabriel
Hanotaux, "why not muzzle it at its birth?"2
And during the last twenty-five years, through the develop
ment of hydro
electric power
houses and the
transmission of
power by elec
tricity, there has
come about a
mighty indus
trial revolution
which gives to
countries de
prived of coal,
such as Switzer
land or Norway
or California, an
economic power
and rank that
it would have
been impossible
tO imagine Or The Valais is the most arid region in Switzerland, and that
r t j. is why the water from the glaciers is there carefully collected
IOreSee. L>eC US, and conducted for the irrigation of the upper pastures. The
however Studv negation canals, called bisses, are miniature works of art con-
' J sisting sometimes of tunnels, and sometimes, as in this case.
Somewhat more of flumes simply but skillfully constructed. The water in this
, , , bisse flows from the Trient glacier.
closely such a
phenomenon in its entirety on a map such as that of Wyssling,
Carte des stations centrales d 'electricite en Suisse (Kummerly
JOn the subject of "green coal," consult the investigation made by Henri Bresson,
La Houille verte, mise en valeur des moyennes et basses chutes d'eau, Paris, 1906. See
also Charles Barrat, Les Forces hydrauliques de la France el la houille verte, a commu
nication made to the Societe de statistique de Paris .(May 13, 1907), Nancy, 1907.
2G. Hanotaux published under the title of "La Houille blanche," in the Rev. des
deux mondes, an article of such great importance that it influenced the modification
of jurisprudence. These pages are reproduced in L'Energie francaise, Flammarion,
Paris, pp. 163-197. Apropos of Dauphine, he writes: "It is nevertheless true that
one of the most active and noblest provinces of France, peopled by mountaineers ordi
narily classed among 'backward communities,' has created and developed without
outside assistance a magnificent industry born of the soil, the future of which is
immense. The sons of the mountain have wrested from the mountain a force it was
expending uselessly" (p. 187). On the subject of "white coal," see Congres de la
houille blanche, Grenoble-Annecy-Chamonix, September 7-13, 1902, Grenoble, 1903.

Fig. 8.

Joan Brushes
A Small Irrigation Canal or Bisse
of the Valais

60 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
et Frey, Bern, 1902). The truly Alpine region, the region of-
high mountains, appears to us as still being poor in electrical
plants; the existing plants are isolated and furnish power
only for a short distance, while in the Swiss Jura and on the
great molassic plateau power houses with long transmitting'
lines are numerous.1 (Fig. 9.)
The reason is that man has found on the plateau, if not
more available water than in the Alps, at least streams with
more volume and force. He has found especially more popu
lation and more labor, therefore more facilities for the creation
and organization of factories to use the power produced by
the waterfalls.
Certainly we are coming to see more and more clearly that
high falls are particularly valuable and that a movement to
lead industries toward the high mountains is taking place, but
alas, how slowly!2
It is the human phenomenon that, above everything else,
directs this utilization, and it is through the increase in popu
lation, through the construction of factories, through the
creation of a network of communications, that is, once more,
through some of the essential facts of the preceding section —
houses and roads — that this new fact of the domestication of
natural forces is revealed. It is becoming more and more
obvious to men that it is to their interest to take advantage
of the free forces of nature.3 This evolution is carefully noted
in a general work on U Homme et la terre cultivec ("Man and
the Cultivated Earth").
The wind is another natural force that seems to be coming
back into favor. It was a valuable aid at a time when man
aThe phenomenon appears still more clearly, if possible, in the second edition,
which dates from 1907: Carle des stations centrales d'clectricite en Suisse, dressie
comme complement de la carte du professeur Dr. Wyssling et editee par I'Assoc. Suisse
des eleclriciens.
2J. Dalemont, "L'Energie des cours d'eau en Suisse," La Geographic, XVI, 1907,
pp. 291-308. See what this says of the "ascent of factories toward the mountain."
p. 298, and the diagram, Fig. 26, representing the number of central factories built
in Switzerland from 1891 to 1903, classed according to the height of the waterfalls,:
utilized. In a still more recent work, Les Industries de I'clcctricile au Canada, Julien
Dalemont, speaking of the 394,400 horse-power already taken from Niagara Falls,
insists upon the part which the preceding economic facts, especially facts of population,
play in the utilization even of hydro-electric forces (Rev. icon, internal., Dec, 1909).
3See Brunhes, "L'Homme et la terre cultivec. Bilan d'un sieclc." Bulletin de la
Sociele neuchdteloise de giographie, XII, 1899, pp. 219-260. See III, "Better Economy
of Riches and of Natural Forces."

CLASSIFYING FACTS OF HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

61

was less spoiled than to-day and could use only the feebler
sources of energy. In Germany and Holland, as in Spain,
the huge wings of windmills still stand out everywhere on the
horizon. It was the wind that ground the grain and sped the

Fragniere Bros.
Fig. 9. One of the Great "Centrals" of the Swiss Plateau: the
Pressure Pipes at the Hydro-Electric Works of Hauterive,
2^4 Miles (4 Kilometers) above Freiburg

62

HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

ships of our forefathers. The century of steam and elec
tricity has caused this power of the wind to be neglected and
almost forgotten. It is, to be sure, a capricious and irregular
force, but it
is a force that
is free and
inexhaustible. To-day
we are again
turning to
the wind.
Wind motors
as well as
steam en
gines are
used. To a
steam engine
for raising
water for
irrigation,
for example,
we join a wind motor. Even if this motor should save only
the coal that the steam engine would burn in twenty-four
hours, it is a clear gain. Air motors are increasing in number
over the great plains of the Dakotas and in France, particu
larly in some departments of the southeast.1 In the same
way navigation by means of sails, far from disappearing, is
being developed, although the modern sailing vessel may have
an auxiliary steam motor for use in case of need. On the
sea, as on the land, man is turning once more to this force
for the moment despised; a new age of wind power is about
to begin.
Now, from the geographical point of view, windmills must be
included in the same group with water mills. Sailing vessels,
geographically speaking, will not be separated from the steam
vessels which follow the same courses and carry the same
merchandise. It is not the forces conquered but the resulting
1 There are still many regions where wind motors are used in raising the water
necessary .for market gardening. Few regions are so characteristic, from this point
of view, as the immediate environs of Dresden, in Saxony.

Courtesy of H. Busson
Fig. 10. Traditional Utilization of Hydraulic Power
A large water wheel, in the vicinity of Murcia

CLASSIFYING FACTS OF HUMAN GEOGRAPHY 63
surface phenomena that furnish the basis for a geographical
classification. Finally, among the facts which our vision of the earth's
crust reveals to us, we have pointed out, as of the very first
rank, that unequal covering formed by the human popula
tion itself. Men, too, must be looked upon as a sort of natural
force which here exists and there is rare; as a sort of funda
mental fact which it is in human power to utilize far more
than to modify suddenly or radically. When, as a result of
an economic or historical fact such as the South African War,
the black labor had disappeared or fled, it was discovered how
difficult and dangerous it was to repeople a section of the earth.
Even though the central power desirous of finding workmen
was one of the most powerful on the globe and the interests to
be safeguarded were the interests of gold, and even with the
attempt at a partial transplanting of the yellow race to this

From U. S. G. S.
Fig. ii. A View of the Great Eastern Irrigation Ditch. Garden City
Project, Kansas
Wind motors used in connection with a gasoline or steam engine for the raising of
water represent a large saving in fuel.
land of impoverished "human vegetation," the endeavor to
reestablish the earlier conditions was but a slow and sorry
procedure. This simple instance may serve to introduce the general
consideration of that terrestrial surface fact, the popu
lation. The phenomena of life are not merely the results of

64 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
geographical causes, nor are they fatally and closely bound to
them and them alone; it would be a mistake to think it.
But while geographers have not to seek the remote beginnings
nor to investigate the obscure and confused complex by which
the present population is explained, must they not at least be
asked to investigate the present influences? But do these
influences themselves all belong to the domain of geography?
Who would dare claim that the natural environment furnishes
the key to all these phenomena, so fascinating and so involved,
which form the object of study of demography: birth-rate,
proportion of marriages, mortality, etc.? What will be the
part of human geography here ? In what places and by what
modes must demography profit from geographical observations
and by its own results benefit geography ?
It evidently goes without saying that it is from the critical
studies of great censuses that geographers have been able to
form a clear idea of the predominating facts of population.
The countries which have methodical censuses at regular
intervals, from almost all the European states and the United
States to India or Egypt, are the ones where the geographer
finds a hold, so to speak, and can make his judgment sure.
P. Vidal de la Blache, while insisting, as is proper, on the
importance of facts of population, has justly said:
There is at the base of political geography a question that may be
considered as fundamental; that is the question of the distribution
of human populations over the surface of the earth. Nothing is
more unequal: certain relatively restricted parts of the globe show
enormous accumulations; India and China alone contain nearly
half of humanity. These are masses of human beings cemented
by time, against which wars, epidemics, and famines wear them
selves out in vain. On the other hand, there are vast new spaces
which man is just beginning to occupy in large numbers. Now,
with regard to these phenomena, which have a resulting influence
upon the entire geographical physiognomies of the districts, we
have only begun to be informed since regular censuses, still too
few, have allowed us to compare the state and progress of popula
tion in widely separated parts. It was a revelation when in 1872
the first census of British India showed us positively the existence
of nearly 250 millions of men (to-day 291 millions) in that peninsula.
Since 1790 the monumental series of decennial censuses in the United
States of _ America has not ceased to furnish valuable documents
for following the progressive increase of population in a vast country.

CLASSIFYING FACTS OF HUMAN GEOGRAPHY 65
We are thus enabled to study comparatively the geographical
aspect of the population in countries of old civilization, whether in
Europe or in the tropics, and in new countries such as America.
And we find strange phenomena, some of which have been forcefully
set forth by F. Ratzel. The United States contains some of the
great metropolises of the world, although the density of population
is only thirty-three inhabitants per square mile (thirteen per square
kilometer). Australia has more than 30 per cent of its people in
three cities. The enormous inequalities of distribution which
these figures indicate exist even in the immediate radius of great
cities. A few hours separate New York from the wooded solitudes
of the Adirondacks. Had it been in Europe, clearings would have
been made in these forests; through factories or different occupa
tions a population would have striven, and probably with success, to
create in them means of existence for itself as it is, a few hunters
or woodsmen, and they only in the summer risk themselves in
these solitudes. Such is a demographic picture of a new country.1
But how do these phenomena of population reveal them
selves to us ? How are they even approached and measured, so
to speak, by censuses except through the habitation? Because
of the fact of the material establishment at a given place on
the land men are "caught" and counted. Where men are
not thus fixed they escape all control and all accurate number
ing. Now the earth's covering of human dwellings is a
phenomenon more geographical, more closely bound to
natural conditions, than the earth's covering of human beings
itself. The first is the visible sign of the second and is preemi
nently within the province of geography. Truly geographical
demography is above all the demography of the habitation.
Let us add that the two facts of sterile occupation of the
soil — houses and roads — arrange themselves in varied net
works which are literally representative plottings of the
population. A moment ago there was mentioned "the
demographic picture of a new country" drawn from statistics.
A still more expressive idea could be drawn from maps on a
large scale. A piece taken from a good topographical map
is preeminently a " demographical picture of a new country."
(Fig. 12.)
The human fact as a force applied to the transformation of
the surface of the earth will manifest itself as an explanatory

!"La Geographie politique, a propos des ecrits de M. Frederic Ratzel," Ann. de
geog., VII, 1898, p. 105.

66 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
and cooperating factor in each of the visible and tangible
results of this transforming work: apropos of the cultivated

Fig. 12. How the Settlement of a New C6untry Marks the Ground
Portion of the Hebron Quadrangle U. S. Geol. Survey, showing the strikingly
regular distribution of houses on the dry plains of the West settled under the various
Homestead Acts.
field or the mine, men will have to be studied in so far as they
determine these facts and in so far as they remain connected
with them. We shall see how the factor of "labor" is intro
duced into all studies of cultivation, of devastations, of the
exploitation of minerals.

CLASSIFYING FACTS OF HUMAN GEOGRAPHY 67
Nowhere does man exist without doing something; every
where he at least eats and sleeps; and everywhere he leaves
the marks of his passage which are par excellence the object
of our particular studies.
Proceeding by way of analysis and following our principle
of classification, we must go over again, step by step, the
problems of population. It is in connection with the house,
the village, and the city, that the question of the distribution
of population must be examined — under its real and logi
cal aspect — • as well as the question of the maps and diagrams
intended to show that distribution.
The Two Primary Maps of All Human Geography
On the whole, if we wish to draw any general conclusions
from a critical examination of the natural forces which are
everywhere basal to all human geographical facts, we consider
as fundamental maps the map of water and the map of men;
that is, the map of the general distribution of the rainfall and
the map of the general distribution of the population (Figs.
13 and 14).
All the water, either for his life or for his work, is not fur
nished to man by the rainfall alone, and those who engage in
irrigation in a dry country know this better than anyone
else. But the expenditure of time, money, and human
muscle required for artificial watering makes us recognize by
contrast the full geographic and economic benefit of rainfall
which is shed in drops over such vast surfaces. Directly or
indirectly, almost all the water that we use, whether it be
spring water, well water, or other water, is due to rainfall.
Excess of rainfall is, moreover, like the dearth of rain, unfavor
able to the free extension of human life; the fullest and best
development of humanity is limited to areas lying between
these two extremes of rainfall. In these intermediate zones
we find all the great centers of population. We shall have
occasion to take up this very important point again when we
come to discuss those occupations and industries which are
most directly connected with climate, that is, the works which
involve vegetal and animal conquest. (See § 1 of chap. IV,
pp. 230-249.).

68

HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

Fig. 13. General DistribotJ
The two continuous heavy lines mark the southern limits (in the nort
(exception made of some isolated, very high elevations as Ruwenzori andj
The works of Supan, Loomis, A. Angot, Hann. Woeikof, etc., also (j
LII, 1906, T, 7., etc.) have been consulted. But the data are taken prima]

CLASSIFYING FACTS OF HUMAN GEOGRAPHY 69

'recipitation on the Globe

aisphere) and northern limits (in the southern hemisphere) of the snowfall
j-o). 5 special publications (rainfall map of Africa by Fraunberger, Pet. Mitt.,
a the rainfall map of Andree's Atlas (4th edition) published by A. Scobel.

70

HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

It remains none the less true that a general rainfall map
represents one of the great terrestrial facts the actual distri
bution of which controls in the highest degree the geog
raphy of man.
The distribution of human beings is another all-important
geographical fact. Once more, it is not our purpose to study
here groups of human beings from the ethnological or histori
cal point of view; there is no doubt that facts of race
and of history are of great significance in explaining the
present distribution of men. To make the actual dispersion
of men dependent upon geography alone would be an error.
The two Americas, which to-day, invaded by migrations of
men from the Old World, show themselves so favorable to
population in so many regions, were for a long time in places
a juxtaposition of uninhabited districts. A hundred years
ago they were devoid of men in comparison with other parts
of the world, such as Europe, Asia, or even Africa. Even
to-day the comparative table of absolute area and popula
tion of the continents justifies the declaration that human
beings are localized and distributed on the earth in a manner
that is far from being exclusively dependent upon natural
conditions. Comparative Table of Population in 1910

Total Population

Surface in Millions
of Square Miles

Average Population
of Continents per
Square Mile

Millions of
Inhabitants

Whole Earth

Continents

Seas

1,665

197

57-5

139-5

29

Population in

Surface in

Average Pop

Proportion

Millions of

Millions of

ulation per

of Earth's

Inhabitants

Square Miles

Square Mile

Population

America 

l8l

16.2

II .2

10-9%

893449
17.0 3-9
52 • 5
115 1
53 6ro
Europe 
Africa 
135
115
11. 7
» ¦ I %
Australia and
Oceania ....
7
3-4
2. 1
4%
Polar Regions
0.013
5 5
002
In Asia, which is only one-sixteenth larger than the
Americas, lives a population that is almost five times the
population of the New World. Europe, which is only one
CLASSIFYING FACTS OF HUMAN GEOGRAPHY 71
fourth as large as America, has over two and a half times as
many inhabitants as America.
A critical and detailed examination of regions having close
natural analogies would be still more instructive.
We shall, then, have ground for repeating, in chapter VIII,
that human geography, properly so called, must be first and
above all the geography of _ material human works; it is also
the geography of human masses and human races, but only
in so far as these masses and races express their specific and
distinctive modes of activity by material works, and in so far
as they reveal their existence and their presence by these
same works.
Certainly there are real relations between the general map
of rainfall and the general map of population. (Figs. 13 and
14.) The study of plant zones in relation to climatic zones,
to be taken up later, as well as the vegetation and climatic
maps (Figs, in and 112), will further bring out these con
nections. However, we shall consider here the two groups of
facts, rainfall and population, as providing the fundamental
factors, the primary and almost brute factors, of the infinitely
varied play of causes and effects which ends in covering the
surface of our globe with a multitude of human marks
and traces.
From these different records of observation it is evident
that all the phenomena of human geography can and must be
examined in the light of the facts that we have designated
under the term of essential facts. The question is now to
undertake a more detailed analysis of these facts with the aid
of numerous examples.

72

HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

Fig. 14. General Dm
These population maps of the hemispheres are from the Teachers' Gt«S

CLASSIFYING FACTS OF HUMAN GEOGRAPHY 73

Compiled by Mark Jefferson, Ypsilaqti, Mich.

>«¦ the Population
ark Jefferson, and are reproduced here by courtesy of the author.

CHAPTER III
THE ESSENTIAL FACTS OF HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
FIRST GROUP: FACTS OF THE UNPRODUCTIVE
OCCUPATION OF THE SOIL: HOUSES
AND RDADS
I. The form of the house. Typical houses. Examples : {a) the
wooden house in forested northern and central Europe; {b)
the house in Egypt: the house of earth and the house of stone.
2. The material characteristics of the street and of the road.
3. The physiognomy of the human establishment: geographical
types. Example: the village-type in Egypt.
4. The geographical localization of the human establishment.
Site. Dissemination or concentration. Limits.
5. The urban agglomeration and the city road. The large city
and large cities. Brief comments upon an example of
comparative geography: the large cities of the world above
5,000 feet {1,500 meters).
6. Urban circulation and the fortification. A geographic
feature of the city: the "boulevard" as a fact of urban
geography.
7. The general geography of circulation.
The human habitation — a small geographical phenomenon
so intimately associated with our lives — is almost as ephemeral
as we ourselves. In the best preserved cities the oldest
houses go back only some three or four hundred years; in
general the ordinary house is replaced frequently as the
generations come and go. If a fact that changes so quickly
still keeps the same general characteristics and, as it were, a
physiognomy that is handed down, it is certainly because
a real power of tradition influences its successive forms; but
it is also because the human house depends upon natural
conditions to an extent which is yet to be defined and which
is, moreover, variable. 74

UNPRODUCTIVE OCCUPATION OF THE SOIL 75
Even the house of the urban center shows this dependence.
Toulouse is a city composed of brick houses, and certain of ¦
its most celebrated monuments, such as the marvelous Roman
basilica of Saint Sernin, are likewise of brick. By contrast
a commonplace building in a street near la Dalbade enjoys
the solemn title of "The Stone House." Similarly, on the
quay of the city of Antwerp is a building called the "Steen"
(Stone), a fact which indicates to what an extent the rest
of the town is built of other materials, in this case of brick.
But it is especially the rural house and the isolated house
which best show the characteristics of this dependence upon
the geographical environment.1 The geographer is interested
above all in the most representative type of a given region. He
has no interest in the more or less costly abnormal house
which expresses only the individual taste of the owner. The
pseudo-Italian villa built in the Vosges Mountains or on
the Swiss plateau, as well as the pseudo-Swiss chalet built
on the shores of Lake Maggiore between Pallanza and Intra,
the plaster facades of which bear painted representations of the
trunks of larch trees, are generally detestable artistic atroci
ties and are in any case geographical absurdities. That which
is exceptional has less value, in the study of human geography,
than that which conforms more closely to a "type."
I. THE FORM OF THE HOUSE. TYPICAL HOUSES. EXAMPLES: (a) THE
WOODEN HOUSE IN FORESTED NORTHERN AND CENTRAL
EUROPE; (b) THE HOUSE IN EGYPT: THE HOUSE OF
EARTH AND THE HOUSE OF STONE
Many scholars and artists, archaeologists and architects,
have been interested in noting, by description, drawing, or
photography, the forms of the urban or rural house.2 The
JApropos of L'Habilation humaine dans le Sinonais, Paul Privat-Deschanel goes
so far as to say: "We will confine ourselves to the study of the rustic [peasant's]
house, which alone is closely connected with local geography" (La Geographie, XVI,
1907, p. 209), a slightly exaggerated formula, but one arising from a correct idea.
2The literature on this subject is so abundant that only the more significant
references available can be given here; as for instance Dohme, Das englische Haus,
Braunschweig, 1888; Aug. Ahlqvist, Die Kulturvolker der westflnnischen Sprachen. Ein
Beitrag zu der alteren Kullurgeschichte der Finnen, Buchh. Wasenius, Helsingfors,
and in Commission Leipzig, Leopol Voss, 1875, chap. IV: Wohnung, Hausger'dth,
Kleider, pp. 101-160. See also the very remarkable and well-illustrated Polish
work on the marvelous wooden architecture of Tatra: M. W. Matlakowski, Popu
lar Architecture of Podhalau; with reference to Switzerland, consult: A. Sutter,
Schweizer Landschafts- und Archileklur-Bilder (in 3 series), M. Kreutzmann, Zurich; —
Rahn, Geschichle der bildenden Kiinsle in der Schweiz; and especially the works of

76

HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

form of the house interests the geographer not so much in its
details as taken as a whole, or, more exactly, in so far as the
materials of construction bring about a certain form, and as
the adaptation
to geographical
conditions is
shown in the
general plan.
Travelers who
pass through
new and dis
tant regions are
more frequently
struck by the
signs of this
geographical de
pendence than
we are by analo
gous facts nearer
home. One sees
in the middle of
a stony steppe a wretched house like the one in Fig. 15. It
is certainly the blocks of stone strewing the ground that have
been piled up to make the walls, and the great stalks of the
dried-up vegetation that have been brought together for the
roof. This house is, as it were, a piece of natural vegetation.
Gladbach, Der Schweizerholzbild, Die Holzarchileklur, Charakteristischc Holzbaulen der
Schweiz. Especial note should be made of the series of works by the late Hunziker;
the title of the first volume, published in 1890, is: J. Hunziker, Das Schwcizcrhaus
nach seinen lands chaftlichen Formen und seiner geschichtlichen Entwickelung. first part,
Das Wallis (Aarau, 1900) ; and in French; La Maison Suisse d' apres ses formes rustiques
et son developpemenl historique, French translation bv Fred. Broillet, first part. Le
Valais (Lausanne and Aarau, 1902). See also XIIe Bib'l. 1902 of the A nn. de geog., Xo.
304. The series is continued by some volumes published after the death of Hunziker
by C. Jecklin, translated by Broillet, Les Orisons, Le Jura comprenant la Suisse romande
d I' exception du Bas-Valais, des Ormonts et du Pays d'Enhaut, etc. The Swiss Society
of Engineers and Architects has begun a large publication on the bourgeois house;
Das Burgerhaus in Uri, Basel, 1910. Finally, if we leave Europe, we should need
several volumes to hold the bibliography of a multitude of studies. Other important
monographs are: Richard Mahler, Siedelnngsgebict und Siedehtngslagc in Oceanien
unter Berilcksichligung der Siedelungen in Indonesia!, which appeared in Archie Inter
nationales f. Etnographie, Suppl. gr. 4«, V, 1898; Bastian (A.), Die Culturlandcr
des alien Amerika, 3 vols., Berlin, 1S78-1889: /, Ein Jahr auf Reiscn: Chile. Peru.
Ecuador, Colombia, der Isthmus. Guatemala. Aus Religion und'Sille des alien Peru; —
II, Beilr. zu geschichtl. Vorarbeilen auf wesll. Hemisphere: Geseh. der Inca in Peru,
Gesch. des alien Mexico, u. s. id.; — Ill, Nachlrage u. Erganz. aus den Sammlungen
des elhnologischen Museums, etc.

Jean Brunhes
Steppe House of the Upper Jordan
The walls are made of the blocks of limestone strewing the
ground, and the roofs of the stems of the tall weeds seen in
the foreground at the right.

UNPRODUCTIVE OCCUPATION OF THE SOIL 77
Let us, however, pass by all these facts which depend so
strikingly upon the geographical environment: the snow
huts or igloos of the American Eskimos;1 the summer chum
and the winter yurt of the Ostiaks;-' the gray felt tents of
the nomads of central Asia; the Tahitiar or Congo huts of
leaves or stalks; the round, thatched huts of Harrar at the
foot of the Abyssinian plateau ; the houses of eastern Bolivia,3
with roofs of foliage and without walls.
From the studies of Frobenius, as from many others, we
get the impression that, in spite of the principles of imitation
and repetition which have an ethnic significance, varieties
which are dependent upon geography appear everywhere.
It was formerly thought that in the entire Sudan there was
but a single dominant form of habitation — the round hut with
a conical roof. What a multiplicity of forms adapted to their
surroundings have recent explorations revealed!
We likewise once considered certain types of habitation as
corresponding to a period of human history and even, in
certain cases, to an age of humanity. Learned ethnographers
have shown, as far as Europe alone is concerned, that the
lake-dwelling populations are not at all represented by a single
ethnic group, and that the bond of resemblance existing
between the forms of habitation of these very different
populations results from the same need of defense which had
to be met in like geographical surroundings.4 Even to-day
many people build upon piles, and one of the latest explorers
of Sumatra considers that the chief reason for building upon
piles is not to place man in safety from ferocious beasts or
from his sometimes no less ferocious fellows, but particularly
to raise him above the immediate surface of the soil which
in equatorial regions is much too damp in the rainy season
(Fig. 1 6).'
1See, for example, Captain Roald Amundsen, The Northwest Passage, 2 vols.,
New York, 1908.
2Charles Rabot, "Les Ostiaques, les Samoyedes et les Zirienes, d'apres les travaux
de M. Sommier," Revue d 'ethnographic, 1889.
3See La Geographie, September 15, 1900, pp. 226, 227.
4Marquis de Nadaillac, "Les Populations lacustres de l'Europe," Rev. des questions
scientifiques , October, 1894.
5See M. Moszkowski, Aufneuen Wegen durch Sumatra, Forschungsreisen in Ost- und
Zentral-Sumatra (1907), Dietr. Reimer (Vohsen), Berlin, 1909, p. 267. See chapter iv
and figure on p. 79, as well as chapter xii and figures on pages 270, 272, 274, etc.

78

HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

The troglodytes are not merely prehistoric groups. Men
have lodged and still lodge in caves in regions where rocks
which are at ths same time soft, homogeneous, and dry, such

Fig. 16.

M. Moukmrd
A Contemporary Sumatra Dwelling on Piles

as the Turonian chalk or the Swiss Molasse, permit them to
make a sufficient shelter at small expense. We must with
good reason speak of modern, of contemporaneous, troglo
dytes.1 Without even going as far as America or Africa, one
may examine their habitations as a type of human geography
in France and in Switzerland2 as well as in Italy, where the
Central Bureau of Statistics informs us that more than
200,000 persons now inhabit more than 37,000 subterranean
dwellings. In the south of Spain there are numerous inhabited
'See the studies by Dr. Bertholon in the Bull, de la Soc. de giog. commercial de
Paris; D. Bruun, The Cave Dwellers oj Southern Tunisia; Johnston, " A Journey through
the Tunisian Sahara," Geog. Jour., 1898, pp. 38 ff.; and more recently, Pierre Prins,
"Les Troglodytes du Dar Banda et du Djebel Mela," Bull, de geog. hist, et descriptive,
1909, No. 1; J. Russell Smith, "The Desert's Edge," Bull. Amer. Geog. Soc. see
Vol. XLVII, 1915, PP- 813-831 (on the Matmatas, pp. 824-S29).
2Village of Orival (Lower Seine), village of Haute-Isle (Seine and Oise), the neigh
borhood of Tours, etc., caves in the neighborhood of Fribourg (Switzerland), etc.
For France, see Philibert Lalande, "Les Grottes artificieilcs des cavernes de Brives
(Correze)", in Mem. de la Soc. de speleologie, January, 1897; Abbe Parat. Les Troglodytes
conlemporains, reviewed in ibid., IV, pp. 44-45; and for Switzerland, J. Fruh has
published in 21-24 OI the Globe, 1897, some very interesting articles on modern
troglodytes. See also Jacques Flach, L'Origine historique de l' habitation el des lieux
habilis en France, pp. 4-5. The valley of the Ourcq is especially rich in subterranean
dwellings which are called boves.

UNPRODUCTIVE OCCUPATION OF THE SOIL 79

caves near Jaen or Granada. A similar case occurs in one of
the basins in the midst of the Betic Cordillera, where, in the
little town of Guadix, 3,000 inhabitants live in dwellings,
revealed only by their whitewashed chimneys, which have
been hollowed out of a conglomerate coherent enough to stand
unsupported and yet easy to excavate (Fig. 17).
The following brief sketch will indicate how rich in results
would be a complete geographical study of simply the form of
the house in central Europe as well as in the Mediterranean
world, that is to say, in two contrasted areas in which may
be seen the infinitely varied effects of an already very ancient
history. In traveling from north to south over the vast plains of
European Russia,1 where natural zones succeed each other
with a simple clearness that is not to be found in central,
southern, or western Europe, one is struck by the regular
succession of prevailing types of human habitation. In the
north, in the zone of the
tundra, whose frozen sub
soil bears but a meager
and uniform flora of
cryptogams without for
ests or crops, there are
no fixed human shelters
except huts. Then comes
"trTe^great forest, the
largest remaining piece
of the enormous boreal
forest of old, and there
we meet with the_wocjden
house. Then, toward the
south, extend the her
baceous steppes with the , ,
rich "black earth" region Evjjncaye dwellings:
where the house is built of earth__or_jdoloe3nd_coyered with
thatch or clods of turf. When this regi^nwithout-trees or
rSee -Alfred Hettner, Das europaische Russland, Eine Studie zur Geographie
des Menschen, in 8 vols., Teubner, Leipzig, 1905; and also Alois Kraus, "Landbau
und Landbauzonen Russlands," Jahresbericht uber die Prager Handelsakqdemie,
1898-1899, Prague, 1898.

Fig. 17.

Jean Brunnea

A Group of Subterranean
Dwellings

Contemporary troglodytes in Spain: subter
ranean Guadix. The little .city of Guadix has
r,nn inhabitants. _of_ whom more than 3,000

80 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
stones is succeeded by the stony steppe of Crimea or the chains
of the Caucasus, the stone house reappears, while on the
southern slope of the western and central Caucasus a vegetation
of trees and shrubs with pliant stalks points to a warm and
humid climate and expresses itself in certain accessory build
ings, such as barns, made of wattle work.
i. General Survey of the Wooden House in Forested Europe
Let us consider in detail the wooden house — the chief of
these types.1 By examining it briefly in its entire geographical
distribution let us see how far we can answer these four ques
tions : Where is it ? How is it made ? How far. does it
extend? What becomes of it?
Where is it? {geographical zone). — The wooden house, as it
exists in Finland and Russia, belongs, as we have said, to the
great northern forest. This forest formerly extended almost
unbroken over the whole of central Europe. The excessive
clearing due to increased occupation has cut it up. This
region did not and could not become populated except at the
expense of the forest. At many points the human settlement,
even in the immediate neighborhood of large cities, such as
Munich, appears as an opening or clearing in the midst of the
trees (Figs. 18 and 19). Thus large islets of this primitive
forest still remain in the mountainous plateaus of the Her-
cynian or the Alpine zone, the Harz Mountains, the Black
Forest, the Alps, etc. Wherever wide stretches of the forest
persist the wooden house appears, in Sweden as in Bohemia,
in the French Alps as in the Swiss Alps.
The boreal forest is made up of the more northern species,
such as the birch, and of others more southern, such as the
beech; but everywhere they present the common twofold
characteristic of being composed chiefly of trees with very
straight trunks, such as the fir, the Scotch pine, the beech,
and of being pure growths of each of these species over
vast extents. These are the two characteristics of the forest
which proceed to put their stamp, so to speak, on the form
of the house.

Un Russia only 4 per cent of the houses are of stone (Les Forth de la Russic 1000
p. 17). ' v

UNPRODUCTIVE OCCUPATION OF THE SOIL 81

Scale=l:171.875 Fig. 18.

From Karte dea Deutachen Reichea (638 Miinchen) , Amer. Geog. Soc.
Human Settlement in the Forest of Central Europe

This region, situated southeast of Munich, reveals in the map, in the form of
clearings in the great forest, how human settlements were made. If in this map the
meadow land were included within the forest contours, the regularly circular design
of the clearings would be still more striking. — History confirms these facts, still so
apparent on the map to-day. Following are the dates when the principal settlements
were first mentioned: Hohenbrunn, 812; Siegertsbrun, 1075; Putzbrunn, 1095;
Brunthal, 1073; Grasbrunn, 11 60. It is not surprising to discover that the three
first settlements named were founded by the convent of Benedictines at Tegernsee.
The land-clearing monks were the first to open up the vast forests of Germany.
How is it made ? {geographical form) . — The straight trunks
of these trees can be easily superposed or cut up into
boards. The houses, in their simplest form, are built by the

Chateau '
du Heron

00 ts3

Lyons Forest and the Public Forest
26,210 acres (10,607 hectares)

Fig. 19. How A very
Beautiful Forest, For
merly Continuous, has
Gradually been Opened
Up, Traversed by Roads
and Cut to Pieces.
For this same point of
view see the illustration
which shows the progress
of "deforestation" in a
modern industrial region
(Essen-Bochum), chap. V,
PP- 392-393-

This engraving has been kindly
loaned by the Touring Club of
France, which is active iu preserv
ing the still beautiful remnants of
this Lyons Forest, typical of the
forests of western Europe (depart
ments of Euro and Soine-Inferieure
iu Franoe).

boundaries of
departments — — -

Railroads -
Rivers -

I o

Public forests l\o:i*Zi.<&s,z\

UNPRODUCTIVE OCCUPATION OF THE SOIL S3

superposition of timbers or logs, sometimes in the rough, some
times more or less regularly squared. These pieces of timber
are joined at the
corners. By the
use of boards,
more complicated
and varied forms
of construction
are possible. The
first type does not
lend itself to so
many combina
tions. Geographi
cally speaking, it
is more shaped
in advance, and it
is for this reason
that the walls of
the house in Fin
land are exactly
like the walls of
the mazot in Valais,
like those of the
little Czech village
or of the Swedish
boreal forest to

Fig. 20.

Jean Brunhea
The Wooden House of Forested Europe.
A Swedish Dwelling-house

Environs of Are, in the interior of Sweden, not far
from the Norwegian frontier. The sides, made of joists
carefully squared and joined, are covered with a coat of
red paint which protects the wood against the wet. The
roof is covered with thin slabs. The chimney is built of
flat stones.

forester's hut; and if we follow the great
other lands, we find the same type with
superposed and united timbers in the Siberian tatga or where
frontier conditions still exist in the great northern forests of
America (Figs. 20, 21, 22, and 23).
In the Russian forest the wooden house is such a common
thing that it is the basis of a special traffic. Even before the
improvement of roads and of methods of communication,
portable houses of wood existed in Russia. The Almanach de
Gotha for the year 1823 reminds us that "the seat of the wood
industry is at Yaroslav, Tula, Kursk, and Moscow"; then
it adds: "In this last city ready-made houses of wood,
which can be set up and taken down at will, are sold to
peasants." The wooden house was once far more general in some of the

84

HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

Fig. 21.

Jean Brushes
In Sweden, near Ragunda

countries where it is seen to-day. The reason for its disappear
ance will be taken up later.
An historical work by Marius Besson begins thus: "Every
thing leads us to think
that, in our regions, re
ligious edifices of the
early Middle Ages were
generally of wood.
Thus is explained their
disappearance ."1
In Sweden, in Nor
way, in Russia, as in
Switzerland, many old
churches or small chap
els are still made of
wood. The national
expositions of bygone
types of constructions
have brought once
more to hght for our
admiration the most
curious of these types.
The following was
published as a result of the Geneva Exposition of 1 896 :
The houses of wood can be divided into three great groups:
those of the plains, which are very much decorated and of which
the type perceptibly approaches stone buildings ; those of the moun
tainside, likewise skillfully decorated but belonging more particularly
to the chalet type and no longer having the huge pointed gables or
the facades with horizontal cornices of the former; finally, those of
the high mountains, in which the wood is more or less squared, the
ornamentation rudimentary, and which show no notable differences
of form and structure.
These last are represented in the village by small chalets and
genuine mazots; their roofs with two very flat slopes are covered
with shingles or lath held in place against the wind by large stones.
They present a compact mass capable of resisting the* heaviest falls
of snow. Decoration is lacking (they are, in general, nothing but
barns), consisting of hardly more than a symbolical figure hastily
cut above the door, accompanied sometimes by a date or name. . .
*On this point, see a number of texts dealing with ancient Gaul, collected by
A. Marignan, Le Cullc. des Saints sous les Meroringiens. Paris, 1899, pp. 149-150.

Typical hay-barn, the walls of which are made
of small straight, joined logs and the roof covered
with thin wooden slabs. To be compared especially
with the haybarn of Fig. 22: resemblances are
striking in spite of the thousand miles which sep
arate the two regions.

UNPRODUCTIVE OCCUPATION OF THE SOIL 85
In fact, most of the rural dwelling houses are made of wood.
It is an old custom; the Burgundians and the Alemanni constructed
their houses of the trunks of trees sawed or cut the same length,
placed upon each other and notched at the point of union in such a
way as to avoid intersections. These trunks were fastened together
by means of pins of oak or cherry. Before the time when they were
squared they were hewn into various forms.
Formerly the peasant who built a house was helped by his neigh
bors. The wood was sought in the forest, the cellar was dug, and
the foundation was laid of rough stones taken from the immediate
neighborhood and joined with mortar. There was no thought of
locks; a simple catch served as a lock. Finally the covering was
made of the larger waste pieces from the squaring.
In eastern America the house- or barn-raising, where all
the men of a neighborhood joined in the setting up of the
prepared frame, was an occasion for a social gathering and

O. Marinelli
Fig. 22. In the Comelico (Carnic Alps)
This is a fenile (hay-barn) situated at 4600 feet (1400 meters)
altitude. It is constructed of small logs roughly squared and joined.
(See further the resume of the studies by O. Marinelli on the Comelico, Chap. Ill,
PD- 157-164).
jollification until the "balloon type" of building succeeded
the ' ' frame' ' building. Even to-day ' ' raisings' ' are occasionally
held in the more rural communities.
Red spruce was used particularly, first of all because of the mag
nificent red-brown coloring which this species of wood acquires after
long exposure to the air.

86

HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

In the mountains the roofs were covered with laths, strips of wood,
more or less large, held in place by stones lest the wind should carry
them away. In the plain, where straw is abundant and where the
roofs must be very peaked in order to make room for the storage
of hay and other harvest products, roofs of thatch were used for a
long time.
The covering of the house is, in all climates, a delicate and
difficult problem. In the northern forest it is made relatively
easy by those fine,
straight tree trunks
which furnish the
framework. To make
the roof itself, men
have recourse, accord
ing to the circum
stances, to thin pieces
of wood — bardeaux,
Schindeln (shingles)
(Figs. 20, 22, and 23)
— or to thatch (Fig.
24) or even to flat
stones, such as the
large slabs of schist
with which the in
habitants of Valais
cover their mazots.1
Likewise the form of the roof will depend, to a considerable
extent, upon climatic conditions.2
Throughout the Alps the two-sloped roof of the high moun
tain chalet is less steep because it must support the snow which,
in midwinter, the peasants like to keep on their roofs as a
means of protection from the cold. In the low mountains
lEven in Russia where abundant iron has favored the use of roofs of painted iron,
it is weU to remember that this characteristic roof, always very noticeable to the
traveler, is above all an urban roof, and that only .5 per cent of the roofs in all Russia
are of metal, while 30 per cent are of wood and 69.5 per cent are of thatch. The
wooden roofs correspond with the forested zone.
2Climate expresses itself chiefly through the form of the roof. In his Esquisse
geograpluque du Vivarat-s, R. Blanchard has clearly brought out the contrast between
the Mediterranean valleys and the bare, denuded plateaus of the Montagne, swept by
the violent gusts j of the hurle: It is still in the dwelling that the contrast is most
extraordinary. We left behind at Montpezat storied houses (often with two or three
stories), with rather flat tiled roofs, sometimes projecting in a gable above the facade,
to protect it from the torrents of rain.

Fig. 23.

Jean Brunhes
The Wooden House in Switzerland
At Ringenberg, on the shores of the Lake of Brienz.
The foundations are of masonry; well squared and
smoothed trunks are joined at the corners; the roofs
are shingled and strewn with crosspieces and stones
to keep the shingles in place.

UNPRODUCTIVE OCCUPATION OF THE SOIL 87

or in the Swiss Mittelland the roofs with two or four sides are
much steeper, either to allow the rain to run off better or in
order that the less abundant and less persistent snow may slip
off more easily (Fig. 24; the inclination of the roof is less in
Fig. 25, than in Fig. 24).
To the north of Bern, the house is entirely hooded by its
roof, a real cover of thatch or wood which comes down on
four sides with a steep and even slope, to within two yards
of the ground, and hides nearly all of the walls. The house
is protected by its roof on all sides; there are nowhere any
large clear spaces. If we walk around it we can catch only
a glimpse of the bottom of the door, or here and there the
beginning of a window between the base line of the roof and
the ground.
But a new style is being developed in the midst of the
ancient type. The more modern house has joyously turned
up the edges of the old roof and raised it especially in front to
form a frame
for its elab
orate facade.
The facade
roof of the
coquettish1 and multi-'
form chalet
of the plain \
is placed and
arranged al
most like a
woman's hat]
— susceptible)
of undergo
ing and dis-
¦nlavino- the structed with much care and very durable. In certain more
yt-ay nig m^ anc;ent houses, the overhanging eaves are still nearer the ground.
capriciousfantasy of each little group of the population and almost of
each individual. The house with the old four-sided roof
is everywhere the same; the chalet everywhere varies. Might
we not say, to express our thought in a word, the strictly

Jean Brunhes
Fig. 24. A House of the Swiss Plateau North
of Bern
Large roof with four sides, thatched and very steep, con-

HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

traditional hood of the old grandmothers has become a hat?
Here is Emmanuel de Martonne's description of the wooden
house of another region, far distant from the Swiss plateau
— the range of
Paringu in the
southern Carpa
thian Mountains :
The architecture
of the stina is of
the simplest. The
walls are generally
formed of rough
tree trunks resting
upon corner pillars
planted in the
ground. The wind
passes freely
through the un
stopped cracks.
Sometimes there is
a sort of basement
made of dry stone
(without mortar).
The roof, two or
three times higher
than the walls, is
placed upon them
like a cover that
can be taken off,
and resembles a boat with a straight keel and flattened bow and
stern. It is made of strips of wood nailed upon each other like
slates {sindrele).
Such are some of the truly geographical elements of the
wooden house. How have they been combined: roofs of
thatch with houses of timber, roofs of slate with houses of
boards, etc. ? How are their parts arranged and proportioned?
What, finally, is their ornamentation ? All these are questions
to which it is proper to reply with explanations human rather
than geographical. But here again these different features
have been combined in an analogous manner over stretches
of country which frequently form small natural provinces and
the study of which can never be completely independent of
geographical considerations.

Fig. 25.

Jean Brunhes
A Chalet of the High Mountains in
the Bernese Country

Above Lenk, at an altitude of 6,000 feet (1,700 meters).
The walls are of stone; the roof is covered with small slabs
of wood carefully superposed and fitted; this covering is
rounded even at the four angles of the roof, so that the
water from the snow can not penetrate into the interior of
the chalet.

UNPRODUCTIVE OCCUPATION OF THE SOIL 89
How far does it extend? {geographical limits). — ThejwoQden
house extends^aj far ;_as_the forest. It is sufficient to say here
that the steppe is a zone of middle Russia where forest growths
first become sparse, then disappear to give place to the Gram-
ineae, Cruciferae, Labiatae, Umbelliferae, Liliaceae, and Com-
positae which form great herbaceous covers beneath which
lies the rich tchcrnoziom (black earth). In the steppe appears
the isba, built of dry earth, of clods of turf, or of loam, often
entirely covered with a dazzling white layer of lime (Fig. 44).
Thus geography explains in an entirely natural manner
what an exact and well-informed traveler in Russia noted:
Most of the isbas of the steppe are built of turf — yes, in this
paradoxical Russia, where in places the wood overruns everything,
a part of the rural population dwells in huts of turf and warms
itself . . . with straw! This is the way our amateur architects
proceed. They plow parallel furrows which merely split the layer
of turf and roots which covers the steppe. With a spade they then
cut up these grassy strips and thus obtain pieces about 1 1 to 13 inches
square by 2 to 3 inches thick (30 to 35 centimeters square by 6 to
8 centimeters thick). First they dry them; then placing them close
together, grassy side down, they make walls about 27 inches thick
(70 centimeters) and 7.5 feet high (2 meters and 50 centimeters).
Then upon these walls they fit slender beams which form a roof
frame with ridge pole perpendicular to the street. On these rafters
they spread branches and on the branches a double layer of turf.
When the whole building is well dried they daub the walls within
and without with clay and whitewash them. Such is the typical isba
of the steppe; the differences that are found come from the larger
or smaller quantity of wood used in the construction.
Also in the marshy plain of north Germany, dotted with
lakes and peat bogs, the wooden house disappears, to be re
placed, now by houses with walls of burnt brick, now by
nouses with walls of clods of peat and of wickerwork as in
the Moorkolonien.1
In northern regions the -forest ends, and wherever sedentary
populations have established themselves these dwell in houses
in which wood plays only a very secondary r&le. From this
point of view the Iceland farmhouse is entirely typical: the
walls of the house are built for the most part of clods of turf
and earth and only the front of the house is faced with boards.
, 'For an interesting study of the houses in the Moorkolonien see G. Blondel,
Etudes sur les populations rurales de V Allemagne, p. 133.

90

HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

In all western and central Europe the forest is limited on
every side by enormous strips of open land, or by island-like
clearings, and here rise everywhere infinitely varied types of
houses which contrast in their whole exterior form and in
their character with the wooden house.
Up to the very foot of the forest, and, so to speak, joined
to it, is a region which is not yet entirely deforested, like all
of the Swiss plateau up to an altitude of 2,300 or even 2,650
feet (700 or 800 meters). There the rural house is built of
stone and wood in variable proportions.
Another boundary of the forest is the limit of high altitude
where trees no longer grow: above the forest is the alp, with
its pastoral and nomadic life of summer. Where the alp is
extensive is found a hut of stone — the chalet in which cheese
is made — like the chalet of the Bernese high mountains
or the Sennhutte of the canton of Valais. The same fact
occurs again in the Department of Cantal. Above and
beyond the forest we find the upper pasture-ground and the
bur on, which
is in general
a structure
of stone (Fig.
26). Toward the
south of Eu
rope, finally,
the northern
forest ceases
altogether. It
ends still more
de finitely
than toward
the west, and
the wooden
house stops
also at the
edge of that
Mediterranean world whose geographical types of human
construction will be examined a little later.

Jean BruDtaej
Fig. 26. In the Central Highlands of France: a Buron
of the Department of Cantal
This stone structure (walls and roofs of stone) surrounded by
stone walls, is a temporary summer dwelling, standing at an alti
tude of about 4,900 feet (i ,500 meters) at the foot of the Puy Mary.
It is used for the manufacture of cheese, and is called a buron.

UNPRODUCTIVE OCCUPATION OF THE SOIL 91

What becomes of it? {geographic future). — The forest, in spite
of reforestation — attempted with so much energy and method
in certain countries, notably Switzerland — is dwindling and
becoming impoverished. Besides the necessary clearing which

Fig. 27.

Isaiah Bowman
The Stone Dwelling Beyond the Forest Limits

Straw-thatched stone huts of mountain shepherds in their winter homes in a deep
valley at Soncor, eastern edge of the Desert of Atacama, Chile.
we have looked upon as the condition of historic settlement in
our countries, there has been too often an unrestrained and
destructive utilitarian clearing, an important fact which will
have to be considered at length as a phase of destructive
economy. Besides men, the forest has many other enemies, such as
the avalanche or inundation; but the most serious of all is
fire. It would be very useful if a geographer, taking as a
basis the known facts of the last half century alone, would
make a study of the extent of forest that has been destroyed
by fire even when it has been possible to fight fire with
effective modern methods.
Going back only a few years, let us recall, during the single
hot, dry month of August, 1904, the. fires of the first days of
the month in southern Norway and Sweden ; toward the middle
of the month, the fire in the forest of Fontainebleau and the

92 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
great fires in the forests of Silesia; toward the end of the
month, the fires in Corsica and in the forests of British Colum
bia. Late in August, 1906, a serious fire in the forest of the
Esterel cost the lives of several soldiers and destroyed at least
7,410 acres of wood (3,000 hectares) ; at the same period several
forests in Savoy and several in Auvergne were also burning.
Some days later, at the beginning of September, fire devoured
the forests of Val Champex in the territory of the commune
of Orsieres (Switzerland) and raged likewise in the forests on
the east shore of Lago di Garda.
In October, 1908, enormous clouds of smoke, coming from
forest fires caused by dryness in the states of New York,
Pennsylvania, and Michigan, swept over the cities on the
banks of the Hudson. In New York this thick and suffocating
smoke so darkened the day that it was necessary to turn
on the electric lights at noon, and there was a distinct smell
of burning wood and leaves. One of the numerous fires in
the Adirondack Mountains spread over a width of four miles.
Every hot and dry summer implies a diminution of the
forested area, and it takes long years for the trees to grow
again and the forest to be replaced.
The summer of 191 1 was to a rare degree a summer of fires.
Recall the numerous wooden houses, in the depth of the
Canadian forest, which were destroyed by fire in July. In the
month of June 8,000 houses of the city of Kirin, in Manchuria,
were burned. In July "the red cock with wings of flame," as
the people call it there, ravaged Russia and Siberia. In a
single week it was announced that more than a thousand
houses had been entirely destroyed and that 59 persons had
been burned alive. At Basel, in the canton of Aargau, at
Suhr, at Fribourg, at Selzach (Solothurn), fire devastated
much property during the months of August and September,
and on the 17 th of August the large Italian village of San
Bartolomeo, close to the Ticino frontier, fell a prey to the
flames.1 In July, 191 1, there were extensive fires in the great forest
area of North America, both in the United States and in
]For other facts, see "The Forest Fires of ioio," American Forestry November
and December, ioio, Washington, and L. Morei, La Question forestiere en France,
A. Rousseau, Paris, 1910.

UNPRODUCTIVE OCCUPATION OF THE SOIL 93
Canada, especially in northern Ontario. At the same time
in France the forest of Fontainebleau burst into flames, and
nearly 2,500 acres (1,000 hectares) were burned; the Argonne
forest also caught fire.
Between August 12 and 20, 1911, the woods and thickets
everywhere in Europe took fire; in France alone twenty or
thirty places were affected: Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Ram-
bouillet, etc. While the Belgian fagnes were burning over
hundreds of acres, the pine lands of Franzensfeste in Tyrol
were in flames and masses of forest in Switzerland were
everywhere on fire — in the neighborhood of Locarno, in the
communal forest of Abbaye (canton of Vaud), in the valley
of the Conches, on Glishorn, on Grammont, in Vanil des
Arches, etc.
During the first days of September, 191 1, fire spread its
ravages near Avallon, in the neighborhood of Chartres, in the
forest of Vallussiere (Var), in the forest of Chinon, in the peat
bogs of Puy-de-D6me, in the forests of Pont-Guiraud at
Saint-Pons (Herault), in the department of Gard, Morbihan,
Sarthe, etc.
Everywhere the dry trees are an easy prey to the burning
cinders from locomotives; on the slopes which border rail
road lines we even see the grass licked up and destroyed by
creeping lines of fire.
The isolated wooden house and the village of wooden
houses are subject to the same danger that the forest is.
They may also be destroyed by fire.
The little village of Neirivue in the canton of Fribourg,
Switzerland, was completely destroyed by fire three times
in a little more than a century. In May, 1906, the village of
Planfayon, also in the canton of Fribourg, was devastated.
In August of the same year, the little village of Cleibe, in
Valais, was swept away; only a single dwelling house was
spared. What has happened so often in Switzerland has happened
in all European countries wherever the wooden house pre
dominates, from Bulgaria (destruction of city of Kotel, near
Sliven) to Scandinavia, where the largest cities such as Trond-
hjem have so often suffered from fire. On January 24, 1904,

94 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
the little town of Aalesund, the port of southern Norway,
had three-quarters of its wooden houses devoured by a
conflagration. Now what is the result of this destruction by fire and of the
constant menace which it holds for wooden structures ? Sooner
or later they give way, and stone or brick is substituted. In
the Siberian forest which continues the Russian forest, Irkutsk,
called to-day Irkutsk the White, acquired its new form and
its surname only after it had been completely destroyed by
fire. Likewise, Meiringen (Bernese Oberland), once destroyed,
has been rebuilt of stone, and so again Neirivue and Planfayon.
Governments, alive to the dangers of fire, make laws forbid
ding that new roofs be made of thatch or new coverings of
shingles ; little by little roofs that have been repaired, even in
the very midst of the ancient territory of the wooden house,
have been covered with tiles or slate. In America the most
congested cities have fire laws requiring that all new struc
tures shall be built of fire-resisting materials. Thus the geo
graphical distribution of the wooden house, like that of the
forest, becomes more and more restricted because of the
ravages of fire.1
The house of the large city has been transformed still more
quickly than the house in the village or small settlement.
Nothing in Petrograd recalls the forest which reaches to its
very gates.
This very brief outline of the geography of the wooden
house in the northern forest shows us that, if geography is far
from explaining everything in the house, at least the human
habitation cannot be completely understood without an appeal
to geography.
A similar study of the prevailing types of human habitations
in the Mediterranean region would enable us to establish in the
same way the relation of the house-type to the geographical
surroundings. Whatever may have been the earlier conditions of vegetation
in the Mediterranean territory, however beautiful and numer
ous may have been the forests of the eastern shores of the
"See Raoul Blanchard, L' Habitation en Qncvras: "The threat of fire hangs over
these houses incessantly. The threat is often realized," etc. (La Geographie XIX,
1909, p. 27).

UNPRODUCTIVE OCCUPATION OF THE SOIL 95
Adriatic or of Mount Lebanon, however large may have been
the rainfall in certain districts,1 Mediterranean Europe to-day
contrasts with the deforested Europe that we have just been
considering, as a denuded Europe with a Europe that is
clothed in green. The Asiatic and African countries that
border on the Mediterranean together with the European
peninsulas form a Mediterranean world which, by the seren
ity of its sky and the sharp severity of its mountainous
setting, contrasts strongly with central, western, and northern
Europe. We cannot discuss here the relationships between climate,
natural forms of vegetation, and animal and human life in
this environment of the Mediterranean where so many kinds
of human energy have developed with such intensity. Let
us merely note that everywhere appear forms of vegetation
composed of shrubs with evergreen foliage, bushes and plants
that survive the dryness of the summer; they are the garigues,
the maquis, etc. Let us recall also that everywhere men
have striven successfully to transform the often steep slopes
into terraced gardens — the cultures en tcrrasses — and that
they have devoted themselves with a natural taste to the
skillful cultivation of trees.
These small cultivated trees (orange, olive, mulberry, etc.)
are generally planted at intervals, and they appear from a
distance in the form of a light trellis, or else as if scattered
in the form of little round spots close to the ground. They
never give the impression of large, bushy masses, thick, and
tall, and close together, such as that always given by the
northern forests, whether they are seen from a distance or
near at hand.
All about the Mediterranean rise chains of mountains or
highlands with exposures of bare rock. Here again is the
house of stone: in Spain, in Provence, in Liguria, and in
Calabria, as in Sicily and Greece, at Jerusalem, at Tunis, and
at Algiers. The stone house, by the very nature of the
"The best watered place in Europe is, in fact, to be found in the Mediterranean
portion: Crkvice, at an altitude of 3,500 feet (1,100 meters), receives about 14 feet
(4 55 m.) a year, and even reached a maximum, in one year, of almost 20 feet (6 m.)
of water. See K. Kassner, "Das regenreichste Gebiet Europas," Pelermanns MM.,
L„ 1904, p. 281. Again, in Switzerland, the best watered spot is Brissago, on the
shores of Lago Maggiore, a little to the south of Locarno.

96 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
material used, is susceptible of much more capricious archi
tectural variations than the wooden house. If we should
make a general and systematic study of the stone house
analogous to that which we have made of the wooden house,
we should be obliged to consider the distribution according
to regions.
i. In the Terra di Bari and in the Terra d'Otranto, Apulia
petrosa, formed of a thin-bedded fissile limestone, the people
build houses and shelters by arranging blocks of limestone in
superimposed circles without even binding them with cement.
To cover these round rooms they narrow progressively the
diameter of the rings and place on the top a large flat stone.
Sometimes the exterior form is that of a truncated cone, or
rather, since they arrange two or three shelves on the outside,
of several truncated cones placed upon each other; this is a
truth . Sometimes the whole structure is covered with a
conical roof which is itself constructed of small limestone
sheets called chiancarelle; this is the casella.
2. Trulli and caselle are strictly limited to the zone of sheet
limestone. 3. On the other hand, we find analogous structures in the
Balearic Islands, at Gozzo, or even in regions geologically
entirely different, but where the constituent rocks are also
easily cut into* sheets (Ireland, Hebrides).
4. We must include in the same type of building ancient
structures of uncemented stones, the ruins of which have
often been described by archaeologists — the talayots of the
Balearic Islands, the nuraghi of Sardinia, or the pueblos of
New Mexico and Arizona.1
5. It would, however, be a mistake to consider the trulli
and the caselle as primitive forms of habitation in Apulia. On
the contrary, the region where these structures are the most
numerous has been peopled only for the last two or three
centuries. Where now stands Alberobello, the largest town
of caselle, with 9,000 inhabitants, there was nothing at the.
"G. Perrot and Chipiez, Histoire de I'art dans I'antiquite. IV, pp. 51-55; and
Cartailhac, Monuments primitifs des ites Bali-ares. See also the discussion bv Jean
Brunhes of ancient talayots, and modern constructions of the inhabitants of the
Balearic Islands called barraccas and ponls. in an article that appeared in the Rev.
des deux mondes (November 1, 1911), entitled; "A Maiorque et a Minorque, Esquisse
de geographie humaine."

UNPRODUCTIVE OCCUPATION OF THE SOIL 97
beginning of the seventeenth century but "a chapel in the
woods." As a matter of fact, whatever be the historical and archaeo
logical interpretation accepted by competent scholars, one
cannot but say with Bertaux :
If the geographical conditions of Apulia do not suffice to explain
the distribution of the trulli, they alone can explain their continu
ance. On the one hand, the trullo, the low wall of which forms the
inclosure, furnishes a use for the stones which must be taken from the
field. On the other hand, the irregular materials which can be
picked up at one's feet would not lend themselves to the building
of houses; wood for roofs becomes more and more rare as the last
groves of oak give place to olive trees. All the peasants agree that
the tajjlois the most economical building  Lt_is alsp__the. driest and
thernost healthful; the rain rolls easily over the chiancarelle, and
the sun "does not penetrate its thick walls. In fact, the interior of
a casella of a well-to-do agriculturist is comfortable and attractive.
Before seeking to determine the historical relations of the
trulli and caselle, it is wise to determine their relations to like
structures elsewhere.
One of Bertaux's happiest observations is that which con
cerns the resemblance between types of construction belonging
to different regions but made of similar materials (in this
particular case, limestone rocks). We must always bear in
mind the fact that the materials utilized by man bring about
certain forms of construction, not because of their internal
character, but because of their physical characteristics (hard
ness, strength, and customary _ forms). In Palestine houses
without order or symmetry are crudely built of scattered
blocks of the compact white limestone from Mount Hermon
and of the black basalt from the Hauran. These rocks, so
dissimilar in many respects, have the same durability and are
readily available, rough-hewn for the builder (Fig. 28).
But the facts here set forth are not limited to the Mediter
ranean region. For example, in the Central Plateau of
France, or, to be more exact, in Cantal, sheets of basaltic
"E. Bertaux, "Etude d'un type d'habitation primitive, trulli, caselle et specchie
des Pouilles," Ann. de geog., VIII. 1899, pp. 207-230. See also a more recent and well-
illustrated work by Carlo Maranelli, La Murgia dei trulli, un' oasi di popolazione
sparsa nel Meggiorno (Scrili in onore di Giuseppe dalla Vedova), Florence, 1908,
pp. 107-142. Apropos of the population of Apulia, consult Theobald Fischer, Mittel-
meerbilder (Leipzig and Berlin, 1906), under the title: "Ansiedelung und Anbau in
Apulien" (pp. 204-215).

98

HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

lava have covered the crystalline base. Thus the basalt
from the ancient volcano of Cantal has spread over the region
called Planeze, and the city of Saint-Flour is built upon the

S^s»

Jean Brunhes
Fig. 28. Miserable Little Low Houses, Loosely Constructed of White
Blocks of Limestone and Black Blocks of Basalt
These houses belong to the village of Hadar, on one of the long and difficult caravan
routes from Banias (Caesarea Philippi) to Damascus. In the foreground and especially
on the left are slabs of Mt. Hermon limestone; in the background and on the right
are sheets of basalt connected with the Hauran toward the southwest.
extremity of a promontory of this flow. Beyond the limit of
the basalt and all about Planeze the surface is formed of a
solid gneiss which separates in large blocks. The houses of
Planeze and those of the surrounding border are verv similar,
for the blocks are of basalt. Man finds them equally suitable
for his work and for his needs.
The larger prehistoric pueblos of New Mexico were built of
locally derived extremely fissile rocks. In some cases the
pieces are no larger than a man's hand, with the spaces between
chinked with slivers of rock or with mud. These ancient walls
are often found still plumb and perfectly faced (Fig. 29).

UNPRODUCTIVE OCCUPATION OF THE SOIL 99

Richard E. Dodge

Fig. 2q. Ancient Pueblo Ruins in New Mexico
Evidence of the former presence of a storied building is seen in the weathered
line in which the ancient floor timbers were supported. The wall alignment is still
nearly perfect.

Richard E. Dodge
Fig. 30. Ancient Stone Constructions in New Mexico
These ancient masonry landmarks were built to serve as a guide to water holes.
They are now sharply inclined from the perpendicular through the action of
landslips.

100

HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

In some of the smaller structures less care was displayed.
Rough stones, more or less flat, were built up almost like a
house of cobs. ' Yet so well were the stones lapped that the
form of the structure is
still intact, even in some
cases after the building
has been split in twain by
a landslip (Fig. 30).
The immediate neighbor
hood of the Mediterra
nean, however, is not all
bare rock; if we circle its
coast, we find a series of
plains and lowlands — now
immense rich alluvial
regions like the plain of
the Po, now small basins
inset among the moun
tains, now simple deltas,
now even muddy and
marshy regions.
In these regions and in the humid areas the house is made of
dried or baked earth, sometimes of mere mud {adobe); and
though the small dwelling of loam of the hucrta in A'alencia
(Spain), called the barraca, is covered with a slender and
rather attractive roof with two slopes, the wretched mud house
of the infertile plain of Sharon, at the other end of the Mediter
ranean, between Jaffa and Mount Carmel, is covered with a
flat roof made simply of clods of earth resting on slender beams.
Though this dependence is in a sense very natural, yet it
suggests such consequences that it is well to examine a little
more closely a typical case of this geographical juxtaposition
of the house of earth and the house of stone. Moreover, the
stone house is generally built in part of wood.
Often in the Mediterranean region a particularly skillful
advantage is taken of small short logs such as those of the
juniper tree (Fig. 31).
Since the wooden house has been considered only in a
general way, and since it is desirable to illustrate here the

Fig. 31. The Use of Wood in the Con
struction of Stone Houses
In some houses in the Mediterranean region
the upper stories are extended and supported
by the ingenious use of short pieces of wood.

UNPRODUCTIVE OCCUPATION OF THE SOIL 101

exact method to be followed in this phase of human geography,
let us make a study of the characteristics of the wooden and
the stone house — including form and construction — in the
small natural unit area of the lower valley of the Nile (Lower,
Middle, and Upper Egypt).
2. The House in Egypt: The House of Earth
and the House of Stone
Present life is not considered of much importance in Egypt.
True monuments are built only for the dead. Contemporary
excavations find
almost intact
the ancient
temples where
the Pharaohs
raised them
twenty- five or
thirty centuries
ago(Figs.32and33).1 Fronting
the Pyramids,
the Moham
medan califs
have erected the
cupolas of their
tombs. The god
of Mahomet has
raised up for the
prayers of the
faithful, mas
sive, bold, and
rich mosques,
like the wonder
ful mosques of Cairo, splendid witnesses of Arabic art in its
various periods.
1Moreover, the excavations made in Egypt during the last twenty years have re
vealed a primitive Egyptian art which made use only of brick: "At the beginning
of those far-away epochs," says Prince /TArenberg, in his address on "Les Fouilles
de la Compagnie du Canal de Suez en Egypte," before the annual public conference
of the Five Academies, October 25, 19 11, "unbaked brick was the only material
used in the construction of monuments, and it was only much later that limestone
and granite were adopted for temples and tombs."

Jean Brunhes

Fig. 32. The Kiosk of Philae
Figures 32 and 33 show two monuments of ancient Egypt;
one, the kiosk of Philae, is without doubt the master-piece of
harmonious elegance; the other, with its "forest" of 134
columns like those of the photograph, Fig. 33, was one of the
hugest and most overwhelming edifices that have ever existed.

102 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
But the Egyptian never thinks of building for his own use
and comfort. He lives out of doors, in the open sunlight, the
year around, and his house is only a shelter for the night. He

Jean Brunhes
Fig. 33. The Columns of the Large Hvpostyle Hall of
Karnak
This illustration is placed here to bring into clearer contrast the
plain and wretched houses of earth or stone in which the Egyptian
fellahin dwell to-day.
must work in his field or in the field of another from January
to December, without a day of rest, in this land that is never
allowed to lie fallow.1 He has no need of a shelter like that
of the peasant of our northern countries for the long, gloomy
evenings of the winter. He lives, in short, from hand to
mouth. Since he has neither reserve nor provisions, and
receives his daily pay of two piasters as he gathers the bundle
of bersim for his ass and his buffalo, his dwelling does not need
to be large enough to be used as a granary.
]See Jean Brunhes, L' Irrigation dans la Pcuinsule iberique et dans I'Afrique iv.
Nord, p. jOo.

UNPRODUCTIVE OCCUPATION OF THE SOIL 103
Furthermore, in the Delta all that would be necessary for
constructing a solid dwelling fails him. He has neither stone
nor lime; wood is a rare and precious thing which is reserved
for the saquich, or plow. All that he possesses in this land of
the Nile is the mud from which and on which he lives. This
mud is, moreover, the most plastic of materials; it is worked
without difficulty with a little water, and in this region where
the air dries out everything, it hardens quickly and becomes
as hard as clay. It is too easy and too cheap to build thus,
for the fellah to have recourse to other means. Often in a
small village he does not even take the trouble to mix some bits
of straw with his clay and to make crude little bricks; much
less will he think of sending for a barbarin, a man of Upper
Egypt more skillful than himself, who can build a brick-kiln and
bake the clay. These are caprices for great proprietors or the
better business men of modern Egypt. Rather than all those
improvements which involve extra trouble and labor, the fellah
prefers the clay of the Nile which his wife can knead and the
mud hut which his wife can build.
The Egyptian's house is thus reduced to the necessary
minimum — four walls of pressed earth with a hole in one
side for a door. The dimensions are irregular: neither the
height, breadth, nor depth is fixed, and the one does not vary
in fixed relation with the other.
As for the roof, that is a more serious problem; in fact, it
is the great problem of the fellah's house (Fig. 34) . In certain
cases he gets along without it, living under the open sky by
night as well as by day. This is rare, however, for he at least
covers his house with palm leaves or with durra straw or sugar
cane. But generally he makes a roof ; upon one or two beams
or a few branches he places a network of straw which he covers
with mud. Thus the five walls of the house have the same
color and an entirely identical appearance; they are of the
same material as the soil upon which the fellah walks and on
which he makes his bed.
In Lower Egypt the occasional rains are a further reason for
the construction of a roof, and this roof must be built suffi
ciently strong so that the rain which softens the clay may
not destroy it too quickly. The fellah has an additional

104

HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

incentive to make a flat, solid roof, since this will serve him
as his only granary ¦ — very rudimentary it is true, but still
a place where he may store in small piles the cakes of manure
that serve as fuel and the sheaves of straw that he has
gathered (Figs. 34 and 35).
On the house of crude brick there is sometimes seen either
a vault1 (Upper Egypt) or a little cupola (Lower Egypt) of
baked brick (Figs. 36 and 37). This roof is more" solid, but it
presents a smaller surface and is less useful as a granary. Care
for the morrow being a secondary consideration with the fellah,
in comparison with the needs of the present, he rarely has
recourse to this method of building a roof; he prefers to allow

Roofless Houses at Luxor

In the climate of Luxor, rains are much more rare than in the
climate of Cairo; most of the houses of the fellahin nevertheless
are covered with a roof; but there are some that are not.
the rain to destroy his roof many times rather than take so
much trouble. The little cupola, for example, predominates
1The methods of constructing this brick vault are exceptional. It is, in fact, built
without any supporting arch; simple cords serve to guide the workman, though the
vaults have a span of at least six feet.

UNPRODUCTIVE OCCUPATION OF THE SOIL 105

only in the small villages, or rather quarters, which the great
proprietors of to-day build for their farm laborers (the tama-
liehs) — villages which are called ezbes.1
From just below Assuan (Fig. 38), the plateaus of Nubian

Fig. 35.

The Customary Flat Roof Loaded with
Supplies of Fuel

Pressed-earth houses of a little village near Sakha (Delta).
also the flat roofs loaded with supplies of fuel in Fig. 34.

See

sandstone approach nearer the river and are not so well dis
sected as to the south of Korosko. They appear as low, slightly
xIn a study of the geographical literature of Egypt, it is curious to note to what a
degree the fellah's house, the ordinary house, is passed unnoticed. Little attention
is given to this topic in C. B. Klunziger, Upper Egypt: Ils People and Its Products,
A Descriptive Account of the Manners, Customs, Superstitions, and Occupations of the
People of the Nile Valley, the Desert and the Red Sea Coast, with Sketches of the Natural
History and Geology, Blackie & Son, London, 1878; or in E. W. Lane, Modern Egyp
tians, written in Egypt from 1833 to 1835, fifth edition (edited by E. Stanley Poole),
J. Murray, London, 1871. A single passage of the latter, written over eightyyears
ago, shows that the fellah's house, unceasingly renewed, never changes: "Very few
large or handsome houses are to be seen in Egypt, excepting in the metropolis and
some other towns. The dwellings of the lower orders, particularly those of the
peasants, are of a very mean description; they are mostly built of unbaked bricks,
cemented together with mud. Some of them are mere hovels. The greater number,
however, comprise two or more apartments, though few are two stories high. In
one of these apartments, in the houses of the peasants in Lower Egypt, there is
generally an oven (furn), at the end farthest from the entrance, and occupying the
whole width of the chamber. It resembles a wide bench or seat, and is about
breast-high: it is constructed of brick and mud; the roof arched within, and flat on
the top. The inhabitants of the house, who seldom have any night-covering
during the winter, sleep upon the top of the oven, having previously lighted a fire
within it; or the husband and wife only enjoy this luxury, and the children sleep
upon the floor. The chambers have small apertures high up in the walls, for the
admission of light and air — sometimes furnished with a grating of wood. The roofs
are formed of palm branches and palm leaves, or of millet stalks, etc., laid upon
rafters of the trunk of the palm, and covered with a plaster of mud and chopped
straw. The furniture consists of a mat or two to sleep upon, a few earthen vessels,
and a hand-mill to grind the corn" (Lane, I, p. 25).

106

HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

Fig. 36. Vaulted Brick Roofs in a Village Near Assuan

1

UHt i> UHL^mb whrUi ^^^&Vi*^i~~~Jt5*i& "3WW~JWMBH1

r^-jggkgSg ¦Es^ft^S iSeB

l3&lj?,r^^^^^^^t^P^^M

low
K^"^B^yJ^MBB^^i^-^^^^' 1
kSifc'- ... il fc35r .ja ^IB wBk/j ¦
_
UPS:- ^^^H ^^^£^ *i^Rr ' j Mr * ^^^^HF I {¦^^
Fig. 37. Vaulted Brick Roofs in the Little Village of Edfu
The vault is nowhere the only fonn of roof; houses covered with vaulted roofs
are mingled with flat-roofed houses, or walls without root's. This photograph of
Edfu was taken from the top of the large pylon of the temple of Horus.
UNPRODUCTIVE OCCUPATION OF THE SOIL 107

convex, broadly undulating swells, resembling huge tortoise
shells, and are separated by slight depressions which end at the
river. In general only the bank left uncovered by the fall of the
Nile separates the plateaus from
the river. The houses are very
scattered and in general lie near
the base of the plateau, or even
on the plateau slopes, for the
cultivable land of the plain is
too valuable to have houses built
upon it.1 The houses, cubical in
form with a single opening in
front for a door, are usually built
of stone because of the abun
dance of that material at hand.
Sometimes the houses are even
excavated in the rock itself.
Thus in this country, with a
similar population throughout,
the house is of two types — in
Lower Egypt^the. mud or clay

house; in Upper, or stony Egypt,
the stone house.
In Middle and Upper Egypt
the need of protecting grains
and other provisions from the
inclemency of the weather or
from neighbors has led to the
construction • — always of mud
which dries so quickly and holds
so well — of fixed receptacles,
such as those seen in Fig. 39.
In this study of Egypt we have not left as yet the valley
itself of the Nile. We have not quitted the immediate banks
of that great river which F. Schrader so well characterized as

Scale^l :30.000

General Outline Map of
the" Nile Valley up to Kalab-
sheh, just South of Assuan

Fig. 3

I Between Edfu aVd Assuan, going up the Nile, the stony slopes approach the river
yet do not border it, as do the banks of granite farther south between Assuan and
Wadi-Halfa — that is between the first and second cataracts On this intermediate
stretch i below Assuan some desire to be near the water and others to be near the rock.
?o we often see two ines of houses, one of mud (especially near the Nile), and the
oth^r of stone wlthbrick vaults (beyond the cultivated zone and scattered in the desert).

108

HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

"generous, marshy, deadly, fertile, unapproachable, creative,
and destructive."1 We have yet to consider the great oasis
of Fayum, the water and life of which come from the Bahr Yusuf,

Fig. 39. The Entrance to a House in1 the Fayum

Above the door are the provision "sacks," large receptacles of clay.
in the environs of Medinet-el-Fayum.

View taken

an affluent of the Nile. Fayum, fed by a river of relatively
regular regime, is an Egypt with relatively great differences of
level, though more "Mediterranean" in climate than is Egypt.
Everything is more trim, better finished, and we might
almost say more artistic at Fayum. The house is of the
same type as that of Egypt; but just as its approaches and
annexes show more care, so the arrangement and details of its
walls of pressed earth show a more developed taste and even
art (Figs. 39 and 40).
When many detailed studies have been made of these rep
resentative and truly geographical types of human habitation,
we shall be able to establish certain general facts concerning
the form of the house, and to develop an exact classification.
1F. Schrader, Les Origines planetaires de l'Egypte (Revue de I'Ecolc d' anthropologic
de Paris, XIX, 1909, p. 16).

UNPRODUCTIVE OCCUPATION OF THE SOIL 109

Let us now consider several examples of these general facts.
From studies made in the countries of the wooden house, it
seems evident that secondary_buildings, such as the stable and
granary^ retain the characteristic features of the ancient type
of constructor!, long ..after, the earlier wooden house has for
someTeason been replaced by a house of another style. If
the" house is not replaced, it is often repaired, and a study of
the successive alterations made in the course of its history
would doubtless show us some interesting changes that reflect
geographic conditions. In the Black Forest, shingles replace
thatch; in the Fribourg Alps, slate or flat tiles replace the
wooden shingles (Fig. 41). Even the walls of the house are
partially repaired, and thus in small villages of north Germany,
we see how bricks inserted in the middle of sections of wood re
place the earlier loam.
Perhaps this piece
meal renewal of the
parts of the house
would explain the per
sistence of certain
characteristics and
especially of the geo
graphical disposition of
the house. Thus after
the fire at Neirivue
many of the new stone
houses were placed
upon the cellar walls
that once supported
wooden houses.
It seems, however,
that in other places
opposite customs pre
vail. "According to
the local usage," says
Emile Auzou in speak
ing of the villages of the
peninsula of Guerande, "they do not rebuild fallen houses
on the old site; they build at a distance without even utilizing

Fig

Jean Brunhes
40. The Wall of a House of Pressed
Earth at Medinet-el-Fayum

The arrangement of the bricks and the little open
ing where the pigeon is seen, show a certain art of
construction and even of ornamentation.

110 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
the fallen material so that the heart of the village is sadly
filled with ruins."1
Certain secondary details of the form of the house, common

Pierre Hanssen
Fig. 41. Two Adjoining Barns at the Bugnon (Gruy-ere)
The new part of the roof continues the slope of the main part, but it is covered
with tiles.
to otherwise wholly dissimilar and widely separated types of
habitation, are to be explained in a similar way. In order to
preserve their rice from rodents, the inhabitants of Imerina,
in Madagascar, place large round pieces of wood in a horizontal
position at the base of their rice granaries. These serve the
same purpose as the slabs of schist which the Yalaisans place
at the four corners of the base of their racarts, and which are
found also at the base of the Stabbuhr in Norway. We might
even compare with these the granaries which certain peoples
of the north build on piles to protect their provisions from the
bears. 2. THE MATERIAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE STREET
AND OF THE ROAD
The most modest human establishment is accompanied by
visible signs of travel and trade, in the form of small trodden
spaces or beaten paths. At the door of the most wretched
chalet or hut of the mountains ends a line marked on the
Quotation from the volume by Emile Auzou, La Presqu'ile Guerandaise, Plon,
Paris, 1897, p. 316.

UNPRODUCTIVE OCCUPATION OF THE SOIL 111
ground, by which men and animals ordinarily reach this tiny
center of human life (Fig. 42).
As soon as houses are grouped, intercommunication becomes
more intense and the street begins, more or less clearly marked
and with a more or less regular space left between the dwellings.
Whatever its character, it is simply an enlarged and more
significant primitive trail, an evidence of human movement,
transportation of goods, trade. In a small hamlet or village
the crossroads formed by two primitive streets is but a big
city square in embryo, or perhaps a local market, which when
more developed we call the fair ground and with which — what
ever its form or size — we always associate exchange.
Other geographers, and especially Ratzel and Hettner,
have brought out the geographical significance of the most
rudimentary types of roads: the ioot^aXhjJFiisswej) , the mule

Paul Girardin
Fig. 42. The Traffic Accompanying Settlement
Chalets in the Glandon pass which opens a passage for the Maurienne
in the Oisan group between the Belledonne chain and the Grandes
Rousses mountains. These chalets are situated at 6395 feet (1950 m.).
All about are the paths, visible signs of complex movement, scattered
and uncertain: the less the lines of communication are improved, the
less they are fixed.
tra.il J^jauinweg) , the wagon road {Fahrweg). But perhaps
Ratzel has not sufficiently noted the relations between the
character of the road, especially the perfected road, and the

112 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
geographical environment. Not only does the desert track,
or the trail cut through the virgin forest, form part of
the landscape and at the same time give it character ; but the
highway itself, by its construction, by its windings, by its
slopes, by the material of which it is made, and even by
its color, is a fact teeming with geographic interest. Even
the city street — especially in its best developed forms — has
geographical characteristics. The city of Toulouse, a city of
bricks, is built upon the Quaternary gravel of a terrace of the
Garonne. The stone that was lacking for the houses was
also lacking for the street until recent improvements in means
of transportation. Who does not envy and admire the
streets of Funchal in Madeira, paved with smooth, basaltic
cobbles, so hard and so closely fitted that the wooden, ox-
drawn sledges used in place of the wheeled carts of other
cities produce no dust! New cities and dead cities have
streets which show or recall some of the characteristics of their
material environment.
Finally, certain roads and transportation routes are, so to
speak, ready-made in advance by geographical conditions.
Man has had only to change slightly the most favorable parts.
Under this head might be classed all roads over the snow and
ice. These are doubtless the most economical solid roads for
long distances, as is well illustrated in the winter lumbering
sections of glaciated North America with its miles of ice
plains in the cold season. Regions practically impassable in
summer are ready highways with uniform grades or even
horizontal slopes in winter.
It is also known how in Russia beyond the Volga, in all the
Ural, in Siberia, and in Tibet, winter is the season of travel
because at that season roads are available over the snow-
covered lands or by icebound rivers and lakes. In the Alps,
winter is the season for gathering wood and fodder. Mild
winters with a deficient snowfall prevent the completion of
the winter tasks, as does too early a spring.
In many forested and rugged countries, men make use of
chutes to transport wood from the higher to the lower and
more accessible slopes. Similar to this type of path is the very
steep, partially graded road found on many forested slopes.

UNPRODUCTIVE OCCUPATION OF THE SOIL 113
Almost all natural waterways, and all sheets of water, lakes
or seas, which become waterways (Wasserwege), are physical
features which man uses, without in any way changing their
essential characteristics. These are certainly geographical
facts; but as facts of human geography they are less character
istic and less important than routes of travel upon land.
Travel upon the sea never leaves a mark upon the surface of
the waters as clear or as permanent as even the fugitive trace
of a camel's foot in the sand seas of the Erg.
The slightest improvement in the means of travel on land
expresses itself by small surface facts, while improvements
in marine travel leave the surface of the globe almost as
unchanged as is the mass of the atmosphere by the passage of
an aeroplane. Navigation and aviation put their marks most
clearly on the earth at those points of contact between land
and sea or land and air which are natural landing-places.
Here ports and railways are developed as visible, persistent
evidences of invisible water routes, or hangars stand as
witnesses to air routes not only invisible but perhaps unknown.
One very important point in reference to land travel deserves
emphasis. If a road or route is naturally adapted to only one
mean's of travel, a change in the method of travel brings about
a corresponding change in the character of the road. Means
of travel then find an echo in geography; cart wheels have
made their ruts in the streets of the dead cities of Pompeii or
of Les Baux, or along the historic Santa Fe Trail, as they are
making them in the streets of recent cities. To a much more
marked degree steam traction and electric traction have
brought into existence strips of road of a new type.
The development of steam as a motive power caused
engineers to reduce the grades of old roads, which varied from
3 or 4 up to 6 or 7 per cent. The grades of the great inter
national railways and the Arlbefglmd^Mont Cehis lines do
not^exceed^ per cent. ^The^niaximunTof the Gotthard line
gradels 2 .y^per~ceirt7 that of the Lotschberg line and of the
Simplon line (on the Italian side only) only 2 . 5 per cent. The
grade of the broad-gauge road that crosses the Rocky Moun
tains at the highest level (11,600 feet) nowhere exceeds 4jper
cent. Cog roads and funiculars may be built on slopes of

114 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
almost any degree of declivity; but they are mountain or
city railways whose zone of action is very much restricted.
Electric traction, on the contrary, has so wide a range that
it has been introduced partially on roads where the trains
normally run by steam (electric locomotives draw the trains
from Brigue to Iselle and return through the 12 miles [20
kilometers] of the Simplon tunnel). Electricity is now used
on some of the steep mountain roads of the Far West in the
United States. It will become more and more the traction
of the future, for it can be used over much steeper grades than
can steam.
The form and character of the road are expressions of human
geography that show the development of mankind as closely
and as precisely as does the house.
Roman roads were above all built for strategic purposes and were
destined to facilitate the sending of troops Trito all parts of the
empire. The system increased as the Roman dominion increased.
The first great road, the Via Appia, from Rome to Capua, was
destined to assure the submission of Campania; the defeat of the
Boii made necessary the creation of the Via Aurelia; and the defeat
of the Gauls and the Germanic populations resulted in the construc
tion of an important road system in the Alps and the basins of the
Danube and the Rhine. Little by little viae traversed all the empire
from the center of Spain to the heart of Egypt.1 This explains why
the Romans, desirous above everything else of quickness of commu
nication and military transportation, took no account, in the con
struction of their roads, of the natural features of the land. Their
roads are as far as possible straight lines. Artificial work is there
fore very frequent, and includes bridges over vallevs, embankments
(aggeres) in the depressions of the soil, pilework, causeways, and
masonry in marshy lands (as in a part of the Appian Way), enor
mous supporting walls along the sides of ravines, cuts through the
mountains, or even tunnels. The Romans did not content them
selves merely with smoothing the ground. In order to assure the
solidity of the road, instead of opening it they built it.
The distinctive features of streets or roads, their arrange
ment or their number, are notations on the surface of the
earth of the intensity and importance of the human relation
ships they serve.
If a structure, such as a monastery or a group of monasteries
1 These lines and those that follow are taken from the Lcviqitc des antiquites
romaincs, compiled under the direction of R. CaKnat by G. Goyau (Thorin, Paris,
1895, PP- 304-305; the article "Via" is signed G. M.). '

UNPRODUCTIVE OCCUPATION OF THE SOIL 115
(Lhasa in Tibet), becomes a center of attraction, paths and
trails multiply about it and the road accompanies them,
representing graphically the influence exercised by this center
of pilgrimage.1 In a general way the activity centering in
every human establishment is indicated by these more or
less definite, more or less established, lines found around it.
Both the main roads and the secondary roads of any well-
peopled country are, in their general character, in the details
of their plan, and in the state of their maintenance, reflections
of a multitude of historic and economic facts.
Ratzel has many times pointed out the fragmentary char
acter of the first short railroads in any region. This frag
mentary character is common to all roads; and it is doubtless
in the first stage of development of a new form of communica
tion that the influence of local geographical conditions upon
man is the strongest. Take for example the valley of Visp
at the end of which stands Zermatt, and which is to-day trav
ersed from Visp to Zermatt by a railroad. That valley offers
us, from the point of view of the road, a typical case of
interrupted communication. A strip of wagon road exists
from Saint Nicholas to Randa which is not connected with any
larger road system. At each end this road runs into paths
wide enough only to accommodate the passage of a mule.
Railroads were first built in short, disconnected sections.
In a recent lecture Paul Girardin, speaking of the early history
of railroads from 1828 to 1832, called attention to the fact
that these lines were first built in England, by the joining of
two elements, the rail, projecting or hollowed, whence the
name "roads with ruts," and the locomotive, a Watt steam
engine placed upon wheels and made movable. The tubular
boiler definitely substituted mechanical traction for traction
by means of horses and, because of the greater speed obtained,
it allowed travelers to make use of a means of transportation
which in the beginning seemed suited only to the carrying of
merchandise, and particularly to the movement of coal from
the coal fields which were then just beginning to be opened up.
But for a long time the future possibilities of this", mode of
locomotion were not perceived, and as keen a statesman as
1See J. Sion, "Le Tibet meridional," Ann. de geog., January 15, 1907, p. 44.

116 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
M. Thiers could speak, in the Chamber of Deputies, of rail
roads as "playthings. " This word, which seems ridiculous to
us, is explained if we go back to the time when it was spoken.
What railroads were built or under construction in Europe
in 1828-29? There were lines from Paris to Saint-Germain
and a little later from Paris to Versailles, from Berlin to
Potsdam, from Nuremberg to Furth, from Brunswick to Wolfen-
biittel, -from Naples to Portici, from Petrograd to Tsarskoe-
Selo — every line uniting a capital to a royal residence. Was
it not natural that they should seem only "playthings," just
as to-day some cogwheel railways, engineering masterpieces
though they be, play no economic role because they only
make mountains accessible as playgrounds?
Finally, every inhabited area in which Httle or no effort
has been made to mark out roads is an evidence of a people
politically or economically backward.
In the interior of the island of Crete roads barely exist;
the groups of human beings along the shore carry on a coast
wise trade by sea, but it fails to meet the needs of this isolated
land as a whole.1 In the Pripet marshes (Russia) certain small
centers of human occupation communicate wdth each other
only by means of boats. Here, in the midst of Europe, some
60 or 70 miles (a little more than a hundred kilometers) from
great industrial centers, is a region so primitive that men do
not even know the use of the watch or of money.
1,1 To my great regret I had not time to visit the interior of the island, as I had
done in 1857; but, according to all I have heard, if I could have allowed myself the
excursion that so strongly tempted me, I should not have found there the surprises
which, it seems at first glance, I should have had a right to expect. The island has
not even a suburban railroad for either of the two capitals — Canea and Heracleion.
It has no more well-built carriage roads than it had at the time when the luxurious and
boastful Veli Pasha, whose guest I have been, had constructed at great expense, on
the outskirts of Canea and Candia, the beginnings of some excellent macadam roads.
In his carriage he used to take his European visitors out for one or two miles (3 or 4
kilometers) ; on their return to the west these visitors lauded the progressiveness of
the reformer-pasha; but he would have been very much embarrassed if one of these
visitors had asked him to go a little farther along the way. After the sixth or seventh
measuring post (there were kilometer posts — I saw them), the great macadam road
ended abruptly. It was continued by a vague trail, or a mule path. These charlatan
tricks are no longer the fashion; but the state of the roads is scarcely more advanced
than in the time of the Turks. Between the three chief cities of the north coast,
Heracleion, Rithymno, and Canea, there are no easy means of communication — for
the transportation either of people or of merchandise — except bv sea, and no one of
these cities has a port where steamboats can enter. When the weather is bad, one
cannot, in these strange harbors, disembark passengers or unload freight. Relations
are almost entirely interrupted for several days, sometimes for several weeks "
(Georges Perrot, a letter dated from Heracleion, May 11, 1907, and published in
Journal des dtbats. May 23, 1907).

UNPRODUCTIVE OCCUPATION OF THE SOIL 117
3. THE CHARACTERISTIC ASPECT OF THE HUMAN ESTABLISHMENT:
GEOGRAPHICAL TYPES. EXAMPLE: THE VILLAC?E-TYPE IN EGYPT
Houses and streets joined in varied combinations form all
the collective groups, from the hamlet to the great city.
Ratzel has well noted the different historic modes of these
agglomerations, especially in the Germanic countries:1 Hof
and Gehofte (small isolated farm or large farm, equivalent to
the royal villa or the chateau with its complement of houses
of the "villagers," like that of. Epoisses, Cote-d'Or), Zinken
(houses on the slopes of the hill or along a thalweg), Weiler
(hamlet), Marktflecken (market town for fairs), Landstadt (city
which lives from and for its rural environs), etc.
The true originator of this study of human groupings is
J. G. Kohl, who published Der Verkehr und die Ansiedelungen
der Mensclien in Hirer Abhdngigkeit von der GestalUing der
Erdoberflache2 in 1841. This work is the product of a very
original creative effort. Since antiquity all the books treat
ing of countries and cities have spoken of geographical position
in relation to the concentration or increase of population, and
of the physical limits, of peoples as well as of human establish
ments, but they have not treated of these things as the end
and object of special and systematic investigations. It is in
this book that we find for the first time a comparative exami
nation of Residenzstadte (pp. 15 ff.), Badeplatze, Wallfahrtsorte,
Kirchdbrfer, Tempelstadte, etc.
It is well first of all to bring out the peculiar physiognomy
of the settlement which truly represents the type of a region.
We have already considered the house type. It is equally
important to study the village type or the small-city type.
Their essential characteristics . are clearly seen through a
study of the following illustrations in the text:
Fig^i^A village of the upper Alpine valleys: Saas-Grund
(5,125 feet) in Switzerland.
Fig. 44 : A village in the southern steppes of Russia.
~Fignj57 A~small town along the shore of one of the lakes
of Upper Italy: Said.
 /
JSee Ratzel, Anthropogeographie, II, pp. 410 ff., and Raveneau, "L'Element
humain dans la geographie," Ann. de geog., I, p. 333.
2Buchhandlung, Arnold, Dresden and Leipzig, 1841. See also J. G. Kohl, Die
geographische Lage der Kaupislddte Europas, Leipzig, 1874.

118

HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

Fig. 46 : An aoul of Daghestan (the eastern Caucasus) (p. 120).
Fig. 47 : A small village in Palestine near Bethlehem (p. 121).
Consult also the illustrations of the village types of Suf and
of Mzab (Chap. VI), and notably those of the small towns

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Fig.
Feet (1,562 m.), in Switzerland
Chief place of the valley of Saas (Valais) . Village of wooden houses with base
ments of masonry and roofs of wood. The village is both aligned and massed/at
the foot of a cone of detritus, on the sides of which spreads a checker board of sma|
fields (on the right). The stone church with its bell-tower dominates and groups
and centers, so to speak, the cluster of houses. To the right of the village beside
the road, is a new house, one of stone, which is a hotel and expresses the economic;
evolution of many alpine villages.
so typical of Mzab which form such a striking geographical
family. The village type is in itself a geographical fact, both in the
way it expresses the nature of a whole region and in the way
its appearance and position depend upon its immediate
surroundings. The picture of the village of Salo, on Lago di
Garda (Fig. 45), might, for example, have a commentary
like the following which applies to villages of all the wooded
slopes bordering the lakes of Upper Italy:
Slopes almost entirely green, of two greens combined, one
bright, the other almost black, forming from afar one somber
color; on this background, in no sharp contrast, are light or
UNPRODUCTIVE OCCUPATION OF THE SOIL 119

Fig.

44-

Paul Ja
A Village in the Southern Steppes of Russia

Near the bend of the Don. Representative village, with its houses of white
washed loam and large roofs of thatch. Some of the hedges and some of
barn walls are of basketwork or wattling.

Jean Brunhes

Fig. 45. A Small Town along the Shore of One of the Lakes of
Upper Italy; Salo
On the shores of Lago di Garda. See the commentary in the text, pages 118, 120.

120

HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

dark gray rocks. What does stand out upon these high and
steep but harmonious slopes, what gives them life, what
produces the opposition of shades and lines, is the white village
against the dark background. Each village spreads horizon
tally along the hillside, breaking the main lines of the long
slope, its dazzling points forming one level curved line, relieved
and dominated by the vertical shaft of the bell tower. And
as if to complete the harmony and to reproduce in exact
miniature the deep, dark color scheme of the whole, each long
white village is broken by dots of shadow formed by the

1 Brunhes
Fig. 46. An Aovl of Daghestan (Eastern Caucasus)
Stone village of superposed flat-roofed houses, literally veneered and as
if hooked to the steep mountain side. Entire village or aoul arranged for
purposes of defense. (Koubatchi, northern slope of the eastern Caucasus.)
arcades, and the whiteness of each house is broken by the
dark window openings.
Along the Black Forest and on the banks of the Neckar we
see pretty and well-grouped villages with roofs of red brick, now
built of loam with uprights of wood, now of brick, sometimes

UNPRODUCTIVE OCCUPATION OF THE SOIL 121

of red sandstone, but always giving a reddish touch in the
midst of a very green landscape. They are almost, with less

Fig. 47.

Jean Brunhes
A Small Village in Palestine near Bethlehem

On the rocky slopes of the calcareous plateau of Judea, the small stone cubes
of the houses, well cared for and well constructed, rise above the little fields
in terraces. This group of houses is one of the villages that can be seen from
Bethlehem on the__side of a neighboring hill; but it resembles so many others:
Beit-Safafa, Beit-Sur, etc., and nearer Jerusalem: Siloe, El Aziriyeh (Bethany).
brightness, like those great red scratches on the slopes of the
wooded hills made by the quarries that furnished the sandstone
for the castle of Heidelberg, the cathedral of Strassburg, and
even farther up the Rhine, the minster of Basel.1
JA curious quotation from the Rhin of Victor Hugo will show us how recent is
this critical desire to discern tbe nature and the role of the materials used in the con
struction not only of small villages (as is the case here), but also of cities and city
monuments. On visiting Basel he is indignant that the cathedral (Minister) should
be "painted with a red wash! Not only in the interior, as is right, but on the exterior,
which is infamous! And, moreover, from the pavement of the place up to the highest
tip of the towers, so that the two spires, which the architecture has made so charming,
now have the appearance, in the day time, of two sculptured carrots!" (quoted by
Antoine Saint-Marie-Perrin in his volume of the Laurens collection of cities famous
for art, Bale, Berne et Geneve, Paris, 1909, p. 14). Sometimes the great discerning
minds, especially the most illustrious of the naturalists — such as a Cuvier, and par
ticularly an Elie de Beaumont — have clearly perceived and noted such relationships.
"Lombardy, close beside Liguria, which is covered with marble palaces, erects only
brick houses. The quarries of travertine made Rome the most beautiful city of the
ancient world; those of coarser limestone and of gypsum have made Paris one of the-
most pleasant cities of the modern world. But Michael-Angelo and Bramante could
not have built at Paris in the same style as at Rome, because they would not have
found the same stone" (Cuvier, Recueil des eloges historiques, II, p. 325).
8

122 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
But while the village, always well grouped, presents a har
monious if not a very picturesque appearance, the house lacks
embellishment and charm. The house is small with a two-
sided, steep-pitched roof that extends only a few inches beyond
the walls. To the traveler from Switzerland who remembers
those magnificent roofs of the Swiss plateau, so ample that they
seem not only to cover the house but to envelop and clothe it,
the roofs of the middle plain of the Rhine and of the neighboring*
regions appear scanty. They are like our western clothing,
cut just to fit, in comparison with the wide robes with which
oriental peoples drape themselves. But here the house is
hardly ever isolated; the unit which draws our attention is
the village. The Village Type in Egypt
Like house, like village. If the house is fragile and ephem
eral, the village also is fragile and ephemeral. Nowhere else
does one see so many ruins upon ruins as in Egypt, so many
villages which, in the course of centuries, have grown one
above another ; even to-day the houses are so fragile that one
could easily determine how short a time it takes for all the
houses of a village to be renewed.
If the house is low and dull-colored, the village also is low
and dull-colored. However, the houses have been massed
upon slight eminences which remain above water in times of
flood, and the accumulated ruins in one place tend always to
increase the slight elevation. Thus the village rises like an
isolated islet, and even the low houses grouped in it have a
slight prominence which suffices to catch the eye, especially
in Lower Egypt where nothing breaks the even line of the wide
horizon (Figs. 48 and 49).
A village which has only this brown color of the dried mud
of the Nile would naturally pass unnoticed on a plain entirely
of mud. But this land rarely remains bare. It is usually
covered with vegetation, and when this gives to all the
visible landscape a rich, strong, green color, the village in
contrast, and in spite of its dull tint, or rather it might be
said because of its very lack of color, manages to make a spot
which strikes the eye.

UNPRODUCTIVE OCCUPATION OF THE SOIL 123

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Fig. 48. A Village-type of Muddy Egypt. The Compact Agglomeration
of Pressed-earth Houses on a Slight Eminence of Ruins
Village near Benha (Delta). An irrigation canal in the foreground
T " 4
BS III i
1
ut*'1"'"''"1"" a* *¦*
ijBK
¦ ' ¦
itx^f
— / 4
¦ "•-'',•
-^•¦ot
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Jean Brunhes
Fig. 49.
Another Village-type of Lower Egypt with the Single Palm
Tree and the Customary Pool
In the environs of Korachieh (Delta). The accumulations of ruins of these fragile
villages cause the slight relief on which the present village is built. A pool is nearly
always to be found beside the village in a small natural depression, which has been
artificially enlarged by the removal of the clay necessary for the construction of the
houses; on the right, a tamarisk and a cactus.
124

HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

Even in the largest cities of Lower and Middle Egypt the
houses are built of brownish bricks of slightly baked clay; in
the Arab quarter of Cairo, called the Muski, the buildings

Jean Brunhes
Fig. 50. The Type of House Construction in the Muski, Arab
Quarter of Cairo
This prevailing type of city house is, with greater dimensions and improved
forms, of the same type as that of the small towns and of the villages. In the
background are the minarets of the numerous and very beautiful mosques of
this great capital of Arabic art.
are naturally taller and more solid than in the villages of the
Delta, but their walls and their forms recall strikingly the
houses of the latter (Fig. 50).
Against this background, so subdued in form and coloring,
the slightest vertical line and the smallest bit of bright color
take on a striking value.
The dirty white minaret of a very small mosque suffices to
provide unity and to relieve the monotonous character of the
Egyptian village. But mosques are rare in the villages, and
not as in the countries where the church with its little bell
tower is found sometimes even in the very smallest settlements,
the mosque with its minaret is here confined to somewhat
important centers. The mosque is not a temple, but a simple
place of prayer, and its place may be taken by the mirab, a
small area barely inclosed with a light wall of hardened earth,

UNPRODUCTIVE OCCUPATION OF THE SOIL 125

a prayer floor separated from the surrounding ground very
simply, like the floor where the fellah threshes his grain.
For this reason the village in Egypt often has no mosque,
and perhaps only two or three modern houses a little taller
and a little whiter than the others, stand out amid the
brown sun-baked mass.
In a village built thus, constructions which are merely
details acquire a surprising importance. For example, in all
Upper Egypt, the pigeon house, a quadrangular pyramid
whitened at the top, becomes the prominent point in the
village and, in relation to the house which man inhabits, rises
like a monument.
In this great cultivated territory the harvests, which
succeed each other without break, exhaust the soil, and the
fellahin strive to compensate for this impoverishment with one
of the rare fertilizers which is at their disposal — pigeon dung.

Jean Brunhes
Fig. si. An Almost Monumental Row of Pigeon-houses at Luxor
Compare with the pigeon-houses the miserable human dwelling in the foreground
rising only to the "ground-floor" of the pigeon-houses. This type of structure for
the pigeons is frequent in all Upper Egypt.
That is why pigeons are treated with reverence and their
dwellings cared for by men and prepared with more luxury
than is put into their own houses. Beside the most wretched

126 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
huts of Luxor rises an almost imposing row of pigeon houses.
(Fig. 51.) Elsewhere the pigeon house even takes on an
architectural appearance (Fig. 52).
Toward the south the adobe village is replaced by the stone
village, the village of the poorer section of the Nile banks.
The meager and sporadic vegetation and even the houses.
have great difficulty in finding room in the midst of all these

Fig. 52. Two Architectural Types of Egyptian Pigeon-houses
The type on the right belongs to the Delta; that on the left (26 to 33 feet [8 to 10 m.]
in height), which sometimes appears in groups of four or five "edifices" of the same
order, united or contiguous, is a form peculiar to the Fayum.
smooth and rough rocks (granite underneath with a superficial
shell of sandstone) through which the Nile has had to break
its way (Fig. 53). The limit of the adobe village is at
Gebel Silsileh, where were in ancient times the first rapids
of the Nile.
It is beyond Assuan, and especially from El Kalabsheh
on, that the houses are built of stone and at the same time the
village withdraws toward the mountain. It is barely seen
behind the curtain of palm trees which faithfully follows the
river bank; it is near the stone of which it is built, at the limit
of the slender bordering plain and the mountain with its huge,
dismantled blocks of stone (Fig. 54). While the mud houses
of the earthen village rise in all Middle Egypt directly upon the
alluvium of the Nile, whether in the middle of the bordering

UNPRODUCTIVE OCCUPATION OF THE SOIL 127

Jean Brunhes
Fig. 53. The Banks and Granite Rocks at the Beginning of the First
Cataract of the Nile
View taken from the end of the island of Philae (some of the monuments of which
are to be seen in the foreground on the right) , and looking toward the north. Beyond
Assuan, underneath the plateaus of sandstone, projects the granite base, and it is gran
ite, covered with a splendid and brilliant black patina, which borders and strews the
first cataract.

Jean Brunhes
Fig. 54. Typical Village of Stone in the Stony Part of Egypt
View from the left bank of the Nile between Philae and Kalabsheh. On the left,
the houses against the granite slope are built of the same rock, have the same color
and blend almost completely with it.

128

HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

plain or upon the edge of the river bank, the stone houses —
though they can never be far from the river at that part of its
course where it is shut in between two masses of sandstone
or granite —
seem at least
to keep as far
from it as pos
sible. On the
Nubian bank
of the river
rises the sa-
quieh only,
a specimen
of the stone
house which
often remains
unnoticed, a
massive round
tower which
strikes the
eye in this
country where
everything that men
build for the
needs of the

T-

~ J

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m 1
' '¦!¦«
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Jean Brunhes
Fig. 55.
At Medinet-el-Fayum, the Built-up Banks
of the Bahr Yusuf
The houses are more elegant and higher; they rise from the
very edge of a water-course more regular than the Nile, and are
mingled with the trees growing there. All Fayum has a singular
beauty and charm, the reasons for which we have tried to
analyze elsewhere (see p. 108). It is indispensable to connect
the ornamental details of the Fayum house as they appear in
Figs. 39 and 40, and the appearance as a whole which the groups
of houses present in this and the next illustration.
present life, in the villages of stone almost as much as in,
those of adobe, is so shabby, so low, so fragile, and so
ephemeral. In the Fayum only, the agglomeration of houses has, like the
house itself (Figs. 39 and 40), something more attractive and
more harmonious. The trees are everywhere more numerous
and more varied.1 The main water course, the Bahr Yusuf,
the emissary of the Nile, has a more regular regime and this has
allowed the inhabitants to approach close to it. In short, the
village and the little city of the Fayum, which are of the same .
type as the village and city of Middle Egypt, are more closelv
united to the river and to the entire ensemble of a more wooded
'Jean Brunhes, L' Irrigation, etc., p. 352.
UNPRODUCTIVE OCCUPATION OF THE SOIL

129

landscape (Figs. 55 and 56). "The capital of the Fayum,
Medinet, is in still closer contact with the Bahr Yusuf than
Damietta is with the branch of the Nile. Formerly houses and
a mosque were built even over the Bahr Yusuf, and these
bridges of Medinet, covered with buildings, made one think
of cities very
far removed
from Egypt,
of Florence
and of Nu
remberg."1 In the city
or village of
Europ e an
countries the
tree often dis
appears; it is
swallowed up
among the
houses and
can be seen
only when
one looks
down upon
the houses
from a high
place; even
in cities of an
oriental char-
acter and
strewn with
gardens, like
Baktshi-Serai (City of Gar
dens), the old
capital of the kahns of Crimea, which appears framed in dazzling
cliffs of white chalk, the tree does not produce the effect that
one might suppose. The houses are too high (even if they
'Jean Brunhes, L Irrigation, etc., p. 351.

Fig. 56.

Jean Brunhes
On the Bahr Yusuf at Medinet-el-Fayum

In the Fayum, the regular regime of the Bahr Yusuf has made
it possible to build right up to the edge of the water. The trees
are everywhere, more numerous and varied than in middle or
upper Egypt, and the agglomeration of houses and trees has
something more attractive and harmonious.

130 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
end in a flat roof) and, with the exception of the poplars, the
trees form spots without giving prominent lines to the picture.
In Egypt, in the small human agglomeration, so colorless
and so flat, the tree plays an extraordinary part. And as if to
exaggerate as much as possible' this part~played by the tree,
it is the date palm which is usually the associate of the fellah
village. The inhabited huts are like low growths adorning
the base of the tree, whose tall vertical trunk shoots up from
the village with an added height, bearing aloft its hght crest of
notched leaves, a tuft of evergreen fringe which stands out
against the luminous sky.
There are in Egypt, villages without a single palm tree or a
tree of any kind; but they are few and more wretched- than
the others. Small flat cubes of clay, straight slender trunks
of palm trees, green crowns which spread out far above the
ground — these are the essential elements in the physiognomy
of the Egyptian village (Figs. 48 and 49).
But what variety with only these elements! Now a single
trunk with a single crown rising above an entire group of
houses suffices to give to the whole an appearance of height
and freedom. Now a group of palm trees close together
emphasizes the effect which the single trunk produces. Now
the palm trees are scattered in all corners of the cluster of
houses and, casting their shadow over the entire village, resem
ble a screen set to moderate the blazing light of the sun.
Now the palm trees, not content with rising here and there in
the village, penetrate and multiply within it; each house
has its palm or palms, and the trunk, instead of remaining
stiff and straight, is bent and twisted and seems to draw near
to the house and join more closely with men. This is the
finest effect that the Egyptian village can produce. The trees
everywhere present in the cluster of houses are closely asso
ciated with it, and from all these trunks, curving and inter
mingled, there is thrown upon the walls and roofs of clay a
network of shadows which interlace and envelop the little
buildings with that star of shade which falls from each lofty
crown about the trunk that bears it.
But sometimes the palm trees in the village grow side by
side instead of being scattered here and there, and then at

UNPRODUCTIVE OCCUPATION OF THE SOIL 131
one side or the other of this mass of clay huts there is a more or
less close curtain of tall straight trunks, more nearly parallel,
through which pass great vertical lines of light, while the
crowns rise in a broad, thick, undulating fringe terminating
always in a delicate lacework against the sky. Then sometimes
the date palm is not alone ; here and there it is accompanied by
great lebbeks, or tamarisks, or different sorts of acacias. Beyond
Korosko it is not even the only palm that is found ; from Nubia
on we find the doom-palm, which shares with it "the glory of
the palms" (Chevrillon) ; but the doom-palm is isolated and
rare. It plays a secondary r61e in the landscape and especially
in the customary appearance of the ordinary village.
On the whole the type is the anonymous agglomeration, the
one which the tourist does not notice, the one which is not
distinguished from any other but which for that very reason
recalls and expresses all the others and has consequently a
very great geographical value.
4. THE GEOGRAPHICAL LOCALIZATION OF THE HUMAN ESTABLISHMENT.
site. dissemination or concentration. limits
1. The Site
The application of a scientific method to human geography
requires that we arrange the facts in series and then associate
their most elementary forms, such as the isolated house, with
their most complex urban forms. If we follow this method
we shah find that the same natural facts which influence the
location of the house also play their part in the location of the
village and the city.
The site with reference to the sun. — In all the countries of
central Europe man seeks the sun ; his house faces, if possible,
so that the rays of_the__rising sun striklTrrifTtroHt:
But, T;nT3trglTThe isolated houses in aTwideTy open basin like
that of Grindelwald or on the Swiss plateau can and do almost
all face toward the sun, the problem is not entirely the same
when houses are close together. The street then often plays
a directing part and the facade no longer turns toward the
sun but toward the road or the street. What characterizes
even the city, that is, any important urban agglomeration, is
the fact that — to. the detriment of hygiene — the street by its

132

HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

awrj, direction and plan controls the orientation of the houses.
Between the isolated house and the large village is a whole
series of transitions in which the grouped houses now depend
for their orientation upon the agglomeration itself, or, on the
contrary, remain indifferent to the street and the road and
face in the direction most favorable to them (Figs. 57 and 58).
In other cases isolated houses on first inspection seem to be
placed without any regard to sunlight. In the first section of
the upper valley of the Sarine, which flows from south to north,
the houses that are built on the two slopes of the valley face
each other. But this phenomenon, at first surprising, is
explicable. In high, narrow valleys with steep sides the houses
generally face toward the river, that is, toward the valley floor;
for, with the shadows thrown morning and evening by the

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Fig. 57.
Joan Brunhes
Orientation of the House Independent of the Street
Seriers, small village of the department of Cantal (arrondissement of Saint-Flour).
At the entrance to the village, the road becomes a street, narrowing down between
houses which do not look upon it: the windows are on the sunny side.
neighboring heights, they may thus get a larger amount of light.
Though village houses seem often to take less account of
the sun than do isolated houses, the village as a whole seeks the
UNPRODUCTIVE OCCUPATION OF THE SOIL 133
sun. All through the Alps appears the contrast between
fhlTsunny slope and the shady slope, between the endroit
{adret in the langue d'oc, adra in the Fribourg patois) and

Jean Brunhea
Fig. 58. Houses Which Turn Their Backs to the Street
The road reaching a small village of the Gramat Causse (France) expands
into a vague 'crossroads before narrowing into a street. All the houses turn
their backs to both crossroads and street.
the envers {ubac in the langue d'oc) ; the endroit is the sunny
side and the envers is the shady side.
Maurice Lugeon published in 1902 Quelques mots sur le
groupement de la population du Valais.
The influence of exposure [says he] is evident. Statistics ....
show us a population of about 20,000 inhabitants on the left slope
[of the upper Rhone Valley] and 34,000 on the right. It is true that
in this particular case the right bank, being less steep, must lend
itself better to habitation. It is certain that this topographical
arrangement exaggerates the difference between the number of
inhabitants on the two slopes; however, we can show that the influ
ence of the sun is the chief cause of this evident difference. The
district of Conches, or the upstream part of the valley, presents
slopes almost equally inclined. Now the inhabitants of the sunny
slope number about j^oQo,jwhile on the shady side live only from

134 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
700 to 800 inhabitants. All the villages, with two or. three excep
tions, are placed on the slope which profits most from -the "sun.1 .
On the whole, in latitudes where the solar heat is sparingly
dispensed and especially in high altitudes, the urban settlement
seeks the sun. Spreading skillfully on the sunny slopes, it tends
to take that form which Raoul Blanchard calls picturesquely
and accurately the "village en espalier" (a trellised village).
The site with Reference to water. — Every human settlement,
as we have said, must have water, and very often the distribution
of men follows closely the water distribution. Sheets of water,
lakes and seas, exercise an influence which is shown by the
density of the population along their coasts and banks.
Upon the Swiss and Savoyard shores of the Lake of Geneva (Lake
Leman) [writes F. A. Forel], we traced two parallel strips of 1.5 miles
(2.5 kilometers) in width and of a total area of 96.5 square miles (250
square kilometers), the first along the shore, the second entirely
within the interior. The total population of the section along the
shore by the census of 1900 was 246,296 inhabitants, or 1,476 per
square mile (570 per square kilometer) ; that of the interior section,
43,938 inhabitants, or 240 per square mile (93 per square.kilometer).
The lakeside zone was six times more densely populated than the
rural zone. Subtracting from the first, the cities, Geneva and Lau
sanne, there would still be 650 inhabitants per square mile (251 per
square kilometer) ; taking away further the cities, Thonon, Vevey,
Montreux, Nyon, and Morges, there would still remain 401 inhabi
tants per square mile (155 per square kilometer).
Pierre Clerget, who quotes Forel's remarks in a study on the
Peuplement de la Suisse ("Population of Switzerland "), adds:
The causes of this phenomenon are the attractiveness of the
situation resulting from the mildness of the temperature and the-
beauty of the country — two reasons of attraction for foreigners— to
which are added the facilities offered for the cultivation of trees and
the vine and, in particular, the advantages of fishing and navigation,
the latter being possible in Switzerland only on the lakes.
F. Bianchi, who has calculated the density of population in
1 Maurice Lugeon adds these observations on social geography: "There is created,
then, in this connection, a certain aristocracy, the aristocracy of the sun. The people
on the right slope, more favored than those on the opposite slope, are generally better
off, and consequently better educated. They have a certain disdain, almost con
tempt, these proprietors of the sunny side (Sonncnseitc). for the people of the shady
side (the poor of the Schattenseite). For those who know how to analyze fine shades
in the sentiments of the population, Reckingen, that village on both sides of the
Rhone, presents two real castes, not very apparent, but none the less real. This was
pointed out to me by two friends who have lived in the little center. Thus, however
democratic education may be, the facts of nature are such that they come themselves
to disturb peace and to create distinctions."

UNPRODUCTIVE OCCUPATION OF THE SOIL 135

the country encircling lakes Como, Maggiore, and Varese,1
has arrived at similar conclusions. Over a territory of 1,640
feet (500 meters) around these lakes the density per square
mile is 2,123 inhabitants for Lago di Como, 1,440 for Lago
Maggiore, and 1,320 for Lago Varese, while it is only 526 for
the entire province of Como.
The following table recapitulates in more detail the num
ber of inhabitants per square mile:

Zone
of 1 to
1,500 Feet

Zone
of 1,500
to 3,000
Feet

Zone
of 3,000
to 4,500
Feet

Zone
of 4,500
to 6,000
Feet

Zone
of 6,000
to 12,000
Feet

Above 12,000 Feet

Lago di Como. .
Lago Maggiore.
Lago Varese . . .

2,123 1,4401,320

966510 774

657 523
676

477 3°7839

316378
1,178

479627 559

One must have lived near these lakes in order to realize
to what extent they are the means of subsistence, the center of
local circulation
— in a word, the
center of life.
However, if we
pass from there
to Liguria, for
example, we see
still more clearly
that habitations
must have been
concentrated
where the moun
tains and the
sea suddenly
meet. Toward
the sea alone can
there be wide
horizons and
vast hopes, out
let and move
ment; aU- life^ turning by necessity toward thcsea^-beeemes
organized near it.
>F. Bianchi, "Sulla distribuzione della popolazione nella provincia di Como,"
Rivista geog. italiana, XIV, 1907, pp. 79 ff.

Jean Brunhea
Fig. 59. The Coasts of French Provence
View taken from the Trayas toward the northeast. In
the foreground are the superb red porphyries, so delicately
cut, of the Esterel.

Tig. on. Indentations of the Mediterranean Littoral
The ancient little town of £ze and tho seashore of tho Maritime Alps (Prance)

UNPRODUCTIVE OCCUPATION OF THE SOIL 137

In early times, as the kjbkkenmdddings (kitchen middens)
indicate, the shore especially attracted our ancestors because
of the abundance of food cast up by the waves or because of
the available supply of shellfish. Later the chief social
influence of ,
the water
became in
creasingly due to the
unlimited
means of
communica tion which
it afforded.
About the
Mediterra- <
nean, Plato,
let us recall,
saw men
distributed "like frogs'
around a
pond." It is only
the marsh
fevers and the caprices of the ever-moving dunes which can
thwart this attraction and the concentration due to the
proximity of the sea. In all latitudes the shores are chosen
places_for humanity.
If we travel through the coast regions of the Far East, if
we enter those rivers that are wide as arms of the sea, we find
a mass of humanity that is almost amphibious; the waters
are literally crowded with fleets of junks; even in the interior
of these lands this life, which shows so clearly the peculiar
advantage of points of contact between land and water, is
developed with an intensity that can scarcely be imagined
(Figs. 62 and 63). . .
On the Yangtse, at its junction with the Han, three cities,
Wuchang, Hankow, and Hanyang, face each other, forming
9

Fig. 61.

The Entrance to the Harbor of
Cartagena (Spain)

Lbvy

The heights serve as defensive posts and the interior bays as
refuges and shelters.

French Colonial Office
Fig. 62. The Populated River: the Menam at Bangkok
Sampans and rafts of bamboo

These two illustrations (Figs. 62 and 63) aro taken from
Asie ct Insulindc, Afriaue, Busson, Fevre ot Hauser.
Fig. 63. The Divine River: the Ganges at Benares
Ghals or stairs of Benares: Ablutions in the Ganges

UNPRODUCTIVE OCCUPATION OF THE SOIL 139

one large triple city, the parts of which are almost joined
by a multitude of junks. The city disappears, or, more
exactly, is masked behind all this movement on the water and
all these rows of little low dwellings on the bank.
Let a simple example from Norway, whose people get their
living primarily from the sea, serve as a sort of recapitulation
of all the chief phases of the role played by water in the
location of habitations. The population is so distributed that
a map represents it as confined almost exclusively to a fringe
along the shore.
The three illustra
tions (Figs. 64, 65,
66) reproduced by
permission from a
paper published
by Hagbart Mag
nus of Bergen in
1898 show conclu
sively that on the
coast (where the
population is dens
est), as well as
in the valleys of
the interior (where
dwellings are
widely separated) ,
water is the chief
attraction. Be
tween these two
zones is that of

„cale = l:354,000

i-iagbart iviaguus

Fig. 64.

The Grouping of Habitations along
the Fjords of Norway
In the interior arms of the fjords, the rocky slopes are
the fjords and steep and often drop perpendicularly into the sea. The
J ; ' habitations are situated either on flat spurs, or principally
here again the

around the mouths of watercourses. Habitations in
groups are not to be found very far toward the interior of
the region. Wherever a more important watercourse runs
through a relatively large valley and has formed on the
sides an alluvial plain (ore), more considerable agglom
erations are situated which have in part the aspect of
villages: Lardalsoren, for example.

same cause acts as
a control. The site with ref
erence to topograph
ical. conditions. — Let us go down one of the Swiss valleys
through which runs an Alpine river, like the Rhone. In
that valley, where the wide floor spreads out between steep

140

HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

Scale = 1:376,000 Hagbart Magnus
Fig. 65. Example of the Typical Distribution
of Habitations along Rivers in the Interior
of Norway, (the River on the Left Is
the Sjoa River; That on the Right
, Is the Laagen River)

In the large eastern
valleys, the farms are
ranged along water
courses, separated by
uninhabitable spaces.
The road winds from
farmhouse to farm
house. Often the rows
of dwellings are not
situated exactly on the
edge of the stream, but
lie a little higher, on
the side of the valley, '
the slopes here not
being so steep as in
the interior arms of
the fjords.

Scale = 1:370,000 Hagbart Magnus
Fig. 66. Example of the Typical Distribution
of Habitations in the Coast Zone of
Norway (North of Bergen)

This portion of the
coast region is much
cut up and very un-
even; sheep-back
rocks, crags which re
call the Schaeren, and
marsh. Rado island is
tt very characteristic
small hilly region. The
habitations (which are
shown by black dots as
in the two preceding
diagrams) are scattered
irregularly according
to the conditions of
relief. In this zone,
along the Norwegian
littoral, the habitations
arc relatively dense.

UNPRODUCTIVE OCCUPATION OF THE SOIL 141
slopes, some natural features are to be found which take
on an exceptional value. They are first of all the great
alluvial cones of the affluents of the Rhone. In places these
cones are thickly wooded, like that of the Illgraben (and
farther down-stream that of the Bois-Noir between Aigle
and Martigny); in other places, as illustrated above Brigue,
they have already been conquered and exploited by man.
Here they are entirely covered with grass, cut by lines of
trees, and dotted with houses. In the second place, the
floor of this valley is encumbered with curious mounds,
evidences of an enormous preglacial landslide which for some
time barred the course of the river. In the third place,
there appear at Sion, on the right bank, promontories of
schist which are geologically connected with the masses of the
left bank.
All these topographical irregularities have offered natural
places for habitation situated above the level of the river
and of the alluvial plain which was annually flooded before
the regulation of the Rhone, a work done during the nine
teenth century ; residuals of limestone covered by some traces
of glacial material have furnished the site of Sierre and of
Granges, as the residuals of schist have furnished that of
Sion, and almost in the same manner as so many small cities
or villages have been placed on the alluvial cones: Brigue,
Visp, Gampel, Bramois, etc.
In all climates, the large and also the small cones of fluvial
or fluvio-glacial deposits have certainly rendered the very
greatest services to the inhabitants of mountain valleys (see
the examples of the valleys of the Andes, Figs. 178, 195,
and 204, Chap. VII).
All isolated elevations, whatever their origin or character,
have a topographical value that appeals to men who seek to
defend and fortify themselves. This is so true that cities
built upon them come to resemble each other in spite of
otherwise very unlike geological and geographical environ
ments. Compare, for example, the advantage that man has
derived from the twin peaks of the Liassic anticlinal axis of
Sion with that of the two steep remnants of basaltic breccias
in Puy-en-Velay; the photographs of these two localities,

142 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
placed together for comparison, are very expressive (see Figs.
67 and 68).
There is another topographical feature of high valleys which
has naturally exercised a great attraction for human establish?
ments, viz., the terraces.
Our great Alpine valleys present remarkable terraces due to
glacial action. It is comprehensible that man has sought to occupy
these flat spaces particularly favorable to cultivation. It is the
terraces on the right side of the Valais which determine the altitude
of all the villages on the slope. The most remarkable examples
are those of Saviese, of Grimisuat, of Lens, and of Montana. These
terraces limit the upper altitudes of permanent centers. When such
floors are not very sharply defined, the inhabitants are inclined
to go higher up in order to be nearer the pasture lands. Thus above
Sierre we find Randogne and Mollens with their 300 and 285 inhabit
ants at an altitude of 3,937 feet (1,200 meters) and 3,527 feet
(1,075 meters). It is, then, curious to note that from the admin
istrative point of view, the communes, although formed of different
centers, are much more extensive in the regions where the terraces
are well marked. The physical fact seems to create this solidarity.
Compare the contrary example of Saviese with its 2,049 inhabitants
distributed in eight hamlets of which six have an average of 300
souls, while above Sierre we find centers just as close together, and
often with a smaller population, forming independent communes.
Here the terrace no longer exists, for the altitude and the slope
separate the interests of the various groups. Each lives for itself.
Consider the following figures, each of which stands for a distinct
commune, and you will recognize this curious phenomenon: Ran
dogne, 300 inhabitants; Mollens, 285; Miege, 379; Veyras, no;
Venth6ne, 446. When a fine terrace exists in the immediate
neighborhood, as at Lens, the population rises then to 2,254.*
In the Connecticut River valley in Connecticut the houses,
roads, and population are on the first terrace above flood level.
The lower land is cultivated but not occupied, owing to the
probability of annual floods.2
As means of communication are multiplied and improved,
the advantage which results from proximity upon the same
terrace, and even from the flatness of the terrace, decreases.
The factor which comes into play is the number of inhabitants,
the increasing dimensions of the agglomeration. A day comes
, 'Maurice Lugeon, Quelques mots sur le groupemcnt de la population du Valais,
Elrennes helvUiques pour 1002, Georges Bridel, Lausanne, 1902.
2See on Windsor, Connecticut, Martha King Genthe, " V alley Towns of Con
necticut," Bull. Amer. Geog. Soc, Vol. XXXIX, pp. 513-544. especially pp. 522-525.

UNPRODUCTIVE OCCUPATION OF THE SOIL 143

Fig. 67. The City of Sion (Valais, Switzerland) Situated on the Sides
and at the Foot of an Elevation of Smooth Schists from
Which Rise Two Steep Eminences
The similarity of location of this city and of that shown in the photograph below is
striking, though geologically and geographically the environment of the two cities
is otherwise very unlike.

-^  .^^ti^fl^feSs&PMB

s ¦-'•^'iO^~ J^»**.«;5Sr -v-'-i: ' v1^

'^Sf^-.^.JHB

- .  1

tol2BrT...L. MmF?V^QSMm- ¦- '¦'.¦:¦

Fig. 68.

1 Brunhos
The City of Puy-en-Velay (France) on the Sides and at the Foot
of an Eruptive Elevation with Two Projections
On the summits of the eminences in both cities are situated the castles, churches,
etc. (or even colossal statues, as on the crag, Corneille du Puy, to the right in Fig.
68); these cities, both small capitals, have grouped themselves about peaks of defense
or pilgrimage, thence spreading out into the surrounding flat areas,

144 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
when they seek and demand their independence. Since the
work of Lugeon appeared, the four villages of the terrace and
former commune of Lens — Icogne at 3,455 feet (1,053 meters),
Lens at 3,806 feet (1,160 meters), Chermignon at 3,832 feet
(1,168 meters), and Montana at 4,048 feet (1,234 meters) —
have become four independent communes. Examples of
villages or small cities built on large Quaternary terraces are
Broc (in the Gruyere, canton of Fribourg) and Saint-Gaudens
(chief town of an arrondissement of the Haute-Garonne in
France) .
The .site andjrestrictive wnddtions.—We have seen how far
certain facts such as the__suri,^ watgr^, alluvial cones^jterraces^
etc., act as favoring_ conditions. Other facts, and in special
cases even those just mentioned, are restrictive in their
influences on the establishment of human habitations.
Destructive floods in the valleys of powerful unembanked
rivers, such as the Rhone formerly was, prevent men from
locating their center of habitation in the low parts of the thal
weg, and this restrictive factor emphasizes the influence of the
slightest topographical irregularity. In all humid regions
men have had to avoid lands swollen with water or strewn
with stagnant pools. Even in temperate latitudes habita
tions have had to be placed on dry tracts to avoid the damp
ness of the flats.
In certain cases the wind also makes impossible permanent
human habitations. In the upper valley of the Reuss rages
the foehn, that, hot wind so terrible in its effect, particularly
in the springtime. The villages have therefore sheltered them
selves from the foehn by locating in the lateral valleys. A. de
Foville in his introduction to the Enquete sur les conditions de
I'habitation en France has an excellent passage on the part
played by the wind.
Avalanches constitute a periodic phenomenon, recurring so
frequently in some high mountain valleys as to form danger
zones avoided by man.
Charles Biermann has studied very carefully the restrict
ive influence of avalanches upon human establishments in
the higher portion of the upper valley of the Rhone, which is
called the valley of Conches. In traveling through this

UNPRODUCTIVE OCCUPATION OF THE SOIL 145
valley one notices along the road frequent crosses set up to
mark places where one or more unfortunates have met death
under an avalanche. The most serious catastrophe was that
which annihilated the village of Obergestelen, February 18,
1720. An avalanche roaring down from the mountain heights
toward the west leaped over the intervening forest and demol
ished a part of the village. Reaching the Rhone the avalanche
blocked the course of the river, causing a flood which over
whelmed another part of the town ; all that remained standing
was destroyed by the flames spreading from the fires just
lighted by the housewives in preparing the evening meal.
Out of 200 inhabitants 84 perished from one or the other of
the three scourges, and 600 head of cattle were lost. Later
when the village was beginning to rise from its ruins, a new
avalanche from a different direction demolished it again.
However, villages are not continuously threatened by
avalanches. There is danger only at certain times of the
year, after heavy falls of snow or when the foehn blows too
violently at a time of thaw, or again when abundant rains
cause the slipping of layers of snow.
In some places villages have been huddled together between
two avalanche zones so that avalanches pass them by.
Sometimes also they have sheltered themselves beneath great
forests, some of which have been "placed under a ban" to
assure their conservation. Unfortunately, in order to profit
from these seemingly inutilized properties, sheep and goats
are pastured on them and these destroy the young growths.
Thus the forest is but slowly reproduced; the old trees dis
appear little by little and what few remain no longer form
sufficient protection for the village.
Efforts have been made to renew the forests. A Zurich
geologist, Escher von der Linth, left 15,000 francs ($3,000) for
that purpose to the commune of Goschenen. This sum was
employed in the construction of small walls of stone without
mortar in the shelter of which were planted larches and small
firs. In other communes similar work has been undertaken.
But the peasants most often content themselves with arrang
ing their chalets and their villages so that the avalanche
may pass above the roof without meeting with obstacles.

146

HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

2. The Dissemination or Concentration of Human Establishments
From this dependence upon favoring and restricting condi
tions, there results a very unequal distribution of men and of

Scale = 1 271,000
Fig. 6o. The Distribution of Permanent Habitations in the Upper Valley
of the Sarine (after Hanssen)
1. Houses agglomerated into villages. 2. Zones of little hamlets of 8 to 10 houses. 3. Regions of isolated
habitations. Reading up the stream from the plain of Bulle, lying north of the map, we have Gruye'res. 2713 ft. (827 m.):
En = Enney, 2403 ft. (734 m.); Est = Estavennen; Gr= Grandvillard, 2467 ft. (752 m.); N=Neirivue; A =
Albeuve, 2533 ft. (772 m.); L = Lessoc; M = Montboven, 2625 ft. (800 m.); Ros = Rossioiere, 3025 ft. (922 m.);
C. d'Oex = Chateau d'Oex, 3150 ft. (960 m.) ; Rt = Rougemont; S=Saanen (Geasenay), 3382 ft. (1031 m.);
G = Gstad, 3445 ft. (1050 m.) ; La = Lauenen, 4131 ft. (1259 m.). Beyond Lauenen lie the upper valleys.
There are three successive zones in the valley of the main water course; in the
first, from the upper valleys to the basin of Chateau d'Oex west of Rougemont, are
isolated habitations and only four tiny villages; in the second, from east of Chateau
d'Oex to below Montbovon, we find zones of considerable extent occupied by little
hamlets of from eight to ten nouses; the third zone, from below Montbovon to beyond
Gruyeres, is occupied by large villages, quite crowded, in the midst of an empty
country without hamlets or isolated houses. The hachured regions lying apart from
the rest, especially in the lateral valleys, are oases lost in the wilderness of mountain
ous regions (the heavy black lines indicate ridges more than 4,921 feet [1500 m.l
high). These oases are inhabited all the year.
human establishments in the different parts of the earth.
Here we cannot study very closely the modes and causes of this
distribution in each particular region. Pierre Hanssen has
analyzed these facts of distribution in the upper valley of the
Sarine, and has represented the results obtained upon the

UNPRODUCTIVE OCCUPATION OF THE SOIL 147
topographical map of Switzerland {Atlas Siegfried, maps on
the scale of 1:50,000 and 1:25,000).
He has not published his work in extenso, but he has given
a resume of it in the Bulletin de la Societe fribourgeoise des
sciences naturelles, and Fig. 69 is a reduced map, showing the
results of his work in this region where the geographical in
fluences are most manifest.
Taken as a whole, the most striking general fact presented
by the map is that humanity in high mountains is distributed
in isolated islands.1
If we take account only of houses and their grouping, we
can distinguish in the upper valley of the Sarine three well-
defined regions:
1 . In the first region (region of the extreme upper valley) the
dweUings are much scattered and rise in successive steps from

Pierre Hanssen
Fig. 70. In the Upper Valley of the Sarine. The Dispersion of Isolated
Habitations in the Region of the Upper Stream
View taken near Gsteig; scattered and isolated dwellings and barns of the village
of Saali.
the bottom of the valley to a rather high altitude upon the
terraces of the northern slope. They are isolated farmhouses
1This phenomenon, which is pictured in detail on the map by P. Hanssen, appears
also, in the form of several large "packets" of population separated from the rest of
the valley, in the map of the population of Orisons which accompanies the following
work: Ed. Bruckner, " Uber Karten der Volksdichte," Zeitschr. fur schweizerische
Slatistik, 1903; H. Zivier, Verteilung der Bevblkerung im bilndnerischen Oberrheingebiet
nach ihrer Dichte.

148

HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

with hay barns or stables attached or close by, and are situated
upon the flat stretches which are large enough and fertile
enough to allow cultivation. This is the case for the basins of

Pierre Hanssen

Fig. 71. The Dispersion of Habitations in a High Tributary Dale .
of the Sarine
Several houses of the Turbachthal, some with barns attached, others with barns
separate, but in scattered locations.
Gsteig, Lauenen, Gessenay, and even of Rougemont (see Figs.
70 and 71).
2 . In the second region, the habitations are gathered together
in little groups (hamlets) placed on narrow terraces, with a
center on the main road. These centers are composed almost.
exclusively of private houses or those of tradesmen and
merchants. This is observable in the region extending from
Chateau d'Oex to Montbovon.
3. The third region, which extends from Montbovon to
Gruyeres, has dwellings gathered in villages with all their
dependencies — barns, hay barns, stables. The fact that the
valley is very wide but is readily overflowed by the violent
floods of the Sarine explains the necessity for this arrange
ment. Different influences have fixed the site of the habitations.
There is a preference for the more sunny northern slope, and

UNPRODUCTIVE OCCUPATION OF THE SOIL 149
here the houses rise to a higher altitude than on the southern
side. They are built near springs, in the shelter of a curtain
of forest protecting them from avalanches and falling stones,
and, if possible, in the center of the property. They are
always built upon the better lands, that is, upon the alluvial
cones. Example: Les Moulins.
In the Fribourg valley, from La Tine to Gruyeres, this is
not so. There the valley is narrow, the bottom is dangerous,
the terraces are steep, and the habitations are necessarily
gathered together into villages where all advantages are
concentrated. The houses of these veritable little cities are
built of stone but still are often covered with shingles (Fig. 72),
while the isolated and uninhabited buildings are all entirely
of wood.
The sun, however, here claims all its rights and exercises
all its influence. The more sunny left bank is the more

Fig. 72.

Stone Houses of Grandvillard. in the Region of Villages
Without Isolated Habitations

Grandvillard is one of those large massed villages of Gruy£re in the valley of the
Sarine, which suddenly seem large and appear as real little cities. The houses are of
stone, with shingled roofs, which are extended over the entrances.
populated, so that everywhere, in the Pays d'En-Haut as in
Gruyeres, we find an orientation of the habitations toward the
south — toward the sun, which is the dominant factor in the

150

HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

question — and this is true even for the two rows of houses
forming a village street (Figs. 73 and 74).
Hermann Walser has studied the facts of the scattering
and grouping of habitations in a part of the Swiss plateau.1
The Bernese Mittelland is that part of the Swiss plain
which is comprised in the canton of Bern, between the Jura
and the Alps. In this region are isolated farmhouses {Einzel-
hofe) and villages {Dorfer). There are six natural regions: the
Seeland, the plateau of Frienisberg, highland Aargau, the
Emmenthal, the transverse valley of the Aar between Thun
and Bern, and the Bernese Uechtland.
The Seeland, which is the least elevated part of the Mittel
land, seems to have been colonized first. The lake of Bienne
distinctly separates two different regions of colonization.
On the north bank are situated very ancient villages with
narrow streets and stone houses {Gassendorfer). The south

Pierre Hanssen
Fig. 73. In the Region of Hamlets: a Type of Double Wooden House,
Placed to Face toward the South
Double wooden house, at the Frasse, near Chateau d'Oex, in the second region
[see page 148] of the upper valley of the Sarine.
shore of the lake has a different aspect. Bernese farmhouses,
with great roofs overhanging the building on four sides (Fig.
24, p. 87), are scattered over a region rich in meadows and
'Dr. Hermann Walser, " Dorfer und Einzelhofe zwischen Jura und Alpen im Kan-
ton Bern," Ncujahrs-Blatl der lillerarischen Gesellschaft Bern auf das Jahr tool.
Reviewed by Pierre Hanssen in La Geographie, December 15, 1902,

UNPRODUCTIVE OCCUPATION OF THE SOIL 151
woodlands. All along this shore, where formerly were at least
eight lacustrian villages, we see to-day only two or three small
hamlets. South of the lake of Bienne we enter a second

Pierre Hanssen
Fig. 74. Line of Scattered Houses Facing the South
Near Gessenay (Saane), in the upper region of the Sarine, the houses turn their
backs to the street in order to take advantage of the sunshine of mid-day.
depression, which is that of the Grand-Marais. This region is
characterized by the organization of its villages. Around
each village stretch meadows, potato fields, and vast grain
fields. The meadows and the fields are arranged in long,
narrow strips. The long house is the prevailing type, with
its widely overhanging thatched roof sheltering the dwelling-
house, the barn, and the stable. It is further to be noted
how much trouble is taken to preserve in the new tile roofs
the old form of the thatched roof.
The plateau of Frienisberg shows all the intermediary forms
between the isolated farmhouse and the village of average size.
Villages of about ten farmhouses are the most frequent ; groups
of from four to eight villages form a commune. Their name
and their site indicate an ancient colonization. The wide,
uncultivated valley extends from Fraubrunnen to Burgdorf,

152 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
a valley which in its principal features resembles the Grand-
Marais. We find here groups of two villages so near together
that it must be admitted that one grew up by colonization
upon the edge of the other. These are double villages {Doppel-
dbrfer) such as Riidlingen, Alchenfluh, Fraubrunnen, etc.
Highland Aargau can be divided into two parts: (a) To the
north extends a great plateau crossed by two large valleys.
Where the valleys cross each other there are often small plains
which furnish the sites of numerous villages, {b) To the south
extends a rocky region furrowed by a large number of small
valleys where isolated farmhouses predominate. Nowhere
in the canton of Bern is there a more marked contrast between
grouped and scattered habitations. Everywhere we find the
ancient house of wood; almost all the isolated farmhouses are
still roofed with thatch, while in the villages at the present
time the tile roof predominates.
The Emmenthal, interrupted by countless small valleys,
is the most uniform and the most characteristic region of
isolated farmhouses in Switzerland. However, where the
valleys have widened out sufficiently, a certain number of
villages have been established and they might be grouped in
three categories: (a) The very small villages, which are
villages only in a certain sense, since they hardly correspond
to the idea of a rural organization. They are situated in the
very restricted flat bottoms of certain lateral valleys. Here
are built the church, surrounded by a few houses, the priest's
house, the school, a store, an inn, and sometimes also a few
farmhouses. These villages are nothing else than the center
of a commune with the public buildings which meet the needs
of the district. They are like the Kirchorte of Westphalia
and the Kirkepladser of Norway, {b) A second group of
villages are the Schachendorfer. The Schachen (formerly
communal pasture grounds) are the level and dried-up bottoms
of certain wider valleys which were exposed to frequent floods.
Old and new houses, small and large farm buildings, numerous
small estates, houses of workmen, etc., form the mixed whole
of the Schachendorfer. {c) Finally we have in the Emmen
thal a certain number of true villages such as Riiderswyl,
Ranfluh, etc.

UNPRODUCTIVE OCCUPATION OF THE SOIL 153
The transverse valley of the Aar, between Thun and Bern,
is a valley where villages predominate. But here and
there may be noted a few small islands of isolated farm
houses, as for example on the Belpberg and on the plateau
near Blumenstein.
The Bernese Uechtland, like the Emmenthal, is a region of
active erosion, dissected by numerous valleys. High plateaus,
however, are more numerous here than in the Emmenthal.
The principal valley is the Schwarzenwasserthal, which, like
the others, resembles a sort of canyon. The Uechtland is
the second great region of isolated farmhouses of the Bernese
Mittelland. To sum up, the region of the north, that which is more
unbroken and which is situated at the lowest level, is the zone
of the Mittelland where the system of villages predominates,
while the great tableland of the south, cut in all directions by
narrow and deep valleys, constitutes the domain of isolated
farms. On the other hand we find a mingling of these two
types on the plateau of Frienisberg, in the Uechtland, and in
the wide valley of the Aar between Thun and Bern.1
Let us take still another example somewhat farther away
and involving a larger area. The contrast between the
sparsely populated highlands of Scotland, and the lowlands
where the average density reaches 337 inhabitants per square
mile (130 ~per square kilometer), is well known. Sixty-five
per cent of the inhabitants occupy 30 per cent of the total area.
The different counties of Scotland have a density of population
which varies from 10 to 1,080 inhabitants per square mile
(4 to 417 per square kilometer). Apropos of each of the three
great divisions, Southern Uplands, Highlands, and Lowlands,
P. Privat-Deschanel investigates, analyzes, and shows in
detail not only the irregularity of distribution of the inhabitants
but also the different geographical causes, natural and human,
upon which all these great facts of population depend.2
'See also, Everhard Schmidt, Die Siedelungen des nordschweizerischen Jura, Wester-
mann, Braunschweig, 1909; and some interesting generalities in F. Nussbaum, Die
Taler der Schweizeralpen, Eine geographische Studie, Bern, 1910, pp. 106-112.
2 See Paul Privat-Deschanel, who published in the Bulletin de la Societe de geo
graphic de Lyon a study of the distribution of the population in Scotland, translated in
full in the Scottish Geographical Magazine, November, 1902, pp. 577-587, under the title:
"The Influence of Geography on the Distribution of the Population of Scotland."
10

154 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
We might enumerate and examine critically all the attempts
that have been made to represent the exact distribution of
population graphically or through maps. Only by an examina
tion of the actual conditions of concentration or of dispersed
population can we reach true conclusions. But where does
concentration begin? Logically and strictly speaking, are
there any isolated houses, Einzelhofe? There are only houses
more or less separated. Consult in particular the valuable
article by Olinto Marinelli on the distinction between con
centrated population and scattered population.1
One must have struggled against the difficulties which are
met in trying to represent the facts of population graphically
in order to appreciate at their full value the labors and the
maps of Ravn or of Turquan, of Sprecher von Bernegg,2 etc.,
and, in a direction that lies nearer to our own critical interests,
a study like that of A. Hettner,3 or attempts like those of
Friedrich, A. Grund,4 or E. de Martonne.5
In the light of the simple examples, carefully localized, which
we have just given, it is easy to reach a conclusion such as
Behm has already formulated {Petermanns Mitt., Erganzungs-
heft, No. 35), and which Ratzel has taken up with so much
vigor: "The topographical map is the most exact and faithful
expression in ah its details of the distribution of population."6
10. Marinelli, "Sulla distinzione fra popolazione agglomerata e popolazione sparsa,
e sulla opportunity che nel prossimo Censimento e nelle relative publicazioni sia
considerata separatamente ciascuna localita abitata," VI Congresso Geografico
Italiano, Venice, 1907.
2For the numerous attempts made, especially in Germany, see the article by
B. Auerbach, "La Repartition geographique de la population sur le sol allemand,"
Ann. de geog., V, 1895-1896, pp. 59-71 and 469-482.
3A. Hettner, "Uber die bevolkerungstatistischen Grundkarten," Geog. Zeitschr.,
VI, 1900.
4Read in particular the whole chapter entitled "Die Siedelungsverhaltnisse der
Gegenwart," and the map showing the density of the population, on pp. 160 ff., in
A. Grund, "Die Veranderungen der Topographie im Wiener Walde und Wiener
Becken," Geog. Abhandlungen von Penck in Wien, VIII, Vol. I, Teubner, Leipzig, 1901.
^Recherches sur la distribution geographique de la population en Valachie, avec une
Uude critique sur les procedes de representation de la repartition de la population, Bucha
rest and Paris, 1903.
6One can conceive also how this positive way of visualizing the population allows
one to analyze and discover the true relationships between the phenomena of popula
tion and facts of the physical order. See the excellent "geological" studies of the
population of Sweden by Hoegbom, Ahlenius, and Per Stolpe, reviewed by Charles
Rabot in La Geographie, XI, i9°5, PP- 359-367, "La Distribution de la population
en Suede en fonction de la constitution geologique du sol." See also the studies of
human geography undertaken in Servia under the direction of the geologist and geog
rapher, Cvijic, and reviewed by Jovan Erdeljanovic in the Ann. de geog., XIV, 1905,
pp. 424-432, under the title, "Les Etudes de geographie humaine en pays serbe."

UNPRODUCTIVE OCCUPATION OF THE SOIL 155
Outside of large-scale topographical maps some very happy
attempts have been made, first to substitute natural areas for
conventional administrative areas and then to show the facts
of population by suitable colors and signs. Earlier represen
tations paid too little attention to the geographical reality.
In general, progress is shown by a tendency to abandon the
purely statistical representation and by a more or less success
ful effort toward showing definitely, with the aid of lines and
colors, the actual geographical reality.
It is none the less true that the principle formulated by
Ratzel is entirely sound. While the population of slight
density is by nature unequally distributed, a very dense
population tends to represent more and more the statistical
condition and loses more and more its specifically geographical
characteristics.1 3. The Limits of Human Establishments
It is important in every geographical question to consider
and fix limits : the snow line, limits of zones of vegetation, etc.
This js equally true for the facts of human distribution, which
must be limited as to latitude and altitude.
The highest Alpine villages in Switzerland are :
Altitude Number of
in Feet Inhabitants
Cresta  6,417 33
JuTTnear Cresta  6,998 24
Findelen (Valais), summer village  6,890
Chandolin  6,352 123
Lu (Miinsterthal) (Grisons)  6,293 59
Arosa2  6,207 1,071
Saint-Moritz3  6,024 1,368
Pierre Hanssen, in his study of the house in the upper valley
of the Sarine, has shown that the groups of permanent habita
tions, which are not found at altitudes higher than 2,600 feet
(800 meters) in Gruyere, reach 3,300 feet (1,000 meters) at
Gessenay, 4,900 (1,500 meters) at Gsteig, and even 5,400 (1,650
^Anthropogeographie, II, p. 240.
2Arosa owes its large number of inhabitants only to the fact that this village has
become an important resort. In 1888 Arosa had only 88 inhabitants.
8A11 these villages, with the exception of Findelen, are Kirchdorfer or Winter dcirfer,
in contrast to the ecarts — simple groups of permanent habitations. The importance
of these figures is rendered more significant by the fact that, in the Carpathians of
Wallachia, the average limit of habitations, permanent and isolated, is only between
3,300 and 6.600 feet (1,000 and 2,000 meters).

O. Marinelli
the Italian Alps
The picture does not include the entire village; a part of the agglomeration to the left is omitted. This
village, which has preserved very well the traditional character of the region, has not so many inhabitants
(860) as it appears. This is because the slavnli are mingled with the dwelling houses. Note to what degree
the cultivated areas also seem to blend, so to speak, with the houses. The church is modern.

UNPRODUCTIVE OCCUPATION OF THE SOIL 157
meters) in the high valleys of the affluents of the upper Sarine.
Along with permanent habitations we can and must consider
those more or less comfortable structures used only during
some weeks of the year, that is during the period of summer
pasturage. Otto Fluckiger has investigated the upper limit of temporary
habitations in Switzerland1 and finds it to be 8,152 feet
(2,485 meters) in the Val d'Anniviers.
It is to Olinto Marinelli that we owe the most suggestive
observations as to the limits of the different types of temporary
habitation (eastern Alps and particularly Venetia). His
results are so important that they are presented here somewhat
fully.2 He shows us that, if the house is the primary object
of observation, if it is sometimes the simplest and most barren
of the facts of human geography, yet in studying it we are
inevitably led to approach other series of connected facts,
and not only facts of circulation, but facts of cultivation or
of pastoral life.
Notnadism has been much more often studied in the steppes
and plateaus olAsia tha"hlii~the Alps'. And yet it is here just
as interesting if not more so. This Alpine nomadism is
intimately bound up with property (communal or private),
with the proximity of permanent habitation, and with pasture
lands, the area of which is infinitely more restricted than those
of the great steppes. The tents of the Asiatic nomads are
therefore replaced by constructions which, though stable, yet
always retain the character of temporary habitations. Under
this name Marinelli includes not only those structures inhabited
for a longer or shorter part of the year, but also those that
serve as a refuge for the cattle and a temporary storehouse
for hay, and whose location depends upon the distance from
the village — thatjSjjxppn the altitude.
Starting with the permanently inhabited village (Fig. 75,
p. 156) there is a gradual succession on the mountain sides
1Die obere Grenze der menschlichen Siedelungen in der Schweiz, abgeleitet auf Grund
der Verbreitung der Alphullen, Stampfli, Bern, 1906.
20. Marinelli, "Per lo studio delle abitazione temporanee nelle nostre Alpi," In
Alto, Cronaca della Soc. Alpina Friulana, A. XI, Udine, 1900; "Studi orografici nelle
Alpi orientali," Boll, della Soc. Geog. Italiana, VIII, IX, and X, Rome.igoa. See
also "Salita al Monte Cavallo." In Alto, XIII. 1902; Studi soprai hmiti allimetrici,
I, I limiti altimelrici in Comelico, Mem. geografiche, etc., G. Dainelh, Florence, 1907.

158 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
in the Alpine valleys of eastern Venetia (Carnic and Cadoric
Alps) of the following types of temporary habitations:
A. The stavoli (from Latin stabulum) , are very common in the
Carnic Alps, rarer in Cadore. They are constructions utilized
generally twice a year, in spring and in autumn, as a stopping-
place for the cattle for a longer or shorter period, when they
go up to and when they come down from the Alpine pasture.
In general the stavolo is composed of three parts, which
correspond to the dwelling-house, the stable, and the hay barn.
It is a single building, sometimes entirely of wood, but more
often with a base of masonry and almost always roofed with
shingles. B. The fenili, very common in Cadore but much rarer in
the Carnic Alps, are designed for storing hay temporarily
and are inhabited only during the haymaking season. In
general the fenil is built entirely of wood and roofed with
shingles and the bark of trees; sometimes it is raised above the
ground and rests upon wooden supports or a base of hard stone;
it has no windows, but the peculiar construction of the walls
allows the air to circulate freely. In fact, the walls are
generally made of trunks of trees roughly squared and roughly
joined (Fig. 22, p. 85).
C. The casere are designed for the preparation of milk prod
ucts and as a dwelling for the shepherds, or more exactly,
the armaillis, during the summer use of the high pasture
lands. Generally they are communal property. Each family
of the commune sends thither its cattle, the milk is handled in
common, and the products are divided among the owners of
the cattle in proportion to the number of cows and to their
yield of milk. The casere might be considered as cooperative
Alpine dairies.
The casera is a group of buildings in the center of the pasture;
it is composed of the casera proper and the logge or tettoie
(Figs. 76, 77).
a) The casera proper is usually in large part of masonry;
those entirely of wood are rare ; the roof is generally made of
shingles. Originally the casera seems to have consisted of a
single room which served for all purposes, but this primitive
simplicity has been maintained only in very rare cases,

UNPRODUCTIVE OCCUPATION OF THE SOIL 159

To-day the casera is almost always composed of three rooms
(or even four if it has two stories).
b) The logge or tettoie (sheds) are stables for sheltering the
cattle during the night. Very long and closed only on one side,

Fig. 76. A Type of Casera in the Italian Alps
they are in general of wood, rarely of masonry or dry stone;
the roof is always covered with shingles and has only a single
slope. When there are also sheep or goats, logge are not built for
these animals, but a simple inclosure is constructed (a palisade
or a wall of stone without mortar) .
D. The ricoveri belong in general to the region which is still
higher than that of the casere; they are not used exclusively
by the shepherds, but in nearly every case also by wood
cutters, hunters, and others. They fall into two categories:
a) The baite are small temporary buildings constructed
for some definite work (haymaking, making of charcoal,
etc.). They serve as a shelter for storing the wood used
for burning, or for storing charcoal or hay; often too, but
for some few nights at the most, shepherds and hunters
find a refuge there. The form of the baite varies, since in

160

HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

their construction an attempt is made to utilize as far as
possible natural conditions (a wall of rock or a cave-like
hollow) . The roof has in some cases two slopes and in others
but one; it is covered with the bark of trees, with branches
of fir, or with shingles.
b) The casoni, while serving aimost the same purposes as
the baite, are more stable. Generally they are shaped like
fenili, but they are of larger dimensions and the walls are
solid, with no cracks left for ventilation.
The casere are generally isolated. There are, however,
some exceptions, notably in the mountains of Belluno where

Fig. 77. A Type of Casera in the Comelico
In the illustration (Rinfreddo, in the Comelico, at an altitude of 6168 feet, 1880 m.),
we see (1) on the left the casera proper (the part with the extension is the kitchen,
while the more elevated portion consists of two stories, the store-room for cheese below
[zellei] , the herdsmen's dormitory above) ; and (2) in the middle of the illustration,
the sheds for the animals (logge).
three or four casere are grouped on a single pasture ground;
this is due to the fact that the pasture ground is parceled
out to several families. A similar fact may be observed in
the valley of the Resia and among the Slavs of the valleys of

UNPRODUCTIVE OCCUPATION OF THE SOIL 161
the Torre and of the Natisone, where the communal pasture
lands are ordinarily rented to a certain number of families
each of which has its own casera and handles its own milk
instead of handling it in common. All these casere, each
standing apart from the other, form an ensemble which gives
the impression of a primitive village ; and in the case of these
valleysit igjierm i ssible-to s^e^oLsunimerjdlLages-mrcontrast
with winter milages J&ermanent habitations).
Analogous facts may also "he observed in the valley of the
Gail and even in certain regions of Corsica.
By means of diagrams and detailed statistical tables, Mari
nelli shows in a clear and ingenious manner the distribution
and altitude of the types of habitation which characterize the
three zones of pasturage, namely: the -houses ofjthe villages,
which constitute the winter dwellings ; the jtavoli^ spring and
autumn dwellings ; and ^he_fjasere, suirmiex_-dwellings.;.and he
groups the eight regions of the territory which he has studied
in three categories : inner regions, middle regions, and outer or
pre- Alpine regions (Figs. 78, 79, 80).
He thus reaches the following conclusions which follow
naturally from these tables:
1. The zones become lower as they proceed from the inner
regions toward the outer.
2. In the pre-Alpine region the zone of the stavoli is much
restricted and that of the casere is at a very low altitude.
3 . The zone of the casere is cut in two by a wooded zone ; the
upper zone consists of the primitive pasture grounds, while the
pasture grounds of the lower zone are the result of deforestation.
4. The zone of the baite, which characterizes the meager
pasture grounds above the zone of the casere, rarely reaches, in
the pre-Alpine region, 6,560 feet (2,000 meters), while in the
Alps it sometimes exceeds 7,874 feet (2,400 meters).
For the Comelico, which belongs to the inmost and most
northern part of the high mountain region examined, Marinelli
notes the following facts :
The density is fairly great; it is 164 inhabitants per square
mile (63 per square kilometer) ; in all, in 1901, 9,300 inhabitants
were living upon 56.7 square miles (147 square kilometers).
But the zones of altitude are even there much lower, than in

Fig. 78. Diagram of the Distribution of Natural Regions
in That Part of the Eastern Alps Studied
by O. Marinelli
At the exact point where meet the boundaries of the three regions,
Cadore, northern Carnic Alps (Carnia Sett.), and central Carnic Alps
(Carnia Centr.), is the little city of San Stefano di Cadore; the Comelico
extends northwest from this point along the line separating the northern
Carnic Alps from the Cadore.
Olinto MarinelH's ingenious efforts to represent diagrammatically the result of his investiga
tions in altimetric limits merit the reproduction here of his diagrams. (Figs. 78 and 79.)

4 sq. miles
(10 km2)
t« Stavnli and fenili
dumber relative to 4 sq. miles
\1V km 2)
O" Permanent "habitations
Number relative to
04 sq. mllee (.1 km1*
(One habitation to 5
Inhabitants, accord Ing
to the census of .J 871}

Fig. 79.

Scheme of Distribution of the Various Types of Permanent or Temporary Habitation in a Group
of Natural Regions in the Oriental Alps as Diagrammed by O. Marinelli

The number of symbols for casere, stavoli, and fenili shows the number of these constructions in each 4 square miles (ro sq kms ) of
territory. The symbols for permanent habitations show the number to each .04 square mile (.1 sq. km.), with five inhabitants to each
habitation according to the census of 1871.

UNPRODUCTIVE OCCUPATION OF THE SOIL 163
other regions of the Alps. The houses of the highest village
reach exactly 4,583 feet and a fraction (1,397 meters).
Here are the exact altitudes of all the highest stavoli of the
Comelico, grouped according to their exposure:
Stavolo above Costalta  5,269 feet • — exposure to southeast
Stavolo above Masdavoi  4,924 feet — exposure to southeast
Stavolo above Lake Campo  4,672 feet — exposure to southeast
Stavolo above Dosoledo  4,836 feet — -exposure to southwest
Stavolo above Costalissoio  4,35° feet — ¦ exposure to southwest
Stavolo above Casamazzagno . . . 5,259 feet — exposure to south
Stavolo above Costa  5,177 feet — exposure to south
Stavolo above Vantadei (Danta) 4,721 feet — exposure to south
The limit of the casere of the Comelico varies from 5000
to 6000 feet:
Casera Coltrondo  6, 1 68 feet — exposure to south
Casera Silvella  5,994 feet — exposure to south
Casera Pian Minoldo  5,981 feet — exposure to south
Casera Melino  5, 600 feet — exposure to south
Casera Ajarnola  5,282 feet — exposure to east
Casera Selvapiana  5,105 feet — exposure to south
Marinelli has studied more especially 107 fenili of this
region and he thus sums up their altimetrical distribution:
8 fenili are found between 3,935 and 4,265 feet (1,200 and 1,300 meters)
6 fenili are found between 4,265 and 4,595 feet (1,300 and 1,400 meters)
25 fenili are found between 4,595 and 4,920 feet (1,400 and 1,500 meters)
23 fenili are found between 4,920 and 5,260 feet (1,500 and 1,600 meters)
21 fenili are found between 5,260 and 5,578 feet (1,600 and 1,700 meters)
17 fenili are found between 5,578 and 5,905 feet (1,700 and 1,800 meters)
7 fenili are found between 5,905 and 6,235 feet (1,800 and 1,900 meters)
As for the baite, two only have been observed — at 6,300
feet (1,920 meters) and at 6,783 feet (2,070 meters).
Marinelli then establishes other relations between the
habitations and some other facts for the entire section of the
eastern Alps under consideration:
1. The zone of permanent habitation corresponds to that
of certain fixed crops of which the type is maize.
2. The zone of the stavoli is devoted to a variety of crops,
a zone which ends with the cultivation of the potato.
3. The principal zone of the casere corresponds almost every
where to the zone where full-grown forest trees predominate.
4. The- upper zone of the casere coincides with the zone of
shrubs and small trees which is also the zone of glacial cirques
and morainic lakes.

164

HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

From the point of view of means of communication, the
lower zone is characterized by roads, the middle zone by mule
paths, that of the casere by the numerous paths followed by
the cattle, and the highest by still more indefinite footpaths.
However, the correspondence between the zones
and the phenomena cited does not imply so close a

m.SJ0O
8330 It

Scale = 1:115.000 for the height and 1:23,200 for the width
Fig. 8o. Diagram of the Altimetric Limits of the Forest and of Human
Facts in the Comelico (after O. Marinelli)
The space between the two outside curves is in proportion to the surface corre
sponding to each altimetric zone; it is divided into two parts, one covered with forest
and the other bare.
bond as one might think. Thus, to cite but a single
example, with the opening of a new road there is not always
a corresponding modification of the zone of permanent habi
tations. '
The presence of temporary habitations does not depend
alone upon altitude, but also upon geographical factors. A
rock which is a shelter from the wind, the neighborhood of
a spring, etc., play a part in the distribution.

UNPRODUCTIVE OCCUPATION OF THE SOIL 165
Besides the intelligent modification which man brings about
in pasture land with a view to its exploitation, he further
contributes to the diffusion of plants and the lower animals
by transporting species from the zone of permanent habitation
to the zone of the casere, or vice versa.
It is important to realize this bond which connects the house
with all other modes of human activity. To begin with_tke.
housejJiiejiJ;he road, ...then to proceed to the facts of plant.
and animal conquest or the facts of destructive exploitation,
is" to follow a convenient order of increasing complexity; but
this method of observation, far from establishing false boun
daries between these different orders of phenomena, by the
analysis of the first and most simple, brings us in touch with
all the other related phenomena.
The house in its very form undergoes the influence of man's
work, and many exact observations may be made analogous
to the following:
"While in certain large agricultural plains the granary
seems to crush the house by occupying three quarters of its
height, here [in the vine country] on the contrary the house
seems uplifted by the cellar."1
The hop-house in Franconia has ground floors of the height
of several stories for drying rooms.2
Other properly human elements act upon the location of
human establishments, and one cannot emphasize too fully the
part played by these human factors, historical, religious, etc.
An intense historical life maintains a city in an environment
which is geographically abnormal. Jerusalem no longer has
its vast aqueducts; the reservoir cafled "wells of Solomon" no
longer flows — it possesses but two little insignificant springs,
and the past of Jerusalem keeps there upon the harsh plateau
of Judea 40,000 inhabitants who have at their disposal only
the water of cisterns! Still further, a definite political interest
may create an entirely artificial establishment. Aden is in a
position which England jealously guards, in an environment so
inhospitable that all fresh water must be brought by sea.
iFrom Demangeon, "Le Kaiserstuhl" (Brisgau), Ann. de geog., March 15, 1902,
p. 152. 2See Louis Arque, "Les Cultivateurs de houblon en Franconie," La Science sociale,
23d year, December, 1908, pp. 217-328.

166 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
Finally there are cases where men, with deliberate purpose,
create a settlement in a new country precisely in order that there
may be no bonds with any earlier political interests. Although
great care was taken to realize all the best physical conditions,
relief, springs, vegetation, picturesqueness, ease of communica
tion with a port,1 etc., the Australian Confederation in choosing
in June, 1909, as a place for the new federal capital, the site
of Canberra on the Molonglo, created by decree the geographi
cal fact as one might fix by decree or by treaty an adminis
trative division.2
By the sudden and unexpected fact of the decision of the
King of England, Emperor of India, proclaimed at the time
of the Durbar celebration, December, 191 1, the capital of
English India is henceforth no longer Calcutta, and the old
city of Delhi has recovered its political primacy.
Our interest is more strongly attracted by less conspicuous
and more complex historical phenomena such as the following:
When conditions are unfavorable to an urban establishment
it seems that a more ingenious necessity and a more con
siderable human force are alone capable of overcoming the
difficulty. It is then no longer a village, but a city, which will
be the exception ; a slighter effort would not have succeeded.
iSee "The Capital of the Australian Commonwealth," Geog. Jour., March, 1910.
pp. 318-321, with three maps or charts; and J. Taylor, "The Evolution of a
Capital; A Physiographic Study of the Foundation of Canberra, Australia," Geog.
Jour., 1914, pp. 536-554.
2 To show to what an extent this establishment of the capital is an artificial and
carefully planned fact, we reproduce here the advertisement which the leading papers
of the various countries published in the second half of the year 191 1:
Contest of Plans
For the Capital City
of the
Australian Confederation
The government of the Australian Confederation requests the submission of plans
for the capital city of the Confederation, and the following prizes are offered:
For the plan given first place  £1750 $8,516.37
For the plan given second place  750 3,650.00
For the plan given third place  500 2^33 . 25
The conditions ruling the contest, as well as all information and details, plans
and instructions, may be obtained from the British Ambassador at Paris.
The plans will be received at the Department of the Interior, Melbourne (Aus
tralia), up to January 31, 1912. King O'M alley
Minister of State for the Interior
May 24, 1911 Australian Confederation

UNPRODUCTIVE OCCUPATION OF THE SOIL 167
Thus in the valley of Graisivaudan, obstructed and swept by
the floods of the Isere, groups of human beings have lodged
themselves upon the terraces and alluvial cones. One single
human group escapes the rule and that is the chief one, Gre
noble.1 Likewise along the Sarine, shut in by a canyon with
abrupt walls from the bridge of Thusy to Laupen, men have
not established themselves. Here we find an old castle, or a
watch tower, there an old monastery, here again houses grouped
about a quarry ; but in general the Sarine flows deserted. There
is a single exception and that is the chief city, Fribourg (ancient
iRaoul Blanchard, in a lecture on Dauphin^ given before the general assembly
of the Touring Club of France, December 3, 1911, said: "The appearance of that
great valley of the Isere, especially between the frontiers of Savoy and Grenoble,
where the cliffs of Chartreuse and the needle-like peaks of Belledonne tower close
above it, is one of the most characteristic features of Dauphine. On each side, are
steep walls which seem to defy ascent. At the bottom is an alluvial plain, from two
to three miles wide, through the middle of which meanders the dyked Isere. On the
banks are sloping heaps of debris fallen from the hillsides, or alluvial cones — flattened
by accumulations of material brought down by tributary streams. The level rises but
slightly, varying along the Isere from 600 feet (210 m.) down stream, to 800 feet
(250 m.) farther up; and thanks to this very slight elevation, a very mild temperature
can prevail, even in the heart of the mountain. The orientation, however, produces,
on one side and the other, a great variety of aptitudes. The right bank, exposed to
the southeast, that is, to the rays of a burning sun, forms, on the limestone flank
of Chartreuse, which protects it from cold, damp winds, a gigantic trellis. This is
the domain of fruit trees, of the vine, of the mulberry, the region of chateaux and of
pleasure houses. Large villages, scattered on the slopes of talus, follow each other
without a break, from Grenoble to the border of Savoy. The left bank, which looks
to the north and east, is less happily placed for agriculture; the slopes are wooded,
while cultivation is concentrated on the alluvial cones. But this bank is admirably
adapted to industry. There issue great torrents, descending from the snowy heights
of Belledonne, which by their volume and the steepness of their fall lend themselves
remarkably to the establishment of hydraulic factories. The "white coal," or the
utilization of the motive force of Alpine streams, had its birth on this side of Gresivau-
dan, and great paper and metal factories are installed at the mouths of the chief
affluents — at Pontcharra. Froges, Brignoud, Lancey, and Domene. The villages
established within their range, on the alluvial cones, are increased by a considerable
population of factory workers and tend to become cities. Finally, between the two
flanks, the low plain, still damp in spite of the drainage canals, lends itself admirably
to the cultivation of thirsty plants, formerly hemp, now tobacco. Thus this sub-
alpine depression presents a remarkable variety in its adaptability to agriculture and
to industry. It has also a commercial role, which is no less important. From that long
cleft emerge all the great Alpine routes, those which come down from the interior of
the chain, through upper Isere, Arc, Romanche, and upper Durance; those which 'ead
out of the mountains through the passes of Chambery and Annecy, low Isere, and
lower Durance. All these routes cross and connect with each other in this depression.
Here is the heart of the Alps. Through this valley the railroads have made their
way; here have grown up commercial cities — stopping places, and markets through
which the products of the mountain are exchanged for those from outside regions :
Gap and La Mure to the south, and Chambery and Albertville to the north. But
Grenoble is the most important of all. Situated at the junction of the Drac and the
Isere, commanding the routes from the Alps toward Lyons, it is the true capital of
the French Alps, and especially of the Alps of Dauphine — an industrial capital which
utilizes the products of the mountain in its glove factories and. cement works and
furnishes the hydraulic factories with turbines and pipes; a military capital which
guards the passes; an intellectual metropolis; finally, the point of departure for
tourists, who start from there for the conquest of great summits whose proud line
unrolls its snowy peaks above the valley." See also, by the same author, Grenoble,
Etude de giographie urbaine, Colin, Paris, 191 1, p. 162.

168 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
ford, then bridge, then burg built up at the point of passage).1
We hasten to add that many complex facts of the human
order have cooperated in these obscure, almost unconscious
choices of certain points as sites for cities. Ease of exchange
on the borderland of very unlike natural regions has, as it were,
given birth to lines of cities. Many examples might be cited
(see Fig. i.) In the Vosges, it is on the borderland between
the plain and the mountain that have been established the
markets, Raon-1'Etape, Senones, Gerardmer, Saulxures, Bus-
sang, etc., where from an early date cattle and products of
mountain industry have been exchanged for the grain and
the wool of the lowlands, and at a new turn of economic
evolution these markets very naturally have become active
little industrial centers.
In the United States, Denver and Pueblo, Colorado, have
grown up on the edge of plains near accessible pathways to
the high mountains, and have become not only distributing
centers for goods from or to the mountains, but industrial
centers dependent in part on raw materials from the mountains.
Along with the other conditions of situation and the question
of defense, etc., the economic activity of men and the principal
economic activity of each group play their part. For example,
men who spin, weave, and dye will establish themselves near
pure running water, as at Lyons, France, or Paterson, New
Jersey. A. Hettner even remarks justly that it is these
geographical factors, connected with a certain mode of eco
nomic activity, that are called upon to play the leading part in
iPaul Girardin has devoted to Fribourg a very remarkable study of human geog
raphy, the conclusion of which is as follows: " Three tunes in succession in the course
of the nineteenth century, Fribourg has almost been prevented from growing, or has
just escaped leaving parts of the city behind the others in development: the first
time was when it was a question of bridging the Sarine; the second time it was the
cutting of the ravines ; and the third time it was the difference in level between differ
ent parts of the city — a fact which in the Middle Ages did not press so heavily on
the city organism. Each time it was necessary to find some technical improvement
to surmount the obstacle, and in particular to have the courage to apply it. Each
of these obstacles was caused by nature; each of these problems was set by geography.
Human initiative solved or eluded them, one by one. There was here, however, a
strange turn of affairs, which brought it to pass that the influencing conditions—
which in the beginning determined the choice of the city's situation — have changed
their ir61e in the course of time, and have become restrictive, hindering either the growth
of the city or the uniting of its different quarters. It is man, in this struggle with
nature, who has had the last word. From the greatest of the Zaehringens to his
successors, it has been human wills that have created Fribourg, that have developed it,
and now maintain it." ("Fribourg et son site geographique, Etude de geographie
urbaine," Bui. Soc. neuchdleloise de geog., XX, 1909-1910, pp. 117-128 and 2 plates.)

UNPRODUCTIVE\OCCUPATION OF THE SOIL 169
the further development of the center of human establishment.1
It is proper to add that there is not a city or a road which
bears within itself alone all the reasons of its development.
From the moment of its existence, it shares in relations which
taken together hold the secret of its future. The more the
phenomenon grows, the more it is dependent upon its environ
ment, and this environment, of which the chief factor is the
ease and rapidity of communication, is always more or less
shaped or modified by human will.
5- THE URBAN AGGLOMERATION AND THE "CITY" ROAD. THE GREAT
CITY AND GREAT CITIES. BRIEF COMMENTS ON AN EXAMPLE
OF COMPARATIVE GEOGRAPHY: THE GREAT CITIES OF
THE WORLD ABOVE 4,900 FEET (l,500 METERS)
The concentration of habitations keeps pace with the con
centration of paths of communication. The larger a city, the
finer the network of roads which surround it. Inversely, the
more physical conditions favor the concentration of roads at
one point, the more possibilities of growth a city has. The
essential needs of the inhabitants demand for their satisfaction
a fine network of paths of communication. One must think,
for example, of what is consumed every day by an urban center
of two and a half million inhabitants like Paris and what must
be brought every day to its city markets, in order to com
prehend how much space is taken up in Parisian suburbs by
railroads, highways, or streets.2 This is even more notable in
the case of La Paz, whose 60,000 inhabitants are supplied
largely from a vast semi-arid plateau to the west and tropical val
leys to the east. Hundreds of mule trains daily enter its squares,
bringing barley and potatoes over scores of mountain trails.
JA. Hettner, "Die wirtschaftlichen Typen der Ansiedlungen,"* Geog. Zeitschr., VIII,
1902, p. 98.
2 Paris consumes annually, according to the calculations of D. Zolla, about
661,380,000 pounds (3,000,000 quintals) of wheat flour (D. Zolla, Le Ble et les
cerecles, p. 219). It consumes also 440,920,000 pounds (2,000,000 quintals) of meat,
100,970,680 pounds (458,000 quintals) of fish, etc. From the geographical point of
view, one should above all investigate and see by what material means these various
foodstuffs actually reach the city: 26,417,500 gallons (100,000,000 litres) of milk
through the system of lines from the west; 17,636,800 pounds (80,000 quintals) of fruit,
and vegetables by the railroad running from Paris to Arpajon; of the 1,789,000 sheep
brought to Paris in 1906, a million and a third of them came in on foot through the
gate of the rue d'AUemagne, etc. These figures are those of 1906, according to
Edouard Payen, " Comment s'alimente une grande ville," Rev. econ. internal., February
15-20, 1908, pp. 370-391. Great loads of coal come to Paris by the system of lines
to the north and especially by the canals of the north and the navigable Oise, etc.
11

170

HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

Scalp = 1:336,540
Fig. 8i. The Radial System of Roads About a Center
From Buena Vista Lake Quadrangle — Calif. U. S. G. S.
Great empires have always expressed themselves by roads:
the Roman Empire and the old empire of the Incas, as well as
the recent empire of Napoleon. Economic or political capitals
form the center of a "star" of roads; the phenomenon may be
verified on a large or small scale (see Fig. 81).

UNPRODUCTIVE OCCUPATION OF THE SOIL 171
In attaching roads to itself the city commands and main
tains them. While a simple trail like that followed by the small
caravan across the plains of Galilee in Figure 82 may be very

Jean Brunhes
Fig. 82. A Shifting Trail Across the Plains of Galilee
easily displaced, every great city, by becoming an almost
necessary point of arrival and departure, fixes roads at least
for a long time and gives a certain permanence to the main
directions successively adopted by more and more modern
types of paths of circulation.
A pass in the high mountains is naturally suggested as a road
by the general conditions of the relief. But if this pass does
become a road, it needs, in order to remain so, urban centers
which safeguard it and which, by exercising their influence
from afar, keep the road passing at this naturally favorable
point (Fig. 84).
Thejroad leads toward the urban center and depends upon
\i; but this constructed center ^ also depends upon the road.
The city creates t le road ; the road in its turn creates the city
or re-creates it —'¦¦ that is, displaces it or changes its form.
Sometimes the agglomeration slowly extends downward little

to

Jean Mournes
Fig. 83. The Ancient Little City of Cordes (France), Type of the City Perched on a Height and Illustrating
How the City Slowly Comes Down tiiic Slope by Erecting New Houses Along the Roads
Schools, factories, etc. are being built lower and lower down the hillside

UNPRODUCTIVE OCCUPATION OF THE SOIL 173
by little (see Fig. 83). Sometimes the phenomenon is more
complex and more radical in its consequences. Bergamo was
built as a fortress upon one of those eminences which form the
outposts of the Alps toward the Lombard Plain. Little by
little the city has, so to speak, come down the slopes, and
suburbs have grown up right and left at the foot of the fortified

! Insulinde. Busaon, FeVre et Hauaer, Parifl
Fig. 84. A Caravan from Kabul Crossing Khyber Pass
Peshawar and Kabul sustain the importance and value as a road
of Khyjber Pass, in the Sulaiman mountains, between the plain of
the Indus and Iran.
I
hill. Finally the railroad and the station were located between
the suburbs, in the plain in front of old Bergamo. The road
thus unites and concentrates around the station the new city
which, with its great central avenue and by the aspect of its
buildings, is going to give birth to a new Bergamo at the
foot of the olcl. The city of Quebec has already passed
through this cycie and the new city at the bas*e of the fortified
heights transcerf/ds the old (Fig. 85).
How many cities and villages have been controlled in their
plan by the road and by the waterway as well as by the
land road! (Figs. 86, 87.) The Rhine and its tributaries, the
Moselle and trli Lahn, cross the Rhenish plateau and flow
generally at the foot of steep slopes which extend from the
present river bads to the upper level of the old peneplain.
This arrangement of surface features, by consigning the

174

HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

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Fig. 85. The New Town of Quebec, Lying Along the Water Front at
the Base of the Precipitous Fortified Bluff, is the
Seat of Commerce
Jean Brunhes
Braunlage (Harz). Note how Visibly the Iv.uman Settlement
is Cutting into the Forest
UNPRODUCTIVE OCCUPATION OF THE SOIL 175

houses to the base of the slopes and to the line of contact
with the water courses, has multiplied such typical cases upon
the two banks (Fig. 88).
The village, representing a smaller effort at human establish
ment, is still more sensitive to the influence of the road than
is the small city; in many villages and hamlets the houses

Jean Brunhea
Fig. 87. St. Goar and St. Goarshausen, on the Banks of
I the Rhine
The houses- are aligned along the river-road, the villages or cities succeeding
each other along the banks.

are placed side by side along the route of travel. To this
characteristic '^arrangement the Germans give the name of
Str^iendazL. or.even of Gassendorf : road-village or street-
village. \
">"~Tlrere are m?iy examples of inhabited centers created by
the road.1 As V& consequence of the construction of the St.
Gotthard in Tef lin, a village, Lavorgo, grew up between Faido
and Giornico, raiile Dazio began to fall into decadence and
farther on theNttle port of Magadino, at the head of Lago
iThis fact of hunp.',i geography associated with human occupation may well be
called the "politicalpi^ad," giving to this word its etymological meaning from the
Greek word 7toXl. \tf we find constant relations connecting the house and the road,
it must be admitted fiat it is the urban center which is the concentrated and pre
eminent expression p/tthis connection.

176

HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

Maggiore, played henceforth only an insignificant part. At
the Red Sea mouth of the Suez Canal, Port Tewfik has been
built, while the older Suez has become a slowly dying city,
abandoned, dirty, and nauseating. In Fort Francis, Ontario,
the older town faces the Rainy River, the highway in the days
of the fur trade and in the later lumbering development.
The newer town has turned its back on the river and is
attached to the railroad which was built on the outskirts of
the original town.
In old cities it often happened that bridge and house were
so closely associated that the bridge was itself covered
with buildings. This was the case in old Paris (bridge, of
St. Michel) and
may still be
seenatFlorence
and at Kreuz-
nach1 (Fig. 89).
The large city
deserves to be
studied in itself
and for itself

as an excep
tionally impor
tant fact of
human estab-
hment. Meu-
bt has made
comparative
statistical study of the
The houses are lined along the two banks of the Lahn, betweeli °Teat Urban
the river and the foot of the -wooded slopes. f &agglomerations
of Europe.2 Under the direction of the economist, Bucher,
and with the collaboration of such men as Ratzel, a group of
'See also what has been said above of Medinet and the F;hyum, p. 129.
2P. Meuriot, Des Agglomerations urbaines dans I'Europle contemporaine, Belin,
Paris, 1897. See also Adna Ferrin Weber, The Growth of r'///Vt in the Nineteenth
Century, a Study in Statistics, New York and London, 189/9; and the chapter by
Georg von Mayr, "Die Bevolkerung der Grossstadte," in the\ volume Die Grossstadt,
cited below; also F. P. Gulliver, "Vienna as a Type City," 'Jour. School Geog., IV,
1900, pp. 175-179.

UNPRODUCTIVE OCCUPATION OF THE SOIL 177
suggestive studies has been published entitled : Die Grossstadt.1
These studies are not all equally geographical. The city,

Jean Brunhes

Fig. 89. The Old Built-up Bridge of Kreuznach
This part of the road, the bridge, literally carries the houses
like the village, the hamlet, or the house, must be treated as
a sort of natural being to which may be applied the methods of
comparison of the observational sciences. This comparison
must be applied to the whole as well as to the essential elements
which compose \the large agglomeration.
O. Schluter has made an effort to renew the tradition of
J. G. Kohl;2 he has even commented with keen interest
lDie Grossstadt, Vorlrage und Aufsatze zur Stiidteausstellung, by K. Bucher,
Friedrich Ratzel, Geoi,-g von Mayr, H. Waenting, Simmel, Th. Petermann, and
D. Schaefer, Gehe-Sttftung zu Dresden, Winter, 1902-1903, von Zahn und
Jaensch, Dresden, 1903.
Very detailed monographs have been written upon cities of the first rank such as
Paris and London, and i.heir progressive development has been analyzed with a remark
able attention to geog/raphical conditions. The Geographical Dictionary of Switzer
land, owing chiefly to the activity of the geographer, Knapp, contains a large number
of plans drawn by Borefl which show in different colors the successive zones of develop
ment of the largest cities. Finally, very many eminent observers and writers
have tried to describe! the physiognomy and the most expressive characteristics of
all the significant citiesj
2" Bemerkungen zurfSiedelungsgeographie," Geog. Zeitschr., V., 1899, pp. 65-84.

178 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
upon the studies of Stiibben and of J. Fritz.1 The principles
of grouping and classification should be more boldly and
further extended; in the second place, it is important that
geographers should remain always geographers rather than
statisticians or historians.
However, among the good works consecrated to the
geography of cities let us cite further a little book by Kurt
Hassert,2 and the remarkably illustrated article by Eugen
Oberhummer.3 The second is especially devoted to the study of city plans,
and it is in this article that the author makes the suggestion
— which he later caused to be adopted at the International
Geographical Congress at Geneva4 — that city plans should
be given a real geographical value by having them show,
also relief by means of curved lines or cross-hatching.5
Ratzel had shown particularly the part played by th^situa-
tion6 in the history of a city's development. Oberhummer
considered especially the plan_ of cities as projected on a
plane surface.7 Hassert described the city finally in its total
'"Uber den Grundriss der Stadte," Zeitschr. der Ges. filr Erdkunde zu Berlin,
XXXIV, 1899, pp. 446-462 and 10 plans.
2Kurt Hassert, Die Stadte, geographisch betrachtet, Teubner, Leipzig, 1907.
3E. Oberhummer, "Der Stadtplan, seine Entwickelung und seine geographische
Bedeutung," Verh. des XVI. deulschen Geographentages zu Nurnberg, 1007, D. Reimer
(E. Vohsen), Berlin, 1907, pp. 66-101 and 21 figures.
4E. Oberhummer, "Die Geographie der grossen Stadte," Compte rendu du
neuvieme Congres international de geographie, Geneve, 1008, published at Geneva, 1909,
pp. 464-466. -
6See a very good article by G. A. Hiieckel, "Les Plans de viUes instruments de
travail," Rev. scientifique, May, 1909, pp. 683-689. See also Ccamillo Sitte, L'Art
de bdtir les miles; Notes et reflexions d'un archilecte, translated and completed by
Camille Martin, Eggimann, Geneva, and Renouard, Paris; man;/1 small plans reduced.
6In a more detailed study it would be necessary to distinguish between and to
consider in turn the situation or general geographical position/^ and the situation or
local topographical position; the first might be (or become) .'excellent and the other
bad, or inversely. For the influence of situation on the destiny.- of a citv. see A. Vacher,
"Montlucon: Essai de geographie urbaine," A nn. de geog., X'TII, 1904, pp. 334~347.
and the monographs cited on pp. 178 and 179. *
7The comparison of the plans of cities, especially if one/ could put them in the
same scale, would suggest a very great number of historicall, economical, or social
observations. The great city of ancient times included garfclens, cultivated tracts,.
and scattered houses. Thus it is that, according to informati/on given by Herodotus
(I, 178), translated by Karl Bucher, we can understand that /ancient Babylon, witha
much smaller population, covered a surface equivalent to Uhat of Berlin to-day.
(Ratzel, "Die geographische Lage der grossen Stadte," in J Die Grossstadt, p. 37)-
See especially the remarkable article on urban geography bit Mark Jefferson, "The
Anthropography of Some Great Cities. A Study in Distribution of Population,"
Bull. Amer. Geog. Soc, Vol. XLI, September, 1909, pp. 537J-566. See also Arthur
Schneider, " Stadtumf ange in Altertum und Gegcnwart," -CJeog. Zeitschr., I, 1895,
pp. 676-678, (

UNPRODUCTIVE OCCUPATION OF THE SOIL 179
physiognomy, which comes in large part from the style of its
houses, from the silhouette of its monuments on the horizon,
in short, from the hcighfof its constructed parts. These then
are the three essential factors which cooperate in making the
city a geographical phenomenon. These are evidently not
the only factors, but they are the chief ones.
It is first of all a duty of geography, as Hettner well says,
to describe human establishments in their economic role, in their
dimensions, their form, their geographical situation, their plan
of construction, in the materials of which they are built (let us add,
especially, the form and character of their roofs with their gutters,
chimneys, etc.), and in their other peculiarities; and it is chiefly a
duty of general or comparative geography to compare the estab
lishments of different countries from these points of view and to seek
the causes of their diversity (or of their resemblance).1 -
Merely by their position, cities may belong to the same type.
For instance, at the extremity of the lakes of Zurich, of Lucerne,
of Thun, and of Geneva, and astride the water course which
is the outlet of each of these lakes, are Zurich, Lucerne, Thun,
and Geneva.
He who looks at three cities of the Mediterranean coast,
such as Ventimiglia, Menton, and Antibes, cannot fail to be
struck by their "relationship." But these analogies are found
even between cities which are far distant from each other.
Luxemburg, which rises above the intrenched valley of the
Alzette, resembles Fribourg (Switzerland), proudly perched
upon a promontory of the canyon of the Sarine, almost as
much as Fribourg resembles Bern (which had the same founder)
and more than it resembles other Swiss cities of analogous
situation, such as Aarburg or Burgdorf.
Cities which do not resemble each other in their exterior
appearance can still express in an analogous manner certain
necessities to which they are subjected.
When a settlement is restricted as the result of either natural
or human causes, the house rises in height; the stories are
piled upon each other. In a small oasis of the Ziban (South
Algeria) surrounded on all sides by the precious palms which
1A Hettner, "Die Lage der menschlichen Ansiedelungen," Geog. Zeitschr., I, 1895,
p. 361. This interest in comparison has been met by expositions of city plans, such
as that which was held at Zurich in the spring of 191 1, or the magnificent exposition,
La Transformation de Paris sous le second Empire, organized in 1910 by the Service
historique de la ville de Paris.

Fig. 90. In the Restricted City the House Rises in Height: Pont-en-Royans

iNGuraein

The Vercors is a large calcareous plateau, undulating and with steep ledges, with very narrow valleys. It is moderately
populated; the little cities are naturally situated in the valleys; hemmed in between the river and the nearly vertical
slope, the houses are necessarily several stories higher.

UNPRODUCTIVE OCCUPATION OF THE SOIL 181
they are loath to sacrifice, the houses of dried earth boldly
risk two and three stories (Lichana), just as in the Spanish
city of Cadiz, shut in by the sea at the extremity of its penin
sula, the houses rise very high. At Lyons, at Genoa, etc., we
see the same effect. Again, a simple river, the Bourne, skirting
the steep bluffs of Vercors, obliges the house of Pont-en-Royans
to rise up straight above the water (Fig. 90) . And colossal New
York, where land is limited and costly, holds the record for
steel "skyscrapers," buildings which reach nearly 700 feet
(213 meters) in height. Even in sections of the city devoted
to dwellings, apartment houses holding many families range
from six to ten or twelve stories in height. So characteristic is
this layered arrangement of homes in New York that, in order
to attract the attention of possible buyers in the upper stories,
display signs are placed on the tops as well as the sides of the
delivery wagons of milk dealers, bakers, and other merchants.
There are cities which so resemble each other in their
essential elements that they form a sort of family. Venice,
Amsterdam, Danzig, etc. , are cities built on or near the water.
They have the common characteristic of being, canal cities; and
they certainly deserve to be grouped together and compared
(Figs. 91, 92, 93). The great advantage of such a grouping
based upon essential qualities is that we can compare these
perfect and homogeneous types with small portions of other
cities which have similar geographical features (Strassburg
with its little corner Klein Frankreich, Hamburg, Bruges,
Metz, etc., see Fig. 94).
Likewise, cities in different parts of the world have the
common characteristic of being created in a factitious manner,
so to speak, with a view to housing inhabitants who are only
transient, cities which have at the same time needs that are
very compelling even if intermittent ; such are the hotel cities :
Zermatt, Interlaken, Territet, Le Mont Dore, Atlantic City,
Palm Beach, etc.
Cities built to meet the same political purpose and reflecting
similar points of view and tastes are often strikingly alike even
in details. A. Metin has well caught and expressed the
similar aspect of English cities in India.1
*A. Metin, L'Inde d'aujourd'hui, pp. 178-180.

182

HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

From the military cantonment to the "residence" of the capital
of a native prince, from the smallest chief town of a district to
Bombay and Calcutta, all the English cities are of the same type;

Jean Brunhes
Fig. 91. A Canal City: The Situation of Venice in the Middle of
the Lagoon
This perspective allows the whole of the situation (see p. 184) to be observed; we
can distinguish the S of the Canal Grande, in the background the bridge of the
railroad which unites the city built on piles with the mainland, and in the foreground
the little islands of the Giudecca and of San Giorgio Maggiore. A child, noticing the
outline of this illustration, said: "the fish city."
only the dimensions change. The Englishman never dwells in the
, native city — he even affects to despise it. The wives of officials
who have been in the country for several years claim that they have
never entered the Indian quarters, under the pretext that they have
nothing interesting to offer or that they are too dirty. Tradition
obliges the English staff, civil or military, to reside in villas sur
rounded by gardens and strung along the wide avenues bordered by
trees which make of the English city an immense labyrinth without
other landmarks than the church steeples. It seems that they have
wished to realize the dream of William Morris, of dwellings lost in
verdure and separated from each other by lawns and parks. The
English quarter is almost always so far away from the native quarter
that the one cannot be seen from the other. An immense space
is required for the avenues and the gardens. Lahore and Madras
have an area almost equal to that of Paris, and nine-tenths of
it, like the fashionable sections of English cities, is occupied by
the small British colony, while the enormous native population is

UNPRODUCTIVE OCCUPATION OF THE SOIL 183

Scale = 1:70,000
Fig. 92. A Very Large Canal City: The Plan of Amsterdam
Arrangement of the built-up portions and of the ways of communication in this
huge city conquered from the water in the midst of cultivated fields likewise gained
by human effort (polders). From sheet 23, Amsterdam, of the official Dutch map, 1:50,000

184

HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

concentrated upon a space of some acres in the overcrowded houses
and the narrow streets of the old city. The ports of Bombay and
Calcutta have in their center a business quarter, a sort of "city"
analogous to the city of London, which is the ancient company
"fort." But here are found only offices occupied during the day;
when evening comes all the English are to be found in their country
houses. The mountain stations where the high officials and people of
leisure take refuge during the hot season, especially _ Simla, the
summer residence of the Viceroy, attract a public similar to that
of fashionable watering-places or seashore resorts. The women

Copyright by Underwood & Underwood. N.Y.
Fig. 93. The Grand Canal, Venice. Circulation in a City of Canals
The Grand Canal is one of the 150 canals or water streets of Venice. Means of
circulation are the specially adapted boats (gondolas).
particularly resort to them, leaving their husbands to continue their
civil or military duties in the burning plains.
There is another modern type of city, the great manufac
turing town, and this type must be boldly charged to the

UNPRODUCTIVE OCCUPATION OF THE SOIL 185

accouat_oljxial — not that it rises on the site of the coal
field, but the logical place for its study is after the geographical
facts which are the result of the exploitation of this mineral.
This type of
city will thus
receive further
consideration. (See chapter
V, §4.)
The countries
which have no
coal and which
neverthelesshave become
industrial are
almost unac
quainted with
this type of
agglomeration. In the north
ern part of
Italy, for ex
ample, the fac
tories are scattered everywhere, near little railroad stations,
in the open country; they are close neighbors of the almond
and mulberry trees ; here and there they seem to be scattered
over the wheat and maize fields. This distribution of indus
trial Hfe is far removed from that concentration which has
particularly marked the beginnings of the coal era, and which
remains the genuine echo of it. It indicates on the contrary
rather what industrial geography may more and more become
as the exclusive reign of coal dies out.
These modern industrial cities have an ugliness that is
often misinterpreted and charged to causes which are not
responsible for it.
What more monotonous and vulgar than the huge factories
of our large and populous cities ! A given factory of Warsaw
resembles the factories of Cologne as well as those of Roubaix
and Birmingham. We hastily build vast barracks of some
12

Fig. 94. A Canal of the Old City of Bruges

186 . HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
cheap material like bricks, and we give little attention to the
architecture. That is why brick has had to serve in building modern
industrial cities ; but why blame it for the vulgarity of our own
tastes? We have compromised brick and we should like to
make it bear the blame for the disgrace which we have imposed
upon it. Of all materials of construction it is the one that
adapts itself most easily to all our conceptions, to all our
fantasies; it has an incomparable flexibility, and if it is less
capable than marble or wood of giving a certain air of grandeur
or coquetry to structures inspired by no lofty or delicate idea,
it is ever ready to reflect sincerely and eloquently all noble
ideas and all ingenious thoughts. Without going back to the
Assyrians, recall such striking and beautiful brick structures
as the following: the caissons of the Basilica of Constantine or
the Baths of Caracalla of Rome, the Giralda of Seville, the
Roman Basilica of Saint-Sernin at Toulouse, the Gothic
churches of Belgium or those of Liibeck, a wing of the Chateau
of Versailles (Louis XIII), the Chateau of Blois, the inclosure
walls of the Kremlin at Moscow, etc.
The use of brick as well as of concrete is becoming gen
eral. Both lend themselves to forms of great variety and
meet the sometimes contradictory demands of different
regions. They make it possible even to revive types which
are disappearing and revive them without servile copying.
They will maintain, if we wish, in the house and in the city
their geographic originality while safeguarding their artistic
value. The Great Cities of the World Situated above 5,000 Feet
(1,500 Meters)
We should further group city phenomena according to other
similarities. We might, for example, compare the conditions
of the large dties-of—the .world situated above 5,000 feet
' (1,500 meters).1
In general in the countries of temperate Europe, human
1 Louis Gobet made a study of this kind; unfortunately he was able only to for
mulate the question in a general article in tho Rev. de Fribourg (January - February,
1913); at least from Rime of his pages and notes one can understand in what spirit
the subject should be approached and what a remarkable study in comparative
geography might be drawn from it.

UNPRODUCTIVE OCCUPATION OF THE SOIL 187
establishments become more and more sporadic and the
population less and less dense as we rise in altitude. Ratzel
insisted upon this rarefaction in high altitudes1 and cited the
typical example of the distribution of population in vertical
zones in the Erzgebirge:2
3,300-3,600 feet  15 inhabitants = 10.00 per square mile
3,000-3,300 feet  1,507 inhabitants = 146.20 per square mile
2,700-3,000 feet  6,440 inhabitants = 135.50 per square mile
2,400-2,700 feet  31,293 inhabitants = 113.20 per square mile
2,100-2,400 feet  63,291 inhabitants = 238.48 per square mile
1,800-2,100 feet  138,534 inhabitants = 334.89 per square mile
1,500-1,800 feet  172,190 inhabitants= 318.25 per square mile
1,200-1,500 feet  281,362 inhabitants= 496.01 per square mile
900-1,200 feet  512,346 inhabitants = 1,269.02 per square mile
In Switzerland, which is the country of Europe that has
the highest average altitude, this altimetric or vertical distribu
tion is verified; in 1888, only 5 per cent of the total population
were living above 3,300 feet (1,000 meters), and even in a
canton in the midst of the mountains such as Valais, 44 per
cent only were above this limit. The canton of Grisons alone,
which comprises, it is true, the upper valleys of the Rhine and
the upper valley of the Inn (Engadine) , has more than half of
its population above 3,300 feet (1,000 meters) . The altitudinal
distribution of the population of the canton of the Grisons,
based, as always, upon the distribution of dwellings and
dwelling groups, is as follows:3
Zone of Altitude Percentage of the Population
of Grisons
Up to 900 feet  1.6
900-1,800 feet  20.7
1,800-2,700 feet  19.8
2,700-3,600 feet  18.4
3,600-4,500 feet  21.6
4.500-5,400 feet  14.0
Above 5,400 feet  3.9
Not even one-fifth of the habitations in Grisons are situated
above 5,000 feet (1,500 meters).
'But the contrary may be found to be true in tropical mountains and plateaus.
See pp. 189-196.
2Ratzel, Anthropogeographie, II, p. 210, and in general, chapter VII, pp. 209-222.
3Pierre Clerget, "Le Peuplement de la Suisse, Etude de geographie humaine,"
Bull, de la Societe royale beige de geographie, 1906, No. 2, reprinted with additions
in his book La Suisse au XXe siecle. Etude economique et sociale, Armand Colin,
Paris, 1908. See, from another point of view, R. v. Schlagintweit, "Uber den Ein-
fluss der Hohe auf den menschlichen Organismus," Zeitschr. der Ges. fur Erdkunde zu
Berlin, I, 1866, pp. 332-342.

188 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
At still higher altitudes, man treads vast snow fields and
glaciers, and the tourist finds no other shelter than the isolated
huts of the Alpine Club. Yet at the same altitudes in
certain other parts of the globe, conspicuously in the tropics,
are very dense groups of population and even important cities.
Whereas the lofty plateaus in Europe have a restraining
influence on human establishments, it is the high plateaus in
other regions that have become the rallying points.
Consider the great plateau of Abyssinia in Africa: where
are the chief cities? They are situated thus:
Harrar at  6,089 feet
Adua at  6,398 feet
Gondar " at . . 7T. V . . . 7,447 feet
Adis-Abeba at  7,953 feet
Ankober at  8,530 feet
The populated zone is almost entirely between 6,000 and
8,500 feet in altitude.
If we cross the Red Sea to Arabia we find in the Yemen a
city, Sana, situated at 7,054 feet (2,150 meters). The plateau
of Iran offers us still more characteristic facts: Teheran, the
capital of Persia, is situated at 3,707 feet (1,130 meters) and
has 280,000 inhabitants; Hamadan, the ancient Ecbatana,
shelters 35,000 inhabitants at 5,905 feet (1,800 meters);
Ispahan at 5,200 feet (1,585 meters), has 90,000 inhabitants;
and Kabul, one of the keys of India, which has nearly 150,000
inhabitants, is at about 5,905 feet (1,800 meters) altitude.
Let us take next the classic country of the great lamaseries.
Going down the valley of the Tsang Po, we find the city of
Shigatze, which has a considerable commerce with India; it
is situated at 12,861 feet (3,920 meters). A little lower is the
capital, Lhasa, with its huge convents inhabited by 20,000
Buddhist priests, and the famous Buddha- La (Fig. 95); it is
situated at 11,647 feet (3,550 meters), that is at an altitude
which surpasses that of any peak of the Pyrenees. Gyangtse
is at 13,123 feet (4,000 meters) and Phari at 14,272 feet
(4,350 meters).1
But the New World, extraordinary from so many points of
view, will astonish us still more. Over a strip of land several
JSee the study by J. Sion, "Le Tibet meridional," Ann. de glog., January 15,
1907, p. 36.

UNPRODUCTIVE OCCUPATION OF THE SOIL 189
thousand miles in length, extending from Mexico to Chile,
we find that the populated zone remains constantly in the high
regions. With the exception of a few ports on the Pacific, the
most considerable cities are nearly always found above 6,500
feet (2,000 meters). The city of Mexico is situated at 7,730
feet (2,356 meters) and has a population of more than 470,000
inhabitants. On this same plateau is a series of cities, such
as Leon, San Luis Potosi, Guadalajara, Puebla, all of which
have from 60,000 to 100,000 inhabitants.
The same facts are repeated on the other side of the Isthmus
of Panama. In Colombia, Bogota, with a population of more

Photo sent by the Geographical Society of Petrograd
and engraving kindly loaned by H. Busson

Fig. 95. The Buddha- La of Lhasa, at an Altitude of More
than 11.500 Feet (3,500 Meters)
Mountain of Buddha (near Lhasa) on which are built the temples,
palace and residence of the Dalai Lama.
than 120,000 inhabitants, lies at an altitude of 8,678 feet
(2,645 meters), and many cities with a population varying
from 10,000, to 20,000 are found on plateaus between heights
of 5,906 feet (1,800 meters) and 9,842 feet (3,000 meters).
Toward the south the interior plateaus of the Andes rise
in height and the cities follow the same upward march :
Altitude Population
Ibarra  7,293 feet  10,000 inhabitants
Quito  9,350 feet  70,000 inhabitants
Cuenca  8,464 feet  50,000 inhabitants
Loja  7,283 feet  10,000 inhabitants
In Peru the most inhabited zone lies between 4,900 feet
(1,500 meters) and 11,500 feet (3,500 meters) altitude and most

190 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
of the cities are found above an altitude of 6,560 feet (2,000
meters) : Altitude
Arequipa, with 35,000 inhabitants. . . 7,874 feet
Cuzco, with 15,000 inhabitants. . .10,499 feet
Sicuani, the paradise of Peru  11,588 feet
Oroya  11 ,926 feet
Puno  12,664 feet
Crucero  12,959 feet
Finally, Cerro de Pasco, with 13,000 inhabitants, is at
14,270 feet (4,350 meters), more than a half mile above the
timber line.
Let us close with Bolivia, where the Andes spread out and
form a vast plateau: Population Altitude
Cochabamba  30,000 inhabitants  8,399 fee*
Sucre  29,000 inhabitants  8,858 feet
La Paz  100,000 inhabitants  12,139 feet
Oruro  22,000 inhabitants  12,188 feet
Potosi  29,000 inhabitants  13,123 feet
Huanchaca, which is growing in importance. . . 13,452 feet
What gives these facts their particular value is that we are
not dealing with a few habitations lost in the midst of snows
or mosses and which would serve to shelter man only for some
months of the year, but rather with flourishing cities whose
population runs from 20,000 to 100,000 inhabitants and in
certain cases reaches 450,000. This distribution of population
is not a fleeting fact due to a chance circumstance. The high
plateaus of which we are speaking have seen brilliant civiliza
tions, which have disappeared in part to-day, it is true, but
to the development of which certain monuments still bear
witness. (The Aztecs in Mexico, the Medes and Persians in
the Iran, the Quichua and the Aymara in Bolivia, and Peru
'under the rule of the Incas.)
Finally, as if to make the contrast still more striking, the
region below 4,900 feet (1,500 meters) in altitude is, in general,
very moderately populated.
What can be the cause of facts so contrary to those which
we observe in European regions? Why has man withdrawn
from the lower plain? Could it be perhaps the impossibility
of finding upon an ungrateful and arid soil the resources neces
sary for his existence? No, that is generally not the case. In

UNPRODUCTIVE OCCUPATION OF THE SOIL -191
most of these countries, almost all within or near the tropics,
a hot sun combined with abundant rains favors an exuberant
vegetation, and men can harvest almost without cultivation.
Banana, cacao, coconut, vanilla trees and manioc bushes
crowd the lower land. Man would find here material for
lodging, food, and clothing, and yet none of these regions con
tains population groups of noteworthy density. Man has fled
these plains where fever reigns eternally. Because of the loca
tion at or near the equator and the abundance of the rainfall,
the temperature of a hothouse prevails, a moist and unhealthful
heat, favorable doubtless to plant life, but almost invariably
fatal to the European and dangerous even for the native.
In the tierras calientes of Mexico, of Central America, and of
Venezuela people succumb to the attacks of fever, of the
vomito negro. Vera Cruz, on the Gulf of Mexico, was long so
unhealthful that the Mexicans themselves have called it Ciu-
dad de los muertos ("City of the Dead")- The same dangers
are found in Peru, where the coast region is unhealthful; in
Arabia and in the Iran, where the regions along the coast are
haunted by cholera; in the Abyssinian kolla, where the depths
of the valleys are so filled with miasma that the inhabitants
of the high plateaus do not descend below 3,200 feet (1,000
meters) during the rainy season.1
Driven from the plain, men sought in these countries more
favorable regions ; they had only to go higher up the mountain
sides or to penetrate into the high plateaus of the interior
to find abundant resources and a pure and healthful air.
In Mexico, leaving the hot and unhealthful lands of the coast,
man had before him the temperate and the cold lands where the
temperature is remarkably favorable. On these plateaus, more
than 6,500 feet (2,000 meters) in elevation, the mean tem
perature for the year is 140 C. (570 F.); variations from one
season to the other are much less marked here than in our own
regions. The air is in general keen, dry, and salubrious ; where
water is not lacking the vegetation is rich. Here the greater
part of the population lives and here, as we have seen, are
found the most important cities.
JExactly the opposite reason has prevented population of the southern coast of
Peru and the northern part of Chile: the dryness of the air has made this region a
desert.

192 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
We find identical facts in South America. The city of
Popayan, in Colombia, situated at 5,900 feet (1,930 meters)
altitude, has a mean temperature of 170 C. (630 F.) Higher
still, at 8,330 feet (2,540 meters), the city of Santa Rosa de los
Osos, built on a plateau exposed to all winds, enjoys a mean
temperature of 140 C. (570 F.) and a perfect salubrity. "No
one dies here except of old age or by his own hand," according
to a local saying. Quito, at about 9,350 feet (2,850 meters),
but on the equator, has an almost constant mean temperature
of from 130 C. (560 F.) to 150 C. (590 P.). The cities of Abys
sinia, situated in the voina-dega or the dega, that is, at more
than 6,550 feet (2,000 meters), have mean temperatures that
do not remain below 140 C. (570 F.).
Great as its influence may be, however, climate cannot
in itself explain the peopling of high regions; men must have
found there resources permitting them to subsist and to
develop. The products of the temperate regions of Europe
are here found along with those of the south or equatorial
regions, and this is the case for the greater part of the countries
we have just noted.
If we penetrate to the high plateau of Mexico, at an altitude
at which the Alps, subject to a polar temperature, produce
hardly anything but mosses and Alpine plants, we see fields
Iof barley, of wheat, of maize the stalks of which reach a height
of 9 to 13 feet (3 or 4 meters); sugar cane is also found and
the galm tree grows in the gardens of Mexico.
In Colombia the banana tree and sugar cane are found to an
altitude of 6,500 feet (2,000 meters); higher still are fields of
wheat, barley, and potatoes. Bogota, situated at 8,530 feet
(2,600 meters), on a plateau where trees are both scattered
and poor, is surrounded by vast stretches which lend themselves
to grazing and to the cultivation of cereals; the same thing
is true on the high Andean plateaus of Ecuador, Peru, and
Bolivia. On the Amazon slopes, because rain is more
abundant there, the city of Tarma, situated at 10,007 feet
(3,050 meters), has fields of coffee and sugar cane; Jauja and
Huancayo at 11,150 feet (3,400 meters) gather abundant
harvests of fruit and vegetables; finally Sicuani, at 11,500 feet
(3,500 meters), one of the privileged and famous sections

UNPRODUCTIVE OCCUPATION OF THE SOIL 193
of Peru, has broad fields of maize and numerous orchards.
The voina-dega of Abyssinia produces plants of the Mediter
ranean region : olive and lemon trees, the vine, maize, etc. ; and
up to 8,200 feet (2,500 meters) tropical plants as well: cotton,
coffee, etc.; the dega, above 8,200 feet (2,500 meters), has pas
ture lands which feed large herds.
But there are inhabited regions higher still. In Peru and
Bolivia, in particular, populations have grouped themselves at
amazingly high altitudes. Thus La Paz, which has 100,000
inhabitants, and Oruro, which has 22,000, are situated above
12,000 feet (3,700 meters). Cuzco is at 10,500 feet (3,200
meters) and has 15,000 inhabitants. Potosi is at 13,100 feet
(4,000 meters); it has to-day only 29,000 inhabitants, but at
the time of the great mining operations there were as many
as 150,000. Let us cite in closing, Cerro de Pasco, which has
13,000 inhabitants and is situated at 14,275 feet (4,350 meters).
No peak of Jtha. Bernese- Al-ps 'is so high.
At these altitudes the mountaineers contract diseases caused
by the rarefaction of the air and the lack of oxygen. Almost
all visitors who go up to Cerro de Pasco or to some other city
of the high plateaus are attacked by the soroche, or mountain
sickness, which seems to affect them in a different manner and
with greater or less severity in different regions.
"Whatever precautions are taken in white families," says
a traveler, ' ' out of three children born at Potosi scarcely more
than one survives beyond a few hours and is brought up with
much difficulty. Those who reach man's estate would have
been athletes in other countries and these chosen specimens
at Potosi are able to form only a puny and stunted
population."1 The water of the Puna de Atacama is almost everywhere
salt ; there is no drinkable water except in small streams before
they come out of the mountains and in springs often 30 miles
apart (50 kilometers). The climate is dry and rather cold; the
temperature goes down almost below freezing during the night,
even in summer. On the other hand, the sun is burning hot.
The winter season lasts from June to August, the summer from
December to February. According to a series of observations
'Reclus, Giog. univers., XVIII, p. 681.

194 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
at Cochinoca (11,483 feet, 3,500 meters, altitude) the mean
barometric pressure would be 19 inches (491 millimeters). In
spite of this extreme rarefaction of the air the Indians of the
high plateaus are capable of doing heavy work. On the other
hand, newcomers suffer from oppression and palpitation of the
heart at the slightest exercise.1
Even the high Bolivian plateau or altiplanicie, which is
situated farther north, is strangely poverty-stricken. "Here
and there are clusters of wretched-looking mud huts thatched
with straw and set down upon a cold, semiarid, treeless plain.
Moss and dry resinous bushes, of which the tola is the most
numerous, are used as fuel, besides dry llama dung (called
taquia) which is collected in the stone corrals of the mountain
shepherds. Only the potato will mature. Barley and corn
will not ripen, though they are raised in favorable sections for
winter forage. ' '2
These regions are relatively little inhabited:
Bolivia has only 3.38 inhabitants per square mile
Peru has only 6.6 inhabitants per square mile
Ecuador has only 17.0 inhabitants per square mile
Colombia has only 1 1.5 inhabitants per square mile
If we compare these figures with those furnished by certain
countries of Europe or even North America, such as the high
plateaus of Mexico, for example, we shall be forced to confess
that these Andean republics are desert countries.
It is true that these low figures admit of some further
explanation. It is to be noted first of all that there are here
vast uninhabitable stretches, such as the chains of the Andes
and even certain lower regions of the costa and of the montana,
too marshy or too woody.
It is certain, on the other hand, that it is not toward these
high plateaus that the flood of European emigration turns in
spite of the mineral riches which might attract adventurers.
This is a very natural fact which we should find elsewhere.
California, for example, in spite of an admirable climate and
1Dr. L. Laloy, " Ethnographie du haut plateau argentin." La Geographie, XXI,
1910, p. 172, after one of the volumes of the Mission scientifique, G de Crequi-
Montfort and E. Senechal de la Grange: Eric Boman, Anliquites de la region andine de
la Republique Argentine et du desert d'Atacama, II, Le Soudier, Paris, 1908, 557 pages,
1 map, 51 plates, and 45 figures in the text.
2A- Dereims, "Le Haut Plateau de Bolivie," Ann. de giog., XVI, 1907, p. 357-

UNPRODUCTIVE OCCUPATION OF THE SOIL 195
a fertile soil, receives a much smaller number of immigrants
than regions situated east of the Rocky Mountains. In South
America the vast plains of Brazil and the Argentine Republic,
which are rich regions and easy of access, can still receive
millions of immigrants before they will be obliged to cross the
Andes and install themselves among the high plateaus where
they are, so to speak, separated from the rest of the world in
spite of new roads. It is no small labor to fling railroads up
mountain sides and across heights of from 9,800 feet (3,000
meters) to 13,000 feet (4,000 meters). One must reckon with
the scarcity of water and the difficulty of all labor in such high
altitudes. Engineers can do wonders if they are well supplied
with capital, but after the road is built the bills must be paid.
Man can conquer even the heights, but he wins at a price.
Our boasted conquest of nature is after all a conditional
conquest. The Antofagasta-Oruro line over Chilian and Bolivian ter
ritory crosses the desert of Atacama and reaches an altitude
of more than 13,000 feet (4,000 meters). The Callao-Lima-
Oroya-Cerro de Pasco line, opened on September 28, 1892, has
63 tunnels and in a distance of 86.9 miles (140 kilometers)
rises to 12,220 feet (3,725 meters); at three points it goes
above 13,000 feet (4,000 meters) in altitude and reaches the
highest elevation of any railroad on the globe: 15,663 feet
(4,774 meters). The new Duran-Quito line reaches 13,451
feet (4,100 meters) and the Mollendo-Puno line, 14,580 feet
(4,444 meters).1
Here as everywhere the way of communication accompanies
the city. To the paradoxical city corresponds the almost
paradoxical railroad. But here true "roads" are still more
rare than "houses," and all future economic development can
result only from a multiplication of the roads.2 Now to raise
ten tons to a height of 13,000 feet (4,000 meters) demands the
same expenditure of coal or electrical energy in Andean America
as in the Dauphine or in the Engadine, and this so painful
*In connection with the great transandine routes, we recall that in 1910 they had
completed and opened to traffic the Buenos Aires- Valparaiso line, the highest altitude
of which is at 10,486 feet (3,196 meters) above sea level (Scottish Geog. Mag., XXVI,
1910, p. 39).
2See the conclusions of the article already quoted, by A. Dereims, Ann. de giog.,
XVI, 1907, pp. 358-359-

196 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
and costly a task of circulation will in itself very rigidly limit
the development of these very remarkable agglomerations in
high altitudes.
6. URBAN CIRCULATION AND THE FORTIFICATION. A FEATURE OF THE
PHYSIOGNOMY AND GEOGRAPHY OF CITIES: THE "BOULEVARD" AS A
FACT OF URBAN GEOGRAPHY
There is doubtless no human fact which has more quickly
and powerfully changed "the face of the earth" than the
recent and prodigious growth of cities. Let us look at the
reality more closely ; it is not a simple modification in appear
ance — it is a profound, a topographical modification, which
turns aside streams, fills up depressions, levels reliefs, etc.1
Now what we have said of the necessity of grouping the
material surface facts (which compose the large agglomeration)
according to their analogies, we may say likewise of the parts
which form this whole. That the reader may clearly under
stand our meaning let us try to detach one of these urban facts
and show the interest that a comparative study of it might
have. The city street deserves to be regarded as a geographical
fact as well as the road proper.2 F. Ratzel, in the second
1See, for example, Hugo Hassinger, "fiber einige Aufgaben der Geographie der
Grossstadte, mit besonderer Berucksichtigung Wiens," Geog. J ahresbericht aus Osler-
reich, VII. On the other hand, Etienne Clouzot groups some typical facts as follows:
'" Made land' and excavations have, in all regions, softened the relief of the soil 
The continual paving of streets and avenues has everywhere raised the level of the ground
a little . . . At Paris, the island of the Cite, which, according to P. Dupuy's
expression, forms a breakwater in the middle of the Seine, has throughout its whole
expanse been built up from 22 to 26 feet (7 to 8 meters). At Boston, of the three hills
on which the primitive locality of Trimountain was established, there remain only
two. Beacon Hill was leveled in 1795, to give place for the State House. The same
is true of many water courses, small or great, such as the Flon at Lausanne: they
disappear. Rivers have been turned from their courses, canals have been dug to
conduct water through the city; then, when abuse or indiscriminate dumping reduced
them to the rank of mere sewers, ingenuity was taxed to turn them back to their origi
nal course, to cover or do away with them. At Cairo, the Kaligh. diverted from the
Nile and still in sight a few years ago, has totally disappeared to-day. At Paris, the
Bievre, conducted in the twelfth century to the neighborhood of the Place Mauberl, in
the fifteenth century reduced to the elevation of the wine market, and at the end of
the seventeenth century restored to its original mouth not far from the Austerlitz
bridge, has just been completely covered over and wiped off the map as a Parisian
river. At London, the Fleet River is now nothing but a memory. Was it not but
a short time ago that the Paillon at Xice was hidden from view, and at Paris a part
of the canal Saint-Martin?" (E. Clouzot, " Le Problcme de la formation des villes,"
La Geographie, XX, 1909, p. 174). See also Mark Jefferson, "How American Cities
Grow," Bull. Am. Geog. Soc, January, 1915.
2We have taken great pains never to separate the "urban road" from the road
with no qualifying word at all, and that since the first glance at "The material
characteristics of the street and the road" (sec above, sec. 2, and especially Fig. 42>
p. in).

UNPRODUCTIVE OCCUPATION OF THE SOIL 197
volume of his Anthropogeographie, has devoted an entire
chapter, a chapter both geographical and philosophical, to
Wege (roads) j1 what Ratzel has done for extra-urban roads
which connect population groups may be attempted also
for urban "roads." The multiplicity, the regularity, and a
certain physiognomy of streets correspond to different stages
in the development of civilization. In the same way a definite
differentiation is the sign of a progressive evolution; the
carrefour (crossroads), for example, is a type of urban "space,"
a passing intermediary between the street proper and the
square proper, which tends inevitably to disappear.
Then, too, even the most modern cities, and older cities
with all the more reason, are lacking in space set apart for
the ever-increasing needs of circulation. There is no longer
room enough for the excessive movement of individual or
collective vehicles ; the streets are too narrow. Just as human
dwellings have been placed above each other, that is, just
as the house has multiplied its stories in cities of restricted
area, so do paths of circulation tend toward superposition, one
above the other. Thus have arisen subterranean or elevated
roads (New York, London, Paris, Berlin, etc.). The streets
of the future will doubtless consist of several stories. Even
to-day the basements of some New York stores near large
subway stations have been extended to the subterranean road
so that the subway traveler may here and there look into:
well-lighted exhibition windows, underground drug stores, and'
small shops of many different kinds.2
The great railroad systems penetrate as far as possible into
the cities in close touch with the electric cars and the urban
railroads. All these are problems which have a geographical
aspect.3 What a truly geographical picture is that of the small and
large streets in a typical city, such as Genoa, which has hardly
1 Anthropogeographie, II, chap. XVI, pp. 525-526; and I (2d edition, 1899), passim,
especially p. 129.
2 Ellsworth Huntington, "The Water Barriers of New York City," Geog. Rev., II,
1916, pp. 169-188.
3See, for example, Ernst Egerer, "Die Entwickelung der stadtischen Personen-
verkehrsmittel," Deutsche geog. Blatter, XXIX, 1906, pp. 154-176); and a good
chapter on "Les Moyens de transport urbain," in the 5th series of the Mecanisme dela
vie moderne, by Vicomte dAvenel (Colin, Paris).

198

HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

had room to grow and none to change ! What an abundance
of small passages between the tall houses and what an abun
dance of varied names to designate their different kinds: via,
street; vico, alley; vico chiuso, blind alley; salita, a little steep
path; scaletta, little street in the form of a stairway; corso,
courtyard; mura, rampart.1
In a large number of cities in Italy, Spain, France, Switzer
land, Greece, etc., which are grouped upon heights or around
heights, we find real stairways, covered or uncovered, or
streets in the form of stairways; in the Mediterranean countries
this is particularly frequent, as at San Remo, at Genoa, at
Naples, at Gir-
genti (Fig. 96), at
Jerusalem, and
at Algiers. In
the cities of the
Middle Ages the
street was rarely
rectilinear and
the houses along
the street rarely
in a straight line;
cities of which
certain quarters
have kept their
ancient character
still furnish a liv-
ing witness to
this: Toledo and
Cordova, Blois
andMorlaix.Bru-
ges and Ghent,
Nuremberg and
Ratisbon, etc.
In the way of example we shall merely call attention to the
special characteristics of those roads which, in most cities in
France, are called boulevards.

Fig. 96.

Jean Brunhes
A Street of Stairs at Girgenti (Ancient
Agrigente, Sicily)
These streets of stairs are accessible even to loaded
animals, as can be seen by the mule which is completing
the ascent of the steps.

¦See, on the names given to the principal streets of various large or small cities, an
article in the Austrian review, Zeitschr. fur Schul-Geographie, by L. G. Ricek,
"Strassen," XXIX, 1908, pp. 371-377.

UNPRODUCTIVE OCCUPATION OF THE SOIL 199
The "Boulevard," "Avenue," "Paseo," "Anlage," "Corso,"
etc. (in French, English, Spanish, German, Italian, etc.), that
is, the broader city street often planted with trees, is a charac
teristic: (a) of entirely modern cities recently built (see in
particular the plans of American and Australian cities, of
Johannesburg, and even of cities somewhat less recent such
as Berlin, Odessa, Petrograd) ; or {b) of the newly built parts
of old cities (the new sections of Cairo, Barcelona, Brussels,
etc.). In the largest cities of to-day there is an ever-growing
need of laying out and reserving, in the monotonous checker
board of streets cutting each other at right angles, some
broader ways which become the main arteries of circulation.1
But the "Boulevard," "Avenue," "Anlage," etc., although
always of recent creation, may be of more ancient origin and
may have therefore a richer historical meaning and more
interesting geographical characteristics.
If we glance, for example, at a map of Paris, we are struck
by the circular plan of that line of boulevards girdling the city
which runs from the Bastille and the old Saint Antoine gate
to the old gates of Saint Denis and of Richelieu: it is simply
a plan of a part of the wall of Paris under Louis XIV.2
In fact, the "boulevard" represents very often the only part
of ancient cities which, without too much demolition, could
be changed into a broader street or series of streets; that is,
it represents the line of ancient ramparts. These features of
course often reproduce inexactly the ancient outlines of the
fortification; the angles, the characteristic zigzags of certain
types of ramparts, have disappeared to give place to a less
complicated, less broken general direction ; but these boulevards
as a whole emphasize in a new form essential traits of a past
that has vanished (Moscow, Cracow, Prague with its Graben,
Vienna with its Ring, Milan, Trent, Bruges, Namur, Cologne,
'George G. Chisholm, the eminent English geographer, has stated: "It ir. how
ever, interesting to note that in ancient times cities were built with broad, rectilinear
streets. The Roman colonies were built on the model of the Roman camps. An
English city such as Chichester still bears, in this respect, the Romau imprint, although
it was not really a 'colony.' Some Greek colonies of Asia Minor have the same
characteristics." 2See the plan of Paris a I'avenement de Louis XIV, d'apres Gomboust, 1652, and
other plans of Paris at various epochs, such as Paul Dupuy has successfully brought
together for comparison in the Atlas Vidal-Lablache, Maps 466 and 46c. See also
the article by Paul Dupuy, "Le Sol et la croissance de Paris," Ann. de giog., IX, pp,
340-358.

200

HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

Saragossa, etc.). In France there are abundant examples of
large and small cities which to-day have boulevards on the sites
of their ancient ramparts: Amiens, Rouen, Chartres, Dijon,
Auxerre, Montlugon, etc. We shall call attention particularly,
as showing this geographical fact in a distinctive manner, to
the little city of Brive (Fig. 97) and to that of Beaune.
An important characteristic of the city is the fortification
which shows itself by walls and by the hollows of canals.
What is the fortification but the contrary of the road,, the

zoom.

Fig. 97. Brive (France); The Belt of Shaded Boulevards on the
Site of the Ancient Ramparts
Type of boulevard of historical character, the design of which preserves a former
feature of urban physiognomy, that of the fortifications.
geographical expression of the struggle against circulation?
An urban center, because, of this inevitable bond between its
construction and the paths of communication, must be rich in

UNPRODUCTIVE OCCUPATION OF THE SOIL 201

ways of approach, and in so far as it profits from such abundance
it is obliged to protect itself against the dangers of possible
invasion and surrounds itself with works of defense.
The most unpretentious facts of circulation on the earth

Jean Brunhes
Fig. 98. At Chateau d'Oex. A Fence Made of Split Rails Driven into
the Ground and Crossed
This very pretty type of fence was photographed in the mountains of Switzerland,
and is quite common in Swiss and Austrian alpine regions ; by its character it belongs
to_ the geographic nature of forest zones, and it even uses up so much wood that in cer
tain districts in Austria there is a movement to replace these natural and geographic
fences by barriers of other materials.
are accompanied by other unpretentious facts of defense
against "invasions" of circulation; pastures, fields, or gardens
are inclosed with fences or walls. These fences or walls
might be studied, from the geographical point* of view (Figs.
98, 99), in their mode of construction and their distribution
just as we must study the most striking and colossal "con
tradictions" of circulation: the Great Wall of China or those
walls of several miles in length in the south of Russia on the
banks of the Dnieper {Smievy Vali, [ramparts of the serpent],
Veliki Vol, etc.), the entire collection of old cities surrounded
by walls and notably those which are still in existence, cities
dead yet still alive, marvelously preserved jewels such as
13

202

HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

Fig. 99. The Walls Which Inclose the Gardens of Damascus
In the magnificent oasis of Damascus, the wood of the fruit trees is too valuable to
be used in making fences; instead broken stone from the cones and from the terraces
of the seven-armed Barada River furnished the essential elements for a sort of concrete
out of which are made the large slabs that are used in building the protecting garden
walls.

Jean Bn
Fig. 100. Gates, Walls, and Towers of Old Aigues-Mortes
What gives special interest to this city, the walls of which are so perfectly preserved,
is that inside or in the shadow of these walls and towers still live some hundreds or
thousands of inhabitants. The city is nearly dead, like a museum specimen, but in
the center of all these masses of stone, now without use or reason, life endures, though
reduced and diminished.

UNPRODUCTIVE OCCUPATION OF THE SOIL 203
Aigues-Mortes or the old city of Carcassonne (Figs, ioo and
ioi), and finally the fortified castles of former times and
the strongholds of to-day.
We might undertake, in the same spirit,- a critical geographi
cal comparison between the numerous castles of France.

Fig. ioi. A City Dead Yet Alive: An Exceptional Type of Fortifications
for Defense against Circulation. Plan of the City of
Carcassonne, by Michel Jordy
A thousand inhabitants still live inside the walls, where the castle and the great
church of Saint Nazaire are located. The wall is double : the line of the interior wall
is 3,609 feet (1,100 meters) in length; the exterior wall is 4,921 feet (1,500 meters).
Between the two there is a protected and continuous circulation zone called "lists":
"upper lists" and "lower lists"; in reality the two walls and the lists constitute a sort
of city apart, completely separated from the interior city, and equipped to house and
feed all the defenders (bake-houses, store-houses for food, etc.) At each ,gate are
various defensive works. It is a real museum of the art of fortification, of which
certain parts go back tothe era of the Romans, of the Visigoths t>r of the Arabs, while
others belong to the feudal or royal era. Here, one over the other, are the traces of
more than a thousand years of history (from the first centuries of our era to Saint
Louis and Philip the Bold in the 13th century.)
According to their purpose and their date, each has taken
advantage of certain natural facts, isolated heights, terminal
tongues of lava flows, edges of plateaus, marshes or water
courses, etc. Instead of examining the existing or ruined
castles from the historical or artistic point of view, as has often
been done, it would be interesting to introduce into this type

204

HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

of questions a principle of coordination that would be properly
geographical. For this purpose, France, with its long historic
past and the astonishing geological and geographical variety

Jean Brunhes
Fig. 102. Types of Elemental Agglomeration at the Foot and in the
Shadow of a Castle: Sailhans (Dept. of Cantal)
On the spur of basalt attached to the plateau of Planeze (arrondissement of Saint-
Flour) , stands an old castle which has been recently rebuilt and enlarged. A village
of some houses has grown up at the foot of the short but steep slope, so well adapted
and as if predestined for the establishment of a defensive post. Other houses, like
those shown here, and even a little more numerous, border the foot of the rock on the
other side.
There are several other places of the game type at the end of lava-flows in the heights of the Auvergne
Mts.; see M. Boul and L. Fargeg, Dept. of Cantal. Guide for the Tourist. Naturalist and Archaeologist, Fans,
Masson, 316 p.. 85 illustrations and 2 maps in color.
of its soil, would offer a field and a material of high value.
Such researches would have an import all the more general
because many villages and cities have sprung up or developed
later in the shelter of and sometimes literally in the shadow
of a castle1 (Fig. 102).
We have just thrown in purposely a sort of parenthesis in
order to show once more how timely and how rich in results
would be the study of the phenomena of human geography
*On the complex, varied, and continuous r61e played bv the chateaux, see E.
Clouzot, "Le Probleme de la formation des villes," La Geographie, XX, 1909, PP-
170-171, as well as Camille Jullian, "Les Villes fortes de la Gaule romaine," Journal
des savants, February, 1908, pp. 72-79. See also A. Vacher, " Montlucon: Essai de
geographie urbaine," Ann. de gtog., XIII, 1904, pp. 121-137 and Plates V and VI.

UNPRODUCTIVE OCCUPATION OF THE SOIL 205
from their embryonic to their developed forms. The divisions
in categories founded upon dimensions are much less instructive
than "organic" divisions. If in the city the great fence of
the rampart is bound to the road which it is destined to keep
watch over or even to oppose, Fig. 98 shows also how the
rudimentary fence and the smallest road, the path, are already
associated. Let us return to the relations between the city fortification
and circulation.
It will be interesting to study the historic type of boulevards
in different countries. In Germany the types representing the
different stages of the change seem exceptionally varied and
numerous. First of all, certain German cities, like the cities just men
tioned, have visible traces of their ancient ramparts shown in
the modern city by a belt of wide streets. At Dresden the
ancient zone of fortifications is to-day marked by bands of
great streets in two parallel lines. From this circular zone,
running from the center toward the circumference, radiate
broad, straight streets — Wettiner Strasse, Prager Strasse,
Grunaer Strasse, etc. — boulevards with no historic value —
which, diverging from one another with geometrical regularity,
stretch away to those new sections where the street is planned
before building begins, where the street precedes the house.
Dresden is then a good specimen of an ordinary type which
is frequently met with outside of Germany. But there are
many other German cities which, from our present point of
view, are rather original. It should, moreover, be noted that
in general the name boulevard does not exist in Germany.
This is rather a curious fact, for the word is of Germanic origin,
and in its etymological meaning, bollwerk, recalls the historical
genesis of this geographical feature of modern cities.1
In German cities on the site of the ramparts we find but
rarely a street, properly so called, extending between two
rows of houses as at Dresden ; but we find rather a promenade
which often bears the name of Anlage or of Promenade; some
times, but much less often, the name of this promenade is
'It is for this very reason that it seems well to us to adopt it as a general term,
covering all the different terms which serve to designate the same fact.

206 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
Avenue, the name more particularly used in English or Ameri
can cities. Finally, it sometimes happens that transformed
parts of the ramparts have kept the name of Graben.1
But where the phenomenon becomes more typical as a
geographical fact is this: The promenade remains often at
the level of the ancient patrol road, o, 13, or 16 feet (3, 4,
or 5 meters) above the city which it surrounds. At Liibeck
and at Stargard in Pomerania, for example, the former ram
parts have not been leveled and the Wallstrassen dominate
these cities. At Gottingen the ramparts form a promenade,
a celebrated "walk" near which is seen the house in which
Bismarck lived as a student.
At other times the moat, if not the embankment, of the
ancient fortifications has been preserved. This moat exists
more or less entire at Ratisbon, at Nuremberg, etc.; it is,
moreover, accompanied by a road which follows it sometimes
on the side toward the city, sometimes on the other side.
Finally, the physiognomy of this type of "boulevard" is
completed by walls, when they have been preserved, as at
Nuremberg. It is seen that this type approaches very
closely to the ancient ramparts themselves, but it is already
a "boulevard." If the type were more perfect — if, for
example, instead of being dry and occupied by the market
gardens at Nuremberg, the moat were still filled with water
like the famous Graben of the Oker, at Brunswick, and
if there were no recent transformation for the sake of traffic—
we could hardly speak of a new kind of road. We should
have before us the ancient historic city, carefully preserved;
we should no longer have to do with the boulevard, but with
a rampart, and that would belong rather to the geography of
fortification.2

'So it is at Frankfurt-am-Main: a little skating pond is called Bechner Graben.
The ramparts of Frankfort have been replaced by Anlagen which follow the ancient
angular design of the walls; and the old ramparts develop in proportion as there are
places where remains of them still exist with vestiges of old moats before them.
Similar observations could be made about many of the cities of German Switzerland.
2If one could go into great detail, one would take pains to distinguish between the
cities which have long since spread beyond the boundary of their encircling walls and
those which are still shut up within that circle, like Brunswick (following the
example of Aigues-Mortes and of Carcassonne; it is, in fact, a question of examining
two quite different cases: the deliberate change of the ramparts, accompanied by that
desire which people have to-day to preserve ancient things, and the natural trans
formation, such as took place at a period when no care of that sort was exercised,

UNPRODUCTIVE OCCUPATION OF THE SOIL 207

We have said enough to indicate the fundamental difference
between the two types of boulevard : the type which is generally
rectilinear and the type usually winding or more or less com-
pktely^^cataiv: Certain cities which are without parks will perhaps have
the unexpected good fortune to obtain air, trees, and open

PUTfflUX

Fig. 103. The Plan of the Future Belt of Parks in Paris on the Site of
the Present Fortifications and Military Zone
spaces by the transformation of their belt of fortifications.
Paris is much less rich in public gardens than London;1 but
an imposing project, practical and beneficent, plans to trans
form the zone of fortifications and part of the military zone
into a chaplet of playgrounds and parks, eleven in all, four
of which are to be of large size (Fig. 103). If Paris some
day receives this magnificent and peaceful halo of green she
will owe it to the material precautions and guarantees which,
through long years, threats of siege and invasion have forced
her to take.
'See on this subject Eug. Henard, "Etudes sur les transformations de Paris,"
brochure 3, Les Grandes Espaces libres; les pares et les jardins de Paris et de Londres,
H. Champion, Paris, 1903, reviewed and in part reproduced in La Geographie, IX,
1904, pp. 197-204.

208 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
7. THE GENERAL GEOGRAPHY OF CIRCULATION
Through these several lines of approach we are brought
once more to the general geography of circulation. This
phase of human geography has certainly received the fullest
and best treatment. It is besides the core of economic
geography, which hitherto has received more attention as a
whole than human geography. Hence we need note here only
its cardinal points.
Can and must all economic facts touching on circulation,
including even cost of transportation, commercial treaties, and
free ports, be connected with the geography of circulation?
And yet there is a method of studying, from the geographical
point of view, even such complex problems as the international
use of transalpine routes of travel and trade.1 Geographers
cannot forego their special part in such discussions nor their
own particular interpretation of the physical and economic
facts which are connected with the establishment of roads
with greater or less gradients, the boring of great tunnels,
the choice of certain routes.
If it is a question of maritime circulation, the decisive
predominance of the commerce of the Atlantic Ocean surpasses
a!LatJhejL_con£iderations. In 1903, acc^rdmg~t6~ Max Eckert,
the commercial shipping of the world involved 46,000 vessels,
with a registry of 2,723 million cubic feet2; 44,000 vessels
(of which 17,000 were steamers), with a registry of 2,645
million cubic feet, belonged alone to the Atlantic Ocean and
what might be called its maritime dependencies.
In general, "for about twenty -five years vessels and ports
have been passing through a crisis of growth the intensity
of which surpasses the boldest prophecies and upsets all
calculations."3

'See Jean Brunhes, " La Question des voies d'acces au tunnel du Simplon," Rev.
icon, inlernat., October 15-20, 1904, and especially "Les Relations actuelles entre
la France et la Suisse et la question des voies d'acces au Simplon," 55 pages and 9
maps or charts (a study which first appeared in Rev. eeon. internal., February 15-20,
1906), the conclusions of which agree with the results of the two international con
ferences of Berne in 1909 and with the clauses of the two international conventions
which have resulted from it.
2Max Eckert, Der allanlische Ocean als handelsgeographischcs Mittelmeer betrachtel,
Ratzel Gedenkschrift, Seele & Co., Leipzig, 1904, pp. 41-60.
3Louis Fraissaingea, Le Probleme de la marine marchande, Larose, Paris, 1909.
p. 2. See the documents, observations, and just conclusions which Marcel Dubois
has gathered together in La Crise maritime, Guilmoto, Paris, 191 1.

UNPRODUCTIVE OCCUPATION OF THE SOIL 209
This is particularly true if we take under consideration the
regular steamship lines, which J. Russell Smith, in his article
on the "Organization of Ocean Commerce," separates into
four groups:1
i. The_fasjLpa.ssen g^rlines, whose freight business is merely
incidental to their main purpose. Superiority in speed or
at least regularity of speed is their first and almost their
only aim. The North Atlantic Ocean is the predominant
and even omnipotent center for these lines especially, and
it is for the North Atlantic service that these gigantic human
dwellings, provided with all the necessary equipment for
practical, intellectual, artistic, sporting, and social life, have
been constructed.2
2. TJie^Jrei^lrj^lin^s^Jless fast but less expensive, having a
great relative importance in ports which do not seek to hold
the first place in the transportation of travelers.
3. Lines— of steamnavigation which are prolongations of
railroads; where the railroad "ends at a port which is the
center of numerous lines of navigation, the railroad company
does not think of establishing a line for its own service and
correlated with its own service. "New York has no trans
atlantic line which is a prolongation of a railroad, while
Philadelphia, Newport News, Pensacola, Portland, and Boston
all have them." The Canadian Pacific maintains lines to
Great Britain, a line on the Great Lakes, and a very impor
tant line of navigation from Vancouver to Japan, China, and
Hong Kong.
4. Private or industrial lines of navigation, destined pri
marily and sometimes even exclusively for definite kinds of
transportation, of which a very striking example given by
'See J. Russell Smith, "Les Transports oceaniques," Rev. icon, internal., March 15-
20, 1911, pp. 446-469; The Organization of Ocean Commerce, "Publications of the
University of Pennsylvania, Series on Political Economy and Public Law," No. 17,
1905. 2The giant of the world was the Titanic, which, like the Olympic, belonged to the
White Star Line. At the time of its first passage from Southampton, to New York
in the night between the fourteenth and the fifteenth of April, 1912, it collided with an
iceberg and sank. Of the 2,200 passengers and crew of this veritable floating city, only
a third could be saved. The Titanic measured 979 feet (268 meters) in length and
displaced 51,037 tons; it cost 88,878,000 (46,000,000 francs). In 1913 the German
company Hambourg- America launched the Imperator, with 55 , 1 1 5 . 5 tons displacement .
In April, 1912, the Compagnie generale transatlantique placed in service the largest of
its packets, La France, of 29,762 tons displacement, 712 feet (217 meters) long, capable
of carrying 2,529 people, crew included.

210 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
J. Russell Smith is that of the importation of bananas into
the United States.
This fruit forms by far the most important exportation in quantity
fromthei Central American coast, Jamaica^ and Colombia, and there
are numerous ports which export almost nothing else. Moreover,
it ^requires vessels of peculiar construction and with a speed rather
superior to that of the tramp steamer. The perishable character of
the fruit necessitates very careful organization for its handling and
delivery in good condition,1 factors which have served to bring about
a consolidation of the business and the use of more than a hundred
vessels by a single company which has a number of lines between
ports of the United States on the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico
and the banana ports of the different coasts of the Caribbean Sea.
In this particular case consolidation has gone still farther; the com
pany has found itself obliged to buy plantations, to cultivate bananas
for transportation by its steamers, and to build railroads to trans
port the banana from the plantation to the port. Then, thanks to
the speed of the banana vessels, it is easy to add a few cabins for
passengers. Finally, the attractions of the coasts of the Caribbean
make them a favorite objective point, so that a transportation com
pany for bananas has become, to a certain extent, a transportation
company for travelers. To care for the travelers it has had to build
hotels and thus complete a considerable group of industries centering
about a particular enterprise in steam navigation.2
But if we should examine carefully maritime circulation
on the globe as a whole, we should see alongside all these
regular lines the literally innumerable multitude of isolated
boats, vagabonds, tramp steamers, which, for the transporta
tion of merchandise, are the formidable competitors of the
regular boats.
The larger part of the world's freight comes from numerous
little ports, often unknown to all those whom the nature of
this freight does not directly interest. These small ports
habitually load for only one direction, and often only one or
two articles, ordinarily raw materials.
Thus Galveston (Texas) exports by sea twenty times as much
freight as it receives by sea, and the vessels leaving this port for
foreign lands are almost as numerous as all those leaving the United
States for South America; Brunswick (Georgia) exports large
JOn the general import of this question, from the point of view of circulation, see
Henri Hitier, "Le Progres du commerce international des denrees perissaples," Ann.
de geog., XXI, 1912, pp. 109-117.
2Rev. icon, internal., March 15-20, 1911, p. 463.

UNPRODUCTIVE OCCUPATION OF THE SOIL 211
quantities of building wood, as does Humboldt (California), while
the insignificant localities of the custom house district of Pearl River,
which has less than 100,000 inhabitants and of which the commerce
almost exclusively consists of 350,000,000 feet of building timber
per year, export more than 350,000 tons of maritime freight per
year — a figure almost equal to that for Portland (Maine); Tampa
(Florida) exports numerous cargoes of phosphate and Norfolk exports
coal, while Santiago (Cuba) exports hundreds of thousands of tons
of iron ore per year. The characteristic of hundreds of small ports
scattered over the world is to load entire cargoes of one or two
articles only for countries importing raw materials. The ports for
building timber in the Gulf of Mexico have their counterpart in the
Baltic, and the West Indian ports which exist on ore shipments have
their counterparts in those of the Mediterranean. Besides the fact
that small ports load great quantities of one or two commodities only,
the organization of the traffic is made still more difficult by the irregu
larity of the season. Thus the wheat at Galveston is ready to be
exported before that at Montreal; the season differs again for the
Argentine, California, and the Indies; Hawaiian sugar is loaded at a
different time from Java sugar, and the Cuban season differs from
the season of German exportations. The season for loading cotton
follows immediately after its harvest season, and even mineral
sodium nitrate has its rush season because of its large consumption
by establishments which manufacture fertilizers to be used in the
spring sowing season of the Northern Hemisphere. The transpor
tation of building timber from the regions of the Baltic (northern
Europe) to the consuming countries of western Europe gives rise to
a traffic reaching more than twelve millions of tons per year and
far surpassing in quantity the exportation of grain from America.
Almost all the ports of the Baltic being blocked in the winter, nearly
all of this transportation must be done in the warm months of the
year.1 And yet, for very many of the heavier products, like iron
ore, coal, etc., the time and duration of transportation are
almost matters of indifference. These are the materials that
aid preeminently in making up the cargoes of "tramps,"
which, according to their "need and'" the necessity " of 'stops,
cah^Tjffer-reducerJr- t^ffT^
" Ih^hTm¥tler~"of"tlie^well-known rivalry, upon which there
are such widely different comments, between the railways
and the waterways, there are still facts which force themselves
upon the attention, whatever be the conclusion that we may
wish to draw from them.
1J. Russell Smith, "Les Transports oceaniques," Rev. icon, internal., March 15-20,
1911, pp. 477-479-

212 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
Yves Guyot has tried many times to show that a crisis in
transportation by water exists everywhere. In England
railroads are being used more and more. In the United
States the phenomenon is still more striking. The Mississippi
and the Missouri, a wonderful navigable system of nearly
6,210 miles (10,000 kilometers) in length, are becoming less
and less used.1 Ask any railroad man about the Mississippi
and he will tell you that on account of its floods, the expense
of bridging it, and the difficulties raised by terminals at towns
on its banks, he would wish the "Father of Waters" into
oblivion ! 2
This deterioration in river commerce is increasing; there
are now few boats on the Missouri. It should be added,
however, that the Panama Canal makes possible a productive
renewal of the entire system of navigation of the Mississippi
and that the central and southern states are not neglecting
to prepare for it.
The United States has also in the north an admirable inland
sea, a "Mediterranean," formed by the Great Lakes. From
July, 1914, to July, 1915, out of a net tonnage of 8,389,429
tons for the commercial fleet of the whole country, more than
two millions of tons (2,818,009) belonged to the Great Lakes,
while the maritime tonnage was more than five million tons
(5,432,616). River traffic, properly speaking, is caught between the
double necessity of being closely connected with maritime
navigation, that is, of allowing few transshipments, and of
having at its disposal in the interior good water stations to
which railroad lines run. But it has in its favor the incom
parable advantage of cheapness for the transportation in
bulk of heavy material.
For quick transportation of travelers and mails the boat is
being replaced by the railway; for example, the Indian Mail.
In the second place, there is a tendency to avoid all trans
shipments by running an entire train upon the deck of a
'Guyot, La Crise des transports, Paris, iqoS, and "Problemes des transports,
La voie d'eau et la voie de terre," Rev. icon, internal., August 15-20. 1908, pp. 235-
256. 2Isaiah Bowman, "Water Resources of the East St. Louis District," III. Geol.
Survey, Bull. No. 5, 1907, pp. 4-6.

UNPRODUCTIVE OCCUPATION OF THE SOIL 213
properly adapted vessel called a ferry-boat, as for instance
the quicker communication between the Danish Islands and
the Continent. This sort of advantage in favor of rapid
land circulation is so great that the chains of small islands
which form a continuation of Florida have been joined by a
continuous railroad and that now the 180 miles of ocean rail
way make it possible to reach Key West from the mainland
without changing cars.
Finally, in the matter of external and internal commerce,
there exist striking differences between new countries and old
countries with an ancient civilization where each district, for
long centuries, has had to strive to be self-sufficient in the
production of the necessities of life. In the young and new
countries, on the contrary, specialization on a large scale in
cultivation and in all productions is the rule. In the United
States, for example, entire sections justly deserve the names
of cotton belt or corn belt; thence comes an indispensable
exchange between the different provinces that is striking in
bulk and activity. Much_more_ so than in the European
states, interstate commerce by far surpasses foreign commerce.
The statement is ma<Ie~Dy~~ American" schoolbooks, wrote
H. Hauser in 1905, 1 that "our own products, transported from
one point of the country to another to be sold at home, are
worth about twenty-eight billions of dollars per year, qr^
thirteen__Jimes the value _of_^lljDur_foreigncom.merce." The
same idea may be "expressed by saying that every citizen of
the Union buys forty dollars' worth of domestic products to
one dollar's worth of foreign.
Geography will find a place in all these questions which
concern commercial routes,2 not as furnishing the only data
but often the fundamental data, and as explaining the estab
lishment and development of the points chosen by man as
points of contact between circulation by water and circulation
*H. Hauser, "Le Commerce interieur aux Etats-Unis," Ann. de geog., XIV, 1905,
P- 94. 2See the following: George G. Chisholm, Handbook of Commercial Geography, seventh
edition, with an additional chapter on "Trade Routes," London, 1908; also, for an
article on the geographic role of railroads, Hugh Robert Mill, "The Development
of Habitable Lands: An Essay in Anthropogeography," Scottish Geog. Mag., February,
1900, p. 128. See also George G. Chisholm, "The Geographical Relation of the
Market to the Seats of Industry," Scottish Geog. Mag., April, 1910, especially pp. 176-
177. and "Inland Waterways," Geog. Jour., July, ip°7-

214 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
by land.1 There are ports and ports, and there are many
ways of looking at and representing their value, their technical
condition, and their zone of influence.2
If a port such as Hong Kong handles, counting the total
entries and departures, about as many tons of merchandise
as London or Antwerp, and three-fourths as many as New
York,3 that fact cannot fail to have a very great significance
and we must imagine what such an entrepot represents at the
entrance and outlet of the more populated zones of the world;
but that cannot be the only measure of economic reach and
power. Thus in the history of the towns of the Hanseatic
League4 there has not always been a rigorous correspondence
between the bare statistical facts of a port and its historic
or geographic significance. It is nevertheless true that, the
farther we go, the more the numerical expression of gross
tonnage becomes the mark and, as it were, the standard of
economic or even political victories.
' The more the processes of technical construction are per
fected, the larger become the units of maritime traffic. The
more colossal these units become, the smaller in number are
the large ports. Ports are like clothes; they must not direct
or stop growth — they must submit and conform to it. All
history shows us, as a strict application of this law, a pro
gressive decrease in the number of the great available ports,
true centers of economic influence. For the vast volume of
maritime traffic and for the huge vessels which are the mani
festation of this colossal traffic, there are fewer ports to-day
than there were yesterday; there will be fewer to-morrow
than to-day. This is a formidable prospect for nations which
possess only numerous medium-sized ports, but it is a prospect
^See the collection of monographs published by the Scientific Society of Brussels
on "Les Ports et leur fonction economique," Louvain, 1906, 1907, etc., and a number
of regional, or special, studies: Arthur Raffalovich, "L' Amelioration des ports en
Russie," Assoc, internationale de la Marine, Congres de Copenhague, 1902, Paris, 1902,
pp. 831-837; Paul de Rousiers, Les Grands Ports de France, leur role iconomiqM,
A. Colin, Paris, 1909; etc. See also Ellen Churchill Semple, Influences of Geographic
Environment, London, 1911, pp. 263-264, and chaps. VIII and IX.
2See, for example, Paul Langhans, "Die wirtschaftlichen Beziehungen der
deutschen Kiisten zum Meere," diagram on scale of 1:. 1,500, 000, Petermanns Mitt.,
XLVI, 1900, Vol. X.
3Albrecht Penck has published a remarkable discussion of New York harbor,
"Der Hafen von New York," in the collection Meereskuude, IV, Berlin, 1910.
¦'Ellen Churchill Semple, "The Development of the Hanse Towns in Relation
to Their Geographical Environment," Bull. Amcr. Geog. Soc, Vol. XXVI, 1899. No. 3'

UNPRODUCTIVE OCCUPATION OF THE SOIL 215
which is the result of a sort of unavoidable necessity both
material and geographical.
If we extend the domain of geography too far, we run great
risk of leaving it altogether and running more than once into
political economy and history. The Politische Geographie of
Ratzel would require reservation on this point in more than
one place. Just because a certain "geographical spirit"
ought to inspire certain studies, it does not follow that such
studies must be incorporated into geography — even human
geography. G. A. Huckel, in coordinating them, has made a remark
able resume of a good share of the properly geographical
theories of Friedrich Ratzel on the general geography of circu
lation.1 Modern progress in the ways and means of communication2
has determined:
¦ i. The multiplication of roads.
2. Their development with regard to distances reached, as an
(effect of great discoveries.
3. Their reduction to the shortest lines.
4. The substitution of regions imposed by nature for regions
and points accidentally chosen.
5. The increase in extent of the space conquered and the increase
in the possibility of transportation in bulk.
6. The transportation of a" large part of the continental traffic by
river or sea; and for the systems of river traffic, the cutting of trans
verse canals from one basin to another.
There is scarcely need of insisting on the originality of this
theory, a theory as complete as that in reference to the evolution
of a river system, and with which it has many analogies though
there are also many important differences.
The comparison does not stop there. Corresponding to the
period of old age in a river system is the period of decadence
•Huckel, "La geographie de la circulation selon Friedrich Ratzel," Ann. de geog.,
XV, 1906, pp. 401-418, and XVI, 1907, pp. 1-14. See also the important articles by
A. Hettner in Vol. Ill of the Geog. Zeitschr. (1897) under the title " Der gegenwartige
Stand der Verkehrsgeographie."
2See also Alfred de Foville, La Transformation des transports et ses consiquences
economiques et sociales. See also the report by E. Levasseur, Des changements sur-
venus au XIX" siecle dans les conditions du commerce par suite du progres des voies et
moyens de communications, a report presented to the International Congress of Eco
nomic and Commercial Geography, 1900, Paris, Society of Commercial Geography.
On the development of means of transportation, consult the posthumous work, by
Ferdinand von Richthofen, Vorlesungen iiber allgemeine Siedlungs und Verkehrs
geographie, edited by Otto Schluter, Dietrich Reimer (E. Vohsen), Berlin, 1908, pp.
16-352.

216 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
in commercial routes; it may be either the breaking up of
the system by the exhaustion of the main artery of circula
tion which completely destroys the strength of the small
arteries, or it may be, on the other hand, the weakening of
the smaller routes through the gradual diminishing of popu
lation thus causing them to cease to feed the main channels
of trade. The great arteries consequently weaken or dis
appear entirely.
The many parts of a great system of trade routes are as
delicately interrelated as are the many branches of a river
system. A quickening of movement in the central artery
has the effect of accelerating the movement in all the trib
utary lines. The opening of the Suez Canal and of a trade
route by way of the Mediterranean and the Red Sea caused
the creation and improvement of railroad lines crossing the
Alps, the boring of the Saint Gotthard tunnel, the use of more
powerful engines, and an increase of speed upon all the systems
of Europe north of the Alps.
The law of the "historic movement" is likewise a law of constant
increase in rapidity of communication.1 The transition from one
mode of locomotion to another has of course not taken place without
sudden jerks, but the harmony of a higher law has never failed to
soften these transitions. After the establishment of railroads, the
highways of Europe did not cease to be alive, and the activity upon
them has even gained in importance in so far as they are properly
adapted to the new system and feed the traffic of the railroads.2
In Siberia, on the contrary, the railroad, by taking the place of a
system of traffic which used only a few sections of the highways, has
caused a revolution by putting an end to the long caravans bearing
tea, silk, etc.
Transit and "entrepot " countries {Stapellander) . — The peoples that
are most backward in developing their own trade grant to foreign
merchants certain trade privileges. Some nations have awarded to
themselves the privilege or the monopoly of trade; others have
limited themselves to the role of intermediaries or middlemen. Here
we find once more the transit region already mentioned; in certain
cases the entire country plays the part of a market. In the
1Ratzel refers here to the work by W. Goetz. Die Verkehrswege im Diensle des
Wellhandels (Stuttgart, 1888), where the subject of circulation has been treated by the
purely historical method (criticized by A. Hettner, Geog. Zeitschr., Ill, 1897, p. 625).
2Add to this the development of automobiling and cycling, which have revived
the incomparable value of the system of roads which France established in the first
half of the nineteenth century. See the Minister of Public Works, Album de statis-
lique graphique de 1000, Imp. nat., Paris, 1906, Plates 2 and 3.

UNPRODUCTIVE OCCUPATION OF THE SOIL 217
countries which Ratzel calls so strikingly Stapelldnder or entrepot
countries (anciently . etaples or landing-places) , the inhabitants
receive the imports and transport them at the farthest from one
frontier to another. There were thus successively distinct series of
numerous intermediate stations. In the Middle Ages, Arabia,
Armenia, Persia, Greece, Italy, France, Flanders and Bruges,1 and
north Germany played this part of transit regions. The effect of
each new development was to eliminate {ausschalten) an intermediary
that had become superfluous and thus to cause the ruin of a com
mercial city or state (the Hanse towns, Flanders and Venice, which
rose again at least as maritime powers, the Sabaeans, the Bulgarians,
the Armenians). In ancient times the enormous distance between
the different centers of civilization favored the multiplicity of regions
of transit: Arabia and Asia Minor. The Semites and the Greeks
were, like the Italian republics in the Middle Ages, the great middle
men of commerce.2
It is particularly important in such a study to consider
the following three types of regions in their distribution —
exporting areas^_importing or market_xegions, and transit
regions. We can also divide the world into regions having
analogous or slightly differentiated characteristics as far as
the ways and means of transportation are concerned; these
are the Verkehrsgebiete or trade regions.
We can also consider the progressive development of trade
and the new conditions, regional or local, which arise from it,
in the same provinces of human geography. There are modes
of traffic which result from the means utilized. A railway is by
definition fixed; the train is bound to a fixed route and fixed
stations; it must discharge or transship merchandise at its
stopping-places. What a revolution this is in comparison with
the ancient means of transportation, which were more primitive
but also more pliable! The camel walks slowly, but he can
be brought directly before the hut, the tent, or- the bazaar of
the one who desires the products he carries. It is facts of
this sort which explain the resistance, not without reason,
of certain groups to the progress of locomotion. For many
years a group of camel caravans held in check the railroad
company from Beirut to Damascus and confiscated to its own
profit a large part of the traffic.
2Raoul Blanchard, La Flandre, Danel, Lille, 1906.
2Huckel, article quoted, Ann. de giog., XV, 1906, pp. 412, 413.
14

218

HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

We might further consider the very skillful adaptation to
geographical conditions of the birch-bark canoe in the North
American forest or of the sealskin kayak of the Eskimos, a
slender skiff which seems one with its occupant,1 or of the
pirogue with its outrigger (Fig. 104); or the important part
played by the wheeled cart or wagon, that marvelous instru
ment of transportation which was known in ancient times
only in southern Asia (Fig. 106, p. 221) from China to Asia
Minor and around the Mediterranean and which has sub
stituted the much diminished resistance of rolling for that of
dragging or sliding. We might examine all the ingenious
methods that man has discovered for facilitating transpor
tation on men's backs (baskets, etc.), or transportation with
the help of animals.2
But the unparalleled superiority of the new means of
transportation lies, not in their rapidity (the value of which

Fig. 104. Pirogue of the Kanakas of New Caledonia
Equipped with Outrigger and Sail
is appreciated only by means of education), but in the weight-
that is, the maximum and total weight — that can be trans
ported per unit. Formerly only precious products, such as
incense, gold, and silk, could be transported any great distance.
¦See also an interesting note on David MacRitchie's Le Kayak dans VEurope
seplentrionale, by Rabot in La Geographie, September 15, 1911, pp. 186-189.
2See M. Haltenberger, "Primitive Carriers in Land Transportation," Bull. Amer.
Geog. Soc, Vol. XLVII, 1915, pp. 729-745.

UNPRODUCTIVE OCCUPATION OF THE SOIL 219
Here is a rough comparison which explains the entrance into
traffic of so many heavy materials and the unprecedented
power of modern means of traffic:
Approximate Equivalents of the Weights Transportable by
Different Maritime and Terrestrial Means1
A great transatlantic steamer (merchandise
transport)  22,050 tons
An ordinary steamer  5,515 to 6,615 tons
A large sailboat  3,307 to 5,515 tons
A Rhine boat  1,102 tons
A wagon for merchandise  11,13, or 16 tons
An automobile truck  2.7 to 5.5 tons
A horse draws  2,205 pounds
An ordinary aeroplane 2 carries  300 pounds
An elephant carries  882 pounds
A camel carries  441 pounds
A horse or a mule carries  331 pounds
An ass carries  165 to 220 pounds
An eskimo dog draws  99 pounds
An ass (in India) draws  55 pounds
A sheep or a goat (in the Himalayas) carries .... 26 to 35 pounds
A porter (in Africa or Asia) carries  55 to 66 pounds
Of the two transportation animals of early America, the
dog of the Eskimos in the extreme north and the llama in
South America, the first can draw 99 pounds (45 kilograms)
and the other carry 66 pounds (30 kilograms). At the time of
Shackleton's expedition to the Antarctic, the sturdy Man-
churian ponies, to which the explorers owed in part the success
of their attempt, drew from 551 to 661 pounds (250 to 300
kilograms). According to these figures, it takes about 10
horses to draw the weight of ten tons carried by a small dray,
and 45 camels, 60 horses, 100 asses, or 330 men to carry this
same weight.
All the general geography of trade and traffic will describe
in more or less detail the surface picture which results from the
*A considerable number of figures in this table are borrowed from Max Eckert,
Grundriss der H andelsgeographie, I, p. 143.
2An ordinary aeroplane carries, in reality, its pilot (165 lb.) (75 kilos.) and fuel
enough for several hours of travel, which means 100 lbs. as a minimum. The
development of aeroplanes has been so great since 1914 that one cannot really
compare their possibilities with other means of transport. In 1919 an aeroplane
carrying two men successfully crossed the Atlantic as a feat of endurance. In
practical use, however, the radius of service is limited by many conditions. Dirigi
bles by virtue of being lighter than air, are not so strictly limited, and the weight
carried depends on the volume; the cubic capacity of some of the destroyed Zeppelins
was from 530,000 to 630,000 cubic feet (r5,ooo to 18,000 cubic meters), and they could
carry as much as 6,000 lbs. (3,000 kilos.) — that is, about 40 persons. The British
Dirigible B-34, which had a gas capacity of 12,000,000 cubic feet, and which in 19 19
made the first round trip from the British Isles to the United States, carried a total
load of 68,640 pounds and was 75 hours in the air on its return journey.

H i'ih',' do Mnrgeric
Fig. 105. The Maritime Traffic Along the Coasts of Norway, in the Vicinity of the
Seven Sisters Peaks
On the coast of Norway, at the outlets of the fjords, — between the numerous islets which form the Skjoergaard
(Skerry Wall) and the heights of the mainland, — extends a sort of long maritime channel, unequal, sinuous, quite
narrow m some places, but protected against the tempests of the high sea, which provides a wonderful passage for traffic

UNPRODUCTIVE OCCUPATION OF THE SOIL 221

connection of facts on the earth. It will show the zones or
points on the surface of the earth which are the chosen places
of trade and it will show them as large or small, general or

Fig. 106. At Colombo.

Verascope Richard
The Wheeled Cart of Southern Asia

local, with their characteristic equipment of means and
agents of transportation (Figs. 105, 107, 108, pp. 220, 222,
224). It must even see, as it were, in all their reality, phenom
ena of larger dimensions, the whole of which our eyes cannot
actually grasp : the close cluster of maritime commercial lines
in the North Atlantic .Ocean or the Mediterranean; the points
of the earth's crust where all these more or less divergent lines
approach to join and mingle, either ending at a great port or
passing through a narrow way, such as the Suez Canal, etc. ;
the world system or local systems of telegraph or telephone
wires, the network of submarine cables, etc.1
xWith regard to cables, see especially Th. Lenschau, Das Weltkabelnetz ange-
wandte Geographie, I, I, Halle, 1903; and Maxime de Margerie, Le Reseau anglais de
cables sous-marins, A. Pedone, Paris, June, 1910. See, too, the Nomenclature des
cables formant le reseau sous-marin du globe, published by the International Telegraph
Bureau at Bern. For the Suez Canal, the success of which has surpassed all expecta
tions, consult the articles in Rev. de Paris, October 1, October 15, and November 1,
1899), as well as J. Charles-Roux, L'Islhme et le canal de Suez, hisiorique, etat actuel,
Hachette, Paris, 1901, 2 vols, of more than 500 pages, 268 figures, and 18 plates.
For the Panama Canal, see Haskin, The Panama Canal, 1914; E. R. Johnson, The
Panama Canal, 1916.

Jean Brunhes
Fig. 107. A Port in the Northern Part of the Great Passageway of Maritime Traffic along the
Coast of Norway: the Port of Tromso
The port of Tromso, very well sheltered and with its back to the high sea, is quite an important exchange center
in the northern part of the long maritime passage referred to in Pig. 105. It is also an outfitting port for the fishermen
of the Arctic seas.

UNPRODUCTIVE OCCUPATION OF THE SOIL 223
From this point of view, how different is the actual physiog
nomy of the various continents!
Asia [says Huckel1 in summing up], with its belt of high plateaus,
steppes, and deserts, forces the great routes to turn to the north
(trans-Siberian railroad)2 and to the south (Suez Canal, Bagdad
railroad). It is less favored than America with its great trans
continental communications (railroads of North America, the
Panama Canal).
Africa, a country of plateaus, without peninsulas, obliges trade
to follow the great hydrographic systems such as that of the Nile
and is but lightly touched by the great lines of ocean commerce.
Finally, Australia, an isolated continent, ten days from Singapore
and fourteen from Ceylon, is of such character in the interior that
its states were long compelled to. communicate with each other only
by sea and are really bound together — and here not closely — only in
the east.
In Europe the trade systems are particularly crowded toward the
west. From the strip of central Europe, limited on the north by
the Warsaw-Berlin-Cologne-Brussels line and on the south by the
Budapest-Vienna-Munich-Paris line, are clearly distinguished the
insular and peninsular countries situated north of 550 and south of
45° N. latitude. The paths of trade, which diverge toward the east,
approach each other in the west at Hamburg, Antwerp, the ports of
France, and Lisbon.3
Along with these currents of trade of which the direction is
"latitudinal" must be mentioned the oblique currents passing
from London to the Mediterranean Sea and especially that
very active strip that runs from Paris to Marseilles. It is
'Article quoted, Ann. de giog., XV, 1906, p. 406.
2Trans-Siberian: the International Company of Sleeping-Cars before 1914 main
tained a combined service of sleeping-cars of the first and second class which placed
Paris but fourteen days from Japan. From London, from Brussels, or from Paris one
could reach Berlin by the Nord-Express; then leaving Berlin on Tuesday, between
7:00 and 8:00 in the morning, arrive at Moscow Wednesday evening, at Omsk
Sunday morning, at Irkutsk Tuesday night, and at Vladivostok the following
Saturday at 9:25 in the evening (Kharbin time), or at 3 o'clock in the afternoon
(Petrograd time).
3See J. Partsch, Mitteleuropa (Gotha, 1904), pp. 408-410. P. Vidal de la Blache,
Tableau de la giographie de la France (Paris, 1903, pp. 31-32), shows that the ancient
routes of migration and the prehistoric zones of settlement correspond with several
avenues which traverse Europe from east to west: first, through the valley of the
Danube, ending in Burgundy; second, through the German plain and Belgium, ending
in Picardy; third, through the alluvial plains along the shore of the North Sea, as
far ag Flanders^

Fig. 108.

Lit
On the Vendee: The Return from Harvesting in the Marsh Lands (Marais)
In the Vendean "Marsh, circulation and transportation are by water

ill Anp,ct* of Ihe Globe

lots, M. Allain and H. Itn

UNPRODUCTIVE OCCUPATION OF THE SOIL 225
represented on the ground to-day, almost from one end
to the other, by four lines which are hardly sufficient to bear
the traffic.
It is impossible also not to note the great diverging fan of
railroad tracks which has its center in the plain of the Po and
the lines of which cross the Alps through the great transalpine
tunnels and stretch away to the extremities of Europe — to
London in the west and Petrograd in the east. The old
attraction of the Mediterranean and of Italy, which is pre
eminently the historical embodiment of the "empire" of the
Mediterranean, is shown by this design in steel, one of
the most expressive in Europe.
Switzerland has profited from this attraction in large
measure, and, but for the concentration of trade brought
about by the bow-like form of the Alps and the activity of
the Italians of the north, she would doubtless have remained
outside the great economic currents instead of being master of
their subterranean gates. It seems, however, that a certain
movement is taking shape which aims at independence of
this concentration of lines in upper Italy and which, while
awaiting merchandise, is beginning by turning aside some
thousands of travelers.1
In 1909 Austria inaugurated the line and tunnel of the
Tauern which bring Hamburg, Berlin, and Munich respectively
within 801, 1,120, and 323 miles (1,290, 1,804, and 520 kilo
meters) of Trieste, instead of the 892, 866, and 502 miles
(1,436, 1,395, and 808 kilometers) which separate them from
Genoa by way of Saint Gotthard. Toward the west a train
de luxe was formed, the Riviera Express, which ran from
Berlin to Ventimiglia in less than thirty-two hours. This
line not -only goes around the western curve of the Alps but
passes through Mulhausen, Belfort, Besancon, Bourg-en-
Bresse, and Lyons, avoiding Swiss territory.
Let us go still farther. All the facts of traffic must be looked
at in themselves and for themselves exactly as the facts of
installation were considered (Sec. 4, p. 1 3 1 ) . They are localized ;
it is therefore proper, after having denned their typical form
'Merchandise is more rigorously faithful to certain lines of circulation and more
strictly bound to certain laws of transit, such as the law of the shortest distance
in miles.

? . Arctic region : ice sledge , small skin-
covered boat.
? Northern forest ; snow sledge,
" snow-shoe; bark canoe.
J III Atlantic region ! travel on foot ; dugout.
? --. Great Plains : travois ; in the north,
'' snow sledge ; bull boat,
? „ Plateaus' and interior basins :
' transportation by porterage.
E33E?a Coasts of the northwest, of 'the Caribbean
S3z£a VI Sea and of the Gulf of Mexico : targe
pirogue.
The limit between III and IV, an veil an between
IT' and V, in x<eru uncertain.

Fig. 109. Geographic Distribution of the Means of Transportation and Circulation
Aborigines op North America, by II. Baulig

ill' )NG THE

UNPRODUCTIVE OCCUPATION OF THE SOIL 227
and appearance, to seek to determine: (i) their site (zone of
extension); (2) their dissemination or concentration; and
especially (3) their limits.
The systems of inland paths of navigation and the rail
road systems, whether in each country or in the world as a
whole, present themselves to us with zones of maximum
density1 and with limits. It will always be one of the real
concerns of geography to determine these maxima of density
and to fix these limits: limits in latitude (examples for rail
roads: the most_northern line in the world is the Scandi
navian line which runs from Gellivara to Narvik and to the
Ofoten Fjord and which, reaches 68° 27' N. latitude; the most
southern system is that of New Zealand) and limits in altitude.
For maximum altitudes in South America, see the figures given
apropos of the large cities of the world above 4,900 feet (1,500
meters), pp. 188—195; maximum altitudes of the cog railways
in use in Switzerland : the terminal station of the Gorner Grat,
9,902 feet (3,018 meters); the Eismeer station, which is only
a temporary terminus of the Jungfrau Railroad, 10,371 feet
(3,161 meters); higher altitudes of North American railroads:
the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad, 11,329 feet (3,453 meters) ;
the Pikes Peak Railroad, 13,976 feet (4,260 meters); the
Moffat Road, 11,660 feet (3,554 meters).
From the local point of view, as far as the method to be
followed is concerned, we know of no better model than the
article by H. Baulig, "Sur la distribution des moyens de trans
port et de circulation chez les indigenes de l'Amerique du
Nord," an article that is all the more remarkable because it is
1The calculation of what is called the density of a railroad system is delicate and
susceptible of various critical interpretations; see Geog. Zeitschr., VI, 1900, pp. 220-
223, 395-396, and 635-639. At the end of 1909, Europe with its* 146,000 miles (235,-
000 kilometers) of railroad, North America with its 300,000 miles (485,000 kilometers)
and Asia with its 48.500 miles (78,000 kilometers) represented respectively 35 per cent,
50 per cent, and 8 per cent of the total of the railroads of the world. But these absolute
values are insufficient to represent the human value of these means of communication.
The United States, for example, have built 228,528 miles (368,000 kilometers), but
this makes only an average of about 241 miles (389 kilometers) for a surface of 3,861
square miles (10,000 square kilometers); for a similar surface of 3,861 square miles
(10,000 square kilometers), see the length of railroads constructed in some typical
states (according to the Geog. Slalislische Tabellen by v. Juraschek) :
United States  242 miles 390 kilometers
France  460 " 740
Germany  670 " 1,080
United Kingdom  732 " 1,180
Switzerland  739 " 1,190
Belgium  1,577 " 2.540

228 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
primarily the explanation of, and a commentary for, a map1
(Fig. 109, page 226).
Let us conclude with a reflection of more general import
and one which may serve as the real bond between this chap
ter and those to follow. Traffic or circulation is brought
about by all the characteristic forms of destructfve~economy
and the necessary migrations which result from them (see
chapters IV" and V), and, above all, by trade. Trade tends
to bring raw materials or manufactured products to those
places where there is a demand for them or where they are
useful. Moreover, physiological appetites and needs of food
among men are not all; there is something more than the
stomach; human society has other needs; there is notably
the need of labor which has been the explanation of so many
•transplantings of human beings (see chapter IV). How
many currents of continuous immigration or how much of
the ebb and flow of periodic migrations are determined and
j directed by calls for labor ! From this point of view, the
' demands, repeated each year, which bring down the moun
taineers of the Ligurian Appenines to the rice fields of Novara
or Vercelli are the equivalent of those indispensable demands
for Italian labor which arise whenever a great transalpine
tunnel is to be dug, or again of those more or less lasting
transplantings under the influence of intermittent industrial
exploitations of which German brickyards furnish a typical
example. The brick industry (which to-day tends to become
a permanent industry) remained for a long time, and is still
in large part, a matter of season, and it is migrating work
men who furnish the necessary labor: before 19 14 Russians
and Poles had penetrated to the brickyards of the Weser and of
the Elbe; Czechs had invaded the brickyards of Saxony;
Walloons and Dutch worked in those of the Rhinelands
and Westphalia; and Italians came naturally to offer them
selves to the brickmakers of southern Germany.2
lAnn. de giog., XVII, 1908, pp. 433-459, a study based principally on the docu
ments published by O. T. Mason in the various collections of the Smithsonian In
stitute. The map reproduced here is from the map by H. Baulig, published in the
Annates, p. 435.
^ee Bruno Heinemann, Die wirtschaftliche und sociale Entwickelung der deutschen
Ziegelindustrie unler dem Einflusse der Tcehnik, Werner Klinckhardt, Leipzig, I9°9i
and by the same author, "La Briqueterie allemande," Rev. icon, internat., April 15-20'
1910, pp. 116-131.

UNPRODUCTIVE OCCUPATION OF THE SOIL 229
As a synthetic expression of all these needs and as a result
ant of all their first experiences in exploiting and exchange,
men learn to conquer space — free space and, especially, space
populated by human beings — and they acquire more and
more the spirit of conquest. In this sense circulation, or the
movement of trade, becomes the conqueror of space. No
true power results from space alone, from naked space.
Space has value only through its connections with life.

CHAPTER IV
THE ESSENTIAL FACTS OF HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
{Continued)
SECOND GROUP: FACTS OF PLANT AND ANIMAL
CONQUEST. CULTIVATION OF PLANTS AND
RAISING OF ANIMALS1
I. The geography of plants and animals in their relations to
the important facts of climate.
2. Origin, importance, and number of cultivated plants and
domesticated animals.
j. The principal cereals chosen as types of cultivated plants:
wheat, rye, barley, oats, maize, and rice.
4. Other types of plant production.
5. Plant and animal types of textile products: cotton, silk,
and wool.
6. Pastoral nomadism: typical forms; varied forms; weakened
forms; semi-nomadism.
I. THE GEOGRAPHY OF PLANTS AND ANIMALS IN THEIR RELATIONS TO
THE IMPORTANT FACTS OF CLIMATE
From the geographical point of view, the geography of
plants is still more significant than the geography of animals.
Plants do not move ; they are fixed in the ground and therefore
cannot avoid certain extremes of temperature or of insolation
which animals can easily escape by a change of place. Fur
ther, plants are really the fundamental part of human food.
The animals upon which man feeds live upon plants or upon
other animals which are herbivorous. The distribution of
References: A. R. Wallace, The Geographical Distribution of Animals, 2 vols.,
London, 1876; Angelo Heilprin, The Geographical and Geological Distribution of
Animals, London, 1887; W. L. and P. L. Sclater, The Geography of Mammals, London,
1899; E. Warming (English adaptation by Percy Groom and j. B. Balfour), Oecohgy
of Plants, Oxford, 1909; F. E. Clements, Plant Physiology and Ecology, New York,
1907; M. E. Hardy, An Introduction to Plant Geography, Oxford, 1913; M. I. New-
bigin, Animal Geography, Oxford, 1913; V. C. Finch and O. E. Baker, Geography of
the World's Agriculture, U. S. Department of Agriculture, Washington, D. C, iai7'
230

FACTS OF PLANT AND ANIMAL CONQUEST 231
cultivation therefore lends itself to geographical analysis to
a degree much more striking than the distribution of domestic
animals. For this reason, while not ignoring the subject of animal
conquest, we shall deal more particularly with that of plants.
Plants form organic groups which reflect the strong influence
of the environment in which they live. The earlier classi
fications of botanical geography gave too much importance
to climate alone and to certain particular factors of climate.
This notion has given place to a much truer and more exact
idea— the idea of environment. We must take into con
sideration the en^rre^nviromTi^t '^^climate, soil, and, finally,
the living beings and the other_plants beside which and among
which a certain" Jftant is-obriged. to jievelop. Certain plants
live together in groups, even while belonging to different
species; they join together because they happen to be adapted,
in a somewhat similar manner, to the general conditions of
that part of the earth in which they grow.
A plant is in itself a complex. It is composed of different
organs which endure in a different manner a given phenomenon
of temperature, and each of the reproductive or vegetative
organs of the plant has an annual evolution which causes it
to feel differently the effects of the succession of the seasons.
The ideal for a plant will be the climate, the soil, and the
biological environment which will correspond each moment
to the progressive demands of its organization and its life;
thus is formed the idea of bjohgical optimum. Theoretical
analysis cannot tell us a priori how a pfanT writ act with refer
ence to a given soil.
Certain soils are rich in salts which the plant requires, but
these salts occur in an insoluble or unassimilable form and the
plant then finds itself in the same condition as if these salts
did not exist. Inversely, some plants (halophilous, calciphi
lous, and others) seem to seek soils rich in mineral elements
(sodium chloride, carbonate of lime, etc.). They simply have
an organization which enables them to endure these salts
in quantities that to other species would be iniurious or
even fatal.
The learned Belgian specialist in agronomy, A. Proost,

232 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
has demonstrated theoretically and by many experiments
the value of what he calls the "analysis of the soil by the
plant."1 Regions of the earth may be rich in precipitation, as New
Zealand or certain islands on the coast of Brittany or Fries-
land; yet the strong, continuous winds may cause such evap
oration that the plants, though receiving more than 6 or 10
feet (2 or 3 meters) of water per year, are compelled to protect
themselves against evaporation exactly as in a desert region.
A phenomenon of the same order is sometimes found magni
fied in a still more typical fashion when we reach the regions
of the far North. For example, on the western coast of Green
land, plants have been found which protect themselves from
evaporation by the same processes and often with the same
outward behavior as certain plants in the middle of the
Sahara.2 In western Europe precipitation takes place during the
winter season, but in a form and at a temperature such that
the plant cannot profit by it; and that is why the organs
of respiration and transpiration disappear: the trees lose
their leaves. In other words the plants adapted during a part
of the year to a damp climate (plants called hydrophytes)
become during the remainder of the year practically different
plants and as if suited to a dry climate (such plants being
called xerpphytes) ; and such changing plants are known as
tropophytes. Finally, soil has no value for plants except in connection
with climate, and, inversely, climate only in connection with
141 In a blackish, earthy alluvium, along the banks of the Dyle at Ottignies-Mousty,
there is, in places, a profusion of plants containing potassium, although this alluvium
is in itself very poor in potassium. This anomaly is explained by certain mixtures
of glauconiferous sands, the green or black grains of which contain, as we know, some
soluble potassium in the form of carbonate. In the same way, feldspar and mica also
yield a certain amount of potassium, which is not revealed by the usual laboratory
analyses" (Carte agricole de la Belgique, Proces-verbaux des reunions consullatives,
Brussels, 1901, p. 33). On the subject of plants as showing the composition of the
soil, see E. W. Hilgard, Soils, Their Formation. Properties, Composition, and Relations
lo Climate and Plant Growth in the Humid and Arid Regions, Macmillan. New York,
1906, as well as the article devoted to this book by A. Woeikof in Ann. de giog., XVI,
1907; read especially pp. 386 and 398.
2The soil of the Arctic regions, because of the prevailing low temperatures which
do not allow absorption of moisture by plants, ought really to be considered as being
almost always physiologically dry. On this subject see M. Rikli, Die Pflanzenwelt
des hohen Nordens in ihren Beziehungen zu Klima und Bodenbeschaffenheit, St.
Gallen, 1903.

FACTS OF PLANT AND ANIMAL CONQUEST 233
soil.1 Certain limestones exclude certain families of plants
in damp regions, while the same limestones are very favor
able to these same plants in regions such as that about the
Mediterranean. There rain is rarer in spring and summer
and occurs only in the form of passing showers; the quantity
of carbonate of lime which is thus placed at the disposition
of the plant is not likely to be so abundant as to stifle it,
something which occurs normally in limestone regions watered
by fine and continuous rains.
All these phenomena show us how insufficient is analysis
alone to enable us to understand the conditions of life on the
earth as a whole. We must consider the entire group of natural
conditions in the many delicate and almost imperceptible
connections existing between these different factors which
form the environment. One can easily see then that the plant
should be considered as a sort of telltale mark of these groups
of conditions.
Since we thus arrive at the fundamental notion of environ
ment, we cannot insist too strongly upon the importance of
'This is so emphatically true that, at the first Agrogeological Conference of Buda
pest in 1 909 (the second was held in 1 9 1 0 at Stockholm) , the compilation of a ' ' soil map
of Europe on a climatic basis" was discussed. In summarizing the chief points of
a report on this subject made by Treitz at Budapest, Th. Bieler-Chatelan communi
cated to the Society of Natural Sciences of the canton of Vaud the following curious
and typical observations: 4,In the plain of the Rhone, above Martigny (Valais), it
is an established fact that in several places, especially at Saxon, Econe, Sion, and
Granges, the soil during the dry season becomes covered with saline efflorescences.
These salts, whether sulphate of sodium (as at Ec6ne) or sulphate of magnesium
(as at Saxon), form sometimes quite extensive beds, very harmful to vegetation,
especially when they produce at the surface of the soil a crust capable, so to speak, of
strangling young plants. This formation seems at first sight surprising in a region
where the annual rainfall (600 mm., 23 .68 inches), although the lowest in Switzerland,
yet considerably surpasses that of regions with an arid continental climate. It would
be truly surprising if the air remained motionless; but this is not the case. In the
valley of the Rhone there is a constant wind that accelerates the evaporation of the
soil and thus causes the saline solution to rise to the surface, where it is concentrated
and forms a crust of considerable hardness as it dries. We have found proof of this
in measuring the salinity of the soil at different depths, at the School of Agriculture
at Econe (near Riddes), where the beds are formed of sulphate of sodium:
DEPTH SALINITY
Crust at the surface  42 . o per cent
" at 3 . 9 inches  4.6 per cent
" at 7 . 8 inches  9 per cent
" at 1 1 . 8 inches  S per cent
"There is, then, a very distinct progressive increase in salinity from the depth toward
the surface" (minutes of the session of April 20, 1910, Societe1 vaudoise des sciences
naturelles). So, a short distance from the high snow peaks and the glaciers of the
Swiss Alps, at the bottom of that depression in Valais, certain local climatic conditions,
when the valley is overheated and dry, produce saline efflorescences similar in every
way to those which appear in desert territories. See Brunhes, V Irrigation, p. 235,
Fig. 22, and p. 325, Fig. 44.
15

234 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
the human environment, its density, and its quality from the
point of view of cultivation. Cultivated plants depend upon
the number of men, upon the strength and fitness of human
muscles, as much as upon the climate and the soil. These
factors have been too often neglected, not only in strictly
agr_onomic studies, but also in economic studies. One of the
purposes of human geography is to make clear this factor of
labor. The geography of cultivated plants and domestic animals is
then directly connected with the general geography of climates,
and in order to localize either it is indispensable to distinguish
on the earth's surface the chief climatic zones. By reference
to these zones we shall be able, in the following pages, to
indicate clearly to what sections certain plants and animals
belong. Among the natural classifications of the climates of the earth
there is one in particular which imposes itself upon us —
that of Koppen. Climate being above all a very complex
fact, we run the risk, if we consider separately temperature,
pressure, or rainfall, of failing to understand the synthetic
reality which is the result of the combination and reciprocal
reactions of these different factors. The plant, on the con
trary, which forms a part of the natural vegetation of a
region, being obliged to undergo the complex and combined
effects of all the factors of climate, constitutes a recording
apparatus which can show to a remarkable extent, if it be
well chosen, the cumulative effects of the different climatic
phenomena. Such a classification based upon facts of vege
tation will be all the more valuable for us as we proceed to
consider in what natural regions can live and develop (i)
plants which are cultivated and (2) animals living upon plants.
Flahault1 has simplified the work of Koppen.2 We take
the liberty, for our present purpose, of restricting the number
of natural provinces and of reducing the general table to a few
simple and fundamental features which may serve us as guides
'See Ch. Flahault, "Le Progres de la geographie botanique depuis 1884, son tot
actuel, ses problemes," Progressus rei bolanicae, I, 1906, pp. 276-284.
2See W. P. Koppen, "Versuch einer Klassifikation der Klimate, vorzugsweise nach
ihren Beziehungen zur Pflanzenwelt," Geog. Zeitschr., VI, 1900, pp. 593-611, 657-
679, and Plates 6 and 7.

FACTS OF PLANT AND ANIMAL CONQUEST 235
for the studies to follow. We give here first of all this simplified
classification as a whole: Climates of the Earth
Simplified Synthetic Table, according to Koppsn and Flahault1
A. Megathermal (warm and humid) :
i. Climate of the lianas
2. Climate of the tropical savannas
B. Xerophilous (dry):
i. Climate of the date palm
2. Climate of the saxaul
3. Climate of the herbaceous steppes
C. Mesothermal (middle zones) :
1. Climate of the olive tree
2. Climate of the maize
3. Climate of the camelia
4. Climate of the high savannas
D. Microthermal (moderate cold) :
1. Climate of the deciduous oak
2. Climate of the birch
E. Hekistothermal (cold):
1. Climate of the white fox (arctic tundras)
2. Climate of the penguin (antarctic tundras) ,
3. Climate of the yak (Tibet)
4. Climate of the chamois (Alps;
A brief commentary will suffice to outline the characteristics
of each of these provinces of the earth.
A. Megathermal Climates
Megathermal climates are the warm and damp climates
of the equatorial regions, or regions which have similar
characteristics, like those which are watered by the heavier
summer rains of the monsoons.
Among these climates we distinguish two main groups of
natural provinces:
1. The first is that of typical equatorial regions {climate of
the lianas with no dry seasons and more than 75 inches of annual
rainfall). The forests are very tall, always green, and full of
1Some time before Koppen, A. de Candolle, Grisebach, Woeikof, and Drude
popularized the ideas of megathermal, xerophilous, and microthermal climates, etc.

236 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
vines and epiphytic plants;1 this is particularly the region of
the great palms, which, excepting the date palm, nearly all
belong to hot and damp regions.
2. The other group is that of the bordering zones of the
equatorial region. North and south of the equator the rains
decrease both in intensity and in duration; they become
seasonal rains depending upon the zenithal position of the
sun. Here, then, occurs a dry period of longer or shorter
duration, increasing in length the farther we go from the
equatorial region. The large forests are less dense and they
tend to break up ; groups of trees only occasionally appear in
the midst of wide stretches of grass; finally the grass covers
the entire ground. This is the zone of the tropical savannas,
dominated very often in Africa by that magnificent and
characteristic tree, the .baobab. To this zone corresponds the
large, fertile, and dense transitional region which is situated,
in central Africa, between the Congo Forest and the Sahara
and forms the Sudan. B. Xerophilous Climates
Xerophilous climates are those which impose on vegetation
a special adaptation to dryness: deserts and steppes covered
by thorny bushes and a series of plants with long, penetrating
roots which spread in clusters. This zone of xerophilous
climates forms everywhere a barrier to the intensive develop
ment of human life and economic activity. The only points
where man can make permanent settlements are in the oases
where water is available.
Among the xerophilous climates Koppen distinguishes a
first province under the name^pf climate of the date tree. Here
the fact of cultivation serves to express the general conditions
of the climate. The date palm cannot endure cold.2 It
belongs to regions of which the mean annual temperature is
above 20° C. (68° F.) ; it disappears as soon as the desert is
1Good clear descriptions of the various types of vegetation, descriptions which
include physiological, physiognomical, and geographical viewpoints, may be found
in Edmond Gain, "Introduction a l'etude des regions florales, Notions de geographie
botanique," Parts I and II, Bulletin de V Instilut colonial de Nancy, Crepin-Leblond,
Nancy, 1908, See I, pp. 60 ff.
2See Brunhes, L' Irrigation, etc., p. 241, and consult the monograph by Theobald
Fischer, " Die Dattelpalmc. ihre geographische Verbreitung und kulturhistorische
Bedeutung," Pctcrmanns Mill., Ergdnzttngshefl, No. 64, 1881.

FACTS OF PLANT AND ANIMAL CONQUEST 237
subject to a cold season. The great regions of the date palm,
such as the Sahara and Arabia, are the natural habitat of
running animals — the ostrich, the camel, the horse.
Beside these warm deserts we must place, because of simi
larity and contrast, the cold deserts — that is, the deserts
with a severe winter.1 Deserts with a cold winter occupy
depressions such as that occupied by the Transcaspian desert.
There an indigenous shrub, the saxaul, has developed, and
has helped in the conquest of the desert by holding the
dunes in place.
Between the hot and the cold deserts and on their borders
we meet with a whole series of transitions which correspond
to different steppes, more or less dry or damp. In particular,
the deserts with a cold winter are bordered on the north by
zones where condensation causes summer rains. Vegetative
activity here often undergoes winter and summer interruptions.
Nevertheless the vegetation appears in the form of a contin
uous carpet. This is the great zone of the prairie steppes
which extends from Mongolia into central Europe and which
has played so large a part in the history of the Old World.
This same zone is represented by the western jprairies of
North" America. C Mesothermal Climates
, As we approach the middle zones corresponding to the
mesothermal climates, the combinations of shades of difference
are more manifold and these shades of difference are them
selves more varied. That is, the natural provinces are more
and more numerous and of less extent.
We shall select from these mesothermal climates only the
types of greatest interest from the point of view of human
geography. The climate of the olive tree is above all the climate
of the European Mediterranean, with mild and damp winters
and winter rains which, according to conditions, are more
vernal or more autumnal and which precede or follow dry
summers. Here are found trees and shrubs which are always
'Deserts with a rigorous winter, but with a summer always hot and dry. _ Do not
confuse this type of desert, always partially warm, with deserts where the soil is always
frozen. See, below, the hekistothermal climates, and see farther on the two principal
types of desert which are distinguished, both in the text, p. 243, and on the map,
Fig. in, pp. 244-245.

238 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
green and that bushy vegetation of which we have already
had occasion to speak in the chapter on the house.
The climate of the maize represents the transition between
the prairie steppes and the region characterized by the olive
tree. The winter is not severe, the spring and early summer
are damp, the summer and the autumn are dry. It is the
rainfall and sunlight of the early growing season which favor
the cultivation of maize. This type is met with in northern
Italy, in Roumania, and in the United States.
The climate of the camelia corresponds to a better watered
summer, to a continuation of the rains into the middle of
summer. This is the climate of southern China, of the eastern
end of the Black Sea, of the lake region of northern Italy, and
of the plains of Uruguay and Paraguay; this zone is impor
tant because in Asia it represents the principal zone of tea.
These last types of climate, belonging to regions that are
inclined, so to speak, to a higher altitude, are characterized
by heavy summer showers, following rather dry winters and
springs. This determines the vegetation of the high savannas
of Mexico or Abyssinia. D. Microthermal Climates
With the microthermal climates we reach the zone which
we have already described as forming the boreal forest. They
are cool temperate climates with snow in winter and rain in
summer. In this region Koppen rightly distinguishes a more
southern province which he calls that of the deciduous oaks,
and a colder and more northern province which he calls the
climate of the birch.
In the first we find four months at least with a mean tem
perature above io° C. (50° F.). In the second the summer is
shorter and the winter more severe ; the vegetation is that of
great forests with rigid trunks and of pure growth. These
are the special regions of the great cereals of the temperate
zones — wheat, rye, barley, oats — and also of the potato.
E. Hekistothermal Climates
Extreme or hekistothermal climates correspond to zones
where even the warmest month has a mean temperature below

FACTS OF PLANT AND ANIMAL CONQUEST 239
io° C. (50° F.). Here trees disappear after having assumed
slender and dwarfed forms in the transitional zone between
this and the region of the preceding climates. The plants
are bound only to local conditions of humidity or orientation,
and Koppen rightly prefers to distinguish the provinces of
these extreme climates by taking the animals as expressive
types of the climatic facts. He distinguishes the Arctic tundra
and calls its climate the climate of the white fox; the sub-Ant
arctic' ttmdra, which corresponds to the region of the penguin;
the region of the Pamir and of Tibet, which corresponds to that
of the yak, and, finally, the climate of the upper zone of the
Alpine mountains inhabited by the chamois. These animals
are the last companions of man and one may say that, thanks
to some of these representatives of animal life of exceptional
resistance (yak),1 the inhabited region extends beyond the
limits of the microthermal climates. It should be noted that
the climate of the white fox is also the climate of the reindeer.
It is true that the reindeer is often found south of the limit
of the tundra and that it does not go as far north as the white
fox;2 but cannot the same thing be said of the yak, which comes
south into the valleys of Kashmir and is not found as high or
as far over Tibet as such a wild herbivorous animal as the
hemione or kiang?
The Great Climatic Emblems of the Earth: Three Homogeneous
Vegetational Formations and Two Types of Deserts
When the world as a whole is taken under consideration,
there are great, striking facts which are inscribed on the
ground with clearness and exactitude by the vegetational
covering. Accepting the preceding classification as a basis,
let us examine more clearly the general divisions in which
Koppen's different regions are placed.
Although hiirnidity is an important factor, yet it is tempera
ture which furnishes- the basis for every climatic division of the
earth. Like Koppen, let us adopt the temperatures of io° C.
and 2o° C. (50° and 68° F.) as characteristic averages. We
2Ratzel has frequently, and rightly, emphasized the Randvolker, or marginal
peoples, living at the extreme limit of the inhabited world.
20n the subject of the southern limit of the reindeer in Norway and Sweden, see
Charles Rabot, Aux Fjords de Norvege el aux forils de Suede, Hachette, Paris, 1905,
p. 190,

240

HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

then distinguish on the earth "geotlfermic zones" whose
boundaries are modified and complicated upon contact with
continental surfaces (Fig. no).
Let us introduce into the traditional division the factor of

Fig. i io. Geothermic Zones
AA,' Equatorial zones with a. mean temperature for all the year of more than
20° C. (68° F.)
BB', Subtropical zones, with a mean temperature during 4 to 11 months of more
than 20° C. (68° F.)
CC, Intermediate zones, with a mean temperature during 1 to 3 months of more
than 200 C. (68° F.)
DD', Cold zones, with a mean temperature during 1 to 4 months of more than
io° C. (500 F.)
EE', Frigid zones, with a mean temperature for all the year of less than io° C.
(50° F.)
In this ,map are given, along broad lines, the geothermic zones as determined by Koppen. simplified and
drawn by Emile Chaix; the illustration ia loaned by the author and is taken from his Notes d' analyse aio-
Rravhioue: Conditions qui determinent la valeur economique d'un pays, Emile Chaix, Geneva, 1906.
humidity, and it will at once take on a general appearance
that brings it near to the reality.
The torrid zone will be divided into hot and damp zones and
hot and dry zones succeeding each other and in contrast with
each other. Between these two very dissimilar types are the
transitional zones, the essential zones from the human point
of view.
In the same way the cold zones of the north and south break
up into damp cold zones and dry cold zones. Cold and damp
zones have a precipitation which is abundant enough to allow
the development of forests and for four months at least have
a mean temperature above io° C. (500 F.), thus allowing

FACTS OF PLANT AND ANIMAL CONQUEST 241
vegetative activity. Cold and dry zones in the far north are
those where precipitation is rare and insufficient, as in the
Alaskan, Russian, and Siberian tundra and in all regions where
the temperature always remains so low that no absorption
of moisture by plants and therefore no vegetative activity
of shrubs or trees is possible. These are often called regions
of great physiologic dryness.
Finally, between the cold zones of the north and the warm
equatorial or tropical zones are placed all those transitional
zones which correspond to the much too vague earlier name of
temperate zones and more exactly to Koppen 's series of meso
thermal climates.
Now these transitional zones are preeminently human
zones, or at least zones favorable to man's development. The
following outline shows the succession of the several zones:

Jo

- ,, ( cold and dry
Cold zones \ ,, -, ,
{ cold and damp
A great series of transitional zones in the northern hemisphere,
called temperate zones (Mediterranean, Atlantic zones, etc.).
' warm and dry
i transitional zone
Warm zones \ warm and damp
' transitional zone
, warm and dry
Transitional zones of the southern hemisphere, equivalent to the
Mediterranean zones of the northern hemisphere.
„ , , ( cold and damp
Cold zones i ,, , -,
( cold and dry
Because of its continental dimensions and the almost equal
balance of its great mass on each side of the equator, the old
continent of Africa shows a distribution of climates which is
the nearest approach to what would be the schematic distri
bution for an earth whose equatorial regions were entirely
occupied by continents.
To what natural provinces, then, of the continent Europe-
Africa does our theoretical distribution of the zones of climate
in the preceding outline correspond? It is evident that we

242 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
can place opposite each line of the outline the name of an
actual region which will express typically one or several of
the characteristic forms not only of the plant life but also
of the animal and human life.
r , j cold and dry  Lapland
o zones | cq^ and ^^ Scandinavian and Russian

forest
;lantic
nean region, etc.

Great series in the northern hemi- . . . .
sphere of the transitional zones called \ . ur°Pe' e erra"
temperate zones warm and dry .... Sahara
i transitional zone . . . Sudan
Warm zones < warm and damp . . . Congo Forest
transitional zone . . . Upper Zambezi
, warm and dry  Kalahari
Equivalent in the southern hemi- ~j
sphere of the transitional zones of the > Cape Coast
northern hemisphere )

_, , . ( cold and damp . . ) _.
Cold zones j ^ and ^^j Ocean

Are not all the transitional zones the centers of the maxima
of human activity for this continent, Europe- Africa ?
From the point of view of its climate, Asia undergoes impor-'
tant modifications as a result of the intense heating in summer
of the atmospheric masses in the region of Tibet, of the attract
ing action of the center of depression there from April to
September, and of those great inflowing air currents, the sum
mer monsoons. It may be said that in general the entire
succession of the different zones in Africa is here "pushed
up" toward the north — from the zone of warm rains to the
zone of deserts which thus become cold deserts.
America likewise presents a distribution of climatic zones
which is modified in comparison with that of Europe-Africa.
The lines of relief in America run in general north and south,
and the climatic zones, instead of being vaguely parallel to
the equator, have rather an oblique direction with reference
both to the parallels and to the meridians.
There are thus unlimited varieties and variations which

FACTS OF PLANT AND ANIMAL CONQUEST 243
deserve the most minute attention in every regional study,
but which should not blind us to the following general and
essential geographic truths:
Two types of forests: (i) the equatorial forest corresponding
to the warm and damp zone (Koppen's climate of the lianas)
and (2) the boreal forest corresponding to the cold and damp
zone {microthermal climates).
Two types of deserts: (1) the hot or cold deserts comprised
between 500 N. latitude and 45° S. latitude on each side of
the equator (deserts in which the summer months are always
hot) and (2) the perpetually frozen deserts which are those of
the tundra and of the permanent snows.
Finally, on the very edge of the deserts of the first class,
there are more or less dry or damp steppes with a definitely
marked winter and a hot summer, covered over vast extents
by types of vegetation of which the grasses, the bushes, or
the low shrubs are themselves more or less adapted to dryness
or humidity.1
Such are the five most general and most apparent climatic
units of the earth, in the sense that they are found on all
continents and that they are preeminently the types that
show the strongest contrast with each other.
Since we are here taking the point of view of human activity
on the earth, we have represented on a map (see Fig. 111)
the locations of these two types of deserts and of these three
clearly distinguished and relatively simple typical forms of
vegetation. Now it seems as if these five zones are related through a
common feature — the fact that they are for different reasons
JIt should be said that classifying grass-covered steppes with dry steppes and, on
the other hand, separating dry steppes from deserts is a plan based on the precise
observations of E. F. Gautier, the explorer of the Sahara. See for example his letter
of 1905, addressed to the Geographical Society of Paris: " Some 400 miles from Gao,"
he says, "we entered a steppe which holds sway without interruption as far as the
Niger. This steppe no longer has thorny plants, like those of the Sahara, but a fine
grass in a forest of mimosas, continuous though scattered. This wide band of steppes
is probably almost continuous from the Atlantic to Egypt, and forms the transition
between the true desert and the Sudan — an important and new feature of African
geography" (La Geographie, XII, October 15, 1905, p. 263). In many other works
of his, Gautier returns often to the idea (and Chudeau also) that the Sahara is not
so wide as people think it is (La Giographie, XIII, January 15, 1906, p. 16). Finally,
see E. F. Gautier and R. Chudeau, Missions au Sahara, Paris, 1908. Through
fear of systematizing too far this general conception of the five great climatic types
of the earth, the map in Fig. 1 1 1 is based for the most part on the map of the zones
of vegetation in Bartholomew's Atlas.

244

HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

¦ REM 'gSI! «l 1 I. Equatorial forests. 2. Boreal
.1 — 1 »E3 4- Cold deserts (where the ground is i
Fig. iii. The Great
There are on the earth great natural regions, relatively homogeneous
most clearly (he distribution of climatic effects on the earth. Two types 0

FACTS OF PLANT AND ANIMAL CONO.UEST 245

Scale = 1 :160,000.000

. Hot deserts (with at least very hot summers).
> a considerable depth). 5. Arid or grassy steppes.
LEMS OF THE EARTH
tent. They are the predominating surface phenomena which indicate
2;: two types of deserts (3 and 4), and immense stretches of steppes (5).

246 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
and to varying and modifiable extents distinctly unfavorable
to human occupation; they nowhere have a great density of
population.1 On the other hand, let us represent on another
map (Fig. 112) the zones which with good reason can be
grouped under the title of zones of transition, expressed by
more complex types of vegetation: countries with tropical
summer rains, such as India, China, or the Sudan; countries
with winter rains, such as the shores of the Mediterranean,
South Africa, southeastern Australia, or California; eastern
sections of the United States where the violent seasonal
climatic contrasts of the northern or central plains of North
America diminish; countries with a mild and damp climate
without great extremes of temperature, such as all that part of
Europe which benefits from the influence of the Atlantic,
etc. These are populous countries, countries with a vigor
ous civilization, what we may call in short the home lands
of humanity.
A comparison between these maps of zones of vegetation
and the map of the distribution of population (Fig. 14) will
allow us to check the correspondence which has just been
pointed out and to verify the exactness of this general outline
into which it is now permissible and useful to introduce all
sorts of shades. Let us have recourse to Koppen's classifi
cation and, among the transitional zones, let us distinguish
the main provinces which he has defined and of which he has
marked the limits, especially that of the climate of the olive
'Here we clearly distinguish between the question of the actual distribution of
the masses of population, taken as a whole, and all the problems which suggest them
selves on the subject of the development and of the progress of the various civiliza
tions. It is certain that, from this point of view, the steppes have permitted an easier
change of place for human groups, and that the zones of steppes bordering on the
forest have been especially sought out; see Robert Gradmann, " Beziehungen zwischen
Pflanzengeographie und Siedlungsgeschichte," Geog. Zeitschr., XII, 1906, pp. 305-325;
the long introduction by Vidal de la Blache, Tableau de la geographie de la France,
and in Petermanns Mitt, of March, 19 10, R. Scharfetter, " Pflanzen und Vfilker-
grenzen," pp. 121-123. Man makes variety on the earth, while the zones most
homogeneous in aspect are those in which he plays the least part; see A. Hettner, "Die
wirtschaftlichen Typen der Ansiedelungen," Geog. Zeitschr., VIII, pp. 92-100. Ratzel
has often insisted in his Anthropogeographie on the rfile of the forest as an obstacle
to human dispersion, and thus it is not necessary to speak of it here. It would
be necessary to speak of it here only in order to emphasize those very correct
views; see, for example, what will be said of the Congo forest and of the Fang in
chap. V, sec. 2. In the other continent one might choose as an example the Amazon
forest, and this is what one would discover: this selva is, especially on the border of
the water courses, a tangled and disordered confusion, very rebellious and almost
impenetrable; indeed, it is only the water courses that can serve as routes for
traversing it. The contrast between the two examples given is easily understood.

FACTS OF PLANT AND ANIMAL CONQUEST 247
tree, of the climate of maize, and of the climate of the
camelia or of tea.1 (Once more compare the data of the four
maps, Figs. 14, 15, in, and 112. 2)
2. ORIGIN, IMPORTANCE, AND NUMBER OF CULTIVATED PLANTS- AND
DOMESTICATED ANIMALS
"The origin," said Humboldt in 1807 in his essay on the
geography of plants, "the first home of those plants that are
the most useful to man and have been his companions since
the remotest ages, is a secret as impenetrable as the original
dwelling of all the domestic animals."3
To-day we are better informed, particularly through the
remarkable book by A. de Candolle, L'Origine des plantes
cultivees, though there are still plants of the greatest impor
tance, such as wheat or the common bean, about whose
primitive home we can make no exact and definite statement.
These facts go back so far that they belong to the history
of man's earliest efforts to win from the earth the satisfaction
of his needs. There are points on the globe where the furrows
newly traced every year on the same plot of ground and in
the same direction have perhaps been thus traced from a
time that antedates historical documents. Most of the more
important sorts of cultivation are older than the first Egyptian
or Chinese dynasties.
That ancient power of selection and domestication, which
is surely one of the rare gifts of human ingenuity, seems to
have been exhausted. In spite of the great progress in scien
tific methods, the list of new cultivated plants is strikingly
meager. If we ask what sorts of cultivation have been
introduced in the last two thousand years, we find some new
artificial fodders, a few plants with an aromatic berry such as
'Maps in and 112 have been made on too small a scale. They express an idea
and that is all. Maps on a larger scale would show the data with more exactness.
2 The great work, Vegelationsbilder, by G. Karsten and H. Schenk, consisting ot
a fine collection of photo-engravings published in separate brochures (Gustave
Fischer, Jena), furnishes valuable material for the illustration of all the climatic
types of vegetation.
3Quoted by A. de Candolle, L'Origine des plantes cultivies, second edition, F. Alcan,
Paris, 1896, p. 36. See also the following: Victor Helin, Kulturpflanzen und Haustiere
in ihrem Ubergang aus Asien und Griechenland, Ilalien, etc., Leipzig, 1870; L. Rein-
hardt, Kultur geschichle der Nutztiere, Munich, 1912; Kullur geschichle der Nulzpflanzen,
2 vols., Munich, 191 1; W. G. Freeman and S. E. Chandler, The World's Commercial
Products, Boston, 1911; Otto Warburg and J. E. Van Someren Brand, Kulturpflanzen
der Weltwirtschaft, Berlin, (1909 ?).

248

HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

Fig. 112. The Zones of Transitik
HI, Se'he^nduofeedb'y shading ^^ F* *"' "" by intenti°n
the<!pEm!1wda=.a con/eclueJnce of natural conditions or of human acts, th
these mixed aieas of woods, meadows, and cultivated fields that theprin
SuHnn AW ¦ ¦ zo"f comprise all the principal "zones of humanity"
AMFRi'rA • nn , ' Pl*teaU ?f the Lakes' Imcrina, southern border of
America, eastern sections of the United States, etc., etc. (See the test)

FACTS OF PLANT AND ANIMAL CONQUEST 249

Scale= i: i60.ooo.ooo
ields, and Trees Mingled Together)
lenlary. All the populous zones of the earth, which are in white on Fig.
t of all the zones of transition is heterogeneous, and it is in the midst of
numan beings are settled on the earth.
antic Europe, central Europe and the Mediterranean region. Africa:
Asia: the Asia of monsoons. Australia: eastern Australia. North

250 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
the coffee plant, and, very recently, a few rubber vines. What
a slender contribution in comparison with all those fundamental
plants which have literally fed humanity since its first exist
ence — wheat, barley, rye, maize, rice, the potato, the date
tree, the banana tree, etc. All these cultivated plants of the
Old and the New World certainly go back two thousand and
some of them at least five or six thousand years.
The weakness of human invention in recent times in the
matter of cultivation is all the more strange and emphasizes
all the more the wonder of these prehistoric selections because
primitive humanity in the New World drew from nature
useful plants different from those which served for food or
clothing in the Old World. The only great disturbance took
place after the discovery of America. Plants of the old
continent spread over vast stretches of the new continent,
while certain American plants — the potato, maize, the
cassava plant, the cacao plant, tobacco, the tomato, etc. —
invaded the Old World.
We may consider that all cultivated plants have had three
primitive centers: Mesopotamia and Egypt (barley, wheat,
the grape, flax) ; China, India, and Indo-China (rice, tea,
sugar cane, mulberry, cotton plant) ; and tropical America
(maize, potato, tobacco).1 Almost all the cultivated plants
of ancient times belong to the annual species, for at the
beginning of civilization men cultivated the plants which
grew most quickly and perennial cultivated plants were rare.
There is often no relation between the zone of the primitive
habitat of a plant before cultivation and the immense extent
which it occupies as a cultivated plant. In relatively recent
times (especially since the discovery of America) it has been
possible to transport plants directly to another part of the
world far from their place of origin. We might even cite
other than American examples, notably the Eucalyptus globulus
of Australia which has been planted in Algeria, California, and
other places with a Mediterranean type of climate.
Humanity has found and developed these principal culti
vated plants to satisfy its need of food or clothing. The
'According to G. Martinet, director of the agricultural experiment station and
professor at the University of Lausanne.

FACTS OF PLANT AND ANIMAL CONQUEST 251
greater number of food plants are cultivated for their seed
(wheat, barley, rice, maize) or for their fruit (orange, pome
granate, fig, olive, date, banana, melon, Elais guineensis or oil
palm, and, for American species, tomato and pineapple);
some furnish for food their tubers or their roots (turnips,
carrots, onions in the Old World, potatoes and cassava in the
New); finally some are even cultivated for their leaves or
their stalk (cabbage and asparagus). Among textile plants,
certain ones, such as the cotton plant, are cultivated for the
fiber of their seed pods, but the greater number furnish man
with thread from the fiber of their stalks or leaves (flax,
hemp, jute, ramie, and, among American plants, century
plant [Agave americana]).
The very early historical or prehistorical problem of how
man came to domesticate animals is not a problem to be
discussed here. Further, the question as to what were the
first domesticated species is a less important problem for
geographers than the problem of the domestic animal popula
tion at the present time. We may say, however, that accord
ing to recent studies the dog seems to have been the earliest
domestic animal. Then came the ox, of which the economic
role has been all-important, since the bovine species has been
used by man both for drawing (especially the plow) and for
food (milk and meat). It should also be noted that this same
species in different geographical zones meets different human
needs; in China the ox serves only as a draught animal and
cow's milk is not used.1 Besides the cow, the animals which
were domesticated for their milk were the goat and the sheep ;
for drawing and carrying, the ass first, then the camel, and
finally the horse. The pig is almost the only animal that has
been domesticated for its flesh alone.
Man has successfully attempted the domestication of but
a very small number of plants and animals.
Out of the 140,000 or 150,000 species of plants we may
say that those which have a real economic and geographic
lMoreover, in all central and southern China breeding is applied only to small
animals, no one of which furnishes milk. So true is this that, as a modern result,
China, especially the great Chinese ports where important European colonies are
located, has come to be among the chief consumers of European or American con
densed milk. It is the cows of Switzerland, Holland, Norway, or America that
nourish the little Europeans of Shanghai or Canton.

252 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
importance — that is, which are not exceptional facts or facts
of luxury but current geographical facts — do not exceed 300.
That hardly amounts to one cultivated to five hundred
natural species.
For the animal kingdom the proportion is still less. There
are entire classes of invertebrates from which man has not
selected a single type; out of the entire class of the Mollusca
he raises only the oyster and the clam; from the class of the
Articulata, which comprises by itself ten times as many species
as the entire vegetable kingdom, man raises only the bee
which furnishes him with honey and some few insects which
furnish silk. In comparison with the millions of species in
the animal kingdom, we must estimate the species of domestic
animals at the very modest number of 200.
These figures must not make us lose sight of the vast extent
of the earth's surface that has been transformed by men with
the help of these 300 vegetable and 200 animal species. The
space conquered by these species under the guidance of man is
such that, although they may appear restricted in number,
the geographic importance is immense. Some brief notes on .
certain of the principal cultivated plants and domesticated
animals, chosen as geographic types, will show this. Our
purpose in this exposition of method cannot be to make
complete studies (which would require entire volumes), but to
try to introduce into these fragmentary sketches some prin
ciple of geographic logic.
3- the principal cereals chosen as types of cultivated plants:
wheat, rye, barley, oats, maize, and rice
Wheat
We shall consider here the present state of common wheat
and the causes of its geographical extension.
It is customary to distinguish numerous kinds of wheat of
which some are species; but geographically, common wheat
must be considered as being one single species belonging to
the family of the Gramineae and characterized by the fact that
its seeds become loosened from their envelope at maturity.
We shall consider the geographical conditions that determine
the distribution of the different wheats without distinguishing

FACTS OF PLANT AND ANIMAL CONQUEST 253
the different kinds: ordinary wheat {Triticum vulgar e), Egyp
tian wheat or big wheat {Triticum turgidum), the hard wheat
{Triticum durum) of Spain and the south of Switzerland, as
well as Polish wheat {Triticum polonicum), and the less
productive but more hardy red wheat of Alsace.
Wheat was one of the earliest cultivated plants of the Old
World. It has been cultivated for at least six thousand
years. It is one of the five plants solemnly sown every year
by the emperor of China at the time of the celebrated ceremony
instituted 2,800 years before Christ. Likewise grains of
wheat have been found among the remains of the lake-dwellers
and in some tombs of Egyptian mummies.
What are the geographical conditions of the cultivation of
wheat that may explain its general distribution?1
. Heat. — In order to ripen, wheat requires a rather large
amount of heat, but it can ripen very quickly and this fact
shortens, in certain favorable cases, the necessary period of
heat. Thus wheat that requires from 250 to 270 days to
mature on the coasts of the English Channel, requires only
135 days in the overheated region of Russian central Asia
and, if need be, four months may suffice.
On the other hand, too great cold is unfavorable to wheat ;
it hardly extends beyond the regions where the temperature
falls below 2o°C. (68°F.), unless it is protected by an abundant
layer of snow. Where cold weather without snow prevails
during the winter, wheat can be sown only in the spring;
otherwise it will not ripen. Thus the adaptability of this
plant, the fact that the proper varieties can be sown either
before or after winter, and the protection furnished it by a
thick layer of snow combine to extend its geographic range.
In general, temperate winters with successive freezing and
thawing are much more unfavorable to wheat than severe
winters with an abundant fall of snow.
Humidity. — In order to develop, wheat needs water, espe
cially at the planting season and during the period of most
xFor a full presentation of the geography of wheat, see Dondlinger, The Book
of Wheat; Hunt, The Cereals in America, Orange Judd Company, New York, pp. 26-137;
also N. A. Bengtson and D. Griffith, The Wheat Industry, Macmillan, New York, 1915;
V. C. Finch and O. E. Baker, Geography of the World's Agriculture, U. S. Depart
ment of Agriculture, Washington, D. C, 1917, 13-26.

254 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
rapid growth. Climates characterized by spring rains or
where there is an abundant snowfall which melts in the spring
are well suited to its cultivation. There is a general geographic
correspondence between zones of abundant snow and certain
zones of wheat cultivation.
However, climates that are too damp, and especially those
that are too damp in summer at the time of the full maturity
of wheat, are unfavorable to it. We do not find this cereal
in the countries of the great equatorial rains nor in the countries
that receive the heavier monsoon rains. In the monsoon
countries we find wheat cultivated on a large scale only where
these rains are less abundant (regions of India such as the
Indo-Gangetic plain, the region of the Hwang-ho in the
north of China, and the middle regions of Japan).1 For a
like reason the climate of Switzerland with its rainy summer
and heavy summer showers is much less suitable for wheat
than for pasture lands.2 Similarly, soils that are too damp
are unfavorable to wheat; in some regions where the upper
soil is not sufficiently permeable, as in Brie, to the east of
Paris, it is necessary to establish very deep drainage and
more generally to plow from time to time furrows deeper
than the others to facilitate the running off of the water.
While wheat does not endure well an excess of humidity, it can
endure extreme dryness very satisfactorily, provided the plant
receives, somehow or other, its indispensable rninirnum of water:
a) Wheat can resist exceptional cases of dryness because
it can send its roots to a depth of from 5.5 to 6.5 feet (1.7 to 2
meters) (experiments made at Grignon). >
b) Wheat adapts itself very well to very dry and permeable
lands if there is beneath an impermeable layer which assures
it the necessary quantity of water (Beauce).
c) Wheat also becomes easily acclimated in regions of
great summer dryness, such as Turkestan, provided that the
1A. Woeikof contributes the following accurate observation: "It is not the abun
dant rains of the monsoons that exclude wheat from many regions of India, but the
absence of a cool season. Wheat is a winter, not a summer, cereal. It is cultivated
where there are slight but regular winter rains (the Indo-Gangetic plain) , or where
the monsoon rains are late in ending and where the cool season is. nevertheless, quite
long (a part of the Central Provinces). Wheat is sown in November, after the rains."
2In Switzerland spelt especially is cultivated. Switzerland's production of cereals
is equal to about one-third of her consumption; see Geering and Hotz, Economic
politique de la Suisse, Zurich, 1903.

FACTS OF PLANT AND ANIMAL CONQUEST 255
roots of the plant receive water in sufficient quantities by
means of irrigation.
d) The wheat area in western United States1 has in recent
years been greatly extended through the use of dry-farming
methods. An area is alternately cropped and fallowed so
that a crop is raised every other year. The ground is con
stantly tilled while not in use, evaporation is reduced, and
the moisture thus saved to the soil suffices to germinate and
mature a good crop of wheat; though it should be noted that
dry farming is most successful where the annual rainfall
comes mainly in the fall and early spring. In the driest
portions of the dry-farming belt a longer period of water
conservation is required and a crop can be grown only once
in three or four years.
Qualities of the soil. — Wheat is a plant that exhausts the
soil. It needs therefore a rich soil (such as clay lands, the
alluvium of rivers or lakes) either in the actual layers in
which it is sown ("black earth zones" of Russia) or near these
layers (Beauce).2 Wheat is a plant so exhausting that it is
best not to sow it two years in succession on the same land.
It is better to allow the land to lie fallow or to alternate wheat
with clover or alfalfa, which have the property of restoring
nitrogen to the soil and thus enriching it. The lands best
suited to wheat are the slightly mixed clays, neither too
compact nor too impermeable, which the ancient glaciers
spread over a large part of northern and central Europe and
northern North America. They are the glacial or fluvio-
glacial clays, or those finer, limey clays without pebbles,
called loess, the origin of which is more uncertain and more
1J. F. Unstead, "The Climatic Limits of Wheat Cultivation, with Special Refer
ence to North America," Geog. Jour., May, 1912.
2"To be raised successfully, spring wheat should be sown in finely powdered soil,
for, sown in heavy soil, it is likely not to attain its maximum growth. In a general
way, spring wheats very rarely give a yield superior to that of autumn wheats; in fact,
in certain soils, their cultivation is not to be recommended. Sown in good season and
in good soil in the right condition, however, they still produce remunerative harvests
in the provinces of Nord, Oise, Seine-et-Marne, Seine-et-Oise. In Beauce their success
is more uncertain, and it becomes extremely doubtful in the silicate-argillitic soils of
the Centre. Assuredly, in this crop, climate plays an important part, but the rich
ness of the soil has an influence of primary importance. Only rich soil is good soil
for spring wheat, while soil of moderate fertility is rather to be considered unfavorable.
Even in good soils one must not forget that, because of its rapid growth, spring wheat
is not desirable as a fertilizer. In soils that are light and of little fertility, it is much
better to sow oats than spring wheat" (Marcel Vacher, L' Agriculture moderne, April
I, 1900, p. 195).

256 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
debated (loess of central Europe, loess of the United States,
and the great loess deposits of China) . In fact, we find wheat
on all the plateaus of central Europe which have been covered
by the clays or the loess,1 and the same thing is true in North
America. Labor. — Wheat requires for the entire cycle of its cultivation
a large amount of human labor:2 plowing and sowing, har
vesting and threshing.
Hence wherever wheat is cultivated on a large scale, a
large force of laborers is a necessity, particularly at harvest
time. What are the geographic facts that result from this?
Unless the population of the cultivated region is numerous
(as is the case in the upper valley of the Ganges), this cultiva
tion brings about a call for labor, which results in a regular
human migration (northern France, southern Russia, central
United States, or Argentina).3 Otherwise, man supplies the
lack of labor by means of more and more perfected and costly
machinery (Fig. 113). This is the partial solution of the
question adopted in the great wheat plains of the central part
of the United States and Canada, where reapers are used
which also thresh the wheat, besides putting the grain in
sacks.4 Yet it must be noted that in the United States it is
not the largest farms that raise most of the total production
of wheat. Relatively small farms of less than 100 acres (40
hectares) produce a fifth of the total harvest, while the largest
1See the map compiled by Vidal de la Blache in his France, showing the history
of the occupation of the soil in Europe (plateaus of Podolia, rich Bbrde of Germany,
plateaus of Haiinaut or of Picardy, etc.), adding to the zones marked in yellow the
alluvial deposits of the Po basin.
2In order that this observation may keep its full value, let us note, however, that
there are some periods when wheat germinates and sprouts all by itself, at least where
one is not trying to cultivate it with a large crop in view. In this connection,
George G. Chisholm writes: "A man at the head of a large farm in the Dominion at
Ottawa called my attention to the fact that the chief reason why the first possessors
of the soil had cultivated so much wheat was that it was the only crop that they
could leave entirely to itself for three months after sowing."
3In certain regions of Italy the cultivation of wheat brings in its wake strong
currents of migration; for the harvest, 75,000 Italians from other parts of Italy move
to the great grain fields of the tavoliere of Apulia. See Le Correnti periodiche di
migrazione interna in Italia durante il 1005, Ministry of Agriculture, Industry, and
Commerce, Bureau of Labor, Rome, 1907; Pierre Denis, "Les Migrations periodiques
a l'interieur de l'ltalie," Ann. die giog., XVII, 1908, p. 82.
^Everywhere the problem of labor is growing more acute, as is that of machinery
to offset the lack and high cost of labor. Hence all the efforts, in England, Germany
and the United States, particularly, to introduce steam and electric ¦ power; see
Ach. Gregoire, "Labourage a vapeur," Rev. icon, internal., August 15-20, 1909,
PP- 364-379-

FACTS OF PLANT AND ANIMAL CONQUEST 257

quantity of wheat is raised on the medium-sized farms (from
ioo to 170 acres).1
By means of a general map showing the distribution of

Fig. 113. Steam-Plow for the Growing of Wheat

The growing of wheat in the New World requires the most perfected
and rapid machines.
wheat cultivation we can see to what extent the three chief
wheat-producing countries owe their supremacy to a more
or less perfect meeting of these different geographic conditions
(see Fig. 114, p. 258).
1. The United States: (a) a very great summer heat;
(6) humidity, especially during the spring and resulting
largely from the melting of the snow; (c) glacial clays;
{d) maximum perfection in machinery replacing hand labor.
Out of a total extent of 427,292 square miles (1,073,340
square kilometers) of the surface of the earth devoted to
wheat, 83,658 square miles (19 14) are in the United States.
At Duluth, Chicago, and other wheat ports enormous granaries
or elevators (Fig. 115) are an evidence of the gigantic wheat
production of this country. Chicago, with its wheat pit, is
the largest wheat market.
Storing and transportation of wheat are facilitated by the
1See the article by A. P. Brigham, "The Development of Wheat Culture in North
America," Geog. Jour., XXXV, 1910, pp. 42-56.
16

Fig. 114. General Geographic Distribution of Wheat-Growing
Tn the southern hemisphere, the wheat KrowinR areas arc between 300 and 400; in the northern hemisphere, chiefly between 350
and 6o°, the areas in the latter region tending to avoid the damp parts and concentrating in new lands between 50° and 55°.

FACTS OF PLANT AND ANIMAL CONQUEST 259

fact that the grain can be handled more or less like a liquid.1
2. Russia: {a) great heat in summer; (6) humidity furnished
by melting snow; (c) black earth, chernoziom; {d) periodic

Fig. 115. A Grain-Elevator

Situated with a lake on one side and a railroad on the other.
Pneumatic tubes, large and flexible, suck the grain from the
freight-cars to the top of the structure. It then runs through
chutes to the holds of the carrying vessels.
migrations in harvest time of at least five to six million men
from north to south; that is, from the northern sections of
the "black earth country" (which are more populated)
toward the southern sections.2
3. France: Here the conditions are much more varied
and differ in the different regions. Almost everywhere, with
the exception of the mountainous regions, the conditions of
heat and humidity, while not perfect, are sufficient for wheat.3
Generally speaking, the richness of the soil and the density
of the population have been the determining factors in wheat
cultivation. To-day, in the neighborhood of Paris and particularly in
'See George G. Chisholm, "A Hundred Years of Commerce between England and
America," Scottish Geog. Mag., November, 1909, p. 571.
2See J. Machat, Le Diveloppement iconomique de la Russie, Armand Colin, Paris,
1902, p. 122.
3See a very good chapter, "La Repartition geographique de la production du
froment en France," pp. 37 ff., in D. Zolla, Le Bli et les ceriales, Doin, Paris, 1909.
Consult also, in a general way, L. Grandeau, V Agriculture et les institutions agricoles
du monde au commencement du XX" siecle, Marcel Riviere, Paris, 1905-1906; and also
Van Someren Brand, Les Grandes Cultures du monde, leur histoire, leur exploitation, leurs
diffirents usages, translated from the Dutch by F. Rode, E. Flammarion, Paris, 1905.

260 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
Brie, the cultivation of wheat is kept up only with the help
of Belgian and Polish labor. The Belgians come every year
for the harvest in organized groups and are called aouterons.
In France the population cultivates its own wheat and eats
the product; it is not, like the United States, Canada, and
Russia, an exporting country.
Another chapter of true human geography should comprise
a study of the dates of the harvests in the different countries.
Wheat is to a remarkable degree a world product and the object
of a world commerce. We may say that the wheat-producing
countries have a joint responsibility and that humanity's
need of wheat is such that, because of the change of seasons
and the geographical situation of the different regions, there
is always some spot on the earth where wheat is being gathered
and threshed.1
Table of the Principal Regions Where Wheat Is Harvested, Month
by Month2
January  New Zealand, Chile.
February  Upper Egypt, eastern India.
March  India.
April  Lower Egypt, Asia Minor, Mexico.
May  Morocco, Algeria, central Asia, Persia,
China, Japan.
June  Southern states of the United States, Euro
pean peninsulas of the Mediterranean.
July  Central states of the United States, southern
Russia, Roumania, Bulgaria, Austria .Hungary,
Switzerland, Germany, France, England.
August  Northern states of the United States, Canada,
central Russia, Poland, Denmark, Holland,
Belgium, and northern France.
October ( Scotland, Sweden, and Norway.
November  South Africa and province of Santa Fe
(Argentine Republic).
December  Other provinces of Argentina and Australia.
After these geographical considerations it will be interesting
to consult statistics. Here, for example, is the table of the
wheat harvest for the year iqoi (which was a good year),
'Hence, as a result of the increasing facilities of transportation, has come about
that "leveling of the price of essential commodities" which E. Levasseur has often
studied and emphasized; see, for example, some figures on the subject of wheat
"Enquete sur le prix des denrees alimentaires en France," Rev. icon, internal.. May
15-20, 1909, p. 247.
2From the "Ernte-Kalender." published bv G. Ruhland in his book. Die Lelire von
der Preisbildung filr Getreide, W. Issleib, Berlin, p. 132.

FACTS OF PLANT AND ANIMAL CONQUEST 261

compared with that of 1915, which thus far was the most
productive year of all.
Production of Wheat in Millions of Bushels1

United States 
Russia 
France 
India 
Italy 
Austria-Hungary . . .
Germany 
Spain 
Canada 
Argentine Republic .
British Isles 

1901

1915

7421

ioii|

4055

834

3101

258

170

383

1475-

170*

1471

231

1 <>4f

160

76*

139

79i

336

73!

178

53s

76

The total production of wheat in 1896 was estimated at
2,527}-! million bushels.
The total production in 191 5 was estimated at 4,217 million
bushels. The average annual production for the world is estimated
at 3,900 million bushels.
World Production of Grain, by Weight,
according to the landwirtschaftliche marktzeitung of ruhland,2
in Millions of Pounds
1900  156,747.06
1901  161,376.72
1902  190,477.44
1903  196,870.78
1904  184,304.56
1905  i97.973-o8
1906  203,264. 12
1907  185,406.86
1908  184,304.56
1909  203,925.50
As the world market develops, not only dees the cultivation
of wheat become more extensive in the regions which offer
the best geographical conditions, but also decreases in the
countries where the geographical conditions are less perfect.
Though the acreage devoted to wheat may be decreased, the
crop may increase, because as wheat lands are worn out
'For statistics of world agricultural production, see current publications of the
International Institute of Agriculture, Rome.
2Cited by D. Zolla, Le Bli et les ciriales, Doin, Paris, 1909, p. 39. The figures,
beginning with the year 1905, were supplied by G. Ruhland.

262 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
through extensive cultivation, more intensive methods are
followed, crops are grown in rotation, and the production per
acre rises.1
For example, the cultivation of wheat has perceptibly
diminished in the British Isles, in Belgium, and in the western
part of France, because the climate there is too damp, especially
in summer. But the average production in these same
countries for the latest per-year period (19 14) for which
comparative statistics are available is as follows : British Isles,
33.8 bushels (British) per acre (30.36 hectoliters per hec
tare); France, 18.9 bushels (British) per acre (16.97 hecto
liters per hectare). On the other hand, where condition^
are most favorable, the rate of production reaches only 9.4
bushels (American) per acre (8.18 hectoliters per hectare)
in Russia, and only 16.6 bushels (American) per acre (14.4
hectoliters per hectare) in the United States.
Progress of the relative yield of wheat per acre in France
is as follows: 1820  11 bushels
i860  16 bushels
1900  19 bushels
1910  20.4 bushels
Other Cereals of the Temperate Regions
From the study of the geographic zone of wheat, we shall
now examine briefly the geographic distribution of the other
cereals of the temperate countries in relation to that of wheat.
Rye2
Rye is first of all a more hardy plant than wheat; it can
adapt itself and gets along well with: (1) a decreased amount
of heat; (2) a greater amount of water; (3) a poorer soil. It
also requires less care than wheat.
Rye is found along the edge of the wheat zone where
wheat growing begins to diminish, and within the wheat zone
where wheat does not prosper either because the soils are
poor or because the climate is too damp (Limousin, Brittany,
!J. F. Unstead, "A Statistical Study of Wheat Cultivation and Trade," Geog.
Jour., 1913.
2V. C. Finch and O. E. Baker, Geography of the World's Agriculture, U. S.
Department of Agriculture, Washington, D. C, 1917, pp. 27-28.

FACTS OF PLANT AND ANIMAL CONQUEST 263
Central Plateau of France, plateau section of New York and
Pennsylvania). Rye is found in the Alps up to an altitude
of 6,230 feet (2,000 meters) and even a little higher. In
general the cultivation of rye goes beyond the natural limits
of wheat both in latitude and in altitude. It forms a sort
of border around the wheat zone, and especially to the
north, where the general conditions are more unfavorable to
wheat-growing. The chief rye-producing country is Russia, for the cultivation
of wheat in the "black earth country" is of recent date and
the people live principally upon rye; the wheat grown in
Russia is intended chiefly for exportation. The countries
next in order of importance as rye-producing regions are
Germany, Austria and Hungary. Rye in Germany covers
22 per cent of the total cultivated surface; the proportion
in Saxony reaches 26.7 per cent and in Prussia 28.9 per cent.
The hght, sandy, and sandy-clay lands of the North German
Lowland are well suited to rye.
The increase in wheat production and the relative decline
in significance of rye are in part due to changing ideals as to
food. Black bread gives way to white bread, and unbolted
flour to bolted flour. Improved milling methods have made
it possible to transport flour through warm, damp regions,
and improved methods of transportation have made it
economically possible to distribute wheat and wheat flour
far and wide. Many regions that once were dependent
entirely upon home-grown rye can now secure wheat from
the most distant wheat fields.
In Russia, the greatest rye-producing country, rye was
long used extensively for the manufacture of an alcohol,
the liquor called vodka. Whiskey too is being made from
rye. In the United States, where rye has never been culti
vated extensively as a food cereal, it has been cultivated
for the manufacture of whiskey. Barley
Barley is a very old cereal which has served and still serves
as a food for men and animals and for the manufacture of
beer. It is a richer cereal than rye and is coming to be used

264 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
much more generally as a food for human beings. Barley1
belongs geographically to the wheat zone and in character is
the most adaptable and the hardiest of all the cereals. We
find it scattered throughout the wheat region, and even far
beyond the farthest limits of wheat-growing. It is found
far toward the north in Norway (700 N. latitude) as well as in
the oases of the Sahara (as far as 250 N. latitude).
Barley is cultivated particularly in Russia and in the
United States (Minnesota, North Dakota, California, South
Dakota). Much of the barley has been used for making
beer — a market now lost in the United States.
In a more detailed study it would be proper to distinguish
between brewery barley, which is cultivated as intensively as
winter wheat in central and western Europe, and barley
used as food for animals, which is produced by less intensive
cultivation and without fertilizer in southern Russia, in Rou-
mania the Mediterranean countries, in California, in Chile, etc.
Oats
In spite of recent successful attempts to place oats in the
list of human foods,2 oats are still used chiefly for animals and
especially for horses. On the whole, the zone of this cereal
is closely bound to the zone of horse-raising. In a climate of
damp and cool summers, oats succeed well; they are found
in the wheat zone in regions where the summers are less warm
and dry.
The chief oat-producing countries are the United States
(abundant cereals), Russia, Germany, France and the British
Isles. After having thus determined, in their main lines, the zones
of geographic distribution, let us examine some comparative
'"Barley," says Woeikof, "is the cereal which is satisfied with the least amount
of warmth : so we find it at the northern limit of cereals, in the north of Russia and of
Scandinavia and at very great altitudes in the Alps, the Caucasus, the Himalayas,
the Andes, etc. But it is cultivated just as much to the south of the wheat region —
for example, in Arabia. This first fact is explained by the rapid maturing of the barley;
this allows its harvesting during the short season with very high temperature. The
same reason allows the cultivation of barley in countries where the rainfall is too
slight to give a good harvest of other cereals" ("La Geographie de l'alimentation
humaine," La Geographie, XX, 1909, p. 225). See also Finch and Baker, loc. cil.,
pp. 40-44.
2 "Oats are the principal food for man in certain parts of Sweden, in Norway,
and in Scotland, and on the other side of the Atlantic, in Nova Scotia, etc." (Woeikof,
ibid., p. 226). See also Finch and Baker, /«-. cil., pp. 35-39.

FACTS OF PLANT AND ANIMAL CONQUEST 265

statistics, including the statistics of corn (maize), of which a
brief study will follow. Principal Cereals
Production, in Millions of Pounds, in the Chief Producing Countries for
Three Recent and Characteristic Years
Wheat

1900

1909

1913

Total production 

156,747.06 35,934-98
23,589 -22
19,400.48 14,770.82

203,925.50 42,769.24 46,957-9821,605.08 I5,2H74

253,008.36 45,802.80 52,447.62 19,260.00

21,761.58
Rye
Total production.
Russia (K)
Germany (%) .
Austria 
Hungary 
France 
United States .
87,302. 16
51,146.7218,739.10 3,086.442,425.063,306.90 1,343-77
91,711.36 50,264.88
24,911 .98
6,393-34 2,865.983,306.901,805.38
112,823.22 58,317.6028,870. 14
6,545-583,135-362,482.86
2,317-33
Barley
Total production .
Russia 
Germany 
United States . .
39,241.88 11,243.46 6,613.80 2,865.98
74,515 -48
22,707.38 7,716. 10
8,157.02
99,015.9033,455-58 10,122.5410,691.34
Oats
Total production.
United States . .
Russia 
Germany 
France 
105,379-88 30,643.9426,014.28 15,652.66 9,038.86
140,212.56 32,848.54
36,596.3620,061 .86
12,566.22
281,846 67,30666,335
40,153 18,669
.22
.08.46.86.42
Corn
Total production.
United States. .
Hungary 
Roumania ....
Italy 
Argentina ....
Russia 
155,424.30126,103. 12
8,157.02
4,850.124,850.123,306.90 1,984. 14
208,114.24 155,203.84 10,141 .16
3,968.28
4,629 . 66
9,259-32 2,204.60
215,245 146,819 10,601 6,8796,503
11,798 4,367
74
28 6472
28 52
58
Corn (Maize)
Corn (maize) is the great cereal of the New World and one
of the most important products that we owe to the discovery
266 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
of America. In the Old World corn bears names which show
both its late arrival and the uncertainty of different peoples
as to its true origin. It is called in western Europe bU de
Turquie (Turkish wheat), and in Turkey, bU d'Egypte, and in
Egypt, dourah de Syrie.
In the Old World corn is utilized as a secondary cereal,
while it is the traditional cereal of the older populations of
North and South America. In Mexico the national dish is
the tortilla (a hot pancake of corn). There are .only two
countries in the Old World where corn has won an exceptional
place as a human food ; they are Italy, where the polenta made
of corn flour has become a national dish, and Roumania with
its mamaliga.
Corn requires more heat and humidity than does wheat.
Thus it can adapt itself to extreme, damp heat which is inju
rious to wheat, and can be cultivated everywhere in the tropics.
It also requires an abundance of sunshine during the growing
season, not maturing in regions with cloudy summers, even
where the temperature is favorable (England).1
Two essential ideas are to be drawn from the study of com :
i. Corn belongs to the warmer and damper zones which
are situated toward the south, in the interior or on the border
of the wheat zone. We shall see farther on that rice is pre
eminently the cereal of the very warm and very damp regions
of the globe. Corn, by its geographical conditions, is a sort
of intermediary between the wheat zone and the rice zone.2
In two cases especially this general fact is clearly shown: in
the plain of the Po, where wheat, corn, and rice succeed each
other in approximately concentric zones in proportion to the
humidity, and in the great valley of the Mississippi, where
we find the wheat plains situated toward the north, the rice
plains near the shore of the Gulf of Mexico, and the corn
lands in the middle region, between the wheat and the rice.
2. Corn is a type of plant whose zone of actual geographic
extension is very far from reaching its zone of possible geo
graphic extension. Corn, a cereal of the New World, has
1See Finch and Baker, loc. cit., pp. 29-34.
2 In certain humid countries (as in Annam) maize is cultivated side by side with
rice, but it is of quite secondary importance; it is used for food only when rice is
about to fail,

FACTS OF PLANT AND ANIMAL CONQUEST 267
as yet been introduced only here and there in a scattered
fashion in the Old World where it has found so much land
already occupied by the older traditional cereals. It is still
to-day predominantly an American cereal, but, considering
its American production, it is surprising that it should already
play so important a role as it does in the Old World.
Let us now turn back to the table of statistics on p. 265.
What does the United States do with this enormous surplus
production of corn? Corn meal is not an important food in
the area of surplus production, the so-called corn belt. The
rural population of the southern states makes a large use of
corn, but such corn is locally grown. The southern states are
not a market for the northern surplus in a large way. The
chief use of corn is to fatten hogs, and to a lesser extent
cattle, which are raised in great numbers in the corn-growing
states ; and also for feeding horses and mules. Corn is grown
as a grain in every state of the Union for local consumption.
The corn-surplus states of the Mississippi Valley form the
so-called corn belt. Corn is also grown extensively as a forage
crop, especially in the dairying sections, even where the short
growing season does not favor the maturing of the grain. The
plant is cut when still green, chopped fine, and preserved in
silos, cylindrical structures especially constructed for the pur
pose. Ensilage forms a vital part of the winter ration and in
many cases of the year-round ration of dairy cattle, as it
furnishes a succulent food that is very palatable.
Rice
As a food plant for men, rice is still more important than
wheat. We may consider that rice feeds about 450 millions
of men (one-third of humanity) . Rice is above all others the
principal food plant in very warm and very damp regions
and, while wheat becomes more and more localized in the
temperate regions with warm and dry summers, rice belongs
especially to the tropical regions with summers characterized
by heavy, warm rains.1
xAlwin Oppel, Der Reis, Bremen, 1890. See especially C. Bachmann, "Die geo
graphische Verbreitung des Reisbaues und seine Intensitat in den Monsunlandern,"
Petermanns Mitt., LVIII, 1912, pp. 15 and 16, Table 3. One ought, on principle, to
distinguish between upland rice and lowland rice; but, economically speaking, the
former has little importance. See also Finch and Baker, loc. cit., pp. 46-49.

268 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
The Geographical Conditions of Rice
Great heat and great humidity : The countries which enjoy
great heat and a large amount of precipitation throughout the
year are so suitable for rice that several crops a year may
be raised, as in Java. Countries which have a warm and
rainy season are suitable for this plant, and the longer this
season lasts the more crops can be raised. The countries par
excellence for the cultivation of rice are the monsoon countries
and the countries of southeastern Asia. In certain regions
the rains of the summer monsoon are so abundant and so
regular that this cereal is cultivated without irrigation; such
are central and eastern Bengal, the Malabar coast, certain
provinces of Java and of Indo-China. But in China, Japan,
and Korea rice is cultivated only with the aid of artificial
watering. Soil: Easily worked lands, rich and in general low, for they
must be not only watered but submerged ; the alluvial regions
of the great deltas of the Asiatic Far East are as if made ready
for rice cultivation.
Labor: Very dense population, for the cultivation of rice
demands many hands and continuous work. The preparation
of the rice field requires very minute care. The field is divided
into a series of flat basins which must not only receive the
water but retain it for from eight to ten days in succession.
Each of these basins is shut in by embankments which must
be regularly kept up; the ground in these little basins must
be prepared by plowing or harrowing (Fig. 1 16) ; then the rice
must be sowed. After the rice is sowed, the fields are covered
with water for twenty to thirty days, this being renewed
from time to time, for it must never become foul from remaining
stagnant. When the rice has sprung up, it must be trans
planted (Fig. 117). This is a long, hard, and very unhealthful
task. When transplanted into the basins where it is to
develop, the rice must be watered at fixed periods; these
waterings must have careful supervision and be often renewed.
Finally, when the rice has developed, the rice fields must be
drained, before the harvest begins. The rice is cut with a
sickle, that is, by hand. Then there is still the husking of
the grain to be done, which requires many hands.

FACTS OF PLANT AND ANIMAL CONQUEST 269
How [says Woeikof] could a cereal so difficult to cultivate manage
to take root in so many countries and become the chief article of
food for hundreds of millions of men ? There are two reasons for
this: (i) The cultivation of rice made possible the using of marshy

Fig. 116.

Copyright by Underwood & Underwood
Harrowing a Rice Field in the Philippines

_ The planting can not be done until the ground has been flooded for periods of from
eight to ten days, after which it is plowed and harrowed.
grounds where other cereals would not grow; besides the yield of
rice is very great. (2) It is very quickly and easily digested,
conditions that are important in warm and damp countries where
the other cereals cause indigestion.1
The cultivation of rice is mainly carried on in well-populated
regions which consume most of the product at home. In
order to have a surplus for export, rice must be grown where
there is little local demand for the grain, labor must be cheap,
'A. Woeikof, op. cit., p. 228.

270

HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

or special methods must be employed that will permit machine
labor, as has recently been done in Louisiana and Texas.
The general geographic fact is that rice is mainly consumed
locally in the producing countries with a dense population
and a low scale of wages.
The rice-producing countries are first of all China, together
with the neighboring Asiatic monsoon countries (Japan on the
one hand and India and Indo-China on the other).
Rice is the essential and fundamental food of all central
and southern China. In certain parts of northern China the
inhabitants live upon wheat, millet, and sorghum, but the
great majority of the inhabitants of China live upon rice and
by means of rice. This plant, which requires no highly

From the Verascopo Richard. Engraving loaned by H. Busson
Fig. 117. The Transplanting of Rice
A rice-plantation at Taolongtou (Yunnan). The work of transplant
ing is a difficult and very unhealthful work, for it must be done with the
feet in the water.

perfected agricultural tools, which demands little fertilizer
but much water, which needs only four months for its complete
development, is very well suited to China, a region overheated

FACTS OF PLANT AND ANIMAL CONQUEST 271
in summer, abundantly watered by rains, rich in alluvial lands,
and, finally, overpopulated.
Throughout China rice is so generally the staple food that

Jean Brunhes
Fig. 118. After the Harvesting of the Rice: the
Imprints of Human Feet
The men must do the harvesting with sickles, and always with their
feet in the water. When the rice field has dried and, after the harvest,
the mud has become hardened ground, it still bears the deep imprints
of the feet of the harvesters. View taken in the rice fields of Albufera
dAlcudia (Balearic Islands).
the expression chih fan ("eat rice") is the current expression
for "take a meal," just as the expression chih kono fan ("How
have you eaten your rice?") is the usual formula of greeting,
equivalent to such expressions as "How are 'you?"1
Rice has developed in two other groups of regions, namely :
i. The countries of Africa, and, after the discovery of the
New World, the countries of America where the general
natural conditions are similar to those of the Asiatic Far East
in respect to heat, humidity, alluvial and marshy soils, and
1See Elisee and Onesime Reclus, L'Empire du Milieu, Hachette, Paris, p. 646.
One should compare these words with some of our expressions, such as to "earn his
bread."

272 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
sufficient population. In detail the regions are as follows:
In western Africa: the monsoon coast of Guinea; in eastern.
Africa : the region of the Great Lakes, the coast of Mozambique
and the lower Zambezi, the plateau of Imerina in Madagascar;1
in South America : the humid areas of eastern Brazil ; in North
America : the low, warm, and well-watered region of the lower
Mississippi and of the Gulf of Mexico.
2. The second type of region includes some countries with
warm and dry summers where the required conditions of soil
or population exist and where the lack of rain is met by irriga
tion (lower parts of the Delta of the Nile, lower parts of the
basin of the Po).
The history of the development of the cultivation of rice
shows clearly that the monsoon countries of eastern and
southeastern Asia are preeminently the rice countries.
In the ceremony instituted by the Emperor Chin-Nong,
2800 B.C., which has already been mentioned in reference to
wheat, the emperor himself sows every year five plants, but
the first to be planted is rice.2
From China this plant passed to India and from India it
spread to the region of the lower Euphrates, where rice was
already cultivated in the time of Alexander, 400 years before
Christ. At about this time it seemed to have reached the
extreme limits of the summer rains and was even touching the
dry and desert regions. Thus for more than a thousand years
it was unable to pass beyond this limit toward the west. It
was doubtless only by chance and after many attempts that
rice succeeded in gaining a foothold in some parts of Syria or of
neighboring countries ; in those parts which are very dry it has
not been generally cultivated. It is surprising that there is
no mention of rice in the Old Testament; but in Palestine,
which is outside of its natural geographical environment, its
cultivation would have been very difficult, if not impossible.
From Syria rice must have been carried into the lower parts
of the Delta of the Nile, where we still find it to-day.
The great Mussulman crusade from the eighth to the tenth
!The island of Madagascar was for a long time an importer of rice. Thanks to
the improvement of the rice fields, it is now beginning to export this product in
considerable quantities.
2A. dc Candolle, L'Origine des plantes cullivees, p. 310.

FACTS OF PLANT AND ANIMAL CONQUEST 273
century had certain agricultural consequences. It was through
this movement that the Arabs introduced rice into Spain. It
is still found there in certain irrigated parts, as in the huerta of
Valencia, and it has kept its Arab name {arroz). Much later,
rice was carried into Italy. Its first cultivation there, near
Pisa, dates from 1468; thence it was introduced into the well-
irrigated parts of the basin of the Po, where we find it to-day.
Finally in the eighteenth century rice was carried to the
southern United States and all the low parts of the Gulf of
Mexico.1 It is now grown extensively as a commercial crop
in Texas, Louisiana, and Arkansas. The development of rice-
harvesting machinery has offset the disadvantage of a lack of
cheap labor, so essential in the production of rice in the Orient.
Rice, which feeds so many men, plays an important part in
Nahrungsgeographie, the geography of food; its place is less
important in Verkehrsgeographie, commercial geography.
In Europe rice is consumed on a large scale only in Italy,
where it is cultivated (50 pounds per head each year), while
in Great Britain, the European country which imports the
largest quantity of rice, the consumption is only 15 pounds
per head.
The consumption in Germany is:
1865  1.8 pounds per head. each year
1883  4.18 pounds per head each year
1900  5.73 pounds per head each year
Thus, while the quantity consumed has tripled in thirty -five
years, it is still small, especially in comparison with the con
sumption in Italy.
The commerce in rice seems to be less centralized than is
the commerce in wheat, but in some sections it is important
in local trade. Japan uses rice of inferior quality imported
from Chosen (Korea) and exports better varieties. Likewise
in the Piura valley of northwestern Peru, Chinese rice is im
ported and the local rice is exported to Chile and Europe. The
exportation of rice from the large, fertile, and well-populated
1See Leslie Harrison, "Cultivation of Rice in the United States,'' Jour. Geog.,
No. 7, September, 1903; published also in Forestry and Irrigation, July, 1903, pp.
334-343. with, in addition, seven illustrations reproduced from photographs; reviewed
by J. Nepper in La Giographie, November, 1903. See also Twelfth Census of the
United States, 1900, Vol. VI, pp. 53-60.
17

274 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
island of Java in 1910 rose to 55,857 tons as against 53,100
in 1909 and 21,800 in 1908. All the rice exported is of
superior quality and high price. On the other hand, Java
imports much larger quantities of the cheaper grades of tea
from Saigon and especially from Rangoon: 184,308 tons in
1908, 211,658 in 1909, and 425,575 in 1910.
Statistics relating to rice are incomplete for China, which
certainly leads all other countries both in production and in
consumption. The production in British India is approxi
mately 55 billion pounds (250 million quintals). "Three-
quarters of all the rice brought to the markets of the world
is furnished by British India, and Bengal is the most pro
ductive district. Siam, China, Japan, Java, the Straits Settle
ments, Ceylon, the Hawaiian Islands, and the other Asiatic
regions all produce a larger or smaller quantity of rice, but
still not enough to satisfy the local demand."1 According
to the Quinzaine coloniale, the average production of rice in
Japan from 1894 to 1904 was about 14 billion pounds (63 million
quintals) ; that of Java would reach about 9 billion (42 million
quintals), and that of Siam about 2 billion (10 million quintals).
Manioc and Sorghum
Manioc is a plant whose tubers serve as a food for all the
black peoples of Africa and is a basal food product in tropical
South America, especially in Brazil. It is, however, scattered
and is far from having the importance of sorghum or durra,
or the different varieties of millet. It is from manioc that
tapioca is obtained.2
Sorghum is cultivated not only in all central Africa, but
also in Japan, China, India, central Asia, and South America,
and, geographically speaking, it might be claimed that it is the
cereal which feeds the most men.3
But for sorghum, as for manioc, all accurate information is
lacking ; we can only mention the general importance of these
''¦Quinzaine coloniale, January 25, 1908, pp. 72, 73.
2Manihot ulilissima is regarded by E. Hahn as a sort of elder brother of the potato.
See H. Jumelle, Les Plantes d tubercules alimenlaires, Doin, Paris, 1910; P. Hubert,
Le Manioc, Dunod, Paris, 1910; and L. Colson and Chatel, Le Manioc a la Riunion,
Challamcl, Paris, 1906; see also Finch and Baker, loc. cil., pp. 45, 102.
3We add here to sorghum "all the plants that resemble it" (Woeikof).

FACTS OF PLANT AND ANIMAL CONQUEST 275
plants, the products of which have, up to the present time,
contributed little to world commerce.1
4. other types of plant production
The Olive Tree
The olive tree and the vine are two plants which belong
chiefly to the Mediterranean region and to similar countries;
but the olive tree is limited to the immediate shore of the
Mediterranean (extreme limits in altitude: 4,593 feet in
Portugal, 2,624 feet in Algeria), while the vine reaches far
beyond the natural limits of this region and of this climate
and extends toward the north and the east as far as the fringes
of the boreal forest and the steppe.2
Geographical conditions. — The olive tree thrives best where
there is a dry and warm climate during the summer with a
mean temperature of 180 C. (650 F.) during the flowering
season, and where the minimum winter temperature does not
fall below — 180 C. (200 F.). Light granitic or calcareous soils
are best, the reddish calcareous sands being much superior to
the compact clay lands. Further, olive trees require almost
constant care, and trained labor is essential. The many opera
tions of tillage, grafting, and pruning must be done just when
needed; the harvesting must be timed exactly and requires
hand labor (Fig. 119). Finally, olive orchards come to full
bearing only after many years and then they can develop only
with the help of a stable population and in an era of peace.
Geographical distribution.3 — Portugal (very favorable
throughout), Andalusia and all Mediterranean Spain, south
eastern France, Italy (the richest natural province after Spain) ,
Albania, Epirus, Peloponnesus, Crete (very rich), Asia Minor
(unimportant), Palestine, and even Mesopotamia and Iran,
2In a complete study of the cereals, the profit which men derive from certain by
products, such as straw, would have to be considered. See chap. Ill, pp. 48 ff., in
the book by D. Zolla already mentioned. In certain regions of Switzerland spelt
and wheat have been cultivated with a view especially to the industry of braiding
straw (which has now declined) ; see the chapter by Leon Genoud on this subject in
the volume on the Village Suisse, already quoted.
2The best geographical work on the olive tree is beyond question the mono
graph by Theobald Fischer: "Der Oelbaum, seine geographische Verbreitung, seine
wirtschaftliche und kulturhistorische Bedeutung," Pelermanns Mitt., Ergdnzungsheft,
No. 147, Gotha, 1904. See also Finch and Baker, loc. cit., p. 89.
3See the map accompanying the monograph by Theobald Fischer, and the map in
Bartholomew's Alias of the World's Commerce, p. 169.

276

HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

Tunis and Algeria,1 and finally Morocco (very rich), are the
chief olive countries.
Raoul Blanchard has published a comprehensive work
on the north
ern limit of the
olive tree in the
French Alps.2 It
is a geograph
ical study based
upon careful
personal inves
tigation and
proves how nec
essary it is that
the works al
ready published
on the limits
of cultivated
plants be taken
up again in de
tail. By careful
analysis of the
factors which
explain the
present north
ern limit of the
olive tree between the Rhone and the Maritime Alps,
he throws light upon and modifies a number of the earlier
conclusions of Theobald Fischer. It is not the nature of
the soil (there are olive trees in all soils), nor the latitude,
nor even the altitude that decides the march toward the
north or the withdrawal of this ancient cultivated plant-
it is the exposure. A favorable exposure toward the south or
the east, with effective natural protection from north, north
east, and northwest winds, explains all the apparent anomalies
iSee the works of Lecq and Riviere, Trabut, and the article by Dugast, Rev. gen.
ties sciences, January 15, 1894.
2La Geographie, XXII, 1910, pp. 225-240. 4 figures in the text and map outside
the text, map on scale of 1:600,000, on which are traced the zigzags and the indenta
tions of this real limit.

Fig. 119.

Jean Brunhes
The Cultivation of the Olive Tree in the
Mediterranean Countries

The soil at the foot of the olive trees is plowed; walls are
constructed all about to retain the vegetable mould and
the rain-water.

FACTS OF PLANT AND ANIMAL CONQUEST 277
of the limit studied. ' ' Thus the limit of the olive tree is not
a true climatic limit. This is not the true frontier of the
south  This is an interesting example of the exten
sion that man can give to a delicate plant by adapting it
closely to topographical conditions." These very significant
statements, which are based upon many careful observations,
are all the more worthy of attention because the olive tree,
while preeminently a Mediterranean plant, in other places is
found beyond the strict limits of this region, as for instance in
all the damp coastal areas of Portugal already mentioned.
Blanchard has outlined and explained the different natural
regions of France, and has noted particularly the plateau of
Valensole, whose inclosed valleys are covered with olive groves
on southerly exposures up to the very edge of the plateau
surface, which is itself devoid of olive groves. The absence of
olives in the lower valley of the Bleone, where the natural
conditions are very favorable, is due to a psychological factor,
"the agricultural caprice of the inhabitants of the valley."1
The olive can grow in other regions of the globe with a
Mediterranean climate. In North America it has acquired
economic importance only in California; it is found also on
the high plateaus of Mexico; in South America it thrives in
Chile, north of 350, and in the Argentine Republic, around
Mendoza. It is also established in South Africa and is
prospering in the south of Australia. This tree, which
furnishes oil, belongs preeminently to regions where cattle
are not raised and which are consequently deprived of butter
made from cow's milk. The Vine2
Geographical conditions. — The physical conditions necessary
for successful vine culture are: a well-marked warm season,
with no excess of rain, and land that is dry or easily drained.
The labor element also is important because of the many
- 1There they prefer pear and almond trees, which grow more rapidly and bear more
quickly than olive trees; the presence of a railroad, already long established, has for
a long time rendered easy the marketing of these products, and in 1908 the producers
of Bleone sent their pears as far as Germany (article cited, p. 302).
2For the geography of the vine, consult the article published by Pierre Clerget,
"La Geographie de la vigne et la crise viticole," Bull, de la Soc. neuchdteloise de gio-
graphie, XIX, 1908, pp. 121-143: see also Finch and Baker, loc. cit., pp. 84-88.

Fig. 120. The Vintage in Burgundy
The great vineyards of Burgundy are located about half-way up the eastern slopes of the C6te d'Or
^ltWe-e?_ Dlg? 1a£ Be?unc' . A liUl? hi«hcr are plantations of black currants, and peach and cherrv
tor in viticulture in
Sec the text, p. 279.

".rants, and peach and cherrv
The labor dement is an important factor in viticulture in particular, demanding as it does

orchards.
continuous human effort and a peculiar aptitude

FACTS OF PLANT AND ANIMAL CONQUEST 279

different operations necessary for successful cultivation. The
land must be frequently tilled; the plants need to be pruned
and layered; props must be set to which the vines may be
attached as they grow; spraying is necessary several times
during the season. Then the
grapes are picked and made
into wine and the vineyards
made ready for the dormant
season and the next year.
Where terrace culture is fol
lowed the soil itself must be
replaced. There is thus a de
mand for continuous human
effort and a peculiar aptitude
the result only of long training
and adherence to custom. No
where can vine dressers be
improvised. The vine passes
through many crises which can
be overcome only by the most
painstaking attention to the
plant needs. It seems to attach
the vine dresser to it in propor
tion to the labor it demands.
Geographical distribution. —
"The middle zone in the two
hemispheres is comprised between 270 and 490 latitude.
The northern limit starts in France from the mouth of the
Vilaine, runs toward Givet, crosses the Rhine near Bonn, is
prolonged to the east into Saxony, turns .then toward the
southeast across Moravia and Hungary, crosses the Car
pathians, and includes the provinces of southern Russia bathed
by the Black Sea. It is found again at Astrakhan (4 7°) and at
Peking (400). In North America the vine flourishes in all of
California, which lies south of latitude 42°. In the southern
hemisphere, where the lands do not extend as far toward the
pole as in the northern hemisphere, the vine is cultivated in
South Africa, which reaches only 350; in the south of Australia,
which approaches some degrees nearer to the pole; in the

Fig. 121.

The Bourguignon Vineyard
and Its Make-up
The most important commercial places
are underlined.

280

HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

parts of Chile and of the Argentine Republic which are north
of 400 south latitude."1
The limits of vine growing have changed a great deal;
viticulture is withdrawing gradually from the too unfavorable

Vineyards

Fig. 122. The Principal Viticultural Centers of France
northern regions and is concentrating in more favored centers.2
On the other hand, it is being established beyond its present
natural limits through wholly artificial cultivation; magnifi
cent table grapes are produced in the hothouses in the suburbs
of London and in Belgium.
1 Pierre Clerget, ibid, pp. 121, 122. See the map in Bartholomew's Atlas, pp.
90 and 91.
2Example: In 1889 there were not more than 70 acres of vines in Belgium; see
A. Berget, "Les Vignobles en Belgique," Rev. de viticulture, XII, 1899, pp. 103-107
and 158-162.

FACTS OF PLANT AND ANIMAL CONQUEST 281
Finally, the attempt at localization, which should always
be the aim of geographers, would lead us to prepare, from a
general map like that of the distribution of wheat-growing
or of the sugar beet and sugar cane, (Figs. 116, 118) a series
of more detailed maps and sketches showing the most favor
able centers, then within these centers the most favorable points
(Figs. 121 and 122). Sugar Cane and the Beet
In ancient times sugar was obtained from honey, a fact which
accounts for the importance which was then attached to
apiculture. There is at present a renewed demand for honey
and a renaissance of bee-raising.1
To-day sugar is derived largely from sugar cane or from
beets. At the beginning of modern times (sixteenth century)
ease of communication brought the product of sugar cane
to our markets (about 1 150 its cultivation had been introduced
into Cyprus, in 1420 into Sicily and the Madeira Islands, and
about 1500 into the Canary Islands). In the middle of the
thirteenth century Marggraf, a German, discovered the
existence of sugar in the beet and the first sugar works were
established in Silesia and then in France. The continental
blockade, by cutting off the cane sugar brought by English
boats, brought about an increase in beet-raising in all conti
nental Europe; but after the blockade this prosperity was
followed by a terrible reverse which ruined the European sugar
industry. It was saved, however, by the scientific processes of the
laboratory, through chemical analysis, and became triumphant,
so that the cultivation of sugar cane in its turn was very
gravely threatened and became almost non-existent. On the
one hand, this menace caused the application of scientific
methods to the cultivation of sugar cane, and in Java, for
example, the yield per acre rose in a few years from 3,500
pounds to 9,000 or 10,500. On the other hand, the unrestricted
competition of the European countries, made keener still by
protective tariffs and by the tactics of exportation bounties,
iSee the remarkable work by T. W. Cowan, published in English and translated
into French: Wax Craft: All about Bees Wax, Medina, Ohio, 1908, with numerous
plates and text illustrations.

Fig. 123. The Geographical Distribution of the Sugar Beict and Sugar Cane
Plants which are in competition and prow in quite different geographic domains. One belongs to the transition zones near the
great boreal forest and. the other to the transition zones near the ureal equatorial forest.

FACTS OF PLANT AND ANIMAL CONQUEST 283
ended in such great overproduction that an effort had to be
made to limit the production. In this the Conference and
the Convention of Brussels (1902) was finally successful.
After laborious discussions, the Convention was renewed at
Brussels at the beginning of 191 2 for a period of five years,
with some modifications adopted to the advantage of the
Russian export trade.
Thus we see to what extent these two plants have been
historically dependent upon each other.
Geographically, sugar cane and the beet meet in the basin
of the Mediterranean ; sugar cane is cultivated in the irrigated
zones of Egypt and Spain, and the beet appears native in the
warm districts of Spain and Portugal. However, as the struggle
became more severe between the two sugar plants, they have
become differentiated and separated, from the geographical
point of view, so that to-day they belong to sharply opposed
zones (Fig. 123).1
Geographical conditions of sugar cane. — (a) A mean annual
temperature of at least 160 to 180 C. (6i° to 640 F.), and
especially a very high summer temperature ; when the winter
is severe, too early cold periods cause great losses, as in
Chile, Natal, and Japan, where the cultivation of sugar cane
is almost impossible.
(6) A heavy rainfall, at least 47 to 55 inches (1,200 to
1,400 millimeters); much water is necessary during the early
period of growth, much water and heat during the middle
period, much heat without too much rain at the time of
harvest. (c) The general tendency to transform this plant into an
annual plant increases the need for labor. Further, the
regions which are suited to sugar cane are fever regions and
not so well adapted to Europeans; hence the introduction
of negro slaves into the West Indies and into inter-tropical
America. Geographical distribution of sugar cane. — The zones which
border immediately upon the great equatorial forest in both
Walter Such, "Die geographische Verbreitung des Zuckerrohrs," Beihefte zum
Tropenpflanzen, I, No. 4. Berlin, pp. 119-191. Also Surface, The Story of Sugar,
Appleton, New York, 1910; H.,C. Prinsen Geerligs, The World's Cane Sugar Industry,
Past and Present, Altrincham (Eng.), 1912: Finch and Baker, loc. cit., pp. 71-76.

284 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
hemispheres: India; Cuba and the southern states of the
United States; Brazil; Java;1 Philippine Islands and Taiwan
(Formosa); Hawaiian Islands; and finally Egypt, where the
growing of sugar cane has been developed by means of irri
gation and cheap labor.
Geographical conditions of the beet. — Beet growing is a very
exacting industry in one way; but in the other it is very
remunerative. The beet is being grown in all central and
western Europe on the best lands, which it makes still
better because of the necessary tillage and fertilization.2
It has played a highly important educational and economic
role. Its cultivation requires such hard and capable labor
that it is the cause of very important temporary migrations,
such as that of the Camberlands in the north of France and
of the Poles in all central Europe. The attempt to introduce
beet cultivation on the Swiss Plateau brought about a trans
planting of Poles from Galicia.3
Geographical distribution of the beet.i — The chief producing
countries are Germany,5 Austria, Russia, France, Belgium,
and the Netherlands (Fig. 123).
Sugar cane and beets must be treated immediately after
being harvested ; their cultivation has therefore made necessary
the establishment of mills near the fields.
The consumption of sugar has gone on increasing at a very
rapid rate (direct individual consumption, consumption by
pastry and candy-makers, consumption by chocolate factories
and by factories for canning and preserving fruits, etc.).
x0n the sugar market in the Par East and on the production in Java, see the articles
published by Reau and H. Brenier in the Bull. icon, de V Indo-Chine and analyzed
in the Bibl. de 1903 des Ann. de giog., No. 174.
2See Jean Brunhes, "L'Homme et la terre cultiv£e, Bilan d'un siecle," Bull, de la
Soc. neuchdteloise de giog., XII, 1899, pp. 23-24.
3The Poles of Galicia, for example, emigrate temporarily as far as Sweden and
Denmark, on the one hand, and as far as Switzerland on the other. Recently Kasimir
Ladislaus Kumaniecki, after having noticed the difference between emigration beyond
the sea and these seasonal migrations which allow of return to one's country, has
gathered together some interesting data with regard to this second fact; see "Die
galizische Saisonauswanderung im Lichte auslandischer Arbeitsvertrage," Statistische
Monalsschrift, 1909, pp. 521-567.
4Van Cleef, "The Sugar Beet in Germany, with Special Attention to Its Relation
to Climate," Bull. Amcr. Geog. Soc, Vol. XLVI1, 1915, pp. 241-258 and 334-341-
For a study of the beet, see particularly the investigations of the Rev. gen. des
sciences (July 15 and 30, 1896), and the chapters by P. P. Deherain in Les Plantes
de grande culture.
5See the map by Bartholomew, pp. 78 and 79.

FACTS OF PLANT AND ANIMAL CONQUEST 285

The English are the largest consumers (88 pounds per head
per year). Comparative Statistics of the Production of Sugar Cane
and of Beet Sugar in Thousands of Tons (American)

Sugar Cane

1894-1895

1 899-1900

1905-1906

1,102 &39364 154 99
276 121no143 8366
253
2,326 342816353353 no176
121 99
132121 88
66
2,381 1,400
1,113
Louisiana and neighboring states. . .
375374
Egypt 
Brazil 
66
292
231
231
British West Indies 
187 132
Peru 
165
209
I&5
Beet Sugar
Season of
1 897-1 898
(Before the
Convention of 1902)
Season of
1903-1904 (After the
Convention of 1902)
Campaign of
1908-1909 (After the
Convention of 1902)
Germany 
2,033 794793 852
258404 1.39
2,168 1,395 1,279 621220 208 136
2,182 1,494
1,433
827
287
4°3*
220
* 1907-1908.
How many uncertainties in such statistics as these sugar
cane figures! And how many variations in such harvests!1
In the beet-sugar statistics there are variations also, though
not so great as those for the harvests of sugar cane. Further
more, notice should be taken of the rapid strides made
by those countries which have most recently turned to the
x0n the map of Fig. 123, Mexico and even the continental territory of the United
States might seem to play a role more important than they play in reality in the world
production. Those zones, problematical or scattered in extent (for example, in
Mexico), are far from being very productive zones. To-day Cuba, the Hawaiian
Islands, and the Philippines are distinctly the leading countries in their possibilities
for developing the sugar cane industry.
286

HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

cultivation of the sugar beet: in 1908-1909, Italy produced
190,698 tons, Spain 91,491 tons, Denmark 66,138 tons, etc.1
Total Production of Sugar Cane and Beet Sugar
in Millions of Tons

Sugar Cane

1890189519001901
1902 1903
1904i9°5 iqo6

.0
.2•9.0
-57
.62 .96 45

Beet Sugar

3
4 17
91 29
64

Total

6.87-8
10.4
11. 4
10.74
10-5310.25 13.0
13-9

The foregoing table demonstrates the rivalry between the
two sugar-producing plants and the abnormal progress in
production caused by this competition.
Tea, Coffee, and Cacao
These are three trees or shrubs which belong to the warm
and moist transitional zones. Their products are consumed
in ever-increasing quantities especially in the overpopulated
regions of the temperate zones. By reason of the develop
ment of means of transportation, tea, coffee, and cacao
(chocolate) penetrated almost at the same time (in the seven
teenth century) into the countries of central and western
Europe and they are to-day allied, as it were, for the more
complete conquest of popular favor.2 On the other hand,
they often come into rivalry with each other (for instance,
the substitution of the tea shrub for the coffee shrub in the
island of Ceylon, of the cacao tree for the coffee shrub east
of the Niger delta, etc.).
The tea shrub can endure low temperatures that kill the
coffee shrub, although the two plants require approximately
the same summer temperature; it follows that the coffee
shrub is excluded from certain regions where the tea shrub
can live without difficulty.
'The majority of these figures have been taken from Scobel, Gcographisches Hand-
buch, allgemeine Erdkunde, Liindcrkunde und Wirtschaflsgeographie, Bielefeld and
Leipzig, 1910.
2W. H. Johnson, Cocoa, Ils Cultivation and Preparation, London, 1912.

FACTS OF PLANT AND ANIMAL CONQUEST 287

From the human point of view we should group together
three trees such as the date palm, the banana tree,1 and the
coconut tree. From the geographic point of view, however,
they are very different and belong to widely varying zones,
though for man they have the common characteristic s that
they meet varied needs and that all their parts are used.2
The Concomitants of Plant Cultivation
One last point must be emphasized. Geographers should
note not only the transformations of the surface which are

Fig. 124. The Labor in Market-Gardening
Under bell-glass, the vegetables grow in protection from the cold
Illustration from M. Allain and H. Hauser "The Principal Aspects of the Globe,
France, 1012"
brought about by different sorts of cultivation, but also in
detail the types of buildings and the other investments of
William Fawcett, The Banana, Its Cultivation, Distribution, and Commercial Use,
London, 1913.
2See, for example, for the date palm, the long note on pp. 241-242 of Brunhes,
L' Irrigation; for the banana, a passage by Stanley, reproduced in H. Busson, etc., Asie
et Insulinde, etc., p. 199. The banana especially is called to a brilliant economic
future; it will play a larger and larger part in ordinary consumption, even in European
countries; see the volume on Les Bananiers in the collection of Vegitaux utiles de
I'Afrique tropicale frangaise, by Auguste Chevalier; and in the collection of the Biblio-
theque pratique du colon: Paul Hubert, Le Bananier, Dunod and Pinat, Paris, 1907.
The volume on the coco palm in the same collection is equally worth consulting.

288

HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

capital that are necessary in each of these several types of
human toil.
In traveling through the vineyards of the southern shore of
Balaton Lake, the vineyards of the south of France, or those
of the northern shore of the Lake of Geneva, one notices
everywhere small structures of clay or stone which are neces
sary accompaniments of this kind of cultivation. Such a
structure is called a capite in the canton of Vaud, and else
where mazet, bastidon, etc. In the small intensive market
gardens around Paris, the ground is covered with large bell
glasses {cloches) which enable the maraicher to produce vege
tables during the spring and winter months (Fig. 124).
In Tyrol the meadows are dotted with little buildings
of rough boards, usually not close fitting, which serve as a
shelter for the supports, shaped like parrot , perches, upon
which the Tyrolese peasants dry their hay. Thus a special

Fig. 125.

Jean Bninhes
Stacks of Poles Used in Holding up the Hay, Sweden

The poles are here seen set up in stacks, scattered over the Swedish meadow,
before being set up in fence-like rows to support the hay for drying.
type of work, combined with the humidity of the climate,
covers the ground with small supplementary facts of human
geography. In countries that are still farther north, and where
the summer is shorter, all the hay is set up and spread out to
dry by means of vertical stakes supporting horizontal bars
(Figs. 125, 126, and 127).

FACTS OF PLANT AND ANIMAL CONQUEST 289

Mark Jefferson

Fig. 126. Drying Barley on Poles in West Norway
Sticks projecting horizontally from the vertical poles hold up the barley, exposing
it to the sun and preventing it from absorbing moisture from the ground.

Mark Jefferson
Fig. 127. Drying Hay on Fence-like Hurdles, West Norway
Here wires or ropes are strung between the poles, which have been set up in the
sunniest spot to be found on the hillside.
18

290

HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

In the case of rye it is still more necessary to set it up on
supports, that it may resist the humidity of the climate and
not absorb moisture from the soil; care is taken further to
turn the hanging ears of grain toward the south, that is—
toward the sun.
On the sheltered western shores of the Lago di Garda lemon
trees are cultivated, the fruit of which, especially in former
times, was famous and much sought after. Curious sheds
consisting of white posts united at the top by cross beams,

Jean Brunhes
Fig. 128. The Cultivation of Lemon-Trees on the Sheltered Shores
of Lago di Garda (Riviera)
Lemon-trees prosper in all the Riviera of Lago di Garda; but they need to be pro
tected under sheds (sem) during the winter; that is why these posts of white-washed
brick have been constructed. (However, as a consequence of the disease called
"resinous flow," the cultivation of the lemon tree, formerly so flourishing, diminishes
from year to year. In 1862 on the shores of this lake were produced from sixteen to
eighteen million lemons; at present only from two to three million are produced.)
constructed to protect the trees from the winter cold, consti
tute a peculiar and distinctive feature of the landscape
(Fig. 128).

FACTS OF PLANT AND ANIMAL CONQUEST 291
The splendid table grapes from Thomery in the neighborhood
of Fontainebleau, called the cliasselas de Fontainebleau, are

M Allain and H. Hauser
Fig. 129. Cultivation with a Special Arrangement; the Vines
at Thomery (Seine-et-Marne, France)
grown beside walls built to protect the grapes from the wind.
These little parallel walls give a distinctive appearance to
this whole region (Fig. 129).
5. PLANT AND ANIMAL TYPES OP TEXTILE PRODUCTS: COTTON,
SILK, AND WOOL
In comparing the geography of three of the chief textile
products, cotton, silk, and wool, we have the advantage of
comparing at the same time the geography of a plant (cotton) ,
that of a tree and an insect combined (the mulberry and silk
worm), and finally that of a domestic animal (the sheep).
A Plant Product: Cotton
Cotton i,s at the present time the most important textile
plant. It tends more and more to replace the older textile
plants, flax and hemp. It is the most productive and the
most generally used fiber plant in both hemispheres and in
countries of different latitudes. The cotton plant belongs to
tropical and equatorial regions. Cotton is spun and woven
by the most primitive peoples of Sudanese Africa. It furnishes

292 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
to-day the clothing both of very primitive and of very
civilized peoples.1
The cotton seed is in a pod, which opens of itself at maturity;
it is surrounded by fibers from .3 to 1.5 inches (1 to 4 centi
meters) long, and these fibers, sometimes of a dazzling white,
sometimes yellowish in color, are the basis of the world's
great cotton industry.
The geographical conditions of the cultivation of cotton. —
Heat and humidity: The cotton plant needs high temper
atures and abundant rainfall throughout the period of its
growth and maturing, and hence it is principally grown in
warm regions with summer rains (the Asiatic zone of the mon
soons, African Sudan, southern coastal plain of America, etc.).2
The cotton plant is a perennial which cannot stand low
temperatures; it is thus naturally eliminated from regions
which are warm and damp in summer but which have severe
winters. Since it was found that the best means of obtaining
a good product was to pull up the plant and replace it every
year, cotton has practically become an annual. As a result
it can be grown in countries with moderately severe winters,
provided that the summers are long and hot. Thus the
southern states of the United States have become a great
cotton -producing country (Fig. 130).
While the cotton plant needs much rain during its growth, it
is injured by rain in the last period of its maturing. As soon
as the pod is opened a heavy shower will injure the fiber, and
cause it to decay. Thus the preservation of the seed is difficult
in countries of monsoons and summer rains, which are admira
bly suited to the cotton plant during the growing season. There
are other regions that may be favorable to the cultivation of
cotton if the effort and expense of irrigation is undertaken;
the harvest may then be more certain than anywhere else.
:On flax, see L. Mercier, Monographic du Un et de V Industrie linicre dans le deparle-
ment du Nord, Lille, 1902; and Achille Gregoire, " La Culture et l'industrie du fin en
Hollande, en Belgique et en France," Rev. icon, internal.. May 15-20, 1909. Since
the first edition appeared, Pierre Clergct has published an excellent article on "La
Geographie des textiles" in La Geographie, XXIII, 1911, pp. 109-132; see also
A. Oppel, Die Baumvolle, Leipzig, 1902; E. C Brooks, The Story of Cotton and the
Development of Ihe Cotton Slates, Chicago, 191 1; Twelfth Census, United States, VI,
pp. 405-420; Finch and Baker, loc. cil., pp. 51-54; Atlas of American Agriculture,
U. S. Department of Agriculture, Washington, D. C, 1918, Part V, Sec. A.
2See these zones of transition marked on the map in Fig. 112.

FACTS OF PLANT AND ANIMAL CONQUEST 293
To the first class of countries, warm and naturally favorable
for the cultivation of the cotton plant (India and Japan,
southern United States), there is added then another geo
graphical class: the irrigated countries with a warm and dry

Courtesy North Carolina Agricultural Experiment Station
Fig. 130. A Cotton Field in North Carolina
The pods are ripe and the cotton is ready for the pickers
summer (the oases of Egypt, of Turkestan, and of southwestern
United States). (See map in Fig. 131.)
Nature of the soil: The cotton plant needs soils that are very
rich, especially in phosphoric acid, and these soils must be
fertilized heavily in order to meet the heavy demands which
cotton makes and to maintain their fertility. In India the
soils formed in situ from eruptive rocks {regur) are peculiarly
suited to the cultivation of cotton. The cqtton fields of the
Deccan are mainly confined to this soil area. In the United
States it is on the richest soils of the coastal plain and the
southern prairie plains that we find cotton cultivated, and
especially on the alluvial lands of the lower valley of the
Mississippi. In irrigated countries cotton is grown particularly in regions
covered with alluvium.
Labor: The cotton plant requires very minute and con
tinuous care, in the preparation of the soil, in the sowing, in

Fig. 131. Tme Orographic Distribution of the Cotton Plant

The chief regions -where it is grown arc shown as dotted areas: these are naturally watered zones (India and the United States)
and irrigated zones (Egypt and Russian Turkestan).

FACTS OF PLANT AND ANIMAL CONQUEST 295
the watering in dry countries, and in the harvest, especially
in damp countries. Thus the successful cultivation of cotton
depends in great measure upon an abundance of cheap hand
labor. In new countries which are adapted to cotton culture
but which have a sparse population, labor has had to be
imported, as was the case when negroes were brought from
Africa to the United States. This was one of the fundamental
economic causes of the slave trade and of the development of
slavery on a large scale in the southern states. The Civil
War was primarily a struggle for the labor necessary for the
cultivation of tobacco and cotton.1
An Animal Product in Connection with a Plant: Silk
Several species of Bombyx produce cocoons which can be
unwound and which furnish more or less rough silks. The
Bombyx mori, or Bombyx of the mulberry tree, is the one
which furnishes the most valuable thread. Geographically
the distribution of silk production depends, then, upon an
animal, the silkworm, and upon a plant, the tree upon which
the silkworm lives and upon whose leaves it feeds (Fig. 132).
There are numerous species of mulberry trees: the black
mulberry, the white mulberry, and the Chinese mulberry
{Morus multicaulis). The two last mentioned, having leaves
more tender and more easy to pick, are better for silkworm-
raising. The mulberry is in general a very adaptable tree.
It accommodates itself to northern latitudes, such as those of
Norway and northern Russia, as well as to latitudes near the
equator. It does not succeed at all in regions that are too
clayey and too marshy, but, with this exception, it is not
exacting as to the quality of the soil. It grows very well upon
the dry, silicious, or calcareous slopes of the domain of the
olive or of the camelia.
Judging only by the tree, then, it would seem that silk might
be produced from Norway to the Sudan. As a matter of fact,
the cultivation of the mulberry and the raising of silkworms
have been attempted even in the countries with cold winters
and springs, such as Switzerland (canton of Freiburg and
1See the very remarkable number devoted by the Rev. icon, internat. to cotton
(April 15-20, 1911), the five chief articles of which are signed: E. de Wildeman, W. R.
Dunstan, E. Levasseur, A. Aftalion, and C. W. Macara.

296 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
canton of Vaud) , and even in Prussia (attempts of Frederick II
in the eighteenth century) ; but most of these attempts have
failed, for it is not sufficient that the mulberry develop nor
mally; it must put forth its leaves rather early in order to
serve as food for the silkworms. The climate must also be
rather mild so that new leaves may grow and the tree come
to maturity. Hence arises a very perceptible limiting of
the distribution of the mulberry toward the north. All the
countries of microthermal climates (p. 237) are excluded from
it, and, still more definitely, all the countries covered by the
boreal forest (Fig. in).
Then, too, the Bombyx itself depends on temperature
conditions. Where it develops in the open air or under simple
sheds it cannot endure, during its period of evolution and of
labor, a temperature lower than 150 C. (590 F.). But this
period is short, lasting only about a month ; and the countries
where the spring period of first leaving of the mulberry
coincides with a warm climate are suitable for the raising of
silkworms : the damp regions of the Asiatic Far East — that is,
the zone of transition of the monsoons and particularly the
region of the camelia (Koppen).
However, even in these favored habitats, a chance tempera
ture that is too cold is enough to endanger the entire growth
of the cocoon. As the critical period is short, men have been
led more and more to build protected sheds and have even
reached the point of building closed rooms called magnaneries,
in which the silkworm may work. During the first days a
temperature of from 250 to 300 C. (770 to 86° F.) is maintained
in these rooms and in the following weeks a temperature of
about 20° C. (68° F.). From twenty to twenty-five days
must be counted for the feeding of the caterpillar, and from
four to five days for the making of the cocoon; this artificial
breeding then lasts for a month. The leaves, its food, are
brought to the worm, and the "climate " that it desires is made
for it. All this requires only a small space and lasts only a
short time. Such conditions are then easy to realize several
times a year if enough mulberry leaves can be procured for
these successive breedings. Moreover, it will be possible to
carry on such an artificial breeding at any point on the globe,'

FACTS OF PLANT AND ANIMAL CONQUEST 297
provided that mulberry leaves can be obtained. As a result
of these special conditions of "hothouse" breeding, the geo
graphic distribution of the productive silkworm, which was
very much limited by climatic demands, is now greatly
extended and limited geographically only by conditions
imposed by the plant and not by the animal. Silk culture
has thus been able to spread out from its original center, the
Asiatic Far East, and gradually to reach regions with a much
colder climate and finally to establish itself very successfully in
the Mediterranean region. The natural provinces where the
mulberry produces its leaves early enough and abundantly
enough are possible centers for the raising of the silkworm.
Here another factor comes in and determines within these
natural provinces the most favored localities for the silkworm.
This factor is the very one whose full economic value and
effectiveness we have been trying to show in the course of
this study — namely, labor (quality and quantity).
In fact, this domestication of the silkworm requires a large
number of active hands, for picking the leaves, for keeping a
constant temperature in the magnanerie, for feeding the worm,
for unwinding the cocoon after the silkworm has been killed,
and finally for the preparation of the eggs, which must serve
for the next breeding. This is a very absorbing work, and
since it is confined to a period of only a few weeks it must
be performed by persons who are very careful and attentive.
In Provence and in Lombardy the women are particularly
apt at silk culture.
This sort of work can be carried on only where the population
is rather dense and can be employed at just the time of year
when the mulberry tree must be picked and the silkworm
raised (Fig. 133).
In the Mediterranean countries conditions of climate are
such that the mulberry furnishes its fresh leaves only once a
year and in general only one breeding takes place during the
year. There are species of the Bombyx which are called
polyvoltines (lending themselves to several breedings per
year) ; naturally they are raised where the climate allows the
mulberry to produce leaves more than twice a year. It is
the great advantage of China, Japan, Tonkin, and India that

298

HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

FACTS OF PLANT AND ANIMAL CONQUEST 299

they can raise the polyvoltine species, and in these countries
they have as many as four and five breedings a year.
From the human laborer's point of view, this results in a
certain advantage, for those who are employed in this industry

Jean Brunhes
Fig. 133. Cultivation of Mulberry Trees in Coele Syria. Types of Low
Trees, Kept so for the Purpose of Gathering the Leaves
The labor required in this rare and precious cultivation must be reduced as much
as possible; that is why, in Provence, Lombardy, etc., as here in Syria, the mulberry
trees are maintained at a height such that it is easy to reach the leaves to be gathered;
the branches are usually arranged, by means of pruning, so that at six feet from the
ground there is a sort of fork to which it is easy to climb.
Trees of other kinds, that likewise require delicate gathering and are well cared
for, are trained in the same way; with the mulberry trees of this illustration might
be compared the olive trees, the fruit of which is kept within'arm's reach so to speak
in all the well cultivated plains which border the slope north of the Maures range, in
Provence (Carnoules, Le Luc, Argens Valley, etc.).
To the right in the illustration, are the ruins and the base of the remaining walls
of the famous temple of the sun at Baalbek (ancient Heliopolis).
can devote the entire year to it. In Europe, on the other
hand, only supplementary hands can be employed for the
raising of silkworms. We have here a limitation set neither
by the plant nor by the animal, but by the human population
and by the general work in which it is employed. De Gaspa-
rin remarks that "in the south of France silkworms are not

300 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
desired in districts consisting of large farms because the
farming population is too sparse. They are also unwelcome
in regions given up to special sorts of cultivation, such as that
of the vine, the olive, etc. Large farms are not favorable
for the development of the industry, because the population
of this class of farms,, is unwilling to care for the silkworms,
while the people of the small farms are more easily interested.
Finally, the breeding of the'Bombyx cannot be carried on where
crops are grown which demand much labor in the spring; in
short, great estates do not in general produce silk, while, on
the contrary, the industry fits in wonderfully well with all
sorts of cultivation on a small scale."1 That is why in the
small French or Italian centers it is especially the women
who furnish suitable labor.
Another characteristic fact which shows the curious influence
of the human element upon the geographical distribution of
this culture is that in India and Tibet the Buddhist peoples,
who are forbidden by religious precept to kill any animal
and who object therefore to the necessary artificial suffoca
tion of the chrysalis in the cocoon, constitute a barrier to the
extension of silk culture analogous to that which certain
special conditions of climate might cause. Thus a psycho
logical fact of a religious character expresses itself upon the
map of the world by the distribution of a certain kind of
breeding. Unlike the manufacture of cotton, which until recent
years has been developed far from the cotton-producing
centers, the silk industry arose within the regions of silk
worm production, or very near them.2
An Animal Product: Wool
From the earliest times men have had the idea of using
for their own clothing the natural clothing of animals; primitive
'V. Grofner, "La Production de la soie dans le monde," Ann. de giog., March 15,
1900, p. 100.
2See R. Gonnard, "LTndustrie lyonnaise de la soie et la concurrence mondiale,"
Rev. icon, internal., August 15-20, 1905, pp. 259-299. It would be well also to note
the development of that unexpected rival, artificial silk. On the beginning of these
facts, see A. Menegaux, "L'Etat actuel de la fabrication de la soie artificielle," Rev.
gin. des science*, July 30, 1898. See what has been said on this question in the last
pages of Pierre Clerget's "La Geographie des textiles," La Geographic, XXIII, 1911,
pp. 131 and 132.

FACTS OF PLANT AND ANIMAL CONQUEST 301
peoples clothe themselves with skins. The most advanced
civilization seems to be joining with the civilization of savages,
for the most fashionable women more and more desire furs.
The modern development of the automobile has in recent
years created a great demand for furs for use in the cooler
seasons. When the fur of an animal is taken, the animal is killed.
The -idea of using the hair of an animal without killing it led
to shearing. It was then necessary to solve the double problem
of making thread and of weaving it. The natural fur of all
hairy animals can be and in fact has been used for the manu
facture of thread and fabrics. Goats (notably the goat of
Tibet and the angora goat of Asia Minor), the camel, the
alpaca (South America), etc., are sheared and their fleece
made into thread of varying resistance and value.
The animal whose fleece is most used by man is the sheep.
A geographic study of wool entails first a study of the geo
graphic causes of the distribution of the sheep.
Climate. — Sheep live chiefly upon grass, but may depend
also upon shrubs and dry bushes : the bushy growths (lentisks,
myrtles, etc.) which cover the dry slopes and plateaus of the
Mediterranean region and which form the maquis (Corsica),
the garigues (Languedoc), etc. All this vegetation belongs to
xerophilous or mesothermal climates (climate of the alfa, or
esparto, climate of the olive), as well as to the zone of the
steppes. We may say in general, for the world as a whole,
that the types of climate and of vegetation corresponding to
the dry parts of the Mediterranean regions are particularly
suited to sheep.
Nature of the soil. — The soils which produce this vegetation
are stony and often calcareous soils, which do not lend them
selves well to cultivation. Calcareous soils usually have a
good under-drainage. The surface is rarely water-soaked, a
desirable factor in both sheep- and poultry -raising.
Human population. — In dry sheep countries the vegetation
is scattered and poor and it requires a large acreage to support
even a small flock of sheep. Hence arises the necessity for a
constant change of place and for the periodical migration of
flocks, which has led from time immemorial to the development

302 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
of well-worn trails {drailles, carraires, tratturi, vias pecuarias,
etc.).1 In Italy, Spain, Provence, and Thessaly, vast flocks of
sheep driven by their shepherds pass the summer on the lofty
plateaus or in the high mountain regions, and in the winter
come down toward the plains, where they crop either the
natural grasses or the dried stalks left in the fields after the
harvest.2 Now in order that these great journeys may be possible, the
population itself must be very thinly scattered. Sheep-
raising corresponds exactly to the zones of sparse population:
the scantiness of population is one of its conditions. On the
other hand, where a population of growing density is established
and where consequently the cultivation necessary for its
subsistence is introduced, sheep diminish and sometimes even
disappear. This is the all-important fact for human geography and is
confirmed by many observations as well as by many statistics.
Sheep also furnish a good quality of milk, to which we
owe famous cheeses, such as Roquefort. The sheep is also
raised for its meat. In this case it is, geographically speaking,
another animal. It is raised, for example, in regions which
are unsuitable for producing a good quality of wool, but which
are excellent for the quality of the flesh. Thus in Great
Britain, famous as the original home of many breeds of sheep
known the world over, sheep thrive from Scotland to the
Downs. The better mutton breeds are found chiefly in
southern England, where the equable temperature throughout
the year favors the development of sheep. In some countries,
as in Normandy, sheep for mutton are pastured on the fine
salt grass of the "salt meadows" close to shore.
We have here a fact which is associated with entirely
different geographical conditions and which should therefore
be analyzed as a different and almost independent phenomenon.
xSee especially the pages and the very suggestive maps by Andr£ Fribourg, "La
Transhumance en Espagne, "Ann. de geog., XIX, 1910, pp. 231-244 and Plate XIV.
2"A grass, the Brachypodium ramosum, here feeds from October to June these
thousands of sheep, whose periodic routes of migration, the drailles, we shall see furrow
ing the sides of the Cevennes with their white lines and reaching as far as Aubrac"
(J. Sion, " La Seconde Excursion geographique inter-universitaire," Ann. de giog., July
IS. 1906, p. 337)-

FACTS OF PLANT AND ANIMAL CONQUEST 303
Merinos have been introduced into France with the idea of im
proving the fleece. "When interest in the production of meat
grew," says L. Perruchot, "English breeds were brought in. . . .
These are great eaters and do not prosper in countries with scanty
pasturage; .... they particularly dislike heat, dryness, dust,
and drives. They prosper particularly well in the Paris basin, on
the clayey plateaus, where to other favorable conditions is added
the advantage of a climate that is cool without excess  "
Cultivation, far from excluding sheep, makes their presence possible,
as does even manufacturing. Clover, lucerne, vetches, beets for
fodder, the residue of sesame, cotton seed, peanuts, and especially
pulp from sugar beets are lavishly used in the sheepfold. The
sheep are fed scientifically with a view to producing a food product
that is almost a manufactured product.
If, with this exception, we examine the distribution of the
flocks of wool-bearing sheep, we find that on the whole it
is controlled by remarkably simple geographical principles.
The sheep is found in all the dry, rough, little-cultivated, and
thinly populated districts throughout the entire Mediterranean
region: the steppes of Spain, the Cevennes and Alps of
Provence, the mountains and plateaus of peninsular Italy and
of Sicily, the calcareous ridges of Greece, the plateaus of
Albania and Istria, the Rhodope Mountains, Bulgaria, Rou-
mania and the great dry steppe of southern Russia and the
Crimea, Asia Minor entire, Syria and Palestine, ending with
the deserts of North Africa and especially with the high steppes
of Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco, the Atlas countries, which
have so well deserved the name of "sheep countries."1
The dry zone, which is favorable to sheep, continues to
the east of the Mediterranean world across the southeast of
Russia and the Kirghiz steppe as far as Mongolia, and farther
to the south, beyond Asia Minor as far as Iran and the dry
districts of northern India. In North America, which is
naturally favorable to sheep, we find a strikingly similar
region, the so-called "arid region," in the western part of
the United States as well as in the high Mexican plateaus.
Likewise, in the southern hemisphere, dry zones similar to
the dry countries of the Mediterranean, reappear in the
Argentine Republic, in South Africa, and in Australia. Sheep
are raised in large numbers in these three regions.
1See Finch and Baker, loc. cil., pp. 135-141.

Fig. 134. The Geographic Distribution of Sheep
Observe, by comparison with Pig. 131, how radically distinct are tho zones or the' cotton plant and the zones where the florlr* of
sheep are raised; this fact is quite evident in northwestern India and above all in the United States. re ™e nocJ<:s ol

FACTS OF PLANT AND ANIMAL CONQUEST 305
The largest flocks in the world have been those of Australia.
Introduced over a century and a quarter ago, they had
reached in 1891 the formidable figure of 106 million head;

R. du Verger
Fig. 135. Flocks of Sheep in the High Mountains in Summer
The sheep of Provence (also the Algerian sheep that cross the sea to the number
of more than a million every year) ascend the Alps to 6,000 feet and more in order to
feed: T&tes des Cos and pastures of the Combe in the Aiguilles de l'Argentiere.
See the monograph on the Aiguilles de l'Argentiere published by E. Gaillard antf R. du Verger in La Montagne,
July 20, 1911, with a fine topographic map by R. du Verger.
and while the repeated dryness of several years reduced
this number to 50 millions, it seems to-day to have reached
once more a total of 80 millions.1 No example could show
more clearly the point to which human power may attain in
a very short time in the way of animal conquest and how
the methodical purpose of breeders may within a few years
'The whole story of sheep in Australia is summed up strikingly by Paul Privat-
Deschanel, "L'Australie pastorale," La Giographie, XVIII, 1908, pp. 145-168, etc.
19

306

HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

spread a multitude of new domestic animals over a country.1
Size and Temporary Decrease of the Australian Flock2
1788  29 sheep
1801  6,757 sheep
1821  138,755 sheep
1861  23,000,000 sheep
1871  40,000,000 sheep
1881  78,000,000 sheep
1891  106,260,000 sheep
1900  92,000,000 sheep
1903  50,000,000 sheep
1906  84,000,000 sheep
Approximate Statistics of Sheep3

The countries grouped
geographically

About 1900

In
Millions
of Heads

No. to the
Square Mile

No. to
100
Persons

In 1910

In
Millions
of Heads

S5 <
55 W
< 3

S<3

The Atlas countries .
Spain 
France 
Italy 
Hungary 
Greece 
Bulgaria 
Serbia 
Roumania 
Russia 
Asia Minor 

t <
P 7-

m fa
m < S <
g a 3 w „
<r; h
w S ?¦ w
« a s w
5 p o «

United States 
Uruguay 
Argentine Republic.
Cape Colony 
Australia 

Germany 
Great Britain and
land 

Ire

1116.
19- 78
3 7
3 5-
52

62 18.5
74 12.5
92 9-5
3i

86.2
95 05
59 -3i
64 -75
116.03186.48 160.58 m. 11
26.93

17-35
269 . 36
66.56
43-25 28.75
46.36
25563

88.35°- 5
21.242.2
119. 4
18.4
121. o
92.8 50.0

81.3
1,938.81,814.0 520.0
2,028.0 17.2
74-4

11
H 17.8 7
837 3
5-5
44

51 18
67 15
84 7-7
29

!From the same point of view, one might consider the influence of human inter
vention on the animal population of the earth by the typical example of the introduc
tion of the rabbit into Australia. In 1 862 some rabbits were taken there to be used
as game for hunting; the rabbits multiplied so that to-day they are to be found by
the billion; they now constitute a real economic danger, and people are obliged to
preserve by means of wire fences not only their cultivated fields, but even the natural
pasture grounds of sheep, against the incessant menace of these hordes of rabbits.
2Note besides, as J. Carpentier has truly remarked, that, while the Australian
flock varies in size in such alarming proportions, exportation of wool from Australia
has remained almost constant (146,000 tons in 1903 as in 1892). This comes from
the raising of sheep of a cross breed, whose wool is less fine and more abundant, but
which can also be exploited for their flesh (J. Carpentier, "Les Pays producteurs de
laine, etude geographique," Bull, de la Soc. de geog. de Lille, XLV, 1906, pp. ioo-I23)>
3The figures in this table were taken from Max Eckert, Grundriss der Hanids-,
geographie, Goschen, Leipzig, 1905, 2 vols., an excellent book extremely useful for
reference. See I, p. 104; the figures give the size of the flocks about 1900. Tlje
figures for 1910 are from the volume by Scobel, (See note p. 2S6).

FACTS OF PLANT AND ANIMAL CONQUEST 307
6. PASTORAL NOMADISM: TYPICAL FORMS; VARIED FORMS,
WEAKENED FORMS; SEMI-NOMADISM
The modes of human activity connected with the raising
of herds deserve particular attention as phenomena of human
geography. The life and the great migrations of the horse
herdsmen of central Asia1 and the caravans of camel herds
men in the deserts of Arabia and of North Africa are well
known. The horse is the principal animal of the great grassy steppes,
and the camel that of the drier regions of the xerophilous
climates (deserts) of the Old World. On the frontier of these
two great types of natural regions, these two saddle and trans
port animals encroach upon each other's territory. The camel
is found to-day in the south of Russia and in Crimea, and the
horse was long ago introduced into Arabia and the Sahara,
where it has even improved. Moreover, the horse has been
so well chosen as a domestic animal that he finds a place in
the most advanced forms of contemporary civilization and
lends himself to manifold uses.2
Where the horse cannot endure~the too severe temperature
of the extreme limit of the great boreal forest, he is replaced
as an animal for transport and for food by the reindeer (cold
regions of high latitudes) and the yak (cold regions of high
altitudes).3 Nor should we forget the animals that are often attached to
very small human centers and to the most modest family
groups. There are countries where pigs and goats are raised
on a large scale, but, in the countries of old Mediterranean
civilization the pig and the goat are frequently isolated
'See that very remarkable, though somewhat too systematic book by Ellsworth
Huntington, The Pulse of Asia, Houghton Mifflin & Co., Boston and New York, 1907.
_ 2 For studies of the horse and the camel, see chaps. IV and VII in Robert Miiller,
Die geographische Verbreilung der Wirlschaflstiere mit besonderer Berucksichtigung der
Tropenldnder, Hensius, Leipzig, 1903. See also Otto Lehmann, Das Kamel, seine
geographische Verbreilung und die Bedingungen seines Vorkommens, Weimar, 1891,
51 pages and a map of the ancient world showing the distribution of the two species
of camel. 3Ed. Hahn, "Die Transporttiere in ihrer Verbreitung und ihrer Abhangigkeit
von geographischen Bedingungen," Verh. des XII. deutschen Geographentages in
Jena, 1897, PP- 181-196. See yak, p. 185; reindeer, p. 186; camel, pp. 187-190;
horse and ass, p. 191; mule, p. 191; on the use of the reindeer for transportation and
for food in Alaska, see the annual "Report on the Work of the Board of Education
forthe Natives of Alaska" (the latest, for 1914-15, being Bur. of Educa. Bull., 1916,
No. 47, Washington, 1917).

308

HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

companions of the humblest peasants. From this point of
view they are deserving of a social rather than a geographical
study. In Andalusia, as in the canton of Grisons, they con
stitute the only reserve of the poor and form a sort of living

Henry HosJrier
Fig. 136. A Flock of Goats in Lydenburg (South Africa)
"savings bank." The raising of fowls also is too general
a fact of human geography not to hold the attention of any
geographical observer. It is none the less true that the
greater numbers of domesticated animals are raised in herds
or flocks.
Since we have studied sheep as types of flocks, it would be
well to examine a little more closely the phenomena of nomad
ism as related to sheep.1
The southern Carpathians, and especially the plateau of the
Paringu, form one of those mountainous regions the summits
of which, given over to pasturage beyond the tree-line, are
occupied by the greatest number of flocks of sheep, at least
during the summer period. During the winter a part of the
flocks are taken into Transylvania and another part goes down
JE. de Martonne has collected characteristic facts concerning this nomadism in
his article "La Vie pastorale et la Iranshumance dans les Karpates meridionales;
leur importance geographique et historique," Zu' Friedrich Ralzels Gedachtnis, Seele,
Leipzig, 1904, pp. 227-245.

FACTS OF PLANT AND ANIMAL CONQUEST 309
toward lower Wallachia, toward the Danubian steppes of
Balta. De Martonne has represented the main lines of peri
odic movement of the sheep, roads that bear the expressive
name of Drumul oilor, "sheep roads."
Just as we have shown the close relations between the house
and the road or street, so we should note that often the phe
nomena of cultivation and the phenomena of domestication
are closely mingled. What is Hackbau, i.e., cultivation with
the spade, as opposed to Ackerbau, i.e., cultivation with the
plow, except the contrast between the labor of working the
earth by the human arms alone, with spade, mattock, etc.,
and the labor to which man has trained a domestic animal,
ox, horse, camel, etc.?
It would be wrong to consider nomadism as the exclusive
specialty of pastoral Hfe. Man must, to be sure, follow his
sheep, horses, or camels when he drives them from place to
place in search of new pastures ; this kind of toil implies nomad
ism, but it has no monopoly of it, and we shall have occasion
to take up this important point again.
Even in countries where nomadism is a recognized fact,
there are many cases of semi-nomadism representing a greater
or less mixture of cultivation and animal-raising. The follow
ing description by Masqueray of the semi-nomads of the Aures
range is equally true of the people of the high Algerian steppes
and the northern part of the Sahara:
Aouras, taken as a whole, is a region too poor to admit of an abso
lutely sedentary life. Burned by the sun and dried by the southwest
wind, grown slowly sterile since the destruction of the works of the
Romans, it demands from its inhabitants the raising of cattle as well
as the tilling of the soil. The Aoulad-Daoud cannot content them
selves with the meager gardens at the foot of their villages which
furnish them with apricots, grapes, and watermelons. They need
a more fertile field in some canton of the north ; they need the product
of some herd. Moreover, whence would they have obtained the
wool for their clothing in former times when they were always fight
ing with their neighbors?
During the winter they work the plains of Medina and Taham-
mamt; they return to harvest them during the summer. In the
meantime they follow their thin cattle over the slopes of the
mountains of which they are masters. During the autumn they must
descend to the south toward Benian and Mchounech to buy dates,

310 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
the only food easily transportable. It follows that their life is made
up of regular, successive changes of place; that these people whom
a superficial traveler would think sedentary are semi-nomads; that
the possession of a herd is with them a sign of wealth ; that the tent,
although they have houses, is their ordinary dwelling; and that for
four-fifths of the year their large villages are almost abandoned.
Only the very poor remain in them.
The real purpose of the villages of the Aoulad-Daoud is, then, to
serve as a storehouse. Each person shuts up first within his own
house a small part of his provisions; then, since robbers are always
to be feared, he places the main part of it in the common fortress,
the guelaa, under the care of a guardian. A guelaa contains nearly
all of the movable wealth of the inhabitants, considerable quantities
of wheat, barley, wool, pressed dates, butter, and strips of dried
meat. I saw one of them being filled at the beginning of autumn;
loaded mules followed each other in an unbroken line. I must add
that accidentally and rarely a guelaa may be isolated. This is the
case at Sanef. The guelaa here consists of a large castle built on
the very border of the wadi, while the village rises a considerable
distance above it. This is perhaps why in maps we find Sanef on
the bank of the river.1
For some, nomadism was only a stage in the march of
humanity; for others, it was above all else a question of race.
In the eyes of the former it presupposed a state of civilization
which was still rudimentary, but which was destined to progress
and to bring man to a sedentary life. Wherever we can follow
his march, said the partisans of this idea, man was first a
hunter, then a shepherd, and then a tiller of the soil. The
advocates of the latter view, having noticed that nomadism
is particularly widespread in Arabia and Algeria, immediately
drew the conclusion that it was peculiar to the Arab family
and that it was hardly capable of evolution; the Arab was a
nomad, he could be only a nomad.
Thus presented, these solutions of nomadism have a grave
fault. They take no account of natures restrictive influence on
human activity, or of man's adaptation to geographical condi
tions, or of the political factor which is the result of man's will.
To take a concrete example : As far as we can go back into
the history of the region, the high Algerian plateaus are pre
eminently the country of nomadism. For a long time the
government had seen its seemingly most intelligent legislative
'Emile Masqueray, Note coneernanl les Aoulad-Daoud du Mont Aures (Aouras),
Adolphe Jourdan, Algiers, 1879, pp. 21-23.

FACTS OF PLANT AND ANIMAL CONQUEST 311
plans meet with the most vigorous opposition, which some
attributed to the world-old customs of nomads rebellious to
ideas which disturbed their habits. Then a series of reports
made on the spot under the direction of the civil and military
administration in the years 1 901-1903, seemed to show modi
fications in the customs of these peoples. In the succession
of these facts there was ground for surprise and reflection.
Could nomadism then be something else than a matter of
race? Could it owe its origin to many factors, among which
the human element played an important part, but which
resulted also from the natural conditions of the country; and
could the predominance of the one over the other be the key
to the problem? Is it not in this direction that we might find
the reason why in certain instances or in certain parts of the
country nomadism offered an unyielding opposition to the
laws of French colonization, while, in other instances, or in
another field, it was seen to be entering upon a new phase ?
On the high Algerian plateaus nomadism is naturally the
"regular and periodic migration to meet the needs of pastoral
life;"1 it is the changing of place, not by some individuals only,
but by a whole tribe, at fixed times and periods because it
must find new pastures for the herds which furnish its food and
support. But nomadism is far from showing a single type
over the whole territory. There are degrees of nomadism,
and, as Augustin Bernard and N. Lacroix say,2 there is a
series of intermediate types between the native of the Algerian
Tell, principally a cultivator, who feels almost no need of
migrating because the soil is rich enough to feed him and his
herds throughout the year, and the Shaanba and Tuareg, who
hardly migrate any more because they are so poor that they
have no large herds and prefer to remain within the vast
stretches of the Sahara with their camels, waiting for a chance
to make a raid and to live at the expense of the oases around
which they gravitate. Between these two come the nomads
properly so called, who live by means of their herds and whose
nomadism is a necessary result of geographical conditions.
JFor this statement see Augustin Bernard and N. Lacroix, in L'Evolulion du
nomadisme en Algirie, Adolphe Jourdan, Algiers, and A. Chalamel, Paris, 1906, p. 3.
2Ibid., pp. 77-99.

312 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
In fact, as is well shown in the work to which we refer, the
utilization of the ground in the special form of nomadism is the
only possible use to which it can be put on the high plateaus
of Algeria — that is, in all the regions comprised between the
Tell Atlas on the north and the Saharan Atlas on the south,
because it can be nothing but a steppe. Cultivation can be
established there only by means of irrigation and never goes
beyond a very limited region. Let us not forget that the
subtropical zone, to which this whole region belongs, receives
less than 16 inches (406 millimeters) of rainfall in the course
of the year, and that this quantity falls with a ' ' disheartening
irregularity," since more than a year may pass without a
helpful shower. Let us add that such a vast extent of land
does not offer everywhere the same climatic conditions nor,
consequently, the same advantages to shepherds. The
northern part, the region which borders on the Tell Atlas,
receives spring and summer rains; the southern, or Saharan
region, receives autumn and winter rains. Certain tribes are
therefore obliged to have summer and winter and sometimes
even spring and autumn camps, i.e., to make a regular periodic
migration. The phenomenon causes still other complications. The
more numerous the tribes and the richer in flocks, the more
space they require and the more they wish to extend their
pasture ground. On the other hand, it goes without saying
that to reach periodically the different encampments the flocks
need to cross a large stretch of land, to which rights of usage
must be acquired; 100,000 sheep are not transported from the
Sahara to the Tell in the twinkling of an eye and without
requiring water and grass. Let us suppose besides (and in
nomadic countries there is ground for the supposition) that
in a certain year the irregularity or insufficiency of the rainfall
has considerably injured the steppe ; will not the tribes be forced
to seek farther for their ordinary pasture? In other words,
will they not be tempted to invade the limits imposed upon
them by cultivation or by the forest, rather than allow the
flock, which forms their entire wealth, to perish?
Here a new difficulty arises : to abandon the forest reserves
to sheep or goats means to sacrifice them, means to continue

/

FACTS OF PLANT AND ANIMAL CONQUEST 313
that work of deforestation which has done all too much injury
to Algeria. It even means, as a fatal consequence, the destruc
tion of the pasturage, for it condemns to death the shrubbery,
the undergrowth, which grows in the protection of the tree and
serves to sustain the plant covering of the steppe itself.
On the other hand, ' ' the extension given to the cultivation
of cereals, by causing the undergrowth vegetation to disappear,
is rather unfavorable to sheep-raising."1 Thus a strip tends
to form between the regions of real cultivation and the pasture
regions, which, in the case of rainy years, becomes more and
more infertile and impoverished; in these years it is good for
neither the cultivators nor the shepherds.
We see then that the difficulties arising from natural condi
tions are not so easily overcome as some public men think.
One of these wrote on January 8, 1904, "Is it necessary to leave
more than 740,000 acres (300,000 hectares) unproductive
in order to allow some hundreds of Arabs to bring their flocks
there during two or three months of the year?"2 The fair
reply to this is: "Is it necessary to condemn to death sev
eral hundred thousand sheep in order to harvest some few
bushels of wheat and that only in the most favorable years ? ' '
Even if it is true that the interests of agriculture are, on
principle, to be preferred to the interests of extensive animal-
raising, yet the former must be real and durable and we
must be assured of reaping the profit from them.3
Cultivation cannot gain ground indefinitely in Algeria;
Schirmer4 and Brunhes stated this some years ago, calling at
tention to the fact that in certain oases it has acquired all the
extension of which it is capable and that to endeavor to
develop it over larger surfaces is to expose it to the danger of
perishing where it now exists, for new borings are almost always
fed at the expense of earlier ones. Bernard and Lacroix are
entirely of the same opinion. "If it is possible in certain
places, in the Tell or in the Hodna, better to utilize the surface
water, it must not be forgotten that the larger part of these
1Le Pays de mouton, p. 47.
2The Dipiche algirienne, quoted by Aug. Bernard and N. Lacroix, in L'Evolution
du nom/idisme en Algerie, p. 61.
3Compare also, for these facts, Jean Brunhes, V Irrigation, p. 215.
^Ibid., p. 372.

314 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
watering-places should always be given up to watering the
flocks and that cultivation should never be permitted to for
bid shepherds and flocks an access to the springs."1 There
are regions where cultivation is so problematical that to
attempt it is to take a real chance. This is particularly the
case in the Saharan regions.
The irregularity of the rains [says a report upon the Ouled-Djellah2
post] always makes the profit that a harvest may yield too much a
matter of chance; the cultivation, without which the nomad cannot
become sedentary, is always impossible in the neighborhood of the
watering-places and too . often causes disappointment when carried
on elsewhere. Thus it is wisdom, the result of a long experience,
which leads our peoples to place all their hopes in the raising of
flocks. The rains follow each other with disheartening irregularity.
Only regions situated on the limits of the Tell seem destined
to give more certain results; and yet the importance or the
increase of cultivation mentioned in certain reports must not
be exaggerated. It is a matter sometimes of 4,000 or 12,000
acres (2,000 or 5,000 hectares) for regions comprising perhaps
2 or 4 million acres (1 or 2 million hectares).3
We now understand the conclusion of Bernard and Lacroix:4
' ' One must be hostile toward too absolute solutions, be careful
not to believe in the intrinsic superiority of cultivation over
grazing, and not forget that its role in the steppes, while
increasing somewhat, can never be other than a subordinate
one." If this conclusion seems too unfavorable to agriculture
or too pessimistic, let us not forget that the shepherd's industry
is not an evil, but a real wealth, which corresponds to the
conditions of certain countries. It would be but a poor
policy to take away from pasturing some few oases in the
midst of the steppe to give them over to a cultivation that
promises precarious results and perhaps for some few years
only.5 "But have we the right to condemn the nomads to
*Aug. Bernard and N. Lacroix, p. 183.
2lbid., p. 186.
3Reference is purposely omitted here to conquests which can be made in North
Africa by dry-farming methods. See the preface by Augustin Bernard in the volume by
John A. Widtsoe, translated by his daughter, Le Dry-farming, Culture des lerres seches,
Paris, 1912.
4Aug. Bernard and N. Lacroix, p. 205.
5Newell, the great apostle of irrigation in tho American Far West, presents some
identical reservations and remarks on the economic advantages of sheep-raising.
See his book, Irrigation in the United Stales.

FACTS OF PLANT AND ANIMAL CONQUEST 315
die of hunger and make the steppes throughout unusable and
unproductive in order to try to make wheat grow where the
climate does not allow its existence? It is still less necessary
to permit European or native cultivation to interfere with
the shepherds when this interference is compensated by no
advantage that is serious and of real economic interest."1
Looked at in this light and as a function of climate, nomadism
might on the whole be considered as unchangeable, and we
should then have the right to conclude that the high Algerian
plateau can never be the dwelling-place of sedentary peoples,
for the relief and the climate of these regions can hardly be
modified. However, on reading a number of reports brought
together by the government of Algeria, we find that this
immutability of nomadism is not complete, that changes have
shown themselves for several years and even tend to become
more marked. Under what influences has this evolution taken
place, what agents have intervened, and why has their action
not been perceptible until within a rather short time ?
It is important to get a closer grasp of the problem. In
northern Africa nomadism owes its origin, as we have said, to
pastoral activity; the regular periodic migrations result from
the necessity of finding pasture for the flocks which form the
wealth of a tribe. May not other, perhaps accessory, factors
have played their part in the extension of certain forms of
nomadism? We know that the nomad is not only a shepherd,
but also a merchant, and that the great caravans of camels,
which go from the Sahara to the Tell, and vice versa, are the
important means of transporting dates from south to north
and cereals from north to south.2 We know further that
nomad is often a synonym for pillager and that the fine fields
of barley or the verdant growth of the oases are well suited
to tempt the cupidity of the nomad, who compares to them
the meager vegetation of his own steppes.3 These are facts
common to all regions bordering on deserts. The Turkomans
of central Asia were as great a danger to the Iranians as the
1Aug. Bernard and N. Lacroix, op. cil., p. 63. See also Jean Brunhes, the whole
conclusion of the chapter on "L 'Irrigation en Algerie-Tunisie," in L' Irrigation, pp.
300-307. 2Schirmer, Le Sahara.
30n the "tufted Sahara," see L' Irrigation, p. 230 and Fig. 20.

316 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
sand of the neighboring desert; the Mongols, urged on by
that instinct for pillage long inherent in nomads, used to
invade the rich fields of China and India. We can then
believe that if the geographical factor lies at the base of
nomadism, the human element has been able to extend it and
to exaggerate it. Might it not also restrict and reduce it?
History offers on this point a series of incontestable facts.
Regions to-day trodden by the nomad or invaded by sand
were once occupied by a sedentary population and devoted to
cultivation. In attempting to explain these changes, before
having recourse to alterations of climate, which are always
very problematical, at least as far as historic time is concerned,
we must see whether they may not be as well attributed to
the ravages and destruction of wars. Now we may state that
it was not the Arab invasion which introduced nomadism
into northern Africa; to assure himself of this one need only
read the testimony of authors of the first centuries who speak
of the nomads of Mauretania. We know just as certainly
that through the protection of the Roman armies cultivation
had driven back nomadism and gained ground, without,
however, reaching the regions of steppes which extend well
to the south of Algiers and Oran. To the south of the Roman
ized territories the nomads maintained themselves. With
the decadence of the Roman Empire there was a giving way
on the part of the cultivator and a forward movement by the
nomads which, though arrested somewhat under the Byzantine
rule, started again with the Arab invasion of the seventh
century. Some authors have thought that this invasion had
spread a nomadic population over these regions. It was
rather the invasion of the twelfth century which established
as many as 500,000 nomads in these lands and added to the
evils of war the evils arising from their type of life and habits.
"It is their sheep, their camels, their goats, that ruin north
ern Africa."1 The Turkish administration was still less than
to-day of a sort to encourage agriculture; the incessant inter
tribal wars and the periodic raids of the bey could only weaken
and even bring to naught the efforts of the sedentary popula
tion constantly deprived of the fruits of their labors. Why
'Aug. Bernard and N. Lacroix, p. 26, and farther on, chap. X.

FACTS OF PLANT AND ANIMAL CONQUEST 317
wear one's self out, if at harvest time the harvests were to be
carried off by the robber of the desert or the robber of Algiers ?
But a failure to work on the part of the sedentary population
means the ruin of agriculture, for we must not forget that
"in dry countries, such as the Mediterranean countries, and
with all the more reason in the steppes and the Sahara, there is
no need of positive injury in order that the soil should depre
ciate, the forests perish, and nomadic life gain ground. Nega
tive action is sufficient; it is sufficient to do nothing, not to
keep up the hydraulic works, and not to busy one's self with
waters and forests."1 To how many other countries would
a remark of this sort apply? We might say that all the
regions bordering upon deserts, all the zones marked as
steppes on the map of Fig. 1 1 1 , would furnish us with examples,
but Mesopotamia, Russian and Chinese Turkestan, the plateau
of Iran, and Mongolia are the most significant in the Old World.
In the New World we have an excellent example of seasonal
nomadism in the case of the Navajo Indians of New Mexico
and Arizona. Though they cultivate favorable soil areas in
the lowlands to a moderate degree, their chief form of wealth
is sheep. These they drive into the forest and grassy high
mesas in the summer, where the higher humidity favors the
growth of succulent vegetation. In the winter season the
flocks are driven to the lower levels (below 7000 ft.) and are
fed on the dry nature-cured hay that has grown during the
summer. If the state of war, the insecurity which is the fatal conse
quence of it, the absence of a vigilant and firm administration,
give to the nomad every facility for developing and putting in
action his instincts for idleness and pillage, while at the same
time permitting him to feed his flocks and herds upon lands
which cultivation might claim, we can on the other hand
understand that the man of sedentary life, feeling himself
protected, and assured that his toil will bring him an abundant
and paying harvest, will no longer fear to push his cultivation
to the limits where climatic conditions favor it. He will
retake the land which he had abandoned and we shall see a
drawing back of nomadism.
xAug. Bernard and N. Lacroix, p. 29. See also Brunhes, V Irrigation.

318 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
This drawing back, however, is only an outer aspect,
affecting the region much more than the institution itself.
Changes in the state of the nomad would be much more
important and much more significant. And that is exactly
what has happened upon the high Algerian plateaus where
Bernard and Lacroix made observations which show not
merely a withdrawal of nomadism, but a transformation, a
veritable evolution.
The nomad or the shepherd can devote his energy to
different sorts of animals, and there is a whole series of transi
tions, including the raising of the horse, the goat, and the
sheep, between the nomad who raises cattle and him who
raises camels. We may disregard cattle-raising, since cattle,
requiring fodder and water, can live only rarely in the steppes.
As for the horse, which is essentially the animal of the
steppes, its raising also presents some difficulties. The require
ments are more rigid than in the raising of sheep, and even
of the ox; yet it is well known what a place the horse holds
in the life of the Arab and how the Prophet made the care
to be given to horses one of the obligations of Mussulman life.
And why was this ? Because the horse was essentially a war
animal. There is nothing more typical on this point than the
words of the emir Abd-el-Kader : "It has been a part of the
customs and nature of the Arabs from the earliest times to
make war upon each other, as well as upon neighboring
nations. The poor Arab needs a horse in order to fall upon
the goods of his enemy, take possession of them, and grow
rich, and the rich Arab likewise needs a horse to protect his
fortune and his head."1
The consequences of the French occupation and the pacifica
tion which has been the result of it are now easily seen. Why
keep an animal, the price of which has risen, the support of
which is costly, and which no longer renders the service that
was once expected of it? Consequently we see that horse-
raising is steadily decreasing, while the raising of horned
cattle and of the mule is increasing. The horse has become
more and more a luxury. This is a natural consequence of
peace and does not fail to disturb the government. "Some
'Aug. Bernard and N. Lacroix, op. cil., p. 114.

FACTS OF PLANT AND ANIMAL CONQUEST 319
years ago," says the report from the "circle" of Khenchela,1 "it
would have been easy to find in Algeria 20,000 horses ready
to be equipped and placed immediately in service. This was
a valuable asset for the state, but one which unfortunately
no longer exists, and if the government does not take measures
to stop the emigration of colts, it is clearly evident that before
long it will be impossible to provide for the recruiting of the
horses necessary for the cavalry in Algeria."
There is modification also in camel-raising. The camel,
as we mentioned above, is particularly adapted to the desert,
where it plays an important part, either as a pack animal or
as a saddle animal; yet it has not the endurance that is com
monly supposed. As a result of their use by the Algerian
troops the camel herds were decimated to such an extent that
the effective force had fallen from 255,000 in 1896 to 187,000
in 1 90 1. This mortality, aggravated further by the dryness
and severity of the winter of 1 903-1 904, caused the price of
camels to rise. Sums of money were granted by the govern
ment for building up the herds, but many natives have bought
cattle and sheep. Why? On this point it is interesting to
read the reports of officers. "In the 'circle' of Marnia,
insecurity having ceased, the native is no longer obliged to
change his dwelling quickly and to flee before swift and
numerous enemies; his camel is therefore less useful to him."
"In the 'circle' of Mecheria the usefulness of camels for the
natives is decreasing because they wander less and less, and
the railroad is competing with transportation by caravans.
Moreover, the decrease in camels is not to be regretted;
cattle and sheep will take their place to the advantage of the
country." In other regions which are deserts or on the edge of
the desert and where consequently great migrations are neces
sary, camel-raising holds its own and cannot be neglected. We
find here the influence of the human element as a geographical
factor. The security enjoyed by the sedentary peoples and
the building of railroads have made the camel useless both as
a pack animal and as a war animal; it is giving way to the
sheep, which is truly the animal of the Algerian steppe. Care
should be taken not to interfere with the growth of the flocks
JAug. Bernard and N. Lacroix, p. 116.

320 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
of sheep through measures too restrictive upon grazing or too
favorable to cultivation. According to Bernard and Lacroix,
the best thing would be, not to sacrifice cultivated lands or
forests, but to substitute intensive for extensive sheep-raising
by care of the pasture lands, by the development of watering-
places, by a better utilization of the actual resources.
That there is ground for such a proceeding, and that great
advantages may be hoped from it, is shown by the results
obtained in other countries. "In Australia in the Murray
basin, the irrigation projects have allowed the creation of
fields of alfalfa; thanks to this plant, 15,000 sheep are fed upon
200 acres, or 75 per acre, while formerly in the same country
it required 4 acres to feed 5 sheep."1
Another factor which is modifying the conditions of nomad
ism is the commercial factor, or rather the changes which it
is undergoing. Formerly it was necessary to organize great
caravans in order to send to the markets of the Tell the flocks,
the wool, and other products of sheep-raising, and to bring
back grains and divers manufactured products. But to-day
the railroads have penetrated to the very edge of the desert
and have facilitated the establishment of depots, of places of
exchange, of commercial centers. Owing to the relative
security of the roads, "we see to-day merchants and com
mercial travelers, Jews or Mozabites, soliciting the trade of
the nomad even in his tent and offering him the objects which
he needs. "2 Another fact no less significant is that ' ' the weekly
market has in more than one spot replaced the annual fair."
This evolution has, moreover, taken place elsewhere under
the influence of the same agents. The great caravan routes
for tea and silk in central Asia are disappearing as a result of
the coming in of the railroads ; commercial centers are changing
place; the great annual fairs have given way to more frequent
markets, and in Europe, too, the merchant, the commercial
traveler, penetrates to each village, to the smallest hamlet, and
solicits the trade of the peasant under his thatched roof.
The coming in of the European has had its influence in
'On the subject of irrigation in the Murray basin of Australia, see Paul Privat-
Deschanel, "La Question de l'eau dans le bassin du Murray," La Geographie,
December 15, 1905, p. 466.
2Aug. Bernard and N. Lacroix, p. 226.

FACTS OF PLANT AND ANIMAL CONQUEST 321
another form — that is, in the habits of daily life. While for
merly the nomad lived chiefly from the product of his flocks and
clothed himself with fabrics of native manufacture, now he
has recourse more and more to the products of Europe. ' ' The
use of coffee, sugar, and tea is making its way into the houses
of the rich ; even among people of moderate means these articles
are considered necessities." "European clothes, fabrics, and
tapestries are beginning to excite their desires; many natives
are even beginning to wear shoes of the European style."
"To-day," say Bernard and Lacroix,1 "the weaver works
quickly, puts less wool into the fabric, and replaces it by cotton
in the warp ; in the woof he uses wool colored with aniline dye
instead of wool colored with vegetable matter."
Passing through an evolution in grazing, in commerce, and
in industry, the nomad seems also to be passing through an
evolution in his social organization, and here again we see the
influence of the human and political factors. Perhaps a change
may be made in the Mussulman family in the matter of polyg
amy. Certain authors hope that, because domestic tasks will
be less numerous and less binding, the Mussulman, having
less need of servants, will take fewer wives.
That there is an evolution in nomadism in Algeria is then
undeniable; some of the changes take place before our very
eyes: "A tendency to reduce the migrations, a decadence in
camel-raising and progress in cattle-raising, a progress in
cultivation, a tendency to build houses, an increase in luxury,
an increase of individualism in the family, a growing freedom
of the family and of the village in relation to the tribe. "2 How
ever, these changes seem to have shown themselves much more
in semi-agricultural tribes near the Tell, in those which are
along the limit of the steppes; they have affected much less
those which live in the midst of the steppes or in the Sahara.
In other words, the evolution is more marked in regions where
nomadism owed its existence and development to undoubted
physical factors, but also in large measure to human factors,
the insecurity of the country, and low density of population.
The evolution is much less marked in parts where nomadism
lAug. Bernard and N. Lacroix, p. 267.
2Ibid., p. 302.
20

322 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
is chiefly the result of truly geographical conditions. How
ever, nomadism has expressed itself here by a number of
facts important enough so that we can say that it is not a
matter of race, that it is not of a single type, and that it is
not unchangeable. On the other hand, the resistance that it
offers to a too rapid change shows that it rests upon natural
conditions that are difficult to modify.
On the transformation of the periodic migration in Spain,
A. Fribourg has lately published some important data.1
Since the new rates and the new means of transportation
inaugurated in 1899 by the Madrid-Saragossa-Alicante
Company and in 1901 by the Madrid-Caceres-Portugal
Company, "the sheep migrate in cars." Besides, in many
countries and notably in Spain, the raising of sheep implies
a diminishing migration. In the fifteenth century there
were 2,694,000 migrating sheep, while at the end of the nine
teenth century there were not more than 1,355,000, and that
is but a very small part of the total number of sheep in
Spain, which certainly reaches nearly 14,000,000 head.2
We cannot end this chapter without saying a word about
Alpine nomadism, or the nomadism predominant in the
Alps and the mountains of humid Europe, i. e., central and
western Europe.
Alpine nomadism is especially associated with the raising
of cattle.3 The pastoral migrations of cattle in the Alps differ
from the nomadism connected with the raising of sheep in that
they are always migrations for a short distance; moreover in
moving from their winter station to their summer pastures,
the herds do not have to traverse entire zones occupied by
LAndr6 Fribourg, "La Transhumance en Espagne," Ann. de giog., XIX, 1910, see
P- 375- 2In many parts of the Pyrenees nomadism is, on the contrary, allied with the rais
ing of sheep.
3Dr. Joseph Girou, of Aurillac, on reading this paragraph wrote: "It is not only
in Spain that they pay railroad fare for animals that migrate. The cows of our coun
try have no reason for envying the Iberian sheep. The mountain pastures of the
canton of Allanche and of the neighboring cantons (situated to the north of the de
partment of Cantal) are excellent and are very much sought after by the herdsmen
of the neighborhood of Aurillac, to the south of the department; but they are far away
and there is no way of getting at them by a direct road. So. when the new line from
Neussargues to Bort, which crosses the country of Allanche. had been opened a short
time, the herdsmen asked the Paris-Orleans Company to make special trains for cows;
the company arranged for such trains, and they are used especially for the animals
having the longest journey to make."

FACTS OF PLANT AND ANIMAL CONQUEST 323
forms of exploitation of the earth that are entirely different.1
As we have found in the case of sheep, it would be a mistake
to reduce Alpine nomadism to a single formula. There are
cases where cattle-raising brings about a whole series of
regular migrations with fixed establishments, and no example
is more representative than that of the Val d'Anniviers; but
there are other cases where the migrations are so slight and
affect such a small number of human beings that we might say
that there is no nomadism, properly speaking, and this is
chiefly the result of general geographical conditions. The
high Swiss valley of the Valais (Val d'Anniviers) is a type of
what may be called nomadism at its highest power. In the
same Valais, some dozens of miles from the Val d' Anniviers,
is the valley of Conches — • a high valley without nomadism
or with nomadism that is very restricted.
The valley of Conches, the upper section of the Valaisan
Rhone, has an essentially pastoral population.2 Everyone
owns some cattle or sheep, often both. For 4,204 inhabitants
(in 1900) we find 4,723 head of cattle of which 2,240 were cows.
There are few regions in Switzerland where the proportion is as
large. The cow is here the unit of wealth; formerly, as in
Homeric Greece, a young bride received a cow as a dowry.
Pasture animals and cheese are almost the only merchandise
exported from Conches. Cattle products furnish almost all
the native food including meat, and especially milk and its
products, butter, cheese, and curd. For the native of Conches
cheese plays the part that bread plays elsewhere.
As a matter of fact the climate (three months only have
a mean temperature above io°C. [5o°F.], and the altitude
(more than 3,200 feet) are not favorable for agriculture. The
fields are upon slopes so steep that they cannot be worked
with the plow, and transportation has to be upon the backs of
men. The spring frosts sometimes destroy the meager crops,
especially in Haut-Conches and in the valley of Binn.3
'On cattle-raising in France, see Henri Hitier, " La Repartition des races bovines
en France," Ann. de giog., XII, 1903, pp. 450-453.
2In 1907 Charles Biermann presented at the University of Lausanne a thesis on
human geography: La Vallee de Conches en Valais, Essai sur la vie dans une haute
vallie fermie des Alpes suisses sous V influence de V altitude, du climat et du relief,
Imprimerie reunies, Lausanne, 1901.
3See Leon Desbussions, "La Vallee de Binn," La Montague, IV, 1908, pp. 221-230.

324 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
The higher pastures are the only resource of the country.
They cover 21,497 acres (8,700 hectares) out of a total area
of 130,641 acres (52,870 hectares), of which 63,504 acres
(25,700 hectares) are unproductive. They are especially
important in the regions poor from the agricultural point
of view, where not only the population maintains its position,
but where it established itself from the beginning. On the
other hand, where pastures have been destroyed by an excessive
deforestation, as in the Gerenthal, there was a loss of population
in spite of the good exposure of the fields and meadows.
Most of the pasture lands are on the left bank of the Rhone,
where the more numerous mountain chains are less high, where
the lateral valleys are deepest, such as those of Egesse and
Binn, and from which, finally, the unfavorable exposure
(shady side) excludes cultivation, established only at the
expense of the forest and the pasture. The villages are, how
ever, in general grouped upon the other (right or west) bank
at the foot of the sunny slope in the midst of the cultivated
fields. The herds pass the winter in the village, go in the spring
to the may ens (midseason pastures), then stage by stage, as
the summer advances, they go up the grassy slopes to the
upper limits of vegetation. In the early autumn they come
down as slowly as they went up and end the season in the
stables scattered amid the low meadows.
Restricted as the development of this nomadism is in the
matter of distance (and doubtless for this very reason), the
inhabitants have but a very small share in it. A few women
and children accompany the animals to the maycns; three or
four herders only follow them to the upper pastures to make
the cheese. The other inhabitants of Conches remain in the
village. This is not at all like what happens in the Val d'Anniviers,
where continual migrations constantly transport the entire
population from the valley to the plain and from the plain
to the mountain and oblige each family to build a house at
each one of these stops. The cause of this difference is to be
sought in the frequency and violence of the avalanches and
torrents which restrict the available surface of Conches,

FACTS OF PLANT AND ANIMAL CONQUEST 325
depriving of population even the districts which are richest
in vast pastures.
In this upper part of its course the Rhone itself is only a
torrent whose extreme and rapid rise at the time of the melting
of the snows exposes its banks to disastrous floods; most of
the villages therefore avoid its immediate neighborhood. Its
affluents are still more to be feared. The clearing of the
inhabited slope of the valley has given them a torrential
character, and at their meeting with the Rhone their deposits
form numerous cones, sometimes of considerable size, which
the avalanches sweep away every spring. This last scourge
is the most terrible of all. The avalanche more than anything
else ruins crops, destroys houses, and even causes deaths. It
compels villages to crouch on the edge of alluvial cones; it
causes the gathering of the population in close groups with
hardly a single dwelling standing by itself (see chap. III).
The avalanche is moreover the reason why all the villages form
distinct communes, the largest not reaching 500 inhabitants.
During the bad season from October to April, the villages,
separated from each other by dangerous zones which cannot
be crossed, are almost isolated from their nearest neighbors.
Thus shut within itself, social activity has acquired an
extraordinary intensity, which explains the importance, in
this purely pastoral region, of the possession of low-lying
meadows. It is this which regulates the usage of the pastures.
In fact, in order to avoid the monopoly of the common property
by a minority, the principle has been established of admitting
to it only the cattle wintered with the hay crop of the country
without the addition of other resources.
There is an exception to this rule only at Binn. Here the
pastures are very extensive, the ground that can be cultivated
or inhabited, on the other hand, very much restricted. The
population, far from numerous, could not maintain itself alone
as mistress of the valley; it has had to admit consortages1 of
cattle owners from outside the valley. The pasture grounds
which it has reserved for itself are too vast for its own use,
'A Valaisian expression. The "bisses" or irrigating canals (see the illustration,
Fig. 8, p. 59) belong to certain collective organizations also called "consortages." See
the thesis by Louis Lehmann, V Irrigation en Valais, Elude de giographie humaine,
Paris, 1912.

326 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
and it has therefore been necessary to permit the introduction
of cattle from without.
About the fifteenth century the building of a mule road
over the passes of the Grimsel (7,241 feet) and of the Gries
(8,097 feet), connecting upper Germany with the plain of
the Po, opened up additional resources to the inhabitants of
Conches. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries more
than 200 horses and mules passed over the mountain every
week. The building of the Simplon road in 1805 and the bor
ing of the Saint Gotthard tunnel in 1882 ruined this transverse
traffic and restored the preponderance to the longitudinal way
along the thalweg of the Rhone. But the communications
assured by the wagon road of Conches (built by sections from
1820 to 1867) are of an entirely new nature. This is a road
frequented by tourists and marked by post relays. One of
these, Fiesch, situated in the center of prosperous cultivation
at the foot of a mountain famous for its view — the Eggishorn
(9,626 feet) — being a starting-point for visitors to the Aletsch
Glacier and the valley of Binn, has become the most densely
populated village of the entire valley. Beside the ancient
wooden houses, tall and narrow, the barns perched on piles,
the haylofts and stables of an architecture which is found in
all Haut-Valais, have risen hotels, bazaars, shops for rare
minerals, etc., built of stone or boards with roofs of slate,
roofing paper, or zinc. Most of the communes of the right
bank of the Rhone have benefited from the same transforma
tion. The advantages of a slope less steep, of a more prolonged
sunlight, and of a greater security from avalanches have given
way to the proximity of the wagon road at Blitzingen, at
Selkingen, and at Ulrichen. On the other hand, on the left
bank, which was left to one side, the decadence has been
striking at Steinhaus, at Ernen, and especially at Ausserbinn,
where it has taken on a strange form — an excessive dislike
for marriage. In 1900, 81 per cent of the inhabitants of this
little village were unmarried, though almost none of the inhab
itants was younger than sixteen.
The influence of the highway is not limited to these changes
in the relative importance of places in Conches. For a long
time the valley of Conches, surrounded on all sides by high

FACTS OF PLANT AND ANIMAL CONQUEST 327
mountains, remained almost absolutely closed to foreign
importation. It enjoyed a sort of economic independence; it
was almost sufficient unto itself, producing almost everything
necessary to its inhabitants : milk, butter, cheese, meat, bread,
vegetables, linen and woolen cloth, leather, wood, building
stone, and even iron. This is no longer so; the cultivation of
textile plants and even of cereals is diminishing under the
effects of competition, while, on the other hand, the value of
the cheese and cattle is increasing and the valley is on its
way toward specialization in pastoral activity.
While this transformation is taking shape, without as yet
the introduction of the methods of intensive cultivation, the
peasant of Conches is already seriously departing from ancient
usages ; exploitation is becoming destructive. Not only are the
peasants ceasing to keep up the upper pastures, to free them
from the parasitic bushes of myrtle and rhododendrons, to
gather and pile up the debris from landslides and avalanches,
but they are depriving the mountain, to the profit of the plain,
of the natural fertilizer left by the cattle which feed there, and
they are admitting, along with the cattle, those great enemies of
vegetation in the high pastures, sheep and goats. Thus the
capacity of these pastures is diminishing, as is shown by a
comparison of historical documents.1
Such is Conches, an interesting type of an alpine pastoral
country, almost without nomadism, and of an economic oasis
in process of absorption, that is, a region which is passing
from one geographic form to another.
Let this significant example convince us how premature is
every generalization about nomadism or even about the
pastoral migrations of the Alps, until conscientious observers
shall have studied in detail the infinite variety of these
phenomena. Here is another case, in the French Alps, of which the differ
ences, and especially the striking analogies with the valley of
Conches, give some suggestion of what might be the scien
tific import of a series of comparative studies methodically
carried out.
This case is that of Queyras, a canton or "escarton" of
'See the documents carefully collected by Ch. Biermann, op. cil.

328 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
Brianconnais, which comprises the upper valleys of the Guil
and its affluents.
The existence of summer villages is hardly more than an accidental
phenomenon caused by depopulation and the descent of the in
habitants toward the large villages of the valley. The upper Guil
is not a country of chalets, if we take this term in the sense of may ens
or of stavoli. We shall see that with all the more reason this is true
of the valley of Molines  In this district, where, owing to
the softer forms of the schists, wide valleys allow man to establish
himself permanently at a great height, there is no need of villages
especially intended for summer stopping-places. In the too distant
parts and those that are distinctly too high for one to be able to
pass the winter there, simple barns have been set up to shelter the
supply of hay and to receive the animals in case of bad weather
during their short stay in the neighborhood  1
While proposing a classification of the facts of human
geography which would serve especially as a guide for direct
observation, we are very careful always to place these facts
back in their complex environment and to connect the phenom
ena which have first been arranged in series with the whole
of which they form a part. Thus from the cultivated field
and the herd we have been naturally led to consider the human
establishment of the cultivators or of the drivers of the animals.
We have met once more the phenomena of the house and the
road in their connection with the facts of plant and animal
conquest. All that we have said of the forms of semi-nomad
ism, all that will be said later on this subject in the chapter
on the oases of the Suf and of the Mzab (chap. VI) , and the
explanations which we have sought for the restricted nomadism
of the valley of Conches, as well as those of the intense nomad
ism of the Val d'Anniviers, show how these different surface
facts are connected with each other.
There is a form of human agglomeration which is especially
connected with the raising of herds — that regular but inter
mittent form called the fair. Men driving herds come together
at certain dates related to the migration of the animals and
occupy for some hours and in a very important manner a
space which will be deserted all the rest of the year. Besides,
in countries of an intense and varied economic life, where the
'Raoul Blanchard, "L'Habitation en Queyras, " La Geographic, XIX, 1909, p. 44-

FACTS OF PLANT AND ANIMAL CONQUEST 329
population is increasing, fairs pass through an evolution, just
as does nomadism (we have noted it with reference to the
Algerian steppe). Their recurrence is more frequent, they
increase in number, the leading ones lose their supremacy,
and the whole system becomes more regular. They are thus
gradually transformed until they approach a type of center of
exchange characteristic of the great cities — the daily market
(such as the animal market of la Villette at Paris).
Thus this nomadic type of temporary human establishment,
the fair, should be studied in connection with nomadism and
semi-nomadism. 1

'It goes without saying that there are other fairs which are not connected with
cattle-raising, and which should belong only to the geography of circulation. In the
same way, a series of allied facts should be connected only with the geography of
circulation (see, for example, the little article which Paul Labbe has written on "Les
Trains-foires en Russie," according to the Bulletin officiel du Ministere des voies et com
munications of Petrograd, in La Giographie, X, 1904, pp. 401—402). It is no longer
by virtue of their names alone, but by reason of their intrinsic character, that the
different economic facts ought to take their place in such or such a group of our posi
tive classification.

CHAPTER V
THE ESSENTIAL FACTS OF HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
[Concluded)
THIRD GROUP: FACTS OF DESTRUCTIVE EXPLOITA
TION: PLANT AND ANIMAL DEVASTATION;
MINERAL EXPLOITATION
I. Modes of destructive exploitation.
2. A complex type of plant and animal devastation in the equa
torial forest: the Fang.
j. The extractive industries from the geographic point of view.
4. The preeminent type of mineral exploitation on a large scale:
the exploitation of coal.
I. MODES OF DESTRUCTIVE EXPLOITATION
Under the general heading of destructive exploitation we
group every exploitation that tends to make a levy on the
world's raw materials, whether mineral, vegetable, or animal,
with no thought or method of restitution. Men who take
from a quarry, marble or stone for building houses, do so with
no thought of returning the material naturally stored in the
earth's crust. Fishing and hunting when not associated with
any breeding, as of pheasants or salmon, likewise take from
nature something for which no deliberate compensation is
made.1 In man's first development of the earth, destructive exploi
tation is of primary importance. Even to-day many new
countries are developed only through what we might call a
combination of modes of destructive exploitation.2
'The art and tools of fishery, the distribution of the industry, and the nations
or peoples that live by means of it are studied with more and more accuracy as ocean-
ographic studies progress. A very abundant literature deals with such of these
facts as refer to civilized countries. We are examining here, in its special relations
with human activity, a characteristic type of primitive fishery (§2) ; but in accordance
with the principle previously pointed out apropos of the sea (chap. II, §4) , this special
and extensive subject will be amply treated in another place.
2See Albert Metin, £tude sur la colonisation du Canada, La Colombie britanniqw,
Armand Colin, Paris, 1907. 330

FACTS OF DESTRUCTIVE EXPLOITATION 331
Among the different forms of destructive exploitation we
shall find that some have a normal and methodic quality
while others show an unrestrained intensity that makes them
well deserve the German name of Raubwirtschaft — that is,
economic plunder, or, more simply, devastation.
Destructive exploitation, Raubwirtschaft, is, in a sense, a
particular form of gathering or harvesting, Sammelwirtschaft,
but it attacks nature with much more violence. This violent
attack may end in want {Not), and we then have characteri-
sierte Raubwirtschaft, characteristic devastation.1
Destructive Exploitation by Civilized Peoples
It seems particularly strange that characteristic devastation
with all its grave consequences should especially accompany
civilization, while primitive folk know only milder forms of it.
They do indeed partially despoil and destroy, but they hardly
ever devastate, in the true sense of the word, and they do not
have to suffer the want that is the usual result of devastation.
We take as examples two widely contrasted cases. On the
one hand, cannibals use their economic resources with a
certain forethought by limiting hunting, or by declaring
"taboo" for a time certain animals whose number tends to
diminish.2 On the other hand, we have the more highly
developed Incas of Peru, who adopted very strict measures to
prevent the exhaustion of the precious guano, while the birds
were carefully watched and protected. Hunting, the privilege
of the Inca alone, was allowed only on certain holidays, and
the killing of the female wild guanaco and vicuna was strictly
forbidden. The death penalty was inflicted on violators of
these laws.
We are well aware that elsewhere examples are cited of
savage peoples who cause devastation by burning forests and
'For a review of the study on Raubwirtschaft, published by Ernst Friedrich in
the geographic review of Gotha, see the article by A. Wahl, in La Giographie (X,
October 15, 1904, pp. 247-254). This review has been the chief reference for facts
on the subject, supplemented by numerous observations and developments.
20n the subject of "primitives," consult the work by Elisee Reclus, Les Primitifs,
Etudes d' 'ethnologic comparee, Schleicher, Paris, 1903; these studies, published ten
years ago, were written almost thirty years ago, but they are still full of interest,
perhaps because of their excess of indulgent optimism with regard to all those human
groups which have not yet been contaminated by civilization. In the last great work
by Elisee Reclus, L' Homme et la terre, will be recognized general tendencies of a like
nature.

332 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
cultivating the land thus acquired until it is exhausted.1
But, since in such countries there is still an abundance of
unoccupied land, this process does not result for the inhab
itants in a dearth of the means of existence; it merely brings
about a nomadic form of existence. Nor, among savage
peoples, does hunting have the character of destructive
exploitation in the proper sense; it is not so intensive that it
is not balanced by the reproductive power of nature.
In short, characteristic devastation with all its consequences
is almost a peculiarity of civilized peoples. And how far-
reaching these consequences are! Plants and animals are
removed from the possibility of scientific investigation, and
the extinction of a species may cause regrettable gaps in our
knowledge.2 A warfare of extermination is carried on against
certain animals that are considered injurious, when more
profound observation would show that they were useful. The
case of the moles and alligators is an excellent illustration.
Two points are to be noted. First, devastation always
brings about, not a catastrophe, but a series of catastrophes,
for in nature things are dependent one upon the other. In
the second place, devastation in all its forms is a phenom
enon not of fixed, but of floating, humanity, and is associated
with such facts as the nomadic life, colonization, or war.
The Principal Groups of Facts of Destructive Exploitation
The mineral kingdom. — The exploitation of mines {Bergbau)
is always a form of destructive exploitation in the sense that it
is impossible to replace the materials that are taken from the
earth. However, under the name of devastating exploitation,
Raubbau, we should include only abusive exploitation, where
'Cultivation by burning the vegetation on a stretch of ground and then sprinkling
the ashes over it. (See, in particular, the example of the Fang, given farther on.)
2Might one not say that, from this purely scientific point of view, the cremation
of the human body is a very regrettable form of destructive economy? What would
be our knowledge of the beginnings of life and human civilization on the earth if we
had not had at our disposition skulls, skeletons, and tombs? For example, Eugene
Pittard, who has begun, with a very fine first volume, a series entitled Crania helvetica
(I, Les Cranes valaisans de la vallie du Rhone, Geneva and Paris, 1909-1910), writes:
"We have given ourselves the ungrateful task of studying the ossuaries still to be
found in the canton of Valais. The pious custom of thus building sanctuaries to the
dead — a survival of the Neolithic customs — has preserved considerable quantities of
scientific documents which, had it not been for this, would have been irremediably
lost" (p. 6). There is not an anthropologist worthy of the name who does not
think likewise.

FACTS OF DESTRUCTIVE EXPLOITATION 333
the desire for immediate returns causes it to extend over too
wide a surface, and where the surface only is exploited, to the
detriment of future generations. As an example take the
superficial, hasty, and wretched exploitation of the silver
deposits in the south of Spain. The consequences of this
devastation in exploitation show themselves clearly only
where the material extracted is distributed over the earth in
restricted spots and in relatively small quantities. Thus
guano was locally exhausted in some dozens of years, and it
will be somewhat the same with the nitrate of Chile. At
the present moment an improper exploitation of coal is going
on. In spite of the enormous quantity of this precious fuel,
the time will come when it will be exhausted, at least locally.
Devastation in the exploitation of coal has its geographical
distribution. It is striking to find that the zone comprised
between 36° and 5 6° N. latitude, where the most advanced
civilization is concentrated, is also the zone where this Raub
wirtschaft is intensely practiced.
We may also speak of devastation in our resources of petro
leum, phosphates, diamonds, precious metals, etc.; but, on
the other hand, there can hardly be a question of devastation
in the case of metals such as iron, for iron ores seem to occur
in nature in quantities that are relatively inexhaustible and
that are easy to reach.
Devastation is of the worst sort if, as a result of incon
siderate exploitation of mines, catastrophes take place such as
the sinking of Eisenach and of Brux, or if along coasts the
rocks which protect the land from the attacks of the sea are
removed, as on the shores of the Baltic Sea.
However much devastation is to be condemned, it sometimes
has a happy result. With the exhaustion of the mines comes
poverty, and large groups of people, if they do not wish to
emigrate, find themselves forced to turn to more permanent
occupations, as was the case in the Erzgebirge.1 In California
the discovery of gold in 1 849 led to a gold rush of great intensity.
To-day the resources of soil and forests are far greater in sig
nificance than the mineral products, and California has grown
'Friedrich returns often to this idea, which we consider by far too optimistic — the
belief that Raubwirtschaft is only a stage and that it is necessarily followed by a
progress.

334 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
from a beginning as a mining center into one of the significant
states of the Union.
The plant kingdom. — Still better known perhaps than
mining devastation is the Raubwirtschaft of cultivation. It
attacks the fertility of the soil, greedily taking plant foods
from it without replacing them, desiring to obtain a crop at
the least possible expense, in spite of the fact that man has
at his disposal the means of restoring the richness of the soil.
In western Europe, with its very dense population and its
very intensive cultivation, devastation is practically no longer
found ; necessity has taught the value of fertilizers. In colonial
countries this is not the case. There the cultivator, although
a European, finds himself, so to speak, in the condition of
savage peoples, and like them he begins to exploit. He prac
tices one-crop farming at least as long as the population is
thin, and he exhausts superficially one region after another;
finally the exhaustion of the land makes itself felt and he is
then compelled to practice crop rotation or to use fertilizers.
Here again devastation leads to progress.
Devastation in young colonial countries causes, however, a
lack of balance in world production, and producers who exploit
their land normally cannot rival their competitors in colonial
countries. This, in a broad sense, is the situation of Europe
with reference to the colonies,1 accentuated by the growing
production of countries like Russia, which is passing from an
inferior social condition to a higher type of civilization and
can still produce more cheaply than its rivals.
How many producers of wheat practice Raubwirtschaft,
especially in the temperate zones, in the United States, Canada,
Russia, Siberia, the Argentine — regions that are at the same
time seats of a higher civilization ! In the Dakotas, Nebraska,
and Minnesota the consequences of devastation are being
keenly felt, and a change is taking place in the method of
exploitation; in other words, progress is a necessity.
The peoples who are semicivilized (at least according to
our ideas) seem to be distinguished from the peoples of a
higher civilization by the fact that they do not practice
'See Marcel Dubois, Systemes coloniaux et peuples colonisateurs, Masson and
Plon, Paris, 1895. With his customary independence of mind, the author shows
clearly all that ought to be included under the heading of facts of colonization.

FACTS OF DESTRUCTIVE EXPLOITATION 335
devastation; as a result they do not have to suffer its con
sequences. But have not the Chinese reached their careful
cultivation through devastation? On the one hand are the
deforested, soilless mountains of Chili where once there were
cultivated fields ; on the other hand are the rich hillside farms
of Shensi where a similar fate is averted only through patience
and scientific forethought.1
Civilized man carries on his devastating activity particularly
in forested regions. The forest is a treasure which, wherever
it is protected, has been growing richer year by year for cen
turies. Carefully exploited it produces annually and accumu
lates true riches which can be utilized at the proper time. We
know the beneficent influence of the forest upon agriculture,
and the hygienic and biological part it plays. We know that it
is the best protector of mountain peoples against avalanches and
inundations. And yet the treasure is badly administered. The
devastation practiced by the Venetians, who in the Middle Ages
deforested the coast regions of the Adriatic, 2 can be excused ;
but to-day, when we know all the dangers which unrestrained
deforestation brings with it, the guilt of the highlander who
fells trees for the sake of an insignificant gain is unpardonable.3
If savages devastate by making clearings for cultivation in
'F. H. King, Farmers of Forty Centuries; Ellen Churchill Semple, "Influence of
Geographical Conditions upon Japanese Agriculture," Geog. Jour., XL, 1912, pp. 589-
607; "Japanese Colonial Methods," Bull. Amer. Geog. Soc, XLV, 1913, pp. 255-275.
2"European Countries Reclaim Waste Land," Forest Sendee Bull., December 12,
1912, p. 2. The Karst was a stretch of barren limestone lands comprising some
600,000 acres in the hilly country along the Austrian shores of the Adriatic Sea. For
centuries it had furnished the ship timber and other wood supplies of Venice, but
excessive cutting, together with burning and pasturing, left it a waste almost beyond
recovery. In 1865 the government began to offer help to landowners who would under
take forest planting there. Taxes were remitted for a period of years, technical
advice was given, and plant material as well as money was supplied. At present over
400,000 acres, or two-thirds of the Karst, are under forest, partly as a result of planting.
3In spite of the distressing consequences which follow the devastation of forests,
deforestation continues in Roumania, in Abyssinia, in Sumatra,, in Siberia, and in the
United States as in Australia, and, in this regard, our time really deserves the terrible
name of the age of extermination. A quarter of a century ago Sir Joseph Hooker said,
on the subject of the beautiful forests of sequoias in California: " The doom of these
noble groves is sealed. No less than five saw mills have recently been established
in the most luxurious of them, and one of these mills alone cut in 1875 two million
feet of Big-tree timber; and a company was lately formed to cut another grove.
In the operations of the California wood-cutters, the waste is prodigious. The young,
manageable trees are first felled; after which the forest is fired to clear the ground
and get the others out, and then the saplings'are destroyed. More destructive still
are the operations of the, sheep-farmers, who fire the herbage to improve the grazing,
and whose flock of tens of thousands of sheep devour every green thing, and more
effectually than the locust. The devastation of the California forest is proceeding
at a rate which is utterly incredible, except to an eyewitness. It is true that a few
of the most insignificant groves of the Big-trees at the northern extremity of its range

336 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
the virgin forests, these clearings are small, scattered, soon
abandoned, and quickly disappear (see the example of the
Fang). The devastation is restricted to the shores of the
sea and to the lower slopes and floors of valleys; but, with
the progress of colonization and the improvement in means
of communication, devastation will not be long in attacking
regions now inaccessible. The forest has always had less
strength in countries with a dry climate than in well-watered
countries ; thus in dry countries the forest has been easily ruined.
The progress of devastation is still more rapid in the steppes.
In all climates, islands above all other lands have been
affected by devastation: Ceylon, Mauritius, Reunion, Saint
Helena, some of the Bahamas, and most of the islands of the
Mediterranean are deforested.1
The main field of forest devastation is the north temperate
zone, a region inhabited by the civilized white race. Forest
devastation is essentially the work of civilization — that is,
of a denser population and of more perfect tools (Ratzel).
We keep warm with coal or coke; we build more and more
with iron, brick, and concrete; the locomotives of southern
Russia, of Mexico, and in sections of the southwest United
States burn petroleum. In short, new products are every
where replacing wood so that it no longer seems to be the indis
pensable product that it was for long centuries. However, let
us not deceive ourselves, for this current idea is a grave error.
Wood is more than ever indispensable to the modern industrial
are protected by the state legislature and that a law has been enacted forbidding the
felling of trees over fifteen feet in diameter; but there is no law to prevent the cutting
or burning of the saplings, on which the perpetuation of the grove depends, or the
cutting or burning of the old trees, which, if they do escape the fire, will succumb
to the drought which the sweeping away of the environing forest will occasion.
"During the last quarter of a century the Anglo-Saxon has been ruthlessly carrying
fire and the saw into the forests of California destroying what he could not use, and
sparing neither young nor old, and before a century is out the two Sequoias may be
known only as herbarium specimens and garden ornaments; indeed, with regard^ to
the Big-tree, the noblest of the noble coniferous race, the present generation, which
has actually witnessed its discovery, may live to say of it, that 'the place which knew
it, shall know it no more.' " (From an address before the Royal Institution of Great
Britain, delivered April 12, 1878, by Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker, and published in
the collection of Botanical Papers of Sir J. D. Hooker.) Fortunately some of the
best groves are now protected in national forest reserves. R. Ducamp, ("La Marche
retrograde de la vegetation," Rev. des eaux et forits, XXVII, 4th series, 6th year,
1908, pp. 289-298) describes the progressive "deforestation" of tropical countries
like English India and Tonkin.
'At Messina in 1902 G. Ricchieri made a very exact study of the ancient extent
of forests in Sicily and of the progressive march of deforestation (Quali insegnamenti si
possono trarre dai desastri di Modica, Mantua, 1903).

FACTS OF DESTRUCTIVE EXPLOITATION

337

world. The timber used in mines, for railroad ties and cars,
posts for telegraph, telephone, and electric power wires, paving
blocks, pulp for making paper, etc. — all the great lines of
economic activity, from the exploitation of coal to the develop
ment of newspapers — imply an increasing consumption of
wood. Never in the history of humanity has there been a
more reasonable and also a more eager demand for trees.
In primitive times and in primitive countries the willful
burning of forests destroys in a few days vast stretches of
timber. But in such times and countries wood is protected
from exploitation up to a certain point by the fact that it is
heavy and difficult to transport. The expense of transporta
tion is such that wood carried on the backs of mules can hardly
go beyond 12 miles (20 kilometers), and upon wheels hardly
beyond 24 miles (40 kilometers), without doubling the cost.
To-day, owing to the many means of transportation em
ployed, from the most ancient, such as floating, to the most
modern, wood is brought from all directions to the great indus
trial markets. That is why the past century has been such a
spendthrift in forest riches. Here are some significant figures.1
Percentage of Forest
The proportion of the total surface that is still wooded

Melard

Decoppet

Melard

Decoppet

(1900)

(1910)

(1900)
(1910)
Per cent
Per cent
Per cent
Per cent
Great Britain .
4
Switzerland
20
21 .9
Denmark
6.2
Norway
21
21
Netherlands
7-5
Germany .
23 -3
25-9
Spain .
13
16.9
United States
25
Greece .
i.3
Austria-Hungary
30
3°
Italy
14
I4.6
Russia .
32
37
Roumania .
H
Canada
38
Belgium
17.2
'7-7
Sweden
40
47.6
France
• 17-7
18.2
Finland
60
Fortunately some countries still constitute valuable reserves
(Finland, Sweden, and Canada), but account must be taken
of the enormous and constantly increasing consumption by
the great industrial countries.
'The data of these tables are borrowed from the interesting work which A. Melard,
inspector of waters and forests, prepared for the Paris Exposition of 1900, Insuf-
fisance de la production des bois d ' ozuvre dans le monde, and from the more recent estimates
of the Swiss Bureau federal de statistique forestiere, which is under the direction of
Professor Decoppet of Zurich. We thus obtain data for comparison separated by
an interval of about ten years (1900 and 1910).
22
338 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
From all sides come the echoes of catastrophes which occur
in regions that are to-day stripped of their wood — inunda
tions on the' slopes of the Alps, the Pyrenees, and the Appa
lachians, gullying of the Russian plains, etc. And the
lamentations are so strong and so well justified that, in all
civilized countries, not only is the question of reforestation
constantly discussed, but the work has already begun.1 While
the remedy is being applied, the evil continues. Exploita
tion is allowed to develop without method and devastation
to continue without oversight; everywhere the axe continues
to lay low the century-old trunks which it will take new
centuries to replace. This progressive impoverishment of
the earth in the matter of trees is one of the most important
economic facts of the present time. Without hindering the
attempts at reforestation, measures should be taken to end
at once the mad and selfish depletion of the forests where-
ever they still exist.2
When the trees no longer form a protective covering for
the earth, the trickling and running waters are no longer
beneficent but destructive agents. They help to denude
the surface still more by carrying away the soil or depriving
it of its covering of humus. Vast spaces, once covered with
splendid forests, are to-day only stretches of bare and arid
rock. Not only does the water no longer play its helpful,
fertilizing r61e, but almost as soon as it has fallen it disappears
into the earth through the fissures in the rocks. In limestone
countries it forms those subterranean streams which hollow
out caverns. Some of this underground circulation may
evoke the admiration of the tourist, but it can only sadden the
economist to see this agent of all fertility and of all life lost
far from the cultivable and habitable surface.
Where the European can establish himself for any length of
time he starts trading-posts around which plant exploitation
{Pflanzenkolonien) gradually develops. He seeks the raw
material from the savage, and at the beginning of colonization
the natives procure these products without much difficulty by
'See, Charles Rabot, "La Degradation des Pyrenees et 1 'influence de la foret sur
le regime des cours d'eau," La Giographie, XVI, 1907, pp. 163-170; and for Russia,
Woeikof, Second congres du sud-ouest navigable, Toulouse, 1904, pp. 470-478.
2Bernard Brunhes has especially emphasized this consideration (see pp. 348-35°)-

FACTS OF DESTRUCTIVE EXPLOITATION 339
simply "gathering" them. Urged on by the prices offered,
they are not long in reaching devastation. Of course in time
cultivation will be started which will yield a regular product,
but in the meantime incalculable natural wealth, which might
be conserved for lasting use, is entirely disappearing.
In tropical countries devastation makes its worst attack
upon rubber, gutta-percha, and the Raphia vinifera, the
young leaves of which the natives gather without restraint
although there is an increasing industrial demand for the inner
bark. We might point out abusive exploitation of many other
products of the plant kingdom, such as esparto grass (an
African plant) and sandalwood.
Among these plants we shall take the clear and simple
example of that group which produces the precious latex, from
which rubber is made and for which there is an ever-growing
industrial demand. To-day, in all the European equatorial
colonies, an attempt is being made to develop cultivated rubber,
although until now rubber has been obtained chiefly by
"gathering" from wild plants.
But who could estimate the value of the forested stretches
of Africa or America that have been thus "devastated"?
Here are some official figures for the Belgian Congo, one of
the regions of the globe from which we have obtained rubber
in the largest quantity:
Progress in Exportation of Rubber in 14 Years (1891-1904)
v Weight in Thousands Value in Millions
*ears of Pounds of Dollars
1891  10,628.2 O.63
I892  365.2 0.I2I
1893  530.2 0.186
1894  743-6 0.270
1895  1,267.2 0.540
1896  2,897.4 1254
1897  3,656.4 1.602
1898  4,648.6 3-049
1899  8,241.2 5-404
1900  11,695.2 7.720
1901  13,248.4 8.685
1902  11,770.0 7-9'3
1903  13,019.6 9-071
1904  10,628.2 8.299
Although in this last series of cases it is the uncivilized natives
who, with no thought of the morrow and failing to understand

340 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
that a well-conducted exploitation might mean for them a
lasting income, practice devastation and "cut off the branch
upon which they sit," it is certainly the Europeans who
are really responsible because, wishing to grow rich quickly,
they furnish tools to the natives and encourage unwise exploi
tation; indeed they sometimes by torture and slave-driving
methods force the laborers to work (Congo, Amazon).
We have just seen how the rubber industry, in so far as it
is independent of cultivation, depends upon forms of destruc
tive exploitation. It had its birth from them, is suffering the
consequences of them, and for a long time to come will be
their vassal.1 Human geography must always approach the
more complex problems by way of the original problems that
condition them, and in analyzing the former must never lose
sight of the latter.
This primary idea of localization of certain modes of indus
trial activity must govern the study of industrial facts even in
regions where life is more complex and more diversified.
The entire wood industry, established at so many points in
that great boreal forest of which we have already spoken at
length in connection with the habitation, is logically and
geographically associated with the vast and general fact of
forest devastation ; and, on a small as well as a large scale, in
a limited district of Switzerland as in a vast country like
Sweden, the distribution of the elementary industries is at
the same time the expression of the more or less perfected
and concentrated industrial methods and of the general
phenomenon of destructive exploitation.
The animal kingdom. — Devastation makes its ravages also
in the animal kingdom. Man may kill animals for food or
clothing, but if he takes care to provide for their reproduction,
it is called raising, not devastation. Nor is it Raubwirtschaft
when, as a result of the increase of population in Europe or
in other densely populated regions, men find themselves
_'" The geography of rubber changes very rapidly. On the one hand, some forested
regions become exhausted while new ones are brought to a state of production; onthe
other hand, the plantations are unceasingly extending" (L. Perruchot, "La Deuxieme
Exposition internationale du caoutchouc," La Geographic, XXV. 1912, p. 200; read
the entire article, pp. 193-200, which sums up well the geographic physiognomy of
the present exploitation of rubber). See also the Rev. icon, internal., February I5-20'
1912, a number especially devoted to rubber (articles by Em. Perrot, E. de Wildeman,
P. von Romburgh, E. Lejeune, Vincent, Herbert Wright, and G. Lamy-Torrillon).

FACTS OF DESTRUCTIVE EXPLOITATION 341
restricting the sphere of animals. That is an entirely natural
fact. Man has also a right to exterminate dangerous animals.
But the question becomes somewhat different when we
consider hunting as a sport (see Fig. 137, p. 342). Hunting
becomes devastation if it attacks without consideration the
animals that are not injurious.
In the beginning hunting, like the clearing of the forest, was
a condition of colonization, but, like the clearing of the forest,
it too often becomes devastation. In France, 74,130,000 acres
(30,000,000 hectares) out of 110,000,000 acres which con
stitute the "hunting region," are given over to "mercenary
hunting, which should be considered a veritable evil."1
Raubwirtschaft in the animal kingdom is practiced especially
for the purpose of adornment, particularly feminine adorn
ment (feathers, aigrettes). Among the favorite birds is the
silver heron. In Florida about a million and a half of these
useful insect-eating birds are slain every year. Small wonder
that their number is rapidly decreasing and extinction is
imminent. Millions of birds of paradise and humming-birds
are killed each year.2
The birds of passage have also excited the cupidity of men,
and, in recent times especially, there has been a complaint of
their extermination in southern Europe. One is inclined to
attribute the increase in grasshoppers in certain regions of
Africa to the decrease in the number of birds that eat them.
In the United States the innumerable swarms of migrating
pigeons, once migrating in flocks so extensive and dense as
to darken the sun, have disappeared, although in the neigh
borhood of Petoskey, Michigan, their nests used to cover
nearly 100,000 acres (40,000 hectares).
In the two departments of Landes and Basses-Pyrenees, going
along the shore at the time of the migration of the birds, one may
count at least one double net every five hundred yards, and that
too over a space several miles in width. In one good day each net-
owner catches from fifty to sixty dozens of small birds, and some
times more. This means then, with a minimum of a thousand
'Quoted from Maurice Lair, "L'Importance economique de la chasse en France,"
Rev. icon, internal., September 15-20, 1909, pp. 399-424.
20n the destruction of bird and animal species, see the excellent pages in Elisee
Reclus, L'Homme et la terre, VI, pp. 225 ff.; also W. T. Hornaday, Our Vanishing
Wild Life: Its Dissemination and Preservation, New York, 1913.

coto

£3
I t*lO

Fig. 137. Animal Life in the Forest.

the Great Forest of Eastern Europe (Russian Poland)

FACTS OF DESTRUCTIVE EXPLOITATION

343

hunters, from fifty to sixty thousand dozens of birds per day. But
let us take a daily average of twenty-five thousand dozen for the thirty
days in which the passage ordinarily lasts, and we have nine millions
of small birds destroyed each year in two departments alone.1
The ravages of animal devastation are carried on especially
on the confines of the boreal forest, both in the north and in
the south. In Canada, in the northern part of the United
States, in the north of Russia, and in Siberia, fur-bearing
animals are hunted in large numbers, and in the southern part
of this zone devastation is almost an accomplished fact. The
beaver, first sought for its flesh and then for its fur, has almost
completely disappeared. In America millions of bison were
slain in ten years.2 The reproductive force of nature is power
less against such sanguinary instincts and there is no safety
for the persecuted animals save in flight to inaccessible places.
Of all the animals living in the virgin tropical forests and
the savannas, the elephant is most threatened because of its
ivory. It is already very rare in the savannas ; in the forests of
central Africa the hour of its complete disappearance will come
with the establishment of better means of communication.

Exportation of Ivory from Belgian Congo from 1891 to 1904

Years

Weight in Thousands
of Pounds

Value in Millions
of Dollars

1891 

310.854IO.05407-85 557-76
643 ¦ 74
421 .08
542 - 33
473-9964* -54
577-60
438.71 548-94
407 ¦ 85
368.17

O.540

1892 

O.714

1893 

O.714

O.965

1805 

1. 119

1896 

O.733

1897 

O.946

1898 

O.830

1899 

1. 119

1900 
1901 

I.OO4
°»753

1902 

0.946

1903 

0.714

1904 

0-733

In the steppes the ostrich is more persecuted than any other
game, and its only defense is in the vast, open, and inhospitable
nature of its home. In 1858 it had already disappeared
'Letter quoted by Cunisset-Carnot in the Temps. Swallows, see also the Temps,
July 5. 1910.
2In the year 1878-1879, 200,000 buffalo skins were shipped down the Missouri.
In 1892 the Hudson Bay Company's warehouse at Montreal received 133,814 skins.

344 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
from the high Algerian plateaus, and in South Africa, where
it was once plentiful, hunters such as Anderson and Carew
carried on a veritable war of extermination against it, so that
it became very rare. This very scarcity brought progress.
In i860 people began to devote themselves to the raising of
the ostrich and with such success that in 1895 the number of
domesticated ostriches was estimated at about 200,000.
The extinction of an animal species takes place most rapidly
within limited spaces, especially in islands of small extent.
England has outstripped the Continent in the extermination
of the bear, the lynx, the deer, the elk, the beaver; in the
island of Reunion the giant bird Didus ineptus was extermi
nated in less than ten years.
The devastation of the animal kingdom is most disastrous
in the seas, where it is favored by the competition of the
nations. Take, for instance, the slaughter of seals,1 of tor
toises,2 and of whales.3 It is especially in the Arctic seas
where the great marine mammifers are particularly numerous,
that devastation is unrestrained. It not only causes the
impoverishment of the marine fauna, but also the withdrawal
toward the south of those peoples of the north who live upon
the fat and flesh of these animals.
Everywhere fishing has a tendency to cause extermination.4

'See Isaiah Bowman's "Alaska Notes," Nat. Geog. Mag.: also D. S. Jordan, Fur
Seals and Fur Seal Islands of the North Pacific Ocean, in 5 parts, Special Agents'
Division, Treasury Dept., Washington, 1898.
2Wieland, "Marine Vertebrates," Popular Science Monthly.
3The maximum size of the whale fleet in 1846, was 680 ships; in 1914, 32 ships.
Maximum production in 1851 was 428,074 barrels of oil, 5.652,300 lbs. of bone; in
1914, it was 19,270 barrels of oil, 34,000 lbs. of bone; (Whalemen's Shipping List,
printed 1843-1914, Department and Consul Report, 5542, 1915.) See also Tower,
History of the Whale industry.
4See the article by Hugh M. Smith, "King Herring: An Account of the World's
Most Valuable Fish; Industries It Supports, and the Part It Has Played in History,"
Nat. Geog. Mag., Washington, XX, 1909, No. S, pp. 701-735 and 22 illustrations.
See also an excellent, article by Charles Rabot, with some typical figures, " Meurtriere
conquete d'un aliment vulgaire," Lectures pour tous, 1901, pp. 333-332. "In the
north of Europe, cod serves all purposes. It feeds men and domestic animals. In
the winter, in place of hay, codfish heads dried and then boiled are given to the
horned animals. For several years codfish heads that were not used to feed stock
have in Germany been made into a powder for fattening pigs" (p. 329). Charles
Rabot, in his book Aux Fjords de Norvege et auxforets de Suede, says again: "Fisheries
are the chief industry of western Norway, and the cod and the herring the two great
sources of revenue for this region. In this country, composed entirely of high, barren
mountains, man could not live without the inexhaustible fertility of the ocean. Here
it is the sea that feeds man" (p. 137). See Fig. 138, p. 345. For a good monograph
on all the questions connected with fishing and one in which the subject is treated
in a spirit truly scientific, see Le Liman, by F. A. Forel, III, pp. 603-659.

FACTS OF DESTRUCTIVE EXPLOITATION

345

Even in rivers and lakes where trouble is taken to assure
restocking, fishing is a menace. In the Lake of Neuchatel
fishing is carried on to such an extent (only by nets and other

Fig. 138. Drying of Cod in Norway
instruments that are within the law) that its impoverishment
becomes pronounced and the government of the canton is
compelled to take new measures to protect the fish.
Finally there is a devastation which touches man and either
injures him or removes him completely from his environment.
Natural refuges, places that facilitate attack or flight,
contrasts of poverty and comfort, have ever been a cause of
devastation in a violent or mitigated form. Thus oases
attract nomads who are conscious of their strength and who
feel their superiority to the peaceful possessors of these privi
leged spots. A necessary consequence of this is the with
drawal of agriculture and the encroachment of the desert
upon regions once cultivated.1
Seas rich in islands, mountains, and impassable forests have
likewise always favored devastation in the form of piracy or
brigandage. War forms a chapter of Raubwirtschaft which,
geographically, should have a place here; it is the great and
terrible struggle for space and life.
'Ratzel, in Anthropogeographie, has a fine chapter on the geography of ruins. E. W.
Hilgard states that the most ancient and flourishing centers of civilization grew up in
arid countries conquered by means of irrigation: "The sun and the climate of these
regions have not changed, but the bad political situation, the consequence of nomadic
invasions, has paralyzed agricultural and social development" (E. W. Hilgard, "Why
Ancient Civilizations Flourished in Arid Regions," North Amer. Rev., Sept. 1902, p. 3 15) .

346 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
The most hideous form of devastation among men is the
slave trade. European colonization developed this trade on
a large scale by transplanting the unfortunate blacks from one
continent to another. Colonization has too often affected
the "savage," not only in his liberty but in his very existence,
either by destroying his food resources or by bringing in
poisons, such as alcohol of the poorest quahty. It is a fact
found to be universally true that non-civilized peoples gradu
ally die out when brought into contact with our civilization.
The extermination of the natives has made the most rapid
progress in regions where the climate is favorable to Euro
pean colonists — North America, the Argentine, South Africa,
Australia. One might perhaps offer in the way of explanation
(although not of excuse) that, as a result of their very increase,
the Europeans were obliged to extend the limits of their
territory. But how justify the slow exterrnination of the
"savages" in regions uninhabitable for any European?
A last form of devastation is cannibalism, which to-day is
confined almost exclusively to tropical regions.
The Present Reaction against Destructive Exploitation
In recent times much attention has been given to destructive
excesses. In Europe and the United States the point has been
reached where energetic measures are being taken against
devastation. The United States first set the example of establishing
"national parks," which are veritable "museums" of plant
and animal life as well as of natural riches.
Thus the United States has the Yellowstone National
Park, the Yosemite National Park, Mount Rainier National
Park, Sequoia (Big Tree) Park at the foot of Mount Whit
ney, Glacier National Park, and several others. Canada has
the Laurentides National Park, Algonquin Park, Banff Park in
the Rockies, and has just reserved along the Grand Trunk
Railway a park of 5,000 square miles (13,000 square kilo
meters) or twice the extent of the average French department
(Jasper Forest Park). The Argentine has had a study made
of the projects of parks of the Iguassu Falls and of the Lake
Nahuel Huapi districts. At the present time the movement is

FACTS OF DESTRUCTIVE EXPLOITATION 347
gaining ground in Europe. There already exists an institu
tion of the sort at Stockholm, under the name of Skansen, but
it is of very small dimensions and of a different character;
for the Swedes have brought together at Skansen all the
natural or human facts that seemed to them worthy of preser
vation and have created a park of an artificial character and
particularly of historic interest. Together with animals and
plants of the country, one sees ancient types of houses; local
songs are sung and old provincial dances are reproduced. The
movement which is beginning to make itself felt in Germany,
in Switzerland, in Austria, in France, resembles much more
closely the American examples. In Germany the acquisition
and establishment, as a natural reserve, of one of the most
mountainous and picturesque districts of the country, the
forest and lake district around the little lake of Konigssee, in
the principality of Berchtesgaden, on the confines of the
Salzburg, is due to a private society, the Naturschutzpark of
Stuttgart. This mountainous canton, considering its moderate
altitude (6,000 to 6,500 feet), is still almost in virgin condition;
it contains a large number of rare plants — which it is proposed
to protect, — -great woods, rocky pastures frequented by a con
siderable number of chamois and by other game. It appears
that the owner gave up territory covering some 37,000 acres
(15,000 hectares) on a ninety-nine-year lease. In another
direction the Naturschutzpark Society has just obtained
control by purchase of a vast natural region of the Luneburger
Heide, the picturesque beauty of which was beginning to be
recognized and to attract crowds of tourists at the same time
that the landscape was threatened by the progress of the
exploitation of petroleum and potash salts. Mount Wilseder,
561 feet (171 meters) high, about 24 miles (40 kilometers)
south of Hamburg, with the immediately surrounding country
(533 acres in all), will form the nucleus of the future national
park. All about are moors and state forests abounding in
large game, and it is hoped that the size of the park may
easily be increased to from 7 to 10 square miles (three or four
square leagues).
In Switzerland the Naturschutzkommission of the Helvetian
Society of Natural Sciences leased, on December 31, 1909, from

348 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
the commune of Zernez (Engadine) for a period of twenty-five
years, the Val Cluoza, which since January 5, 1910, has
formed the first section of the "national park." The Swiss
Confederation has decided to take upon itself the formation
of this reserved domain while the Ligue Suisse pour la protection
de la nature will at its own expense assure the maintenance
and care of the national park.
Special laws have been passed to protect fish and game.
In order to prevent the disappearance of the white bear and
the blue fox, islands have been reserved for them in Alaska.1
In Switzerland there has long been a certain number of regions
in the high mountains that are hunting reserves, particularly
refuges for the chamois. In France, England, Germany, and
elsewhere women are forming associations to protect the
birds, and men are endeavoring to save the African elephant
from absolute destruction.2
As the effects of devastation make themselves felt more and
more, we notice, at least among Europeans, a certain solicitude
for everything that is in danger of disappearing. In England
and Germany thought is being given to the measures that may
be employed to stop devastation in the exploitation of mines,
etc. This solicitude has been shown particularly with refer
ence to the forests. The association between forest and
water and the need of defending one's self against floods and of
using streams for power have brought our contemporaries to a
better understanding of the urgent necessity for safeguarding
these two sources of wealth which are rapidly disappearing.
In our day, as we have said, in all fields of rural and industrial
economy, we hear much about utilizing the sovereign energy
of water. Everywhere cultivation is dependent upon rain and
reserves of water. In the Far West of America and in the
Argentine Republic, in the south and north of Africa (in Egypt
or in southern Algeria) , in India and Russian Turkestan, in all
latitudes and in both hemispheres, men are eagerly and
patiently toiling in this conquest of the desert through a
'"L'Elevage du renard bleu," by Henri de Varigny in the Temps. January 24,
1907, after a study by Th. E. Hofer appearing in Forest and Stream (July 28, 1906.)
2See a short summarizing note by Fr. Hahn, "Tierschutz in Afrika," Petermann!
Mill., LVI, 1910, pp. 141-142, with a plate of four drawings (Plate 27): "Tier-
Reservationen in firitisch-Afrika."

FACTS OF DESTRUCTIVE EXPLOITATION 349
methodical distribution of water. Finally, it must be repeated
here apropos of the forest: "White coal" is to-day and will
be still more to-morrow the most important reserve of energy
that man can use in his industrial activity. Water is more
than ever necessary to us, and it is more than ever escaping
from us. Trees and water depend upon each other, and both
are going to fail us through the fault of our own deeds. A
reaction is inevitable.
It is in Switzerland that the nations of the Old World must to-day
seek the most perfect expression of a reaction against the right to
abuse the soil. The federal law of October ii, 1902, on the pro
tection of the land in forested and pastoral regions, is certainly
the most coercive type of legislation in the world, but it is also the
most effective for the preservation of mountain soils.
Switzerland in 1838 gave another example of wise foresight
in a political conflict of pastoral origin which led to a struggle
between the partisans of large and small pasture animals, the Horn-
manner and the Klauenmanner. The federal' council settled the
strife to the advantage of the partisans of cattle. It withdrew the
mountains from the systematic devastation of the sheep and goats
and gave the impulse to the exploitation of cattle which assures the
preservation of the soil and the fortune of the country.
In all the countries where forest plundering is practiced,
men are struggling and must struggle more and more, against
this form of destructive exploitation.
Thus a public opinion is being created in all civilized
countries which is a deliberate reaction against the excesses of
destructive exploitation. The scientific book which best sums
up all these new tendencies is La Degradation de Venergie by
Bernard Brunhes:
Ostwald has said that civilization consists in the art of making
use of the brute energy of nature. The arms successively invented
by man represent successive stages in the utilization of the ordinary
forms of energy: weapons for striking, which use the kinetic energy
of matter, were followed by weapons which were thrown by means
of the potential energy of a tightened spring, and then by the firearm,
which uses the chemical energy contained in a powder. But all the
progress of civilization is not equally marked. If man's action is
always limited by the impossibility of making the world go back
ward, he has the power of slowing up or increasing degradation.
Industry, which is beneficent when it slows up the degradation of
energ}', is evil when it increases it and when it causes the devastation
of nature {Raubwirtschaft).

350 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
The part assigned to living beings is to retard the degradation of
energy in the world. Consciously or unconsciously they play this
part fairly well. The man who harnesses "natural forces" plays it
especially well; the man who makes use of a waterfall to turn his
waterwheel diverts a useless caloric energy into the form of mechani
cal energy. At every step in the scale of being, everything that
lives is capable of increasing the fraction of the energy of the uni
verse that is utilized. The palpable result of "evolution," in what
ever field it shows itself, is definitely expressed by an increase of the
energy utilized. But utilized energy must not be confounded with
available energy . . . .[p. 195].
One of the general facts to be taken into consideration is
the bond between nomadism and plant and animal devastation.
When in the preceding chapter we examined some forms of
pastoral nomadism, we were careful to say that nomadism
was not merely a fact of the pastoral art. There is nomadism
as soon as there is periodic devastation. Should we not then
see in pastoral nomadism a nomadism connected with destruc
tive exploitation ? In this case the direct agent of destructive
exploitation is not man, but the flocks and herds, sheep or
goats, camels or horses, which he drives. (See chap. IV,
sections 5 and 6; and Fig. 135, p. 305, and Fig. 136, p. 308.)
But these are particular and, moreover, very well characterized
cases of a more general phenomenon.
There is a more or less regular nomadism in fishing, hunting,
"gathering" (collecting wild products), and in forest devasta
tion.1 There can be even a more or less regular nomadism in
cultivation when this cultivation is so primitive that it falls
into the category of phenomena of destructive exploitation.
To make our thought clear we shall give, in some detail, a
typical example.
2. A COMPLEX TYPE OF PLANT AND ANIMAL DEVASTATION IN THE
EQUATORIAL FOREST: THE FANG 2
The Congo equatorial forest is to-day the field of migration
for the Fang. Lost in the natural or artificial clearings of
'Even in its perfected form, the exploitation of forests can bring with it a sort of
nomadism; see La Giographie, July 15, 1909, p. 49.
2The essential points in this section are from a study on the " Nomadisme des
Fang," published by Father Martrou of the Congregation of Saint-Esprit, missionary
to the Congo, in the Rev. de giog. annuelle of Professor Velain (Delagrave, Paris),
III, 1909. Louis Martrou is one of the earliest scholars of the Geographic Institute
of Fribourg.

FACTS OF DESTRUCTIVE EXPLOITATION 351
the forest, the Fang1 move about invading the dwelling-places
of other peoples who give a tacit consent. Often they
perform acts of violence which make them feared by their
more timid or weaker neighbors : Mpongwe, Nkomis, Galoas,
Bulus, Akeles, etc. Their migrations result from a whole
series of facts of exploitation of natural resources, plant and
animal. Geographical Environment
We propose to study here the Fang, not in the whole breadth
of their distribution, but in the region of the Middle Ogowe.
This region forms almost a circle with a radius of about 61
miles2 (ioo kilometers) with Njole as a center, and extends
along the river from Samkita to Mount Otombi, from the
Upper Abanga on the north to the sources of the Lebe on the
south. With the exception of a few Akele villages, at
Samkita, on the Mbomi and on the Lebe, all the human
establishments are of the Fang race, speaking the same
language and having the same ethnic origin.
This district is representative of the different Fang habitats,
for it is the point of contact of several natural regions of the
equatorial forest:
a) The region of Samkita and of the Lower Abanga ends
toward the north with the limit of the raffia {Raphia vinifera).
The Ogowe River, after crossing the last ramifications of
the Crystal Mountains, broadens to a width of from 2,600 to
'Numerous studies on the Fang have appeared. We note in particular: Liotard,
"Les Races de l'Ogoou£, Anthropologic, VI, 1895, pp. 63 ff.; R. P. H. Trifles,
"Proverbes, legendes et contes fang," Bull, de la Soc. neuchdteloise de geographie,
XVI, 1905, pp. 49-295. (We write the plural of "Fang" without s, after the example
of Pere Trifles.) In this connection and for comparative data, see also the books by
Mgr. Le Roy on Les Pygmies and on La Religion des primitifs; that by W. Schmidt,
Die Stellung der Pygmaenvolker in der Entwicklungsgeschichte der Menschen (Buschan's
collection) , as well as the first volume of Jerome Dowd's The Negro Races, A Sociological
Study, Vol. I, The Negritos, New York and London, 1907, xxiii+493 pp. and one
chart. Reference may again be made to a brief article (accompanied by a chart)
prepared by a specialist, J. Deniker, "Distribution geographique et caracteres
physiques des Pygmees africains (Nigrilles), " published in La Geographie, VIII,
'903. PP- 213-220.
2The map which we add to the text has no scientific pretensions. It is to be
attributed to L. Martrou and is rather an outline, as accurate as possible, the result
of sketches hastily made from a canoe or on explorations in a country covered with
forests where the topography is exceedingly difficult; see Fig. 139, p. 353. The
materials for this map were obtained previous to the studies which the author made
at Fribourg under the direction of Paul Girardin. It was published, in 1909, by the
Rev. de giog, annuelle and was, very obligingly, sent to us by Professor Velain and
the Delagrave house.

352 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
6,500 feet (800 to 2,000 meters). On all sides are channels,
lakes, and marigots.1 These flow from rivers. A thick layer
of alluvium brought from the slopes of the upper river has been
deposited upon the clays. It is a fertile land, well watered,
where the banana prospers and the rivers and lakes are full
of fish. Some rather pronounced undulations appear here
and there. It is a country particularly favorable to human
settlement. b) From Nzum, going up toward Njole, the mountainous
region begins — the edge of the African plateau. Its folds run
perceptibly north and south, from 500 to 800 feet (150 to 250
meters) in altitude. The Ogowe crosses these folds at right
angles over rapids, as at Talagonga. Here erosion is intense
and the youth of the landscape is shown at every step:
V-shaped valleys, very steep slopes, falls in the affluents of the
Ogowe, numerous and very much intrenched small streams,
pot-holes by thousands, which are seen when the water is low,
and which after the rainy season have changed in form and
size, hollowed indifferently in the hard or soft rock — quartz,
schists, laterites, and conglomerates of every sort. There
is active erosion on the steep hill sides, especially if they are
deforested; the upper layers of humus are carried away and
only the yellow and compact clays are left.
c) Erosion, working backward from the baselevel toward
the sources, has not yet finished its work, in the moun
tainous region, on the affluents of the Ogowe. It has met
with rock sills which offer resistance and which the rivers
cross by means of falls or series of falls. Thus the Missanga,
which ends at Njole, crosses one of these sills with a single leap
of 130 feet (40 meters) about 30 miles (50 kilometers) from
the stream into which it flows. The Abanga descends through
a series of cascades of 30, 65, 100 feet in height (10, 20, 30
meters), after having received the waters of the Nkam; and
the Lebe and the Mbomi also have their falls. These sills
form secondary baselevels, limits to the alluviation of the
upper regions, and we find there, separated from the lower
districts by gorges, in the midst of a hilly or mountainous
'Name given in Senegal to lakeside affluents; means also low regions where rain
water collects.

FACTS OF DESTRUCTIVE EXPLOITATION

353

country, regions of alluviums of a particular type, small geo
graphical worlds comparable to the high valleys of the Alps.
cO'At some miles from the island of Alembe and from the

ENVIRONS of
NJOLE (GabunJ

_,,n h] -1lDeo' Long.E.Grc-enwcti

7k - ' I '"*&j%< '\C'.|HtM;len

A-PJUBE

«?';* V. --' -, . --' t*ou

, ':-'---.

¦¦-..' -. ( ¦;'•- 'v, •'- ¦ i pi-.Bi3u.-i >J «3&«»*': A -"~

(group >,y<

' . »;

^//w..- , ^^

'.\lfcT" H.(ttvuhC-r,l

;

(»«r" ¦¦  I«'il

Scale = 1:671,000
Fig. 139. Outline Map for the Study of the Nomadism of the Fang;
Njole Region
(After the engraving in the Revue de geographie annuelle. Vol. Ill, 1909)
mouth of the Okano begins what is improperly called the region
of the plains. The forest, which up to that point covers the
whole country, narrows to a line along the river or to patches
determined by a little humus or vegetable mold. The
rest is covered by siliceous grasses; some few stunted trees
remind, one of the vegetation of the Sahara. The imperme
able soil is covered with ferruginous and quartzosfr pebbles
and boulders.
From the plateau above which rises Mount Otorhbi, 2,250
feet (687 meters), a superb view of this region is obtained, half
forest, half savanna ; the slopes are gentler than below and the
23

354 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
hills are rounded. One can trace the watercourses or the strips
of vegetal soil by the line of the forest. This immense horizon
is a restful sight for the prisoner in the equatorial forest
who ordinarily has no horizon other than the opposite bank
of the river upon the shore of which he has built his house.
Climate
It is easy to form an idea of the climate of this equatorial
country when we know that Njole is at o° 8' S. latitude (longi
tude 8° 37' east of Paris or io° 57' 9" east of Greenwich).
The first rainy season, which the Fang calls sura, begins
usually in the early part of October. The rains, which are at
first moderate, become very abundant in November, and
are accompanied by wind storms coming generally from the
northeast. Sometimes the precipitation in a single day is very
great. Thus on November 22, 1906, between six o'clock in the
evening and nine o'clock the next morning, there was a rain
fall of 7 inches (180 millimeters); at midnight the rain gauge
- — capacity 4.7 inches (120 millimeters) — w s overflowing.
After this violent rain important landslides were found
everywhere upon the banks of the Ogowe. The gullying
had brought down trees, walls of rock, and great quantities of
earth torn from the sides of the hills. The important land
slides of April, 1904, traces of which can still be seen at
Nzum, Talagonga, and Njole, must be attributed to a similar
rain. The Ogowe and its affluents, which are registers of pre
cipitation and indicators of climate, rise rapidly. From the
15th of September to the 20th of November there is a differ
ence of 21.3 feet (6.5 meters) in the level of the water at Njole.
Toward the 20th of November comes the great flood, the clay
flood, as the Fang call it {ndceus bikonce). The Ogowe rolls
along, its yellowish, foamy waters carrying trunks of trees and
debris of every sort.
With December the rains gradually diminish, without,
however, altogether ceasing, and the temperature rises. In
February and March we find maximum temperatures of 300 C.
(86° F.) in the shade. This is the esep of the natives, the short
dry season of the Europeans. The waters of the river fall
and the sand banks appear. This is the flowering period, and

FACTS OF DESTRUCTIVE EXPLOITATION

355

especially the period of the maturing of the fruits; under the
warm sun after the rains plant life becomes exuberant.
Toward the 15th of March the rains again become heavy
and continue into April and May. This season has the
same character as the rainy season of October-November;
toward the 25 th of May the swelling of the Ogowe reaches
almost the same level as in late November. But a phenom
enon peculiar to this period appears — the tornado, which
twists and even overfurns trees and damages dwellings.
Then comes the dry season, oyun (from June to the 20th of
September) ; by July the rain has ceased entirely and the tem
perature falls. In July and August we notice minimum
temperatures of i8°-i7° C. (64°-63° F.) at Njole. There
is much cloudiness, and the sky is gray, with only a few
hours of sunlight from eleven until one o'clock. Vegetation is
less intense ; there is a partial arresting of vegetative activity
and certain trees lose their leaves. The water falls rapidly in
the river and the sand banks obstruct the river beds. Toward
the end of August and in September the little steamers which
draw more than 3 feet (1 meter) cannot find a channel to go
up to Njole.
This is the favorite season of both the natives and the
Europeans. One may sleep in the open air, on the sand
banks, or in the open forest. The roads are dry, and fishing
is good in the marshes, the lakes, and the rivers.
Table of Precipitation Observed at Njole
Long. E. of Greenwich 10° 57', Lat. S. 0° 8'
(In inches)

January . . .
February. ,
March. . . .
April 
May 
June 
July 
August. . .
SeptemberOctober . . .
NovemberDecember .
Totals..

2.9
10.2216.9

o.o. 1
6
14 94-

15 8
2oo4

09 5i«9
95 35
906 24 6354305

70-42

1905

2.92
4-15 4-i 52742709 14
54
9204

5-76

48.19

1906

i-3
5-8

356 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
The Main Establishments of the Fang: the Village
The Fang village is always built near a stream of water.
Wells, cisterns, and aqueducts are unknown. In this equa
torial climate where precipitation is abundant, rivers are not
lacking. It is therefore easy for the Fang to locate themselves
near water. They usually establish themselves on the bank
of a brook, river, or lake, but they choose a place where the
banks are high enough so that there is no risk of their being
reached by high water.
The village is composed of a street bordered by two parallel
lines of rectangular huts all joined together. The two ends
of the interior court are closed by two abenoz, or guardhouses,
solidly built of round pieces of asceis {Musango),'a, soft wood
through which the native bullets do not easily pass. In case
of war with the neighboring villages there are always some
guns night and day in the abence. The narrow door and
loopholes give a view over the road and the river.
The abence serves as a meeting place for the men and a
reception room for strangers. Here also the men eat in com
mon. If the village is important, there are two, three, or four
other guardhouses within the court in addition to the two
abences at the ends. This common hall, built by a group of
men, is under the care of an old man who sweeps it, keeps up
the fire, and governs morally his modest but noisy areopagus.
The double row of houses, bordered by a narrow gallery,
consists of separate huts for the men and the women. They
are built of wood and bark, without stone, cement, or clay;
stakes stuck in the ground support a light framework some
times of raffia, sometimes of elceis, sometimes of amomum
stalks, which are covered, according to the region, with tiles
of raffia leaves or other leaves sewn together. The walls are
made of tree bark, beaten and dressed, arranged in strips and
fastened to the posts by vines. These huts are very light,
require little work, and show by the materials used the plant
geography of the region. Thus, for example, in the region from
Samkita to Nzum and higher up the river from the Lebe to
the island of Alembe, regions where the Rapliia vinifera
abounds, the hut is almost even-where built of the wood and
covered with the leaves of the raffia; while from Nzum to

FACTS OF DESTRUCTIVE EXPLOITATION 357
Njole, where only the oil palm is found, the building is much
more difficult. This is one of the reasons why this latter
region is less populated and would perhaps even be totally
deserted if the commercial center of Njole, the terminus for
navigation with small steamers, had not drawn numerous
villages into this district (Fig. 139).
Behind the huts extends the banana grove. Here each
woman has a few feet of banana trees, pimentos, sweet potatoes,
etc. When an unexpected guest arrives, or when the weather
is too bad to go to the distant plantations, she uses the fruits
from the banana grove. Women's yard, and a burying ground,
the banana grove plays also the part of those little gardens
which are seen in certain regions in France in front of country
houses, in which are planted such things as lettuce, parsley,
and onions to avoid the necessity of going several times a
day to the vegetable garden, which is in some cases far away.
This is, however, only a small cultivated patch, a "reserve"
of secondary importance.
How then do the Fang live? They live by the devastation
of the forest — gathering and cultivation — and by fishing
and hunting. Gathering, Exploitation of the Forest, and Cultivation
Almost all the fruits of the forest ripen in the sunny days of
the esep. A certain number of these fruits are edible and are
used by the natives. The Fang know these trees and pluck
their fruits at the proper time.
Sometimes the labor of fruit gathering makes a temporary
camp necessary. Four or five trees called ascia (terebinths)
are felled, the fruit of which, when cooked in water, is held in
high esteem by the natives and even by Europeans. The
children gather fruit and, after boiling it in a kettle, eat their
fill of it, repeating this program several times a day. The
women fill their baskets with the fruit to carry to the village,
or even, after cooking the ascia and removing the kernel, make
packages of the pulp, properly salted and spiced and sewn
up in leaves, which will keep for from ten to fifteen days.
It is especially for gathering the ndoi {Trvingia Gabo-
nensis, Oba Gabonensis) that the Fang go into the forest regions

358 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
where this tree abounds. In the regions of Samkita and of the
Lower Abanga an entire month is given up to it. A camp is
built in the best place and the man goes there with his women
at the moment when the mellow fruit is falling to the ground.
They clear away the space beneath the andor and every
morning the women visit all the trees and take up the fruit,
which they place in a pile. When the pulp loosens of itself,
they wash the kernels, split them, and fill their baskets with
almonds. When all the fruit has fallen or all the baskets are
full, the campers go back to the village to make the precious
oil cake. It is the women who do this work; the men only
build the temporary camp and protect and govern this short
lived colony, which is far from the village.
European commerce, which has come into the Congo to
exploit the rich natural products of the equatorial forest, both
flora and fauna, has had its influence upon the work of the
natives. Except under the stimulus of European influence,
the ebony, mahogany, rosewood, copal gum, and rubber are
not used. The few objects made of ivory — trumpets, pipes,
and spoons — give only a slight value to the tusks of elephants.
But as soon as the white people buy these products in exchange
for highly prized objects, a new branch of native activity
is formed to find and exploit these natural riches.
In the territory which we are discussing, the Apocynacea
(vines) and the Fici, from which the Fang get rubber, are
relatively rare. This is doubtless the result of the prolonged
and pronounced exploitation of these regions, a condition
which has long been known. It will not astonish us when we
learn that the Fang cut the vine close to the ground instead
of bleeding it, and, on the other hand, that the vine multiplies
by means of the seed of its fruit.
The Fang, especially in the last few years, have sold much
ebony to the trading-posts of the Lower Ogowe. They first
cut the trees on the shores of the river and of the navigable
streams and channels. But at the present time the ebony is
far away ; men must go a long distance to cut it and must carry
it upon their backs along difficult paths. When work is not
pressing in the village and when some European merchandise
is desired, it is decided to go camping in the forest, 6 or 7

FACTS OF DESTRUCTIVE EXPLOITATION 359
miles (10 or 12 kilometers) away, perhaps, and go "ebonying."
A few men with their women establish themselves in a corner
of the forest which is rich in ebony trees. For some days the
men cut the trunks of these trees, split them in logs of from
65 to 130 pounds (30 to 60 kg.), and remove the hard outer
layer. Finally, when the stock is considered sufficient, the
women form a caravan to carry the pieces of ebony to the
village or to the navigable canal. They make as many trips
as the number of logs requires.
The Fang are not content with these direct depredations in
the forest. They cultivate, but their cultivation presupposes
and causes renewed devastation. When the aboice nzoi, a tall
tree with twisted branches, has no more leaves, and when the
fruit of the surce has fallen, it is time to begin the work of the
gardens. We have said, in studying the climate, that the maximum
intensity of plant life coincided with the short dry season (the
month of March). The Fang know this and set out at the
end of January. They go into the forest and find a favorable
place, settle in common the respective limits of each planta
tion, and the work of cutting the thick-growing underbrush
begins. This work is done by men and women armed with the
machete, a tool imported from Europe which the Fang have
adopted in place of the fa, a two-edged cutlass which they
formerly made themselves.
The underbrush once cleared away, the men cut down the
big trees {ba baibiti), leaving here and there only some few
giants too strong for their attacks, or some few trees with
edible fruits. All the others are pitilessly cut down, never
close to the ground, but 6 to 15 feet (2 to 4. meters) above it.
The Fang fasten themselves to the trunk in a sort of sling
and thus fell the trees they have selected.
This work is long and laborious. In the beginning of March,
after the long, sunny days of February, the stalks of the bushes,
the reeds, the branches of the trees are chopped up in pieces
and burned, and soon, in place of the great forest, there remain
only the big trunks lying on the ground. In this ground,
covered with ashes and humus, the women place banana plants,
stalks of manioc, and seeds of gourds. It is near the end of

360 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
March and the precipitation becomes abundant; hence banana
trees, manioc, fruits, and vegetables ripen rapidly. For his
cultivation the Fang is then dependent upon water; he waits
for the rain and regulates his work accordingly. Woe to him
if his calendar or his activity fails him ; that will mean a partial
scarcity of provisions. If the rain delays more than usual, or
is less abundant, the plants will suffer and will yield but small
crops. The banana tree in particular is rather delicate; a
prolonged dry season after a short season of rain sterilizes it
and prevents it from producing its natural yield. On the
other hand, if the precipitation of the suras surprises the Fang
before he has burned the trees he has felled, his incompletely
burned plantation, entangled with branches and stalks and
not having the ashes to fertilize it, is rendered useless for that
year. There is no general famine among the Fang as in India
and in the monsoon countries. This is due to the fact that
the native plants, manioc and yams, are rather hardy. The
same banana trees bear at all seasons, though their yield is
greatly diminished during the dry season. There is no
harvest and therefore there are no barns. The garden lasts
for two years and the people go to it for their provisions
according to their need until it -is exhausted. At that time
the new garden should be bearing. There will therefore be
a scarcity of provisions if the garden is exhausted before the
new one begins to produce, or if the provisions are not
abundant enough for the family. No one dies of hunger,
however. Whenever the gardens that are to be started are at a long
distance from the main village, an hour's walk or more, a
mfini or plantation village is built. It may be said that this
is usually the case for groups whose main village remains
for some years in the same place or whose near-by lands are
not favorable for food plants. It is then necessary to seek
favorable land in the virgin forest far away, for the Fang know
absolutely nothing of intensive cultivation. With their
primitive agriculture they need immense stretches to support
the smallest group of human beings. Every year, then, new
sections of virgin forest fall under their destructive axes,

FACTS OF DESTRUCTIVE EXPLOITATION 361
Fortunately after twenty years the forest reasserts its right
and we see no longer any trace of man's work.
The mfini of the plantations is identical with the village,
built on the same plan, though not so well ; the street is not so
wide, the huts are less substantial and without gallery. This is
the temporary center of life during the work in the gardens.
Outside of the period of agricultural work there are always
some few persons who keep watch over the gardens lest
marauders should pillage them or wart hogs or elephants
ravage them.
Sometimes though, when the chief village is threatened, it is
abandoned and the mfini becomes the real social center. This
often happens on the Ogowe at the time of the collection of
the taxes. If the village is important (with four or five guard
houses), it has several mfini; each village has its own in the
midst of its plantations.
The inhabitants of the villages of the savannas have no
mfini; they make their gardens in the surrounding forest.
When this is exhausted they move farther on. In the same
way the villages situated far from navigable waters make
their plantations within the radius of an hour's travel, and
when this circle of forest is exhausted they begin once more
their migrations. When the work at the plantations is ended
the men and women go back to the village where they had
left those who were too old or too young to work. Even
during the working period they had gone back to the village
individually or in groups for a palaver — a mourning, a dance,
or merely for a walk.
We find the workers in the fields at the mfini at other times
of the year. In June the weeds which have grown with the
rains threaten to stifle the young plants; the women weed
them out and cut them with the machete, or long knife. In
the midst of the dry season, in August, in order to be ready
for the first October rains, new clearings are made, but smaller
than the others, for the sowing of maize, groundnuts, cucum
bers, tomatoes, pimentos, etc. ; all these vegetables will ripen
in the warm and sunny days of the esep. But everywhere
and always devastation is the prelude and fire the necessary
condition of cultivation.

362 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
Fishing and Hunting
Toward the 15 th of August the waters have gone down
considerably. The Fang, especially in the region of lakes and
ponds, have long been awaiting the happy event and watching
with an attentive eye the falling of the waters. At last a
certain tree trunk or a stone in their wharf which serves as
a mark appears above the water and they can go fishing.
The Fang then build a camp on the shore of the lake,
marigot, or river where they intend to fish. Very few people
remain in the village. All, big and little, wish to have their
fill of fish, and they can all aid in the work of fishing.
The palavers cease ; there is a tacit truce caused by a common
need. They must profit by the dry season, especially the last
six weeks. The cast-net brought in from Europe, nets of
pineapple fiber, dams, draining of pools, poisoning by herbs —
every means is put into practice to catch the fish. During
the first days an enormous quantity is eaten ; then the work
of smoking and preserving the fish is begun.
The camp is very large, the site well cleared, the roofs
high, the drying-house made of sticks of raffia well built.
There are sometimes several parallel streets. Even the dogs
and the chickens are brought here from the village. At
nightfall the camp grows animated. Their hunger satisfied,
the Fang, gay and numerous, chat and sing under the vault
of great trees and tell the old stories of their folklore.1
On a certain shallow well-stocked fishing lake of the Lower
Abanga, Lake Eugene, Louis Martrou saw in 1902 a dozen
camps of this sort, and yet the lake has hardly more than
a square mile (5 square kilometers) of surface.
The inhabitants of the mountainous region and of the savan
nas are less favored. Fish are not abundant because the cold,
deep waters are too swift and flow over rocky bottoms. And
yet the people try to procure a few fish. They dam the
smaller brooks and drain the pools of the branches of the
river. They always go camping four or five days on the
bank of some stream and come back with a few small fish,
shrimps, crabs, and catfish ; at any rate they have eaten fish.
'See the interesting studies by R. P. Trilles, " Proverbes, legendes et contes fang,"
Bull, de la Soc. neuchdteloise de giographie, XVI, 1905, pp. 49-295.

FACTS OF DESTRUCTIVE EXPLOITATION 363
With the plant food (manioc, bananas, yams) the products
of their fishing form the basis of the food of the Fang. The
barnyard of a Fang village does not amount to much:
some thin chickens, a few Barbary ducks, a few sheep and
kids — a dozen per village — are the entire "stock." And the
kids and sheep are "reserved" for the payment of a pressing
debt, the conclusion of a marriage, or for the fetish to be asked
from the medicine man in case of a serious illness.
It is easily understood, then, that the Fang, after having
fished the waters, hunts the forest for a very necessary addition
to his plant food. He goes hunting with his gun and his dog,
calling the game by imitating its cry. He is lucky if he brings
back a monkey or a porcupine. He skins the animal, keeps
a large share, and the remainder goes to his table companions
in the guardhouse.
But game has its habitat far from groups of human beings.
It is most frequently found in certain solitary districts of the
forest near streams or near trees upon which it may depend
for fruit. The Fang know this and at certain favorable seasons
they move to these places to hunt. Once more they build a
camp, but more simple than the one before mentioned. Posts
stuck in the ground, a framework supporting a roof of tree
leaves, a drying-house, a hearth, and a bed — such is the hunt
ing camp. A dozen men and two or three women go thither.
The women do the cooking, go after wood, and smoke the
pieces of meat in the drying-house. The men hunt all day.
At other times they shut off a corner of the forest with a
palisade, digging deep ditches at intervals, which they care
fully cover with leaves and twigs, and at each of these places
leaving an opening in the palisade. The animal, wart hog,
antelope, etc., seeking a place to pass through, falls into the
ditch and is found the next day. It is at the time of the
great floods that this arrangement of fences and ditches,
which has had to be made some time in advance, is fruitful.
Peninsulas and isthmuses are formed where much game takes
refuge or passes, and then good catches are often made.1
'While hunting, digging ditches, or making traps to catch game, the Fang must
be continent. This, he says, makes him more agile in pursuit of the animal and more
successful in his hunting. If he violates this prohibition, the game is sure to escape and
make sport of the lazy hunter. Thus there are few women in the hunting camp.

364 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
After ten days, two weeks, or three weeks at the most, this
hunting season comes to an end and the Fang go back to the
village with the dried meat, which for some time will give
variety to the food supply of the lucky hunters. It is impos
sible for them to remain very long in the forest, since the pro
visions they have brought with them are quickly used up and
it is then necessary to go to the plantations or the village for
a fresh supply.
The Great Migrations Resulting from These Forms of
Destructive Exploitation
All this moving about and these more or less prolonged
stops, either at the ephemeral camps of the forest to gather
its fruits and products or to hunt, or at the more stable fishing
and garden camps, do not prevent the Fang from going back
to their village. They go back with pleasure; here is their
hut, their home, the burial place of their recent dead.
To see one of these animated villages where the inhabitants
seem happy in their careless life, one might think that it was
going to remain there forever, that it was going to become
attached to its environment, to the plot of ground which it
covers. Not so — it is there but for a time ; it is but a stopping-
place, a halt in the migrations of the Fang.
After four or five years the village needs repairs; there are
holes in the roofs, the bark is damaged, and the courtyard full
of gullies. If the inhabitants decide to remain in the place,
they rebuild the village, moving it twenty, thirty, or a hundred
yards farther on to avoid some inconvenience they have
noticed, such as too steep a slope in the yard, too great a dis
tance from the river, or a bad exposure with no shelter from
tornadoes. The restored village keeps the same name.
But some day, at a turn in the river, on the shore of a stream
where hitherto was only the forest, we see a new clearing, a
few wretched provisional huts {bikukula), with a few men
as an advance guard. To this point a village is to be moved.
As the old village falls in ruin, the number of provisional huts
in the new one increases. Finally, one day, the whole tribe
proceeds to the new establishment, carrying the children, the
boxes full of old clothes, the kettles, the kitchen utensils, and

FACTS OF DESTRUCTIVE EXPLOITATION 365
the fetishes. The distance is sometimes 15 or 18 miles (25
or 30 kilometers) in a straight line, and it takes several days
for this nomadic horde, encumbered with baggage and children,
to reach its new home. They travel by day and sleep at night
in the forest, and at last reach their destination.
The first months in the new village are hard, for there is a
lack of provisions, although they have brought some with
them. Those who went on ahead have made a few gardens,
but these have not begun to yield. Hence they are forced
to borrow or buy provisions from the neighboring villages,
though this is not enough completely to satisfy them. They
therefore immediately set about the agricultural work, although
it will be some time before they will eat the first vegetables
from the new plantation and think of building the true village,
leveling the courtyard, and constructing the abence. In the
beginning they still have "a gnawing in their stomachs" and
they do not build. And then, too, they are still very unstable,
like a bird on a branch. Any one of a number of events or
difficulties, the hostility of neighboring villages, unexpected
deaths, may lead the tribe to return perhaps to its former
village, or it may go farther in search of a safer and more
favorable spot.
But usually the Fang remain in this new country, which they
quickly learn to know and to exploit, beginning here again
their organic nomadism. And during this time their elic
(former village) becomes covered with tall grass and weeds.
Soon the equatorial forest which surrounds it closes the wound
which human toil had made in its closely tangled mass, and
of this place, so alive a few years before, there remain but a
memory and a name. The tribe adds it to the already long
list of its many stops in the savannas and forests of Africa.
The length of these stops varies. Economic and social
reasons may fix a village for some years, stop it for a longer
time than usual on its nomadic course. The village of Ayais
(family Esaisfan) of the Middle Missanga has been for fifteen
years at least in the same district on the shore of the Metomce.
It is true that this is one of those superior oases of which we
have spoken.
Andor, on the Ogowe, at the outlet of Lake Mangeis, is an

366 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
old village, several times rebuilt. The children who were
born there at the time of its origin are now young persons of
twenty years of age and more.
But these are exceptions; the average duration of a village
is five or six years. An old man of Njole, in telling the history
of his tribe, located his native village on the Lorn, a small
tributary of the Upper Uindo. And since that time his
family had moved its village thirteen times. This old man was
between sixty-five and seventy years of age.
Is this rapid movement of the Fang tribes, these periodic
migrations, to be explained by reasons found in the geographi
cal environment alone ? Not entirely. A village may change
its place as a result of a war with other villages. The hostility
of a powerful tribe, the collection of the tax, the death of an
important man, some superstitious reason such as the cry of
an owl in the neighborhood, may cause the family to move
toward another region, and in this case the change is due to
human will or human caprice. It is none the less true that
the more fundamental and general causes of the migration
are geographical and result from destructive exploitation.
As we have said, it takes a considerable extent of ground
to support a Fang village. As their method of cultivation is
primitive, without fertilizers or tillage, the garden is aban
doned after the second or third crop. Every year hundreds
of acres of forest fall under the axe of the Fang. The planta
tions are soon too far away from the village, and the village
moves on to find the great forest.
Sometimes a village leaves a region because its plantations
of banana trees and manioc are ravaged by animals, especially
wart hogs or elephants. In the region between Lake Ayen-
Nkago and the Mbomi a troop of about thirty elephants had
established itself. The natives hunted them, but only one
or two were killed. The villagers were obliged to remain in
their mfini during the season of cultivation, to build fires on
the edges of their gardens, and to keep watch, beating the
tom-tom to keep away the marauding beasts. If they relaxed
their vigilance, an entire plantation might be devastated in
one night, and that would mean want for a long time to come.
Several villages, therefore, migrated, in spite of their desire to

FACTS OF DESTRUCTIVE EXPLOITATION 367
remain in this region which was both fertile and full of game.
The elephants drove them away.1
Finally, what shall we think of the proverbial paradox about
the eagerness of the Fang for our European merchandise:
"Take away all the trading-posts of the Gabun and of the
Ogowe and leave only those of the Senegal and in twenty years
the Fang will be at Dakar and at Saint Louis?" It is true
that villages are built around a European trading-post. Many
families of the interior leave their old village to come toward
the "new Eldorado." But disillusionment soon comes.
Before long they learn that the white man gives his powder,
trading guns, fabric, and hardware only in exchange for
products. In order to obtain these products soon they must
resort to tilling the soil, and thus they again take up their
old life. Some day, whether or not they wish to do so, they
again become nomads.
Through the immense forest there are, as it were, veritable
"lines of nomadism," human thalwegs which spread out fan-
shaped, like the branches of a delta, from the sources of
migration. By taking the present position of a village on the Ogowe or
in the region along the coast of the Atlantic and by marking
the former sites of this village in the equatorial forest on the
banks of rivers and small streams, we obtain a line with a
constant direction. The point of departure which the con
temporary natives give for their permanent nomadism is the
region comprised between the sources of the Ntem and the
sources of the Uindo. The memory of the old men gives no
clear and precise information beyond this district, where from
sixty to eighty years ago were the present villages of Njole
and of Samkita.
Sometimes in this constant line of nomadism there are sudden
turns or crooks. Some commercial center has attracted the
family clan ; then, the attraction ceasing, they have continued
their migration, coming back to the line running west or
southwest. These "lines of nomadism" make disastrous trails in the

xHave those who condemn the killing of the elephant as useless and harmful con
sidered this economic side of the question? It is impossible for native villages to
exist when there are any elephants within a radius of from ten to twenty miles.

368 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
equatorial forest, for it is evident that the passage of the
nomadic Fang in close ranks diminishes its natural richness.
These forests successively felled for primitive cultivation and
replaced by the bushy vegetation of thickets; the zone of the
banana constantly narrowing, and the lands which produce it
becoming more and more rare ; the rubber vines cut and lopped
off; fruit trees felled to facilitate the gathering of the fruit —
such are the geographical consequences of this complex and
varied nomadism.
Moreover, the Fang, since they have no thought of remaining
permanently, do not plant fruit trees even where they would
succeed very well, for at the time when these trees would be
in full bearing the planters would be far away and neither they
nor their children would profit from their work.
One may imagine that all this life resulting from human toil
shapes the history of the Fang people. One may also easily
see that such phenomena are not without their effect upon
social relations.
Let us leave this typical group of primitive peoples {Natur-
vblker), living in truth from Raubwirtschaft, to observe among
the most advanced groups of civilized peoples (Kulturvolker)
the effects of another form of destructive exploitation.
3. THE EXTRACTIVE INDUSTRIES FROM THE GEOGRAPHIC
POINT OF VIEW
Mineral devastation does not cause a nomadism as visible
or as immediate as that before mentioned, but in its rudi
mentary form, which might be called plundering, it causes
changes of place at the will of circumstances which make it
resemble a hunt. The first gold rush to California or to
Alaska formed a sort of migration.
A manufactory associated with an extractive industry may
also be subject to movement. Glass-making in the United
States at first depended upon the devastation of the woods,
then upon the devastation of coal (Pittsburgh), finally upon
natural gas, the "springs" of which are always short-lived.
Thus the glass factories are moving from place to place over
the United States almost like a flock of sheep, but a flock
which never comes back to the same place. This "nomadism"

FACTS OF DESTRUCTIVE EXPLOITATION 369
of the American glass industry (or that of the exploitation
of placer gold) is not a true nomadism, for it implies no
return, no periodic movement. The necessity for migration
is inherent in every mode of activity that is either closely or
distantly bound to a definite form of extractive industry.
However, the essential characteristic of mineral exploitation
is to fix the work of man, for the moment at least, at a precise
point on the earth. Thence comes the exceptional geographic
value of all forms of mineral exploitation.
A study of the exploitation of quarries and of mines may be
made in the form of a special local study.1 A similar study
might be made of the sulphur mines of Sicily, the copper
mines of Rio Tinto, of the tin of the Malay Peninsula.
The study of the general distribution of a mineral must
never be neglected, nor, if possible, an examination of the
general geological causes of this distribution (see Fig. 143).
Moreover, the geographer must investigate the geographical
facts of surface and depth — what we might call exterior
and interior landscapes. At those points where man under
takes the exploitation of a product furnished by the earth, he
establishes himself in a fashion which modifies the natural
topography. In centers of petroleum exploitation, such as
Bibi-Eibat and Balakhany, near Baku (Russia), man's work
appears in characteristic forms: the forest of pyramidal oil-well
towers or the great petroleum reservoirs (Figs. 141 -143).
It is important to emphasize finally, from the economic point
of view, the "speed" of certain of these phenomena. Petro
leum has been exploited at Baku only since 1865 and in Penn
sylvania only since 1859. The production of petroleum in
Texas went from $772,000 in 1901 to $2,895,000 in 1902. 2
The facts of mineral exploitation may and must be examined
1Q. D. Hubbard, Gold and Silver Mining as a Geographic Factor in the Develop
ment of the United States, Cornell University thesis, 1905, 102 pp.; seven published
papers bound together as one, Oberlin, 1912; of these, see especially: "The Precious
Metals as a Geographic Factor in the Settlement and Development of Towns in the
United States," Scottish Geog. Mag., XXVI, 1910, pp. 449-466; "The Influence
of the Precious Metals on American Exploration, Discovery, Conquest, and Posses
sion," Bull. Amer. Geog. Soc, Vol. XLII, 1911, pp. 594-602.
2See L. C. Tassart, Exploitation du pitrole, Historique, Extraction, Procedis de
sondage, Giographie et giologie. Recherche des gites. Exploitation des gisements, Chimie,
Thiorie de la formation du pitrole, Dunod and Pinat, Paris, 1908; see also the excellent
review of the geographic substance of this volume given by M. Zimmermann: "Les
Gisements et la production actuelle du petrole," Ann. de geog., XIX, 1910, pp. 359-366.
24

370

HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

under different aspects. They have been examined especially
from the point of view of the engineer, the chemist, the geol
ogist, the economist, and the statistician, but they have

U. S. G.
Fig. 140. Discharging Oil Into Reservoir. Scene in the McKittrick
Oil Field, California
received less attention from the geographic point of view.
Now we must indicate clearly from what angle geography, and
especially human geography, must look at these facts.
These facts proceed from certain needs or appetites of man;1
they rest upon discoveries and technical establishments, and
they lead finally to forms of population which cannot be
otherwise explained.
JIt is evident that certain mineral products (salt, iron, etc.) have played and
continue to play a very important part whether in the life of primitive people or in
the historic vicissitudes of civilized nations. We ought especially to mention, as far as
minerals are concerned, in connection with human geography. Part III (which, to our
mind, is the best) of J. G. Kohl's book, Die nalurlichen Lockmiltel des Vblker-Verkehrs:
Bemerkungen iiber die wichtigslen rohen Naturprodukte, welche die Ausbreitung des
Menschengeschlechts uber den Erdboden gefbrdert, zu Lander-Entdeckung, Ansiedlung,
Colonien-Sliftung und Stddte-Bau Veranlassung gegeben und in der Geschichle der
Geographie eine hervorragende Rolle gcspiell haben, Ed. Miiller, Bremen, 1878. We
note also the volume by Richard Andree, Die Metalle bei den Naturvolkern mil Beriick-
sichtigung prahistorischer Verhdltnissc, Leipzig, 1884. Let us say at least in a word
that many of the prehistoric or primitive civilizations have been distinguished from
one another and it has been possible to differentiate them precisely, by means of the
minerals that they have known how to treat, and by the metals which they have been
able to utilize or to amalgamate; among a great many examples, see Dr. L- Laloy,
" Ethnographie du haut plateau argentin," La Giographie, March 15, 1910, p. 17S1
dealing with the researches and discoveries of Eric Roman.

FACTS OF DESTRUCTIVE EXPLOITATION 371

C. W. Hayes. U
Fig. 141. Gushing Well at Beaumont, Texas, January, 1902

R. Arnold. V. S. G.
Fig. 142. Interior of Catch Metal Reservoir with a Deposit of the Sand
which Flows with the Oil. Maricopa Well, Sunset District,
Kern Co., California, Oct., 1908
Oil districts are characterized by "forests" of quadrangular pyramids of wood,
which provide the scaffolding necessary for the boring machines.

372

HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

In chap. Ill we considered the cities of the world situated
at a very high altitude. How are such important groups so
far above the level of the sea to be explained? How have

Fig. 143.

The Geographic Distribution of Petroleum and Asphalt,
after Hofer

This map is taken from the one published in the new review of general geology edited by G. Stein-
mann, W. Salomon, and O. Wilckens with the title "Geologische Rundschau."

such desolate regions, where vegetation dies, where even the
fauna has difficulty in living, been able to attract such large
populations ? Let us go back a few centuries and ask history,
or rather let us go down into the still open holes and we shall
find the answer there; it is the gold, silver, or copper mines
which explain facts of population apparently so abnormal.
Says Reclus: "Had it not been for a powerful attraction,
Cerro de Pasco would have remained what it was in 1630, a
solitude traversed infrequently by shepherds. But at that time
a shepherd Quichua discovered one morning ingots of silver
in his fireplace. Suddenly the crowd appeared; the city was
founded as if by enchantment, and since that time its popula
tion, largely floating, increases or diminishes according to
the yield of the mines or the fluctuations of the market."1
'E. Reclus, Geographie universelle, Vol. XVIII, L Amcrique du Sud, p. 59°'
quoting Lewis Herndon, Exploration of the Valley of the Amazon.

FACTS OF DESTRUCTIVE EXPLOITATION 373
To-day more than two thousand veins cross each other
below the city, but hundreds of excavations are buried under
landslips or invaded by water.
Oruro, in Bolivia, owed the 70,000 inhabitants it once con
tained to its silver mines. These have given place to-day to
tin mines. It was also the silver mines that made the fortune
of Potosi, the city founded in 1545 at the foot of the Cerro de
Potosi, a mountain said to be a cone of silver. Honeycombed
by more than 5,000 galleries, the Cerro de Potosi forms an
immense labyrinth; but here, as in the Cerro de Pasco, the
increasing depth at which the galleries must be cut and the
invasion of water make the exploitation difficult. However,
the city still furnishes considerable quantities of silver.1
As to the high plateau of Mexico, it is particularly indebted
to the extractive industries: it owes its past fortune to them,
and to them it will owe its fortune in the future. "The silver
produced in this country exceeds a third of the world produc
tion; it has been estimated to be more than 100,000 tons
from 1 52 1 to 1905, worth about 4 billion dollars (21 to 22
billion francs), for up to 1550 silver was worth more than $60
(300 francs) per kg., and up to 1875 more than $40 (200
francs)." "It is estimated that in Mexico there are more
than 1,902 mining districts, of which 553 contain silver."
We know that a large part of the wealth of these mines went
to the Spanish ' governors and another part to the churches. The
cathedral of Zacatecas is a noteworthy example. Enormous sums
have been expended in the building of such an imposing monument
at this altitude in a rocky country which produces almost nothing.
But all wealth, however great it be, is finally exhausted, and
Zacatecas, which has gradually passed from 80,000 to 30,000 in
habitants, is an illustration of what will happen to many mining
cities which are to-day flourishing but are situated in countries
unproductive from an agricultural point of view. Copper has
indeed been found some distance away, but the work of exploration
is not yet finished. One cannot escape a feeling of melancholy as
one sees but a few steps from this superb cathedral and from a
luxurious theater, the remains of the old cloister transformed into
stables, while all about are almost uninhabited streets.
In the state of Michoacan, adjoining that of Mexico, there is a
mining district which is a field of still greater activity than that
'According to approximate evaluations, it has supplied since the beginning of
the exploitation, $1,500,000,000 (8,000,000,000 francs).

374 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
of Guanajuato. This district has recently become celebrated
throughout the entire world on account of the group of mines of
El Oro, comprising the Esperanza, the Mexico, and the Dos Es-
trellas  These new mines, now at the height of their
productiveness, contain more gold than silver. Esperanza, El Oro,
and Dos Estrellas have all passed four millions in dividends although
they have been worked only from ten to twenty years 
The region of Guanajuato, although agriculturally more produc
tive than that of Zacatecas, could not without the mines maintain a
large city. There at the present time remain only low-grade
ores, the waste heaps from former operations that are still worth
handling, and finally the untouched ores below a depth of from 500
to 600 yards. The latter ores are still rich but complex and
therefore much more difficult to treat than the surface ores. The
problem, then, was to find a process both economical and powerful,
and the cyanide process used for gold ores was tried. This
process has already reached a perfection sufficient to allow the
extraction of from 80 to 90 per cent of the total percentage instead
of 75 per cent, at the most, which was obtained by the amalgama
tion of gold and silver in the patio.
Guanajuato is situated at an altitude of 6,539 feet (1,993
meters) and Zacatecas at 8,005 feet (2,44° meters).
Thus from the earliest times the precious metals, gold and
even silver,1 have exercised such a powerful attraction on
men that they have drawn them up and kept them up on even
these high plateaus where it is difficult to find the ordinary
means of subsistence, and where the air is so rarefied above

JLet it suffice to mention the founding of Dawson City, in Alaska, where the
mean annual temperature is — 70 C. and where a three-month night reigns; there, in
another region and under other conditions, is an example of settlement that might
be called abnormal. We note again, in the sierra of Chorolque, a mine being worked
at an altitude of 17,500.5 feet (5,308 m.), that is, at three-tenths of a mile (a half kilo
meter) higher than Mount Blanc. On the subject of gold, see the book by Hauser,
the studies by De Launay, and also the book by Auzias-Turenne. In "L'Avenir
geologique de l'or et de l'argent" (Rev. gin. des sciences, VI. 1895, PP- 362-373), L. de
Launay shows why there must remain many fewer deposits of gold, the exploitation
of which is practicable, than of silver, first, for areason quite psychological — theexploita-
tion of gold attracts more capital, more energy, and is always ahead of the exploitation
of silver; in the second place, if we must admit that at the time of the cooling of the
earth the heaviest materials were condensed nearest its center, then we must recog
nize that metals are not found at the surface, that is, within the reach of man, except
under exceptional circumstances, and naturally more rarelv in the case of gold, the
density of which is 19.26, than of silver, which has a density of 10.5. On the other
hand, the very constitution of minerals, of conglomerates, or of gold veins brings about,
in the beginning, very great prosperity, but an ephemeral prosperity, or at least one of
slight duration: witness the exploitations of California (in 1855, production of gold:
336 millions; forty years later, in 1895:63 millions). The exploitation of silver is more
regular, of longer duration, and can be carried out to greater depths. " The time when
the silver mines rf the world shall be exhausted is, then, so far away that it is useless to
think of it, and it is quite certain that the last gold vein will have been long abandoned
when considerable quantities of silver are still being extracted" (p. 367).

FACTS OF DESTRUCTIVE EXPLOITATION 375
11,500 feet (3,500 meters) that one has difficulty in doing even
ordinary tasks.
Likewise, "Gold has peopled Australia. It is to the dis
covery of the deposits in Victoria and New South Wales that

Fig. 144. How Mining for Gold Marks the Ground
_ Portion of the Goldfield Quadrangle, Nevada, U.S. Geol. Survey, showing the
intensive type of occupation of the land even in an arid climate, if there exists
the stimulus of rich ore deposits.

376 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
must be attributed in large part the sudden increase in
population which took place in the middle of the nineteenth
century (403,000 in 1805 ; 5,315,000 to-day). About 1890-1892,
it was again gold which attracted immigrants into western
Australia, the region hitherto the most neglected in Australia."1
It is like a scene in fairyland to see this Cyclopean activity
appearing suddenly in the midst of the solitude. Take Kalgoorlie
for example. On the bare moor rise mills arranged in the form of
an amphitheater. The tall iron chimneys throw out smoke and
flames, while on all sides strange metallic structures rise like gigantic
retorts. Trains wind about, emptying entire forests into the
furnaces. Everywhere the subsoil has been burrowed and there
are sometimes as many as twenty stories of subterranean galleries.
And all around this mining camp the refuse of rocks torn from the
depths of the earth forms a girdle of small hills.
Thousands of workmen labor in these mills under the burning
sun, blinded and sometimes almost asphyxiated by the smoke, the
pulverized refuse of the ores, and the yellow sand of the desert.
It must not be thought, however, that these agglomerations are
really cities. Two wide streets which cross each other, bordered by
a few brick houses, hotels, or stores, form the entire town, but the
mining population, from the simplest laborer to the chief engineer,
lives about the mine in temporary dwellings : a few huts of wood and
more numerous shanties of corrugated sheet iron and canvas, provided
with an exterior fireplace. It is a vast camp, a temporary refuge for
a population which will scatter when the last veins are exhausted.2
Everywhere on the globe gold causes cities to rise out of
nothing — Nome and Circle City, Alaska, for example.3
Cripple Creek became the greatest gold-producing center in
the United States; exploitation began there in 1891.4 Wells
1Bertrand Nogaro, " L'Australie, " Rev. icon, internat., July 15-20, 1909, p. 32.
2Nogaro, pp. 30 and 31.
Summarizing table of the production of gold in the four chief gold-bearing coun
tries, in 1908 and in 1909 (after the ^tatistique de Vindustrie minerale en France, etc.,
for the year 1908, p. 270; and ibid., for the year 1909, p. 262):
1908 1909
American Metric Millions American Metric Millions
Tons Tons of Tons Tons of
Dollars Dollars
British South Africa. .. .260.47 236.3 157 270.28 245.2 163
United States  IS9-72 144.9 96 156.74 142.2 94
Australia  122.79 in. 4 74 117. 61 106.7 7°
Russia  46.18 41.9 27 53-68 48.7 32
World production  720.46 653.6 435 731.48 663.6 441
If it is desired to compare this production with that of a number of years ago,
read A. dc Foville, "La Geographie de l'or," Ann. de giog., VI, 1897, pp. 193-211.
4L. de Launay, L'Or dans le monde, Paris, 1907, pp. 128 and following.

FACTS OF DESTRUCTIVE EXPLOITATION 377
and prospect holes dot the ground in all directions. Yet the
streets of the town end in suburbs that are absolutely barren
(see Fig. 144).
4. THE PREEMINENT TYPE OF MINERAL EXPLOITATION ON A LARGE SCALE:
THE EXPLOITATION OP COAL
A. General Geographical Inquiry
1. what coal is
a) Characteristics. — Coal — rock which burns — is gener
ally of a beautiful and often dazzling black, with glossy
fracture surface. Coal is classed according to its external
appearance, composition, and especially the manner in which
it burns. We distinguish, for example, bituminous coals,
which are oily coals rich in hydrogen, and anthracite coals.
But we will not discuss here the different sorts of coals. We
are studying the coal deposits as a whole, although later,
apropos of the geograpnical examination of local deposits,
we may mention the influence of the special qualities of
certain types of coal.
b) Origin. — Coal is unquestionably of vegetable origin.
Between the trees which stand in our forests, and anthracite
coal, which is the type richest in carbon, there exist imper
ceptible transitions through different varieties of peat, of
lignite, and of coal. In certain coal specimens we find parts
that are already perfect fuel while other parts show by their
texture their vegetable origin (stalks, barks, leaves, fruits).
Moreover, the microscope shows absolutely that coal is of
vegetable origin.
From the geographical point of view it is not without interest
to note that a botanical map of the coal periods is not unrelated
to the actual distribution of coal and consequently to the
distribution of the present human activity associated with
coal. The analyses of this mineralized vegetable substance
and the minute examination of the coal flora allow us to form
a picture of these emerged lands and the neighboring shores
in the great periods of coal formation.1 Though the greater
1,1 The characteristic of the vegetation of which coal was formed was profusion
rather than richness, vigor rather than variety. . . It was an association of large and
elegant ferns, above which rose bare tree trunks . . : the top of this vegetation alone was
crowned with sparse foliage, stiff and sharp, which decorated the ends of the topmost
branches" (G. de Saporta, Le Monde des plantes avanl V apparition de Vhomme, p. 45).

378 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
number of coal beds known and exploited to-day date from
a geological period which takes its name from carbon, the
Carboniferous period,1 coal was formed in several different
geologic epochs.2 2. WHERE IS COAL FOUND?
The geological map of the globe still has many gaps and
we may be certain that coal will be discovered at many points
where it is now unknown. We can, however, draw an approxi
mately exact map of the general distribution of coal beds
(see Fig. 145).
Such a map might be accompanied by a long commentary.
If in Europe the coal beds almost coincide with the zones of
production,3 that is far from being the case elsewhere. Of
the two largest coal fields in the world, the one in the United
States furnishes the largest quantity each year, while the other,
in China, is for the most part still unexploited.
As far as human geography is concerned, coal finds a place
in our studies only from the moment that man becomes asso
ciated with it by wishing to make use of it. It is because man
wishes to use coal that he becomes dependent upon it ; and it is
therefore by a rapid examination of what man does with coal
1Emile Haug, in his excellent Traite de geologie, has united under the single name
of the piriode anthracolitique the Carboniferous and the Permian, after the example
of W. Waagen (II, pp. 743 ff.).
2There are at Tonkin, for example, some coal deposits of the Jurassic age (Rhetian
period). See R. Zeiller, "Flore fossile des gites de charbon du Tonkin, jlin. des
trav. publics, E"ludes des gites miniraux de la France, Colonies francaiscs, Texte, Paris,
1903. "There is some of it [coal] in the Cretaceous, in the Tertiary — in a word,
at every step of the geologic scale. The coal fossils of Fuveau (Bouches-du-Rhone)
are remarkable for the clearness with which they belong to a water course which carried
the granite of Maures and the porphyry of Esterelle into a great expanse of fresh water,
reaching from the Var to the Herault, an ancient marine gulf which had become
separated from the sea and turned from salt to fresh water. Crocodiles, turtles,
thousands of river shells, have left their remains in this lignite. Mammals certainly
existed, for we know the most ancient of them, but they have not yet been found at
Fuveau. The flora was already rich in phanerogamia in this latter part of the Cre
taceous era. At Manosque (Lower Alps) coal was formed toward the middle of the
Tertiary period; cryptogamia and even gymnosperms are decidedly relegated to a
second place; oaks, laurels, camphor trees, cinnamon trees, myrtles, legumes, aralias,
magnolias, palms, dragon trees, made a covering of abundant and varied foliage
sprinkled with bright-colored flowers and filled with soft, sweet odors. Turtles,
crocodiles, and mammals similar to our hippopotamus — the anthracotheria — wal
lowed in the grass on the banks of the streams. In the dry regions, other mammals
already very diversified — cropped the grass or fed upon their prey, while the birds
called in the woods or flew over the waters" (Collot, Combustibles fossiles, Dijon,
1901, p. n).
3Yet the basin of southeastern England and especially the basin of Campine,
recently discovered by means of sounding, ought to show coal zones yet untouched,
as well as evidences of basins now in the process of exploitation,

FACTS OF DESTRUCTIVE EXPLOITATION 379
that we shall be able to grasp the true connections which exist
on the earth's surface between coal beds and human facts.
B. The Use of Coal by Man
Coal has existed where it is since there have been men upon
the earth, but it had no influence upon man so long as he did
not know how to take advantage of it. As soon as man had
need of coal and in so far as coal could satisfy the needs of
human activity, men came, at certain points of the globe,
under the influence of a localized attraction and the human
geography of coal began.
The Chinese knew coal at a very early date. The Greeks
also knew it, and Theophrastus, in his Treatise on Stones,
speaks of the Lithanthrax. Doubtless some blacksmiths, be
cause of lack of wood, employed mineral carbon, but this
was only a very restricted use, and the Romans seem to have
made still less use of coal.
In the Middle Ages we find some traces of exploitation,
notably in the basin of the Loire, in the neighborhood of Roche-
la-Moliere (Forez). A document of 13 21 bears the statement
that the lords of the district of the Loire had laid claim to a
tax on all the coal mines of their territory. In England the
coal fields of Newcastle are mentioned as early as 1066. But
there, as in Belgium, the attempts at exploitation were very
limited. Not only was coal not sought after, but it was
feared. When the tradesmen of London had recourse to coal
in the fourteenth century, the nobles and the middle classes
protested, and Edward I severely punished anyone who
introduced coal into the cities. Similarly in France under
Henry II the farriers of France were condemned to fine and
imprisonment. As the industrial movement slowly developed and doubtless
also as wood became more scarce, coal was used to a certain
extent, but all these fragmentary historical data represent
nothing, as a general geographical fact. Indeed it is only with
the end of the eighteenth century that we see the sudden
advent of coal as an economic factor.
Coal owes its arrival as an economic factor to steam and
iron: to steam, because it became the great fuel for producing

380

HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

FACTS OF DESTRUCTIVE EXPLOITATION 381
it; to iron, because it became the great fuel for preparing it.
The century of iron and steam has been the century of coal,
and one may equally well say that if the nineteenth century
had not been the century of coal it would never have been
the century of iron and steam.
At the end of the eighteenth and at the beginning of the
nineteenth century there was an astonishingly converging
series of events: Iron ceased to be used exclusively for the
manufacture of arms and locks and began to be used for
building; it was required therefore in large amounts, and we
have the prelude to those daring works which reached their
highest point with steel. On the other hand, steam furnished
a new motive power ; and the union of iron and steam brought
about the complete transformation of transportation.
These five dates, taking the place of long expositions, show
very strikingly the birth of the new industrial age :
1779: First iron bridge over the Severn at Coalbrookdale ;
beginning of metal structures.
1785: First application of the steam engine to the manu
facture of cotton (Manchester) .
1801 : Lebon in France obtains illuminating gas from coal.
1819: First crossing of the Atlantic by a steamboat, the
Savannah, from Savannah to Liverpool, in 29
days.1
1825: First railroad from Stockton to Darlington (Eng
land) ; first locomotive for passenger service.
Coal is not the cause of all the industrial revolution but,
until the advent of "white coal" at the end of the nineteenth
century, it was the necessary condition of it.
And now we shall show what is done with coal.
I. INDUSTRIES WHICH USE COAL
a) Metallurgy. — The metallurgical industries are the great
consumers of coal. The development of iron and the develop
ment of coal are not merely parallel but, as we shall see, closely
connected. It would be well to recall here the multiform

xSee P. Camena d' Almeida, "Le Centenaire de la navigation a vapeur 1807-1907."
Correspondant, August 25, 1907, and separately. Instilut colonial, Bordeaux, p. 10.
It is a discussion of the voyage of Fulton's Clermont, on the Hudson, from New
York to Albany (1807), the centenary of which was celebrated with good reason;
but this voyage had no immediate economic and commercial results;

382 '. HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
development of metallurgical industries. Iron construction
finds one of its most representative realizations in railroads
which have locomotives, cars, and tracks of metal.
Now about three tons of coal are required to reduce one ton
of iron ore ; it then takes not less than four or five tons of coal
to transform pig iron into iron or steel. Metallurgy therefore
calls for a very large consumption of mineral fuel.1
b) Other great industries. — Let us simply mention the
textile and glass-making industries, which use coal as a fuel.
It would be well to note further the part played by coal in
many industrial preparations such as the manufacture of soda,
the concentration of sulphuric acid by the Kessler process, etc.
c) The transportation industry. — In France the railroads
alone consume an amount of coal that varies between -j}i and
*In studying iron ores and the metallurgical industries, it is important always to
bear in mind the same geographical ideas of localization and connection; see, for
example, the book by Georges Villain, Le Fer, la houille et la mitallurgie a la fin du XIXs
siecle (Colin, Paris). We recommend especially the studies devoted, in 1895-96,
by the Rev. gin. des sciences to French metallurgical industries, in the series of
scientific and industrial researches ; these articles are accompanied by very well-made
maps. See, for example, in the year 1895, E. Demenge, Elat actuel du travail du fer
et de Vacier, pp. 922, 924, 926, 927, and 928, with schematic maps representing the
distribution of French foundries in their relation to the coal beds; and in the year 1899:
A. Pourcel, L'Etat actuel de t'industrie de la fonte en France, pp. 511— 515, with maps
representing the distribution of iron minerals in the different parts of the world.
There is a discussion here of the connection between metallurgy and coal. For the
most recent bibliography of iron deposits, see above, the notes on chap. V, §1.
Nothing shows better in what real and complicated forms the local and regional con
nections between coal and iron present themselves than this passage taken by way of
example from the remarkable study devoted to "Regions francaises" by P. Vidal
de la Blache in the Rev. de Paris, December 15, 1910, pp. 835 and 836: "The region
of Lorraine set forth a quarter of a century ago, at full sail, upon the sea of industrial
life. In spite of the remarkable progress, in this period, of the textile industry in the
Vosges, the transformation is due especially to the extraordinary importance to which
iron has attained in modern civilization. The systematic extraction of oolitic ore
from the hills of Lorraine had begun as far back as the last years of the reign of Louis-
Philippe, but its phosphorous nature made it unfit for the manufacture of steel. The
discovery, in 1880, of the process of dephosphorization suddenly changed the state
of the market; Lorraine became, in fact, one of the chief mining centers of the world.
While production still increased around Longwy and Nancy, soundings directed by
geologists in the neighborhood of Briey revealed the existence of the same deposits
over an extent of more than 100,000 acres. Already the iron of Lorraine, which, in
1878, counted for only half the iron production of France, to-day represents nine-tenths
of it ; and it is prophesied that in a few years the single district of Briey will put out
20 million tons. How is this prodigious mass to be exploited in a normal way, without
disastrous risks, in a country which has no coal and which lacks labor? To the first
question science has given an answer: methodical investigations organized by the
Association of the Coaling Societies of Lorraine, in 1904, revealed, at a depth of
from 2,000 to 3,000 feet, the prolongation of the coal vein of Sarrebruck at the very
place where the position of the anticlinals had made it possible to foresee that these
veins would approach the surface. This is perhaps not enough to render it inde
pendent, but it may eventually serve toward that end." See also, on the same point
of view, Th. Laurent, " Le D6veloppement economique de la France, l'industrie metal-
lurgique," Musie sociali, Mimoires et documents, April, 1912 (Rousseau, Paris), and
F. Sauvaire-Jourdan, "Un Conflit dans la mitallurgie allemande," Rev. politique et
parlementaire, No. 206, August 10, 191 1.

FACTS OF DESTRUCTIVE EXPLOITATION 383
8 million tons, that is, about a fifth of the total production
(4°.SI3.934 tons in 1908). x Steam vessels represent an ever-
increasing consumption.2
d) Domestic use. — For France the domestic consumption
of coal equals at least a quarter of the total production.
One may see from these few brief indications that for a
country such as France the production does not equal the
consumption. According to one of the recent volumes of the
Statistique de Vindustrie mine'rale et des appareils a vapeur en
France et en Alger ie, published by the Minister of Public
Works, a volume which refers to the year 1909, the production
of coal was 41,711,032 tons and the consumption 62,119,015
tons. The production therefore provided for only three-
fifths of the consumption.
We should add that the coal fields themselves use much
coal directly — nearly 5 million tons.
2. THE INDUSTRIAL OFFSPRING OF COAL
Coal is not used merely as a necessary condition of a great
number of industries. It has itself given birth to a series
of industries that we may rightly call the "offspring" of coal.
It is true that the full effect of Lebon's discovery in 1801
was not felt immediately. "It required long effort and the
intervention of the King, Louis XVIII, to triumph over
prejudices which opposed the substitution of gas for the
older lighting by oil."3 But, since that time, how the
problem has changed! Formerly coal was treated to obtain
illuminating gas. All that remained, even the coke, was
waste. To-day it is the other way about; the residues have
1Statistique, etc., pour I'annee ioo8. Imp. nat., Paris, 1909, and idem, pour Vannie
iqoq, Imp. nat., Paris, 1910.
2"Day by day greater speed is desired, and, all other things being equal, the con
sumption of coal increases as the cube of this speed; that is, if they want to advance
from 10 to 20 knots an hour — or simply to double the speed — it is necessary to use
eight times as much coal and to find room enough to store the corresponding weight.
Hence the high price of rapid transportation; time is money. The smallest steamers
of the Netherland Line use over 55 tons a day, about 2\ tons an hour; those of the
Inman Line and of the White Star Line from 110.23 to 121.25 tons. The large
steamers, such as the Etruria or the Umbria of the Cunard Line, and the City of Rome
of the Anchor Line, use daily 325 tons of fuel. The City of Paris, at the limit of its
power, attains the frightful consumption of 529.11 tons a day, or 22.046 tons an hour,
1. 102 tons in three minutes, 10 lbs. (5 kil.) in 15 seconds" (H. de Parville, Causeries
scienlifiques, 31st year, 1890, Paris, 1895, pp. 309-310).
3 Jules Gay, "L' Acetylene," Quinzaine, April 15, 1897, p. 555.

384 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
acquired such a high industrial value that gas would be
manufactured even if it should no longer serve for lighting.
In fact, the industrial productivity of coal is practically
incalculable, since from it are obtained the coal tars with their
by-products: benzine, naphthalene, coloring matters, artificial
perfumes, and even pharmaceutical products such as sul-
phonal and antipyrine.
Let us sum up in a few lines the derivatives obtained from
coal by dry distillation:
i. Coke, mingled with carbon and other mineral substances
which form in certain cases a much prized fuel that burns
without smoke.
2. Gases (formalin, acetylene, hydrogen, carbon dioxide,
carbonic acid, azote, sulphureted hydrogen, vapors of sulphur
and of carbon, salts of ammonia, and carbureted hydrogen).
These gases may be used as a very economical motive power.
3. Ammoniacal waters. Ammonia is thus obtained from
coal and the industrial and agricultural uses of ammonia
increase : for freezing, the manufacture of sulphate of ammonia
as a fertilizer, etc.
4. The prussiates and cyanides from which Prussian blue,
for example, is obtained.
5. Finally, those marvelous compounds, the coal tars, from
which come alizarin, which has replaced madder, phenol or
essence of bitter almonds, etc.
What are the geographic consequences of the development
of the industries which are the offspring of coal?
They are first of all some indirect and negative consequences
which have a remote, but strong and very powerful, influence,
showing itself in certain geographical facts such as the dis
appearance of cultivation from an entire region (madder), or
the suppression of all the commerce associated with camel's
dung, from which ammonia was formerly obtained.
The direct consequences are, from the geographical point of
view, less important than one might at first suppose. A
remarkably fruitful industry in coloring matter has developed,
especially in Germany, i. e., in one of the great coal-producing
countries. That is, however, a general connection which
does not cause a direct localization of the new industry on

FACTS OF DESTRUCTIVE EXPLOITATION 385
the coal bed. Likewise, illuminating gas is manufactured for
use in cities, and this industry is in a certain measure inde
pendent of the coal regions. In short, all that group of indus
trial facts which arise from coal are much less dependent upon
it geographically than economically, logically, or historically.
What, on the other hand, are the geographical consequences
of the rise of industries which use coal ?
Coal is a heavy product that cannot be transported far from
the original beds without great expense, and, since certain
industries need coal in large quantities, the industrial establish
ments have necessarily been brought close to the coal fields.
This is an essential connection which was almost tyrannical
at the beginning of the modern industrial movement but
which tends to lessen as the development of means of trans
portation, aided by coal itself, allows a wider diffusion of this
fuel. This connection remains, however, the most important
fact in all the human geography of coal. We have seen
the profound reason for it and we shall now study its
manifestations. From the point of view of strictly geographical method we
should note very carefully this distinction between the logical
and industrial connection and the geographical connection.
When coal is used as raw material, the industries proceeding
from it are less dependent upon the earth and are less fixed
to a certain point on the surface. When coal is used as a
fuel, the industries making use of it are more dependent upon
the coal regions. Thus, for the geographer, there is a closer
bond between coal and the industries which exploit it as a
fuel or motive power than between coal and the industries
which treat it as a raw material.
C. New Geographical Pacts
I. THE COAL MINE
A subterranean world, composed of hundreds of feet of
shafts, miles of "galleries," hundreds of "cuttings," is the
chief type of the great mine. Coal is a product that is required
and consumed in large quantities; it is consumed without
being subjected to any special treatment; it is completely used
up and the supply must be constantly renewed. For these
25

386 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
three reasons the holes made in the earth are larger than for
any other sort of mining ; only a few salt or copper mines can
be compared with coal mines. They have depths that reach
2,600, 2,950, or 3,280 feet (800, 900, or 1,000 meters).
In spite of the very hard conditions of the miner's work
there are other sorts of industrial labor still more exhausting.
We wish to emphasize, not the difficult character of the coal-
cutting, for example, which the miner must often do lying
down, crouched in a very small space, or stretched out upon
damp and muddy ground, but the general characteristics as a
whole which result from the dimensions and from the material
and geographical conditions of the coal mine. It is because of
the number of forces against which the struggle must be carried
on every hour and every moment that the accidents which
occur are sometimes veritable human hecatombs: the catas
trophe of Courrieres (March, 1906) with its 1,100 victims will
serve as an example.
On the whole, life in the depth of the mines is of such a
character that certain endemic diseases develop which have
long been grouped and hidden under the blind expression
"miners' anaemia." The race is atrophied; a miner's child
may be recognized by its sickly look. The women have
too long been permitted to work in the depths of the mines.
2. THE AGGLOMERATION WHICH IS THE SURFACE APPENDAGE
OF THE MINE
On the whole, the mine is a veritable territory, but it is a
territory which man cannot inhabit. Some few horses and
mules are the only living beings that go down into the mine
once for all, never again to see the light of day. The mine
workers live on the outside. The journey to the working
place is so difficult and so long that this population connected
with the mine must be lodged as near as possible to the shafts.
There is thus created near the openings of the mine a sort of
artificial city, with houses exactly alike, which are the "result"
and the necessary "sign" of the work underground.
It is becoming more and more possible, however, for this
type of uniform and, so to speak, amorphous agglomeration
to be placed at a great distance from the shafts, and the

FACTS OF DESTRUCTIVE EXPLOITATION 387
working population is then brought to its work by special
trains running upon special tracks.
3. THE URBAN INDUSTRIAL AGGLOMERATION
As we have said, other industries group themselves around
coal. Let us see what are the surface facts which result from
this connection.
Coal — - in small or large quantities — is like the protoplasm
around which develop industrial construction, circulation, and
life. On the Podeze, near Lausanne, is a small vein of lignite
once exploited and later abandoned because of the competition
of foreign coal. But beside the coal are clay deposits; in 1896
a cement factory was installed nearby, farther downstream.
This factory took up again for its own use the exploitation of
the vein of lignite, and also worked the clay ; having both fuel
and clay, it had only to bring in the lime. The vein of lignite
is now no longer sufficient, and the factory brings in other
fuel from farther away. Nevertheless it is true that the
isolated vein of lignite was the determining cause of the small
industrial unit situated beside it.
In directing itself upon miniature facts, geographical obser
vation gets a better grasp upon the colossal reality of the
connections which have determined the industrial agglomera
tion of to-day — an agglomeration of factories of every sort
brought together by the common fact of the exploitation of
coal — monster cities busy day and night, cities whose atmos
phere is vitiated by the smoke emitted from a forest of chim
neys, some among them rising to a height of more than 300
feet.1 In the beginning of this book we declared that every form
of human labor found expression in facts of habitation and
forms of installation. They are, as it were, fixed and material
"projections" of that which occupies the mind or the muscles
of men. No chapter of cultural or industrial geography can
be complete unless we further consider the way in which these
'The atmosphere of great industrial cities is much more vitiated by the smoke
than one would think. Paris, as is well known, is a great industrial center; her 1,950,-
000 chimneys send out yearly about 300,000 pounds (160,000 kilograms) of soot, and
one can imagine all the carbon dioxide carried in the air which is breathed (see the
report of Gautier to the Academy of Sciences, March 21, 1898).

388 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
types of activity express themselves through the "house" and
aggregates of houses.
Coal has given the impulse to excessive industrial con
centration and it must be regarded as the responsible cause
of the industrial agglomeration, even when this is far from the
coal bed. We must in fact distinguish two chief types of
industrial cities : the great city born above and from the coal,
and the great historic city which was powerful enough to
summon coal to it and to transform itself into an industrial
center in spite of its distance from the coal.
There is always a difference of appearance between the two.
The first is a sort of vague being, an invertebrate body, to
which cells are unceasingly added; it has no precise center;
its life comes from elsewhere and goes elsewhere. It is never
alone, it forms part of a whole ; there are other similar groups
all around it ; it belongs to a zone of industrial agglomerations,
but it does not constitute the zone in itself, as does the
second type, the historic city, such as Paris or London.
The first type as it develops joins other centers likewise
developing. The fundamental kernel is not the city, but the
zone which, when it reaches the point of saturation, will be cov
ered with an almost even and continuous layer of population.
The second type, from its historical origin and in spite of the
vicissitudes of its new life, retains a principle of unity and plays
the part of a true center of attraction. It goes on developing
and swallows up its suburbs. It has a center. It is not one
long street like Saint Etienne. And, curiously, it further
causes emptiness in a great circle around itself. If it does
not depopulate certain small cities, it deprives them of their
logical and natural growth. Within a radius of more than
60 miles (100 kilometers) of Paris there is not a single city of
50,000 souls. The same thing seems to be true of London and
Berlin. An urban center near Manchester, Newcastle, or
Dtisseldorf will, like those cities, have the chance of growing.
An urban center near Paris or London will be likely to remain
stationary, unless it be very close and grow by direct and
immediate contact with the central agglomeration — unless it
be situated precisely in its zone of extension.
For how long a time did Passy, Levallois, etc., remain little

FACTS OF DESTRUCTIVE EXPLOITATION 389
villages until Paris, reaching and joining them, communicated
to them her vitality, her power of growth ! These little cities
so close by, not having within themselves a principle of life
independent of the historic tradition and the acquired force
of the central agglomeration, live the new life only. when they
are themselves within the ever-growing circle of the whirlpool.
The great city may even become empty at its center, a
fact which may be verified at Paris or at London. This
is not a question of an ephemeral and exceptional fact, but
of a fact of urban geography that is becoming more and more
general. A German author has given to this phenomenon
the name of Citybildung, formation of a city (London) ; he
shows that this progressive diminution of the centers of great
cities dates only from the middle of the last century.1 Up
to the year 1901 the city of London lost 118,000 inhabitants,
that is, four-fifths of the maximum population which it had
possessed. The center of Paris lost 90,000 inhabitants, or
two-fifths of the maximum. The Altstadt of Berlin lost
30,000, or half of the maximum. In Vienna the phenome
non seems to have been perceptible only since 1871, but
it, becomes more pronounced day by day. In New York
the density of population in wards 1,2, and 3 of Manhattan
Borough, the "center" of the city, is almost below city grade.2
In spite of the profound contrasts between the industrial
and the historic city, there are very many traits common to
the two types. For example, both give rise to the large
house. The people crowd together and the houses, being
unable to spread out in width, rise in the air to form the
tenements of the great factory cities.
4. THE INDUSTRIAL ZONE
The industrial city, as we have described it, shows us at the
same time what this strip or spot of industrial life is which
'Hermann Schmid, Citybildung und Bevolkerungsverteilung in Grossstddten, Ein
Beitrag zur Entwicklungsgeschichte des modernen Stadtewesens, Reinhardt, Munchen,
1909. At the end of his article, "The Evolution of Cities," Contemporary Rev.,
February, 1895, pp. 246-264 — an article which also contains a number of ideas and
observations which might be questioned — Elisee Reclus has called attention to this
fact; but its importance should be further emphasized.
2See again Mark Jefferson, "The Anthropography of Some Great Cities, A Study
in Distribution of Population," Bull. Amer. Geog. Soc, Vol. XLI, 1909, No. 9, pp.
537-566 and 10 figures.

390 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
marks on the surface of the globe the subterranean coal veins.
The general aspect is that of the famous "Black Country"
of the center of England: neither verdure nor running water;
blackish canals, gray houses, roads strewn with black slag, a
gray and heavy atmosphere, and everywhere smoke.1 With
their great "terris," they seem at first sight veritable countries
of ruins: they have their mournful coloring, very often their
aridness, and always their sadness.
Nothing could better represent the common character of
these zones of industrial concentration than the very expressive
map, made up of small maps combined, which is found on p. 93
of the Vidal-Lablache Atlas, Regions industrielles de I'Europe.
The author has brought together upon a single page, maps on
the same scale (1:1,000,000) of the main industrial regions
of Europe in order to show, by the very obvious comparison,
certain general economic facts. The map of Fig. 146 is a
specimen of one of these industrial strips or zones of Europe.
The creation of these types of new population has not gone
on without bringing about a large number of geographical
facts which we should later examine from the regional and
local point of view:
a) Depopulation of the country districts as a result of the
attraction of the centers of new life that have sprung from coal.
b) Development and accumulation of ways and means of
communication of all sorts.
c) The rise of entirely new urban centers and consequently
the population of regions hitherto uninhabited: the region of
Birmingham, plateau of Tarnowitz, region of Montceau-
Blanzy, creation of Middlesborough in the mountains of
Kentucky.2 d) Displacement of the historic and economic poles of
activity :
For cities: Newcastle, the great coal city, becoming a very
important center, while in other countries cities which have no
coal and which do not become industrial cities lose their rank
1 In certain coal regions, especially where the coal is found at a great depth, as in
Pas-de-Calais, the surface is used for rich industrial cultivation, such as the raising
of beets. 'Max Leclerc, Choses d'Ameriquc, Armand Colin, 1897; chap. I, "Comment on
fonde une vilk\"

FACTS OF DESTRUCTIVE EXPLOITATION 391
and influence: Constantinople, which has not a single factory
chimney, was in 1870 the third city in the world; it is to-day
only the twelfth or thirteenth.
For countries: Displacement of activity in England to the
profit of the coal zone (see farther on). Growing importance
of the South in the United States. Great power acquired by
the part of Europe where coal is found to the detriment of
the countries of older culture on the Mediterranean.
Coal has been the most active of the determining causes of
urban centers and of what might still better be called urban
strips or zones (see Figs. 147 and 148).
D. Regional Geography of Coal
In a complete book on coal, here would be the place for g
study of all the regions where coal is exploited. It goeti
without saying that such a study would take us too far afield.
By a quick sketch of the geography of coal in two great
European countries, Great Britain and Germany, we shall
indicate in what spirit such inquiries might be conducted.
I. COAL IN GREAT BRITAIN1
During the entire nineteenth century and up to 1899,
Great Britain was the country which produced the most coal.
If the production in the United States is greater to-day, the
geography of coal in the English regions remains none the less
of captivating interest, for the new industrial facts have there
been superimposed son and mingled with a very old historic
life and geography.
England has about 3,500 mines under exploitation, employ
ing 960,000 workmen, so that we may estimate the number of
persons living by means of coal at three millions or three
millions and a half.2

JSee particularly E. Loze, Les Charbons briltaniques et leur ipuisement: Recherche
sur la puissance du Royaume-Uni de Grande-Bretagne, Beranger, Paris, 2 vols., with
maps, plans, cuts, and graphs.
2This number of 960,000 persons employed in the coal mining industry in the
United Kingdom is given by the official English Coal Tables, so that at the time of
the great strike of English miners at the beginning of the year 191 2 one could speak
correctly of "a million men on strike." The same document gives, as the number of
persons employed in the production of coal in other countries, the following figures:
United States, 690,400; Germany, 591,000; France, 191,000, and Belgium, 145,300.
The great miners' strike which occurred in England has shown better than all written
documents the fundamental role of the coal industry.

392

HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

Railroads

Fig. 146. How the Development of ax Industrial Region Marks
The main facts of human establishment in this small section of the basin of the Ri
Between the two industrial centers of chief importance, Essen and Bochum, the he
and tending to become what we call an "industrial zone." — Xotice the almost regular
meandering valley of the Ruhr. In this region, formerly almost all forested, the buildins
though the general outline can still be traced on the two banks of the river. The only
network of lines.

FACTS OF DESTRUCTIVE EXPLOITATION 393

Scale = 1:106.250

FACE OF THE GROUND. An EXAMPLE FROM THE BASIN OF THE RUHR
taken from the two sheets, Essen and Bochum, of the German map, 1:25,000.
rease in number, and the little groups of houses approach one another, nearly meeting
it of the centers of secondary importance (of the type of Steele) on the sides of the
2s caused the trees to be cut down; the forest has become more and more cut up
idicated on the map by black lines, are the railroads, which already present a crowded

ScalB = l:243,000
Fig. 147. A Part of Oklahoma (then Indian Territory) Bicfore Development of the Oil. The Population in 1898
A section of the topographical sheet, scale. 1:125,000, of 1he U. S. Geological Survey. Indian Territory (Choctaw Nation)
McAlester Quadrangle, edition o£ Aug., 1898. In Fig. 148, the same section illustrates the growth of population in eleven years.

vJ;

W-

Dsjv

*hj4S

is^x

&1

jW&fJ£igy£fne:

^ICB:

8§B

Scale = 1:243,000
Fig. 148. Eleven Years Later. The Population in 1909. The Effects of the Development of the Oil
The edition of September, 1909, of the same sheet (Fig. 149) enables us to compare accurately the wonderfully rapid develop
ment of the urban population with the situation in 1898. McAlester has become a large agglomeration with suburbs; an urban
zone extends from McAlester to Hartshorne with small centers, like Bache, forming spontaneously.

CO

396 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
The total annual production of coal in the United King
dom is five tons and a half per inhabitant. If we deduct
from the total the coal which is exported, the coal employed
for the manufacture of exported cokes, as well as the coal
known as bunker coal used for British and foreign ships, we
find that the home consumption is four tons per head, the
largest consumption in the world.1
The coal beds of England have in general the advantage of
being deposited in regular layers with little barren rock; also,
the coal deposits are often found near the sea or near a
navigable stream.
Where are the mines of Great Britain situated? In Eng
land there are two Englands: the old worn highlands of the
north, the center, and the west, and the great Tertiary or
London basin of the southeast. It is in the southeast, green
with its woods, its meadows, its evergreen hedges, so har
monious in outline and color, with peaceful rivers, that all
historic England has developed. In the mountainous region,
a rough country with a hard climate, the mhabitants, down to
the eighteenth century, were pure mountaineers.2
Coal has naturally been deposited and distributed upon the
periphery of the ancient plateaus: (i) the northern coal field;
(2) the central coal field; (3) the coal field of Wales; and finally
(4) the Scotch coal field in the narrow neck of land which
separates the mountainous regions of the north of Scotland
from those of the south (see Fig. 149).
1. The northern coal field. — This is the most important
field and the most distinctly a coal field, with an annual
production equal to that of France and Belgium together
(45,000,000 tons) — a region of 30 miles (50 kilometers) between
According to E". Loze, in the Economiste f ran cais, June ii, 1904, p. 854.
2"In the Middle Ages we used to content ourselves with shearing our sheep and
selling their wool to the men of Flanders, who had become the cloth manufacturers
of Europe. . . " (Thorold Rogers). "At the beginning of the 17th century, the
English are still — and more so than any other people of civilized Europe — a sedentary
society, agricultural and pastoral, who tend to become more pastoral than agricul
tural" (Boutmy, quoted in Max Leclerc, Les Professions et la socieli en Anglelerre,
Armand Colin, Paris, 1894). In order to understand the progressive growth in the
transformation of England, one should read the authoritative book by Paul Mantoux,
La Rivolution industrielle en Anglelerre au X\'IIIe Steele, Essai sur les commencements
de la grande induslrie moderne en Anglelerre, E. Comely, Paris, 1906. The author
shows the series of industrial changes that preluded the coal era in England, and the
extent to which the previous efforts — mechanical and commercial — explain the
development of the 19th century.

FACTS OF DESTRUCTIVE EXPLOITATION

397

the Tees and the Tyne, which lives exclusively by means of
coal. On the Tees, up which the tide mounts 12 miles (20
kilometers) from its mouth, are the ports of Stockton and of
Hartlepool, each being a
type of city which owes
its entire existence to
coal (in 1840 there was
not a single house) . On
the Tyne, to the left, is
Newcastle (to-day 276,-
000 inhabitants) , the real
mistress of the coal zone,
a typical coal city with
an immense port of 1 1 . 7
miles (19 kilometers),
joined to Gateshead on
the right bank by the
Stevenson viaduct, 7
miles in length. Some
times 300 vessels loaded
with coal leave the
mouth of the Tyne on
a single tide.
The attraction exerted
by coal upon other in
dustries : the celebrated
Armstrong establish
ments, the equivalent of
the Krupp factories in Germany and the Creusot factories in
France, are situated on the left bank of the Tyne between
the coal of Newcastle and the iron mines of Cleveland, but
nearer to the coal (they cover 79 acres and employ more than
16,000 workmen).1
2. The central coal field. — Here the phenomena are more
complicated: a very ancient industrial activity has been in
creased and modified by coal.
Staffordshire: The coal comes to the level of the ground.
•See Colonel X . , " Les Etablissements Armstrong, leur origine, leur situation
actuelle," Rev. gin. des sciences, March 15, 1897.

Fig. 149. The Distribution of the Coal
Fields and the Industrial Regions
in the United Kingdom
The darkest areas are the coal fields. The
greater part of the industrial activity is concen
trated in the vicinity of the coal: I, iron; L,
lead; C, copper; Z, zinc; T, tin.
Figures 149 and 154 are from the handbooks of
Busson, Fevre and Hauser, F61ix Alcan, editor.

398 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
No verdure, no cultivation; the activity in coal has devoured
the land; this is a typical example of the "Black Country,"
of which we have already spoken.1
In 1696 Birmingham was a town of 4,000 inhabitants, sur
rounded by moors where the fox was hunted ; to-day, with its
860,000 inhabitants, it is the great iron and steel metropolis,
entirely surrounded by industrial cities such as Wolverhampton
(106,000 inhabitants) to the northwest, the city of foundries,
hardware, and lock-making.
Yorkshire: A remarkable type of a coal field which has
become a great industrial center with a tendency to speciali
zation; Leeds, the leading wool city (457,000 inhabitants).
Lancashire: Yorkshire coal is brought from Manchester
to Leeds by the great canal built in the first quarter of the
nineteenth century. On the other hand, Manchester has
become a seaport by the construction of the Manchester Ship
iCommenting on this book in an article in the Gazette de Lausanne, April I, 1912,
J. -El. David described in a very personal way the " Black Country" and the contrast
between historical and industrial England: "Formerly, beyond the England of his
tory, the England which stretches to the south from Worcester to Cambridge, there
was an England of forest and heath, of pastures and marsh, broken only by some
few ancient cities huddled around a sanctuary or the ruins of Roman casira— York,
Chester, Durham, Leicester, Peterborough, Shrewsbury, bordering the country of
Wales. A train leaves for Oxford; let us take it. The little hills of Shropshire, looking
like mountains with their mantle of woods, quickly give place to level land. Under
the fine turquoise sky, in the shade of clumps of oak trees, the cattle browse or chew
their cud. — A shadow passes; then another, denser; still another joins them, and a
cloud of soot bursts into the coach. The horizon bristles stiffly into vertical bars
above which wave black plumes. The earth billows into heaps of crumbling, smoking
debris. An atmosphere like a tunnel, acrid odors, invade the coaches. Through the
windows, hastily closed, one sees little brick houses filing past — all exactly alike and
colorless. Enormous letters placard the front of massive buildings: Works;
Manufacturing Co.; industrial names known throughout the world may be read, with
obscure ones as well. Not a tree, not a spear of grass. Hills of slag, mounds of coal,
careful piles of materials, blackened railroad stations, branch lines forking in every
direction; panting engines, long trains that follow or pass each other; drawbridges,
cranes, reservoirs, sheds — -yawning empty or filled to overflowing — cables where
a scoop hangs, runs up, balances, and slides down again. At intervals, a glimpse of
a street, the end of which is swallowed up in thick gloom, a narrow corridor between
low houses, dreary and monotonous, with rooms like cells, where a pall of smoke
descends and rests. Four or five 'clearings,' where the buildings are less crowded,
sketch vague limits between these funereal towns. From Wolverhampton to Birm
ingham more than a million beings of human form stifle in the poisoned air of a
dozen cities and hideous suburbs for an extent of over a hundred square miles, with
collieries and lofty furnaces, forges and workshops, factories, narrow yards, huge
storehouses, and swarming streets. In the 17th century, the gentry of the neigh
borhood hunted and tracked game in this very region. — The train rushes on. The
smoke clears away. Once more the turquoise sky smiles between the trees and above
the meadows. We shoot past a station with platforms prolonged into flower beds.
On the right, covered with ivy, are massive walls: Warwick. From beauty _ to
horror, and from darkness to light. Between the Welsh hills and the castle of the 'king
maker,' lordly still in its ruins, the Black Country makes an impressive contrast.
On this corner of the country, man and the industrial age have branded their mark
as with red hot iron."

FACTS OF DESTRUCTIVE EXPLOITATION 399
Canal, a lock canal, voted by Parliament in 1885, begun in
1887, and opened on January 1, 1894. l
Manchester, the city of cotton, is in close relation with
Liverpool, a great historic port which receives the raw material
and exports the manufactured cotton. The development of
Manchester dates from the application of steam to spinning : in
1696 it was simply a small, badly built city of 6,000 inhabit
ants; from 1786 to 1801 the population grew from 30,000 to
94,000, and by the census of 19 n it had reached 714,000; if
we include Salford, we may say that 1,000,000 inhabitants are
established in Manchester and its suburbs. Liverpool joins
an ancient but renewed maritime situation to a continental
situation entirely new. Formerly the slave trade made for
tunes for the shipowners of Liverpool, who developed docks
for 24 miles (40 kilometers). To-day the docks and slips of
Liverpool and Birkenhead cover 544 acres and have 34 miles
of quays ; the entire estuary of the Mersey is like a suburb of
Liverpool. Liverpool, which had 4,000 inhabitants in 1696, in 19 14 had
763,000, and around it are many cities of over 100,000 inhabi
tants : Birkenhead (135,000), Oldham (150,000), Bolton (184,-
000), Blackburn (134,000), Preston (119,000). In the face of
these masses of human beings carried along by the fierce
activity of business, why has the little city of Lancaster, with
its 41,000 inhabitants, remained in name the political capital?
3. The coal fields of Wales. — Cardiff, thanks to coal and to
the industrial activity developed by coal, is in tonnage the
third of the British ports (ahead of Newcastle, which is classed
as fourth). In 1801 there were fewer than 2,000 inhabitants;
in 1911 there were 182,260 inhabitants. Swansea, a great
industrial center for tin, has 114,660 inhabitants.
4. The Scotch coal fields. — The port of Glasgow did not
exist two hundred years ago ; the great works were begun after
the Act of Union. The city grew rich through the importation
of tobacco from Virginia and Maryland and then finally
through coal and because of all the industrial activity of the
basin of the Clyde: iron foundries at Airdrie, weaving at
'See Loze, I, pp. 520 ff.-, and Yule Oldham, Geog. Jour., June 1894, pp. 485-402,
with one plan.

400 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
Paisley, etc. To-day Glasgow has 1,010,000 inhabitants,
while Edinburgh has only 320,000; it is the leading city of a
region where the density of population reaches nearly 231
inhabitants per square mile (600 per square kilometer).
London. — It is impossible to study the geography of coal
in Great Britain without speaking of London, an example
of the historic city which has become an industrial city.
London has not given up its pretensions to being the com
mercial metropolis of the world. To become a great port it
has had to become a great industrial city. Industries have
not come of themselves but men have brought them. By
the tenacity of the English will, by the laborious effort of
her merchants, London has maintained her position and has
grown prodigiously. She has become the most colossal type
of monstrous urban agglomerations, with no close rival
except New York City. The county of London counted
in 1911, 4,521,685 inhabitants. The district of the councils
of jurisdiction contains more than 7,000,000 inhabitants,1
that is, more than Paris, Vienna, and Berlin together,
and much more than the total population of two countries
such as Norway and Denmark, and almost double the total
population of Switzerland (3,877,000 by the census of 1910).
All this mass of men grouped at a single point of space ! Lon
don in 1801 had fewer than 1,000,000 inhabitants (958,000). 2
London had no coal; she had to import it. She profited
by the old relations between Newcastle and her port on the
Thames: in 1750 as much as 863,633 tons were already being
transported annually from the northern coal field to London,
and forty -five years later, in 1795, this tonnage had nearly
doubled (1,242,399 tons).3 To-day the northern coal field is
still the great source of coal for the huge industrial city.
Because of a perfect organization of the work and of special
technical devices for loading and unloading, steam vessels
take only three days and six hours to load with coal, go to
London, and return to Newcastle.4
•Census of April 2, 191 1: 7,323,000.
2See, for example, Price, The Population of London, 1S01-81, and Kemmann, Der
Verkehr London, Springer, Berlin, i8g2.
3See the figures cited under the title: "The Circulation of Coal," pp. 397 ff .
4See Loze, op. cil., pp. 108 ff.

FACTS OF DESTRUCTIVE EXPLOITATION 401
In a purely geological study of coal a place would be given
to the new coal field in the southeast of Great Britain,1 but
from the human point of view that is a subject only for future
study. It would now be proper to take up again the general con
siderations set forth in the preceding pages and see what
their application may be to Great Britain.
Through the advent of coal all the historic activity of Eng
land has been displaced. With the exception of London all
the cities that count are cities within the coal zone.2 A map
of the density of population shows that the places with in
creases are the suburbs of London and all the coal coun
ties3 (see Fig. 150).
Many general conclusions will doubtless be drawn from a
thorough study such as we have been able to indicate here
only in outline.
As phenomena which form a covering on the surface of the
earth it will be important to note the accumulation of great
public works in the regions of industrial cities : the construction
of canals, such as those mentioned in connection with Man
chester; the multiplication of all the ways of transportation
by land and water, especially railroads; and finally, such
exceptional works as the three-mile tunnel under the Severn
connecting Bristol with the opposite bank of the river.
From the point of view of economic activity we find in the
England of coal and industry some very representative speci
mens of the tendency to monopolization.
Leeds, having become a wool center, tends to draw the wool
of the entire world. Liverpool and Manchester draw cotton
from everywhere — from India, from Egypt, from the Missis
sippi Valley.4 Swansea is becoming a great world center for
•See the article by Loze in La Giograpkie, September 15, 1907, pp. 145-162.
2Mark Jefferson, "The Distribution of British Cities and the Empire,'' Geog.
Rev., IV, 191 7, pp. 387-394.
3From the political point of view, the same change in place of activity is shown:
the radicalism and imperialism of Chamberlain have had as their center and place of
electoral support, Birmingham (see Victor Berard, and below, chap. VIII, §4). See,
in the book by Paul Mantoux, La Rivolution induslrielle en Anglelerre au XVIII'
siecle, pp. 360-365, the four maps which represent the distribution of the population
at the four following dates: 1700, 1750, 1801, 1901.
4Note, however, that these monopolies, instead of increasing, tend to diminish in
influence. One-third of the cotton cloth exported by the United Kingdom is sent out
through ports other than those of Manchester and Liverpool.

402

HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

work in tin. (We might likewise note how in France, for
example, the Creusot works, after having at first used the
iron ores nearby, have become a great center of attraction
for the iron of Spain, Algeria, etc. Essen, in Germany, illus
trates the same law.)

LeflH than 130 inhabitants per eq. mile
(50 per sq. km.)
i From 130 to 260 inhabitants per sq. milo
(50 to 100 per sq. km.)

SFrom 260 to 1300 inhabitants per. so. mile
(100 to 500 per sq. km-.)
More than 1300 inhabitants per sq. mile
I (More than 500 per sq. km.)

Fig. 150. The Distribution of Population in the United Kingdom
On a map of the density of population — with the historical and traditional
exception of London — can be read, so to speak, the distribution of the principal
coal fields. Compare with Fig. 149, p. 397.

FACTS OF DESTRUCTIVE EXPLOITATION 403
2. COAL IN GERMANY
What makes the economic power of Germany is the geo
graphical coincidence between its historical development and
its industrial development through the coal. While the Eng
land of coal was separated from the historic England, with, as
a result, the veritable economic and even political revolution
which we have pointed out, the coal regions of Germany
have revealed themselves as if superimposed upon the older
historic regions. The exploitation of coal and industrial activ
ity began later in Germany than in England, but Germany
has been remarkably aided by this fortunate coincidence,
of which we shall briefly indicate the geographic phases.
With the exception of the rich zones of clays and loess which
fringe the mountains, Germany a hundred years ago was a
country in large part in its natural state with an agricultural
production that was worse than mediocre.1
The old mountainous country of the Hercynian zone is
bordered on the north by the great Germanic plain, Nord-
deutsches Flachland, a sort of narrowed prolongation of that
vast flat Europe of the east. This plain is covered with glacial
deposits, erratic blocks, lakes and marshes of every size; the
ground is irregular, chaotic, covered with moors and heaths, for
ests of pines, or damp bogs. In short, the region is little suited
to human establishment and rebellious to intensive exploitation.
This plain toward the south comes in contact with the moun
tain, forming a whole series of festoons that project forward
mainly in three large gulfs: the double gulf of Cologne and
Westphalia, the gulf of Saxony with Halle and Leipzig, and the
gulf of Silesia with Breslau. It is also by way of these gulfs
that the Rhine, the Saal, the Mulde, the Elbe, and finally the
Oder escape from the mountains to join the northern seas.
The transition from the mountain to the plain is very gradual,
and along this line of contact from one end to the other, from
west to east, a series of cities with a historic past have nat
urally located themselves, so that it becomes a very important
border of human beings and large cities: Cologne, Miinster,
Osnabriick, Minden, Hanover, Gottingen, Magdeburg, Halle,
1See Werner Sombart, Die deulsche Volkswirtschaft im Neunzehnten J ahrhundert,
Georg Bondi, Berlin, 1903.

404 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
Leipzig, Dresden, Breslau. These three gulfs represent the
essential regions of historic settlement from the point of view
of cities as well as geology and orography.
Now this great zone of contact, and especially the three
gulfs, are, in the part formed by the plain which is rich in land
suitable for cultivation (clay and loess), very well provided
with natural means of communication, and in the mountainous
part very rich in pure water, wood, and deposits of ore.
As a result of a geographical phenomenon analogous to that
which explains the deposit of coal in Great Britain all about
the old highlands, coal has been concentrated around the
old highlands in middle Germany. But while this border in
England, before the nineteenth century, was but little inhab
ited or even almost deserted, three of the most important coal
beds of Germany discovered on the face of the mountains
have coincided, not unnaturally, with the three great gulfs of
historic activity.
The Saar coal fields had a very great part to play in Ger
man industry but these have now been internationalized in
favor of France as a contribution toward the indemnity that
Germany has to pay the Allied Powers. Sixteen per cent of
Germany's coal production was in the Saar region. At the
end of fifteen years a plebiscite is to determine final ownership.
We wish particularly to call attention to the phenomena of the
three groups of coal beds of Westphalia, Saxony, and Silesia.1
A. Owing to the clear water, the abundance of fuel furnished
by the forests, and the presence of iron ore, the last spurs of
the Rothaar and of the Sauerland are among the oldest indus
trial centers of central Europe. In the eleventh century
Cologne was not only a political and intellectual center, but
also an industrial center with its cloth factories and its market
for precious metals.
B. In the same way, around the "gulf" of Saxony are the
Hartz Mountains, whose silver, lead, and iron mines are very
old and were valuable resources for the first emperors of the
House of Saxony. Near by extends the saliferous region, -the
*It is, moreover, the Rhine-Westphalia basin that is the greatest producer. Hugo
Bottger, a member of the Reichstag, wrote in 1909 that 56 per cent of the total pro
duction of Germany came from there, while the coal region of Upper and Lower
Silesia furnished 27 per cent and that of Saarbriick only 10 per cent ("L'Industrie et
le commerce des charbons en Allemagne," Rev. icon, internal. April 15-20, 1909, p. 104)-

FACTS OF DESTRUCTIVE EXPLOITATION 405
influence of which is seen in the names of Halle and Saale.
To the south, finally, is the Erzgebirge, whose silver mines
were already celebrated in the twelfth century, and which has
been one of the cradles of the metallurgic industry in Europe.
C. Even the gulf of Silesia, along the border of the Sudetes,
had in the Middle Ages only small industrial cities where flax
was spun and woven. As history developed, these old centers
found themselves isolated ; on the north they were bordered by
that great, infertile, inhospitable plain which unfortunately
separated them from the Hanseatic ports and placed a barrier
between industry and commerce difficult to overcome.
Part of the Silesian coal fields will undoubtedly go to
Poland as a result of the plebiscite which, by the terms of
the Peace Treaty of 191 9, is to determine final ownership as
between Germany and Poland.
In the eighteenth century Cologne had fallen from its past
grandeur, Dresden was only a museum, and Breslau had long
been on the road to complete decline.
At this particular point in history there entered a group of hu
man facts which were to prepare and favor the later work of coal.
In the midst of this great damp and marshy plain of northern
Germany and stretching from west to east there is a topographic
depression, a transverse groove,1 which corresponds to a stage
of withdrawal of the great Scandinavian glacial cap.
It was the Great Elector and Frederick II who began the
immense and fruitful work, which is being finished in our own
day and which consists of building an unbroken system of
waterways from east to west, a continuous and easy commer
cial route from the Vistula to the Oder and the Elbe (later
even to the Ems and the Rhine).2
Berlin was created almost entirely in the seventeenth and
the eighteenth centuries,3 at a point where the glacial ridges of
xIn reality a double groove.
2 See in the March, 1910, number of Petermanns Mitt, the article by Professor
Grayelius, "Zur Frage der Schiffahrtsabgaben auf deutschen Fliisse," LVI, 1910,
pp. 123-126, and especially the map which accompanies it: " Binnenschiff ahrtsstrassen
im Deutschen Reich," scale of 1:3,700,000, Table 21.
3At the time of the Thirty Years' War, Berlin had only 12,000 inhabitants; again,
the plague made the population go down to 9,000 and even to 5,000, under George
William. On the contrary, at the death of the Grand Elector, early in the 1 7th cen
tury, Berlin had already 20,000 inhabitants; at the death of Frederick William the First
it counted 100,000 inhabitants and 4,200 houses, and at the death of Frederick-William
the Second, successor of Frederick the Great, 165,000 inhabitants and 6,900 houses.
26 '

406

HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

the north and south, both with low relief, draw near to each
other and form a sort of defile, in which flows the Spree.
Berlin is a great river center established midway on the water
route which runs from the Russian frontier to the lower
Elbe and hence to Hamburg and may be considered a sort of
back-port for Hamburg. It is a political capital which, by
installing itself in the midst of the neglected hinterland, forced
this region to become a great center of intercourse and, by
the development of communication, strengthened the hitherto
feeble bond between the great seaports of the North Sea and of
the Baltic and the historic centers of the three southern gulfs
already mentioned. Everything is now ready, it would seem,
for the exploitation of coal to produce its maximum -effect.
All modern Germany, which is an industrial and commercial
Germany, is explained by this superposition of the industrial
activity due to coal upon the old historic activity of the cities.
But all that has been possible, or at least has reached its high
est point, only through the creation of that central water
artery which joins two metropolises, the one essentially
industrial (Berlin, 2,121,000 inhabitants, and with its suburbs
3,000,000 or even 3,500,000 in 191 2), and the other pre
dominantly commercial (Hamburg, 936,000 inhabitants).
Advance in Population in Thousands of Inhabitants

1801

1850

1871

189s

1900

1905

1910

Berlin1 
Hamburg 

172100

415 161

826240

1,677 625

2,500 706

2,793 803

3.430 936

In the chapter on historic geography (chap. VIII, § 4), it will
be in place to point out briefly the general influence of all
these economic facts upon the political history of contem
porary Germany.

iFigures for 1900, 1905, 1910 include the suburbs. The progress of the single
city of Berlin, year by year (without the suburbs), in thousands of inhabitants:
1899  1,846
1900  1,888
1901  1,893
1902  1,911
1903  1.946
1904  1,988
On January 2, 1910, Berlin had 2,121,134 inhabitants. All the figures in the table, up
to 1908, are from the Statislisehes Jahrbuch der Sladt Berlin, 31, issued by H. Silber-
gleit, Berlin, 1909. The last three figures are supplied through the courtesy of C.
Wendt, librarian of the Royal Bureau of Statistics of Prussia, at Berlin.

1905  2,043
1906  2,091
1907  2,104
1908  2,111
1909  2,111
1910  2,121

FACTS OF DESTRUCTIVE EXPLOITATION

407

A map of the density of the population in Germany shows
at the same time to what extent the economic life of to-day
has been concentrated and developed within the regions

¦Jlfti-e Clian 520
per square mile
{200 per square km.)
Fig. 151. Population Zones of Contemporary Germany
Besides the very populous region of the middle Rhine, the three "gulfs" are seen:
that of the east (Silesia) joins that of the center (Saxony) ; that of the west joins
the region of dense population in the coal and industrial fields of France and Belgium.
which we have called the three historic gulfs, and of what
importance for all contemporary Germany is the geograph
ical significance of the development of Berlin and Hamburg
(see Fig. 151).
A map of all Europe shows the general predominance of
population along that great fringe which begins almost with
the coal fields of the Donetz and runs to the coal fields of
Wales (see Fig. 152), a long line of factories, an almost unbroken
strip of crowded humanity.

E. Coal in Other Countries. The Circulation of Coal
The same facts that we have observed as marking the coal
deposits of Great Britain and of Germany may be verified in
all the fields where coal is exploited.

408

HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

Such regional studies should be pursued by seeking both
the great general facts and the phenomena more peculiar
to a given region. In connection with the Franco-Belgian
region and the coal fields of the north and of Pas-de-Calais,1
it would be worth while to analyze the relation of the coal
which is extracted at these points with the industrial and

Fig. 152. Population Zones of Contemporary Europe
The broken line is merely for reference ; it is the line of the former Russian frontier.
It is seen here to what an extent the facts of population density are independent of
political boundaries even toward the east.
commercial center of Paris : the development of the traffic on
all the canals of the north, of the navigation of the Oise, and
]In France, in 1908, the collieries of Nord and of Pas-de-Calais alone produced
26J4 million American tons — that is to say 64.5 per cent of the total production of the
country. And this is not an exceptional fact but an almost constant proportion (see,
for example, the diagram of Fig. 153 for the year 1916).

FACTS OF DESTRUCTIVE EXPLOITATION

409

I and

'^ISSptsS?0*

even indirectly of the lower Seine. The great importance of
Paris as a river port should be emphasized.
Between the network of the canals of the north, with
particularly a local trade and a regional importance, and the
line of the Seine, with an ancient
historic'and economic life which has
been recently improved, but where
the improvements .have allowed its
life to continue rather than to be
transformed, is the furrow and nat
ural road formed by the Oise, which
has acquired all its importance in
the nineteenth century. A true
purveyor of coal for the great in
dustrial center of Paris, the Oise had
a decisive influence in the happy
outcome of an important part of ^^SER£^S^
French economic historv (see Fig. Departments of Pas-de-
. _ . J s ° Calais and Nord, France
154)- But for it the great economic The figures indicate the pro.
Capital WOuld have burned but a duction in millions of tons and
•i-ii 11 ,. « .. are for the year 1916.
ridiculously small proportion of the
national coal, and the port of Paris would have been flooded
as formerly, but with more disastrous consequences, by coal
from England.1
As a type of coal and industrial region far from the sea
one might choose the region of Saint Etienne, or the region of
Montceau-Blanzy, with the Creusot iron works, which corres
ponds with a narrow depression between the Morvan and
the Charolais groups of ancient rocks. In the latter case
it would become evident that the coal is to-day only an
accessory industry, which is unimportant in comparison with
metallurgy; it would also be clear that the Central Canal,
constructed too soon — that is, before the industrial develop
ment of Creusot — passes too far from the present active
center to serve it profitably.2
1E. Gruner, Les Voies navigables du Nord de la France, vers Paris, leur etat actuel,
mesures a prendre en vue d'en augmenter I'effet utile, Central Committee of the Collieries
of France, February, 1897, Paris.
2For the study of the French coal basins, there are three excellent publications by
the Central Committee of the Collieries of France, and especially its Atlas.

410

HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

The transportation of coal, its general "circulation," brings
in much more complicated facts, and causes much more active
competition than one might imagine.
We have already noted the intimate connection between

Fig. 154. The Coal and Industrial Region of the Franco-Belgian Field
and the Head of the Oise Valley Leading toward Paris
the coal of Newcastle and the prodigious activity of the Lon
don industrial center. The "maritime circulation" of coal
is vast, but it is not the only circulation. More and more
to-day the railroads, almost as much as the sea, assure to the
English metropolis its supply of coal.

Coal

Carried to London from 1905 to 1909 1

Method of
Transportation

I9°S
Tons

1906
Tons

1907
Tons

1908
Tons

1909
Tons

7,993,969 20,592
9,363,194
17,377,755

8,348,423 28,008
9,229,722
17,606,153

9,198,797 27,549
9,04I,9H
18,268,260

9.030,423 25,679
8,846,166
17,902,268

8,609,727

3T.I23

9,809,162
Total 
18,450,012
In human geography it would not be necessary to follow coal
under the soil, for example under the Campine and Holland
— a task for geologists — but wherever coal is transported
•According to the Coal Tables, 1908-1909, London, 1910. p. 54.
FACTS OF DESTRUCTIVE EXPLOITATION 411
over land or sea. It would be necessary to follow English
coal to Marseilles and to Genoa (where in one of these
places, Marseilles, it meets with French coal, circulating with
difficulty over the interior railroad system of France, and in
the other with German coal, which has come through the
Gotthard tunnel) and see it, owing to the ease and cheapness
of transportation by sea, determining industrial centers in
both places. These centers appear theoretically far from
coal, but they are in reality close to it.1 It would be neces
sary to follow Australian coal in its dispersion from New
South Wales across the entire Pacific and then explain the
expansion and present decay of the traffic. It would be
necessary to note how the coal of India has made possible
the establishment and development of native industry — the
cotton industry of Bombay, which competes with Manchester;
the jute industry of Calcutta, which competes with Dublin.2
It would finally be necessary to grasp the stimulating influence
of coal wherever it is simply consigned to storage for recoaling
purposes: the island of Perim, at the narrow outlet of the
Red Sea, living by means of the coal of Newcastle, and even
Algiers, which has acquired a large part of its present impor
tance by reason of being a coal port, etc.
It is difficult to attempt to sketch briefly the general
picture of the complex circulation of coal. Evidently coal
follows customary routes that have become, as it were, fixed.
Of the 13 or 14 million tons of coal which the United States
has exported annually within recent years, 11 million tons,
or about four-fifths of the total, have been sent into the
Dominion of Canada.3 Likewise upon the sea there are regu
lar lines devoted to the transportation of coal, as, for example,
•From 1886 to 1900 more than half the English coal expprted has been for Medi
terranean ports; see D. A. Thomas, "The Growth and Direction of Our Foreign
Trade in Coal during the Last Half Century," J. R. Stat. Soc, LXVI, Part III, 1903,
pp. 439-534, 1 diagram and 1 map. Let us add that English coal goes even as far
as Genoa for a cheaper rate and in greater quantity than the German coal.
2In 1908 English India had produced almost 13 million tons (only I million in
1878); see Pierre Clerget, La Giographie, January 15, 1910, p. 57.
3The exact figures for the years of the Census ending June 30, 1909, are:
Coal Exported by the United States in Millions of Tons:
General Total To Canada
1906-1907  13.3 9.9
1907-1908  14.7 n.o
1908-1909  13.9 10.9

412 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
from Cardiff and Newcastle to Rouen and Havre.1 But these
are really exceptions. A large part of the coal transported
by sea is taken as ballast at reduced rates by tramp steamers.2
In view of the impossibility of obtaining cargoes for each voyage,
it is often preferable to carry a substitute for ballast rather than a
mere dead weight of sand or water. The chief of these substitutes
is coal, of which by far the largest part transported over the ocean
is not taken as a paying load, but as lost weight in the sense that it
does not pay the real cost of the voyage; but its very small freightage
is always worth a little more than the pure loss in the transportation
of ballast, which must itself be bought and loaded and unloaded at
the expense of considerable labor.
The influence of this factor of ballast causes the exportation of
coal to have no significance in -comparison with icoal resources or
even coal extraction. Thus 'Great Britain, which exports annually-
more than 60 million tons of coal, although she mines less, transports
by sea several times as much coal to foreign countries as the United
States. This British export coal is eagerly sought after by thousands
of tramp vessels, both sailing and steam, which unload annually in
English ports the enormous quantity of wheat, maize, cotton, wood,
rice, and other commodities or raw materials with which this manu
facturing nation feeds itself and its mills.
The exportation of finished products requires so little room that
the vessels of the regular lines can take care of it almost entirely. -
Many tramp vessels leave port loaded with ballast and the others
carry the greater part of the 60 million tons of exported coal at a
price so low that English coal could sometimes be carried to Peru
or even to San Francisco at $2.50 (ten shillings) per ton. English
coal is regularly exported to Chile and South Africa; the Argentine
Republic and Brazil each receive at the present time about a million
tons per year, while the United States, the coal of which costs the
same price and is of better quality, sends annually to these countries
only a few cargoes of a special kind of coal.
Thus Japan and Australia, as coal-producing countries, can be
compared only with American states of the fourth class, but condi
tions of ocean transportation make them relatively important ex
porters distributing coal to vast regions. For a long time San
Francisco regularly imported coal from Australia, Wales, and the
north Atlantic ports of the United States. To-day, Japanese coal
'The chief customer of the United Kingdom for coal is France.
Coal Exported by the United Kingdom in Millions of Tons:
General Total To France
1907  7^-7 i-'.o
1908  71.7 11.6
1909  7-3 11.6
According to the Coal Tables, 1908-1909, London, 1910.
aConsult W. Stanley Jevons, "Foreign Trade in Coal," Publications of the Department
of Economics in University College of South Wales, King and Son, London.

FACTS OF DESTRUCTIVE EXPLOITATION 413
goes to Alaska, whose coast is not so far from our mines as the old
Japanese coal markets of Honolulu and San Francisco.1
The two greatest coal-exporting countries in the world are
the two whose coal regions we have examined in some
detail — the United Kingdom with an annual exportation of
about 60 million tons and Germany with nearly 30 millions.
What has been said is sufficient to give a glimpse of all the
different questions of a geographical character which are
raised by coal — a great revolutionary force which has made
and unmade cities and which has often shown itself the mistress
of<the economic and political destinies of states and provinces.
F. Statistics of Production
After all the regional and local analyses, let us examine,
with the help of statistics, the economic total — that is, after
the geographical study, the statistical study. This will show
us better than any other the full significance of the phenom
ena examined. It will further show to what degree year by
year the United States is winning industrial predominance.
Production of Coal and Lignite in the Chief Producing Countries
in Millions of Tons

1870

1885 . 1895

190 1

1904 1908

United States . . .
Great Britain . . .
Germany 
Austria-Hungary France 
Belgium 
Russia 

14.6
92.0 18.2 3-89-4
10.5 Q-3

33
123 37

71
164 65 17
21

111 . 1
178.6

81
2221 19 4

193- 1
212.2 1 14. 6
34-730.922.6

293.2245-3 168.6

35-624.4 18.2

351-8415260.3 186.7 43-0 37-7
25-321 .6

292237 44
4i 25
23

460.8
295-3239.6 52.54i-7
25-928.6

534321
231 56
452531

Total World Production of Coal and Lignite in Millions of Tons2

1890.1895-1900.1901.1902.
1903.1904.

.518-561.767
.786 .802
.883
.886

I9°5  930
1906  984
1907  1,113
1908  1,168
1909  1,310
1912  i,377
1913  i,478

For the first time in 1907, and again in 1908, the production

¦J. Russell Smith, "Les Transports oceaniques," Rev. icon, inlernat., March 15-20,
1911, pp. 454 and 455; also J. Russell Smith, The Ocean Carrier; a History and
Analysis of the Service and Discussion of the Rales of Ocean Transportation, G. P.
Putnam's Sons, New York, 1908.
2Yearbook of the U. S. Department of Agriculture, 1915.

414 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
of coal and lignite exceeded a billion tons, and this production
will doubtless continue in the years to come.
Let us compare this gigantic amount with the total of some
other products of extractive industry for the two years (1908
and 1909)1: 1908 1909
In Millions of Tons
Sea salt and rock salt  15.8 16.3
Petroleum  40.0 41.0
Iron ore  123.0 148.6
Coal and lignite  1,168.0 1,310.0
Statistics for the world at large certainly confirm the very
great importance we have given to this last type of extractive
industry. 'According to the tables of " Statistiques internationales " of the volumes Statis-
iiques de Vindustrie minirale et des appareils a vapeur en France et en Algirie pour
Vannee 1908  pour I'annee 1909 (official publications of the Ministry of
Public Works).

CHAPTER VI
SPECIAL STUDIES OF SMALL NATURAL UNITS
FIRST EXAMPLE: TYPES OF "ISLANDS" OF THE
DESERT: THE OASES OF THE SUF AND
OF THE MZAB
I. The islands. The islands of the stony desert and of the sandy
desert.
2. The dunes of the Suf. The gardens, the houses, and the
cities. The S oaf as.
3. The Shebka of the Mzab. The wells and the gardens. The
houses and the cities. The Mozabites.
4. Conclusions: The Suf and the Mzab.
I. THE ISLANDS. THE ISLANDS OF THE STONY DESERT AND OF THE
SANDY DESERT
After having studied the series or groups of human facts —
facts of the unproductive occupation of the soil, facts of plant
and animal conquest, facts of destructive exploitation — let us
approach these facts as a whole in all their natural com
plexity.1 In the study of natural unities human geography
should first try its hand on the "islands." As definite speci
mens we shall choose representative types of "islands" of the
desert and then, in the following chapter, "island" groups
of the high mountain.
Much has been said of the Soafas and their gardens, of the
Mozabites and their wells; and the language, the race, the
religion, and the history of both these peoples have been
often spoken of. Much has even been written about the
'Needless, to say, this classification, which simplifies analysis and investigation,
is not to be imposed as a sacred formula on all studies in human geography. On the
contrary, so far as possible, geographic study should represent life just as it presents
itself, with its own particular features in each natural environment; here the domi
nant fact will be fisheries; there, the herd; again, fields or houses; and in the general
study of unities or of regions of the earth it is the typical and significant fact one
must try to put in the foreground. Certainly in an irrigated region everything
depends upon a well- watered garden; it is therefore with the garden that this study
must begin. We have tried to keep faithfully to the true order of importance in
the double monograph which follows. 415

416 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
Mzab,1 and, while the literature concerning the Suf is not
so abundant, — which is natural — it is at least sufficient.2
There is a great depression of the Wad Rir' which runs from
the Shot Melrir to Tugurt and bending toward the south
west continues as far as Wargla. In places the ground-water
near the surface shows itself in shots while the deeper
water issues from artesian wells. On both sides of this region
extend two masses of very different aspect and nature, but
both infertile and inhospitable. On the one side, toward the
east, are the great dunes which are the northern prolongation
and the limit of the eastern Erg; on the other, toward the west,
is the calcareous, rocky Shebka, with surfaces of hamada; on
the one side the desert of sand, on the other the desert of stone.
In each of these two desert regions different peoples, equally
independent and original, have succeeded in establishing them
selves and subsisting. They have created and maintained
oases: in the midst of the dunes, the oases of the Suf; in the
midst of the Shebka, the oases of the Mzab. In each region
are nearly 200,000 date palms which feed more than 20,000
inhabitants — large numbers for plantations and populations
'The excellent thesis by Masqueray, Formation des cites chez les populations siden-
laires de V Algirie (Paris, 1886), deserves special mention. This volume begins with a
critical bibliography — a special bibliography of the Wad Mzab, pp. xliii-lxviii.
Particularly to be noted among the works and articles given by Masqueray are: the
articles by Duveyrier, "Tour du monde," 1861, Petermanns Mitt., 1859 and i860, to
which he certainly should have added the first one, which appeared in the Bull, de
la Sociite de giographie de Paris, 4th series, XVIII, 1859, "Coup d'oeil sur le pays des
Beni-Mezab et sur celui des Chaanba occidentaux;" the book by Ville (1872), and the
brochure by Coyne, Le Mzab (1879). Among more recent works should be noted the
following: K. Zeys, Ligislation mozabite, son origine, ses sources, son present, son
avenir, Algiers, 1886 (a full inter-page bibliography); Dr. Ch. Amat, Le Mzab el les
Mzabites, Paris, 1888; A. Konig, Reisen und Forschungen in Algerien. s. 1. n. d. (imp.
Dornbluth, at Bernburg, 1896); Dr. J. Huguet, "Dans le Sud- Algerien," Bull. Soc.
geog., 7th series, XX, 1899; " Les Juifs du Mzab," Bull, et mim. Soc. d' anthropologic de
Paris, 5th series, III, 1902, pp. 559-573; " Les Softs," Rev. ecole d' anthropologic de Paris.
XIII, 1903, pp. 94-99, etc.; a good study by Lieutenant Charlet, "Les Pabniers du
Mzab," Bull. Soc de giographie d' Alger, X. 1905, pp. 11-S7; and various articles which
we shall have occasion^to quote: Captain de I'Eprevier, M. Idoux, etc. See finally the
exact work of Feliu, Etude sur la ligislation des eaux dans la chebka du Mzab.
2Again, some rather superficial remarks are to be found in certain works such as
Largeau's Le Sahara algirien, les deserts de VErg (2d edition, Hachette, Paris,
1881), pp. 325-338, etc. But one may always consult with profit, for the Suf as well
as for the Mzab, the general and fundamenlal works by G. Rolland and H. Schirmer,
and one will find very useful information in the " Revues bibliographiques des travaux
sur la geographie de l'Afrique septentrionale," which Augustin Bernard has published
every year since 1898, Bull. delaSoc. de geographie d' Alger, as well as in A. Bernard and
N. Lacroix, Hislorique de la penilration saharienne, Algiers-Mustapha, 1900. See
finally the paper by R. Rousseau on the countries of the Soafas in La Giographie,
May 15, 1907, pp. 393-395. From the point of view of "La Position geographique
a El-Oued (Suf)," we adopt the conclusions of the article by Paul Pelet, which
appeared under this title in La Giographie, XII, 1905, pp. 29-34 and pi. 1.

THE "ISLANDS" OF THE DESERT 417
in the open desert. These oases, thus established in the Sahara
by men who had at their disposition neither streams nor springs,
are veritable masterpieces of the art of cultivation and at first
view, genuine paradoxes. In both places the result is obtained
by extraordinarily persistent toil. In the Suf a continual
struggle must be maintained against the sand-laden winds; in
the Mzab, an unceasing toil to obtain the indispensable water.
In short, these two groups of oases, so unlike each other,
seem to show two extreme types of careful and productive
cultivation under exceptionally unfavorable conditions.
2. the dunes of the suf. the gardens, the houses, and the cities.
the soafas
The Setting: The Dunes
The dunes which form the Eastern Erg stretch out to the
shots; but the Erg, which is spread out wide from west to
east between 300 and 320 north latitude, grows narrower
toward the north. The most northern part is a small
area of sand shut in by a large semicircle of depressions ; to
the west, the Wad Rir' with its almost lagoon-like series of
lowlands, shebkas, or shots, bordered by artesian - wells; to the
north, the great depression of the northern shots; and to the
east, the Shot el Jerid (see Fig. 155).
It is in the middle of this northern part of the Erg, that is,
in the midst of the dunes, that we find the oases of the Suf.
Lost amid the sands and separated by a journey of several
days1 from all other groups of oases, they form a little world
apart. One must know their setting in order to understand
the exceptional character of these oases. One must have
traveled through the dunes in order to appreciate at their full
value the curious gardens of the Suf. Traveling to El Wed2
'To go from the oases of the Suf to Tugurt requires a hard two days' journey;
to go to Djerid, three days; and to Ziban, five days.
2From El Wed to Tugurt there are 57 miles (92 kilometers) of telegraph wire;
it must be about 60 miles there on foot. It takes fifteen hours by horse; on foot,
an Arab of the region, walking straight ahead, made the trip in fourteen hours, but
that was an exceptional case. On the map (scale 1:1,400,000) there is a mistake:
El Wed is put too near Tugurt. Paul Pelet in his Atlas des colonies franQaises has
fortunately corrected this mistake; but, on the other hand, he has brought El Wed
a little too near the 5th long. E. (Paris); see map No. 7, Sahara algirien et tunisien.
and map No. 5, Algirie III, Prov. de Constantine. See "La Position geographique
d'El-Oued," an article (mentioned above) by the same Paul Pelet in La Geographie,
July 15, 1905, pp. 29-34, with a map, which adopts finally as coordinated with El Wed:
Long. 2. Paris, 4° 57' 20": Lat. N. 33° 19' So".

418

HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

from Tugurt, one crosses successive strips of dunes, nearly
parallel with each other. The strips of active dunes, piled
high with almost bare sand, stand out like bright lines (Fig.
156), while the strips of dead or extinct dunes have more
vegetation and from a distance appear as darker etches.
Thus the zone of the dunes proceeds ; to a zone upon which
the wind is now acting, working and modeling it and giving it
irregularities of relief which are constantly changing, there
succeeds another zone, a little lower and much less irregular,
which the wind is sprinkling more uniformly with sand. This
is a zone of aggradation. The general direction of these suc
cessive and alternate zones is north-northwest to south-south
east; toward the south the direction becomes a little more
north-south. Moreover, these zones, instead of being abso
lutely rectilinear, bend slightly, with a marked tendency to
form arcs of a circle with very gentle curvature.
Beyond the zones of the highest active dunes, such as the
region of Ourmes (Bu-Ourmes) , we find the flat surfaces or the

TJ= 
792
© Laghuat

ft Xi ra
?
Tugu

Sidi-Aoun ra|Deb.ila
Guemara >feT
Taibct-cl-gueblial

el Nfi
Jerld

QGexrara
406

jfGhardaia^'l•VssoBeni-Isguen

oMctlil:
524 -J,
V*

our ^

, 161® Wargla

/
to

V

Loiwitude East of Greenwich
Fig. 155. Oas"5s of the Suf and of the Mzab
In fixing the orientation of this map the conclusions drawn from the investiga
tions of Paul Pelet have been adopted for El Wed, which is 33° 19' 50* N. Lat. and
4° 57' 20" E. Long, from Paris. See note p. 417.
widest couloirs such as the relatively depressed strip which is
now occupied by the oases of the Suf. This slight depression
of the region of the oases gives it the appearance of a very wide
valley of a Quaternary wadi (ravine) and explains the legend,

THE "ISLANDS" OF THE DESERT

419

still repeated by the oldest inhabitants, that formerly a wide
river flowed through the country, the Wad Suf, which has

Joan Brunhes
Fig. 156. View of the Sands at the Suf Oasis. Typical Aspect of
a Zone of Active Dunes
disappeared and now flows underground.1 That the Chris
tians, the predecessors of the Soafas, saw the Wad Suf flowing
on the surface is purely legendary, but it is none the less true
that the oases are situated, if not above a subterranean stream,
at least above a water surface or a series of subterranean pockets
in which water is stored up in rather large quantities. "The
Wad Suf," says Georges Rolland, "must, in my opinion,
correspond to a more or less distinct waterway — or at least
to a zone of successive depressions — which must begin far
above the present oases and run from southeast to northwest
toward the Shot Melrir but the course of which is to-day
almost entirely masked by the great sand dunes of the eastern
Erg."2 Moreover, as all the explorers and scholars who
have studied the region insist, the great dunes throughout the
Sahara play the part of veritable water reservoirs.3
'See, H. Jus, article quoted, and G. Rolland, Hydrologie du Sahara.p. 224.
2Hydrologie du Sahara, p. 25. Georges Rolland, moreover, regards the surface
of the Suf as Slightly ascending; see Ibid., pp. 223-224.
3See, for example, G. B. M. Flamant, "La Traversee de l'Erg occidental," Ann. de
giog., VIII, 1890, p. 234. See also H. Schirmer, Le Sahara, pp. 173 ff.

420 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
To sum up, the gardens are irregularly distributed along one
of those wide strips where the thick accumulations of sand
have a flat surface in contrast to the sharp relief of the border
ing dunes. The Gardens of the Suf
The Soafas have taken refuge in the midst of the sands and
have patiently formed their gardens of date palms by digging
out these masses of sand to a depth of several yards. To be
able to plant their trees they have cleared away the sand until
they were near the water surfaces1 (or water table, as the surface
of the ground- water is called) , and the roots of the palm trees
have themselves found the subterranean water.
Thence comes the strange appearance of the gardens of the
Suf. They are surrounded by high banks and are scattered.
In these scattered funnel-like holes are grouped from seven or
eight to some dozens of date palms. Thus more or less dense
clusters formed by the tops of the trees appear scarcely to rise
above the level of the sandy camel trails (Fig. 157).
But these hollows thus dug in the sand are in constant dan
ger of being refilled. The dry sand of the desert is so easily
moved that at the slightest breath of wind the fine grains
are carried into the hollows, and, in spite of the Httle walls
or fences made of the trunks of palm trees, the gardens would
soon be filled up and the tall palm trees would soon be buried
to their tops if the Soafas were not constantly at work carrying
the sand back to the tops of the steep banks. They fill their
couffins, put them on their heads, climb painfully up the slope,
and empty their little baskets upon the top of these unstable
banks; and this goes on indefinitely. Those who are richer
use small asses loaded with a double couffin.
On the other hand, the Soafas do not have to bother them
selves with watering their gardens ; in the Suf there are neither
streams nor springs ; the tree itself draws water that is unseen
by man. Only now and then do we see wells on the sides
of the embankments which furnish water for the inhabitants
and their animals or for minor cultivation. The Soafas do not
'For the details of these works of excavation, see G. Rolland, Hydrologie du
Sahara, pp. 222-223.

THE "ISLANDS" OF THE DESERT

421

raise wheat or barley, which must be brought from the Tell.
They do, however, carry on some minor cultivation, — onions,
watermelons, henna, etc. — and for this they need a certain

^Stpp**:1 ^"£T

Fig. 157.

Jean Brunhes
General Aspect of the Gardens of El Wed

There is seen only the high tops of the palm-trees rising above great hollows dug
out of the sand of the desert; all the little black spots seen on the horizon indicate
scattered hollows like those in the foreground.
number of wells. Sometimes the water is drawn by means of
a chain or by a sweep, called the khotara.1 Certain of these
wells are common wells to which everyone may go, and as one
goes down the slopes toward them there are seen lines of women
and children like those that go down to the banks of the Nile.
The women carry large round water jars, while the small girls
have smaller jars or carry on their backs goatskin bottles.
'This contrivance consists essentially of a long wooden pole, resting in the middle
on a point of support; to one of the two extremities is attached a rock or a piece of
wood, acting as a counter-balance; at the other extremity is suspended a pouch of
skin, which serves as the bucket; the pouch is called in the Suf, as elsewhere in the
Ziban, etc., the delu. This rustic contrivance, very convenient as the wells are not
deep, is very common in many countries, France, Germany, HungaTy, etc.; the
gardeners of Genoa and Savona make use of similar contrivances which they call
"storks." And the Egyptian shaduf is of the same sort.
27

422 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
In the Suf, more exclusively than anywhere else, the date
palm is the principal object of cultivation.1 The most impor
tant group of these queer palm gardens, these "excavated
gardens," is in the neighborhood of El Wed. The gardens
have not the same value throughout the Suf, their prosperity
depending upon the quality and abundance of the subterranean
water. A line of demarcation may be regarded as running in
general northwest-southeast ; it passes through the very middle
of the gardens of El Wed and in El Wed itself the line may be
drawn from the abattoir on the north to the borj (storehouse)
on the south. All the gardens situated to the east of this line
are considered inferior in quality to those situated to the west;
the palm trees of the first group are sold for from $9.00 to
$28.00 (50 to 150 francs), while those of the second group bring
at least $48 (250 francs) each and sometimes even reach the
enormous sum of $96 or $116 (500 or 600 francs). These
prices are surprising, but the dates of the Suf are of a rare
quality. The hollows in which the trees are planted are
naturally overheated and form veritable hothouses which are
very favorable to the ripening of the fruit.
Moreover, the price of a product depends essentially upon
the general geographic conditions. The farther away a center
of cultivation is from all the great cultivated regions, and, like
the Suf, lost in the midst of the desert, the more the prices of
products cultivated on the spot are likely to rise. These are
the characteristics that distinguish the Suf and, as we shall
see, the Mzab. We should perhaps go further and give these
prices reached by the palm trees of the Suf as an example
showing that in these extreme cases labor is the essential
measure of value. A product costs more because it has
required more labor. If, in the oases of the east, palm trees
sell much more cheaply than those of the west, is it because
the dates are not so good? Is not that the explanation given
by Europeans? Since it is clear that toward the east the
subterranean waters are very good and abundant, is it not
true that the palm trees are less dear there than in the west
'On the distribution of the date palm, see again the study by Theobald Fischer,
" Die Dattelpalme. ihre geographische Verbreitung und kulturhistorische Btieutung,"
Petermanns Milt., Erganzungsheft, No. 64, 1881, and the map which accompanies the
study.

THE "ISLANDS" OF THE DESERT 423
simply because the sand is more humid than in the west and
the trees grow more easily and demand less labor?
The Characteristics of the Human Habitation
It seems that. where man gives great care to working the
ground, he shows the same care in at least a few other ways and
particularly in the art of building. It is certain that there are
few Saharan oases where cultivation demands such constant toil
as in the Suf, and there are no cities or villages in the Saharan
country where the houses are so carefully and we might- even
say so elegantly built as at El Wed, at Kuinine, or at Guemar.
It should also be said that the very original characteristics of
the house in the Suf depend upon the materials which the Soafas
have at their disposal. Stone is rare, and the only stones that
are found buried in this sea of dunes are very silicious, with
curious forms that have long caught the eye of travelers. They
sometimes take the form of roses, whence the name ' ' roses of
the Suf."1 The stones of the dunes contain sulphate of lime
in sufficient quantity to furnish a very good mortar used in
laying the' walls. Thus the Suf, though it has only one kind
of building material, has it in a unique form that supplies both
stone and mortar. Because of the ease with which the blocks
are superposed this material lends itself to difficult building.
In all countries, and especially in the Saharan oases, the
part of the habitation most difficult to construct is not the
walls but the roof (Chap. Ill, § i).
The walls may be and often are built — as at Biskra, at La-
ghuat, or at Bu-Saada — of simple bricks of clay dried in the
sun. But the overhead covering of the house is a much more
difficult problem to solve. Fortunately the two opposing walls
may be joined by trunks of palm trees cut into three or four
pieces and the problem of a roof is often solved in the Sahara
of southern Algeria and Tunis, as also in Egypt, by placing
palm stalks and dried earth upon this skeleton of a covering.
The stone of the Suf has not only permitted the building
of very solid walls, but also, above the four walls, hemispheri
cal cupolas, so that all the houses, even the most humble, end
'This monograph on the Suf and the Mzab was published in La Geographie, 1902,
with twenty illustrations, nine of which are in this book; the map, Fig. 155, p. 4181
is new.

424

HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

above in good architectural forms. With such materials the
inhabitants of the Suf are indeed past masters in the art of
building. Above their four walls they make pendentives and

Jean Brunhes
Fic. 158. A House with Cupola, between El Wed and Kuinine
then raise their hemispherical vaults directly without taking
the trouble to construct supporting arches ; tightly drawn cords
give them their dimensions and directions. One can easily
imagine what skill the builder must have in order to attain the
form of a cupola with such perfection. The cupolas have at
the most a diameter of 6 feet 6 inches (2 meters), and at the
least of 4 feet eleven inches (1.50 meters). A group of two,
three, or four cupolas belong to a single house. The small
rooms corresponding to each cupola communicate with each
other by a very regular semicircular arch.1 Often at the
upper central point of the vault rises a small truncated cone.
Such is the typical house which characterizes this group of
oases, and which adds another striking feature to the appearance
of the Suf. All these houses formed of cubes of masonry
capped with perfect hemispheres have a geometrical regulari
ty of alignment that is surprising, especially in the desert
(Fig. 159, general view of Kuinine). From a distance they
resemble cities of beehives, immense colonies of bees.2
'"These little houses have only a single opening with no door to close it; all those
belonging to the same family open on a_closed court with a stone wall the same height
as the rooms" (Com. A. Monsegur, "Etude sur la province de Constantine," Rev.
de giog., December, 1899, p. 427).
2In southern Tunis also one meets with very clever and curious constructions.
L. Pervinquiere, the geologist of Tunis, describes them in an article which is in every
way remarkable, " Le Sud-Tunisien," Rev. de geog. aim. Ill, 1909, pp. 395-468.
The storied houses of the ksar Mednine arc quite different from those of the Suf (see,
in Pervinquiere, p. 455, Fig. 23); but it is interesting to compare general views of
this ksar (p. 454, Fig. 22) with those of the cities of the Suf. Finally, one will find
in the study mentioned some information on the troglodytes of south Tunis.

THE "ISLANDS" OF THE DESERT

425

The Distribution of the Settlements; the Inhabitants
The settlements follow the gardens. The main center of
the houses is near the main group of gardens — for example,
El Wed, whose kasba is to-day occupied by the Arab Bureau
and the garrison. El Wed has at least a thousand cupolas,
the tall minaret of a great mosque rising above them. The
city, which is situated at the extreme southeast, commands
the group of oases of the Suf and there the most important
market is held. A little north and west of El Wed are the
two centers, Kuinine and Ourmes (more exactly Bu-Ourmes).
Toward the north, the ancient fortified village of Guemar,
which still important, ends the strip of small western

Jean Brunhes
Fig. 159. General View of a Type of Settlement in the Suf, at Kuinine
Note the rows of cupolas which cover the different rooms of each house
centers. On the east, strung in. a- line, are the little clusters
of houses of Z'goum, El-Behima, and Debila. One more
recent than the others, Sidi-Aoun, is only half a century old.1

'It is well to mention also, as connected with the same geographic type of human
settlement, the very small groups of houses of Dmirini and of Taibet-el-Guebha;
Taibet, for example, does not, properly speaking, form part of the Suf, but is much
farther south, about 21 miles (35 kilometers) to the east of Tugurt; but it is a group
of houses situated in the midst of the dunes in the same natural environment as the
little cities of the Suf; the gardens there are similar to those of the Suf; and the houses
there are crowned with cupolas identical with those of the Suf.

426 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
Finally, south of El Wed, is a special center, Hamich,
whose complex character it is important to note. Hamich
is intermediate between the fixed, sedentary settlement, such
as those mentioned above, and the transient settlement, the
agglomeration of nomads' tents. It is in truth a vast camp of
nomads whose tents spread over more than 4.9 miles (8 kilo
meters) . The camps are established beside gardens which are
exactly like those of which we have spoken above. The
extraordinary fact is that the tents are accompanied by small
houses built after the model of those of El Wed or of Guemar;
but they are not dwelling-houses, they are storehouses. During
the winter the Arab nomad comes and camps in front of his
storehouse, while he and his family live in a tent or in a hut
of palm leaves.
The Shamba nomads cannot bring themselves to live in
houses. The following facts illustrate this point: South of
the Suf a number of borjs were built and it was desired to
intrust the guarding of them to some Shambas; but the
Shambas are inferior guardians, for it is very difficult to get
them to live within the borj. They are willing to use the
buildings and the rooms of the borj as storing places while
they themselves pass the night outside in a tent or in huts
made of jerid (palm branches and leaves) or of branches of
retem. In any case, if one of the Shambas finally consents to
live within the borj, he is never willing that his family should
leave the tent.
The populations of the Sahara have been divided into the two
great opposing and often hostile classes of nomads and seden
tary peoples. ' But it goes without saying that, along with these
exclusively sedentary or nomadic groups, there are certain
groups which show the characteristics of both classes. The
oases of the Suf offer us a rather rich collection of such
intermediate groups.1
It is a small detachment of the great family of the Shambas,
those nomads par excellence, that comes every year and estab
lishes itself near the cupola-capped storehouses of Hamich.
These Shambas are the owners of a few gardens. They have
Ut is well to connect these facts with those which we have mentioned in sec
tion 6 at the end of chapter IV.

THE "ISLANDS" OF THE DESERT 427
not planted palm trees, but bought them. They are still
nomads, but nomads who own palm trees and who build houses
like the dwellings of sedentary peoples to serve as granaries.
The Ashesh and the Messaaba are nomadic tribes that have
become in part sedentary. They are to-day cultivators and
shepherds and have at the same time gardens and herds. The
Ashesh and the Messaaba form the bulk of the population
of El Wed. Among the inhabited centers of the Suf, El Wed is
somewhat exceptional. It has not the character of the ancient
ksur of sedentary people ; it has not the same appearance as
Guemar or even Kuinine ; it is built over a wider space, with
less care to crowd the houses together and with less thought
of defense. El Wed is not gathered within walls like Guemar.
There is between Guemar and El Wed the same difference
that there is in other lands between an ancient city with a
girdle of walls and a more modern city that has had a freer
development. A great tribe that is entirely sedentary, the Uled-Saud,
has peopled almost all the centers of which we have spoken —
Kuinine, Ourmes, Z'goum, Guemar, El-Behima, and Debila.
These sedentary populations are chiefly cultivators, but they
are also merchants. The inhabitants of Guemar manufacture
carpets, the famous carpets of the Suf, and sell them as far
away as the Tell.
Finally, a large number of the inhabitants of the Suf, not
finding the means of subsistence in the Suf where natural
conditions are so unfavorable to. cultivation, emigrate to the
Tell, to Constantine, Philippeville, and Bone, and here form
that class of economical and poor laboring people who furnish
the unskilled labor — porters, peddlers, etc. They are the
Uled-Passa. They remind us of other emigrants in the
great European cities who are water-carriers, floor-polishers,
porters,1 etc.
Thus the oases of the Suf form a complete whole from the
point of view of the Arab tribes. They contain a few Arabs
who are purely nomadic, who have remained nomads, besides
'In an article on the Jebel-Demmer (Ann. de giog., May 15, 1897, pp. 239-254) Paul
Blanchet describes the Matmata and the Duiri, whose dwellings are so curious. The
Duiri and especially the Matmata live in the Tell also; from the north they come to Tunis
and Sousse to fulfill the modest functions which the Soafas fufill in the Algerian Tell.

42S

HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

other nomads who have become sedentary but a short time
ago, and also of course a majority of inhabitants who are
purely 'sedentary.
The administrative organization of the Suf is not based
entirely upon a division by tribes nor upon a division by inhab
ited centers; it has aimed at depending upon local conditions
rather than at uniformity. The inhabitants of the Suf are
grouped in three tribes under the control of kaids, and in four
sheikhats under the control of sheikhs. The three tribes are
the Ashesh, the Messaaba, and the Uled-Saud, and the four
sheikhats axe those of Guemar, of El-Behima, of Debila, and
that of the Shambas. It is according to these natural group
ings that the Arab Bureau at El Wed draws up the tax lists.
The following table gives some interesting figures on the
number of animals and trees belonging to each of the groups : 1

Tribes

Number of
Persons

Camels

Sheep

Goats

Palm Trees

4,732
4,496 7,386

2,987
2,123 375

'4,575 8,225

14,903 8,305
2,OI2

38,086

27,10765,085

Uled-Saud 

Independent Sheikhats

3,682 i,i97 854
273
509 54
63
868
346 29
1,275
1,118 214229
1,083
37,005 13,912 9,30/ 1,650
22,620
6,979
24.550
27,864
192,152-
A commentary upon this table is not without interest. The
Uled-Saud and the people of Guemar, El-Behima, and
Debila represent the sedentary part of the population. They
number 13,119 and own all together only a thousand camels
(and it must be further noted that more than half of these camels
belong to the inhabitants of Guemar, who are the most inter
ested in commerce and have the greatest need of camels for
transportation). On the other hand, they own 125,309 palm
'By the authority of Captain Davy de Verville and the kindness of Lieutenant
Gascuel, these interesting figures concerning the number of animals and trees belonging
to each of the groups, were obtained from the local Bureau for the year 1899.
2This is the total number of palm trees giving revenue (since they have been
taxed) in^the year 1899. Comparing this number with the figures for 1875, according
to the " Etat d6taillee des oasis de l'0ued-Souf." which G. Rolland has given in the
"Appendice statistique" of his Hydrologie du Sahara algerien, p. 323. there were in
the Suf in 1855, 154,350 palm trees being taxed, which means, if the figures are correct,
an increase of 25 per cent in a quarter of a century.
THE "ISLANDS" OF THE DESERT 429
trees, or almost two-thirds of all the palm trees in the Suf.
But the small group of 273 nomadic Shambas own only 1,650
palm trees, while they have 868 camels. As to the Ashesh
and the Messaaba who form the main part of the popula
tion of El Wed, they represent, as we have said, a transi
tional type as nomads who have become in part sedentary
and are both cultivators and shepherds. They number 9,200
and, while owning about 65,000 palm trees, also possess rather
large herds (more than 5,000 camels, more than 22,000 sheep,
and more than 21,000 goats).
All these different populations, however, take from their
like geographical environment certain like characteristics.
We speak commonly of the inhabitants of the Suf, of the Soafas,
in spite of all the differences from ksar to ksar and from tribe
to tribe to which we have just called attention. It would be
childish to make all the distinctive manifestations of human
activity depend upon natural conditions. The attempts to
set out with a sort of fatalistic determinism to explain every
thing by geography end in such absurdities that they run the
risk of ruining the conception of a certain dependence of man
upon nature, a dependence that is relative and limited, or
conditional. It is, however, important to bring clearly to
light the facts of human life which manifestly spring from
geographic conditions. The sandy environment of the oases
of the Suf furnishes a typical example.
It is generally known to what a degree the wind, creator
and fashioner of dunes, sets its mark upon the sands ; the form
and direction of the dunes show the force and the direction of
the winds. There is a also a network of ripples in the sand
which, when closely examined, is only a network of miniature
dunes due to minor currents of air. The same effect is seen
on the surface of a sheet of water roughened by the wind.1
Likewise the "writing" of the rain remains for several days
on the sand, if the wind does not blow ; and thus the sand keeps
'The study of these "ripples'' of water and these "waves" of sand, as well as
of all similar movements, is in the process of being established as a branch of geo
graphical science, under the -name of kymatology (Xu/ua, wave) ; see, for example, Otto
Baschin, "Die Entstehung wellenahnlicher Oberfiachenformen, Ein Beitrag zur
Kymatologre." Zeitschr. der Ges. fur Erdkunde zu Berlin, XXXIV, 1899, No. 5, pp.
408-424; and the various publications by Vaughan-Cornish (see Ann. de giog., Bibl.
de 1900, No. 86). See also Jean Brunhes, "I/'Allure reelle des eaux et des vents
enregistree par les sables," La Geographie, XIV, 1906, pp. 193-210 and Figs. 22-31.

430 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
the traces of almost everything that passes over its surface —
the six feet of an insect, or the sinuous line of a serpent, or,
more pronounced because of their greater weight, the imprints
of the feet of men or animals. The inhabitants of the Suf
are accustomed to observe and recognize these imprints. They
know the feet of their own camels and of those of their neigh
bors. When they see the tracks of a caravan in the midst of
the dunes, they easily make out to what tribe the caravan
belongs. The men of El Wed let their camels run free to
pasture and when they have need of them they find them by
following their tracks over the sand. In short, among the
thousand tracks which cross each other on a trail or on a
village square and which seem to us absolutely indistinct,
the skillful Soafas can find the ones they seek.
This exceptional facility in following the tracks of any
passer-by is doubtless the reason that at El Wed and in all the
Suf thefts are less numerous than elsewhere. The Soafas are
no better than the other natives of the Sahara; they are even
considered as inferior to many of them and as cowards by
nature; but this respect for the property of others, which is
extraordinary in the desert, is there a geographical fact. The
robber can be too easily pursued and caught. Moreover,
certain men devote themselves especially to this minute
observation of tracks left in the sand. They are known as
"trackers" and are held in high respect. When a crime is
committed, a murder for example, these trackers are of the
greatest assistance to the police; they find the crirninal with
incredible speed and certainty.
In the oases of the Suf a man cannot go anywhere, cannot
take a step, without leaving on the sand the trace of his pas
sage. This geographical fact is too general and too unavoid
able not to have some influence upon human activity.
3- THE SHEBKA OF THE MZAB. THE WELLS AND THE GARDENS. THE HOUSES
and the cities. the mozabites
The Environment: The Shebka
The dunes, being reservoirs of water, have in places a rather
abundant vegetation and form pastures for the camels and the
sheep. When, leaving the dunes, one penetrates the stony

THE "ISLANDS" OF THE DESERT 431
desert of the hamadas, it seems as if one were leaving a rather
hospitable region and facing for the first time the true desert.
On the large, indefinite, stony patches of the hamadas there
are no large tufts of plants ; only in the gullied bottoms of the
dried-up wadi a few scattered sprigs of vegetation may furnish
meager forage for the limited herds of sheep that find diffi
culty in living there.1
The Shebka of the Mzab is formed upon limestone and its
broad surface is yellowish white, harsh, and bare. It has been
eroded and fashioned by the waters, especially in the north
east, so that it appears as if cut into confused and irregular
series of steep-walled ravines which the natives have naturally
compared to the entangled threads of a net — the word shebka
means "net."
To find oases in the midst of the Shebka seems more aston
ishing than to find them in the midst of the dunes of the Suf.
It is well not to forget that the Shebka is. from 1,900 to 2,300
feet (600 to 700 meters) above the level of the sea, while no
point in the Suf exceeds 300 feet (100 meters). The Shebka
is at a very high level in comparison with the depression of the
Wad Rir' and the ground-water surface that marks that
depression. One must have traveled on foot over the wrinkled and
hillocky surface of the Shebka2 or have seen the steep and
sterile sides of the smallest slopes in order to have a clear idea
of the desert conditions. Between Berrian and Ghardaia, for a
'In Le Pays de moulon, we read (p. 232): "There are about 33,000 sheep within
the limits of Ghardaia. In proportion to the immense extent of the country, this
flock is quite small as to numbers. However, one can scarcely hope to see it increase,
because of the poverty of the pasture lands." We must remember that the limits
of Ghardaia comprise not only the region of Mzab, but also the country of Wargla,
of El Golea, and of Hassi-Inifel (it was only in 1897 that the capital of the extreme
south, which was originally at Ghardaia, was transferred 'to El Golea; see Augustin
Bernard and N. Lacroix, Hislorique de la pinilraiion saharienne , p. 125). The number,
33,000, seems to me less than the true number of sheep; but when it is a question of
wandering flocks, everything depends upon the time of year which one has chosen,
and the statistics are even more liable to error than usual.
2"The soil, consisting of dolomites, yellow-brown on the outside and white
inside, of crystalline structure and well stratified, presents at the surface fragments of
sandstone made of quartz, grayish-black, often numerous enough to form great
blotches on the earth, which attract the attention from a long distance. The rough
rock, sharp-edged and hard, is sometimes remarkably polished, sometimes curiously
chiseled, carved, hollowed, transformed in places into veritable lace-work. Various
meteorological agents play their part in such modifications. Chief among them are
the wearing away by sands which the winds carry, the dilations and contractions
resulting from sudden changes of temperature ... . and the action of certain rains,
heavily charged with carbonic acid" (Dr. Ch. Amat, Le M'zab el les M'zabiles, p. 70).

432 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
distance of 27 miles (44 kilometers), it was impossible to find
a single source of water supply where a relay post for the
stage service could be established.
The Wells and the Dams of the Mzab
Fortunately there are in the plateau of the Mzab some
underground stores of water where the limes and the marls
which lie beneath them come in contact.1 These water sur
faces are, however, rather deep down, and naturally it is easiest
to dig wells to reach them in the beds of the wadi. Of the seven
oases of the Mzab, five are close to the thalwegs2 of a single
wad and its affluents; these five are Ghardaia, Melika, Beni-
Isguen, Bu-Nura, and El Ateuf . The two other oases, Berrian
and Gerrara, are likewise situated in depressions, as well as the
more southern oases of Metlili, which resemble in character the
oases of Mzab proper. But, even in the depressions, one is
often far from the subterranean water, and the wells of the Mzab
vary in depth between 26 and 180 feet (8 and 55 meters).3
The subterranean waters of the Mzab are not artesian;
the water must be drawn up from depths of 98, 130, 165 feet
and more (30, 40, 50 meters).4 How will it be possible to keep
up vast gardens under such conditions, when all the water
must be drawn from such a depth? Will men have the cour
age and perseverance to carry on such a task unceasingly?1
The Beni-Mzab, heretical Mussulmans, beaten and hunted,
have established themselves in the midst of the Shebka and
have had and still have the tenacity and the energy to draw
this deep-lying water. All life is dependent upon water;
the first and essential task is to obtain water. It is then with

'See G. Rolland, Hydrologie du Sahara, p. 34. Moreover, according to the in
vestigations made by J. E. Lahache, the water in the wells of Mzab is some of the
best in the whole Sahara (Elude hydrologique sur le Sahara francais oriental, Paris,
1900, p. 41).
2The lowest line of drainage of a valley is known technically as a thalweg, literally
valley-way. Valley floor is nearly equivalent for the purpose of human geography
(W. S. Slichter, Water Supply Paper, No. 67, U. S. Geol. Surv.).
3 According to Villc (whose Exploration giologique du Beni Mezab, du Sahara et
de la rigion des steppes de la province d' Alger [1872] it is always well to consult and
to re-read), a well of Melika — which is moreover the deepest well in all the Mzab — is
almost 233 feet (71 meters) deep and contains 12 feet (3.72 m.) of water (p. 50).
4The Mozabites call a great many of the watering places of the Shebka, Ain (for
example, Ain Massine. Ain Goufafa, etc.), holding the belief that the water is fur
nished by some sort of springs. It is the same in other cases of the Sahara — as in the
oases of Dakhleh and Khargueh, where they give the name ain to artesian wells.

THE "ISLANDS" OF THE DESERT 433
the wells {hassi) and the gardens that a human geographical
study of the oases of the Mzab must begin.
The means of drawing the water are well adapted to the
surroundings. The great depth has caused the principle of the
lever applied in the khotara and in the Egyptian shaduf to
be rejected. Instead of a pole working on a lever, a rope and
pulley are employed. At the end of the rope is attached a
receptacle consisting of a leather sack holding from 10 to 13
gallons (40 to 50 liters). Instead of winding the pulley rope
around an axle, a tiresome task that could be performed only
by a man, it is drawn over the pulley and away from the well.
This can be done by man or animal — negro, donkey, or camel.
The deeper the well, the farther along the path must the man
who does the drawing go. The Mozabites have arranged this
path on a slight incline, thus reducing the effort somewhat
since the drawing agent is going slightly down hill as the sack
is being raised.1
At certain points the deep pockets, rich in water, are particu
larly scarce. At Beni-Isguen, for example, water points are
much rarer than at Ghardaia ; there are only three or four wells
that always have water even in times of drought. These
belong to several proprietors who sell hours of watering to
others who are cultivators. These wells are used constantly,
even during the night, and the water is drawn by means of
two animals which, with their driver, go at a trot.
If we wish to have a clear idea of the amount of work involved
in this method of obtaining water in spite of its ingenuity,
we must not forget the weight of the sack containing from
10 to 13 gallons of water nor the minimum of time required
for such a process. In the Mzab it is necessary to draw water
without ceasing in order to supply a thirsty soil that so
quickly drinks up all the water given to it.2
The greatest precautions are therefore taken to husband
carefully a supply obtained with so much difficulty. The
'This type of well is really very practical for drawing water from great depths,
and to-day one finds that it has spread and has become common even beyond Mzab,
for example, in the whole Tunisian Sahel. It is also known in India, where the rope
of the pulley is often worked by yoked cattle.
20ne surmises also what the intensity of evaporation is during the day; on this
subject, see Ch. Amat, Le M'zab et les M'zabiles, p. 214. In a general way, see the
whole chapter devoted to "Meteorologie" (chap. IV).

431

HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

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Mozabites strive as best they can to prevent infiltration by
lining the little canals, the little seguia which carry the water
from their wells to their palm trees. This is the only place in
the Sahara where we have seen the natives take such a precau
tion. It is where
water is scarcest
that it is treated
with the most
jealous care.1
Thus the ditch
es are not merely
dug, but, in a
sense, built. It
is important to
note how the
digging of wells
as deep as theirs,
with the upper
part generally
walled for several
yards, and the
building of the
two uprights of masonry upon which to rest the beam for the
pulleys,2 impose upon the inhabitants of the Mzab habits of
serious building. Now, according to the Arab Bureau at Ghar
daia, there are at least 3,300 wells of this sort in the Mzab.
Further, in order to obtain and distribute water, the Moza
bites not only dig wells but they build admirable dams of
masonry. They set too high a value on water- to neglect any
means of obtaining it. Showers are rare in the Mzab; in rainy
years there are only two or three, and entire years pass without
a single drop of water from the atmosphere. A. Coyne says
'Georges Rolland has with good reason supported the fight against infiltration
in Wad Rir'; at his instigation, and under the direction of MM. Cornu and Bonhoure,
the little irrigating trenches have been gradually paved with earthen tiles made and
baked there in the op.ses of Sidi-Vaya. of Ayata, and of Urir. It is interesting to
compare this innovation with the traditional usage of the Mozabites. See Brunhes,
L Irrigation dans le peninsnle ibiriqite et dans VAfriqne du Xord.
2 The Mozabites camo from Wargla, whence they were driven out; and at Wargla
they had acquired the habit of boring artesian wells, the walls of which had to be
stone-work because of the weakness of the earth strata; sec Paul Blanchet, "L'Oasis
et le pays d'Ouargla, " Ann. de geog., March 15, 1900, p. 142.
Fig. 160. How the Water Necessary for Cultivation
is Obtained in the Oases of Mzab
There is seen at the top of the path the uprights of the
well, and the stream of clear water from the previous draw
ing is distinguished; when this is emptied the man and the
donkey, at the end of their path, return for the next
drawing.
THE "ISLANDS" OF THE DESERT 435
very truly that "for the Beni-Mzab the year may be character
ized briefly : the river flowed or it did not flow. " r However, in
anticipation of exceptional" rain floods the Mozabites have built
with their usual care works of considerable importance. Thus,
in the single oasis of Ghardaia, six large retaining dams, several
of them of masonry, cross the thalweg from side to side so as
not only to obstruct the underflow but also to gather up the
run-off — the exceptional treasure of an abundant rainfall.2
Above the oasis of Ghardaia a large dam, the Bushen, is
constructed to store the water and form a sort of large lake
in the exceptional case of a flood. The reservoir is often abso
lutely dry, yet everything is built as if it were to be in continual
use. A subterranean gallery with manholes, after the fashion
of the feggaguir of the Tidikelt, conducts the water, when there
is any, from Bushen to the oasis and allows a moderate and
temperate flow of this unusual and temporary treasure.3
'"The statistical and chronological documents kept by the lolba of Ghardaia
record, for the period from 1728-1872, only twelve great risings for the Wad-Mzab,
or one rising every 13 years" (Ch. Amat, Le M'zab et les M'zabiles, p. 217).
2For detailed information on these dams and the various other dams of Mzab,
see Ch. Amat, Le M'zab et les M'zabiles, pp. 54 ff.; and take note especially of the
technical descriptions, exact and minute, which Ville has given of them in his
Exploration geologique du Beni Mezab, etc.
30ne still finds some feggaguir at El-Golea and in several other oases, such as the
little oasis of Bu-Kais to the west of Sfisiffa (De la Martiniere and N. Lacroix,
Documents pour servir ii Vitude du Nord-Ouest Africain, II, p. 402); and one finds
some also in the oasis of Menchia in Nefzaua (South Tunis) ; one can compare with
the foggara the shegga of Ed-Dis, a little oasis situated near Bu-Saada (the shegga
is a trench in the rock for conducting water, sometimes making the water pass in a
tunnel under the houses). But the Saharan province where the foggara is the chief
device for conducting water is Tidikelt. These are oases to be counted among the
most important, whether from the political or from the economic point of view.
The feggaguir allow the conducting of subterranean water in streams to the gardens.
An original foggara can become, if the main source of water is abundant, the central
branch of an infinity of feggaguir. The main foggara belongs to the community,
and all those who have worked to increase its producing power have a share in it
in proportion to their work. There is still a subterranean canal system of the feg
gaguir type in use at the foot of the Atlas Mountains of Morocco, on the Atlantic
slope, for example, in the great oasis of Marrakesh. There they call these subter
ranean conduits shallara, plural shatatir; Theobold Fischer has described at length
their ingenious construction. (See " Wissenschaf tliche Ergebnisse einer Reise im
Atlas-Vorlande von Morokko," Petermanns Milt., Ergdnzungsheft, No. 133, pp.
86-89). It is moreover a process known and practiced in all the deserts of the ancient
world : kanal in Iran, sahrig in Yemen, etc . What made the natives build such costly
systems for the circulation of water beneath the earth? The first to treat this
problem very clearly was G. B. M. Flamant. E. F. Gautier discussed it in his turn,
mentioning the fact that in Tuat alone there are at least 1,200 miles of feggaguir,
and noting especially "the disproportion between the great size of the work and
the small resources at the command of those who executed it"; his theory is that
this could hardly be the result of a preconceived plan, but was born of increasing
necessities ("Etudes Sahariennes," Ann. de giog., XVI, 1907, p. 66). Similar
reservoirs have been built in many other desert situations. Back of Mollendo, Peru,
there is an expensive dam to obstruct the surface flow down ravines that have living
streams but once in several years.

436 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
But, more surprising still, water is so valuable that here and
there even on the arid and inhospitable slopes of the Shebka
little dams of masonry are seen built upon the rough rocks that
seem never to have known the friendly trickling of water.
These little retaining dams are meant to gather up the water
from the smallest local showers and form one of the most
striking peculiarities of the Mzab.
The Gardens of the Mzab
What obstinate toil is implied by such enterprises and to
what costly cultivation they must lead! The Mozabite is a
skillful gardener who spares neither care, time, nor trouble.1
He, as well as the Soafa, knows the value of fertilizers and he
uses systematically all of the few fertilizers that he can obtain.
The gardens of the Mzab are better cared for, richer, and also
more costly than anywhere else. They are not gardens for
profit, but true luxuries.2 In the Mzab, as in the Suf, the
price of the tree no longer depends upon what it produces but
upon the work that it has cost and represents. In the Suf,
as we have said, a palm tree costs all the way from $10 up to
the incredibly high price of $120 (50 to 600 francs); in the
Mzab it costs easily from $60 to $80 (300 to 400 francs) and
goes as high as $100 or $120 and even S200 (500, 600, 1,000
francs). A palm tree which is worth an average price of S50
or $60 (250 or 300 francs) does not produce on the average
more than $2.00 worth (10 francs) of dates per year.
It is to be noted that the only profitable palm groves owned
by the Mozabites are those outside of Mzab, particularly in
Wargla.3 And yet what magnificent vegetation in these gardens of
'It was a Mozabite who first introduced the palm to Orleansville, by taking
there a quick-growing species from Mzab which could come to maturity under a
northern sky. The Mozabites fertilize their palms with the pollen of the male blossoms
saved from the preceding year. It is very natural that they should have had the
idea of accomplishing fertilization at Orleansville with flowers brought from the
South. 2Captain Cauvet gives these calculations: it cost about 5220 a year to keep up
a garden of fifty palms, and such a garden can bring a maximum return of barely
$200; for instance, some $100 for dates, S40 for fruits. S30 for summer vegetables,
$20 for winter vegetables and cereals, and about S4 for various products such as
grass, wood, etc.
3Many of the million palm trees in the great forest of the different oases of Wargla
belong to the Mozabites. See Paul Blanchet, "L'Oasis et le pays d'Ouargla," Ann. de
giog., March 15, 1910, p. 153.

THE "ISLANDS" OF THE DESERT 437
the Mzab! They are veritable thickets that make one think
of climates where the humid heat gives to vegetation a spon
taneous exuberance. Between the tall palm trees are planted
enormous fig trees with multiple trunks hidden under the
foliage of their spreading branches. Pomegranate, apricot,
and peach trees form a veritable underbrush beneath the
palms, while huge vine stalks send their branches in all direc
tions, their shoots clinging like creepers to the trunks of the
palm trees. The sun can hardly penetrate these arbors of
branches and leaves, and, while in other Saharan oases barley
and beans are cultivated at the foot of the palm trees, here
they are often relegated to the border of the palm grove, form
ing around the gardens a fringe of brighter green.
There are, of course, some differences between the several
oases of the Mzab. For example, at Beni-Isguen the wad is
more confined between the two rocky and arid slopes. There
is less room between the wad and the mountain, with the result
that, since the barley, beans, carrots, radishes, and f elf el (a
red pimento very much liked by the Arabs) cannot be sown
on the edges, they are sown under the palm trees. The fruit
trees are therefore much less numerous and do not form such
dense thickets as at Ghardaia. In short, the impression
produced by the Mzab is very complex.
Throughout the Mzab there are sights that remind one of
Egypf-- Doubtless the first and chief reason of this is to be
found in those steep slopes of arid rock of the valleys of the
Shebka, the colors of which, yellow, tawny, or red, according
to the time of day, recall the long Libyan and Arabian cliffs,
the bare and colored slopes that border the valley of the Nile.
Then, too, it often .happens in the Mzab that cultivation
stops at a more precise limit than in other Saharan oases. At
Berrian in particular little squares of green barley form minute
oases entirely surrounded by rocks and sand. The continuous
creaking of the pulleys of the hassi (wells) reminds one also
of the creaking of the Egyptian sakiyehs; and those wells of
Beni-Isguen, where the proprietors divide the hours of use or
sell them to others and where the work goes on night and day,
make one think involuntarily of those sakiyehs of Upper
Egypt which the Nubians own in common and to which each
28

438 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
comes in turn with his animal to draw the water, so that
there is no interruption in the important work.
But, on the other hand, mixed gardens thick with foliage,
like those of Ghardaia and Metlili, carry our thought far from
the flat and homogeneous fields of cotton or sugar cane on the
banks of the Nile and call to mind the pleasure gardens of
Cairo or Alexandria.
% The Houses and the Cities of the Mzab
The Mozabites, who are such skillful builders, have in fact
at their disposal an admirable mortar, the timshent. A dark,
reddish-brown limestone mixed with earthy gypsum and
called kaddan gives, when burned, this timshent, which has a
pinkish color and as a mortar has the double advantage of
drying very quickly and of having a solidity that withstands
any test. It "sets" rapidly and has the qualities of cement.
The Mozabites, therefore, like the Soafas, have very good
facilities for building. Since they live on the rock, they have
available a large supply of stone, in addition to the valuable
timshent. It should be noted that again in this case the work
demanded of man in the geographical environment of the
Mzab is much more laborious and costly than that of the Suf.
The timshent, like lime, is a product obtained by burning.
In a country like the Mzab where wood and other fuels are
scarce the burning of the kaddan means much labor. The
people burn drinn or retem and have to go far to gather these
tufts of fuel. But the Mozabites are accustomed to laborious
and continuous effort and their dams give proof of a perfection
in building also to be seen in their houses and cities. The
houses of recent times also seem higher than the old. From
a distance some of them resemble those quadrangular towers
of masonry that rise above the gates of our European cities.
The Mozabites have always built houses of ston£, consisting
of two stories and constructed with much care.1 The ground
floor opens on an inner court or the rooms of the first floor
open on a terrace in the form of a court and these openings are
'Some houses are of pise work, but this is the exception. The stone house ceases
farther south: "The houses of this little city [El Golea] are different from those of
Metlili; they consist of four earthern walls covered by a roof of palm branches"
(Duveyrier, " Coup d'ceil sur le pays des Beni-Mezab et sur celui des Chaanba occi-
dentaux, Bull, de la Soc. de giog. de Paris, 4th series, XVIII, 1859, p. 239).

THE "ISLANDS" OF THE DESERT

439

Fig.

Jean Branbcs
161. The Market Square at Ghardaia with
Irregular Semicircular Arches

generally arcades with semicircular arches (Fig. 163, p. 441),
of which they are very fond. The market square of Ghardaia
is bordered with such arcades (Fig. 161). The Mozabites
make the arches
by means of bent
palm branches
upon which they
place the timshent,
afterward remov
ing the branches.1
The Mzab house
is on the whole
less original than
the Suf house,
but when grouped I
together the gen
eral appearance is
not comparable.
The Mozabite city
has a physiognomy entirely its own (Figs. 162, 163, and 164).
The seven cities, eight if we include Metlili, in spite of their
differences have a family resemblance which they owe not
only to the large number of arcades and to their notched walls
of timshent but also to the tall minarets of their mosques, to those
somars in the form of obelisks which are built of timshent
and of which the red color is as characteristic as the form.
Melika is built like a fortress on the edge of an escarpment
of the Shebka, crowning it with a horizontal strip of white
and red buildings; and above this strip rises the red obelisk
of the mosque (Fig. 164). Beni-Isguen extends from the top
of the slope, where there is a high gate, to the bottom of the
wad in two stages, the minaret rising midway. But several
of the Mozabite cities have been grouped upon isolated hills.
This is true of Gerrara,2 Bu-Nura, Berrian, the ksar Metlili,
and especially Ghardaia, the chief city of the Mzab.
'Amat (Le M'zab el les M'zabiles, p. 130) seems to say that the Mozabites also
built vaults without making use of girders, but he is not very explicit.
2Gerrara is built, at the edge of the Shebka limestone, on a peak of sandstone.
For the history of Gerrara see A. de C. Motylinski, Guerrara depuis sa fondation
(translation of a narrative edited by Si Mohammed ben Chetioui ben Slimane of the
Cheurfa of Gerrara), Jourdan, Algiers, 1885.

440

HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

None of the cities of the Mzab has a more striking situation
and appearance than Ghardaia. It is built upon a rocky island

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Jean Bruohea
Fig. 162. Ghardaia, the Principal City of the M'zab, seetn from the
Southeast
Compare this picture of Ghardaia with that of Melika (Fig. 164)
that rises in the midst of a valley. Its light-colored, sunlit
houses, mingled with the dark shadows of the arcades and
separated by narrow circular streets, rise above each other
in harmonious strength and, to crown this confused yet
ordered and aspiring mass, at the very top rises the highest of
the minarets of the Mzab, seeming higher still because of this
compact pedestal of houses surrounding and supporting it.1
Evidently there are some differences between the various
oases of the Mzab. At Beni-Isguen, as we have already said,
the wad is much narrower than at Ghardaia and the inhabitants
of Beni-Isguen have built their houses on the edges of the
slopes rather than at the bottom where they would have ran
the risk of being inundated in time of flood.
•See the plan of Ghardaia in 1882, on the "Carte des Kzour du M'zab" which accom
panies the article by Dr. Huguet, " Dans le Sud-Algerien, " Bull, de la Soc. de giog., 1899.

THE "ISLANDS" OF THE DESERT

441

The Mzab presents another curious fact with regard to the
human dwelling. Not only does the Mozabite live on the prod
ucts of his gardens but he passes half his life in these gardens.
Everyone owns, besides his town house in one of the villages
we have named, a house in his garden. Here he lives with
his entire family during the hot months, often remaining more
than half the year, from May to the first of December, and
living chiefly on the dates, vegetables, and fruits that grow on
the spot. He thus has two houses, a town house and a coun
try house. While the town houses are grouped close together,
the country houses are scattered in the gardens, almost hidden

Jean Brunhoi
Fig. 163. Ghardaia, Seen from the Top of the Minaret of the Mosque
The houses form terraces up the slope of the elevation which is dominated by the
mosque. At the left is a type of interior court bordered by arcades.
under the palms and the branches of the fruit trees. They
are built, however, in the same way as the town houses and,
like these, often have a second story.1
'The Duiri of South Tunis also build country houses in their gardens for the
summer, but these are rudimentary houses; they are composed of four walls without
a roof. See P. Blanchet, "Le Djebel Demmer," Ann. de giog, May 15, 1897, p. 245.

442

HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

Separate mention should be made of the curious settlement
of Metlili. South of the oasis of the Suf we have seen that
curious camp of Hamish where the nomads pitch their tents

i •

j^$LU^XM&:-:~,^'

¦•£$*&£*"*

Fig. 164. Melika, Seen from the Southwest
near the gardens of the Suf type and in front of desheras (gran
aries) built exactly like the houses of the sedentary Soafas.
South of the oases of the Mzab the settlement of Metlili marks
a transition analogous to that of Hamich. Here also nomadic
Shamba1 have gardens entirely similar to those of the sedentary
inhabitants of the Mzab and watered by wells of the same type.
These nomads pitch their tents in their gardens, near summer
houses, which are built in the same way as in the Mzab and, as
in the Mzab, are scattered in the midst of plantations.
To explain this curious combination of nomadic and seden
tary life there is a tradition that there was once an exchange of
sixty families between the little town of Melika and the ksai
of Metlili : sixty Mozabite families are said to have settled at
'Nomads of the Shamba-Berezga: the Ulad-Allush and the Ulad Abdelhad.
(The Tableau des communes, etc., gives to the latter the name of Ulad Abdelkader.)

THE "ISLANDS" OF THE DESERT

443

Metlili while sixty Shamba families were received at Melika.
When one has come to know the great difference in the
Sahara between the nomad and the sedentary person, one is
baffled by the complexity of such facts as are presented by these
transitional types, like Metlili in the Mzab and Hamish in the
Suf. Is it a case of the power of an exceptionally superior
cultivation (sedentary) imposing itself upon those who despise
cultivation (nomads)? It would be rash to give this as the
only reason. What is certainly true is that human estab
lishments in the desert show much greater cultural complexities
than is generally believed, and this is a new and exact con
firmation of all that has been said in chapter IV of nomadism
and semi-nomadism.
Let us glance at the appended table, which is drawn up on
exactly the same plan as the preceding table for the oases of
the Suf and based upon figures dating from ii

The Seven Cities at Mzab

Number of
Persons

Camels

Sheep

Goats

Palm Trees

Ghardaia, ksar. . . .
Melika, ksar 
Beni-Isguen, ksar.
Bu-Nura, ksar . . .
El Ateuf, ksar 
Gerrara, ksar. . . .
Berrian, ksar 
Totals 

8,3H2,017 5,205 •
1,010
2,346 3,3223,040

209 3241 H10
118 66

1,000 522

540
3,670

5°7381706 164 1
743
1,335

60,591 4,032
26,084 9,600
14,479
25,70025,775

25,254

490

5,732

3,837

166,261

Group of Metlili

Metlili, ksar 

1,425
2,2102,160

268
i,8'51,814

830
15,61514,499

i,450
9,4'7 3,421

7,851

Ulad Alush (nomads) 
Ulad Abdelhad (nomads) ....

8,183
11,065

Totals 

5,795

3,897

30,944

14,288

27,099

It is easy to see how the nomadic character of the inhabitants
of Metlili (sedentary inhabitants of the ksar and nomads
'The figures given have been taken from the Arab Bureau of Ghardaia. Again
thanks are due Captain Cauvet, whose courtesy and competence so many travelers
have long appreciated. The Tableau giniral des communes de V Algirie au ier Janvier,
1897, prepared at the order of J. Cambon by F. Accardo, furnishes only the figures
which have to do with the human population (p. 56) ; we have compared them with
our own figures of population; they are very much alike, or even identical. The
number of inhabitants by cities, which Ch. Amat gave in 1888 (Le M'zab et les M'zabites,
p. 226), on the contrary, differs quite considerably from ours. It goes without saying
that we do not pretend to attribute absolute correctness to the figures which we
have here brought together, any more than to those of the table of the Suf; in regions
where the census of human beings is only approximate, the statistical evaluation of
herds is even more approximative. But in regard to their relative values and their
general relation to each other, they are exact enough to be noted here and consulted.

444 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
included) asserts itself: fewer than 6,000 in number, they own
nearly 4,000 camels, while the 25,000 inhabitants of the seven
cities possess in all only 500.
But, on the other hand, the inhabitants of Metlili have
almost as many palm trees (27,000, which is an average of
5 palm trees per inhabitant) as the Mozabites of the cities
(166,000, which is more than 6 palm trees per inhabitant).1
The Mozabites
Thus the Mozabite inhabits several houses. He cultivates
with a view to his own pleasure and varies his cultivation in
order to have choice products at all times of the year. He
provides himself with fruits of every sort. He does not export,
but, on the contrary, he imports many products, particularly
meat; he even brings in from outside foods that are produced
in the Mzab, but in insufficient quantities, such as dates, fruits,
etc. The Mozabite is rich and fives well, and yet, strange to
say, he works hard.
After all, what is this strange personage who lives a life so
refined and cultivated in an environment so sterile that at
first glance it seems to exclude all cultivation and all life,
even though rudimentary? The Mozabite is becoming more
and more an abnormal phenomenon; he can no longer be
explained by the Mzab alone. The Mozabite of former times,
if he was merely a cultivator, doubtless led a simpler and less
expensive life; the Mozabite of to-day cannot be understood
without the Tell.
The Mozabite is a cultivator in his childhood and late in
life, but during middle life he is a business man. He is born
and dies in the Mzab. Though he comes back at regular
intervals,2 he passes the greater part of his life far from his
country; he emigrates to the Tell to earn his living and he
often grows rich there.
'Again, it may be noted how much more Gerrara and Berrian, the two cities of
Mzab which are ex-centric, as it were, being more isolated, mingle with the nomads
who surround them, and show more important flocks and herds (the 3,322 inhabitants
of Gerrara have 118 camels, the 3,040 inhabitants of Berrian have 3,670 sheep and
L335 goats.)
2He must return to his country at least once in every two years; a woman whose
husband does not return at the end of two years has the right to marry another.
But these rules, which formerly were so rigorously observed and obeyed, are falling
more or less into disuse.

THE "ISLANDS" OF THE DESERT 445
The Mozabites are emigrants who are not moved by great
appetites or great desires (like the Anglo-Saxons), since they
dream of returning to pass their old age in their native country
in a modest environment. They are not emigrants who are
urged on by poverty in the strict sense of the word, for nothing
is less poverty-stricken than the Mzab. They form a special
class of emigrants who are poor only because their form of
cultivation must be a rich man's cultivation, kept up at great
expense; the poverty that urges them toward the Tell is
relative.1 They are not absolutely all emigrants and they do not all
become merchants; but, among the Mozabites, not to emigrate
is to lose caste. In fact they are not outcasts, reduced to
poverty, who go to seek their fortune in a more hospitable
land. It is not as elsewhere, even in the Suf, the proletariat
that furnishes the regular contingent of emigrants. Here in
the Mzab it is the chosen few who set the example and main
tain the tradition; or, better still, it is the former emigrants
who become the elite and from whom the chiefs are chosen.
The kaids of the Ksur are former emigrants who Jiave grown
rich as merchants.
In the Tell the Mozabite is a merchant, a small shopkeeper,
notion-dealer, grocer, coal-seller, or butcher.2 He is easily
recognized in the little shops of Oran or Algiers by his round,
flat face and his gandura with large colored stripes.3 It is
'And it is this relative poverty that has saved them. What fine types of humanity
are to be met with in the Mzab! One must have visited other oases of the Sahara,
especially the oases peopled by blacks, to realize by contrast the value of the people
of the Mzab. See the frank and vigorous book by E. Gautier, La Conquete du Sahara,
Essai de psychologie politique, Armand Colin, Paris, 1910, especially pp. 134 ff., where
he speaks of the ' ' physical abasement "of the ' ' sixty thousand Ethiopians ' ' of Gerrara,
of Tuat, and of Tidikelt. Farther on, E. F. Gautier writes: "The sedentary inhab
itant, in the Sahara, is something like a foreign body in the organism ; a black coolie
attached to the soil. . . . The true Saharian, the aboriginal, is the nomad, as for
instance the Tuareg" (pp. 175 ff.). On the subject of the Tuareg, consult Captain
Aymard's fine volume, Les Touareg, Hachette, Paris, 191 1 — interesting, vivid, and well
illustrated. 2One-third of the male population migrate to the Tell, where they set up pros
perous shops. Each city has its favorite centers: the people of Ghardaia go to
Algiers, to Oran, and to Constantine; those of Beni-Isguen to Djelfa, Tlemcen, and
Laghuat; the inhabitants of El Ateuf settle at Bu-Saada, Aumale, and Setif; the
natives of Melika go to Batna and Boghari; only at Algiers does one meet with the
natives of Bu-Nura, and the people of Gerrara and of Berrian turn especially toward
Tunis. Many Mozabites make fortunes; but their hearts are all set on their own
land, there they all hope to return some day" (Amat, op. cit., p. 202).
3The Mozabite merchant of the Tell wears a many-colored gandura; at Mzab
the rich or learned Mozabite affects one of pure white wool.

446 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
with the money that he makes elsewhere that the Mozabite
is able to keep up the expensive cultivation of the Mzab.1
It is because they are merchants that they can continue to
cultivate their oases.
The Mozabites are skillful merchants who do much more
business in the Mzab than might be supposed.2 At Beni-
Isguen there is a Mozabite who has a sort of retail bazaar and
who, in the first part of March, 1900, ordered of one traveling
agent merchandise, liquids, preserves, etc., worth $4,000
(20,000 francs) and of another hardware worth $1,000 (5,000
francs). He sends the money at once, practically paying
cash. This retailer often does $200 worth of business in a
day. The Mozabite merchant comes once a year, toward Septem
ber, to the Tell. He goes from Algiers to Tunis to leave all
his orders at once, and many of these orders together amount
to $20,000 (100,000 francs).3
This is not the place to discuss the history of the Moza
bites, their religion,4 their political life with its strong tendencies
toward equality, their strong municipal constitution, the con
federation of their seven cities,5 their struggles of sof with
sof,6 their customs and their laws,7 nor their language.8 The
Mozabites govern themselves and do it well. Regarded by
'The Mozabites have lost much through the suppression of slavery; they used
to work a great many negroes.
2For the varieties of commerce practiced by the Mozabites, see Ch. Amat, op.
cit., pp. 205 ff. "The Mozabite is the banker for all the nomads of the central
Sahara. He makes use of them for commercial operations, he employs them as
simple commissioners or as contractors" (p. 205).
3The Mozabite strives by every means to earn money enough to live, and to
live in the Mzab. The Mzab buys a great deal of wool. "The manufacture of
native clothing and of wool rugs employs, in the Mzab, more than 6,000 working
men and women, chiefly of that country" (Le Pays du mouton, note 1 on p. 171).
4They belong to the Mussulman sect of the Kharidjites (see Ch. Amat, op. cit.,
pp. 138 ff.; see especially E. Masqueray, Formation des cilis, etc., pp. 17S ff.)
6See A. Coyne and especially Masqueray.
6 See Masqueray and Dr. Huguet.
7See E. Zeys.
sSee E. Masqueray, "Comparaison du dialecte des Zenaya du Senegal avec les
vocabulaires des Chaouia et des Beni M'zab," Archives des missions, 1879, 3d
series, Vol. V, especially the excellent works by Rene Basset on the Berber dialects
(see Bernard, and Lacroix, Histoire de la pinctration saharienne, p. 115), and also
M. Idoux, "A propos d'une grammaire M'zabite," in Rev. bourguignonne de I'enseigne-
ment supcrieur, IX, 1899, No. 2, which contains at the beginning a bibliography.
On the etymology of the word Zenala, the name of one of the greatest Berber families, ,
see Ibn Khaldoun, Histoire des Berberes et des dvnasties mussulmanes, translation by
Slane, Algiers, 1852, III, pp. 188 ff.

THE "ISLANDS" OF THE DESERT 447
the Arabs as schismatics, they detest them1 and are jealous of
their own independence.2 Some cities even retain the customs
of rigorously closed ethnic and religious citadels.3 In short, the
Mzab is a type of race that has kept a religious belief intact.4
4- CONCLUSIONS: THE SUF AND THE MZAB
It has been our intention to emphasize the abnormal char
acter of these facts of human geography. They are facts such
as our utilitarian civilization can no longer produce or even
'They themselves are broader minded toward believers in religions more unlike
their own. In the Mzab there are a certain number of Jews; two synagogues have
been built there; the Mozabites, I am told, live on a good understanding with the
Jews. Duveyrier declared in 1859: "Ghardaia is the only city of Wad Mzab with
a Jewish population reaching as high as 290 or 300 individuals" ("Coup d'oeil sur le
pays des Beni-M'zab," etc., Bidl. de la Soc. de giog., Paris, 1859, p. 325). P. Soleillet,
who spent the months of February and March, 1873, in the Mzab, tells us that there
were not yet any Jews, except at Ghardaia, and "living to the number of 50 or 60
families in a separate quarter" (L' Afrique occidentale, Algirie, M'zab, Tidikelt, Avignon,
1877, p. 70). Ch. Amat, in 1888, counted more than 400 of them at Ghardaia and
more than 300 in Berrian and Gerrara together (p. 226).
2The Mozabites, who are the first to go to the French school when they are in
the Tell (for there French is of great service to them) , rarely send their children to the
the French- Arab schools of the Mzab; they are afraid of losing their character of a
closed sect. It does not enter into our plan (and we regret it) to discuss the schools
of the White Fathers. On the efforts of the White Fathers and of the White Sisters
at Ghardaia and in the Mzab, and on Mgr. Toulotte, see at least Captain de I'Epre
vier, "Voyage dans le Sud-Algerien, Un mois dans le Sahara," Bull. Soc. giog., Algiers,
x897, pp. 401—402; see especially the very interesting bulletin which appears every
two months. Missions d' Afrique des Peres Blancs (Paris, rue de Cassette, 27). With
regard to the very subject of which we are speaking, the non-attendance of the
Mozabite children at the French schools, Captain de I'Eprevier said very truly in
1897: These missionaries "teach the children whom the parents are willing to
entrust to them (these are especially the Jews)" (p. 402). However, the bulletin
of the White Fathers, in its 151st No., January-February, 1902, tells us of what is
really a revolution in the attitude so long observed by the Mozabites toward the
French school; Father Chenivesse speaks of "a hundred or more pupils, almost all
Mozabites," and adds: "The Jews were the chief clientele of our dispensary also;
this year it is the distrustful Mozabites who are more numerous among the sick
that are cared for" (p. 226). For the French influence we earnestly hope that
these facts be confirmed and the new attitude become stronger; but these very
"novelties" that surprise us confirm a ccmtrario our observations.
3Beni-Isguen is the closed city par excellence; they do not allow strangers to pass
the night there; after market days, at six o'clock, they make everybody leave the
city, and then shut the gates for the whole night. The letter from Father Chenivesse
quoted above verifies the uncompromising character of Beni-Isguen: "It is only at
Beni-Isguen, the "holy city" of the Mzab, that the inhabitants receive us always
with the same deliberate indifference. Even the Sisters of Charity, everywhere
considered as angels to whom all doors open, are no more fortunate than we in this
puritan city. In a whole day devoted to offering their services to the sick, they
were enabled to care for only one" (Missions d' Afrique des Peres Blancs, No. 151,
January-February, 1902, p. 227).
4The co-religionists of the Mozabites, their brothers in schism, such as the in
habitants of the island of Djerba, have similarly preserved a marked ethnical in
dividuality. Ch. Amat, on one page of his book, has an expressive sentence which
well sums up the characteristics of the Mozabites: "Combining a natural taste for
building with a strong religious discipline, masons controlled by monks, they (the
Mozabites) have been the colonizers of the Sahara, as their Romanized ancestors
(the Berbers) had been the colonizers of the Tell" (p. 188).

448 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
tolerate. All our agricultural enterprises are founded more
or less, and certainly more and more, on the income from the
soil. Our capitalistic habit of thought makes us less and less
able to conceive as possible an establishment which costs
large and continuous effort and yet serves only for the regular
maintenance of ordinary daily life. We think too much of
the future (of the future more than of the present) to establish
activities that will demand constant and energetic toil for such
a humdrum end, and the colonization of the Sahara will have
to become more profitable or it will not be carried out. On
the other hand, our present economic life is based upon the idea
of bringing into relation — that is, into competition — different
parts of the earth ; and that means, after a more or less extended
period, the condemnation of those regions where the labor
must be as great as the result is meager. Already the Moza
bites, those daring and economical merchants who know the
Tell and live in it, look upon theirs as a poor country.1 If
they still love it, if they are still attached to it and return to
it, they do so as the native of Auvergne who has grown rich in
Paris returns to his country to build a new house in the valley
of the Cere or the Jordane. In the return of the Mozabite,
as in the return of the Auvergnat, there is proof of a traditional
attachment to his country, but there is also a certain pride in
displaying before the eyes of his fellow-countrymen the results
of a life of toil. The son of the Parisian Auvergnat, born in
Paris, still loves Auvergne but has much less desire to return
to it. The Mozabites as yet are all born in the Mzab, since
the Mozabite emigrates without his wife (like the Auvergnat
who emigrates to Spain as a baker or horse-trader, or the
French Canadian who works in the mills of southern New
Hampshire). However, some of them have begun to remain
in the Tell and, although religion, the strongest tradition,
and the proud isolation of this people in the Shebka create
bonds between the Mozabite and the Mzab that will last for
a very long time, we can see the beginnings of an evolution
among these practical and intelligent men.
'The Kaid of Ghardaia, a very intelligent man who made his fortune in the Tell
of Oran and who, for that reason, speaks better Spanish than French, gave me some
categorical statements from this point of view in the course of the long talks in
Spanish which I had with him.

THE "ISLANDS" OF THE DESERT 449
As a fact of human and social geography the Suf presents,
from every point of view, an exceptionally remarkable case.
Property does not consist of land, for in those immense extents,
covered with sand and crossed by dunes, each may take the
space he needs to plant a few palm trees or build his house.1
Nor does property consist of water, for water extends beneath
the sand in a relatively broad sheet, within the reach of all
who have the perseverance to remove eight or ten yards of
sand in order to get near enough to it to plant their trees or
to dig their wells. The only thing that can be considered
property is the tree, and particularly the date palm.2 Each
owns what he plants and the ownership of the tree brings with
it the use of the land. On the other hand, he who has no
tree has no land and can dig no wells. Having no inherent
right to land and water, he acquires possession of them only if,
wishing to plant trees, he digs out and clears away the space
for a garden. In other words, the water and the land belong
to all; it is only work that causes, limits, and fixes private
appropriation of them.
Moreover, no one may plant a palm tree within a certain
number of yards of other palm trees, and no one has a right
to dig a well within the space upon which falls the shadow of
a palm tree already planted. Furthermore, only those who
own trees on the outer edge of a hollow have the right to in
crease their gardens and plant new trees in it, and it is for
their interest to leave sufficient distance — from 22 to 32 feet (7
to 10 meters) — so that the palm trees may not interfere with
each other. And since the owner of a palm tree on the edge of
a garden can always by his labor increase his plantation, his
palm trees command a much higher price than those surrounded
by others in the midst of a garden. Thus the geographical
conditions are extraordinary enough to make the tree alone the
initial cause, the limit, and the end of all individual wealth.
The inhabited "islands" of the Suf and of the Mzab are
'It goes without saying that, on the elevated portions, at the natural level of
the sands, anyone who wanted to build a house would have a right to the land which
his building covered; but private ownership of land exists only where there is good
reason. 2Even in a garden containing 10 or 15 palms, the trees belong to four or five
different proprietors; so an inhabitant of the Suf possesses a tree in one garden, two
or three in another, 10 or 15 in a third situated some hundreds of feet away, etc.

450 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
human establishments situated in regions which were fitted
by nature to be uninhabited. In the one case the wind
threatens constantly to fill up the gardens; in the other there
is constant fear that the water may fail.
On arriving at Ghardaia, one is surprised to see the pic
turesque white city rising in the center of barren surroundings.
Only now and then are seen dark spots made by scattered
groups of palm trees ; here and there ruins of wells prove that
formerly irrigation and therefore cultivation extended up to
the walls of Ghardaia. To visit the oasis to-day it is necessary
to go two or three miles (four or five kilometers) up the valley,
whither cultivation has migrated.
The whole recent history of irrigation in Ghardaia depends
upon a fact which is the most eloquent illustration of the
difficulties and the ruin that may be caused by the absence of
a general organization. Since 1867 the little oasis of Daiet
ben Daua has been allowed to become established some miles
above the oasis of Ghardaia. This oasis is to-day in full
development at the expense of Ghardaia, for it uses and
exhausts the water that once supplied the gardens below.
Cultivation is becoming more and more scattered.1
In the Suf and the Mzab the difficulties are such that the
inhabitants are seeking resources outside of the oases. These
two ethnic and geographic groups live more and more from the
Tell. These sedentary peoples have become nomads of a
certain sort — that is, emigrants. Sedentary and masters of
the art of cultivation but drawn into commerce by necessity,
they are becoming more and more hybrid types, cultivators
and merchants.
If the Mzab and the Suf have seemed to us worthy of a com
parative study from the point of view of human geography,
we have pointed out how unlike they were in cultivation and
in general aspect. In the Suf the trees stand alone, with
nothing at their foot — no plants, no canals, not even a ditch ;
the ground is flat. In the Mzab, on the contrary, the soil is
worked, turned over and arranged, and at the foot of the palm
'The causes and the results of these facts, as well as the lesson which is to be
derived from them, are set forth at length in Brunhes, L' Irrigation, ses conditions
giographiques, ses modes el son organization dans les regions arides et disertiques de la
Peninsule ibirique et de I' Afrique du Nord (1902), and we refer the reader to it.

THE "ISLANDS" OF THE DESERT 451
trees are dense thickets of different kinds of trees. Nowhere
in the Sahara does the palm tree live more by itself than in
the Suf ; nowhere is it more intermingled with other trees than
in the Mzab.
But from this group of comparative observations some
common conclusion may be drawn, as follows.
The Beni-Mzab and the Soafas have been able to establish
their oases in the Shebka only by introducing the most highly
perfected cultivation. The geographical conditions inexorably
demand perfection. An ordinary type of cultivation was im
possible and men had to acquire a taste for the most methodi
cal and persistent exertion in order to maintain themselves.
It seems that the geographical environment has had a still
more profound influence upon the temperament of the Moza
bite and the Soafa, while differentiating them somewhat. In
the Mzab the labor to obtain water is regular and constant,
and ceases only in time of flood ; in the Suf the struggle against
the sand is more irregular and intermittent. Likewise the
Mozabite certainly works more constantly and energetically,
while the Soafa is much more inclined to spells and periods
of idleness.
The Mzab and the Suf are not human establishments which
have value merely from the work accomplished and the relative
amount of production and comfort obtained in spite of natural
conditions. They have value because of their absolute per
fection; they represent the best that can be imagined and
realized in the way of oasis cultivation. It is as if we were to
find a market garden of Long Island or of the suburbs of
Detroit in a remote valley of the Rockies at an altitude of
9,000 feet (3,000 meters).
They are not outposts of humanity on the geographical
periphery where human life becomes impossible, rudimentary,
and, so to speak, limit-forms of human establishment such
as groups of Eskimo huts. They are perfect and complete
establishments which are situated in natural "islands" where
life is possible but not easy, where the inhabitants are on the
whole relatively numerous but where the organization of
labor corresponds to much less perfection or to forms of social
organization entirely different; that is, for example, to the

452 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
nomadic life of pastoral peoples living in tents and in tribes,
When we speak of the Soafas and especially of the Mozabites
we are not speaking of primitive peoples {N aturvblker) meeting
their essential needs by elementary processes, but of advanced
types of civilized peoples {Kulturvblker) .
It will perhaps be allowable to compare this type of high
perfection in the exploitation of natural forces under such
unfavorable conditions with that skillful and successful ex
ploitation that we find among the Finns. The Finns have
succeeded in transforming a niggardly country covered with
snow during seven or eight months of the year into a country
which is not only self-supporting but which is developing its
exportations more and more (butter, for example). Or we
may compare the perfect cultivation of these desert oases with
the intensive cultivation found in regions laboriously won from
the sea {polders). Man's labor in the winning of useful land
from the salt water of the lagoons represents an effort so per
sistent and methodical that it would be folly not to cultivate
the reclaimed land intensively.
In fact, the interest in a study of these two groups of the
Suf and the Mzab is in bringing out the perfection of cultiva
tion under conditions so difficult that an ordinary, easy, and
indolent cultivation would not have been able to establish
itself. And this is the geographical point of view that must
here take precedence of all others: It is the unfavorable condi
tions themselves that determine the perfection of these human
establishments. The effort that man puts forth to exploit
the land is a factor both in what he wishes to do and in the
difficulties which the land imposes upon him. The more diffi
cult and refractory the earth shows itself, the more this effort
increases in energy, skill, and ingenuity. Under the direct
influence and under the pressure of imperious necessities man
sometimes succeeds in attaining a rare degree of perfection.

CHAPTER VII
SPECIAL STUDIES OF NATURAL UNITS
SECOND EXAMPLE:
TYPES OF "ISLANDS" OF THE HIGH MOUNTAINS:
THE CENTRAL ANDES1
THE REGIONAL DIAGRAM, IRRIGATION, NOMADISM
j. The regional diagram.
2. The canyon country.
3. Intermont basins.
Snow-clad mountains, and bordering valleys.
5. The loftiest habitations in the world.
6. Seasonal nomadism in Northern Chile and Argentina.
The mountain border.
The Desert of Tarapacd.
The Bolivian highland. t. THE REGIONAL DIAGRAM
The life zones in the Central Andes of South America are
so closely compressed that in many places it is but a day's ride
from snow to cane fields, from high cold pastures to low hot
valleys. On the east side are heavy forests, on the west a long
desert. Ignorant shepherds who understand scarcely a word
of Spanish live within fifty miles of some of the principal towns.
The railroad tributaries are still to a large degree the llama
and the mule pack-train. Irrigation, nomadism, mining, the
controls of insolation, the forest, and relief, are on every hand
and 'the responses of human kind are clear and unmistakable.
Yet even the general maps available do not express the geo-
graphic features of the country. To supply this need for a
'This chapter on the Central Andes is substituted for a chapter entitled " Le Val
d'Anniviers" in the original. The material is taken from Isaiah Bowman's various
books and papers but especially from: " The Andes of Southern Peru," N. Y., 1916;
"Regional Population Groups of Atacama," Bull. Amer. Geog. Soc, XLI, 1909, pp.
142-154 and 193-211; Results of an Expedition to the Central Andes, Bull. Amer.
Geog. Soc, XLVI, 1914, pp. 161-183; The Highland Dweller of Bolivia: An Anthro-
pogeographical Interpretation, Bull. Geog. Soc. Phil., VII, 1909, pp. 159-184; The
Distribution of Population in Bolivia, Bull. Geog. Soc. Phil., VII, 1909, pp. 74~93-
29 453

454 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
region of such great scientific interest would require much time
and expense if it were undertaken through the medium of topo
graphic surveys. What can take the place of maps in such
a case? It is here proposed that the geographer should use
a so-called regional diagram. The purpose of this chapter is
to explain this new diagram in relation to seven type exam
ples of the geography of the Central Andes.
Each diagram brings out the factors of greatest importance
in the distribution of the people in a given region. Further
more, the facts are compressed within the limits of a small
rectangle. This compression, though great, respects all essen
tial relations. For example, every location on these diagrams
has a concrete illustration but the accidental relations of the
field have been omitted; the essential relations are preserved.
Each diagram is, therefore, a kind of generalized type map.
It bears somewhat the same relation to the facts of human
geography that a block diagram does to physiography.
To take an illustration: In Fig. 165 we have the Apurimac
region near Pasaje, Peru (see location map, Fig. 166). At the
lower edge of the rectangle is a snow-capped outlier of the
Cordillera Vilcapampa. The belt of rugged country represents
the lofty, steep, exposed, and largely inaccessible ridges at the
mid-elevations of the mountains below the glaciated slopes at
the heads of tributary valleys. The villages in the belt of
pasture might well be Incahuasi and Patapampa. The floors
of the large canyons on either hand are bordered by extensive
alluvial fans. The river courses are sketched in a diagram
matic way only, but a map would not be different in its general
disposition. Each location is justified by a 'real place with
the same essential features and relations. In making the
change from the actual to the type representation there has
been no alteration of the general relations of the alluvial lands
to each other or to the highland. By suppressing unnecessary
details there is produced a diagram whose essentials have a
simple character and clear relations. When such a regional
diagram is amplified, as in this chapter, by photographs of real
conditions, it becomes a sort of generalized picture of a large
group of geographic facts. One could very well extend this
method to the whole of South America or to any region whether

"ISLANDS" OF THE HIGH MOUNTAIN REGION 455

OF>WOODLAND.

w

HIGH MOUNTAIN COUNTRY/

oNOWjCLADjMTSA

Fig. 165. Regional Diagram of the Deep Canyon and Grassy Upland
Environment in the Lofty Mountain Zone of Peru
For location see Fig. 166, A; the numbers I, 2, 3, correspond in position to the
same numbers in Fig. 167.
mapped or unmapped. It would be a real service to geog
raphy to draw up a set of, say, twelve to fifteen regional
diagrams, still further generalized, for the frontier regions of
the world now known only through reconnaissance surveys.
The same symbols are employed on all the diagrams
as follows : snow, heavy cross-lining ; strong relief, close cross-
lining; moderate relief, open cross lining; plains and plateaus,

456

HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

Fig. 166. Location Map of Part of Southern
Peru Showing the Positions of Five of
the Regional Diagrams in this Chapter
A corresponds to Fig. 165; B, to Fig. 170; C,
to Fig. 173; D, to Fig. 178; and E, to Fig. 182.

no cross-lining; cliffs and
canyon walls, hachures;
woodland and forest, small
circles ; grass land, dots ; fine
alluvium, small dots;
coarse alluvium, large dots;
towns and villages, squares
roughly proportional to
their size; trails, dotted
lines ; railroads, cross-tie
symbol; swamps, tuft
symbol; lakes, horizontal
cross-lining ; etc.
*. THE CANYON COUNTRY
Returning to Fig. 165, we
first note its location in
Peru (Fig. 166). It repre
sents a region unknown to
scientific geography until
within the past few years —
the western slope of the
Cordillera Vilcapampa and
the deep canyon country
adjacent thereto. First
there is the unpopulated
snow-clad region at the
top of the country. Below
it are grassy slopes, the
homes of mountain shep
herds, or rugged mountain
country unsuited for graz
ing. Still lower there is
woodland, in patches
chiefly, but with a few large
continuous tracts. The
shady sides of the ravines
and the mountains have the
most moisture, hence bear
the densest growths.

"ISLANDS" OF THE HIGH MOUNTAIN REGION 457
Finally, the high country terminates in a second belt of
pasture below the woodland.
Wherever streams descend from the snow or woodland coun
try there is water for the stock above and for irrigation on the

VALLEY ZONE MOUNTAIN

ZONE

5N0W LINE  -j£
£&-
-^KIH RBAS5Y VALLEY*-"^-""
^y  -_-_--.  UppER LIMIT OF HEAVY CLOUDS  iffiaNTOWTJflil^S^
^\BELT OF MAXIMUM PRECIPITATION ^Gv^&F^Z*'
^WeODLAMB
limit of former— 
olaciation ioooo'-
^n^--_ LOWEH LIMIT OF HEAVY CLOUDS— •y^-" ":'.'": '¦"" /
SHOULDER ON VALLEY WAlfc^. s**^ ¦'' TRA1L /
"topographic unconformity* N^-—-..^  -—?r\.~:  jS*
N^OTMra vailet Fuwf/ , ' 3 ^ --^HOFILE OF TRIBUTARY
8000-GOOO1-
X^ yoESERT scnyV^, .^-"*
4000'-
ARID VALLEY FLOOR
2000'-
IRRIGATION, SUGAR ESTATES
Fig. 167. Climatic and Topographic Cross-Section of the Deep Canyon
and Grassy Upland Type of Environment
The numbers along the trail in this diagram correspond in position with the same
numbers in Fig. 165.
alluvial fan below. But the spur ends, dropping off abruptly
several thousand feet, have a limited area and no running
streams, and the ground water is hundreds of feet down.
There is grass for stock, but not water. In some places the
stock is driven back and forth every few days. In a few places
water is brought to the stock by canal from the woodland
streams above, as at Incahuasi. In the same way a canal
brings water to Hacienda Pasaje from a woodland strip many
miles to the west. The little canal shown in the diagram,
Fig. 165, is almost a toy construction, as it is only a few
inches wide and deep and conveys only a trickle of water.
Yet on it depends the settlement at the spur end and if it
were cut the people would have immediately to repair it or
establish new homes elsewhere.
The canal and the pasture are possible because the slopes are
moderate. The slopes were formed in an earlier cycle of erosion
when the land was lower. They are hung midway between
the rough mountain slopes above and the steep canyon walls
below (Figs. 167, 168). Their smooth descents and gentle
profiles are in very pleasing contrast to the rugged scenery
about them. The trails follow them easily. Where the slopes
are flattest farmers have settled and produce good crops of corn,
vegetables, and barley. Some farmers have even developed
458

HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

three- and four-story farms. On an alluvial fan in the main
valley they raise sugar cane and tropical and subtropical

Bowman
Fig. 168. The Apurimac Canyon near Pasaje, Peru. It is 10,000 Feet
from the Top of the Country in the Background to the Floor
of the Canyon. It is a Mile from the Camera to the
Canyon Floor. See Figs. 165 and 167
fruits; on the flat upper slopes they produce corn; in the
moister soil near the edge of the woodland are fields of moun
tain potatoes ; and the upper pastures maintain flocks of sheep.
In one district this change takes place in a distance that
may be covered in five hours. Generally it is at least a full
and hard day's journey from one end of the series to the other.
Wherever these features are closely associated they tend to
be controlled by the planter, who lives in some deep valley
thereabouts. Where they are widely scattered the people are
independent, small groups living in places that are nearly
inaccessible. Legally they are all under the control of the
owners of princely tracts that take in the whole country,
but the remote groups are left almost wholly to themselves.
In most cases, they are supposed to sell their few commercial
products to the haccndado who nominally owns their land, but
the administration of this arrangement is left largely to

"ISLANDS" OF THE HIGH MOUNTAIN REGION 459

chance. The shepherds and small farmers near the planta
tion are more dependent upon the planter for supplies, and
also their wants are more varied and numerous. Hence they
pay for their better location in free labor and in produce sold
at a discount.
So deep are some of the main canyons, like the Apurimac
(Fig. 1 68) and the Cotahuasi, that their floors are arid or
semi-arid. The fortunes of Pasaje are tied to a narrow canal
from the moist woodland and a tiny brook from a hollow in
the valley wall. Where the water has thus been brought
down to the arable soil of the fans there are rich plantations
and farms. Elsewhere, however, the floor is quite dry and
uncultivated. In
small spots here and
there is a little seep
age, or a few springs,
or a mere thread of
water that will not
support a plantation,
wherefore there have
come into existence
the valley herdsmen
and shepherds. Their
intimate knowledge of
the moist places is
their capital, quite as
much as the cattle
and sheep they own.
In a sense their lands
are the neglected
crumbs from the rich
man's table. So we find the shepherd from the hills invading
the valleys just as the valley farmer has invaded the country
of the shepherd.

Bowman
Fig. 169. Type of Twisted Growth Found in
the Belt of Woodland Shown in Fig. 166

3. intermont basins
The intermont basin type of topography, illustrated in a
score of localities in Peru, Bolivia, and northwestern Argen
tina, calls into existence a set of relations quite distinct from

460

HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

those we have just described. Fig. 170 represents the main
facts. The rich and comparatively flat floor of the basin
supports most of the people. The alluvial fans tributary
thereto are composed on their outer margin of fine material
and at their heads of coarse stony waste. Hence the valley
farms also extend
over the edges of the
fans, while only pas
ture or dense chapar
ral occupies the upper
portions. Finally
there is the steep
margin of the basin
where the broad and
moderate slopes of
the highland, break
down suddenly to the
floor of the basin.
(See Fig. 171.)
If a given basin lies
at an elevation which
exceeds 14,000 feet
there will be no culti
vation, only pasture.
If it lies at 10,000 or
1 1 ,000 feet there will
be grain fields below
and potato fields
above (see Figs. 171
and 172). If the
basin lies at a still lower elevation, fruit will grow in the
basin and finally sugar cane and many other subtropical
products, as at Abancay.
Much will also depend upon the amount of available water
and the extent of the pasture land all about. Thus the densely
populated Cuzco basin has a vast mountain territory tribu
tary to it and is itself within the limits of barley and wheat
cultivation. Furthermore there are a number of smaller
basins nearby, like the Anta basin on the north, which are

Fig. 170. Regional Diagram of the Basin Type
of Topography; Deep Alluvial Soil, High
Level Pastures, Rugged Snow-Clad Moun
tains, and Concentric Drainage
For location see B, Fig. 166. See also Figs.
171 and 172.

"ISLANDS" OF THE HIGH MOUNTAIN REGION .461

dependent upon the better markets and transportation facili
ties of the Cuzco basin.
A dominance of this kind is self-stimulating and at last is out

Fig. 171. Border of the Cuzco Basin to Show Alluvial Floor, Steep
Margin, and Edge of Grass Covered Upland. See Fig. 170
of all proportion to the original differences of nature. Cuzco
has also profited as the gateway to the great northeastern

ZONE OFSTORED PRECIPITATION
SOURCES OF BASIN STREAMS

ZONE OF CULTIVATION
l-UMIT OF IRRIGATION AND—!
I INTENSIVE CULTIVATION

ZONE OF MOUNTAIN PASTURES

Fig. 172. Climatic and Topographic Cross-Section of an Intermont Basin,
Peruvian Andes. See Corresponding Regional Diagram,
Fig. 170, and Photograph, Fig. 171
The thickness of the dark symbol on the right is proportional to the amount of each
product at the corresponding elevations.
valley region of the Urubamba and its big tributaries. All of
the varied products of subtropical valleys find their immediate
market at Cuzco..

462 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
The effect of this natural conspiracy of conditions has been
to place the historic city of Cuzco in a position of extraordinary
importance. Hundreds of years before the Spanish Conquest
it was a center of far-reaching influence, the home of the
powerful Inca kings. From it the strong arm of authority
and conquest was extended; to it came tribute of grain, wool,
and gold. If the rise of the Incas to power was not related to
the topography and climate of the Cuzco basin, at least it is
certain that without so broad and noble a stage the scenes
would have been enacted on a far different scale. The first
Inca king and the Spanish conquerors after the Incas found
here no mobile nomadic tribes melting away at the first touch,
nor a race of savages hiding away in the forest fastnesses,
but a well-rooted agricultural race and a large city.
The full occupation of the pasture lands about the Cuzco
basin is in direct relation to the physical conditions that con
trol the food supply. Every part of the region feels the pres
sure of population. Nowhere else in the Peruvian Andes are
the limits between cultivation and grazing more definitely
drawn than here. Moreover, there is to-day a marked differ
ence between the types that inhabit highland and basin.
The basin Indian is either a debauched city dweller or, as
generally, a relatively alert farmer. The shepherds, on the
other hand, are exceedingly ignorant and five for the most
part in a manner that is almost as primitive as at the time
of the Conquest. They are shy and suspicious. Many of
them prefer a life of isolation and rarely go down to the
town. They live on the fringe of culture. The new elements
which have come into their lives have come to them solely
by accident and by what might be called a process of human
seepage. The slight advances that have been made have not
happened by design, they have merely happened. Put the
highland shepherd in the basin and he would starve in com
petition with the basin type. Undoubtedly he would live
in the basin if he could. He has been driven out of the
basin; he is kept out.
And thus it is around the border of the Abancay basin
southwest of Cuzco, and other basins like it, as for example
the Cochabamba and Cliza basins in Bolivia and the Salta

"ISLANDS" OF THE HIGH MOUNTAIN REGION 463
basin or Valle de Lerma in Argentina, save that the Abancay
basin is lower and more varied as to resources. There the
Indian is in competition with the capitalistic white planter.
He lives on the land by sufferance only. Great sugar
estates occupy the basin floor; farther up the slopes are
the farms of the Indians, and above them are the pastures
of the ignorant shepherds. Whereas the Indian farmer who
raises potatoes clings chiefly to the edge of the*' Cuzco basin
where lie the most undesirable agricultural lands, the Indian
farmers of Abancay live on broad rolling slopes so well
cultivated and fenced, so clean and productive, that they
remind one of the beautiful rolling prairies of Iowa.
4. SNOW-CLAD MOUNTAINS AND BORDERING VALLEYS
In the Vilcapampa region on the eastern border of the Andes
we have a third type of distribution (Fig. 173) The Cordillera
Vilcapampa is snow-crested, containing a number of fine white
peaks like Salcantay, Soray , and Soiroccocha. There are a large
number of small glaciers and a few that are several miles long.
There was here in glacial times a much larger system of
glaciers which lived long enough to work great changes in
the topography. The floors of the glaciated valleys were
smoothed and broadened and their gradients flattened. The
side walls were steepened and precipitous cirques were formed
at the valley heads. Also, there were built across the valleys
a number of stony morainic ridges. With all these changes
there was, however, but little effect upon the main masses
of the big inter- valley spurs. They remain as before — bold,
wind-swept, broken, and nearly inaccessible.
The work of the glaciers aids the mountain people. The
stony moraines afford them handy sizable building material
for their stone huts and their numerous corrals (Fig. 175).
The thick tufts of grass in the marshy spots in the overdeepened
parts of the valleys furnish them with grass for their thatched
roofs. And, most important of all, the flat valley floors have
the best pasture in the whole mountain region. There is
plenty of water. There is seclusion, and, if a wall be built
from one valley wall to another, an entire section of the valley
may be inclosed, and with little labor. Thus each valley floor

464

HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

Fig. 173. Regional Diagram of the Cordillera Vilcapampa, Peru
For location see C, Fig. 166
is marked by a band of population. A village like Choque-
tira, located on a bench on the valley side, commands an
extensive view up and down the valley — an important feature

"ISLANDS" OF THE HIGH MOUNTAIN REGION 465
in a village where the corrals cannot always be built near
the houses of the owners. Long, finger-like belts of highland-
shepherd population have thus been extended into the moun
tain valleys (See Fig. 173). Sheep and llamas drift right

Bowman
Fig. 174. A Potato Field at 12,000 Feet, Vilcabamba, Peru
There is no cultivation. The seed potato is merely dropped into a. hole made in
the sod, and left to grow without further attention.
up to the snow line, for in some places not more than a
few hours' journey separates a village from a permanent
snow field.
There is, however, a marked difference between the people
on opposite sides of the Cordillera Vilcapampa. On the west
the mountains are bordered by a broad highland devoted to
grazing. On the east there is a narrower grazing belt leading
abruptly down to tropical valleys. The eastern or leeward
side is also the warmer and wetter side of the Cordillera. The
snow line is several hundred feet lower. The result is that

466

HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

patches of scrub and even a little woodland occur almost at
the snow line in favored places. Mist and storms are more

J*<\

,'• *_S4, -

--

Bowman
Fig. 175. Corrals in the Zone of Pasture at 15,500 Feet between Lam-
brama and Chuquibambilla, Peru
For location, see Fig. 166.
frequent. The grass is longer and fresher. Vegetation in
general is more abundant. The people make less of wool
than of cattle, horses, and mules. Vilcapampa pueblo is
famous for its horses — wiry, long-haired Httle beasts, as
hardy as Shetland ponies. Cattle are found grazing only
five hundred feet below the limit of perpetual snow. Thus the
limits of agriculture are higher on the east ; likewise the limits
of cattle grazing that naturally goes with agriculture. This

"ISLANDS" OF THE HIGH MOUNTAIN REGION 467
is especially well shown in the difference between dry Arma,
deep-sunk in a glaciated valley west of the crest of the moun
tains, and wet Puquiura, a half day's journey east of the
crest. There is no group on the east at all comparable to
the shepherds of Choquetira on the west, either in the mat
ter of thoroughgoing dependence upon grazing or in that of
dependence upon glacial topography.
Though the effects of glaciation are strongly marked at
high altitudes the most important effects are to be found
below the limit of glaciation. The rock waste detached by
the ice was swept forward by streams and deposited in the
middle and lower courses of the valleys where it became the

Fig. 176. Junction of the Yanitili and the Urubamba Rivers near
Pabellon, Peru
The grass-covered slopes extend down the dry lower valley slopes while the moister
slopes at higher elevations are covered with mountain forest.
productive soil of the mountain farmer (Fig. 177). The
narrow touques of pasture land on the floors of glaciated

468

HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

valleys at high elevations thus have their counterpart in
the narrow cultivated bands on the aggraded valley floors
of lower elevations. Where the deep soils of glacial origin

H. L. Tucker
Fig. 177. Alluvial Fill in High-Level Mountain Valleys, Peruvian
Andes. Elevation, 11,000 Feet, Ollantaybamba, Peru
The fill is the result of overloading of the streams in glacial times, in turn due to
intensive glacial scouring at the valley heads.
fall below the limit of severe frosts the degree of cultivation is
astonishingly high. The smooth green fields stand out in strong
contrast to the naked mountain walls forming the valley sides.
5. the loftiest habitations in the world
In Fig. 178 we have one of the most extreme sets of
conditions to be found anywhere and they have led to the
development of the loftiest habitations in the world (Fig. 179).
Between Antabamba and Cotahuasi occur the highest passes
in the Maritime Cordillera. At 17,100 feet, just below one
of the highest passes, is the last outpost of the Indian shep
herds. The snow line, very steeply canted away from the sun,
is between 17,200 and 17,600 feet. At frequent intervals
during the three months of winter, snowfalls during the night
and terrific hailstorms in the late afternoon drive both shep
herds and flocks to the shelter of leeward slopes or steep

"ISLANDS" OF THE HIGH MOUNTAIN REGION 469

Fig. 178. Regional Diagram of the Maritime Cordillera of Peru on the
73d Meridian
The environment in the region of the loftiest habitations in the world. For loca
tion see D, Fig. 166.
canyon walls. Here we have the limits of altitude and the
limits of resources. The inter-valley spaces do not support
grass. Some of them are quite bare, others are covered with
mosses. It is too high an altitude for even the tola bush —
30

470

HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

that pioneer of Alpine vegetation in the Andes. The distance1
to Cotahuasi is 75 miles, to Antabamba 50 miles. Thence
wool must be shipped by mule-back to the railroad, in the one

Fig. 179. The Highest Known Habitation in the World
Elevation, 17,100 feet, Maritime Cordillera of Peru. The snowline is but a few
hundred feet higher.
case 250 miles to Arequipa, in the other, 200 miles to Cuzco.
Even the potatoes and barley, which must be imported,
come from valleys several days' journey away. The question
naturally arises how these people live on the rim of the world.
The main tracts of lofty pasture above Antabamba cover
mountain slopes and valley floor alike, but the moist valley
floors supply the best grazing (Figs. 180 and 181). The main
valleys, moreover, have been intensively glaciated. Hence
their floors are broad and flat, though their sides are steep.
Marshy tracts, periodically flooded, are scattered through
out, and here and there are overdeepened portions where
lakes have gathered. There is a thick carpet of grass, also
numerous huts and corrals, and many flocks. At the upper
edge of the main zone of pasture the grasses become thin
¦Distances are not taken from the map but from the trail.

"ISLANDS" OF THE HIGH MOUNTAIN REGION 471

and with increasing altitude give out altogether, except along
the moist valley floors or on shoulders where there is seepage.
If the streams head in dry mountain slopes without snow
the grassy bands of the valley floor terminate at moderate
elevations. If the streams have their sources in snowfields
or glaciers there is a more uniform runoff, and a ribbon of
pasture may extend to the snow line. To the latter class
belong the pastures that support these remote people.
With extensive grazing grounds at high elevations and
bands of pasture along snow-fed streams in broad valleys
there combines a third factor: the character of the soil.
Large amounts of volcanic ash and lapilli were thrown out in
the late stages of volcanic eruption in which the present cones of
the Maritime Andes were formed. The coarse texture of these
deposits allows the ready escape of rainwater. In their present
condition they would
therefore be arid in
almost any climate.
The combination of
extreme aridity and
great elevation result
in a double restraint
upon vegetation. Out
side of the moist val
ley floors with their
film of ground moraine
on whose surface
plants find a more
congenial soil there
is an extremely small
amount of pasture.
Here are the natural
grazing grounds of the
fleet vicuna. They
occur in hundreds, and
so remote and little disturbed are they that near the main pass
one may count them by the score.
The extreme conditions of life existing on the lofty plateaus
of the Central Andes are well shown by the readiness with

,_,. ^_

*s

sk?^ " *L ' -

'. ':.-" .-:

¦ ¦ ¦ ''¦¦¦"-¦¦¦^'-¦-¦^"ij :

-¦"-,.. :~? *--.-» '

"** vLj"

*..,---*.

Fig. 180. Temporary Shelter Hut of Grass-
Covered Poles Used by Mountain Shep
herds in Their Wanderings above
the Zone of Habitation in
the Peruvian Andes
This hut is at an elevation of 15,500 feet
472

HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

which even the hardy shepherds avail themselves of shelter.
Wherever deep valleys bring a milder climate within reach of
the pastures the latter are unpopulated for miles on either side.

Fig. 181. Huichihua, Peru, at 12,500 Feet
Type of village found at high elevation in the zone of pasture, Peruvian Andes.
These belts of lava plateau bordering the entrenched valleys
are, however, as distinctly "sustenance" spaces, to use Penck's
term, as the irrigated and fertile alluvial fans in the bottom
of the valley. This is well shown when the rains come and
flocks of llamas and sheep are driven forth from the valleys to
the best pastures. It is equally well shown by the distribution
of the shepherds' homes. They are found not down on the
warm canyon floor, separated by a half day's journey from the
grazing, but in the entrenched tributary valleys of Fig. 182 or
just within the rim of the canyon. It is not shelter from the
cold but from the wind that chiefly determines their location,
They are also kept near the rim of the canyon by the pres
sure of the farming population from below. Every hundred

"ISLANDS" OF THE HIGH MOUNTAIN REGION 473

feet of descent from the arid plateau increases the water
supply- Springs increase in number and size; likewise belts
of seepage make their appearance. The gradients in many
places diminish and flatfish spurs and shoulders interrupt the
generally steep descents of the canyon wall (Fig. 183). Every
change of this sort has a real value to the farmer and means
an enhanced price beyond the ability of the poor shepherd to
pay. If you ask a wealthy hacendado on the valley floor, who
it is that live in the huts above him, he invariably says "los
Indios," with a shrug meant to convey the idea of poverty and
worthlessness. Sometimes it is "los Indios pobres," or merely
"lospobres." Thus there is a vertical stratification of society
corresponding to the superimposed strata of climate and land.

Fig. 182. Regional Diagram of the Canyon and Lava Plateau Type of
Topography in the Western Cordillera of Peru on the 73d Meridian
For location, see E, Fig. 166
From the foregoing it will be clear that there is a quite gen
eral shifting of the shepherd population of the Central Andes
in response to the seasons. It will be well to remember,

474

HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

however, and especially before we examine the remaining
regions, that the causes and results of migration are often con
tradictory. These will depend on the state of civihzation and

Bowman
Fig. 183. Irrigated Terraces at Huaynacotas in the Cotahuasi Canyon
at 11,500 Feet
the extremes of circumstance. Dry years and extremely dry
years may even have opposite effects. When moderate dryness
prevails the results may be endurable. The oases become
crowded with men and beasts just when they can ill afford to
support them. The alfalfa meadows become overstocked, and
cattle become lean and almost worthless. But there is at least
bare subsistence. By contrast, if extreme and prolonged
drought prevails, some of the people are driven forth to more
favored spots. At Vallenar, in central Chile, some of the work
men in extreme years go up to the nitrate pampa ; in wet years
they return. When the agents of the nitrate companies hear
of hard times in a desert valley they offer employment to
the stricken people. It not infrequently happens that when
droughts occur in Chile there are abundant rains in Argentina
on the other side of the Cordillera. For this reason there
has been through many generations an irregular and slight,
though definite, shifting of population from one side of the

"ISLANDS" OF THE HIGH MOUNTAIN REGION 475

mountains to the other, as periods of drought and periods
of abundant rains have alternated in the two regions.
6. SEASONAL NOMADISM IN NORTHERN CHILE AND ARGENTINA
The people of the Central Andes respond to the seasons in
unlike ways. At the south (northwestern Argentina) the

Fig. 184. Regional Diagram of the Mountain and Desert Zones between
Northwestern Argentina and Northern Chile
The controlling elements of the physical environment with the exception of the
direct effects of climate. For location see F, Fig. 186.

476 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
winter cold is intense and the shepherds are driven out of the
upper belt of pasture, between 11,000 and 13,000 feet (Figs.
184, 185, and 186), to the warmer valleys bordering the desert in

Fig. 185. Looking Westward at the Volcanic Chain Forming the Edge of
the Andean Uplift on the Border between Chile and North
western Argentina. Oasis of Toconao in the Left
Middle Distance
the lower belt of pasture between 8,000 and 9,000 feet. Unlike
the northern part of the Central Andes the Puna de Atacama
(lat. 230 to 260 S.) has a protracted period of severe winter;
snow now and then blocks the passes. Instead of the fixed
climatic conditions of the trade-wind belt of Peru and Bolivia
we have here a zone where alternately trades and horse lati
tudes hold sway. The balmy da}Ts of "El Verano de San
Juan" in June or the calm weather of a few weeks in summer
are rare exceptions. More common are the high and bitter
winds of winter. The indispensable flocks of the plateau
Indian cannot be risked during the cold season in the lofty
Puna and the Cordillera. Some of the shepherds make their
permanent homes in the oases of the lower belt of pasture;
others in the upper belt. It results that in winter the highland
dweller is a nomad in the warm valleys (Fig. 187), and that in
summer the valley dweller is a nomad in the high pasture
country. A stone hut near a spring (Figs. 188 and 189) serves

"ISLANDS" OF THE HIGH MOUNTAIN REGION 477

for a shelter in both cases. The upper belt of pasture may
be seen from far across the bordering desert as a band of yellow
in winter and light green in summer. There are no villages
in it, only an occasional group of homes or a solitary hut in
some hollow of a sheltering valley wall. When the shepherd
is driven from the

upper pa j (males he
has little choice of
places to go. The
desert oasis may be
crowded but there
his flock must ulti
mately be driven.
The sole though tem
porary alternative is
to seek out the neg
lected spots where
tiny springs water a
narrow ribbon of
green. There his
flock wanders from
one clump of shrub
bery to another or
gathers in greedy
rings about rare hum
mocks of grass.
The mountain
shepherds are stunt
ed in mental devel
opment by the harsh
climate and slender
resources of their
cold valleys and high
pampas. Otherwise
we might expect an
armed contest for food between the oasis dweller and the
migratory mountain shepherd. Actually we find that there is
the closest and friendliest relation. The causes for this con
dition lie not only in the mentality of the Indian; they lie also

Fig. 186. Location Map of Southwestern Bolivia,
Northwestern Argentina, and Northern
Chile, Showing the Positions of Four
of the Regional Diagrams
in this Chapter

F, corresponds to Fig,
197; and I, to Fig. 201.

184; G, to Fig. 191; H, to Fig.

478 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
in the geographic distribution of his principal natural resources.
The oases on the western border of the Cordillera are for the
most part mere dots in a vast desert. Miles of almost naked

Bowman
Fig. 187. Oases of Soncor, Desert of Atacama, Northwestern Argentina.
Elevation 8,500 Feet. Volcanic Chain of Fig. 185 in Background
lava separate them from the belt of mountain pastures. Miles
of hot sandy piedmont separate them from each other. In
the absolute desert about them their own flocks, had they any,
would find subsistence for only a part of the year. Hence
the small size and scattered distribution of the oases make
them quite as dependent on the flocks of the shepherds as the
shepherds are dependent upon the vegetable food of the oases.
Indeed, this supplementary relation is carried so far in the
case of the smaller oases that they are merely the winter camps
for the mountain shepherds who have their own gardens which
they leave to the care of the old and infirm during the greater
part of the year. At Tilamonte a few patches of land are
planted, then left to the care of wind and sun until the harvest is
due. Above Toconao the villagers go up each year to a line of
tiny springs to cultivate a few additional acres. Almost all the
inhabitants of Soncor and Socaire are in the mountains in
summer, leaving the windows and doors of most of the homes
barred, and the gardens cared for by the feeble who are left
behind.

"ISLANDS" OF THE HIGH MOUNTAIN REGION 479

Each village in the piedmont zone represents some natural
advantage. Here a group of algarobo trees feeds on the ground
water and supplies an abundance of algaroba fruit. There a
clump of chafiar trees supplies nuts for the delectable chafiar
meal. On the edge of the swamp of Tevinguiche is pasture
to be rented to the cattle drivers from across the Sierra. The
soil is sandy at Cucuter but it also has no harmful salts and if
watered but twice a year yields good crops. At Catarpe are
warm terraces easy to irrigate, hence beautiful fruit orchards.
From their valley homes in the upper belt of pastures the
shepherds come to the lower oases for the supplies of chuna,
chahar, dried fruit, wheat, and flour. Their dependence on
the town of San Pedro, for example, is so great that in many
cases they construct two huts, one at the home oasis in a
quebrada miles away; another in the desert on the border of
the gardens that surround the city (Fig. 190). They pasture
their flocks on grasses and shrubs nearby, rest a few days,
trade, and return. A few have even gone so far as to construct

Fig. 188. Temporary Home of Mountain Shepherds on the Edge of the
Desert of Atacama, Driven out of Their Mountain Homes by the
Winter Cold
a third hut on some neglected patch of land at the common
border of desert and irrigated land and there plant a few grains
and seeds to help out their slender resources.

480

HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

Among the oasis products are a few of which they have
grown very fond — chafiar, for example. In very dry seasons
the crop may be small and the owners unwilling to part

Fig. 189. Temporary Stone Shelter of Mountain Shepherds at
Altitude of 14,000 Feet in the Puna of Atacama,
Northwestern Argentina

with it. Then the nomads refuse to sell their ropes of
twisted llama wool. Now the arrieros of the town must have
these to hobble their beasts at night while on a journey across
the desert. Leather thongs would chafe the legs of the mules
and start troublesome sores. Moreover, they cannot be so
securely tied and the security of one's beasts is a most im
portant care in desert travel. If the shepherd will not sell
his valuable llama wool ropes for money the arriero must
exchange for them something of less value to him. Thus he
reluctantly parts with his crop of chafiar nuts, for which
he may substitute wheat, rather than do without the wool
ropes for which he has no substitute.
In the communal vicufia hunts, now of great antiquity,
these pastoral nomads on the western flanks of the Andean
Cordillera show most clearly their isolated condition. Else
where the ancient customs have largely disappeared. The
priest has substituted the ceremonies of the Christian church

"ISLANDS'7 OF THE HIGH MOUNTAIN REGION 481

for the old feasts of the harvest and the chase. But the poor
shepherds of the desolate country on the mountain border of
Atacama still retain their old ways. Some of them are in pure
form; even those that have become modified still have a strong
flavor of the original paganism. Among them the vicuna hunt
is by' far the most interesting.
Late in February or early in March, four or five days after
the carnival of Chaya, the men of Aguas Blancas and Toconao
go into the mountain country in search of vicuna. On the
fifteenth day after the carnival the villages are almost depop
ulated. The women are busy stringing threads across the
valleys down which the animals are to be driven, for the
vicuna will not pass a thread or rope stretched across his
path. The men scatter widely to keep the quarry in the
ravines. The hunters are mounted and when the vicuna become
confused and huddled they are easily shot. He who kills a
vicufia gets the skin, the most valuable part. There is thus a

Fig. 190. Temporary Shelter Hut Used by the Mountain Shepherds when
Visiting the Oases of the Plain, Desert of Atacama, near San
Pedro de Atacama
See Fig. 184
strong incentive to compete in achieving the hardest part of
the hunt. The rest of the animal is common property ; since
the hunt is cooperative all share in some way in the spoils.

482

HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

THE MOUNTAIN BORDER
The Salta region, Fig. 191, illustrates a type of geography
quite distinct from any of those we have so far examined. It
is characterized by a basin topography and a climate dry
enough to require irrigation for the best growth of crops,
though corn and grasses will grow fairly well without irriga
tion. On the eastern slopes of the Andes that here break down
to the western edge

of the basin floor the
winds must rise and
in consequence there
is a zone of maxi
mum precipitation
on the mountains
marked by a belt of
temperate forest be
tween 4,500 and 6,000
feet (Fig. 192).
Above the forest,
scattered groves
occur in favorable
places and belts of
timber extend up the
shadier and moister
valley floors. The
higher country, where
the scattered groves
of forest cease, bears
a thin cover of her
baceous vegetation
which gradually
changes to the scat-

Fig. 191. Regional Diagram of the Border
Zone between Mountains and Plains
in Northwestern Argentina

For location see G, Fig. 186.
tered clumps of ichu grass at the highest elevations. Up to
9,000 feet barley is grown (Fig. 193); above that elevation
potatoes are the chief vegetable product. The grasslands
are the seat of pastoral population groups. In the forest,
agriculture and grazing are combined. Below the forest a
more intensive agriculture is practiced with irrigation. Those
streams that have their chief tributaries in the forest

"ISLANDS" OF THE HIGH MOUNTAIN REGION 483

Fig. 192. The Belt of Woodland between
4,500 and 6,000 Feet on the Mountain
Flanks West of Salta, North
western Argentina

belt are most constant in flow and furnish to the population
groups on the mountain border the means for agriculture and
stock raising on a
large scale.
The variety of life
on the eastern flanks
of the Cordillera, due
to the varied climate
and resources, is ex
hibited in a compara
tively narrow zone
owing to the abrupt
nature of the moun
tain border (Fig. 194).
In a few days one may
ride from the warm
valleys at 4,000 feet
to the bleak passes in
the bordering ranges
at 16,000 feet, crossing successively the belt of irrigation, the
belt of forest and woodland, the belt of grasses, and the belt
of barren mountain
slopes and rock slides.
It is but natural that
there should be an in
timate degree of inter-
course between the
people of these unlike
regions. The wool
and skins of the
mountain shepherds
(Fig. 195) are carried
down by pack train
(Fig. 196) to the rail
road at Rosario de
Lerma (thirty miles
southwest of Salta) ;
in the belt of forest, besides the growing of vegetables
("habas," beans, potatoes, etc.) wood cutting is a regular

Bowman
Fig. 193. Upper Limit of Farms, Andes of
Northwestern Argentina, between
8,000 and 9,000 Feet

484

HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

Fig. 194. Typical Relation of Irrigated Allu
vial Fan to Snow-Clad Mountain on the
Edge of the Andes, Northwestern
Argentina. Elevation, 10,000 Feet

occupation for a limited number, to supply timber and
fuel to the mines and firewood and building material to
the towns. The irri
gated valley lands
support herds of cattle
and droves of mules
for the transmontane
trade with the nitrate
country in the Desert
of Atacama. So large
and profitable is the
trade since the fuller
development of the
nitrate industry that
land values have risen
enormously. Many
families, once poor
landowners, are now
rich city dwellers.
This is a phenomenon now common to the eastern agricul
tural provinces of Argentina but it is of recent development
in the mountain provinces and in some cases is due to quite
different stimuli: the railroad, the growing nitrate industry
in Chile, the more rapid development of mining since the
introduction of the
railroad, and a host of
minor causes.
No less clear than
the controls of the
present are those of
the past. Through
out its history Salta
has been an entrepot
between the mining
regions of the high
land rising to the west
and north of it and
the grass-covered plains lying toward the southeast. It is
the focus of the cattle trails of a vast region and, before the

Fig.

195. Stone Hit at 9,000 Feet in the
Belt of Pasture, Andes of North
western Argentina

"ISLANDS" OF THE HIGH MOUNTAIN REGION 485
railroad was constructed, was the last town of importance
on the westward trail from northern Argentina to the Pacific

*

Bowman
Fig. 196. Pack Train Carrying Goat Skins Down from the High Pastures
of the Andean Valleys of Northwestern Argentina to the Rail
road Terminus at Rosario de Lerma, West of Salta

coast at Cobija, Chile.
of traders.1

Its annual fairs attracted thousands

THE DESERT OF TARAPACA
For 500 miles along the west coast of South America or
from Copiapo to Pisagua, the Loa is the only river of any
consequence that reaches the sea and it accomplishes this only
in years of heavy snowfall. in the mountains. In general the
mountain streams dwindle and fail on the inner side of the
desert where their waters are absorbed by the deep porous
sands and gravels that form a piedmont slope 350 miles long.
The northern part of this region is known as the Desert of
Tarapaca. Its conditions are summarized in Figs. 197 and 198.
Each failing stream — Aroma, Tarapaca, Huasquifia, Ma
rtina, Quisma, Huataconda, Chacarilla, and others — is the locus
of a village or line of villages. Each stream is deeply incised
below the level of the broad slope that directs it westward to

*G. M. Wrigley, "Salta, an Early Commercial Center of Argentina,1
graphical Review, Vol. II, 1916, pp. 116-133.

The Geo-

31

486

HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

the inner eastern edge of the desert. Thus there are two. chief
classes of routes of travel: east-west routes along the axis of
the incised streams ; and a north-south route at the inner edge
of the piedmont where the streams terminate. The trails are
for this reason ar
ranged in a roughly
quadrilateral fashion.
So far as these in
terior villages at the
stream endings were
concerned, as well
might the coast be a
thousand as a hun
dred miles away
before the develop
ment of nitrate
brought railroads and
ocean ports. The
streams wither far
from the sea, and
naked desert (Fig.
199) and an uninhab
ited coast repel all
occupation or move
ment in that direc
tion. The fortunate

V

PACI OCEAN1/1

Fig. 197. Regional Diagram of the Physical
Environment in the Nitrate Desert
of Tarapaca, Northern Chile
For location see H, Fig. 186
places were in the mountains and on the inner edge of the
desert, away from the sea. And there they are to-day for any
population unit which must subsist upon what it produces
from the soil. Before nitrate and copper were produced and
the modern artificial coast towns — Iquique, Pisagua, Tocopilla,
Caleta Buena — came into existence, the coast ranges and the
well-nigh impassable desert intervening between them and the
Andes might have been a great continental desert interior. The
people looked to the mountains for their subsistence, not to the
sea. It was of far more importance then that the winter's
snows, whose amount they marked with great concern, should
be unfailing, than that the vessels of distant ports and countries
should ride at anchor off their repelling and distant shores.

•ISLANDS" OF THE HIGH MOUNTAIN REGION 487

The oases, separated by wide stretches of utterly barren
rock and sand, were like oceanic islands in the degree of isola
tion they possessed. In them no single movement of any
consequence was ever originated. Economically they are the
least important units in Chile. Their chief consequence to
the world of progressive men has been their service to land
travelers who have utilized them as links in the chain of com
munication from central Chile to southern Peru, and from the
mountainous hinterland to the coast. For example, they were
determining forces in the extension of the Inca Empire.
They furnished food and water and men to the imperial armies

pergr-gl

Bowman
Fig. 198. Oases of Matilla, Desert of Tarapaca, Northern Chile. Look
ing Westward Across the Desert. The Tower to the Left of
the Palm Tree Contains a Light to Guide Desert
Travelers at Night
and constituted bases of operations in the progressive conquest
of the southerly lands. They were population units incapable
of any initiative and only passively and, in a certain sense,

488 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
unconsciously serviceable to movements initiated in less hos
pitable regions near by. Almagro's army would have perished
to a man, as, without ships and with an uncharted ocean of

Fig. 199. Surface of Salar, in the Desert of Tarapaca, Northern
Chile
sand and salt before them, they made their precarious way
northward from central Chile, had it not been for the occa
sional oases scattered along their line of march. The pros
pectors of a later day and the traveler of the present use them
to similar purpose.
i No vegetation can be found from 2,000 feet to 8,000 feet
in these portions of the deserts of Atacama and Tarapaca,
except where the mountain streams debouch upon the pied
mont slope. It is a thoroughly plantless region; not even that
almost universal sign of the desert, the cactus, can be found;
downright nakedness prevails. This complete barrenness of
the desert pampa, outside the borders of the oases, at once
denies even a pastoral occupation over the wide expanses of
the region. Flocks are kept in certain numbers but they must
forage on the cultivated plants of the garden farms: alfalfa,
millet, etc. Not even the temporary range noted at Payta
and Copiapo, and due to an occasional shower, exists here.
Beyond the oases there is nothing, except in the mountains
above 8,000 feet, and access to these exceedingly thin moun
tain pastures is denied over much of the year by the extreme

"ISLANDS" OF THE HIGH MOUNTAIN REGION 489
scarcity of springs and streams that may be relied upon for
drinking water. Only during a few months of the spring
can certain restricted areas of mountain pasture be relied upon.
Of other pasturage there is none except in some underdeveloped
oases where poorly watered marginal tracts, rarely more than
a few square miles in extent, support a wild growth of tem
porary grasses and perennial shrubs which, for a short time,
bear certain quantities of succulent foliage.
The population, by reason of its aloofness from the ocean
and the lack of herbage afield, is sedentary to a degree. It con
sists of farmers deeply rooted to that portion of the soil watered
by the mountain streams. Each agricultural or horticultural

Bowman
Fig. 200. Pisagua, Chile. A Nitrate Port Built on a Narrow Terrace at
the Foot of Bluffs 2,000 Feet High
See Fig. 197
area is to a high degree a self-centered unit. Formerly this
quality was much more evident than now. To-day the
great industrial development which the exploitation of the

490 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
nitrate has brought about has stirred the oases dwellers out
of their lethargy. Fruit is required at Iquique, and Pica and
Matilla supply a part of it, and thereby acquire a taste for
the products of the town. Laborers are in high demand all
through the nitrate region and the populations of the oases,
crowded from the standpoint of water supply and the food
resources, are often drawn upon for the service of nitrate
oficinas or establishments.
As a consequence of the wide spaces to be overcome with
perishable or bulky goods, or even any goods at all, the prices
for staple commodities vary greatly from place to place.
Where there is none to spare sometimes money cannot buy
forage even of the worst kind; where there is plenty, it is
very cheap; where there is a surplus it is given away; and
where there are no inhabitants it belongs to the first comer.
It is the ratio of supply to demand at a given restricted and
isolated locality that determines the price, not the ratio of
the aggregate supply to the demand of the whole geographic
province. In short, there are no railroads and only the most
primitive means of carriage for freight and passengers; and
no specialized production or adequate equalization of surplus
products of any kind. Furthermore, these primitive means
of communication mean great expense. The prices for food,
fruit, forage, and the like are as high in many places as in
New York City. The price depends on the locality, the extent
to which the commodity is locally produced, and the degree
of abundance of the crop for a particular year.
The precarious situation of most of the towns is one of their
striking characteristics. The least accident may betray
them. This is well illustrated by the history of a line of
settlements in the Chacarilla Valley. It was at one time
a fertile and frequently visited district. But in the early
70's, as nearly as can be determined, a great flood came down
the gorge, broke down the irrigating ditches, cut up the
terraces or deposited infertile sand, gravel, and even boulders
upon them, overwhelmed orchards, and so generally devastated
the farms and discouraged the inhabitants that all but a
remnant of them moved away. Their irrigation works may
still be seen at the site of the now deserted village of Algarrobal.

"ISLANDS" OF THE HIGH MOUNTAIN REGION 491
Here and there a neglected orchard tree or pepper bush,
struggling along as best it can without irrigation, or the
crumbling mud walls of an abandoned home, are mournful
testimony to the ruin wrought by the flood in this once happy
valley. The fragment of people now living within sight of the former
more populous valley occupies a safer position. The tiny
oasis of Chacarilla is perched high above reach of flood upon
the slopes of a terraced alluvial fan, whose outer edge is
protected by a stone wall. The small spring-fed stream
discharging across the fan is led out upon the gardens and
orchards by half a hundred diverting canals.
Each town of the piedmont belt has its patron saint, appro
priate to the specialty for which the town is known or the
condition under which it exists. St. Andrew, the patron
saint of wine, is the patron saint of Pica, where excellent
wine is produced; San Isidro, the patron saint of farmers, is the
patron saint of Canchones, where, without a surface stream,
the farmers still persist in agriculture by digging canals and
great holes to the ground water, and in these they plant their
grain and vegetables. Frequently the saint of one village
is taken on a journey to a neighboring village. Thus, at the
time of our visit to the village of Pica the Virgin of Candelaria
was brought from Macaya, a copper-producing village of 600
inhabitants, lying 60 miles northeast of Pica. She came
asking for alms, for it had proved a hard year at Macaya and
an appeal was thus made to the generosity of the inhabitants
of Pica. The patron saint of Pica was carried out to meet
the visiting saint and with fife and drum the united
procession returned to the village, parading the streets to the
church of St. Andrew. THE BOLIVIAN HIGHLAND
That portion of the Central Andes shown in the figure is
not a line or lines of peaks or of north-south ranges, but a
group of lofty, upwarped plateaus with a broad basin between.
The plateaus have well-defined and fairly straight borders
nicked by streams that descend from the uplands. The
floor of the basin is marked by swamps and salars that indicate

492

HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

the ultimate discharge from Lake Poopo, a salt lake which in
turn receives the excess of Lake Titicaca by way of the Desa-
guadero (The Outlet) River. On the basin borders are
alluvial fans and a fringe of piedmont waste.
This interior basin (Figs. 201 and 202) constitutes a part
of the "alti-plano" or "planicie" (high plain or plateau) of
Bolivia. In whatever direction one travels from this central
basin one is required first to ascend these scarps to reach the
plateaus which form the main part of the eastern and western
Cordilleras with their volcanoes on the west and residuals
on the east. Although the floor of the interior basin is remark
ably flat over great areas, there are, in the aggregate, numerous
interruptions of its surface both from volcanic accumulations

Fig. 201. Regional Diagram of the Great Titicaca-Poopo Depression or
Interior Basin of Western Bolivia
For location see I, Fig. 186.
irregularly disposed and from structural irregularities whieh
bring important projections of the adjacent plateaus within
the general outlines of the basin. Finally, it may be noted
that part of the regularity of the central basin is due to the

"ISLANDS" OF THE HIGH MOUNTAIN REGION 493
aggradation by tributary streams whereby a smooth floor
of waste has concealed some of the minor irregularities once
existing. In the manner in which the plateau and mountain Indian
occupies the land there is offered a strong contrast to the

-•S-i^f'ji^i'. >ti«-'

Fig. 202. Surface of the "Alti-Plano" of Bolivia Looking Eastward at
the Crest of the Cordillera Real. Part of the Interior
Basin of Bolivia. Elevation 12,500 Feet. See Fig. 201
condition in the desert of Tarapaca in northern Chile. There
it has been shown that the extreme degree of rainlessness
precludes pastoral activities. No nomad herds may there
wander about and hope to find even a meager supply of food.
Cattle and sheep are maintained only at the irrigated oases
and the population is strictly sedentary. To travel or to
barter means first to conquer sheer waste space which will
not even support the pack animals that carry the goods.
The isolation of separate groups of oases dwellers is therefore
very strongly marked.
The plateau and mountain-dwelling Indian is more fortunate
in this respect. He lives in the very highland which acts
as a barrier to the rain-laden winds and not in the desert to
leeward of the barrier. His land is likewise arid, even desert,
but its aridity is less intense. Thunderstorm rains are common
at the change of the seasons, as when spring begins; and his
farm is nearer the source of the streams — the winter snows —

494 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
than is the farm of the oasis dweller of Tarapaca. He may
therefore irrigate his already naturally better watered land
more bountifully. His most important advantage, however,
lies in the pasturage which the inter-oases tracts afford. The
light showers are sufficient to maintain some sparse and
scattered vegetation. Bunch grass occurs here and there
and the young edible shoots of tola bushes, cacti, etc., are
also available. In addition lichens and mosses of several
edible varieties form a food resource for stock of no incon
siderable amount; and these grow right up to the snow line.
Of course the scattered tufts of grasses and the individual
spears of grass that spring up after a shower and tinge the
hillsides green are the chief forage resource.
In consequence of the widespread pasturage, flocks of llamas
may be grazed upon well-nigh every agriculturally unoccupied
tract that exists outside the salars and snow fields. To be
sure, thousands of square miles in Bolivia, and on the moun
tainous frontier between Bolivia and Chile, are undergrazed
or wholly vacant, but overgrazing is a fact near the centers
of densest population; land and grazing rights are there a
matter of livelier concern. Likewise, the tracts between
closely adjacent springs are well grazed as a rule, but there
are no artificial devices even of the simplest sort for procuring
water for flocks where pasturage but not drinking water
occurs naturally; and that grazing as an industry is on the
whole underdeveloped in consequence is apparent even to
the casual observer. Nevertheless, to one who has come
directly from the coast desert to the Andean plateau and
the mountains, the significant facts appear to be, not the
underdevelopment of the grazing resource, but the widespread
occurrence and use of these mountain pastures as compared
with their absence in the coast desert and their distributional
effect upon the inhabitants. Instead of the wholly sedentary
population groups of the rainless coast desert, there are here
partially fixed groups whose time is divided between agri
culture and grazing, while a distinct though small number
of population units are wholly dependent upon grazing.
These latter live in isolated sections among the mountains
in huts of roughest construction and range widely with their

"ISLANDS" OF THE HIGH MOUNTAIN REGION 495
flocks now in this direction, now in that, often spending several
nights in succession in bleak corrals arranged at wide intervals
on the border of the settled tracts.
As a rule, therefore, the mountain and plateau Indians are
fundamentally agricultural as well as pastoral. The irrigated
oases are relieved of the burden of animal subsistence but
grazing is not generally the sole or even the chief occupation.
Further reasons for this are noteworthy. In the first place
the products of the flocks, wool and meat, while indispensable,
are also insufficient in themselves. Vegetable foods, grains,
and the like, the products of the farms and gardens, are
demanded. The farm is located near the water supply and is supple
mented by the wide range behind it; either farm or range
alone would be insufficient for the desired degree of comfort
or prosperity. The second reason for the dominance of
agriculture lies in the greater variety of foods it offers and
the comparatively greater security and comfort the farmer
enjoys in extracting a living. Finally, it may be said that
farming and grazing may be combined where agriculture
is the chief resource, while on the other hand it is not easily
possible for a nomadic people, living chiefly from the products
of the flock, to farm. The necessities of their flocks require
constant movement and crops are without that protection
from other wandering flocks and shepherds which the home
near by affords. Such agricultural foods as are consumed
must be purchased from the farmers of the oases.
In consequence of these sources of food supply the popula
tion groups of the mountains and plateaus of Bolivia are widely
scattered as to occupation and compact as to dwelling. The
highland man is a nomadic traveler to the degree that flocks
are a supplemental resource to his farm. He scans the whole
countryside for good pasturage, drives his flock for days
through little known lofty valleys, and only returns when his
supply of food becomes exhausted or there is herbage once
more upon the overgrazed range near his habitation. He
is a great traveler in consequence, and knows the mountain
ways intimately. It is a constant marvel to one in the moun
tains to see to what altitudes the shepherd climbs and what

496 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
out-of-the-way places he reaches. He is the characteristic
element in the Andean scene — bleak slopes in some high valley,
a widely scattered flock of llamas, a solitary shepherd whistling
and clucking to his vagrant flock and industriously spinning
the llama wool into yarn as he trots along, often without food
save the leaves of the coca, and without water for a day or
more at a time, far from any shelter, alone. He is an excellent
guide, fearless and confident, with knowledge of every spring
and trail and no special concern for ordinary altitudes below
the snow line.
One of the best indications of the firm grasp the agricultural
inhabitant has upon the country is the completeness with which
the alluvial fans are occupied. Illustrations may be found
all the way from the southern frontier' of Bolivia to northern
Peru. It is the most conspicuous and general distribution
fact of the whole region. Fig. 203 shows this relation of alluvial
fan and town. The site is excellent not only because of the
deep, rich alluvium washed from the adjacent uplands but
also for the water supply which the fan itself indicates, and
for the regular grades that make irrigation works easy of
construction. This kind of distribution is well represented in the highland
east of Oruro. Above 14,000 feet only a most desolate land
scape appears, with low scattered bushes and bleak wind-swept
highlands. Then come valleys where, at about 12,000 feet
and in the well-watered patches, barley fields of some conse
quence appear. At one spot we observed a shaded spring,
frozen solid, and just above it on a sunny slope a patch of
growing barley. A greater abundance of natural vegetation
is noted here, with a corresponding increase in the number and
size of the flocks of llamas and sheep. At 11,000 feet occur
a few potato fields and lower still in succession one sees blos
soming orchards and vineyards, thrifty vegetable gardens,
masses of violets, hyacinths, sweet peas, and laden orange
trees. Throughout the whole descent one sees at every turn
the barley fields on the alluvial fans tributary to the main
valley. The gradation in the size of the villages is as regular
and certain as the downstream increase in the sizes of the
alluvial fans.

"ISLANDS" OF THE HIGH MOUNTAIN REGION 497
The control over the distribution of the population of this
section by alluvial fans is perhaps best shown on the contin
uous piedmont slope from Oruro 150 miles south to and

:m^B.

Fig. 203. Irrigated Alluvial Fan with Radial Disposition of Cultivated
Fields, above Lambrama, Peru. Elevation 12,100 Feet

beyond Uyuni. Upon this fringe of alluvium is gathered more
than 50 per cent of the whole agricultural population of the
altiplano of Bolivia outside the department of La Paz.
The railway from Antofagasta serves and encourages them
all, Challapata, Machacamarca, Poopo, Huari, Separayo, and
many others. The mining development has been chiefly in
this margin of the eastern highlands; and the agricultural
towns, by the sale of barley, vegetables, meats, blankets, and
the like to the mining towns, have been stimulated to develop
their agricultural lands to a marked degree. A final cause
which must not be overlooked is the relatively greater con
stancy of the water supply on the whole piedmont strip.
Here one finds often in short distances neat cross-sections
of the life of these highland people. In the plateau, as at

498 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
Huynuni, are a group of tin mines at the head of a valley dis
charging westward to the interior basin; the valley itself is
farmed at favorable localities and at its mouth is a widespread-
ing alluvial fan that reaches far out toward the center of the
interior basin; the head and intermediate parts of the fan are
cultivated and marked by prosperous villages and gardens;
the outer edge, more poorly watered, is used for grazing and
is dotted here and there with the huts and corrals of the llama
herdsmen; while beyond this, to the southwest, are the white,
salt-incrusted surfaces of the salars adjacent to Lake Poopo.
The mine on the mountain slopes, the village clustered about
the concentrating works below, the railroad out on the pampa,
and slow-moving caravans of llamas, bearing barley, mer
chandise, and salt, complete the view. From a single position
one may thus mark the whole range of the highland dweller's
activities.

CHAPTER VIII
BEYOND THE ESSENTIAL FACTS
REGIONAL GEOGRAPHY. ETHNOGRAPHY. SOCIAL
GEOGRAPHY. HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY
I. Human geography and regional geography: Islands of the
sea, countries, and natural regions.
2. Human geography and ethnographical geography.
j. Social geography.
4. Political and historical geography.
I. HUMAN GEOGRAPHY AND REGIONAL GEOGRAPHY: ISLANDS OF THE SEA,
COUNTRIES, AND NATURAL REGIONS
From the two preceding studies it is easy to conclude that
the human facts might be observed in like manner in the two
other types of islands: islands of the great forests and
islands of the sea.
In chap. V, § 2, apropos of the Fang, we have shown how
the geographical and human phenomena characterizing actual
"islanders" of the immense equatorial forest may be analyzed.
Islands have long been favorite themes in geographical and
historical science — since the beginning of our own Mediterra
nean history and in antiquity, since the universal rise of the
Anglo-Saxon empire in modern times, and since the advent of
Japan as a great international power in our own time. To
say nothing of those all-powerful archipelagoes, Great Britain
and Japan, there have been excellent studies of smaller islands,
such as Corsica and Sicily as well as of more distant groups
such as Hawaii or Java. And how many tiny islands have
been made the subject of monographs!
We may even consider that, as a result of the definiteness of
their limitation by the sea, islands have called forth the first
true regional monographs. Nothing can better show the real
connection between the method here set forth and the general
499

500 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
method of regional geography than a coordinated collection of
notes on a group of islands.
How the Geography of Islands Is True Regional Geography. An
Example of Islands of the Sea: The Tv/o Large Balearic Islands
The largest of the Balearic Islands, Majorca, is bordered on
the west by a great high, rocky sierra. It extends from the
southwest to the northeast, reaching in the Puig Major its
highest point of 4,741 feet (1,445 meters). Facing this sierra
on the east and running in the same direction is a less moun
tainous region, a large limestone plateau strewn with inter
mittent groups of hills whose highest points do not go much
beyond the modest height of 1,600 feet (500 meters). This
eastern region, especially the strip along the shore, is rich in
famous grottoes, some of which deserve to be counted among
the most beautiful in Europe: the grotto of Arta, the "cueva
del Drach" or Grotto of the Dragon, etc.1
Between these two approximately parallel ranges is a plain
like the wide bottom of a boat, covered with rich erosional
soil and broken only here and there by low hills from 325
to 490 feet (100 to 150 meters) in height. At the southern
end of this vast central depression is the beautiful Palma Bay;
it is also deeply indented on the north by the Bay of
Alcudia. All the most flourishing and crowded life, almost all the
rich and populous cities, the oldest land roads, and all
the railways now built are on the flat and fertile lands of
this huge, wide central furrow, or at least on each side of the
furrow, upon the first low bordering heights, which are rather
additions than boundaries. Inca and La Puebla, Alaro and
Petra, Manacor and Felanitx, small cities in the center of
Majorca, are already served by the short but prosperous system
of railroads and are all true economic centers.
Almond trees predominate in all that large part of the island
that extends in the center from Palma to La Puebla and to
Felanitx and Campos. Here and there gardens of olive trees,
arranged like those of the almond trees, continue this magnifi
cent open forest, and at intervals also the dark foliage of some
]See E. A. Martel, "Les Cavernes de Majorque," Spelunca, V, p. 32, with a map
and numerous illustrations.

BEYOND THE ESSENTIAL FACTS 501
few large carobs or the ashy-gray trunks of a few fig trees are
mingled with the almonds. But the olive and fig trees are
found more particularly elsewhere. The olives are the pre
dominant trees of the foot and the first slopes of all the western
sierra, ascending the mountain to a height of 1,300 feet (400
meters). Fig trees are especially cultivated in the northern
and northeastern part of the great central plain.
All these trees, >olive, fig, and almond, furnish very valuable
crops. Olive oil and figs and especially almonds are exported.
In the year 1909 almonds were exported from Majorca to
the value of $2,900,000 (15,000,000 pesetas — the figures are
nearly exact), and in the year 1910 to the value of $3,475,000
(18,000,000 pesetas — the figures are less certain). But that is
not all. This is the harvest of the upper level, a few feet
above the ground. We must also include that curious
"undergrowth" cultivation — cereals, vegetables, pimentos,
potatoes, or beans — which yields a double harvest yearly.
One harvest above and two below — that is the product of
this rich soil, divided into squares and rectangles by the
checkerboard of walls.1
But what incessant and repeated labor! The branches of
the trees are as if weighted by the care spent on them by
skillful arboriculturists, and beneath them the ground shows
everywhere the marks of devoted human toil. As we walk
beneath the canopy of white blossoms and near the twisted
and knotty trunks of the olive trees which tell such an old,
traditional story of life with men, we gaze at the faultless rows
of beans or observe a carpet of springing barley, so smooth
that we might well think that some wonderful green tapestry
had been spread beneath the leafy and flowered branches.
Sometimes the cultivation is oLa still more mixed character,
but the mixture is always one of intelligence, regularity, and
harmony. Between Manacor and Felanitx there is a " closed
garden" bordered on the inside throughout the whole extent
of its gray inclosures by a row of tall almond trees. Its center
is filled with lines of large fig trees, while throughout the
1For an exposition of this method of simultaneous cultivation above and on the
ground, which she terms "interculture," see Ellen Churchill Semple, "Influence of
Geographical Conditions upon Japanese Agriculture," Geog. Jour., XL, 1912, pp.
589-607. 32

502 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
inclosure are grapevines, cut at intervals by beautiful straight
strips of beans.
And everywhere, in the rice fields of Albufera, in the vine
yards of Binisalem, in the beautiful huerta of Soller with its
famous orange trees, we find the same carefully ordered work.
But whence come the workers to meet the demands of such
incessant toil? The population is relatively dense. Upon
1,350 square miles (3,500 square kilometers) there are 250,000
inhabitants — nearly 200 inhabitants per square mile (nearly
75 per square kilometer) — that is, twice the average for the
Iberian peninsula (which has the modest number of 14 per
square mile), a large average for a country of which a part is
very mountainous. And above all, the Majorcans are per
sistent and admirable workers.
' ' Here the very young children go to work in the fields, and,
young as they are, do the work of women; the women dp the
work of men; the men do the work of beasts of burden!"
The children are taken to the fields at an early age and almost
as soon as they can walk begin to pick up a few almonds or
olives. As families- — in this small section of that great region
of family life, the Mediterranean world — the Majorcans five all
day in the open fields, near the furrows and the vine-shoots,
in the shadow of their orchards, which are also gardens, where
the slender fingers of the little children as well as the weak arms
of the worn old men and women find employment.
Save in the exceptional region about Palma, the country dis
trict is bare of houses ; only here and there are some little casas
de guardia which are simply the equivalent of the bastidon
or capite in which, in other countries, the tools and baskets
for grape-gathering are housed for the night. At Majorca a
guardian sometimes passes one or two months watching the
approaching harvests or the trees laden with fruit. Some
times he even lives there temporarily, and as soon as the figs
are ripe enough so the pigs can feed on those that fall, eight or
ten of these animals are brought to live there with him.
But this is an exception.
In medium-sized or small islands, like the Balearic Islands,
and especially outside of large cities like Palma, the capital
of Majorca, we recognize the distinctive features of ancient

BEYOND THE ESSENTIAL FACTS 503
Mediterranean life. Almost all the Mediterranean peoples,
preeminently "urban," have grouped themselves in settle
ments with houses closely crowded together, so closely that
they have the appearance of small cities even when they are
only simple villages. A life concentrated around the public
square {agora or forum) , around the bastion or stronghold, the
temple or the church, is preeminently a life of house close
against house. Such are many of the small Majorcan cities
— Selva, Pollensa, Manacor, etc. None of them is more typical
than Alcudia. Cleverly situated politically in the middle of
the flat isthmus of the mountainous peninsular cape on the
north which separates the large bay of Alcudia from the still
larger bay of Pollensa — the Puerta Major from the Puerto
Menor — it remains shut in by its girdle of strong walls pierced
only by narrow gates. It is all crowded about its massive
church, a church without high steeples, which, when seen from a
httle distance, dominates magnificently the sky line of the city.
One of the general and necessary consequences of this con
centration of life is to separate the inhabitants from most of
the lands which they have to plow and sow. Every day they
must betake themselves to the fields. In Majorca an ass or
mule is harnessed to a two-wheeled cart upon which are loaded
persons and tools. Fortunately the light plow, with small
plowshare, is easily carried. They unharness at the entrance
to the garden and, if they are to plow, the ass or mule passes
from the shafts of the cart to the plow. When night comes he
draws the whole load back to the town.
Thus there is a double migration, morning and evening,
taking place with the regularity of the tide. These migra
tions are very short, but they are migrations of considerable
numbers; in a single hour of the late afternoon along a bit
of rough but lovely road between the olive trees on the way
from Pollensa to Alcudia, was observed a veritable procession
of carts returning from the fields; ninety-seven family
groups, on their way home after a days' work. The cart loads
were charming: here, behind the father who held the three
leather thongs of the reins, were seven children grouped about
their mother; there, two women in mourning, mother and
sister doubtless, with three little girls with great black eyes;

504 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
in another wagon, two old people, a man and a woman, were
crowded upon the seat beside the youthful driver, once more
an entire household going home after work.
Now this was only one of the roads leading to the city, and
nothing has been said of the less numerous and poorer culti
vators who were coming back on foot, or of those who, though
having no cart, had an animal and were going home perched
upon its back, often two and sometimes three of them, or of
those who were following on foot their mule or ass, loaded
with branches or vine-shoots for the kitchen fire, or with cab
bages, vegetables and grass as food for men or animals.
Unlike so many small "gardeners" of the Far East who
for their work and their life remain much more shut in between
the walls of their gardens, the Mediterranean cultivator moves
about; he must and does organize his movements. The man
who handles the plow must also know his roads.
Is it for this reason that he is so inclined to migrate and
to emigrate? Perhaps this daily habit of going to a distant
field of labor has something to do with those larger movements
from shore to shore. The nearness of the "men of the sea,"
fishermen and carriers, is especially the social fact that educates
the cultivators to the idea of leaving home.
Generally in Majorca the fishermen do not mingle with
the cultivators; but the cultivators need the little fishing
boats for their products. Life on the island is becoming
less and less self-sufficient. The MajorcansT export their
almonds or their olive oil to Marseilles or Catalonia, their
oranges to Port-Vendres or Cette. They have on the opposite
shore as a market for their garden products the large and rich
city of Barcelona. To these regions, or to such cities as
Valencia and Alicante, they go for what they need. In
short, the roads of the sea are the natural roads of approach
and expansion for their little cities and their gardens.
With the exception once more of Palma, which is for Majorca,
considering its size, the enormous, abnormal, and solitary
geographical urban fact (64,000 inhabitants), cities and ports
are distinct. But each city in the strip along the coast has
its small port, which is not a simple dependent annex. This
group of inhabitants who own boats and who live from the

BEYOND THE ESSENTIAL FACTS 505
sea shows its material independence by the long distance that
separates it from the other town. In the western region of
the great sierra the port of Andraitx is one mile (two kilo
meters) distant from the village ; Soller has its port upon a very
pretty harbor almost two miles (three kilometers) away and
entirely outside the huerta. Pollensa, which belongs both
to the zone of the Sierra and to the northern shore, is separated
from its port by four miles (six kilometers), Alcudia by one
(two kilometers). In the mountainous region of the east
especially, the cities, with the desire to share in the economic
and cultural life of the central plain, have located far from
the sea. The consequence is that Puerto Colon, the port of
Felanitx, is five miles (nine kilometers) from the city and the
port of Manacor is seven miles (twelve kilometers). Even
at Palma the greater number of the fishermen and sailors do
not live in the city proper but outside the walls, in the whiter,
more commonplace, and poorer suburb of Santa Catalina.
And yet, while not mixing, the^toilers of the sea' and the
tiLlers jaf— the-stni-aTe-mutually- helpful and closely associated ;
they could not get along without each other; they are the two
parts of a whole. They must have had a strong influence
upon each other, and many traits and aptitudes of the landsmen
owe^something to this contact, with sailors.
""The fishermenof Majorca catch tunny-fish and lobsters, but
they also spend much time in the coasting trade. In this
they are another essential survival of Mediterranean life.
When for some weeks in the spring lobster-fishing is prohibited
on the coast of the Balearic Islands, the boatmen of Soller
find employment in going to Valencia and to other ports
of the incomparable Spanish huertas for the early vegetables
which the islands do not yet have, particularly early tomatoes,
for the Majorcans are almost as fond of tomatoes as of
pimentos. Soller is a port of the western sierra, that is of the true
mountainous region of Majorca. It is situated near the middle
of that splendid coast, rugged and indented, which runs
along the west of the island from southwest to northeast, from
the Dragonera to Cape Formentor. It is dominated by the
highest summits. We have here the finest type of those twin

506 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
agglomerations : a wonderfully cultivated oasis, lying sheltered
and as if hidden in the midst and at the foot of the arid, stony
"wastes" of the high slopes, and a cove forming an almost
perfect circle with a narrow opening toward the sea — an ideal
port, lying sheltered and as if hidden amid the dangerous
reefs of the coast.
Soller is the second port of Majorca; it seems to have a
more ancient and remote life than the capital Palma, founded
by the Romans, a port and fort. To-day two beautiful roads
cross the Sierra, ending at the huerta and the port, but for
centuries the only means the inhabitants of Soller had for
getting out of this shady nook, this verdant "bowl" (some
connect the name Soller with the root olla, pot), were the
mule paths that climb the steep slopes, and the shining and
limitless roads of the sea beyond the port. The people of
Soller make daily trips to all the opposite shores of Catalonia,
Languedoc, and Provence. They know all the markets of
southern ' France ; they know and frequent those which are
much more distant, even as far as the shores of the Enghsh
Channel. The daring emigration of the people of Soller even
takes them as far as the Antilles. French is spoken almost
as much as Spanish on the quays and in the streets of this
busy city. Such is the result produced by the isolation of a
food-producing garden in the midst of mountains, when this
isolation is broken by the addition of a beautiful harbor.
The great sierra is thus "populated" at different altitudes
by skillfully irrigated oases. At the very head of an immense
rocky defile, like the one through which passes the narrow
canyon of the torrent of Pareys with its wonderful whirlpool
sculptures, is the small closed and cultivated basin of Aubarca.
Everywhere rise the tall gray summits which bear even on
their crests, although more and more scattered, the stubborn
tufts of the Balearic wastes along with a few northern plants,
while at their feet spreads out the magnificence of those
privileged spots, Deya and Valldemosa.
Over vast stretches of the mountainous region of the west
are seen rock-roses, myrtles, rosemary, milk-vetch, boxwood,
asphodels, and the Chamaerops humilis, the dwarf palm or
palmito, the most northern representative of the large family

BEYOND THE ESSENTIAL FACTS 507
of palms and the one that in the wild state can brave the
cooler and drier climates. It occurs in southern Spain and
Algeria only in the form of a creeping clump spreading over
the ground like an octopus, while in Majorca it grows tall
enough to form bushy thickets and sometimes a small tree.
In places in the Sierra where the soil is a little less calcareous
and contains somewhat more humus, the thinner, lower, and
drier tufts of the garigue run imperceptibly into the bushy
shrubs of the maquis, relics of the underbrush of former forests,
now devastated, of cork and evergreen oaks. A few thick
patches of these evergreen oaks still remain here and there.1
Then suddenly on the spotted mountain sides we see the
evidence of the toil of men in the shape of walls rising above
each other, remarkably built and finished, which support
the olive trees. On the way up to Nuestra Sefiora de Lluch,
and close to this famous pilgrimage, olive trees have even
been planted and cared for in the midst of the broken patches
of the calcareous lapiaz. Often the olive groves stretch over
acres of broken ground far from any house or village.
Throughout Majorca, except, as we have said, near Palma, the
field and the garden are far away from the village or city, but
it is here in the Sierra that this fact is most striking. For
long miles before reaching any inhabited center we see the
silent evidence of the presence of human hands. Walls are
kept up; the trees are trimmed and the earth beneath them
has been newly turned over. An eager desire to save the
precious humus and the water from the too rare showers has
made a series of small sustaining walls cutting the slopes of
the less steep valleys, which resembles the stair-like succession
of those works that are meant to "soften" the violence of a
torrent in the Alps. And all that with no man in sight, for
the inhabitants are not numerous and they manage to dis
tribute their toil over wide stretches.
At the present time dry farming or dry land farming is
becoming an important fact in America, with all the noisy
fame of a success that is both scientific and practical. But
the laborers of the Mediterranean world have long used this
iSee R. Chodat, " Une Excursion botanique a Majorque," Bull, des travaux de
la Sociite botanique de Geneve, XI, 1904-1905, as well as the two illustrated volumes
by the Archduke Louis Salvator, Die Balearen in Wort und BUd,

508- HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
method in the cultivation of their olive trees, their wheat,
and their vines; they have known for twenty-five centuries
at least that repeated workings and constant tillage of the
soil are a wonderful means of preserving the scant water of
the depths and the capricious water of the rain.
Here in Majorca, where almost all the cultivable soil is
utilized, one has at times literally the impression of crossing
immense deserts, silent and uninhabited, and cultivated
seemingly by good genii.
The island of Minorca, situated east-northeast of Majorca,
resembles the larger island more than has been generally
believed and is more closely connected with it than appears.
It is really only an incomplete continuation of Majorca; it
continues only the eastern part, the part of the calcareous
plateaus dominated by scattered hills to which too often is
given the overambitious name of Sierra of the East.
A great line of fracture crosses Minorca from one side to
the other, from west to east; while the lands to the south are
relatively recent, other calcareous lands, much more ancient,
occupy the north of the island. But, while there is a geological
contrast between the two regions, there is nevertheless
similarity in geography and appearance.
It is then a sort of great stony tableland, humped and broken
in its center by irregular heights of from 650 to 985 feet
(200 to 300 meters) ; over a large part of its circumference it
ends toward the sea in abrupt cliffs from 65 to 100 or 130
feet (20 to 30 or 40 meters high). The waves of the Medi
terranean, so often storm-tossed, break against these hard walls
of gray rock and slowly disintegrate them. Entire strips
crumble down and the uneven shore line becomes ever more
broken and irregular.
The edge of the rocky plateau thus overlooks the waves,
with no gentle slopes to the level of the water forming easy
communication between land and sea. Fortunately the sea,
by the sinking of the land, has invaded the terminal channels
of a few streams, and pushing forward steadily toward the
interior, as the flood of the high tide may do intermittently on
other shores, has established itself in these elongated harbors for
the security and, in time of tempest, for the salvation of man.

BEYOND THE ESSENTIAL FACTS 509
Curious indeed are these ports of Mahon or Ciudadela, long
winding guts or bays in which the sea seems to flow as between
banks. The slope of the ancient river bed can still be followed
on the floor of the narrow bay and continues very gently
upstream. After the winding gulf with no sharp fall comes
the open valley, its sides harmonizing with those of the port,
and the slopes of small tributary valleys seeming to meet by
prearrangement the slope of the main valley. The water
of the small main rio, dammed by the sea, is reduced to such
a feeble current that it is filled with grass and is almost stag
nant. Thus, for example, the little river of Mahon, a slender
thread of water a few feet wide, flows noiselessly along, and
disappears, only to reappear in the midst of a sheet of green
like a bed of watercress.
Since the sea stops its outlet the current is hardly any
longer a current, but the wide valley hollowed out in the
calcareous plain by the river in former times is still there with
its alluvium and its subsoil filled with water from which the
norias may draw. This rich and sheltered lower level has
become the region of gardens, the huerta of Mahon. It is
the "practice school" of those patient and expert horticulturists
of Mahon who have carried into Algeria especially and into
the province of Oran, to Bel-Abbes and elsewhere, the benefit
of their persistent agricultural training.
Of the old valley shaped in other days by the violent waters
what remains to-day? A checkerboard of shrubs and vege
tables dotted with little white houses, which ends exactly
at the artificial wall where begins the port dotted with white
sails — a long and narrow gulf, called a cala:1 a gulf and a
garden. It is a garden which has but few acres and which
is insufficient to feed a population of 18,000 inhabitants. It
has been necessary to create fields and gardens on the top
of the plateau where the rock crops out at all points. The
Minorcans have cleared away the whole surface, stone by
stone, not only in the immediate neighborhood of Mahon, but,
one might almost say, throughout the entire island. They
'See the report by Jean Brunhes to the Academie des Sciences, " Sur les confusions
entrainees par le pseudo-terme morphologique de cala, Comptes rendus," meeting of
March 27, 1911; and see "Les Calas des Baleares" in the volume Hommage a Louis
Olivier, 1911, pp. 55-62, and 8 figs.

510 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
have piled up these stones in innumerable walls from three
to six feet in height (one to two meters) , which serve not only
as a means of getting rid of the stones, but also as protective
barriers. The north wind is frequent and strong, and blows
so cold as to be fatal to the plants. On these plateaus even
the thickets of boxwood and wild olive grow straight up only
as far as the tops of the walls; when they reach this level
they bend over and lie in oblong masses toward the south.
"There is little ground, but it is good," say the- peasants of
Minorca. It is an earth that comes from the decalcification
of the limestone and is a rich, reddish, ferruginous earth, which
lodges with varying thickness in the furrows and pockets of
the rocky surface. It constitutes property par excellence, for
it makes possible the growth of wheat, oats, vine, and fig trees,
and it is treated with jealous care. In the suburbs of. Mahon
between the capital and the pretty town of San Luis, upon
small pieces of ground always inclosed with large walls, people
build villas. But first the projecting limestone is scraped in
order to gather up all the patches of vegetable mold. Men, with
little curved spades, may be seen cleaning all the irregularities
of the stone, as one might clean valuable fossils, and gathering
bit by bit even with their hands all the crumbs from the feast.
At the other end of the island, in the neighborhood of
Ciudadela, the plateau is still more stony and barren. It is,
however, always between the great gray walls and even among
the broad slabs or projecting ridges of rock that the stalks
of wheat grow tall and beautiful. Where else could one find
such paradoxical specimens of fruitful cultivation in a poor
and dry country? And how can this marvel be explained
except by the ancient methods of Mediterranean dry farming?
All the central part of Minorca, more broken and moun
tainous, is also more favored ; it has hollows where the vegetable
mold has accumulated; there are fields where one may plow
without the plowshare striking the hard stone, and the hills
form helpful screens which protect the plants from the too
direct effect of the wind. The chief wonder is then not here,
but upon the outer edge where the citadel ports (Ciudadela
means citadel) have necessarily been established and where
the city life has been chiefly concentrated.

BEYOND THE ESSENTIAL FACTS 511
Mahon, the present capital, which claims the glory of
having been founded by Mago, the brother of Hannibal, and
Ciudadela, the former capital, which still keeps from the
past its cathedral and bishop's palace, are of a type entirely
different from so many small cities in Majorca. From the
top of the cliffs sixty-five feet (twenty meters) high that
overlook the deeply penetrating gulfs, they might be posts
of defense close to the sea. They are compactly built, the
houses close together and immediately above the natural
havens over which they keep watch.
Mahon and Ciudadela are the only real cities in Minorca.
The former has nearly 18,000 inhabitants and the latter about
half as many. They contain mor© than two-thirds of the total
population of the island, attracting all the life by their situation.
They have a noble appearance ; their walls are partially demol
ished, but they still keep the air of cities with a past. Among
cities, as among men, even in their decay there remains a
visible sign of historic pride, which is the survival of heredity
and race. These two cities are white and clean, for all the
cities of Minorca, whether large or small, consist of white
and clean houses, of the dazzling white of lime. It is no longer
merely the splendor given by that Mediterranean light which
silvers even gray or ochre; it is the true white of the layer of
whitewash laid again and again upon the walls, on the outside
as well as on the inside, and sometimes in Minorca even on the
roofs. Everything is carefully arranged to catch all the water
from the rain, and that which flows over the whitewashed roofs
and through the little ditches, likewise whitewashed, maintains
an exceptional purity until it reaches the cistern.
Men who have lived upon this land where the soil is every
where pierced by the rock have been able to subsist only by
constantly clearing the soil of stones.- From the beginning
they doubtless built walls like these of dry stone without cement,
which defy the storms and the years, but they also piled these
same stones upon each other without cement to build shelters
or monuments, for instance the megalithic monuments called
talayots (vaulted chambers). These structures are from ten to
thirteen feet high (three to four meters) and from thirteen to
sixteen feet in diameter (four to five meters), and to-day serve

512 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
only for sheep or pigs. Sometimes what is pompously called
the caballeria, consisting of three or four asses or mules with
once in a while a horse or two, are sheltered there.
Besides the circular constructions called barracas, rectangular
buildings with roofs of two slopes called "bridges" are built
for the same purpose. Upon wide lateral walls large, flat
stones, three feet (one meter) in length and regularly cut, are
set up, leaning one against the other and supporting each
other like two playing cards. The "bridge" belongs to a more
advanced art because it requires the skillful cutting of large
slabs of stone.
The lower part of the walls of certain barracas are not less
than six feet thick (two meters). What an accumulation of
material to obtain such little rooms ! What a waste of stones,
were it not that stones are overabundant and that the problem
is to pile them up in order to clear the ground, an adaptation
which seems to date from the origin of man's establishment
here and which has been perpetuated down to our time in
varied and reduced but strictly similar forms.
In traveling through these two islands, where~lrfe__is_ main
tained with so much labor, one's thought constantly reverts
to the past. All this noise of spade and mattock working
the ground, all these repeated thuds of piling stone, are the
prolonged echoes of an old, old tradition which contradicts
the demands of modern production. How can one imagine
that a population of 40,000 inhabitants could establish itself
and prosper to-day upon an island like Minorca? Minorca
is, everything considered, only a sterile plateau like that of
the center of the Crimea, or those of the southern part of the
Central Massif of France, good for shepherds and their flocks,
but seemingly repelling every attempt at intensive cultivation.
Now there are sheep in Minorca which, when the squares of
earth and rock shut in by walls lie fallow, or the harvests
have been gathered, enter these inclosed spaces and find their
food there ; but they are only accessories. The main thing is
the cultivation of cereals, the growing of shrubs and trees, the
production of those plants that can support human life.
The Balearic Islands are peopled by gardeners and fishermen.
The gardeners are for the most part dwellers in cities, and

BEYOND THE ESSENTIAL FACTS 513
these fishermen become for the most part, if not merchants
in the strict sense, at least coast traders and carriers.1
Miss Semple, in a chapter on "Island Peoples" in her book
Influences of Geographic Environment,11 rightly insists upon this
"insular" association of fishermen and cultivators and she
thus explains in large part the great density that population
may attain.3 This relative density is one of the most general
facts. We have emphasized it in speaking of the Balearic
Islands; it would appear still more clearly in Malta and the
Lipari Islands ; it might be verified in the Polynesian Islands,4
and in Java and Japan it would be found to reach striking pro
portions.
' Japan, where the arable surface is only 15.7 per cent of
the total surface, has developed its agriculture to a degree
of aesthetic perfection and productivity that doubtless has
not its equal elsewhere.5
Thus islands ' ' attract, preserve, multiply, _and concentrate' '
men.6 In this sense they are places of conservation, where
wemnd, as in Minorca, survivals and archaisms;7 there are
in them species of endemisms for human beings as there are
for plants and animals. But islands also become centers of
expansion. Unlike plant and animal organisms, men escape
byway of the sea.8 The extreme multiplication of life within
a rigorously limited environment causes forced migrations
or leads to economic, social, or religious measures that tend
to Hmit population.9
Examination of these small isolated worlds, always based
on observation of the essential facts, leads to problems of
social or historical geography and comparative geography.
These are the best fields for the beginner in observation;
a comprehensive study of these little "wholes" of humanity
1See also "A Majorque et a Minorque, Esquisse de geographie humaine," Rev. des
deux mondes, November i, 1911.
20p. Cil. "Island Peoples," pp. 408-472.
3Ibid., see p. 450.
4Ibid., p. 448.
5Ibid., p. 447.
6Ibid., p. 450.
7Ibid., pp. 441 and 442.
8Ibid., p. 412.
sIbid., pp. 458 and 464.

514 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
is the natural introduction to the study of larger and less
clearly defined unities.1
By way of the "countries" we shall approach somewhat
larger unities — the Morvan, the Vosges, the Jura, etc. — and
finally unities larger still, historical and political rather than
physical, such as Holland or France.
There has been a double movement in the matter of natu
ral regions, whether small or large. Following the geolo
gists and in reaction against false administrative uniformity
and artificial political groupings, we came to believe that
"countries^ were fundamental constituent "cells." That is
an exaggeration if not an illusion. The principle of some
real subdivisions must, however, be sought in the large pohtical
unities. Then it was that the "natural region" appeared as
much the consequence of "facts of humanity" as of "geologi
cal or climatic facts. " It was a "result" and not a "datum." It
was not an "original condition" but a "combination." This is
the most excellent proof of those connections of which human
geography makes a critical examination.
Paul Vidal de la Blache has tried to see how we might divide
France into large regional zones, each having genuine geograph
ical reasons and gravitating about a genuine economic center.
The map, Fig. 204, is a reproduction of the map which he
drew up, a suggestive resume of many valuable observations.2
JIn the first rank of such unities we place the "countries" (Bocage, Vexin or
Beauce in France, Gros de Vaud or Gruyere in Switzerland, etc.).
In 1888, A. de Lapparent, in his Giologie en chemin de fer. Description geologique du
bassin parisien et des rigions adjacentes, made a brilliant attempt at the scientific
rehabilitation of the old countries of France, and, so to speak, analyzed the geological
foundation of the most typical of them.
L. Gallois has recently taken up again the complex problem of the Rigions naturelles
et des noms de pays, Etude sur la rigion parisienne, Colin, Paris, 1908, 356 pp. and
8 pis. He shows the relative and very variable meaning of these current names.
The physical conditions alone can serve as a frame and a solid base for a complete
geographical study. "A natural region is an entirely different thing from what
must be called, for lack of a better term, an economic region. It is again an en
tirely different thing from a political unity." It would not be well then "to go too
far and to give to natural regions an exaggerated importance which they cannot
have." "The notion of natural region is simply the expression of a fact brought
more and more into evidence by the observations which have been carried on for a
century: meteorological observations showing that the averages for temperature and
rain hardly vary in a given region; botanical observations showing in the same
climates the reproduction of the same types of plants; geological observations proving
that, if there is great variety in the constitution of the soil, all is not disorder, and
that the very way in which the sediments have been deported, in which the move
ments of the earth's crust have taken place, implies a certain regularity of behavior."
2Paul Vidal de la Blache, "Regions francaises, " Rev, de Paris, December I5i
1910, pp. 821-849, and a map outside the text.

BEYOND THE ESSENTIAL FACTS

515

Fig.

204.

Division of France into Large Regions
by Paul Vidal de la Blache

The fine dotted lines are the boundaries of regions; the dashes show the
boundaries of the departments. The shaded portions represent the arrondissements
which would be attached in each case to a region other than that of the chief city of
their respective department. These arrondissements are the following:
Arrondissements of Saint Quentin and Vervins (Aisne)
Arrondissement of Montlugon (Allier)
Arrondissements of Rethel and Vouziers (Ardennes)
Arrondissement of Castelnaudry (Aude)
Arrondissement of Confolens (Charente)
Arrondissements of Chatillon and Semur (C6te d'or)
Arrondissement of Nontron (Dordogne)
Arrondissements of Montelimar and Nyons (Drome)
Arrondissement of Brioude (Haute Loire)
Arrondissements of La Tour-du-Pin and Vienne (Is£re)
Arrondissements of Chateau- Chinon and Clamecy (Nievre)

516 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
In Belgium the Central Administration of Primary Instruc
tion, under the intelligent guidance of Director General
Corman, has been successful in obtaining a regional basis
for all instruction in geography; and, to direct the inquiries
of the inspectors and instructors of each region, it has published
and distributed in all the schools of the kingdom a colored
map of Belgium of which we give a reduced reproduction in
black and white1 (Fig. 205).
Regional geography, understood in the broadest and most
general sense, must be the culmination and not the beginning
of geographical research.2 We have to-day, both in French
and in German, excellent models of regional geography.3 But
how many other studies would have gained if they had been
preceded by a more modest and systematic analysis of less
complicated and extensive areas ! Why have so many authors
lost themselves in vague, half-literary, half-historical disser
tations which have little if any relation to geography? In
geography, as in every science, one must pass from the simple
to the complex and it has been a great mistake to observe the
modern state — Italy or Russia — before the natural province —
the Roman Campagna or the Crimean steppe — and the prov
ince before the city, the village, the house, the road, or the
JThis enterprise, which is all to the honor of the Board of Primary Instruction
in Belgium, was not undertaken hastily, but on the contrary had long been meditated.
A circular sent out by the Minister of Sciences and Arts, dated April 15, 1909, on
L'Ecole primaire et V expansion beige, in which the chief question discussed was the
teaching of geography — lectures on the teaching of this subject during the Semaine
pidagogique, held in September, 1910, for the superintendents, both chief and can
tonal (among them Famenne's able expositions of the regional geography of Belgium) —
finally the publication of the map, reproduced here on a smaller scale, which was
accompanied by a Plan d'une elude rigionale de la Belgique and by a Liste ditaillee
des rigions et pays de la Belgique: all this prepared the way for the general work
which is now being elaborated throughout the kingdom. How wisely this cooperative
work has been adapted to the needs can be seen by reading, for example, the report
presented in March, 1911, by the Inspector of Mons — (see the review. La Gymnas-
lique scolaire, May, 1911, pp. 129-151). Apropos of Belgium, and in order to make
more clear the map in Fig. 205, we recommend the consultation of P. Michotte,
Atlas classique de giographie, Albert Dewit, Brussells, 1911, 252 maps, charts, and
figures. It is a sort of Sydow-Wagner's Methodischer Schul-Atlas. adapted to Belgium —
that is, a collection of a great many remarkable maps of Belgium, physical, geological,
demographical, agricultural, industrial, etc.
2"One can, of course, object to this conception, on the ground that it runs the
risk of leading one to premature generalizations. This is possible; but then one
must have recourse to protections; I could advise nothing better than the composition
of analytical studies, of monographs, in which the relationships between geographical
conditions and social facts would be examined close at hand, on a well chosen and
restricted field" (conclusion of an article by P. Vidal de la Blache, "Les Conditions
gSographiques des faits sociaux," Ann. de geog., January 15, 1902).
3Raoul Blanchard, La Flandre;" A. Demangeon, La Picardie et les rigions voisines.
See again La Champagne by Chantriot, and Le Morvan by Levainville.

BEYOND THE ESSENTIAL FACTS 517
street.1 In geographical monographs the point of departure
is a natural, easily distinguished reality and, unless we begin
with the more complicated groups of facts at the very first,
we are almost sure not to go astray.2
The precise examples which already have been treated with
some detail have shown us how clear and natural the ,connec-
tion is between geography thus understood and physical geog
raphy. It remains for us to show how connections may be
established between the types of essential facts and the more
complex manifestations of human activity on the earth. It
has already been possible to see how, from the house, the
boulevard, the field, the herd, or the mine, one passed imper
ceptibly to the examination of properly human problems in
close and direct relation with these fundamental surface
phenomena. The study of the small natural unities and the
conclusions that we have found it possible to reach have been
still more convincing.
Following this "experimental" method, which always pro
ceeds by taking as a subject for closer study a few examples
selected as types, we wish to indicate the relations connecting
the essential facts of human geography with the facts that
make up ethnography on the one hand and on the other with
facts that may legitimately come under the denomination of
social geography or of historical and political geography.
8. HUMAN GEOGRAPHY AND ETHNOGRAPHIC GEOGRAPHY
When we examine closely the six typical facts (pp. 48-52,
Chap. II) at different points on the earth, we readily see
that they are reduced by elimination to a very simple expres
sion and, so to speak, to a bare form. In general, however,
they are surrounded or completed by another category of
'There is no need to insist here upon the general value of the monographic method.
It is well known what a veritable revolution the great Le Play introduced into the
studies of social economy by the inauguration and organization of the monographs
on the Ouvriers europeens and the Ouvriers des deux mondes. It was .the method
of positive observation that broke the bounds of a science that up till then had
remained far too theoretical and dogmatic.
2Among all the disciples of Le Play, Henri de Tourville, who has long been the
directing brain of the group and of the Science sociale, should have a place apart.
Pierre du Maroussem, in the course of his investigations dealing with both country
and town, has well grasped the significance of natural regional unities. Finally,
Joseph Durieu, in the first volume, Les Types sociaux de simple recolte el d'exlraction,
of a series announced as Les Parisiens d'aujourd'hui has given us very accurate
social studies of an immense urban center and its periphery.

518

HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

NORTH SUA

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Ostend,

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MAP OP
BELGIUM
DIVIDED INTO KEGIONS
Scale of miles

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scale of kilometers

BEYOND THE ESSENTIAL FACTS

519

Fig. 205. The Division of
Belgium into Large
Regions and into
Districts
List of principal regions of
Belgium:

I. Lower Belgium
Campine
Sandy Zone of Flanders
Clayey Zone of Flanders

II. Central Belgium

HesbayeBrabantHainaut

III. Upper Belgium
Between the Sambre and
the Meuse
Condroz
Herve District
FamenneArdennes Belgian Lorraine
From the list of regions and
districts of Belgium accom
panying the map, published
by the Central Administra
tion of Primary Instruction,
Belgium, of which the
accompanying map is a
reproduction. The original
map was printed in colors.

520 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
facts, likewise visible and tangible, which form, as it were,
their indispensable retinue.
The inhabited house or cave is never without some furnishing
and some few utensils; the road implies some "accessories"
in the way of means of transportation — sliding sleigh or rolling
cart ; the garden or the field is cultivated by man with the help
of tools — -mattock, spade, or plow; the animal is trained and
guided by means of a rope or leather thong, to say nothing of
the complete harness which marks a more advanced stage of
culture ; the goldseeker and the quarryman have tools, and the
hunter and fisherman have arms and nets.
These different instruments seem to envelop and "clothe"
the material facts that we have described, just as clothing
accompanies and covers the living reality of human bodies.
Of all these ' ' instruments ' ' we may say what we have already
said of clothes: they escape the necessity both of constant
and daily renewal and of immovable fixity at a certain spot;
they are all "movables." A veritable equivalent of clothes,
durable and transportable, all this material is, however, like.
clothes, dependent in a certain measure on geographical con
ditions. But its relative independence is great and in civilized
societies is becoming ever greater. It escapes in large part
particularly the tyranny of the immediate geographical envi
ronment, and man is consequently more free to show his natural
tendencies, spontaneous or traditional, impulsive or racial.
Now this group of objects is preeminently the field of eth
nography. All these facts are not to be rejected or neglected
by geographers, but for them they must be facts of secondary
importance; they observe them and classify them without
exaggerating their geographical dependence. Certain of these
instruments or groups of instruments may here and there
express very vividly certain fundamental conditions of the
geographical environment; but, once again, the more societies
become complicated and intermingled, the more these objects
lose, so to speak, their geographical birth certificate, the more
they tend to become uniform and universal, controlled only
by the great currents of economic activity. It would then be
a serious mistake to place on the same level in human geography
the fundamental facts and these "objects," which are in the

BEYOND THE ESSENTIAL FACTS 521
literal sense of the word (for geographers, but once more not
for ethnographers). 'laccessoxyJi facts.
In the same spirit we might examine questions which cannot
but have a great importance for ethnologists and which in
certain cases are related to the geographical environment.
For instance, with certain primitive peoples the problem of
obtaining or of manufacturing fuel depends closely upon local
or regional conditions. An example is that of the inhabitants
of the high plateaus of Tibet who burn the burtza, a sort of
moss with long roots which they mix with the argol (dung of
the yak) and with horse dung.
It is not for us to give an exposition of just what ethnography
is — that is, the exact and at the same time critical and sys
tematic description of peoples- — nor yet ethnology, which is
a sort of more logical and reasoned ethnography. But it is
incumbent upon us to distinguish very clearlxjsudi sciences
of man or of peoples from human geography.
Whb~do^snoT see at once how" much more geographical are
a synthesis and a map of the means of communication and
transportation in Africa (Fig. 207), because they have to do
with one of the six essential facts, than is a map of the dis
tribution of musical instruments, or of various social customs,
or of clothing of various textures, or of huts of various forms
(Fig. 206). 1 In the habitation we approach very closely to
the field of human geography, but by the predominance of
the study of form, it is evident to what a degree the prob
lems examined by the ethnologist differ from the entire series
of truly geographical questions which have been studied in
Chapter III of this volume. For like reasons and with
the same exactitude we consider that the explanatory study
of races or languages, a study that rests" upon somatic or
philological observations which have nothing to do with
geography,2 does not belong to human geography understood
in its strict sense. That maps should be drawn up showing
'Fig. 206 is a reproduction of a map published in Anthropos I, 1906, together
with an article by Bernhard Ankermann originally appearing in the Zeilschrift fur
Ethnologie, 1905, entitled "Kulturkreise und Kulturschichten in Afrika."
20n the subject of races, Jean Brunhes differs distinctly from F. von Richthofen,
who seemed to make this question of first importance in anthropogeography, according
to his posthumous work, Vorlesungen iiber allegemeine Siedlungs- und Verkehrsgeo-
graphie, edited by Otto Schliiter, Dietrich Reimer, (E. Vohsen), Berlin, 1908.
33

Fig. 206. Geographic
Distribution of
Different Human
Facts in Central
and Southern Afri
ca, by Bernhard
Ankermann.
I. Huts
Gable roof
Hive-shaped Conical roof
Square huts
Northern limit of the
Bant us
II. Clothing
Bark materials
Fiber of the palm
Skin and leather
Limit of cotton materials
III. Musical Instru
ments
Guitar
Wooden drum
Harp Lyre Marimba
Wooden head -rests
IV. Different Customs
Where circumcision is
practised
Where circumcision is not
practised
Where the teeth are filed
Where the teeLh are re
moved
Where the lips are pierced

BEYOND THE ESSENTIAL FACTS

523

the distribution of races, languages, political forms, or religions
is not only proper but consistent with the demands of the
positive method. It is none the less true__that it is only— the

*. Tindevorante

Cape Town

Port Elizabeth

. Railroads
'¦ Navigation on rivers and lakes
. Limits of regions of means of transportation

Fig. 207. Geographic Distribution and Location of the Principal Means
of Communication and Transportation in Africa
Map irom Busaon, Fevre and Hauser. Les Principals Puissances du Monde, Paris, 1911
result of a real cooperation between the facts of the terrestrial
woricl^anrllnjnian activity that comes withinthefield of Human
geography^ We consider that upon the greater part of the
facts in question the terrestrial world has not acted or does
not act or that the action is so infinitesimal that with our
means of observation it is impossible to see and measure it.

524 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
We should then only run the risk of encumbering with vague
verbiage such important sciences as anthropology, comparative
linguistics, or the science of religions.
At the most one might bring within the scope of human
geography certain problems of present dispersion that have a
direct relation with geographical facts. The position and the
distribution of certain great natural roads of the Old World
explain the distribution and the invasions of certain human
groups. The ocean currents have had a certain influence upon
the colonization of the islands of the Pacific, etc. And yet we
think that one must be prudent in the matter of these explana
tions. Do not these facts rather form a part of history in the
proper sense of the word, of a history which must, however,
seek aid and light from all the data of geography?
Likewise there is no doubt that there is a 'sort of geographical
classification that takes place in islands that have undergone
successive invasions. The approximately concentric zones
that run from the periphery toward the more inaccessible parts
are susceptible of real geographic representation.1
Some ethnographers or sociologists have asserted that human
geography was nothing but a province arbitrarily detached
from ethnology and taken from it unjustly.2 As for the
geographers, some of them have said, on the other hand, that
such a fixing of the limit was a detriment to geography and
that geographers could not give up the specific study of races.
Let lis pause for a word of explanation. Evidently geog
raphers cannot neglect a certain examination of races and of
their manifestations or their effects. Whoever uses the word
"race" unites under that very vague word amalgams of physi
cal facts, psychical facts, social facts, etc., which are very
important factors, at the same time variable and determinant,
of the superficial physiognomy of our earth. Why? Because
these complex facts always find expression through some of
the six types of essential facts. Geographers must then first
of "all "see" the races and groups of humanity as they are
"A. de Quatrefages, taking up again, in his Introduction a I'ilude des races hu-
maines, ideas which he had already expressed several times, has even represented
schematically "the usual distribution of the Malaysian, Indonesian, and Negrito
races in the islands of the Indian archipelago where they coexist."
2See Van Gennep, for example, in his article on the subject in the Mercure
de France,

BEYOND THE ESSENTIAL FACTS 525
distributed and then "see" by what material works they
express themselves upon the surface.
An example will bring out our thought more exactly.
In an article entitled Esquisse climatique de t'ancienne
Pologne, Eugene Romer has made the following observations:
At the climatological limit of the steppes, as of the mountains,
economic relations result from the climate and the human will.
The western Carpathians in the region of the Vistula are occupied
by Polish colonists from the lowlands, which have been cultivated
from time immemorial.
The eastern Carpathians, in the region of the Dniester, and
especially in the region of the Pruth, are peopled by Little Russians
who have come from the Pontic steppes.
Now, in the western Carpathians, the meadows and pasture lands
occupy 20 per cent of the territory, while in the eastern Carpathians
they still occupy 40 per cent. The plowed lands occupy in the west
from 40 to 50 per cent and in the east only from 5 to 10 per cent.
As for the forests, they are almost completely cleared away in the
western Carpathians, while in the eastern Carpathians they occupy
from 50 to 60 per cent of the territory.
The influence of race appears more distinctly if we consider the
proportion of plowed land in the valleys below 2 ,300 feet (700 meters) .
In the parts purely Polish the plowed lands are 88 per cent of the
ground and in the district of the Little Russians they occupy only
13 per cent. In the first region the production of wheat per acre
is 50 per cent greater than in the second.
Thus does one of the "essential facts" — the total number
of fields plowed and sown with wheat — bring out clearly, in
both cases, the ruling influences, and therefore the antecedents
and the present aptitudes of the groups of human beings
peopling the same zone.
It is this particular manner of discerning the actual effects
of different ethnical facts that must constitute the originality
of properly geographical studies.
As for explaining races and modes of human population by
pure geography — by the soil and the climate — as was for a
time the fashion, that, in our opinion, is a false theory which
is being more and more strongly disproven.
A well-known geographer offers this unique example as a
decisive argument against the geographical method : "A negro
can, without inconvenience, work for hours in the tropical sun,
his head bare ; if a European removes his helmet for a minute,

526 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
he has a sunstroke. Here is a plain fact if there are any ; it bears
witness to the action of the terrestrial world on the races" {sic).
All of which shows simply that persons accustomed from
childhood to covering their heads in the open air, cannot
brave the rays of a tropical sun without danger. Likewise in
our temperate climate, when, for example, at the time of great
military reviews, men are forced to stand for long hours
motionless in the sun, some are overcome. Let us assume
now, as an experiment, that accustomed head-covering be
removed from all human beings. The phenomenon that is
supposed to characterize the white race in the land of the black
race would occur in many cases. Must we therefore assume
that all these victims of the sun suddenly changed their race?
Let us go even farther; in the island of Reunion, where
several very distinct ethnical groups are found side by side
and mingled, swamp or malarial fever, which is becoming
more serious and widespread, with all its accompanying
miseries, does not spare the blacks any more than it does
the Creoles and the whites.
With regard to races, a sort of medical pseudo-geography
has been invoked against this viewpoint.1 Nevertheless, the
more the local or regional affections, such as goiter or scurvy,
or epidemics such as the plague or the sleeping sickness, are
studied on the spot, the more we shall be convinced that all
the so-called endemic or epidemic maladies are to be explained
by the persistence of some very old center of contagion, by the
attacks of an insect, or by the wretched physiological condition
of a group of human beings; that they are finally matters of
place or circumstance and not of race.2 Geographers should
iSee M. Zimmermann, Ann. de giog., XX, 1911, pp. 109 and no. Also chap. X,
§1, of this book, on the appropriate geographical orientation of the study of diseases.
2 Apropos of human geography, Henry de Varigny wrote: "There is a field in
which man is becoming more and more powerful: that of promoting health. For
a long time extensive and rich territories have been closed, at least to an important
fraction of humanity — to the most active. The obstacle was a malady due to a
microbe, a pathogenic germ: cholera, sleeping disease, malaria, etc. It was appar
ently insurmountable; it seemed as if the white man would have to content himself
with playing the part of Moses in sight of the promised land. Science is grappling
with it, however; she is finding the causes of the evil and the way in which to avoid
it. When we desire it, the microbes shall cease to hinder the progress of the white
man in the tropics. On that day a great fact of human geography will be produced,
and the more important because, if the cold latitudes are those where man is most
active and most industrious, yet the warm latitudes are the ones where the soil is the
most productive, and because the dependence of humanity on the tropics is more
likely to increase than to decrease" (Journal des dibals, January 12, 191 1).

BEYOND THE ESSENTIAL FACTS 527
not be the last to recognize that more and more physicians are
coming to associate taints and maladies with natural conditions.
There is no complete explanation of all these phenomena in
the fact of "races," nor is it to be found in geographical data
alone. The one is too broad, the other too narrow.
Certainly races play a part, sometimes even an important
part, in human geography, and we have recognized this fact.1
Our task must be to show just what this part is in each par
ticular case. Likewise the geographical environment has an
influence upon races; how and to what extent is what must
be made clear.2
Through a form of work adapted to natural conditions and
through the collective training that results, societies of herds
men or fishermen, groups of miners or planters, etc., are
really modified and in the long run show definite tendencies.
They may be so transformed: (i) in their „ physical aptitudes,
and (2) in their most inveterate moral and social habits.
Ellsworth Huntington, speaking of the nomadic Khirghiz
in a chapter which he calls "The Influence of the High Pla
teaus," among other observations remarks explicitly upon two
things that expressly illustrate what has just been said-
1. Physical aptitudes. — The completeness with which Khirghiz
life and character are determined by natural surroundings makes the
relation between physiography and life far more evident than in the
case of more highly civilized peoples. If the nomad is to be success
ful in his enterprises, the keenest of eyesight is necessary to detect
cattle or encampments at a distance. I was amazed one day to
hear my guide say, "Do you see those cattle off there at the foot
of the mountain? They are Chinese animals — yaks." After a
long search I found them, tiny specks of black. Even with a strong
field glass I could barely distinguish them from ordinary cattle.
That my guide should recognize them as yaks shows a keenness
of sight equal to that of the most skillful hunting tribes of savages.
Other Khirghiz showed equal quickness in detecting smoke, kibitkas,
men, and animals at a distance, so that the trait seems general.3
r"It happens, moreover, that Jean Brunhgs values ethnographical examples: as
when he speaks of the singular likeness~m appearance and arrangement of English
cities in all parts of the world, and farther on, quoting from Eugene Pittard, of the
German villages of the Dobrudja, which have kept a traditional physiognomy and
which are astonishingly different from the Slav villages and the Gypsy encampments"
(Maurice Zimmermann, "La Geographie humaine d'apres Jean Brunhes," Ann. de
giog., XX, 1911, p. no).
2E. C. Semple, Influences of Geographic Environment, Chap. IV.
3The Pulse of Asia, p. 125.

528 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
2. Moral habits and social rules. — The house of a nomad must of
necessity be small, and cannot contain two rooms save under the
most exceptional circumstances. A visitor must enter the room
where the women are at work, or else the women must work outside;
and there, of course, they cannot be prevented from being seen by
men other than those of their families. Then, again, at the time
of migrations there are no shelters left standing, and the women
cannot possibly be kept concealed. Moreover, they cannot be made
to veil their faces. No woman can work with a cloth hanging down
over her face. The village woman bakes and brews and washes, and
milks her few sheep and goats in the seclusion of her own courtyard,
where she can throw off her veil in the assurance that no strange man
will see her. The nomad woman must work in semi-publicity, and
cannot be bothered with a troublesome veil, especially when both
hands are more than occupied in milking some of her many sheep.
Accordingly, while the Khirghiz woman is very particular about her
headdress, she makes no attempt to conceal her face. She is in the
habit of meeting strangers, whether men or women, and she does it
modestly, though without timidity. Indeed, she makes a most'i
admirable hostess. Her freedom from seclusion does much, bothi
morally and mentally, to elevate her above her less fortunate sistersl
of the village.1 /
But let us no longer believe with Karl Ritter that the
narrowed eyes and swollen eyelids of the Turkoman are the
evident result of the action of the desert upon the organism,
nor with Stanhope Smith that the high shoulders and sunken
neck of the Tatars of Mongolia are due to their habit of raising
their shoulders to protect their neck from the cold. Is it asking
too much of the geographers of to-day to ask them to banish
all childish finality a la Bernardin de Saint-Pierre? Let them
make up their minds not to try to explain everything by
geography. Here are three expressions and three realities which only
partially cover each other: "Arab world," "Mussulman
world," "Turkish empire." Why should we expect the first
fact — a fact of race — to be more directly explainable by
natural causes than the religious or the political fact?
On the other hand, it is indisputable that a method of investi
gation and analysis of the six essential facts may render real
service to all those who make a study of primitive peoples.^/
If these facts are "filled with geography" even in civilized
iThe Pulse of Asia, p. 129.

BEYOND THE ESSENTIAL FACTS 529
countries — and this is what we have tried to show — with all
the more reason will they furnish the occasion for a multitude
of observations of a truly geographical character in countries
inhabited by primitive peoples.1
3- SOCIAL GEOGRAPHY
While we eliminate much that is generally admitted into
geography, we do claim the right as geographers to enter the
field of economic and social questions. Our criterion will still
remain the three groups of essential facts. Only in so far as
these facts explain or serve to explain the social facts by their
localization or their particular forms, shall we have a right
to connect certain facts with human geography. They may
be grouped under the name of social geography.
For the inhabitants of the Suf, property is limited to the
planted tree; it is primarily effective work which creates a
certain right.2 In an entirely different natural environment
an analogous conception seems, not illogically, to control the
claim to or enjoyment of property. The reader will recall
what has been said of the Fang of the equatorial forest and of
the many forms of their nomadism. It is not surprising that
such a people, who are in perpetual movement, should have
no idea that another people might be sedentary.3
Leading a nomadic life, the Fang have an idea of property
entirely different from that of the sedentary European, for
whom the soil is everything ; the work of his ancestors has long
given a real value to the soil. For the Fang the soil belongs
to no one, hence anyone is free to establish himself on any
unoccupied portion. L. Martrou relates the ironical remark
of an old Fang who was patiently listening to the speech of a
government official. The latter, wishing to prove the lawful
ness of taxation, said that France had conquered this country
'The Societe1 beige de sociologie has organized a very complete program of in
vestigation into primitive populations. Under the direction of Cyr. Van Overbegh,
they have undertaken the publication of a Collection de monographies ethnographiques
the first volume of which is for 1907: Cyr. Van Overbegh and Ed. de Jonghe, Les
Bangala (Etat ind. du Congo), Brussels, 1907; the answers to a model questionnaire
are "published on detachable sheets"; the idea is ingenious. Many facts to which
attention is legitimately drawn in this vast questionnaire are not geographical; but
the interest of these monographs is, none the less, very great for geographers.
2See above, chap. VI. In the section on the oases of the Suf, we were quite
naturally led to social geography.
3See L. Martrou, article quoted. Rev. de giog. annuelle, 3d year, 1909.

530 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
and that the land was French. "Ah," cried the old man
disrespectfully in his own language, "I didti't know that the
French had created the earth and planted BifiTrees of the
forest." When it is a question of establishing a new village, the old
man, the "father," points out to his men the necessary place
according to the number of huts that he needs for himself and
his wives. A corresponding portion of land behind each hut
is reserved for the owner's banana grove. If anyone comes
to settle in the village, a place is given to him free of charge.
If the land is already planted with banana trees, the newcomer
pays the proprietor for the trees, which are carefully counted.
Thus under the direction of the "father" the people of the
village choose in a friendly manner the situation of their planta
tions, which are all contiguous. If one of them finds his land
either too small or too poor, he is free to go to one of the
extremities of the village and find a larger space or one more
suited to his plans.
When anyone intends in the near future to make plantations
in an unoccupied place and fears that this place may be chosen
by others, he marks trees at both ends with his axe and an
nounces the fact to the village about five o'clock in the morning
when all is still, so that everyone may hear him. No one
thinks of contesting his location. The first clearing and the
first cultivation in this region of vast deserted space create the
beginning of property.
Each village has outside of its gardens and its plantations a
zone of influence — its miyoeis ("places of coming and going").
Without being private property, this circle, which grows with
the importance and spread of the village, is respected by the
neighbors. The people of the village gather here the edible
fruits of the trees and cut their stakes, bark, and raffia for
building. Here too the women come for their kitchen wood,
and in the streams and marshes they build their fish traps.
When the village is gone, the gardens exhausted, and the
tall grass covers the abandoned site, the land becomes vacant
once more. However, if a family wishes to establish itself
in the place of another, the former owner, if not too far away,
will ask a small rent of the newcomers — a goat or a gun every

BEYOND THE ESSENTIAL FACTS 531
four or five years — especially if the place abandoned is one
that is desirable and sought after, on the edge of a lake, at the
meeting of two rivers, or near a trading-post.1
Moreover, the first tribe will come back, if there are no
enemies along the way, to fish in the lakes which it has left,
and, if its new home is scarce in game, to hunt in its old haunts.
But the Fang travels very fast along his nomadic road and
after twenty years he is far away from these places. Others
occupy them, hardly knowing who preceded them, and in a
geographical sense all earlier rights quickly lapse.
How can such a life fail to influence all the life ? The villages
themselves feel the effects of this hurry and movement with
pauses but without stop. The villages are after all only camps.
They are so quickly and easily abandoned when new pressure
arises! While for sedentary people the home is the most
sacred thing and the word homeless is a synonym for unhappy
and wretched, nomadic peoples have a general social conception
that is entirely different. When a village is burned, the Fang
laugh at the burning bark and the flaming hut, provided that
they have time to save their boxes and their wares.
Governor General Merlin of French Equatorial Africa
recently formulated what seems to be an exact exposition of
all these basic social facts:
There is in fact an entirely special notion of property in these
new countries. The question to whom the ownership of the soil
belongs has often been discussed. Does it belong to the conquer
ing state or to the native inhabitants? Twenty- two years of
colonial experience have taught me that it belongs neither to the
one nor to the other; in jact JJie-idea__qf property is absent. The
xIn confirmation of these facts, Father Dubrouillet, who spent seven years in the
region of Lambarene, gives the following: "They choose such or such a : hill, because
there was a village in that same situation thirty or forty years ago and because, in
the forest which has sprung up anew, the soil of which has been renewed by a long
rest, it will be easier to make new plantations; it will require less effort than cutting
down the huge trees of the great virgin forest where neither axe nor fire has ever been.
However, the newcomers must have permission from the former inhabitants in order
to settle on this spot, or iligoe. If it were abandoned a hundred years ago, the iligoe
is sacred and, to possess it in peace, the newcomer will have to pay a price. In this
connection let me give a personal recollection. Several years ago, in a Fang village
of Lower Ogowe, a discussion took place in my presence between the chief and the
former occupant of the land, a Viii. The latter taking it into his head to say to the
Fang, 'You clear out, you are on my "land," ' I heard the other smilingly make this
reply, calling the whole assembly to witness, ' Have I not given you the price agreed
upon? Tell me, you others, have I not given him "a hen and a torch"?' 'Yes, yes,'
replied the assembly, and the old Viii admitted, ' Yes, that is right, you are on your
own land,' and was very much ashamed."

532 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
conquering state does not possess property, since it can at any time
take possession of it. On the other hand, the natives cannot possess
it, since they have no such idea. They know nothing of property
except to enjoy the fruits of the soil, to-day here, tomorrow
, elsewhere. Bare property is something utterly indifferent to these
' peoples who have no abstract conceptions.
Consequently I believe there is as much injustice in saying that
the state has a right to the ground as that the natives have a right
to it. When we arrive in these new countries the ground belongs
to no one; it is in an indeterminate state, which must be deter
mined. Now this state can be determined only by exploitation and
by creating value. The ground must be given only to those who
exploit it and make it fruitful.1
O. Marinelli discusses clearly the relation between nomadism
and property. He shows that the analogy between the nomad
ism of the Alps and that of the steppes is due to geographical
causes, which already justify an analogy between the two
regions from the point of view of botanical geography ; and the
pastoral art, an industry that is essentially extensive, has as a
necessary consequence, nomadism. But the increase in popu- \
lation is in direct relation to the manner of exploiting the
ground ; thus little by little it calls forth agriculture, intensive !
exploitation, and at the same time property, at first collective, ;
and then private.
However, the examples of the ancient Germanic marches and
of similar institutions which still persist in our own time in
Russia, in Daghestan, in Java, and elsewhere, institutions
whose analogy to Alpine nomadism is striking, are not to be
referred, according to Ratzel, to a primitive phase of the circle
of evolution of property. O. Marinelli shares this opinion and
ends with the conclusion that the existence of collective prop
erties in |he Alps and their cooperative exploitation are a con
sequence of physical and human conditions, the pasture lands
themselves resulting from the climate and from the slight
density of the population. When the population increases,
cultivation develops. The highest pasture grounds remain
longest faithful to the type of collective property, and, if they
become private property, they remain, as is natural, lati-
fundia. 'Address given on the gth of March. 1910, at the monthly dinner of the Union
coloniale francaise (Quinzaine coloniale, March 25. 1910, p. 226).

BEYOND THE ESSENTIAL FACTS 533
Beginning with the minute study of the watered garden and
irrigating canals and ditches, we endeavored in a previous
work1 to point out some of the social conclusions which may
be drawn from a rather extended and more specialized
geographical inquiry. We shall here take up the most impor
tant of these conclusions:
There are naturally arid regions into which man introduces
cultivation through irrigation. He may thus modify the
natural conditions that are imposed upon him. He does not
create the water; he uses the water which he discovers or col
lects. He cannot irrigate wherever he pleases; there are arid
regions which are condemned to an irremediable aridity.
Irrigation enterprises are possible only under certain natural
conditions. The principle is evident, but the inference to
be drawn from it has frequently been ignored. In fact we
must abandon this illusion that an oasis of cultivation in an
arid zone is susceptible of indefinite improvement; that one
may, for example, multiply at pleasure the plantations of palm
trees in an oasis. He who attempts too much and goes beyond
the limit corresponding to natural conditions makes the situa
tion worse instead of better. The examples of Lorca, of
Bu-Saada, of Ghardaia, and of the Fayum offer sufficient
proof of this.
Thus, although in a large number of cases we seem to domi
nate nature, she still keeps her. righ-t^of preeminence, for at all
points of the earth she imposes upon our activity restrictive
conditions. Our activity, restricted in its modes and Iff its
effects, is further subject to the influence of natural conditions
in the limits within which it may be exercised.
When it is a question of exploiting the water in arid regions,
that is, in districts where water is the chief -means of all wealth,
men cannot but submit to that effective solidarity which
water often imposes upon them. In several cases where the
exploited water is furnished to them by a single source (spring,
stream, canal, or reservoir) and where this exploitation of the
water has led them to ease and prosperity, they have clearly
understood, _ or at least definitely accepted, this necessity of
1 See Jean Brunhes, L' Irrigation dans la Pininsule ibirique et dans V Afrique du
Nord.

534 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
the collective union of individual interests. But here we are
approaching a very delicate question: Upon what does this
correspondence between a group of natural facts and another
group of human facts really rest?
When the output of available water is regularly subject to
considerable variation (Valencia or Murcia, Sidi-bel-Abbes
or Msila), the cultivator of the arid zones will run very great
risks if a definite organization does not control the distribution.
He is uncertain of the quantity of water that will be available
and of the amount of water that his neighbors, through arbi
trary monopolization, will allow to reach his field or garden.
Under such geographic conditions men are naturally inclined
to escape from this psychological state of uncertainty and
anxiety by joining their common interests under fixed laws.
They then seek a normal and peaceful situation by means of
regulation and an organization which will be the more rigorous
and authoritative the more capricious the water supply.
Collective regulation is not determined directly by the
natural conditions but is the result of a state of mind which
is caused by these conditions. If there exists a necessary
relation between these irregular natural conditions, which
menace the individual in proportion to their irregularity, and
the psychological state of insecurity, there is not the same
relation of necessity between this psychological fact and the
economic consequences which often result from it. It must
never be forgotten that man may be powerless to free himself
from this anxiety or may hesitate or refuse to do so. The
egoism of some or the weakness of all may maintain anarchy.
At least, if man, far from obeying the necessities arising from
this state of insecurity and far from yielding to the influence
of natural conditions, neglects or acts in contradiction to these
conditions, they inevitably show their persistent action in
the costly and abnormal effort which they always demand
from human activity or by their negation of this activity.
Such negation means wretchedness, disorder, economic check,
as the sale at auction of Lorca, or the failure of the hydraulic
enterprises of the valley of the Sheliff.
We have said that there exists a necessary relation between
irregular natural conditions and a certain general disposition

BEYOND THE ESSENTIAL FACTS 535
of mind on the part of the cultivator. This relation is neces
sary, but — we must insist upon this point — it depends closely
upon the character of the needs which the individuals expe
rience and to which they are consciously or unconsciously
obedient. When men living in these arid territories once
wish to devote themselves to cultivation, such a relation is
necessary. The same men might live as nomads raising
flocks, and the necessary relation between the natural con
ditions and their own activity would then be a different rela
tion. One of the factors remains constant, but the other
varies according to human impulse; consequently the. relation
between the two varies according to the needs or desires
that man seeks "to satisfy. Let us not generalize the necessity
of this relation; it is a function of an ever- variable factor.
In the present study this variable factor was determined.
It was always the need and desire of producing by cultivation
a sufficient vegetable food in naturally arid zones.
However the matter may be, the general psychological
effect which »certain natural conditions will produce upon the
minds of a group of men plays the part of a necessary inter
mediary between nature and the economic facts. And
if this link is the essential criterion which allows us to classify
combinations of facts from the point of view of human activity,
we must seek above all to recognize this effect. Now, nothing
authorizes us to believe that this effect is always determined
by the same natural causes ; on the contrary, it has been shown
that different natural causes may bring about like forms of
human activity. This is one of the conclusions resulting from
our observations and it deserves to be set in relief. Similar
forms of human activity correspond in reality to very different
geographical cases.
Water is furnished to man in overabundant quantities
(Granada, Kabylia, or the oasis of Aures). Water is furnished
to him more or less sparingly but in a constant volume (Tozer,
Ziban, or Laghuat). Water is furnished to him in large or
small quantities by individual wells dug in as large number as
one may wish upon each property (Tortosa or Jerba). Here
are three cases geographically very different. And yet, from
the point of view of human activity, they are, if not identical,

536 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
at least analogous; they form in a certain sense one family.
In the first case man need not fear lack of water, and he
gives himself up to his agricultural, labors with entire peace
of mind. In the second case an exact distribution must be
established for water with a constant flow, but this distribution
once fixed, however minute it may be, each cultivator is sure
of the morrow and works the earth with no fear of lack of
water. In the third case man will also run no risk and will
always be certain of having at his disposal in the bottom of
his well the water that he needs. In these three cases,;
Granada, Tozer, and Tortosa, natural conditions are such!
that the states of mind of the cultivator are, as far as watery
is concerned, states of entire security. He will have to fear
only those natural accidents which dry up springs and depress
the ground-water surface, just as the peasants of more humid
zones must always fear the relative dryness of a less rainy
year or the violent calamity of a flood.
Even in these critical and unusual circumstances what good
would it do an individual to become angry with his neighbor
who is overwhelmed by a misfortune like his own ? He bends
as a fatalist before forces whose control belongs not to him;
all are equal in the presence of the general misfortune of the
falling water or of flood. No one thinks of having recourse
to a collective regulation of individual interests.
We might multiply examples which confirm and strengthen
the importance which we have attributed to the psychological
effect as the middle term between facts of the physical order
and economic facts. We might cite other examples outside
of the subject which we have studied. For example, is it not'
striking that great drainage enterprises in a marshy region
incline men to the same forms of collective organization as do
great works of irrigation in a dry country?
The foregoing considerations throw light on a last class of
observations. If we have found in how many cases man
obtains the maximum profit from water and can utilize it
with the greatest perfection only by having recourse to an
economic and administrative organization of a particular
type, we have likewise found that this organization is not
always the same, that it is not the same in all the "oases" of

BEYOND THE ESSENTIAL FACTS 537
the same zone, nor even in all the oases of the same geographi
cal type. Sometimes the recognition of this common interest
leads to those admirable "hydraulic communities" of Valencia
or of Msila; sometimes, as Egypt to-day, the state is led to
coordinate the interests of individuals with more or less skill.
Why this diversity? Is it not the task of geography to
explain it? These types of organization may be connected
with varied combinations of ethnical, historical, judicial, or
political influences. Every historical research, every ethno
graphical hypothesis, every judicial study bearing upon these
facts, should certainly be preceded and accompanied by a
geographical study. But at this point geography stops. At
least these different types interest geographers as revealing
the general psychological state of a human group living within
a given geographical environment. They are concrete mani
festations of more or less conscious but real facts; and to the
extent that they express these facts they have in their turn
a geographical significance. They are connected with geog
raphy onl^_bytheir point of departure and by their general
orieritaf^m^ therFimalr^onsequerices- matter little to us here.
To this same more or less vaguely felt need of coordination
of the interests of an entire group correspond, for example,
free syndicates and state organizations. That is why these
types of organization, although separated by such profound
economic differences, are here purposely brought together and
almost confounded.
In this sense and with these reservations, the organized
forms of human activity, in order to endure, must always
correspond to modes, or at least stages, of the perfect adapta
tion of this activity to the geographical environment.
The geographical interest in the way of social geography may
be pushed still further. In Fig. 207 is a map of the Iberian
peninsula upon which are traced lines of demarcation: (1)
between facts of climate (limit between dry Iberia and humid
Iberia); (2) between facts of vegetation (zones of steppes of
esparto). And all this is so far very natural, but we find
that it is possible further to distinguish by limits described
upon a mai. (3) facts of a technical character (zone of great
reservoir dams or canal zones) and (4) facts of economic or

538

HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

BEYOND THE ESSENTIAL FACTS

539

Iberian Peninsula
j 1 Steppes
W^M Irrigated areas
BY
Jean Brunhes

Fig. 208. The Geographic Provinces
of the Facts of Irrigation in Spain
In this map are traced the lines of
demarcation between facts of climate and
facts of vegetation. Maps could also be
prepared of the technical facts or the
economic facts connected with irrigation,
just as a map of agricultural products or
vegetation is prepared.

The original of this map appeared for the
first time in the author's book, V Irrigation dans
la Peninsule iberique et dans V Afrique du Nord,
Paris, 1902; after this it was reproduced in the
volume: Espagne, 7c Serie: Systeme d'irrigalion,
of the International Colonial Library. _ The
engraving from the latter work was kindly
loaned by the general secretary of the Inter
national Colonial Institute.

540 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
social organization (zone I is the zone of the huertas, such
as that of Valencia, without reservoir dams, in which the
marvelous prosperity is due to the collective discipline of
the "hydraulic communes"; zone V, on the contrary, which
includes the vega of Granada, corresponds to the social fact
that in this region there is no real authoritative collectivism
for the utilization of water). '
As another example let us take up once more the study of
the coal mine, and from those observations of a material and
tangible character let us pass to moral and social considerations
which quite evidently result from the actual conditions of the
great mine, from the work in the mine, as well as from the
phenomena of human geography caused by and associated
with coal — the industrial city and what we have called the
tenement in the factory city. We have noted the city built
on the very edge of the mine and sheltering the workmen, who
live exclusively by means of the mine. Around the shafts
of Anzin live thus 15,000 workmen and 50,000 persons.
The Science sociale (VII, 421) has well shown the con
sequences resulting from the very formation of this fact of
human geography. A permanent contact is made between
families which are connected neither by traditions, nor by
relationship, nor by reciprocal interests:
"Crowded together, in the workmen's houses which re
semble barracks in which both air and space are lacking,
the families lose the autonomy, the independence, which
is assured by the isolation of homes. . . . The children grow
up on the staircases and in the streets  The parents
are both busy and cannot trouble themselves about the
children  The loss of parental authority is particu
larly serious here because it takes place at the verv moment
when this authority would be necessary in the midst of the
social complications of the agglomeration  ' The
whole problem of moral education might here be grafted
upon these fundamental considerations of social geography.
The first social results of the advent of coal in England have
been thus judged by F. Le Play:
Parliamentary investigations carried on with firmness taught the
world that English society was struck by nameless calamities and

BEYOND THE ESSENTIAL FACTS 541
that several of its urban and manufacturing agglomerations were
falling into a degradation to which official language sometimes
applied the word "bestiality."
The present era of coal and machinery first of all placed people
in entirely different conditions. Workmen were suddenly gathered
into vast factories far from all the material and moral resources
which had heretofore been considered indispensable to the existence
of any society. Recruited in large part among the improvident or
vicious types who would not have been kept by their old employers
at any price, they were but little suited to educate their children,
and although receiving good wages, they could not even have homes
which were compatible with the preservation of moral order.1
Populations gathered together for the work of the great
mine — and the great mine is preeminently the coal mine— no
longer have any fixed and strong attachment and are no
longer sustained by the old corporations, such as the miners'
corporations of the Harz so well described by Le Play.2
Since no other kind of activity creates between all these
individuals either reasons for or places of exchange, the
small merchant — the wine merchant and grocer — will play
alone the role of necessary intermediary between all these
people who have been torn away from their original place
by coal. We pass over all the economic, moral, and electoral
consequences of this fact which is associated with geographic
conditions. Let us go farther. The nature of the coal mine itself has
made of it the first exploitation which has required very
great capital. Thus great stock companies have arisen and
developed; they have had the very grave effect of completely
separating, not only through the conflict of interests but also
through distance and through all the activity of their lives,
the stockholders and the workmen, who by their work
make the stock productive. To the workmen the stock-
holders_ are .only, far-off, unknown beings ; to the stockholders
the ^workmen are only nameless persons. Thence come so
many injustices and so many acts of violence, which in all
JOn the whole social revolution caused by coal, one should read the vigorous
pages of F. Le Play, Sur les Eliments de disorganisation sociale introduits depuis un
siecle en Angleterre par V exploitation des bassins houillers.
2F. Le Play, Les Ouvriers europiens, 2d edition (Tours, 1877), Vol. Ill, Les Ouvriers
du Nord et leur essaims de la Baltique et de la Manche, chap. Ill, Mineur du Hartz
(Hanover), pp. 99-152. The system of miners' societies explains the relative pros
perity under mediocre conditions.
34

542 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
countries have necessarily accompanied the exploitation of
coal mines.
With the coal mine are connected, as we have said, all the
chief forms of .great _ industrial activity. Likewise, with the
agglomeration born from coal are connected the modern types
of enormous urban agglomerations. Many moral and social
consequences of the organization for the working of coal
must also be charged to other industrial exploitations; many
of the moral and social features of life in the coal groups are
found in all the large, overpopulated cities.1
If, with Dr. Bertillon, we called an overcrowded dwelling
every dwelling where there are more than two persons per
room, we should count in Paris 72,705 households with 332,000
persons who inhabit dwellings of this kind. At Budapest in
1 89 1 nearly 200,000 inhabitants occupied_dwellings with five
persons per room.2 jErorrrthe point of view of physical, moral,
arid" social hygiene the large, overcrowded house is deplorable.
It means contagion of disease and vice, it means promiscu-
ousness and a fatal reduction of the birth-rate — phenomena
which demography finds in all great urban agglomerations —
in New York and Berlin and Paris.
In a lecture on the population of great cities the celebrated
statistician, Georg von Mayr, cited the following example of
decrease of birth-rate in great cities:3
The Number of Births Exceeding the Number of Deaths,
for 1,000 Inhabitants
Year * Berlin Prussia Munich Bavaria Dresden Saxony
1894 
1895 
1896 
1897 
1898 
1899 
1900 
While human beings seem more and more crowded against
each other, they are in reality more and more separated from
each other by the very demands of the social geography of
'See the books and articles, of a very positive bent, devoted by Georges Benoit-
LeVy to the propaganda of Citcs-jardins, and the article by Charles Gide on one
of these books: "Les Cites-jardins, " Rev. icon, internal., October, 1907.
2P. Meuriot, Les Agglomerations urbaines, p. 377.
3Work quoted: Die Grossstadt, p. 134.

10 3

14.8

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10.5

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10.9

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3

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16.2

12.7

13-6

13

9

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10.8

156

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12. 1

13

9

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10.7

16.7

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15

3

BEYOND THE ESSENTIAL FACTS 543
great cities. In the city house of former times the different
floors were occupied by people of very different conditions, and
proximity caused by life under the same roof brought them
together. To-day rich and poor no longer live in the same
house; they do not even live in the same quarter — we are almost
tempted to say in the same city. For the zones of great cities,
which are classified and differentiated by the difference of
trades and especially of conditions, constitute distinct cities,
side by side within the same city, but foreign to each other and
with inhabitants who too often become hostile to each other.1
The great modern agglomeration is a "sick agglomeration,"
as Count d' Haussonville has called it. The masses of beings
who inhabit it, robbed of every tie which fixes them to a point
of ground, with no material and often no moral home, become
veritable nomads who pass from room to room and from
house to house. A certain social anarchy follows inevitably
from the ever-rising tide and the ever-repeated flood of these
unattached beings. In the end, within these masses, favored
by these changes and the thousand holes and corners of the
great city, grow up forms of banditism and brigandage which
resemble those of countries where there is no organized policing
or of Europe during periods of history in which anarchy reigned.
"Gangs "are organized and operate in London, Paris, or New
York as the "bands" of the Middle Ages operated in the coun
try districts of Guyenne or of Burgundy.2
Such are some of the facts which constitute the social geogra
phy of the industrial city and which are connected with the
social geography of the great coal mine.
4- POLITICAL AND HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY
Human history unfolds upon the earth, and historical facts
are always connected with certain places. But here again let
'In Rud. Eberstadt, Handbuch des Wohnungswesens und der Wohnungsfrage,
Gustav Fischer, Jena, 1910, there are some interesting pieces of information, examples
and comments bearing especially upon the city dwelling — a work to be consulted for
all geographical study of cities and great cities. There is a great deal of other in
formation on the typical houses of the working class, gardens of the working class,
etc., with a rich bibliography at the end of each chapter.
2Jacob Riis, in his splendid book How the Other Half Lives, has made a special
study of the movements of the population in New York. He notes the formation of
these bands of apaches and proves that they are nearly always composed of men
without any fixed home and even without any family.

544 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
us be careful to avoid exaggeration and the invasion of fields
not our own. From the fact that historians must always take
account of the climate, the topography, the agricultural prod
ucts, and the mineral resources of the region whose evolution
in time they are reconstructing, it does not follow that all this
evolution must find a place in the domain of geography nor
that it can bejsxplained by geography.
Man comes into relations with the natural environments
through facts of labor, through the house he builds, the road
he travels, the field he cultivates, the quarry he works, etc., and
his very work creates for him obligations, inclinations, and
aptitudes which will find their expression in history.
History is coming more and more to rest upon the careful
investigation of social and economic facts, such as those which
we have just noted in the preceding paragraph. Through
this social intermediary we might already partially connect
history with geography. It is in fact work and the direct
consequences of work which form the true connection between
geography and history.
We shall do better here to show by a few facts how far
geographic investigation and explanation can throw light upon
the destinies of human groups, the interests which divide them,
their struggles with each other, and sometimes even the com
pelling motives which turn their will in a definite direction.
When traveling through Palestine one is struck by the clear
meaning which certain episodes of the Gospels take on in the
light of geographic environment. Christ does not find disciples
in his own city, Nazareth ; on the contrary, he is f ollowed by
the fishermen of Galilee. Now the inhabitants of Nazareth
are patient cultivators, whose little gardens may be seen upon
the slopes surrounded with walls of white stone. Like all
cultivators in all countries, they are obliged to remain on the
land which must be worked, and the horizon of their mind is
limited to the walls which shut in their corner of the earth.
They are naturally averse to new things and their very work
precludes any chance of their leaving home, even though it
were to follow the most winning of the leaders of men. The
fishermen of the lake, on the other hand, are nomads through
the very necessity of their occupation. Fishing is an irregular

BEYOND THE ESSENTIAL FACTS 545-
business, which depends much more upon chance and is
much less hostile to caprice. Then, too, there are sometimes
days of exceptional catches, which permit rest and tranquil
lity for some time and make possible the following of a whim
or the taking of a journey. We do not say that the fisher
men of Galilee were fatally destined to follow Christ, but the
geographical conditions of their environment and their work
inclined them more than the gardeners of Nazareth to allow
themselves to be led into Judea by the Galilean, and these con
ditions help us to a better understanding of what history
tells us.
A contrast of the same sort, showing itself with entirely
different intensity and over much vaster stretches, holds, as
it were, the secret of a large part of the historic destinies of
Asia. Around the great mountainous mass of Tibet, stretch
utterly unlike regions ; to the southeast and east, the countries
watered by the rainy monsoon of summer ; to the north, on the
contrary, desert depressions, beyond which, forming a transi
tion between these deserts and the great forest or Siberian
taiga, is a succession of great grassy plains forming an almost
continuous strip of vegetation from Manchuria to the steppes
of southern Russia and over the plains of the same type in
Roumania and Hungary (see the map of the great climatic
emblems of the earth, Fig. in, pp. 244—245).
It is the monsoon which allows this multiplication of pro-;
ductive cultivation that characterizes India, China, andj
Japan. A wonderful art of cultivation has been developed;
in these countries, and the abundance of food substances is
shown by the density of population, which, without being-
general or uniform, makes of this domain as a whole the home .
of a third of living humanity. '
On the other hand, the herbaceous steppes of central Asia,
where the winter is severe, do not permit of an intensive
exploitation. Cultivation exists and prospers only upon the
edges of the mountains, where some irrigated oases have been
established. Everywhere else the natural environment is
fitted in advance for pastoral life and this has been the chief
region of horse-raisers, small groups of men, scattered with

546 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
their herds over an immense territory, but forced to be ever
on the move, to know in advance and from a distance the
available pasture grounds and the water supplies, and acquiring
thus by the very necessity of their work a sense for leadership
and strategy which predisposed them to the ruling of territory
and the command of their fellow men.
From these steppes have come forth some of the boldest
and greatest conquerors of history — Jenghiz Khan and Tamer
lane — and one may say it is by these steppes, by the aptitudes
conferred upon a pastoral people, by the geographical sub
ordination to environment, that the qualities and faculties
which made their power are explained.
To the question, Of these scattered herdsmen and these
small cultivators swarming and crowded in all southern and
eastern Asia, which are the ones that have led the world?
the answer is, The former. Until the end of the eighteenth
century even India was subject to the rule of the "Great
Mogul," i.e., pfja. .powerful hexdsrrian.
Of course considerations of this sort do not explain the
details of history, particular pohtical events and individual
initiative, but they form, as it were, the explanatory founda
tions of great historic events.
In Africa the Sudan forms the transition between the virgin
forests of the Congo and the Sahara. This transition does
not take place suddenly. First come the pasture lands broken
by groves of trees, then the plains, where some few trees and
shrubs still grow, and finally the desert (see chap. IV). The
virgin forests are scarcely inhabited, for the climate is unhealth
ful and the luxuriant vegetation of the forest is a great obstacle
to circulation and even to cultivation. The Sudan region,, on
the contrary, is the most thickly populatedin^AfricaT^This
is the zone of the real negro political organizations which truly
deserve the name of states.1 In the Sudan are held the great
markets where the products of the north and of the south are
exchanged. The inhabitants of the desert bring to them
salt and other products.
In Oceania the groupings made necessary by fishing have
'From these zones of contrast, which become the soil for the germs of states,
C. Vallaux has derived his well-constructed theory of "differentiation"; see chap.
VI of his Giographie sociale, Le sol el I'elat.

BEYOND THE ESSENTIAL FACTS 547
given rise to political groupings, as Friedel1 has noted. Eduard
Hahn tried to show in Yemen the original center of civilization,
characterized by domestication of the ox, the use of the plow,
and the cultivation of cereals, basing his argument especially
upon the part played by the trade in, and geographic extension
of, incense throughout the East.2
There are, moreover, definite historical crises through
which a people or a nation passes that are still more directly
connected with geographical causes. What more striking
case could be cited than that of Ireland — "that country ever
recovering from some wound"3 — whose history was entirely
upset in the middle of the nineteenth century by very small
facts whose place of action was the potato fields?
Of course one cannot explain the whole Irish crisis by
potatoes alone. Other facts of a political character prepared
the way for the important part played in such a case by this
popular food plant. One should read the premonitory symp
toms of the crisis in the excellent and very impartial book
which Louis Paul Dubois has devoted to the Irish question.
While, at the end of the eighteenth century, the old penal
laws which forbade Papists to buy land had been abrogated,
in the first third of the nineteenth century came the ' ' clearance
systems" and a whole code of cheap eviction was voted by
England. The law of 1829 took away from the small peasants
the right to vote. The farm rents imposed upon them were
veritable starvation rents; in short, the poverty was so great
that people lived only upon potatoes. The system of the
latifundia was so strongly developed that 744 landlords
possessed more than half the surface of the ground. Besides
the pasture lands which predominate in the Emerald Isle,
cereals were also cultivated, but all that, plants and harvests,
was hardly accessible to the peasant.
Then came the real potato disaster. During the autumn
JJ. Friedel, Beitrage zur Kenntnis der Wirtschaftsformen der Ozeanier, Peter-
manns Milt., XLIX, 1903, pp. 123-126 and 269-273.
2See Ed. Hahn, "Die Weltstellung Yemens, " Geog. Zeitschr., IX, 1903, pp. 657-
666. For a long time the author has been interested in this problem of the origin
of the Ackerbau, see Demeler und Baubo, Versuch einer Theorie der Entstehung unsres
Ackerhaus, Liineck, 1896; and a quite recent book — a mixture of correct observations
and of paleo-historic, protohistoric, or prehistoric considerations, sometimes fantastic:
Die Entstehung der Pflugkultur (Unsres Ackerhaus), Carl Winter, Heidelberg, 1909.
SE. Sain te- Marie Perrin, Journal des d'ebats, October 5, 1909.

548 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
of 1845 three-fourths of the potatoes were destroyed; in 1846
and 1847 the crops were nothing at all. Thus from 1846
to 1849 the terrible famine increased. Moreover, durrrrg-
jthis time the landlords were exporting wheat, barley, oats,
jand live stock; and in the midst of abundance hunger raged
''(as we have so often seen it in India). The catastrophe was
terrible because the earlier wretched state of society had made
the potato the only bread of the people.
When once its proper part has been assigned to history, who
can fail to see the influence of geography, a dominating
influence which is being exercised even in our own time?
From this land where people were dying of hunger men fled
in multitudes and crossed the ocean to establish in a freer
land a new Ireland, an American Ireland, which is to-day
numerically superior to the old Ireland.
Emigration took away:
From 1846 to 1851  1,240,000 persons
From 1851 to 1 861  1,149,000 persons
From 1861 to 1871  768,000 persons
From 1871 to 1881  618,000 persons
From 1881 to 1891  768,000 persons
From 1891 to 1901  431,000 persons
From 1901 to 1914  447,565 persons
From 1846 to 1917  5,558,713 persons
The evil and the movement are decreasing to-day, but the
impulse given to a people by a potato disease attained pro
portions which make it a great historical fact. It is not for
us to point out here all its consequences, but geography
should at least point out its enormous general influence.
In 1846 the population of Ireland was 8,500,000; in 1914 it
had decreased to nearly half that number (4,381,000). Even
though the flood of emigration accounts for part of the popu
lation that has disappeared, what a hecatomb the calamity
caused in the island !
In comparison with such a ruin what are the disasters of
a cyclone or an earthquake, what the devastation in human
life due to the despotic caprice of a Sudanese sultan, or even
to the events of an ordinary war among civilized nations?
Our minds can scarcely grasp in all its meaning the lasting
influence of such an agricultural fact, and we must emphasize
its historical and political import by showing in a short and

BEYOND THE ESSENTIAL FACTS 549
final table how the proportion of Irish population to that of
the United Kingdom as a whole has been changed by this crisis.

1S01

1901

Total Number of Total Number of
population inhabitants population inhabitants
in thousands per square in thousands per square
mile mile
England 8,892 153 32,526 558
Scotland 1,608 54 4,472 150
Ireland 5,395 166 4,458 137
In 1801 the density of population in Ireland was greater
than in England itself; a century later it was less than in
Scotland, where so many upland regions are only moors and
heaths in which grouse are hunted. In 1801 the population
of Ireland represented 34 per cent of the total population of
the entire United Kingdom; a century later it represented
only io1^ per cent.
Here is another phenomenon of political geography which
is still more recent, in fact contemporary. The book officially
published by Norway for the Paris Exposition of 19001 says:
The ordinary maps of Europe which take account only of abso
lute distances have fostered the idea that the two countries of the
peninsula form an organic whole. This is true topographically
speaking, but it is not true from the point of view of anthropogeog
raphy. On the contrary, a population map of the peninsula shows,
in a dear and striking manner, the existence of the wide uninhabited
zone between the two countries, and that, too, even if we take into
account the camps of the nomadic Laplanders of the northern
plateau, and in spite of the rather late immigration of the Finns,
now largely assimilated, which has to a certain extent populated
the desert region of the frontier forests of the south. A map which
would represent graphically the ease of communication with foreign
lands would bring out still more the isolated r61e played by this
almost impenetrable zone, where journeys are often possible only
during a very short time each year, while communications are so
easy in every direction by way of the North Sea. Toward the east,
i.e., toward the land, the kingdom of Norway is, with remarkable
distinctness, isolated from its neighbors; there are few countries
which form an anthropogeographical whole so well isolated by
nature.2 1La Norvege, Christiania, 1900.
2Note, simply as an exception that does not change the validity of the statement
as a whole, that there are a number of railroads from the Baltic to the ocean (see
Fig. 210).

550

HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

Distribution
of the population
in Scandinavia.
Inhabitants per km!
LJ Less than i

Fig. 209. The General Distribution of Population in Scandinavia
This map, published by Andr. M. Hansen, shows to what a degree the two king
doms, now entirely separate, have always been separated by what is really a desert
from the human point of view.

BEYOND THE ESSENTIAL FACTS

551

These judicious remarks are also supported by two very
instructive maps, one at p. 8, reproduced here (see Fig. 209 :
The general distribution of population in Scandinavia); the
other (still more geographical, for it localizes the facts
still more exactly) at the end of the volume : Norge, scale 1 :
3,600,000, a map of the inhabited districts, which are
marked in red.
The political facts of 1905, the separation of the kingdoms
of Norway and Sweden, have both illustrated and confirmed
the truth expressed eighteen years ago by these statements
and maps.
Some writers, exaggerating somewhat, in our opinion, have
been tempted to go even farther. If we may believe them,
men, with the exception of voluntary
martyrs and saints, are good only
so long as they have enough to eat.
F. Le Play1 did not hesitate to write :
[In the Middle Ages and in the west
of Europe] the special source of [social]
peace at that epoch was the abundance
of available ground and a free enjoy
ment of a large number of spontaneous
products. So long as available ground
was not lacking in a locality, the men
there remained at peace, with even a fair
amount of virtue. On the contrary, as
soon as it was completely occupied, the
men who could not be provided for had FlG- 2I°- The Economic In-
. , r ,-, ¦ ,• , 1 DEPENDENCE OF NORWAY IN
to emigrate from their native place and
then, even without evil intentions, they
stirred up trouble in society.2

NORWAY

vpi^o

SHl

£ 7

Exchanges by

•  by railroad

way of sea___

i_

. by other w

Relation to Sweden

The long continental frontier
of Norway has little commercial
value; it is by sea that nearly
Let US Stop prudently at an Order all exchanges are made and nearly
c r. . 1 j. ¦ all circulation and communica-
ot phenomena that are more circum- tion is established.
scribed and more "measurable."
England has seen the rise of a whole "radical" representation
supported by the industrial regions — that is, by the coal
regions. The "imperialism" of Chamberlain was above all the
imperialism of ffieTneniblETirom'IBifm Victor Berard

1F. Le
propos, p. vii.
2 Ibid., Vol. Ill, p. 348

uvriers europeens, 2d edition (Tours, 1877), Vol. I, Avant-

552 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
has sharply insisted upon this political conflict in the United
Kingdom to-day in his book V Anglelerre et I'imperialisme.1
In Germany we do not find identical but analogous facts.
Coal is not only revolutionary in an economic way, but as a
consequence is revolutionary both historically and politically.
The facts answer: Germany will be an industrial country 
For entire Germany, twelve years after the profound cause which
gives the decisive impulse to this tendency of things, as Cicero calls
slow and definitive revolutions, in 1882, the census by profession
shows the following proportions per thousand inhabitants: 425 are
occupied in agriculture, 355 in industry, 100 in commerce and
transportation. Thirteen years later the census by professions of
1895 shows: 357 in agriculture, 391 in industry, 115 in commerce
and transportation; that is, 506 as against 355. These figures give
in a way the result of a silent popular vote. The greater part of
Germany has chosen for industry, accepting implicitly the revolution
which this "yes" is bringing about in the ways of toiling, sweating,
thinking, feeling, willing  The development of industrial
activity has been directed by the subsoil, particularly by the coal
deposits  2
Once more, geographers must not change themselves into
historians. Let them be allowed to follow the influence of
human geography into the very midst of history, but let them
strive never to lose sight of those "essential facts" which are
the "touchstones" of true geography. If one wishes, for
example, to form an idea of just how far a struggle, of which
the stake is primarily the road, can give rise to the gravest
political complications, one has only to follow in the Hght
of geographical facts the whole Balkan crisis from 1906 to 1909.3
'Armand Colin, Paris, 1900. See especially, on the subject of Birmingham —
the rendezvous of dissenters, of innovators and inventors, the center of independence
as opposed to tradition, the incarnation "of the material and visible interests of all,
of the right of all to life and to happiness" — the first chapter, which has for a heading
this sentence taken from an address by Joseph Chamberlain in 1886: "I come to
you from Birmingham, that is from the city which is, above all cities, the center of
aggressive radicalism, from the city which is always famous for its democratic sym
pathies  "
2Henri Moysset, L'Esprit public en Allemagne, vingt ans apres Bismarck, Alcan,
Paris, 191 1, pp. 112 and 113; see the developments which follow and read all of
chapter III, "Les Causes du m£contentement g6n£ral."
3There is no better guide than Ren6 Pinon. One should read in his book
L'Europe et V Empire ottoman, chap. VI, "La Crise de 1908, Chemins de fer et
r6formes"; chap. VII, "La Rivalit6 des grandes puissances dans l'Empire ottoman"
(Bagdad railroad); and chap. VIII, "Le Connit anglo-turc et la question arabe" (the
Tabah incident, that is, the German-Egyptian conflict for the terminus of the
railroad from Mecca upon the Red Sea at the Gulf of Akaba, and the Koweit incident,
that is the Anglo-Turk conflict for the terminus of the Bagdad railroad upon the
Persian Gulf).

BEYOND THE ESSENTIAL FACTS 553
Or take the pass over which runs an easy road establishing
close relations between the two slopes of a mountainous
highland (very often the inhabitants of the high valleys
communicate directly with the inhabitants of the high valleys
on the other side of the same mountains while they are sepa
rated from the lower valleys and from the low country by
gorges, defiles, "straits," which, especially before the con
struction of roads or railroads, were in more than one case
impassable). From these communications by the high Alpine
passes easy of approach there result human facts which have
shown themselves in political history. The duchy of Savoy
has extended its dominion over both slopes of the Alps and has
long comprised the lower Valais. Is not this the historical
expression of the ease of circulation and the traditional use of
the two passes of the Great and Little St. Bernard? It was
not without reason that St. Bernard of Menthon established
his hospices upon these two roads which border the highland
of Mont Blanc on the northeast and on the southwest and
which enveloped it and still envelop it to-day with a veritable
network of constantly moving human beings (more than
100,000 travelers cross each of these passes annually). The
House of Savoy had no trouble in establishing its dominion
on the other side of the Alps; from the earliest time, one may
say, it was astride the Alps. Though the political incidents and
vicissitudes of the contemporary period, though the prejudices
with which rulers and diplomats have long been imbued and
which in contradiction to geographic realities and historic facts
of the past have caused to be built up a sort of diplomatic
dogma about the pretended line of the watershed;1 though
finally, the boundaries between neighboring states today cut
transversely the two passes of the Little and the Great St.
Bernard, the long influence exerted during so many centuries
by the two St. Bernards" persists in showing itself by a striking
fact: all the valleys which surround Mont Blanc are French
in language. In spite of the generous gifts made in former
1 See what happened in the Chilean-Argentine conflict, and read the remarkable
article by L. Gallois in the Ann. de geog., notably the first pages on that false politi
cal conception of the divide: "Les Andes de Patagonie." Ann. de giog. X, 1901, pp.
232-259. See also: Col. Sir Thomas H. Holdich, "The Countries of the King's
Award," London, 1904.

554 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
times by German emperors to the hospice of the Great St.
Bernard, in spite of the attempts at assimilation and the
pressure so often exerted by the civil and religious authorities
of the upper Valais where German is spoken, in spite of the
Italian policy of to-day on the banks of the Dora Baltea, in
spite of all the efforts of the past or present, the roads of the
two great Alpine passes begin and end in regions where the same
language is spoken. For the inhabitants of the Italian valley
of Aosta and of the Swiss lower Valais speak French as do the
peasants of the high Savoyard valleys. We have here an
historic and linguistic whole which is in evident connection with
that natural whole created by the roads1 (see Figs. 211, 212).
If we were going back into the past and remaking all history
in the light of geographical facts, it would be necessary to show
the role played by the roads — silk roads, salt roads, spice and
other roads — in the evolution of historic relations between
groups of human beings.
In the matter of the influence upon population of the building
of a road, no example is more characteristic than that of the
Trans-Siberian Railway. The laws and the administrative
traditions of Russia, which on the whole are in every way
opposed to emigration, gave way before the new needs.2
This determining influence of the road, with all that we
have called its prolongations in human geography, square or
station, market or port, would show itself on a small scale as
well as on a large scale. > Primitive Switzerland became
conscious of itself and a first union of interests was formed
by the coalition of the forest cantons. Why? Because the
iln the work which we have already mentioned, "Des Conditions de la vie dans
les hautes vallees alpestres a l'altitude de 800 metres," Bull. giog. de Fontenay,
January and August, 1901, Paul Girardin noted that political groups were formed
in the direction of the easiest communications and natural relations. Now each of
these Alpine valleys is barred or choked up toward the lower end, while at the head
it broadens out into a series of basins which communicate with the valleys of the
other slope by necks of pasture land containing lakes. Between these valleys, run
ning in opposite directions but coming together near their heads, continual relations
are kept up, and there is a network of roads for mule drivers. From these relations
have resulted small political groups on both slopes at once. The type of these groups
on both sides of the summit line, not to mention the House of Savoy, was the republic
of Briangonnais, including three valleys on the French slope and three on the Pied
mont slope, in all five escartons. In the Vaudois valleys they still speak French
today. The idea of taking as a boundary the divide, or "the summit of falling
waters," dates from the 18th century.
2See Georges Alfassa, La Crise agrairc. cn Russie, Quarante ans de propriili col
lective, Paris, 1905, pp. 161 ff.

BEYOND THE ESSENTIAL FACTS

555

lake which is called the "lake of the four cantons" or Vier-
waldstattersee formed the crossing of the roads, or rather
the great public square of communication, of exchange, and

Italian
language
Fig. 211. General Division of Languages in Switzerland in the Central
Alps
This is only a general map for the purpose of giving an exact understanding of the
map, Fig. 212, which would be located in the lower left hand corner of this map, south
of the bend of the Rhone, and of course entirely within the zone of the French language.
of pohtical connection between the three valleys of the high
mountains whose streams led into this sheet of water (upper
valley of the Reuss or canton of Uri, valley of the Muotta or
canton of Schwyz, valley of the Aa or canton of Unterwalden,
first union of the three cantons in 1291) ; and because this same
"central station," or better this liquid confederation of little
coves or small ports, led the peasants of the lower valley of the
Reuss (Lucerne) to join with those of the first three cantons
(1332). It was the lake which naturally bound the interests
of the high mountains to those of the plateau. Here is the
cradle of the Helvetian Confederation, because here is the
knot between the primitive cantons and also the knot of
that association of the Alps and the plateau which always

556

HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

Cittle St. BernarcT*^
•V\ .Pass ^ 1i^-' ¦:..¦¦¦;.. ,t,0'
\ V II

.6000'...-'
Scale 1:550,000.-

Fig. 212. The French Language Envelops the Whole of the Mont Blanc
Mass, in Switzerland, Italy, and France
In spite of the situation of Mont Blanc in the midst of the Alps, in spite of its
general altitude (the contour lines of 5,000 and 10,000 feet are shown), in spite of the
fact that the borders of three states meet here, the two roads and the traditional com
munication of the two passes of Great and Little Saint Bernard have maintained in
lower Valais and the Aosta valley the same language as in Savoy.
has been and still is the raison d'etre and the strength of all
Switzerland.1 By nature and in general the inhabitants of the high valleys
of mountainous countries, when these are closed valleys, are
individualists and have a tendency to live very independently
'The economic activity of the lake of the four cantons is still important today;
see F. Becker, Wasserstrassen zu und in der Sehtvci-, Zurich, 1904, p. 6.

BEYOND THE ESSENTIAL FACTS 557
of each other. But in the single case of the lake of the four
cantons (lake of Lucerne) the public square and the market
are in the very place where in the Alps is often found the gorge
or the rapids of the river which correspond to a sort of human
desert.1 As if to bear witness to the role played by the lake, all the
geographic sites commemorative of the first efforts and of
the first successes at federation are located upon the banks or
near the banks of the Vierwaldstattersee : the Griitli, Brunnen
(agreement of December 9, 13 1 5) , the chapel of Tell, the depres
sion of Stanz, so easy of approach on all sides, where the
famous Diet was held, etc.2
If one were taking up the history of primitive Switzerland
from this point of view, it would be necessary to emphasize
also the role of the lakes which "gravitate around the lake
of Lucerne," like advanced positions toward "the heart of
the Confederation" which is always the lake of the four can
tons, and like advanced positions for the defense of the back
country. It was on the shores of Lake Aegeri that the battle
of Morgarten was fought on November 16, 13 15, the first
victory of the Swiss over the House of Hapsburg ; and it was on
the shores of Lake Sempach, beyond and in front of Lucerne,
upon the plateau, that Duke Leopold of Austria was defeated
and perished in 1386./
Certainly the history of roads, and military history more
than any other, must rest, and in fact has long rested, upon
geography. It is in questions of this sort that we would find
the bond indicated in Chapter III between the ways of com
munication and the natural or artificial facts opposed to
circulation, viz., fortifications. Strongholds are connected
with roads.
"Belgium, since the time of Caesar, has been the road for
armies. Lens, Seneffe, Steenquerque, Neerwinden, Mal-
plaquet, Fleurus, Jemappes, Waterloo, are all Belgian names."
1A representative type of this general fact is, for example, the terminal gorge of
the Lonza, just where the southern entrance of the new tunnel of Lotschberg has
been cut, and where, before this work began, there was a real desert of several miles
separating the few inhabitants of Lctschenthal from the valley of the Rhone.
2For all these facts, summed up briefly and precisely, with important corrections
of dates, see B. Van Muyden, "Conferences sur I'histoire de la Suisse," La Suisse
iconomique, Payot, Lausanne, 1908, I, pp. gff.
35'

558 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
The famous cities which the treaties of Westphalia and of
Utrecht called the "Barrier Cities" are in Belgium. "This
country," adds Andre Tardieu, with a keen sense of reality,
"if it is not a 'barrier,' becomes a passage."1
Many great cities have in their origin been bound to and
sometimes restricted to one or more islands in a river: as the
island of Lutetia for Paris, the KoUn for Berlin, the Tiberine
island for Rome. Why? Because this situation upon an
island in rivers which are sometimes easily navigable (Seine
and Spree) and which were always more or less navigable
for boats of that time (Tiber) furnished easy means of access
to the settlement, and at the same time lines of defense. The
same thing was true of the small island in an arm of the sea
or of a lake : Copenhagen, Stockholm ; and of islands properly
maritime: old Syracuse, and the island of Ortygia (Figs. 213,
214, 215, 216).
Inversely, dangerous zones, defiles difficult to cross, become
naturally the "place" for a road. In the high Alpine valleys
a bridge is ordinarily thrown across the river where its bed is
narrowest and its current swiftest. It is well known that
bogs are obstacles to circulation, and that is the reason, we
should say, that points of passage are frequently met with in
them which, in Switzerland, for example, bear the typical
names of Bruggo, Bruggen, Brieg, Briiggli, Les Ponts, Pontet,
Les Marches, Les Traverses,2 etc.
For the geographer it is of prime importance to emphasize
the influence of the natural phenomena of orography or hydrog
raphy. For example, south of the lake of Garda, an ancient
"tongue basin" {Zungenbecken) of a great glacier, is that
magnificent and continuous morainic amphitheater which
has been studied and represented by Th. Fischer, A. Penck,
and others, and which forms a hemicycle of hills, a veritable
bastion, barring the approach to the lake and shutting it in.
Upon this bastion, near it and at its foot, hostile armies have
many times met, and the amphitheater of glacial moraines is
'A. Tardieu, "Leopold II et son rdgne," Rev. des deux mondes, February I, 1910,
P. 673. 2 J. Friih and C. Schroter, Die Moore der Schweiz, Bern, 1904, pp. 313-315'
Read also the very intelligent memoir by Lord Curzon of Kedleston, Frontiers,
Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1907.

BEYOND THE ESSENTIAL FACTS

559

Fig. 214(A). Syracuse and Island of Ortygia
Fig. 215(B). Stockholm and Island of Stadkn
Fig. 216(C). Copenhagen and Slotsholm (Castle Island)
These four outlines are drawn to the same scale 1: 80,000, allowing
an exact comparison of areas. The islands, nuclei of these four cities,
are in black. The shaded portions indicate approximately the pres
ent urban areas. An exception is made for Syracuse only, because

the present Syracuse, aside from the railroad station and a small suburb, is in the same island of Ortygia, and the shaded portion
corresponds to what was formerly the great Syracuse at the time of its splendor.

BEYOND THE ESSENTIAL FACTS -561
marked by a whole series of names of battles which recall and
illustrate its geographic significance : Lonato, Solferino, Cus-
tozza, etc. (See map in Fig. 217.)
Military historians, such as Chuquet, have therefore made
large use of geography;1 and in a general way, as we shall see
in the last chapter of this book, all history, as it has become
more and more positive and realistic, has_ become also more
geographical. We should not, however, fail to recognize the
arbitrary acts of man.
Rabbits are introduced into Australia and at once a scourge
is created (Chap. IV, p. 306, note 1). A vessel comes into
Genoa_orJVtarseilles and its rats bring cholera or the plague.
The phylloxera invades the vineyards of Europe and, but for
a prodigious effort at renewing and replanting, the long-estab
lished cultivation of vast regions would have been annihilated.
Gypsy moths introduced into Massachusetts by accident
have devastated trees and have been the cause of an expendi
ture of thousands of dollars, not in eradicating them, but in
restricting their distribution. We are at the mercy of blind
forces which are unthinkingly loosed by us and against which
we must then struggle at the expense of our own time and
strength. More than that, the deliberate act of the sugar convention
of Brussels, by suppressing all exportation bonuses after
September, 1903, reduced the amount of surface planted in
beets and, so to speak, ruthlessly wiped off the map of France
thousands of acres of this plant. The negotiators of the
treaty of Frankfurt deprived France of the productive surfaces
of Alsace-Lorraine, of the revenue from taxable raw materials
which swelled the budget of the former German Empire, and
especially of a million and a half men of a calm temperament,
laborious and energetic, whose total effort was cut off from the
total effort of geographic and economic France. The arbitrary
cutting up of Poland was carried out as a cruel child cuts up
the body of an insect. History shows us mutilations of this
1Ardouin-Dumazet, through writing military history, chronicles, and geography,
is directed more and more toward geography. On their part, geographers are be
coming more interested in military affairs, and the Petermanns Milleilungen started
in 1910 a new section on military geography. As an example of good geographical
criticism of a military question, see A. Demangeon, "La Trou6e de l'Oise, " Ann. de
giog., XVI, 1907, pp. 3°9^3i5-

562

HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

Scale =1:44.000

Fig. 217. Morainic Amphitheater of Lago di Garda
1. Moraines of the last glacial period.
2. Rock fragments of the "lower terrace."
3. Portions of the mountain which were covered by the glacier.
4. Portions of the mountain which were not covered by the glacier.
It is a natural bastion, at the foot or on the sides of which the armies of all time have
met and fought; all the underlined names have a military importance and recall
famous deeds; Borghetto, May 28, 1876; Salo, Lonato, Castiglione, July 31 to August
5, 1796; Custozza, July 25, 1848 and June 24, 1866; Solferino, June 24. 1859.
All this recalls the battle on the edge or on the first projecting hills of this morainic
system; farther to the north, in the northeast, is Rivoli, and inside the bastion is
Peschiera.

The geological portion of this map is from that by A. Pcnck in tho great work Die Alpen
by A. Ponok and E. Briicknor, vol. Ill, opp. p. 852.

t Eiszeitalter

sort or even radical destructions on a small as well as on a large
scale — "evictions" and "pacifications." At the beginning
of the last century the county of Sutherland, in the north

BEYOND THE ESSENTIAL FACTS 563
of Scotland, was deliberately depopulated. The agents of the
landlords having advised the Duchess of Sutherland to give
her lands over to the raising of sheep rather than to leave them
in the hands of tenants who did not properly pay their rent,
she followed this monstrous advice. Beginning with 1807
the inhabitants were driven out; in 18 14 the famous Sellar
began to set fire to the moors and even to the houses to hasten
the evacuation; in 1827 "with a few exceptions the depopula
tion of the county was complete."1 The inhabitants of the
highlands were thus thrown upon the coast, and highlanders
who detested the sea were forced to become sailors and
fishermen. Here are phenomena which affect and engender
forms of population and which certainly depend upon human
causes. There are, as we have said, laws which forbid henceforth the
covering of houses with thatch or shingles. There are also
laws which bring about the forced division of estates and the
unhmited subdivisions of the portions; there are, on the other
hand, other laws which order the consolidation of estates or
which make the "family property" unseizable. All such
legislative measures find expression in real, persistent effects
upon the surface of the earth.
An ancient tenure of "communal goods," which is no longer
either general or adapted to the present division of property,
keeps under the collective system excellent lands and a very
rich valley. Because this is the "common" field, all pass
through it, all go there to dry their linen, and they even let
their geese wander there (Fig. 218).
All around Paris immediately beyond the fortifications a
concentric ring of land is reserved under the name of the
' ' military zone. " It is forbidden to build there ; or rather, any
building there may be torn down and removed at any time
without indemnity. As a result of this administrative measure,
a strip of territory in the midst of the Parisian agglomeration,
between the thickly populated and well-built-up suburbs and
the city itself, is shut off from the progress of normal building.
^ee Charles Guernier, Les Crofters icossais, Paris, 1897, p. 79, and all of Book
III, beginning at p. 71. See the Gloomy Memories, reedited in 1883 by Mackenzie
and the Glengarry Evictions by Donald Ross. _ See finally what we have noted above
on the historical "preparation" of the Irish crisis.

Jean Bnnilu-s
Fig. 218. How Facts of the Social Order are Explainicd by Facts of Human Geography
At Vic-sur-Cerc (Cantal), those communal grounds situated in the midst of the Cere Valley would be
excellent meadows, but the collective system, now obsolete and unheeded, makes this land common to all
even the geese (See p. 563).

BEYOND THE ESSENTIAL FACTS 565
Thus one sees at the very gates of Paris waste lands or little
patches of garden dotted with queer temporary buildings made
of old boards or tin boxes and resembling camps of wretched
nomads1 (see Fig. 219).
In the Dobruja, which is a vast island of refuge where sub
sist those motley ethnical groups studied by Eugene Pittard,
the German villages have kept an "imported" look and stand
out to an astonishing degree from the Slavic villages or the
gypsy camps. Fidelity to custom seems increased rather
than diminished by transplantation into another geographic
environment. Certain economic facts especially are increasingly susceptible
of contradictions and complications which, so to speak, place
them in revolt against geography. To-day it is no longer
necessarily when wheat fails in a country that famines take
place. There may be fine crops of wheat sold in advance to
exporters, and while the exporters grow rich the peasants die
of hunger. Southern Russia has offered us such an anti-
geographic spectacle several times within the last quarter of
a century.2 The increasing facility of transportation to a distance or of
exportation causes, on the other hand, in certain regions, a
specialization of cultivation or of animal-raising which would
never have arisen before. In Brittany, in the interior part
of the district of Leon, the mediocre cultivation of cereals has
given place to meadows because outlets have been made for
animal-raising. Circulation is not satisfied with sending products far away
to new markets; with delivering, for example, within very
recent times every year into Europe from 80 to 100 million
pounds (40 or 50 million kilograms) of Soya, or Manchurian
beans. It even exerts an influence upon phenomena of the first
group and causes types of houses to exist outside of and beyond
their natural setting. Thus frame houses that can be taken
down and transported have become one of the characteristics
xIn order to see to what an extent legislative or administrative measures modify
the facts of human settlement on our planet, read the remarkable book by Professor
Paul Masson, Histoire du commerce francais dans le Levant au XVIII" siecle, Hachette,
Paris, 191 1.
2See Victor Berard, "Angleterre et Russie," Rev. de Paris, September 15, 1904,
p. 436.

566

HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

of the treeless prairies of Canada beyond the hmits of the
great forest. The sod house of the Great Plains is also tem
porary. It costs but little. If drought should come and drive

Fig. 219. How Facts of an Administrative Order are Explained by Facts
of Human Geography
The military zone surrounding Paris is occupied by miserable hovels which are
in general inhabited only intermittently. This is one of the best and has permanent
tenants. View taken at Gentilly, near the railway station of Sceaux.
out the families, but little money would be lost on the house.
If the crops were good, the sod house could in time be replaced
by a better house, as has happened to a large degree.
With all the more reason all the agglomerations of houses,
all villages and cities, depend, for what they may become
upon that network of relations and connections which Mac-
kinder once designated by the expressive word nodality.1 Each
city becomes the financial, economic and social bullseye of
the area contributing directly to it. Just as the people of a
rural region look to the nearest hamlet as their "city," so the
smaller city finds its metropolis in the larger center.
1 See what we have said above, p. 169.

BEYOND THE ESSENTLAL FACTS 567
World commerce, world circulation, Weltverkehr, govern in'}
truth a very large number of facts of the. three groups (cities,
roads, cultivation, raising of animals,- exploitation of minerals). j>
This immense economic complex, world commerce, may be
compared to a complex of physical geography, such as climate.
TenTp^sTs~aTe-sutIdenly let loose, sowing ruin In fields of sugar
cane or tin mines thousands of miles from the places where the
commercial tempest raged. The peasant who sows wheat in
Beauce or in Podolia no longer depends simply upon the
atmosphere. His harvest, materially good or bad, will be
made economically good or bad by those vicissitudes of the
commercial atmosphere which we might well compare to the
famous Klimaschwankungen (oscillations of climate). Like
wise the lowering of a transportation rate may suddenly
modify the economic distance between two points in space and
all this happens suddenly as if, with the stroke of a pen like a
magic wand, the real road were shortened or lengthened.
In short, even states in their complex and general situation
are subject to the effects of fluctuations in world trade. The
economic situation of a country such as Switzerland is to-day
a function of Weltverkehr as much as of those natural geo
graphical factors which rule the lives of the energetic inhabit
ants of this patch of earth. "A people is a part of the world
only if it possess a market in the world."1
The "wheat kings" do not gather the harvests, they dis
count them. The "oil or copper kings" must have precise
and scientific knowledge of all the present and future resources
of the soil. Napoleon, who certainly was able to modify
somewhat the map of Europe by his own will, wrote one day :
"The policy of states is in their geography."2 In the same
way in the face of the greatly increased power of the financial
oligarchies, the Napoleons of to-day, as in the face of the social
plans or dreams of political parties, we may say: 'JEvery
lasting, jpolicy and all successful economic movements must
be based more and more upon geography."
At the end of the present chapter devoted to parts of human
^Son Hennebicq, "L'Expansion maritime," Rev. icon, internat., March 15-20,
19". P- 437-
2Correspondance de Napolion; letter of November 10, 1804.

568 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
geography which lie "beyond the essential facts," let us note
that historical or political geography rests essentially upon
the consideration of localized and regional facts, while social
geography, on the contrary, aims at bringing out the general
influences which men undergo as a result of certain efforts and
certain modes of occupation of the earth. Historical geogra
phy must always have a cantonal, provincial, national tend
ency. Social geography must aim at conclusions more
independent of local variability.
It is in this sense that social geography shows us what must
be one of the aims of human geography. We must\aim at
constructing some day a general human geography, founded
of course upon the minute observation of thousands of localized
facts but independent of regional geography to the same extent
that general physical geography, which deals with principles,
is independent of local or regional descriptions, which illus
trate principles.

CHAPTER IX
THE GEOGRAPHIC SPIRIT
I. The geographic spirit in the economic, social, and historical
sciences.
2. The psychological factor in the connections between natural
phenomena and human activity.
3. Human adaptation to geographic conditions.
I. THE GEOGRAPHIC SPIRIT IN THE ECONOMIC, SOCIAL AND HISTORICAL
SCIENCES
In what does the geographic spirit consist?
The geographer must know how to observe. Mere willing
ness to see is not enough. In physical as in human geography
the first and not the least difficult step is learning to see the
actual facts of the earth's surface as they are.1
The geographical method, wherever it can be used, gives first
place to the exact study of what exists to-day. Before inter
preting upon more or less debatable evidence the facts of the
past, one endeavors, in following the geographical method,
to observe, to group, and finally, if possible, to classify the
facts of the present. Such a method has a truly positive and
s"cieritific character.
--Let us learn the present geographic conditions, without being
compelled first to study the origin and the historic transforma
tions of phenomena. One may organize the statistics or draw
up a geographical table of the present distribution of this or
that plant in a given country ; one is not obliged to search out
what succession of plants there has been in this same region
for several centuries. That, in fact, is another study corres
ponding to other interests.
Is it not reasonable first to examine what we ourselves see,
rather than try to picture, on more or less complete and
authentic evidence, what our ancestors saw ? Both studies are
'Read Albrecht Penck, Beobachtung als Grundlage der Geographie, Geb. Borntrager,
Berlin, 1906. 569

570 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
legitimate ; far from excluding each other, they should complete
and even confirm each other. But, if some are allowed to
treat these facts from the historical point of view alone, why
should we be refused the right to treat them from the geographi
cal point of view alone ? That is the extent of our claims.
Geographers must always endeavor to establish the exact
locality where the phenomenon studied is produced. The
question of place is all-important, and should find expression
in maps or diagrams upon which would be represented two
classes of facts: the points or zones where the fact appears
under maximum or optimum conditions, and, on the other hand,
the limit that marks the extreme range of the phenomenon.
In the beginning of this book we noted the geographic
orientation of a large number of works connected with the
earth sciences,1 and we emphasized the fruitful development of
botanical geography.2 This tendency is becoming more and
more general ; studies are being made of the geographic distrib
ution of thermal springs,3 of earthquakes,4 of rodents,5 or the
exact and cartographic distribution of oysters, mussels, etc.,6 and
better still, in a work that has the rare merit of having been
produced through the close and fruitful collaboration of a geog
rapher and a botanist, the distribution of peat-bogs,7 etc.
!The earth sciences have an ever-increasing place for the principle of the geographic
coordination of facts. See the fine collection of paleogeographic maps in A. de Lap-
parent, Traiti de giologie, Masson, Paris; also the copious illustrations, so truly
geographic, in L' Architecture du sol de la France by Commandant Barre, Armand Colin,
Paris; and especially Haug's systematic theory of geosynclinals, which has par excellence
a geographical value and importance ; see also the entire synthetic work by Ed. Suess.
2Besides the works noted in Chapter I, see Arnold Jacobi, "Lage und Form biogeo-
graphischen Gebiete," Zeitschr. der Ges. fur Erdkunde zu Berlin, 1900, pp. 147-238.
3L. de Launay, "La Distribution geographique des sources thermales," Rev. gen.
des Sciences, July 15,' 1898,
4Montessus de Ballore, Giographie siismologique, with a preface by Albert de
Lajjparent, Armand Colin, Paris.
5J. Palacky, La Distribution giographique des rongeurs sur le globe (Travaux gio-
graphiques tcheques, 5, 1903, I), V. Svambera, Prague, 1904.
6L. Joubin, "La Carte des mollusques comestibles des c6tes de France," Ann. de
giog.. May 15, 1908, pp. 197-204.
7J. Friih and C. Schrbter, Die Moore der Schwciz mil Bcrucksichtigung der gesamten
Moorfrage (Beilrage zur Geologie der Schwciz. Geotechnische Serie, III, Lieferung,
Berne, 1904, 40 pages). See, for example, P. Lesne, "La Distribution geographique
des Colioplires Bostrychides dans ses rapports avec le regime alimentaire, R61e probable
des grandes migrations humaines," Comptes rendus Acad, sciences, CXXXYH, 1903,
PP- 133-135' a discussion of coleoptera which inhabit dead trees; the author considers
men responsible for the transplanting of these insects, even as far as the Antilles and
South America. This is said to be the result of the traffic in African negroes. It is
evident to what an extent these studies of botanical and zoological geography keep
pace with human geography. See, also, Louis Germain, "La Distribution geog.'aphique
des animaux d'apres I' Atlas de Bartholomew," Ann. de giog., XXI, 1912, pp. 20-28.

THE GEOGRAPHIC SPIRIT 571
Many phenomena which have both an economic interest and
a great biological interest, such as the migrations of birds, are
especially considered in their relations to geographical facts.1
In the succeeding chapters we likewise observed how
geographically important and useful it was to examine and
represent the geographical distribution of the wooden house,
of coal mines, of sheep-raising, of the cultivation of wheat, etc.
This same preoccupying question of place is becoming more
and more dominant outside of strictly geographical circles,
and particularly in agricultural circles. By the very necessity
of the practical connection of their activity with climate and
soil, the agronomists seem predestined to produce good geog
raphy; and they have not failed to do so. The large-scale
agronomic maps of Belgium, France, Germany, Japan, etc., are
models of painstaking efforts to localize human facts upon the
surface of the earth.2 One of the most elaborate of these
agricultural atlases is the one forthcoming from the United
States Department of Agriculture in which the geographic
distributions of soils and climate and surface features, the
time of seeding, planting and harvesting and crop distribu
tion will be fully presented.
From strictly agricultural facts one passes naturally to
economic facts connected with agriculture. In many countries
publications dealing with these questions are accompanied
by graphic representations which localize the facts : Denmark,
Sweden, Norway, Germany, France,3 etc. More complex
and what we may call more human economic facts have
been represented graphically. Engelbrecht has studied the
localization of the prices of cereals in the United States from
1W. R. Eckardt, "Die geographischen Grundlagen des Vogelzugproblems,"
Petermanns Mitt.. LVI, 1910, pp. 241-245.
2The agronomic map is not the geologic map; but the geologic map forms an excel
lent foundation for agronomic studies. There are also maps showing the chemical
qualities of the soil as they are revealed by analysis. Finally, agronomists such as A.
Proost, the director of the Rural Office of the Department of Agriculture of Belgium,
have often emphasized the special value of maps representing the physical qualities of
the soil. In the Giographie agricole de la France et du monde, by J. Du Plessis de
Gren6dan, with a letter-preface by the Marquis de Vogue (Masson, Paris), may be
found a great many new maps, representing facts of cultivation and of the raising of
various kinds of livestock (the raising of bees and the production of honey, chicken
raising, duck raising, etc.).
3We cannot too highly recommend and praise the economic and demographic
maps contained in that splendid memorial which the Finland Geographical Society
has compiled in honor of its country, L' Alias de Finlande, together with the two volumes
of text which accompany and comment upon it.

572 HUMAN GhOGkaphy
1862 to 1900 and has evolved a map of "isotimal" lines by con
necting with a continuous curve the points where these prices
are the same.1 By joining with continuous curves the points
which may be reached in the same number of hours or days
from a great urban center, "isochronic" lines are_ obtained.
In the book Mitteleuropa, by Partsch, the map, Figure 27,
p. 409, is a reproduction of the map of the isochrones of
Berlin for the year 1900 (map by Marie Krauske) with its
three zones; that of the points which may be reached within
two hours or less, that of the points at a distance of from two
to five hours, and finally that of points at a distance of from
five to ten hours. The Atlas of the World's Commerce, by J.
G. Bartholomew, contains an Isochronic Distance Chart for
1906 with London as a center (see Fig. 220). Finally, Max
Eckert has published in Petermanns Mitteilungen a newer,
better and more complete isochronic map of the world than
any of the earlier ones, with very full information about the
history of the earlier attempts and the method followed.2
Those who seek to localize economic facts are naturally led
to examine the causes of this localization, and thus the exam
ination of the geographical environment is introduced into
political economy.3 There is perhaps no more striking
example than that of the great official censuses, particularly
those of the United States and of India. In the Twelfth
Census and the Thirteenth Census of the United States several
studies of this kind may be found, for example that in the
Twelfth Census by Frederick S. Hall, Localization of Industries,
which has been analyzed by H. Hauser in the Annates dc Geo
graphic* In grouping the causes explaining the present
development of American industries under seven main heads
— "Nearness of Materials," "Nearness of Markets," "Water
Power," "Favorable Climates," "Abundance of Labor,"
'Th. Engelbrecht, Die geographische Verleilung der Getreidepreise in der Vereinigten
Slaaten von 1862 bis igoo, Parey, Berlin. 1903. Maps of places where the harvest is
gathered on the same date or in the same period should be studied, like those which
R. Blanchard (La Flandre, Armand Colin, Paris, 1906, p. 20) and Captain J. Levain-
ville (Le Morvan, Armand Colin, Paris, 1900) have prepared for the wheat harvest.
2Max Eckert, "Eine neue Isochronenkarte der Erde," Petermanns Mitt., LV,
1909, pp. 209—216, etc.
3See P. Clerget, "Le Milieu geographique en £conomie politique," Rev. icon, de
Bordeaux, XVII, 1907, pp. 304 ff.
4XII, 1903, pp. 193-206.

THE GEOGRAPHIC SPIRIT 573
"Capital," "Advance Due to an Earlier Impulse" — Hall is
interested first of all in economic questions, but at the same
time he is producing human geography. x
In applying what might be called critical geography to
sociological studies, one could and should take up a considerable
number of abstract theories formulated in the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries and show their lack of real foundation.
Neither the theory of Sumner Maine of collective property
as a primitive form of property2 nor Ricardo's theory of
"diminishing returns" could stand the test of being brought
face to face with the facts of positive human geography.
Human geography (writes an economist in the Revue d'economie
politique) 3 is destined to renew all the sociological theories that specu
late about some sort of abstract man. For example, the study of
the different forms of ownership of water here examined does away
with all a priori and absolute theories, those that lay down as a dogma
that individual property is the only form of property acceptable to
human reason and those that tend to a conception of state ownership
as applicable to all the countries of the earth.4
It is interesting to analyze closely these conclusions and compare
them with the present teachings of political economy.
Human geography, or at least the study of natural conditions, their
action upon the work of man and man's reaction upon them, has
already renovated more than one sociological theory. It was this
study, however summary, that led Paul Leroy-Beaulieu5 to take up
the theories of the English economists, Malthus and Ricardo, and
refute their pessimistic exaggerations.
The earlier English school of economists (wrote the great liberal
economist) , with all its great merits, from Adam Smith down to but not
including John Stuart Mill, made the mistake of neglecting nature ; this
neglect had serious consequences, notably an exaggerated pessimism.
Considering nature only under one form, land, in the narrow sense
of the word, this school contented itself with establishing, by a too
absolute or premature generalization, the gradual diminishing of the
increase in productive power of the land- relative to the successive
expenditures of capital and labor.
1See von Halle, "Die Verteilung der Industrie auf die klimatischen Zonen," Verk.
des VII. Internal. Geographen-Kongresses Berlin, i8gg, Berlin, II, pp. 514-528. Well-
made censuses, small or large, tend more and more toward human geography; see, for
example, Stephen Bauer, Die Bevolkerung des Kantons Basel-Stadt am 1 Dec, igoo,
Basel, 1905.
2Cf. A. Metin, L'Inde d'aujourd'hui, pp. 234 ff.
3See Georges Gariel, "Le Probleme economique de 1'irrigation d'apres un livre
recent," Rev. d'icon. politique, 1903, pp. 802-826.
*Jean Brunhes, L' Irrigation, etc., p. 439, "Portee critique de la geographie humaine."
5See his Essai sur la ripartilion des richesses, Guillaumin, Paris, 1897, 4th edition.

574

HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

Fig. 220. A
After the Isochronic Chart with London as the center. Bacon's Library and
from five to forty days and over, traveling from London.

THE GEOGRAPHIC SPIRIT

575

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576. HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
The economic pessimism of Ricardo, Malthus, and John Stuart
Mill comes in large part from the fact that the circumstances of the
time when they lived and their habits of thought did not lead them
to study as a whole the role of external nature, the different
resources it keeps in store for us, the half -revealed forces and
those that are still almost unsuspected that it will be able to place
at our disposal.1
The role of human geography is not to build up social
theories but to show the impossibility or inexactness of certain
a priori and too abstract systems. This is not a negligible
role, and many recent works on political economy have a
particular value because of this geographical study preced
ing their moral, sociological, or financial observations and
judgments. Thus a study of poverty should mean not simply statistics
but an attempt at precise localization. Since to fix the topo
graphical distribution of poverty is a means of knowing it
more exactly, it is doubtless also a means of relieving and
curing it in a less abstract and more efficacious manner.
We see this in a book on New- York by Jacob Riis and in th^
study by Henri Bonnet on the Map of the Poor in Paris,
published in the Revue des deux mondes, September 15, 1906.
Poverty is not necessarily disease, but it has many relations
with it, and disease itself, especially contagious or epidemic
disease, is a social poverty.
There is likewise a geography of diseases.2 The discoveries
of the last quarter of a century make this clear. Why?
Because there is certainly a geography of the insects,!]
acaridans, rodents, etc., which transmit such diseases asij
malaria, yellow fever, or cholera. The connection between
the natural environment and man is established through
a small living being which must itself first be studied.
The first stage of research seems to be the geographical
investigation and, if possible, the graphic representation of the
zones where a certain disease is prevalent. A beginning
has been made. The connection between marshy regions
and malaria has been shown by means of typical maps (see
'Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, Traile theorique et pratique d'iconomie politique, Guillaumin,
Paris, pp. 125-126.
2P. G. Clemow, The Geography of Disease (Cambridge Geographical Series),
Cambridge, England.

THE GEOGRAPHIC SPIRIT 577
the map reproduced in Theobald Fischer's Pcnisola Ilaliana,
P- 36S)-1
Studies of the sleeping sickness began rightly with a study of
the region where the scourge is prevalent.2 It appeared that
there was a certain correspondence between the parts of Africa
where this disease appears and the parts where the tsetse fly is
found. Investigation was then begun to find what could be the
responsibility of the tsetse, or more exactly of its near relatives.3
There, of course, geography stops. Let us add, however,
that, for the study of the biological conditions of invertebrates,
scholars who occupy themselves with the lower beings living
upon the earth or in the air have much to learn from the studies
of the biological environment carried on in reference to the small
inhabitants of the sea in laboratories of maritime zoology such
as that of Woods Hole and Rostoff , of oceanography such as
that of Monaco, or of maritime fishing such as that of Bergen.
The medicine of to-day has been entirely renovated by
hygiene. What is hygiene but putting trust in the natural
forces of the human organism and in the action of natural
agents? Hygiene means air, water, sunlight, etc. Hygiene,
thenL means geography. Moreover, studies of social hygiene
can be fruitful only in so far as they rest upon an exact
knowledge of the general physical conditions.4
1Mortalild per infezione malarica in ciascun Comune del regno d' Italia nei tre anni,
i8go-gi-g2. See also in Karl Andree's Geographie des Welthandels, edited by Franz
Heiderich and Robert Sieger, H. Keller, Frankfort, 1909, the general map "Geogra
phische Verbreitung einiger Krankheiten," I, p. 256; the general distribution of eight
great maladies is shown. Prince Auguste d'Arenberg presented at the Paris meeting
of the Institut Colonial international (1908) a remarkable report summing up the
results of the struggle against swamp fever, yellow fever, and the sleeping sickness.
2The Society of Geography of Paris took under its patronage the delegation that
went to the Congo to study the sleeping sickness, from 1906 to 1908 ; in 1909 it assisted
in the publication of the Rapport de la mission d'iludes de la maladie du sommeil au
Congo francais.
3See A. Laveran and F. Mesnil, Trypanosom.es et Trypanosomiases, Masson, Paris,
1904, and the article which Maurice Caullery has devoted to this work (Ann. de giog.,
XIII, 1904, pp. 457-461). Dr. J. Brault, "Les Trois Grandes Pandemies des pays
chauds; leur distribution geographique, leurs principaux foyers," Archives ginirales
de midecine, 88th year, 1908, Vol. 199, pp. 465-493; "Paludisme et maladies parapalu-
deennes, leur distribution geographique aux colonies et dans les pays chauds," Rev.
scientifique, March 28, 1898, pp. 394-402 and world map.
4The book by Dr. Bonmariage on Russia is a model, and is accompanied by
excellent maps, clearly drawn by Jean Bertrand: La Russie d'Europe, topographic
relief, giologie, hydrologie, climatologie, rigions naturelles. Les Peuples et leur mode de
ripartition, Essai d'hygiene ginirale, Brussels and Paris, 1903. In this connection, see
Dr. G. Merveilleux, "He de la Reunion," Ann. d'hygiene et de midecine coloniale, VI,
1903, pp. 195—259 and figure. Etude de giographie midicale de Vile de la Riunion, Saint-
Denis, 1902. Also Paul Juillerat, Rapport & M. le Prifet de la Seine sur les recherches
effectuies au Bureau du Casier sanitaire pendant Vannie igo8. Imp. Chaix, Paris, 1909.
36

578 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
Like the economic and demographic sciences, the whole
group of philological, ethnical, and historical sciences, in the
widest sense, is becoming more and more impregnated with the
geographical spirit.
Researches bearing upon numan facts, such as languages,
proper names, legends, etc., had been remodeled and often
set right by the historical spirit, that is, by the spirit which
considers the succession of forms in time and their evolutionary
development. To this fruitful point of view a new inspiration
has been added, which is growing in influence.
As the Salzburg historian, August Prinzinger, has well said,
"The name [the geographic name] is like the mountain and
the valley, like the river, the forest, and the flora, like uses
and customs, a part of Heimat; fashion does not change it like
a coat."1 It is, so to speak, fastened to a point of space. To
represent the distribution of certain village names, the distri
bution of certain endings {ingen, ens, etc., loo in Holland, etc.)
(see Fig. 221), the distribution even of changes in pronunciation
of the same word (for example, the Arab name for mountain:
Gebel in Egypt, Jebel in the Algerian and Tunisian Sahara,
and ] debet elsewhere), is to throw light at once upon all the
problems of historical philology which arise from these different
facts. Similarly maps of saints' names are made up, and the
names which have come from plants or forms of the land are
examined in the light of geography. One is then naturally
led to form a clear idea of the actual dispersion of all the
archaeological facts, of ruins, as well as of legends and
folklore.2 Place names may be considered either from the point of
view of a linguistic origin, as going back to the Ligurians, the
Iberians, the Celts, the Romans, etc. (and they then allow us to
reconstruct the extension and the habitat of these primitive
peoples, a means which does not give absolute certainty, but
which is up to the present time the only means we have), or
from the point of view of their meaning, which often refers
to a physical circumstance, that is, to a geographical fact.
'Quoted in Raimund Friedrich Kaindl, Die Volkskundc, Hire Bedeutung, ihre Ziele
und ihre Melhode, (Max. Klar's collection, Die Erdkunde, XVII. Teil), Deuticke,
Leipzig and Vienna, 1903, p. 65.
2See E. de Martonne, La Valachie, pp. 384 ff.

THE GEOGRAPHIC SPIRIT 579
A place name may be considered a document, just as a
fossil, a medal, or a coin are documents.1
The names of saints, to which we have just referred, have
been catalogued in the Dictionnaire geographique de la France
by Joanne. Some are accompanied by sketches (twelve in
all), showing their zones of dispersion. There are no fewer
than 4,450 communes which bear saints' names, filling 340
pages of this quarto dictionary (Vol. VI, Q.-S. D.). Among
the most widespread are Saint-Andre (73 communes), Saint-
Aubin (73), Saint-Etienne (70), Saint-Georges (77), Saint-Ger
main (127), Saint-Hilaire (80), Saint- Jean (171), Saint-Julien
(91), Saint-Laurent (94), Saint-Martin (224), Saint-Michel (63),
Saint-Pierre (162). The number would be still larger if we
added the sometimes queer designations which represent the
local deformations of Saints' names, sometimes hardly recog
nizable: Saint- Pere and Saint-Pe (for Saint-Pierre), Saint
Blin, Saint Broing, and Saint -Berain (for Saint -Benigne),
Saint-Sernin, Saint-Sorlin (for Saint-Saturnin) . Who would
recognize the name of Saint-Hilaire in the mountain of
"Alaric"? And who would think of the names frequent in
the east of France where Saint and Sainte are replaced by
'See first the classic book by Egli, Nomina geographica. See some special studies,
such as H. DeheVain, "La Toponymie de la Colonie du Cap de Bonne- EspeVance au
XVIIIs siecle," La Giographie, IV, 1901, pp. 162 ff.; Levainville, "La Toponymie
morvandelle, " ibid, XVIII, 1908, pp. 23-32, etc. Also the Alias linguistique de la
France, by Jv Gillieron and E. Edmont, and give special notice to L. Berthoud and L.
Matruchot, Etude historique et itymologique des noms de lieux habitis (villes, villages et
principaux hameaux) du dipartement de la Cote-d'Or: I, Piriode anti-romaine; II,
Periods gallo-romaine (in 2 parts) which appeared in Bull. Soc. sci. hist, et nat. de
Semur, 1902 and 1905, and separately, impr. V. Berdot, Semur, 1901 (115 pages),
1902 (238 pages), 1905 (170 pages). A. Longnon has offered at the College de France
a course in historical geography which has given birth to some fine works on topon-
omy, among which that by L. Berthoud and L. Matruchot stands in the first rank.
The method followed consists in applying one's self to the most ancient forms which
are known, those previous to the year 1,000 being the most valuable, as they have,
in general, kept almost the primitive theme.. Moreover, one is aided in this research
by comparison with certain analogous words belonging* to the same toponomical
family. Such are certain words having the same ending, -dunum. -durum, -briga,
-ingen, and -ens (see above, Fig. 221). Brochure I comprises the ante-Roman period,
that is, the names presumably of Iberian, Ligurian, Celtic, or Gallic origin, meaning
by "name of such and such an origin" names derived from the language of those
peoples which have remained in the current language for a longer or shorter period
after the disappearance of those peoples. For the Gallic-Roman period (Brochures
II and III), the problem consists in getting back to the most probable theme by
making use of forms more and more ancient: This theme, often conjectural, is formed
on a gentilice, derived from a cognomen; for example, Champagny , derived from the
theme Campaniacus, formed on the gentilice campanius, derived from the eognomen
Campanus, "inhabitant of the country." Finally, von Ettmayer has summed up well
the method and the bearing of the researches on names of places at the 50th Congress
of German philologists (1909): "Ziele und Methode des Ortsnamenforschung,"
Germanisch-Romanische Monatschrift, II, February, 1910, pp. 138-140.

Scales
Statute miles

Orbefl
OrbtTy 1$

*v.lVIoudon: /

ftEcha'lleris

CossoniV^^> / 1 \
v/r'''v!)\ f. ^~—

Bullc// ¦•¦:¦; \. Botterena
.- Estavannena
Cuatel St. Denis :- •

Vevey

Villeneuve

Fig. 221. Principal Regions of Geographic Distribution of Place Names
with Termination "ens" or "inges" in the Romansh District
It is a question of the terminations ens or inges, corresponding in Romansh to the
Germanic terminations ing and ingen. The present limit of the German and French
languages is shown by a light, dotted line. This is the comment of Jean Stadelmann,
from whom the elements of this map are borrowed, on his scheme of distribution:
"The sketch represents a part of Roman Helvetia at the epoch of the invasion of
the Germans, with the principal rqads, cities and market-towns. To the vice known by
the inscriptions in Peutinger's itinerary and table, we add Payerne, situated at the
confluence of the great roads of Eburodunum (Yverdon) and Aventicum (Avenches).
The great number of the German names is found in the ancient pagus Valdensis,
which includes not only the present Vaud country, but also the southwestern part of
the Freiburg territory. Minnodunum (Moudon) forms the center of an extended
and very dense group of German settlements. From there the region stretches in a
wide strip across the districts of Echallens and Cossonay and finally narrows between
the Jura and Lake Leman. East of Moudon, these names descend, on one side,
toward the south and stop at the Vevey plateau, more than five miles above Lake
Leman; on the other side, they ascend to the junction of the Sarine and the Glane,
extending along the two banks of the Glane and the west side of the Sarine (in the
Ogoz country). Between these two rivers, the succession of Germanic settlements
extends about Mont Gibloux like a belt. A little colony, very far from the center,
is on the back and the southern prolongation of Mont Vuilly, between the lakes of
Neuchatel and Morat. It seems to .extend also beyond the Broye, on the northern
bank of the Lake of Neuchatel. No name in ens in the environs of the Helvetian
capital, Aventicum, none in the whole country traversed by the Great Roman road,
from Payerne to the Lake of Morat." "Eludes de toponymie romande, Pays fribour-
geois et districts vaudois a" Avenches el de Payerne, Freiburg, 1902, pp. 381 and 382;
see also, pp. 382-383, the conclusions drawn from this geographic distribution.

THE GEOGRAPHIC SPIRIT 581
Dom (Dompierre, Dombasle), and by Donne or Danne
(Dannemarie)? Even the pagans are sanctified and the
peasants who climb Mount Auxois at the time of the pilgrim
age of Ahse-Sainte-Reine say that they are going "toward
Saint -Jetorix."
The extension of each of these saints' names is not
proportional to its place in the Catholic hierarchy, but
to the part played in the history of France by the prov
ince, the city, the abbey, the chapel, of which the saint is
the patron. The propagation of the most widespread name,
Saint -Martin, allows us to follow the steps of the con
version of pagan Gaul to Christianity; he has remained the
most popular of all the saints and the chappe in which his
relics were kept caused the word "chapelle" to be given by
analogy to all reliquaries and then to the buildings themselves.
Saint-Denis happened to be the patron of the abbey where
the kings of France were buried. As France, at first a simple
district, then a province, became the whole kingdom, his name
spread to the Alps (Mont-Denis in Maurienne) ; his statue
rose in the square of Lans-le-Bourg, and perhaps Mount Cenis
was consecrated to him as Mons Sancti Dyonisii. The
extension of the name of Saint-Benigne corresponds to the
power of Burgundy and did not pass beyond the limits of that
province, because Burgundy did not overcome France. Brit
tany is the type of province with local saints, Saint-Renan for
example, unknown to the rest of France; but each province,
from the north to the south, had its protectors, sometimes
with disconcerting names, which are borne or were borne some
years ago by many children in the province, and these
children could be recognized almost by that fact alone. The for
tune of Saint-Lazare, especially after the Crusades, comes from
the frightful disease which it devolved upon him to cure, and
the change in meaning in the present word ladre (Saint-Lazare
or Saint-Ladre) , now that there are no more lepers, is not the least
curious of such changes. Finally the power of certain abbeys,
Saint-Antoine in the Dauphine, Saint-Benigne of Dijon, Saint-
Benoit, was measured by the number of localities which looked
for protection to this saint, and the name of the village which
grew up became a sort of flag marking this moral sovereignty.

582 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
Further, in a report on topography, Paul Girardin has said :
A place name is both appropriate and expressive; it gives a picture.1
Here are some applications of this idea, for part of Savoy, bearing
upon rather different facts. In the upper Maurienne and in the upper
Tarentaise, for example, the names of trees and plant species are
very different, which shows the comparative rarity of communication
by way of Mount Iseran; on the contrary, they are often alike for
the French slope and the Italian slope {brange, meaning larch, etc.).
Another fact connected with the forest: the arselle (diminutive
arsellin) is found in the same region at a constant altitude of between
6,800 and 7,200 feet (2,100 and 2,200 meters) and designates the
part of the pasture lands obtained by clearing away the preexisting
forest. This series of names marks an almost even curve and enables
us to trace approximately the ancient upper limit of the forest, which
is moreover still reached to-day at some isolated points (Val d'Isere).
Chdtelard (French Switzerland, chatelet) is the Savoyard form
of the diminutive of chateau, which is derived from Latin castrum
{castellum, castellarium) . It defended the ancient road of the valley,
and the distribution of the different chdtelards allows us to recon
struct the ancient roads. The chdtelard usually crowns a ridge
of rock in an isolated and hilly region. The word refers to the
presence of the fortress which becomes, from the human point
of view, the important fact. If the ridge was not occupied in the
interests of defense, it takes the generic name of molard (diminutive
of mole, related to moles, e.g., Mole son), a. term which refers only to
the topographical character of the ridge which rises like an island
in the middle of the glacial valley (German Inselberg). Bessans was
formerly, by reason of its fairs, the center of attraction of the upper
Maurienne. Now the name of the locality is found marking the
passes which lead to it: the. Bessanese, coming from Italy; the passes
of Bezin {Bezan is the ancient form of Bessans) designating the
system of passes coming from the Tarentaise by the valley of
the Fours.
It is evident that these few typical remarks go beyond the field of
philology and have a very great geographical interest. It is rare that
the presence of a useful plant species or of a mineral is not revealed
by a place name. We learn to read maps from the point of view of
the figuration of the land; we should learn to read them also from
the point of view of the nomenclature and its meaning, and the first
condition is to demand that the topographer note down such infor
mation on the spot, note it faithfully, and note it all.2
'See in J. W. Nagel, Geographische Namenkunde (Max. Klar's collection Die
Erdkunde), Deuticke, Leipzig and Vienna, 1903, a curious chapter on the geographical
names of topographical origin, pp. 72 ff.
2Paul Girardin, in Comple rendu de la seance du 8 Janvier igoS of the Commission
de Topographie du Club Alpin fransais, pp. 4 and 5. See H. Jaccard, "Les Noms de
veg^taux dans les noms de lieux de la Suisse frangaise," Bull, de la Murithienne (Sion)
XXXII, 1903, pp. 109-172.

THE GEOGRAPHIC SPIRIT 583
Through the following of all these human traces step by
step over the land, light has been thrown upon different
questions, which the method of economic or political history
or of the history of art1 or of the history of literature had been
or would have been powerless to solve alone. G. Schniirer has
shown that the worship of a female saint with a beard, Saint
Kummerniss, was nothing else than the transformation of
the worship of the "Saint Voult" of Lucca (a representation
of a Christ with robes which was in the cathedral of Lucca).
The venerated image was met with in Germany, Switzerland,
England, and France at points upon the roads frequented by
the traveling merchants of Lucca,2 an obvious geographical
connection. Joseph Bedier has explained the formation and evolution
of the chansons de geste by connecting them with itineraries.
The chansons de geste axe most often in contradiction to history,
but they form groups which are comprehensible and connected
as soon as one has taken the trouble to localize them geo
graphically. A certain group, that of William of Orange, is
nothing else than the practical and utilitarian guide and at
the same time the sincere epic echo of certain facts of human
geography — the traditional pilgrimages that were strung
along the Via Tolosana and of which the distant goal was
Saint- James of Compostella.3
'Emile Bertaux, L' Art dans Vltalie miridionale, de la fin de I'empire romain h la
conquele de Charles d' Anjou, Fontemoing, Paris, 1903; see especially pp. 18 and 19 and
see also, from the geographical point of view, a discussion which deals with the question
of trulli, pp. 386-399 (and above, pp. 96-97).
2See G. Schnurer, "Der Kultus des Volto Santo und der heiligen Wilgefortis in
Freiburg," Freiburger Geschichtsblatler , IX, 1902; "Die Kummernis-und Volte-
Santo-Bilder in der Schweiz," ibid., X, 1903; "Die Kiimmernisbilder, " Jahresberichl
des Neisser Kunst und Altertums-Vereins, VII, 1904.
3J. Bedier, Les Ligendes epiques, Recherches sur la formation des chansons de geste,
H. Champion, Paris, 2 vols. We make haste to say that we are not competent to
judge of material like this: but we cannot conceal the striking impression of truth which
we gain from such discoveries. Some people are skeptical or flatly contradictory.
That is not surprising. Those who first introduced the method of historical evolution
in social or judiciary studies, for example, have had to overcome the same hesitation
and opposition. It seems to us, even, that the facts which we purposely gather
together, and which result from methods of research which are different and even far
distant, reinforce each other. We are convinced that, on the day when philologists,
archaeologists, historians, etc., shall regard with a clearer consciousness our "six essential
facts" of human geography, they will perceive new connections and affiliations. Andre
Chaumeix has shown very clearly to the great public the interest of the researches of
J. Bedier ("Les Chansons de geste," Rev. des deux mondes, June 15, 1909, pp. 766-795).
We note that Joseph Bcdier has written a chapter of,exact geographical criticism on
"Chateaubriand en Amerique, verite et fiction" in Eludes critiques, Armand Colin,
Paris, 1903, pp. 125-294.

584 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
Finally Victor Berard, by traveling over the insular and
peninsular shores of the Mediterranean, with the Homeric
poems in his -hand, and by comparing the ancient descriptions
with the nautical instructions of the Marine Hydrographical
Service, has shown the exactness of these descriptions and has
interpreted the Odyssey as a sort of voyage of investigation.
This example shows remarkably well the general orientation
that we are pointing out. Following G. Hirschfeld,1 Victor
Berard wishes to create a new word to designate the science
of sites and which should be the rational explanation of human
establishments; he proposes to call this science topology.2
He compares the work that consists in discovering what the
Mediterranean world was before written history and con
sequently before the Hellenic civilization, with the work
of the geologist: "The history of the Mediterranean may be
compared with a sedimentary land where, layer by layer,
successive seas have left their traces."3 "All the islands of
the Archipelago, all the cantons of Hellas, present to us some
site of an old city anterior to the Hellenes and left behind by
the Hellenes."4 It is because the author has conceived his
entire study in accordance with this geographic vision that he
reconstructs partially, with the help of Homer, the life of the
Phoenician Mediterranean and gives to the Homeric poems
this revolutionary, and entirely unexpected meaning : " It is a
I geographical document. It is the poetic but not untrue paint-
dng of a certain Mediterranean with its habits of navigation, its
theories of naval life, its language, its nautical instructions, and
its commerce."5
Such are the conclusions to which the geographic spirit
may lead. More often it has only a negative value, eliminating
from problems of origin solutions too narrow or in fact too
theoretical, as we have said that it eliminated certain mistaken
lTopologie griechischer Ansiedlungen, Berlin, 1884.
^Victor Berard, Les Phiniciens et I'Odyssee, 2 fine volumes very well illustrated
with the aid of beautiful photographs by Madame V. Berard, Armand Colin, Paris,
1902 and 1903, Vol. I, p. 6. See F. E. Matthes, "Topology, Topography and Topom-
etry," Bull. Am. Geog. Soc, XLIV, 1912, pp. 334-339.
3Victor Berard, Les Phiniciens et I'Odyssie, I, p. 26.
ilbid., I, p. 51.
5Ibid., I, p. 52. See also II, p. 544; and the very just observations on the
marine character — not terrestrial — of the nomenclature and of the description,
II, p. 554-

THE GEOGRAPHIC SPIRIT 585
sociological systems; and this critical work is in itself very
helpful. Without formulating arguments which' beg the
question, many historians have allowed themselves to be led
to conclusions which seem strictly logical but which vanish
upon a free geographical examination. Thus Berard cites
this remark of Renan in order to refute it : " Extensive navi
gation did not begin until the ninth or tenth century before
our era, among the Greeks, among the present peoples or their
direct ancestors. For there are races which have an antipathy
to colonization and navigation."1
Likewise, expressions such as "Mussulman habitations" are
expressions which have no real meaning.2 Excellent scholars
have yielded to the temptation to simplify too much the
development of human facts without taking sufficient account
of the varied series of adaptations to different geographical
environments. O. Montelius claims that the evolution of
European habitations has passed through the series of the
following forms: (i) the round or almost round conical tent,
placed upon a basis of wood and covered with skins of animals,
fabrics, etc. ; (2) the similar round structure made entirely of
wood; (3) the round structure with a conical roof resting upon
a round part ; (4) the round form of the wall is transformed into
an oval or polygonal or tetragonal form (roof with four slopes,
if the house is square) ; (5) the small sides of the roof become
shorter; (6) the short walls rise to the rafters and the roof
has two slopes.3 In spite of the authority of Montelius, we
cannot admit such a generalization any more than we can
admit after all that we have noted in Chapter III any hierarchy.
in the types of the house which would cause the stone house
to be regarded as more advanced in civilization than the house !
of earth or the house of wood; it simply belongs to another
geographical environment. 1
The house is not only a geographical fact, but also an his
torical fact. A. Grund, in his Verdnderungen der 1 opographie
imWiener Walde und Wiener Becken (Leipzig, 1 901), even claims
'Victor Berard, Les Phiniciens et I'Odyssie, I, p. 14.
2Ch. Gamier and A. Ammann, L'Habilalion humaine.
aO. Montelius, "Zur altesten Geschichte des Wohnhauses in Europa, speciell im ¦
Norden," Archiv. fur Anthropologic XXIII, 1895, PP- 451-465- See also the article
by E. Bertaux of which we have already spoken (Ann. de giog., 1899, p. 222).

586 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
that types of houses are among the most important evidences
of the history of early colonization. But that is not a sufficient
reason for looking upon them exclusively as documents of
ethnical origin, value, and significance. August Meitzen
has made a specialty of the study of human establishments
and has particularly considered the facts of agglomeration or
dispersion of habitations. His three main volumes, based
upon a great many observations and many plans or maps, and
accompanied by an atlas, form a very important collection of
documents.1 But his theory is too systematic and it encounters
contradictions of a geographical character. Let us allow
a very well-informed economist and skilled observer, Georges
Blondel, to soften down the theses of Meitzen by a geographical
argument :
It is necessary also to take great account, much more than Meitzen
does, of economic considerations which in certain parts of northern
Germany overcome all others. Even to-day, in spite of the progress
of agricultural chemistry, we find vast stretches in which the only
inhabitable spaces are little valleys where the inhabitants must be
grouped together; the rest of the country is too sterile. Thus in the
valley of the Ems, and particularly in the very characteristic region
that is called the Hummling, grouping in villages is inevitable. On
the other hand, where the country does not permit transportation
for any distance, the inhabitants were necessarily led to place their
habitations near the cultivated lands.
In mountainous regions the geographical arrangement of the coun
try has usually decided the distribution of dwellings. Thus there
is a great contrast between the Bavarian plateau, which forms, as
it were, the northern glacis of the Great Alps, and the high valleys
which open upon it. Upon the plateau, particularly to the east of
Munich, the inhabitants live for the most part in separated dwellings.
Thus the 62 communes of the district of Wasserburg upon the Inn
comprise 1,439 centers of habitation {Ortschaften) . Each commune
is composed generally of a main center, which bears the name of the
commune and comprises a score of houses, and of a variable number
of Hofe or isolated estates of great importance. Certain communes
have as many as 50 houses. Their average extent may be estimated
at 60 or 70 acres (25 or 30 hectares).
In the valleys, on the contrary, situated somewhat more to the
south, but inhabited by populations of the same race, concentration
has taken place. There are of course chalets and peasants' houses
scattered over the mountain, but the very disposition of the places
'A. Meitzen, Siedelung und Agrarwcsen der Oslgermanen, der Kcltcn, Romer, Fiunen,
und Slawen, Hertz, Berlin, 1895 (atlas of 125 maps or drawings).

THE GEOGRAPHIC SPIRIT 587
has caused concentration on the borders of the rivers and the great
majority of inhabitants dwell in villages grouped together.1
Let us pass rapidly over other categories of human facts.
Linguistic or ethnical geography is forcing itself more and
more not only upon those who study the problem of languages
(Zimmerli, Gallois),2 or of races (Ripley,3 Andre Lefevre,4
Dominian5) , from the purely scientific point of view, but also
upon all those who make a point of method and who bring to
the discussion of questions of the day a practical and enlightened
mind (Rene Henry).6 Even the history of philosophy (Janet)
and the history of religions or of religious customs (P. D.
Chantepie de la Saussaye) are showing increasing interest in
the careful consideration of the geographic extension of facts.
Cannibalism, which is a method of hunting animal food,
appears to us in many cases as a largely religious vestige of
earlier traditions and customs. It is none the less true that
cannibalism arose, developed, persisted chiefly, and persists
still, where geographical conditions placed or place at man's
disposal a very small amount of animal food, or, where
conditions of isolation upon a territory small in extent and
'Georges Blondel, "Remarques sur le mode d'6tablissement des Celtes et des
Germains dans l'Europe occidentale," Entre Camarades, Alcan, Paris, 1901, pp. 13—32.
See also Andre Mater, "L'Origine des villages," Rev. du mois, March, 1908, pp. 272—290,
and the detailed scientific criticism of the over-simplified system of Meitzen in J. Flach,
L'Origine historique de I'habitation et des lieux habitis en France, pp. 7 ff . ; and farther on:
"I have proved the simultaneous existence of villages and of estates farmed by mitayage
in Celtic, Gallo-Roman, and Frankish Gaul, and have shown the development which
took place in the cities under the Latin dominion. ... [p. 38]. Under the influences of
disorder and internal strife, under the influences of the new regime as well, the popula
tion continued to cement its union during the Frankish epoch  [p. 40]," etc.
What really monstrous mistakes have been made because people have interpreted as
facts of race certain divergencies of customs and of life which are to be laid to the
account of geography! Apropos of Tuat and Timbuktu, E. F. Gautier, the explorer
of the Sahara, instances facts and makes note of conclusions particularly striking
(La Giographie, January 15, 1906, p. 18).
2L. Gallois, "Les Limites linguistiques du francais d'apres les travaux regents,"
Ann. de giog., IX, 1900, pp. 211-218, Pis. III-VIII.
3On the subject of races, one cannot praise too highly the geographic orientation
of the remarkable work by William Z. Ripley on the races of Europe: A Sociological
Study, London, 1900, with numerous maps and figures and a bibliographical index of
160 pages of all the works and articles that deal with the races of Europe. All through
it maps of ethnographical distribution and even hypsometrical maps accompany the
text. On p. 599, he reproduces the interesting "Carte des races de l'Europe," by J.
Deniker, on the scale of 1: 30,000,000.
4Andre Lefevre, Germains et Slaves, origines et croyances, Schleicher Brothers,
Paris, 1903 (Bibl. d'hist. et de giog. universelle, XII); ancient history and folklore
studied geographically with many maps.
5Leon Dominian, The Frontiers of Language and Nationality in Europe, Henry Holt
& Co, New York, 1917.
&La Suisse et la question des langues, Paris and Berne, 1907, with map.

588 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
poor in resources led human beings to limit the increase in
population. These facts must be studied in relation with
geographical facts — as Richard Andree attempted thirty
years ago1 — but never in abstracto.
To fix the domain of the different civilizations as one fixes
the domain of the trulli, or that of slate roofs, or of a certain
plant, seems to be to-day the condition sine qua non of every
synthesis relating to origins.
We come at last to history, properly so called. It is becom
ing, we have said, more and more geographical. Not only,
following the example of Michelet and profiting by all the
progress in studies of this kind, is every large work of history
preceded by a geographical "preface," such as the Tableau
Geographique de la France by Vidal de la Blache at the
beginning of Lavisse's Histoire de France, or Bryce's
Introduction to the English translation of Helmholt's
History of the World; not only for a long time has every
historical work of high quality begun with an excellent
geographical picture, such as the Mithridate by Theodore
Reinach or the Empire des Tzars by Anatole Leroy-
Beaulieu;2 but an attempt is being made to explain, in
the full sense of the word, history by geography. It is
no longer a question of a few typical facts, such as those
which were given as examples of an application of the method
in Chapter VIII, but it is a question of a systematic tendency,
such as is seen in Miss Semple's American History and Its
Geographic Conditions. In this book the whole history of the
colonization and expansion of the United States is based upon
the influence of the great facts of physical geography — the
navigable rivers, mountains, and deserts.3
In all that field which has to do with colonization and
emigration recent writers are showing themselves more and
'Richard Andree, "Die Verbreitung der Anthropophagie," Mitt, des Vereins fiir
Erdk. zu Leipzig, 1874, 67 pages, with a very interesting world map in two colors; the
darker color is found in Australia, in New Guinea, in the Congo, and in certain parts of
the Upper Amazon. Compare with this figuration, already out of date, that of
the actual distribution of cannibalism on Map 2, outside the text, of E. Friedrich's
Wirtschaflsgeographie; slight indications only in Australia, New Guinea and Borneo;
the single important zone is that of the Congo.
2Along with Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu, L' Empire des Tzars, Hachette, Paris, 3d
edition, 1897, see the works of Maxime Kovalewsky and especially La Russie a la
fin du XIX" Steele, Guillaumin, Paris, 1900.
3Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston and New York, 1903.

THE GEOGRAPHIC SPIRIT 589
more disposed to give up theoretic systematizing and to become
observers of the reality of human geography.1
Special historical problems, such as those which concern
cities, frontiers, etc., problems which also touch human
geography and which therefore have already been approached
in this book, have very naturally led historians toward geog
raphy.2 As E. Clouzot has well said, "The geographic idea has
made recruits even among historians."3
But geography can boast of still more decisive conquests
and can claim great contemporary historical works, master
pieces as partially" dependent upon her.
Camille Jullian began the first volume of his Histoire de la
Gaule* with, a chapter called "Structure of Gaul," in which he
skillfully draws a general geographical picture ' ' after the manner
and with the same expressions employed by Greek and Roman
geographers in characterizing the visible structure of the soil
of Gaul. ' ' The two volumes of the Histoire de la Gaule are filled
with considerations and data which arereally human geography.5
'See Rene Gonnard. _L' Emigration europienne au XIX" siecle, A. Colin, Paris, 1906;
Jacques Rambaud, "L'Emigration italienne," Rev. de Paris, June 1, 1905, pp. 601-622,
and June 15, pp. 871-894, and Rev. de giog. annuelle. III, 1909; Jules Saurin, LePeuple-
ment francais en Tunisie, Augustin Challamel, Paris, 1910. See also certain chapters
in Henri Deherain, L' Expansion des Boers au XI Xe siecle, Hachette, Paris, 1905; and
the vivid pages devoted to Macedonian emigration by Rene Pinon, L'Europe et V empire
ottoman, Perrin, Paris, 1908, pp. 224—231. This tendency shows clearly even in good
general works: Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, De la Colonisation chez les peuples modernes,
6th edition, revised and considerably enlarged, Alcan, Paris, 1908, 2 vols.; Arthur
Girault, Principes de colonisation et de ligislation coloniale, 2d edition, Larose, Paris,
1904, 2 vols. Too often colonization has not been exempt from mistakes or wrong
doing, just because positive observation has been neglected. See, for example, G.
Grandidier, "Europeans et Malgaches, leurs relations aux siecles passes," La Giogra
phie, XVIII, 1908, pp. 1-22. The study of the causes and actual circumstances of
certain facts of emigration are touched upon in Chapter VI of the present volume, in
connection with the Suf and the Mzab. Finally, note the general map in A. Woeikof 's
"Einwanderung und Auswanderung, " Petermanns Mitt., LII, 1906, Table 20.
2In like spirit there has been published (1914) a remarkable account of the rise and
status of nomadism: The Asiatic Background: The Cambridge Mediaeval History, Vol.
I (1911), Chap. XII, pp. 323-359-
3Article already quoted: "Le Probleme de la formation des villes," La Geographie,
XX, 1909, p. 166. Works of this type are those by Pirenne, by Rietschel, by Luchaire,
etc., and those by Flach, whom we have had occasion to quote more than once. See
also, besides the studies mentioned in paragraph 5 of Chapter III, Paul Girardin,
"R61e des conditions topographiques dans le developpement des villes suisses," which
appeared in Vol. II of the Comple rendu du IXe Congres international de geographie,
Geneva, 1908; and "Fribourg et son site geographique," Bull, de la Soc. neuchdteloise
de giographie, XX, 1909— 1910. See also Erwin Hauslik on cities and frontiers,
Kullur-geographie der deulschen-slawischen Sprachgrenze (Vierteljahrschrift fiir Social -
und Wirtschaftsgeschichle, VIII, Parts 1, 2, 3, 1910, with two summarizing maps, pp.
472. 473- See also studies by Gradmann and Scharfetter mentioned in note, p. 246.
4I, Les Invasions gauloises et la colonisation grecque, Hachette, Paris, 1909.
5See II, Routes et villes, pp. 222-225.

590 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
Adolf Harnack has both analyzed and synthetized, as i*_
one had done before him, the geographical conditions and
peculiarities of the diffusion of Christianity in the first
centuries. From the first chapter of the first volume, devoted
to what we might call the geography of Judaism, to the maps
which end the second volume, and especially throughout this
second volume, the spirit of the work appears happily dom
inated by the thought of the geographic distribution and
localization of religious facts upon the surrounding shores of
the Mediterranean and even in the somewhat more distant
regions of the West.1
The work that from this point of view seems to us the most
important, the most original and the newest, and at the same
time the most conscious in its method, is that of Guglielmo
Ferrero. Ferrero's history is connected with geography in
so far as political history is constantly connected with economic
history. Through this we reach the basis of actual work and
material interests upon which Roman society and the Roman
world were built, and through this work and these interests
we grasp the relations with the conditions of physical and
geographical environment. The conquest of Gaul is not
merely a political conquest. It is the annexation of mines
and forests to the life of the growing Empire; it is especially
the introduction of a crowd of small artisans who know how
to spin and weave flax, work iron, etc. The geographic
resources of the conquered country are here considered,
through the activity of the men who take advantage of them,
as determining factors of the whole historic evolution. We see
the relation which exists between this profound conception
of history and the general conception of human geography.
At the time of his journey to America, in 1908, Ferrero
gave a lecture upon "Wine in the History of Rome," which
is very representative of his manner.
At the beginning of their history and for long centuries the Romans
were water drinkers. Little wine was made in Italy and that was of
'Adolf Harnack, Die Mission und Ausbreitung des Christentums in den ersten drei
Jahrhundcrlcn, Hinrichs, Leipzig; see especially the two following maps: "Die
Verbreitung des Christentums bis zum Jahre 180," and "Die Verbreitung des Christ
entums um das Jahr 325 "; see also George Adam Smith, The Historical Geography of
the Holy Land; Ellsworth Huntington, Palestine and ils Transformation, Houghton
Mifflin Co., Boston and New York, 1911.

THE GEOGRAPHIC SPIRIT 591
poor quality. (Only the rich drank Greek wines from time to time.)
By a law of correlation, as the Roman Empire spreads in the Medi
terranean world, the vine spreads in Italy . . . and the connection
between these two phenomena — the progress of the conquest and
the progress of the vine — is not fortuitous, but organic, essential,
intimate. As the policy of expansion broadens, wealth and culture
increase in Rome, and as a natural consequence the traditional
spirit of simplicity grows weaker, luxury increases, the desire for
pleasures and even the taste for intoxicating drinks become more
widespread. . . . From that time (from 130 or 120 b.c) for a cen
tury and a half the progress of the vine continues uninterrupted, and
an attempt is made to put Italian wines on a level with Greek wines.
We may say. that the vineyards, were one of the foundations
of imperial authority in Italy. . . Ferrero makes a comparison
between the invasion of Hannibal toward the end of the third cen
tury, which lasts for seventeen years and is supported with con
siderable patience, and the revolt of Spartacus, which was in itself
less serious than the fear of the bourgeois peasants who had grown
rich made them think it. And Ferrero explains this difference by
the changes in the field and the garden. In the time of Hannibal
they consisted of cereals and pasture lands; in the time of Spartacus
they consisted of vineyards and olive groves, of long and patient
cultivation, which, when once destroyed, are reconstituted only
after several years of long and costly effort. Spartacus was a sort
of phylloxera or olive tree fly. . . Little by little the emperor
became a sort of tutelary deity of the vineyards and the olive trees,
or, in other terms, of the fortune of Italy. . The owners of
the vineyards and the olive trees, to whom their property was dearer
than the great republican traditions, placed the image of the emperor
in the midst of their household gods and venerated it as they had
before venerated the Senate.
What is there new in this way of treating history except
looking at and seeing on the surface of the earth the reality
and the variations of all we have called the essential facts
of human geography? Here we may certainly evoke that
"geographical sense" which Ratzel declares more and more
indispensable to "observers of politico-geographical phenom
ena." There is a "geographical sense" which demands a
more realistic perception of all the manifestations of human
activity, economic, historical, and political.1
To see the precise forms of terrestrial reality, to see them
in all their material extension and even in their limit-zones,

'Again, Ratzel rightly says: "Practical statesmen have always had that geograph
ical sense that also characterizes entire peoples." A statesman like Roosevelt seems
to have been very fully endowed with this sense.

592 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
to see distinctly their different representations, their different
points in space — that is what the geographic spirit leads us
to do.
In the presence of different types of living beings, or of
manners of being, or of manifestations of human activity, the
historic spirit inclines us naturally to establish a connection
of succession and coordination in time — a point of view which
is not only very legitimate but which has shown itself to be
very intelligent and to which we owe very many discoveries
in the history of to-day. The historic spirit, by inquiring
everywhere into the evolution of facts, institutions, and ideas
through the ages, has besides enriched all moral, pohtical, and
social sciences. Now, as we have seen, the geographic spirit
is coming in its turn. It proceeds from the fundamental idea
of the simultaneous juxtaposition in space of distinct types.
These types do not necessarily succeed each other, but may be
contemporaneous, each corresponding to a different geograph
ical environment. Let us hail this beneficent and fruitful
invasion of the geographical spirit and wish it in its turn, and
all that is connected with the field of the sciences of man, a
fruitful and renovating influence such as the historic spirit
has exercised for a quarter of a century.
2. THE PSYCHOLOGICAL FACTOR IN THE CONNECTION BETWEEN NATURAL
PHENOMENA AND HUMAN ACTIVITY
This habit of seeing realities where they are and as they
are has the effect upon the mind of inspiring it with a proper
distrust of simple labels and of giving it a critical sense for
the variable value of geographical realities. The high moun
tain seems to mean in principle the exclusion of all human
life. But to generalize this idea is to fall into an evident error,
for in certain latitudes, in certain climates, the high regions
are the most inhabited (Mexico, plateau of the Andes', etc.).
Even in European countries the high mountain must be
regarded from the point of view of human geography as a
natural region inhabited and exploited in its own way. The
word "river" will call up very different ideas according as we
consider the equatorial regions where, as a result of the abun
dance of rains and vegetation, the river and the banks form

THE GEOGRAPHIC SPIRIT 593
an almost indistinguishable whole; or the boreal regions,
Canadian or Siberian, where the river is frozen, so that it
ceases to exist for more than half the year; or, finally, the
rivers of western Europe, which have really a fixed bed and
stable banks, upon which men may establish themselves
permanently. He who compares cities and villages of the
same population must see the different realities which may
correspond to these same words, the way in which the former
are peopled and built, scattered or close together, placed like
Calcutta in the midst of an overpopulated zone, or surrounded
like Pekin with the empty environment of a steppe.
Such a spirit, at the same time positive and critical, should
be especially employed when we go beyond simple and strict
observation iand try to explain facts or, more exactly, to
connect them with each other.
Between the facts of the physical order there are sometimes
relations of causality ; between facts of human geography there
are usually only relations of connection. To force, so to
speak, the bond which connects phenomena with each other
is scientifically false; and there will be great need of the spirit
of criticism which will enable one to see clearly the many
cases where connection is accidental and not causal.
The chief aim of this present volume is to illustrate, in a
positive w^^Jas^^f^hnertion betweenjthe physical environ'-"'
ment_and human activity. The reader will remember with
what insistence we said in the paragraph on coal : Coal has
existed where we find it to-day since the beginning of history,
but it was as if nonexistent .for men so long as they did not
have the knowledge, power, or will to take advantage of it.
It was psychological human facts which determined all the
geographical connections of human activity with coal deposits,
and which gave birth to so many phenomena before unknown.
Let the reader take up again the several chapters herein;
let him re-read the examples analyzed in the sections on
"Social Geography" and "Historical and Political Geography"
at the end of chap. VIII ; let him turn back to the conclusion
of chap. VI, devoted to the oases of the Suf and of the Mzab.
To these typical examples of a perfect cultivation obtained
in unfavorable environments by an admirable exertion of human
37

594 HUMAN GhOGiiApn x
will, not only in spite of these hostile conditions, but almost
in proportion to the difficulties to be conquered, let us add this
new example, a curious incident of social geography comple
mentary to the notes devoted to the Balearic Islands.1
In a remote corner of the mountainous- coast formed by the
shore-fringe of the great western sierra of the island of
Majorca, the very modest cultivators of the two small villages,
Estallenchs-Bafialbufar, have accomplished and are still
accomplishing the miraculous feat of developing the irrigated
gardens of their huertas, and they keep them in a state of
splendor that makes them appear like masterpieces, even in
comparison with the other cultivated lands of this great
island garden.
Estallenchs spreads out the branching patches of its olive,
almond and lemon gardens between the sea and the fine
highland of the Galatzo. Bafialbufar concentrates upon a
still narrower space the mosaic of its admirable rising terraces.
All about is a rich suburb of olive groves rising in tiers.
Nearer the village are the very small, irregular and harmonious
basins of a sort of great mythological fountain, such as
we see upon some old Gobelin tapestries; but each basin is
filled to the brim with earth which is weeded, turned, broken,
smoothed, and as fresh as would be that of a jar which has just
been filled. It is meant for vegetables, cereals, and here at
Bafialbufar, chiefly for grapevines.
When one looks from above at all this landscape with its
different levels, one sees on the upper levels two or three of these
basins, which are well filled with water. They are true water
tight reservoirs of masonry, which the cultivators build at
common expense and from which they distribute the water
according to the strict rules of a collective organism.
In Majorca the people know how to employ irrigation
wherever it is possible. The fields and the orchards are often
furrowed with ditches; the norias (draw-wells) are numerous,
and at certain points toward the center of the island, in the
neighborhood of Puebla, are seen the ugly metal windmills,
which are more and more taking the place of the too primitive
norias. But nowhere does the need of water demand such
'See above, Chapter VIII, pp. 490-513.

THE GEOGRAPHIC SPIRIT 595
careful and such expensive work as in the little region of
Estallenchs-Banalbufar. The water which is brought to
the handsome reservoirs, as well as that which is parsimoniously
drawn off for the needs of each little piece of land, is often
conducted in channels of masonry, which are attached to the
rock walls of the valley side.
Now it is here, in the rocky Sierra of the west, where the
productive land can consist only of islands amid the sterile
outcrops and perched above the cliffs, that the inhabitants, shut
off from contact with other localities and situated close to the
sea, have bjecome. at the same time .fishermen and cultivators,
an exceptional fact in Majorca and the Balearic Islands.1
Between the two villages and the two ports of Estallenchs-
Banalbufar, there is more intimate connection than anywhere
else. The same hands find the time to use the oars, to
handle the sails, to cast the nets, and to care for the little
furrows of the terraces. The more this double life demands
in the way of exertion, the more these exertions seem care
fully applied and fruitful. Once more, as we have shown in
other environments, we find that the social demands of a
more absorbing existence, combined with the material
demands of a more minute and difficult agricultural conquest,
give to human labor an extraordinary perfection.
Still to keep within the limits of this very human Mediter
ranean, here is another striking example of the power that
men may acquire to discipline nature to their own ends:
Do you know any less hospitable regions in the Mediterranean than
the little corner of the Syrian shore where are situated the ports of
Tyre and Sidon, famous in antiquity? It will be difficult to find any.
The situations are unfavorable in themselves, and very often a heavy
swell from the open sea makes it difficult to enter or leave the port.
There is nothing here of nature's manifest indulgence for the Greeks,
oversupplied with the advantage of a shore line deeply indented and
furnished with a ragged fringe of islands. And yet the Phoenicians
were a people of navigators and colonists. Why? Because their
commercial ingenuity made up for the unkindness of nature, because
they wished at any price to be the middlemen of the commerce of
the great empires of western Asia and of Egypt with the distant
countries of Spain, Gaul, and the British Isles.2
'See above, p. 504.
2Marcel Dubois, La Crise maritime, p. 25.

596 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
Thus arises a complication which sometimes makes it very
difficult to determine exactly the bond that exists between
men and nature. This connecting bond is in fact variable,
because it rests upon man's need, upon spontaneous or delib
erate appetite, and because these psychological elements,
being by nature variable, necessarily cause the relation between
man and the earth to vary.
We now reach a new class of complications, which result
from the succession in time of different phenomena upon the
same space.1 The geographical environment remains the
same, but the men who live in this environment have needs
which constantly grow, becoming modified and more
complicated, Roskilde, the old capital of Denmark, for example, was
already situated near the water, on the island of Zeeland, at
the extremity of a long fjord which penetrates the country
from the north. That was a situation excellently suited to
defense, but too far away, too hidden, for the control of the
sea. In the fifteenth century, Copenhagen, being preferred
by King Christopher, gained the upper hand through its
incomparable situation near the great "highway" of the Sound,
'H. Hauser has very clearly brought out this succession of the facts of human
geography in an article in the Rev. du mois (February 10, 1906, pp. 201—213), the whole
of which should be read: "La Geographie humaine et I'histoire 6conomique." Vidal
de la Blache also says in his France: "It-is especially a political conception that makes
the difference between the Roman road system and the monarchical road system of the
end of the eighteenth century. Let us examine it : The roads that lead directly from
the Rhone toward the Ocean, from the Sa6ne toward the Netherlands, seem to have
been twisted from their normal course. They are diverted toward Paris, where they
knot and weave a sort of spider web about it. Like the tentacles of a group of polyps,
they stretch out in every direction. The gap between them increases with the distance
from the capital; it becomes enormous toward the west and south. To the south of the
Loire, there are only two roads connecting the valley of the Rhone with the Ocean —
one by way of Clermont, the other by way of Toulouse. Certain fundamental lines
have not entirely disappeared. One can still find, through Langres, Chaumont, and
Rheims, one of the direct roads connecting Burgundy with Flanders. But these routes
of former times have ceased to be so strongly marked in the general physiognomy of
the road system. A weight thrown into the balance has disturbed, for us, the equilib
rium of geographic causes. Natural affinities have been exaggerated. It is no longer
pure geography but a bit of history which is revealed in this concentrated organism,
doubled back on itself, jealously eager to lead back to a home and to concentrate there
the life scattered over the wide stretch of the country. A more self -centered individ
uality has succeeded to that expressed in the former road system" (pp. 380—381). The
author arrives at this conclusion, which expresses at once the advantage which history
can derive from more profound geographic studies, and the proportions such studies
ought always to observe: "Our history obeys a sort of logic, which brings out certain
geographical aptitudes but subordinates others and holds them in the background.
These latter then remain without effect, or, oftener, are expressed by passing signs"
(p. 382). See also the example given at the end of the preceding paragraph from the
historian Ferrero: The transformations of cultivation in Italy. See finally C. Vallaux,
"L'Evolution dc la vie rurale en Basse-Bretagne," Ann. de giog., 1905, pp. 36-51, etc.

THE GEOGRAPHIC SPIRIT 597
a situation that meant more danger, but more power. Ros-
kilde, with the old cathedral with its tall twin towers (which
has been more than once rebuilt and restored, but which
dates from the eleventh century), is the dead city of the
royal tombs; of the 100,000 inhabitants it once had, it has not
now 10,000. Copenhagen is a "half million" city, whose
port is constantly growing. Would the 10,000 steamships
and the 8,000 sailing vessels which annually enter the port of
the present capital of Denmark ever have been able or willing
to make their way to the peaceful extremity of the long fjord
of Roskilde, too sheltered and too peaceful for modern com
mercial activity?
Between the constant natural factor and the variable human
factor the relation is continually changing. It is even possible
that. with time the relation has become almost the opposite
of what it was in the beginning.
Upon the shores of the Mediterranean and in the countries
which form the Mediterranean world, in Asia Minor, Greece,
Italy, Provence, Spain, the houses are.hardly ever isolated and
scattered. They are grouped in small villages or small cities
and often around a rock more or less steep, crowned with an
acropolis (Figs. 67 and 68). The village itself is in some
cases perched upon the rocky eminence, which thus appears
from a distance as if having a battlement of habitations.
That is the fact to be observed first in its many and
very different manifestations. Let us suppose this study
finished and let us seek to connect this fact with human
activity. What is the reason of it? And what are the
human consequences of it? In order to answer these ques
tions we shall be obliged not only to call in historic,
economic, or social facts, but especially to appeal to
psychological facts. If the men of the Mediterranean world
grouped themselves in small cities well situated for defense,
it was because the inhabitants of the cultivated territories
were, so to speak, caught between the nomads and plunderers
of the interior — the shepherds of the mountainous and dry
back country, herdsmen of the great migrating flocks — and
the nomads and plunderers of the sea, professional pirates.
Thence comes this collective psychological tendency to choose

598 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
for a permanent place of habitation a locality with strongholds
— hills — which would serve both as good posts of observation
and as good posts for defense.
It is through this psychological element, conscious with
some, imitative, traditional, and very vague with others, that
the explanation of this type of old Mediterranean agglom
eration must be approached. In order to satisfy the some
times contradictory demands of those primary needs which
we noted in the beginning, man consciously or uncon
sciously obeys an instinct, a thought, a fear — psychological
elements which vary from individual to individual, from
group to group, and especially from epoch to epoch — so >
that he adopts a certain material solution and creates a
certain fact of human geography. The natural setting re
maining the same serves successively for contradictory
human facts according to the impulses which led the inhabi
tants. If these inhabitants are especially interested in
their defense, they elect to install themselves upon rocky
heights; but if another psychological fact is stronger than
this one, if the fear of being plundered disappears, if it gives
place to the desire of having the best food possible or of
growing rich as quickly as possible, men come down from
their mountain and establish themselves either near a
quarry or a mine, or nearer their fields or their gardens, in
the lower and richer alluvial lands, or upon the more fertile
slopes. More than that, another fact of human geography grows
up. The road, which was formerly the sea itself, the com
mon and natural highway of all the coasting trade, takes
on other forms; it becomes the railroad running along
the more level parts of the coast and never ascending
the isolated hills. The road — which does not "create"
the "social type," whatever may be said on this point1 —
expresses and at the same time strengthens this psychological
tendency, which urges men to a better comprehension and
exploitation of the means of communication. And while
the old Mediterranean city remains perched near its
acropolis or upon the ruins of its acropolis, a new city is
'See Edmond Demolin, Comment la route eric le type social, 2 vols., Paris, new
edition 190 1-3.

THE GEOGRAPHIC SPIRIT 599
growing near the railway station in direct contact with
the road.1
The human psychological element is, then, at the origin
of the geographical fact, the necessary intermediary between
man and nature, and might be called according to a general
expression dear to Henri Bergson "the direction of attention";
and it is once more a psychological factor which is found to
be the necessary intermediary between man and nature in
respect to the social, historical, and political consequences
which are the result of it. From these houses gathered in
villages or cities, from this drawing together, this crowding
of inhabitants, arise habits of city life, of civic and social life,
and doubtless also a certain "political" temperament.
To use the happy terms of P. Vidal de la Blache, man "long
a faithful disciple of the soil" has worked so well to establish
connections "between scattered features" and to substitute
"for the incoherent effects of local circumstances" a "system
atic concourse of forces," that he has succeeded in creating
novelties upon the surface of our planet. When one has
cleared away a homogeneous forest zone to cover this space
with cultivation, new relations have been established which
have conferred a new value and a new influence upon the
physical and chemical qualities of the soil. Then another
period may succeed the first one, that is an industrial period,
during which overpopulation will tend to make a certain
number of inequalities disappear and to cover the varied
differences of the ancient agricultural zone with an almost
uniform layer of human activity. The soilf is thus at the
mercy of man.
'Moreover, this fact has been reproduced several times in the course of history,
or, rather, in the course of those successive histories that constitute, in the too simple
and perhaps too regular phrase, Mediterranean history. Even Thucydides wrote:
"The newly founded cities, having a greater experience of the sea besides more riches,
established themselves on the banks or across isthmuses, for the greater convenience of
their commerce. But the old cities, cxi de itaXcxicxi, because of the piracy that
flourished in the old days, were built instead far from the sea, in the islands as well as
on the continent" (Thucydides I, 6). See, in the work of Berard, Les Phiniciens et
I'Odyssee, the succession of the capitals of Argos, and the vicissitudes of some of the
cities, such as Syracuse. Jacques Flach has very well emphasized, in his turn, the
vicissitudes of the cities of another region, in his memoir already quoted, L'Origine
historique de Vhabitation et des lieux habitis (he relates, as a type, the history of
Chartres, pp. 50 ff.). He speaks of avulsion (uprooting) as opposed to alluvion (deposi
tion), and of the migration of cities and villages, under the impetus of a tragic
occurrence (p. 68). See finally what is said above of the "descent" of Bergamo
toward the plain, toward the market place, and toward the railroad station, p. 173.

600 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
The r61e played by civilization in explaining the contrasts
in the density of population is primordial. Between Java and
Borneo, between India and Indo-China, what differences!
At the time of the Khmer civilization Cambodia must have
been much more populated than it is to-day.
The city is preeminently the "projection" of a collective
mass of human wills. An ancient abbey becomes a
manufacturing city.1
Commercial peoples, Phoenicians, Greeks, Venetians, Han-
seatics, are essentially urban peoples {Stadtevolker).2 A city
has in it an essential element, a market. An ancient market
has often contained a city in embryo; and often also the
arrangement of a bazaar or of a market, the distribution of
a group of bazaars, have shaped the city, past, present, or
future. But it is especially the political capitals which
show that the city is always more or less an historic product
of human art. It is thus (rather than by the word "artificial,"
which may cause confusion) that we prefer to translate the
idea of Ratzel: "Eine Weltstadt ist das kunstliche Produkt
der Geschichte."
States are also works of human art which are dependent
upon the soil and which in a certain measure stamp their
image upon it. As has been wisely and wittily said, "The
difference between facts of conquest and facts of destruction
is often only a good police and a government interested in
safeguarding riches of the future."3 These collective wills
set their mark upon the soil through cities and roads, cultiva
tion and factories, etc.; they also set their mark upon it in
the way of frontiers.
Here might be introduced a critical study of facts of limits :
natural limits or conventional limits, which, by the very fact
that they have been decreed as administrative or political
frontiers, become points or strips of concentration for human
beings and cities (strongholds, intrenched camps, or simple
twin custom houses, which are brought near together by being
placed opposite each other), or, on the contrary, they elsewhere
i See the example of Saint-Gall, in Switzerland, in C. Vallaux, Giographie sociale,
Le Sol et Vital, p. 334.
2See Ratzel, Anthropogeographie, II, p. 503.
3See, on the capitals and political cities, Chapter IX of C. Vallaux, op. cil.

THE GEOGRAPHIC SPIRIT 601
determine zones which are avoided, marked often by minima
of population.1
How many foolish statements have been made with regard
to frontiers called "natural" or "artificial"! And if we do
not take account of the absurdities how many truths that are
only approximate! >
In order to make clear what we wish to point out, let us
choose once more a specific example, illustrated in the map, ;
Fig. 222.
In the central plateau of France are great provinces
covered by and formed of volcanic rocks ; the most important
are Auvergne (with its dismantled massifs of the Cantal and
of Mont Dore, with its younger and better preserved chain
of the Puys), and on the other hand, Velay. These eruptive
regions are surrounded by very different zones (See Fig. i,
p. 20) and clearly separated from each other. Now it is
rather curious to discover that in the course of historical
ages, a certain number of administrative, political, and
religious frontiers have brought together under one jurisdic
tion these natural provinces of a certain similarity. The
sketch, Fig. 222, shows two of these divisions taken as types
twelve centuries apart: one (1) represents the part given to
Childebert II in 587 by the treaty. of Andelot, and this fron
tier line is all the more interesting because it followed the
limits of ancient civitates and of ancient ecclesiastical divisions ;
the other (2) shows us that in 1789 the ecclesiastical divisions
still attached on the north to the archbishopric of Bourges
these different volcanic regions ; Velay was joined to Auvergne,
but it was separated from Forez, and Auvergne was separated
from Limagne.
All this is as precise as it is ingenious. But what becomes
of this subtle scaffolding, if we now consider the volcanoes of
Limagne so well studied by Ph. Glangeaud? What should
'On the subject of the relations between natural boundaries and political bound
aries (correspondence or contradictions) , see F. Ratzel, ' ' Uber allgemeine Eigenschaf ten
der geographischen Grenzen und iiber die politische Grenze," Berichte der Konig.
Sachs. Gesellschaft der Wissenschaflen, February 6, 1892, pp. 53—104. The author speaks
of line-boundaries and of zone-boundaries; see the representation of the zone- boundary
between Wadai and Darfur, p. 90. First of all, naturally, the Politische Geographie
by Ratzel should be consulted, as well as the chapter by C. Vallaux to which we shall
soon refer, and Chapter VII, "Geographical Boundaries," in the work by E. C. Semple
already quoted.

602

HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

have been explained is why a certain community or similarity
of facts of human geography had led Auvergne and Velay to
join together in the field of human geography.
If we should analyze all the facts claimed as typical of

Fig. 222. Administrative Limits which have Reunited the Eruptive Regions
of Central France and Connected Velay with Auvergne, Omitting
Neighboring Regions Important but quite Different, such as
the Plain of Limagne and the Mountains of Forez
i. Northern limit of the portion assigned to Childebert II in 587 by the pact of
Andelot. 2. Southern limit of the Archbishopric of Bourges, in 1789.
natural frontiers, we should find most often pleasing analogies
such as this one, but no real explanatory reasons.
In connection with the book by Augustin Bernard, Les
confins Alg&ro-Marocains, a book in which the relativity of

THE GEOGRAPHIC SPIRIT 603
an Algerian-Moroccan frontier is shown, Professor Brunhes
wrote :
The Rhine and the Rhone, which for centuries have often been,
in certain parts of their courses, such important limits of empires!
are no longer so to-day; on the other hand, our frontiers often pass
across mountains, zigzagging to follow the capricious line of water
sheds, while in other times and in other parts of the earth mountain
ous massifs form true ethnic or political wholes having, in conformity
with real geography, a certain autonomy. Finally, to what a relative
extent is the shore of the sea a frontier? The activity of dwellers
on the shore always spreads over the near-by zones of the sea, and is
it not the sea, the sea alone, which caused the political grouping of
the Phoenician world, of the Greek world, and even, although to a
less degree, of the Roman world? There is no need, I think, to recall
here the part played by the sea in certain great contemporary political
empires of the Far West and of the Far East.
Are there then frontiers in nature besides the limits which are
rigorously imposed upon the expansion of human life as a whole?
Are_there true frontiers between human groups? We find in the
facts of physical geography only the natural demarcations that we
seek there. I mean that a certain point becomes a true limit only
according to the mode of occupation of the neighboring regions and
according to the idea that has been formed at different periods and
in different historic societies of the demands of a frontier.1
Certainly all this can and must be connected with human
geography. But although the connection is very real, by what
slender and subtle psychological threads is all that which we
have called "social geography" and "historical geography"
connected with the essential data of human geography ! That
is why we cannot too often repeat the constant appeals for
restraint and critical prudence which we have already made.
The power and means which man has at his disposal are limited
and he meets in nature bounds which he cannot cross. Human
activity can within certain limits vary its play and its move
ment ; but it cannot do away with its environment ; it can often
modify it, but it can never suppress it, and will always be
conditioned by it.
How influencing geographical conditions express themselves
in the world of human facts is what human geography must
investigate and explain in all its chapters.
The densest population in all Europe is that of Belgium,
'La Giographie, XXIII, 1911, p. 363.

604 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
which supports over 7,500,000 inhabitants upon 11,373 square
miles (29,455 square kilometers), or 655 inhabitants per square
mile (253 per square kilometer). Vital necessities then imply
the opening of new outlets for the restless and overflowing
activity of these crowded masses of human beings ; and desires
which have turned them toward expansion deserve to be
considered as the result of a just feeling for the influence of
these general conditions.
On a territory of less than 30,000 square kilometers (11,373 square
miles), writes Leon Hennebicq, professor at the new University
of Brussels, a cluster of dense hamlets, dwells a tenacious people.
Through the vicissitudes of centuries, thanks to its rare vitality, it
has managed to survive. From a little more than 3,000,000 souls
eighty years ago, it has increased to nearly 8,000,000. It is one of
the most populous corners, one of the busiest hives of the globe.
This impulse which finds expression in an extraordinary industrial
energy is due to the strength of the populations of the south, the
Walloons. To them belongs the glory of this national renewal.
The whole Belgian state rests upon the robust shoulders of their
workmen. Their skill and their intelligence first supphed their
immediate neighbors. Then the circle of their customers grew larger
and, since customs barriers closed to them the great markets of Europe,
they had to turn to exportation beyond the sea or else perish. At
the present moment, a watchful king having given them a fine col
ony, they are face to face with that imperialism of trade which
dominates the life of every people that wishes to become a world
power. But the Walloon provinces do not touch upon the sea, and in the
estuaries dwell the Flemish. These latter have unfortunately never
wished to recognize any maritime profits except those of distribution.
At Bruges in the fifteenth century, at Antwerp in the sixteenth, they
did not dare, any more than to-day, to abandon the prudently
profitable role of the middleman for the bolder career of the great
ship-owner, and immediate profits have always tempted their
realistic minds more deeply than has the eventual and complex
building up of businesses with profits in the far future.
Thus economic Belgium offers the unexpected sight of a movement
toward the creation of a national merchant marine and of a policy
of foreign markets supported by the entire country and demanded
particularly by Walloon industry eager for exportation but too often
coming to grief against interests of foreign shipping defended at
Antwerp by the powerful middlemen who live by its means. Cer
tainly this antinomy which retards the expansion of Walloon pro
duction toward the sea is diminishing from day to day. Even at
Antwerp active organizations, such as the Ligue maritime, have

THE GEOGRAPHIC SPIRIT 605
caused the national fleet to make such perceptible progress that in
fifteen years it grew from 75,000 tons to 150,000 tons; it doubled.
But the interesting fact, the dominant characteristic, remains in
the efforts which the industrial hinterland makes to control its
transportation beyond the seas and thus £0 participate in the move
ment of economic expansion through its more active instrument,
navigation.1 Men are subject to nature in a real but indirect manner.
Some have exaggerated this dependence, others have denied
it. We have here a connection which, although in a sense
rigorous, has not at all the insistent fatality of the phenomena
of physical geography. Moreover, natural conditions do
not have either a fatal or an immediate reaction upon human
facts; a certain length of time is necessary. Elimination is
accomplished only in the course of time and we never know
how many years or centuries will be required for this elimina
tion. The tyrannic will of a master or the obstinate clinging
to routine by an ignorant people may introduce and maintain
for a certain time a poorly adapted mode of life, an abnormal
organization. From the point of view of their influence upon man, geo
graphical facts must be grouped in a way, entirely different
from the point of view of pure physical geography. Geographi
cal criticism is not content with observing facts in themselves.
It must distinguish the natural and general psychological
effect that these facts produce upon men, upon men obey
ing certain instinctive or traditional suggestions, seeking the
satisfaction of certain needs, whether primary and necessary
or factitious. It must never forget that facts of human
geography find neither their complete explanation nor their
only principle of coordination in geographical causes alone:
the psychologicaljnfluence of geographical causes_upon..the human
being, in proportion to his own appetites, needs, or whims — this
is the subtle and complex factor that must prevail in every
study of human geography: the factor that permits the
distribution and coordination of the facts both in relation to
the natural causes and in relation to man.
Many geographers, after speaking, not without reason, of
the action and reaction of natural forces and human forces,
'"L'Expansion maritime," Rev. icon, internal., March 15-20, 191 1, pp. 443-444.

606 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
then ask themselves too rigorously and abstractly: How
far do natural forces exert an influence upon human activity
and to what extent does man react to these forces? Some
add: Would it not be well to begin by separating the effects
of the first influence from the effects of the second? And
would it not be well then to adopt, as principles of a general
scientific division, these two antithetical terms: "action of
nature upon man" and "reaction or action of man upon
nature"? Thence have arisen the expressions "passive or
static human geography" and "active or dynamic human
geography." Even in the most elementary facts we distinguish, on the
contrary, an action and a reaction indissolubly intermingled.
The man who crouches at night in a natural cave profits by
a natural circumstance and the part he plays toward physical
nature is reduced to a minimum. However, it is not the cave
alone that is a human geographical fact, but the cave as a
human refuge. Even when man does not create or modify
at all the fact by which he profits, the mere fact that he
profits by it gives rise to a complex phenomenon in which man,
it is true, is influenced by the suggestion of nature, but in
which he shares, were it only by a sort of very obscure instinct.
The water course which man uses when he travels in a canoe
or floats his timber acquires a place in human geography only
because the river has become a road, so to speak, through
man's will. Thus the most rudimentary manifestations of
our terrestrial activity show the close solidarity of the human
geography wrongly called passive and the human geography
called, likewise wrongly, active or dynamic.
Man is never completely passive, or rather, he is entirely
passive only when the agents of the physical world take his
life. Earthquakes at Lisbon, San Francisco, Messina, or in
Provence, cyclones in Bengal, Madagascar, or Tahiti, erup
tions in Guatemala or Martinique, deadly fires or explosions
of gases in the deep galleries of Courrieres, all bear witness
to that omnipotence of natural forces in relation to human
life. First of all, it is not death but life, the conditions and
manifestations of life, that are the subject of human geography.
Now, so long as man lives, he acts and reacts; he drinks, he

THE GEOGRAPHIC SPIRIT 607
eats, he sleeps at some point on the globe, all acts in which
it is easy to recognize his participation in geographical facts.
But even when individuals in large numbers are buried under
the ashes of Vesuvius or stifled in the open air by the asphyxiat
ing gases of Mont Pelee, or killed in the depths of the earth
by fire-damp, even when these victims considered by them
selves seem to be absolutely subjected to natural forces, the
human species as a group reacts against these brutal forces
and other men come to clear, restore, and retimber the galleries
of the mine that have fallen in or been burned out ; other men
rebuild houses, plow the soil, and replant vines upon the
ashes that are hardly cold. A new Messina rises out of the
ruins of the old.
The unrelenting power of natural agents reigns in physical
geography alone. Human geography is the field of compro
mise; nothing is absolute or definitive for the human species
on the earth except those general laws and those fundamental
conditions which determine the limits beyond which all life
is excluded; and if men are not able to push back indefinitely
all these limits, in altitude, latitude, depth, etc., they are at
least able somewhat to force or modify some few of them.
On the other hand, within the limited domain where he can
live, man is never creative. If he digs tunnels or pierces
isthmuses, he "does not suppress natural facts — he modifies
them, shapes them, interprets them. These natural facts
which have been modified, mountainous masses, emerged
surfaces, etc., still persist to such an extent as forces that a
continuous effort is necessary on the part of man in order that
the modification shall continue to exist. Let the ancient
canal from the Nile to the Red Sea cease to be kept up, the
human geographical fact becomes obliterated and disappears;
let the tunnels of our great railroads be no longer watched and
cared for, and a few years will suffice to destroy them; let the
work of renewing the air and pumping out the water in a
great coal mine be stopped, and the mine becomes a tomb;
let the irrigating canals of Ghadames, Bactria, or Palmyra
be no longer carefully and constantly protected, then the oasis
decreases, dies out, vanishes, and where Palmyra once stood
not a living being remains.

608 HUMAN utLULrKArnx
Wherever life is possible, wherever it develops — throughout
the inhabited world — the slightest permanent facts of human
geography imply, not only a double causality both physical
and human, but an indefinitely renewed repetition of human
effort at a point of physical space, an incessant recommencing
of that collaboration of variable terms between nature and
man. Generations following each other must solve anew
and take up for themselves the many and difficult problems of
the adaptation of human life and activity to geographical
conditions. Once again, we are therefore forced to recognize that it is
an ever variable psychological bond that fixes, temporarily
and always revocably, the relations whether between the
phenomena of physical geography and the facts of material
human geography, or between those facts and the facts of
social, political, military, and administrative geography.
Material human geography, both issuing from and being
followed by psychological facts, constitutes then a special
geographical field which is subjected to a much less rigor
ous and less deductive determinism than is the field of phys
ical geography. "It is diverse, manifold, complex, changing
social material, it is human material, it is society and
humanity, it is life that we are touching; it is a wave, some
thing fleeting that we pretend to grasp and fix."1
3. HUMAN ADAPTATION TO GEOGRAPHICAL CONDITIONS
Because man lives upon the earth, he depends upon the
earth. No one recognizes more than we the part played by
human activity. Certainly all is far from being explained by
natural facts alone. And yet soil, climate, hydrograph}*, etc.,
are reflected in general influences in the often much confused
realm of human facts.
The essential thing for men is then to know exactly the
real nature of the natural conditions which surround their
lives and to know always with what precise geographical facts
they will have to cope. The genius of humanity adapts itself
with rare versatility to the most dissimilar facts. That which
'Charles Benoist thus expresses himself in the conclusion of his fine studies on
"Le Travail dans la grande industrie," Rev. des deux mondes, November 15, 1905,
p. 484-

THE GEOGRAPHIC SPIRIT 609
overwhelms and paralyzes it is events that are abnormal or at
least unexpected.
A temperature of five degrees below zero C ( + 23°F) is
more terrible for the Neapolitans who live in houses that cannot
be heated, than twenty degrees below zero C (-40 F) for the in
habitants of Switzerland who are accustomed to the cold
of winter and ready to protect themselves, from it. New York
is in the same latitude as Naples, but the average temperature
in winter is about 300 F (270 C). Notwithstanding the low
temperature, however, the people of New York, who are in
general well fed and warmly clothed, suffer little or not at
all, while the cold finds many victims among the inhabitants
of southern Italy, badly fed, insufficiently clothed, and poorly
lodged. There are countries like those of western Europe where the
freezing of the canals and water courses completely stops
traffic during the winter ; it is the terrible period of the suspen
sion of work. The boats and barges remain tied up in the small
river ports — the holds empty and the little decks deserted.
On the other hand, there are other countries where the freezing
of the streams is such a normal and regular geographical fact
that it is awaited not only fearlessly but eagerly. It is with
the freezing of the rivers of northern Russia, of the Ural and
of Siberia that human activity begins again. Circulation and
transportation begin once more over those great white roads,
now smooth and solid, which run, broad and open, through
interminable forests of firs, pines, and birches.
It is well known how the hardy and laborious peoples of the
Alps eagerly await the snow in order to bring down their hay
or wood. On the other hand, when there is a sudden and
abnormal snowfall in a region unaccustomed to it, when Paris
is suddenly buried in snow as it was for the last three days of
December, 1908, all traffic is interrupted.
One should not be astonished at this confusion caused in the
regular and ordinary life by phenomena which are in these
places unusual. One must have seen the composure — due
moreover to a certain resigned indifference — the stubborn and
almost impassible composure, with which the inhabitants of
the slopes of Mount Etna or Vesuvius sometimes watch the

610 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
gradual advance of the flow of burning lava which will perhaps
in a few hours bury their houses and their fields, one must
have seen these men and women wait until the last moment
and then withdraw step by step before the smoking stream and
the consuming cloud, in order never again to charge with
timidity, cowardice, or mere clumsiness other peoples or other
men even among those who pass for the most fatalistic.
What consternation a flood produces among ourselves!
Against fire we have at least the resource of water. But
against rising and overflowing water, against this abnormal
rising tide carrying along trees and wreckage which become
instruments of destruction for houses and bridges, against
this scourge of inundation, what can human energy do? When
the phenomenon comes unexpectedly, as irregular as it is fatal,
nothing can be done. When it is a river ordinarily peaceable
and regular, like the Seine, which suddenly rises 26 feet
(8 meters), as happened at Paris in January, 1910,1 human
energy is caught off its guard. But when the phenomenon is
chronic and when men have studied it and have become
acquainted with it, they can foresee it and in a certain measure
fortify themselves against it. The wonderful dike- work
of the upper Rhone, an honor to nineteenth-century Switzer
land, is one of the most eloquent witnesses to the power of
humanity over natural forces. Men have not done away with
the floods of the Rhone, but they have forstalled and to a
certain extent mastered them.
In a different geographical environment, the flood, being
not an exceptional and disconcerting occurrence, but a normal,
annual, periodic phenomenon, is counted on to such an extent
by the dwellers along the rivers that the absence or insuffici-
ciency of the rising and overflowing water is the scourge and
is considered by all as a catastrophe.
The life of Egypt from the earliest times has been arranged
in its smallest details of cultivation and human establishment
not merely in spite of, but in expectation of, the rise of the Nile.
The flood is still a real flood with its violence and its dangers
but it is so closely associated with all the creative and agri
cultural economy of Egypt that the inhabitants not only take
'Maximum rise of the Seine, Jan., 1910, 27 ft. 7 in. (8 m. 42) at the Tournelle bridge.

THE GEOGRAPHIC SPIRIT 611
account of it but they discount it, and their fear is lest the
Nile remain in its bed and the periodic flood of muddy water
should not rise high enough to submerge their fields.
Thus everything on the surface of the globe is for men a
matter of habit, of sound understanding of physical facts,
and of skillful adaptation to these facts. Moreover, the
adaptation must take place promptly and at the right time —
preceded, prepared for, and brought about by exact scientific
investigations. These investigations should also tend to moderate our
ambitions, to turn us away sometimes from undertakings that
would mean such bold opposition to the forces of nature that
man would run the risk of seeing sooner or later his patient
work annihilated at a single stroke. The more imposing and
glorious man's conquest, the more cruel the revenge of the
thwarted physical facts. A natural effect, such as the sinking
of drained marshes because of the very draining, is sufficient
to destroy the whole enterprise. In the neighborhood of
Aquileia, marshy lagoons had been reclaimed; 4,000 acres of
land were under cultivation; but this drained land sank and
was again overflowed by the sea.1
When men have succeeded in raising dikes that shut in the
Po or the Hwang-Ho, when they have pushed back the North
Sea and won the polders of the Netherlands, the more fruitful
their efforts, the greater the risk they run. An invasion of
water from the sea or an exceptional flood in these rivers is
destructive in direct proportion to the natural forces that
have been victoriously overcome.2 In January, 1910, at the
time of the flood that has just been mentioned, the Seine,
shut into a too narrow bed at Paris between vertical walls,
took a disastrous revenge.
Before modifying the course of an overflowing river there is need
of ripe reflection and a calculation of all the consequences that may
be produced downstream as well as upstream. If its course is nar
rowed at one point, not only must it be deepened at that point but
also much farther downstream; in addition the banks must be raised
not merely at the point of narrowing but much farther upstream.
'See E. Suess, La Face de la terre, English translation by Sollas, Vol. II, pp. 420, 42 1 .
2On the subject of Hwang-ho, which is always Nih-ho — that is to say, the River
Incorrigible — see pp. 211 ff„ of Elisee and Onetime Reclus, L'Empire du milieu (with
a bibliography by H. Froidevaux), Hachette, Paris, 1902.

612 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
If its course is shortened by the substitution of a more direct path
for the windings, the speed of the water is increased so that often
its banks cannot resist the current, to say nothing of the fact that
deposits appear downstream in the form of shallows or even islands
if there is a slight diminution of the speed of the current as a result
of a broadening of the river, of a bend, or of a less-inclined bed:1
In building great reservoir dams upon torrential water
courses in Spain and Algeria for purposes of irrigation, critical
situations were caused in the irrigated regions after those
sudden "water bolts" which carried away very fine works of
masonry. It is better to content one's self with a half victory over
natural agents rather than to expose one's self to defeats which
are catastrophes; this should be one of the wise rules of geo
graphical adaptation.2
It is likewise in a sense a forcing of natural conditions to
extend too far the cultivation of any plant and cause an
excess of production. The number of mouths and stomachs in
the world that are fitted to receive coffee or wine is limited;
neither the total number nor the capacity of individuals can
be suddenly modified. Furthermore, in the regulation of the
demands of consumption a most important part is played by
the psychological factor — taste, fashion, habit, tradition —
which is the true master, a master whose power takes differ
ent forms but which in its changing, manifold, and scattered
manifestations exercises on the whole an inexorable tyranny.
Certainly the total current consumption changes with
almost inconceivable rapidity. To-day in remote districts
of our countries the peasant eats or drinks, almost every day,
coffee, tea, chocolate, beet sugar, and potatoes, all products
that but two centuries ago were either luxuries or entirely
unknown. He is so accustomed to these foods and drinks
that it is difficult for him to realize their very recent novelty.
This proves aptitude for a new education, the great power
'See, for example, in Jean Brunhes, L' Irrigation, p. 52, "Tableau r&apitulatif
des barrages-reservoirs de l'Alge>ie "(barrages acluels et barrages ditruits). Also, R. M.
Brown, "The Movement of Load in Streams of Variable Flow," Bull. Amer. Geog.
Soc, XXXIX, 1907, pp. 147-158; "The effect of Levees on the Height of the River
Bed," ibid., XLVI, 1914, pp. 596-601.
2A. Woeikof has shown, by a series of ingenious examples, taken especially from
Russian countries, to what an extent our civilization is "unharmonious" ; for our works
are carried on contrary to a wise economy of the earth, and often pave the way for, or
increase the disastrous power of, natural agents; see "De l'lnfluence de 1'homme sur la
terre," Ann. de Geog., March 15, 1901; read especially pp. 100-102.

THE GEOGRAPHIC SPIRIT 613
that a movement of opinion may exercise upon usages that
are the most elementary and that would seem the most inerad
icable, the possible docility of the consumer. It does not
diminish in any respect the immediate import of the consid
eration that must be fundamental at a given moment of
economic evolution — that the capacities of consumption have
their maxima and its demands have limits which any wise and
reasonable exploitation of the earth must not go beyond.
If it does go beyond them, the result is poverty. An over
abundant wine harvest in the south of France or an over
abundant coffee harvest in the Brazilian state of Sao Paulo
may become a worse calamity than any scarcity. Now, be
cause of the possible world consumption in these times of
what we have often called "the civilization of circulation," the
great temptation of every region of the earth is^monoculture.
There is a seemingly great demand for a certain product from
all points of the globe. This is concentrated upon each small
producing zone and the inhabitants are seized with the idea
that they alone can and must meet this exceptional demand.
Since this psychological fact causing increased production
occurs everywhere, an over-satisfaction of the demand results
and — partially, geographically — an overproduction of prod
ucts that can no longer be consumed.
How can adaptation to human geographical conditions be
brought about?
Everywhere there appears a tendency to regulate production
(a tendency that we have carefully noted in those small worlds
of unstable equilibrium, the irrigated oases). This becomes
a political duty of governments at a time of crisis. In the
presence of the overproduction of coffee, which, after having
made the fortune of the state of Sao Paulo, threatened its
business and its credit with a total financial collapse, the
Brazilian government went into the business of monopolization
of its chief product in order to sell the excess product gradually
in foreign markets. Moreover it strictly forbade any new
plantations within its territory. This operation was called
the "valorization of coffee."1 Other states, impelled by like
'Max Turmann explained clearly this operation of the "valorization" of Brazilian
coffee, in an article in the Rev. hebdomadaire (August 28, 1909, pp. 450-470), which he
has reprinted in his book Problemes iconomiques et sociaux, Lecoffre, Paris, 1910.

614 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
difficulties, seek a remedy in other ways; e.g., the agreement
between the Greeks and the Paris union for the buying of the
entire harvest of raisins, whatever it may be.1
Finally, everywhere there are developing unions and
cartells of producers. We cannot study here their different
types of organization nor their good or bad effects, but they
lead to a limiting regulation of production and often to a
distribution of markets among the members.
In a preceding paragraph we used the expression "unstable
equilibrium," and we can speak of a more and more unstable
equilibrium in the present economic world. As a result of
the progress in means of transportation a famine is no longer
to be feared in a well-equipped country (that is, equipped in
proportion to its population). But other dangers threaten
us, such as not only a local but a general overproduction of
certain products, causing underselling, and that means lack of
employment and the paralysis of labor, a situation which is
only another form of famine. Here it is in reality a question
of overflows of human products; they must be foreseen and
provided against in advance; the flood of production must
never be made to pass between banks of consumption that
are too low. Here again we feel that vast solidarity of the
life of the world, and the economists, those "engineers" of
human facts, must more and more discover and teach the
laws — if there are any — of geographic adaptation.
Is it not, at least in part, an illusion to believe that by
increasing his means of control and conquest of the earth man
throws off its tyranny and increases his own independence?
Is it not, on the contrary, a sort of contract with more exact
and one might almost say more Draconian terms that is signed
by civilized men as they make their relations with the earth
closer and more productive ? 2
'A. Andread^s, "Une Nouvelle Experience 6conomique: la crise de surproduction
des raisins de Corinthe et la Soci£t6 privilegiee," Rev. icon, internal., April 15-20,
1909, pp. 130-152. This is the plan proposed by the Greek financier Jean Pesmaz-
aglou, which was adopted by the Chamber in 1905 under the energetic influence of
minister Rhallys. The name of the society is Societe priviiegi6e pour la production et
du commerce du raisin de Corinthe or H6niaia. Let us mention also the type of inter
national solution which the International Sugar Convention of Brussels represents;
see p. 283.
2These ideas are in accordance with the ideas of Alfred Hettner in the observations
on general human geography which he has given at the beginning of his Grundzitge der
Landerkunde, I Bd., Europa, Leipzig, 1907. In an interesting memoir, "Le Tellurisme

THE GEOGRAPHIC SPIRIT 615
Cultivation with the plow, or Ackerbau, seems to free us
or at least to detach us somewhat from the soil to which we are
closely bound with the spade or hoe, which latter method of
cultivation Eduard Hahn calls Hackbau and which we might
call cultivation by hand. But the careful cultivation in
which and for which men, with bent bodies, wield the main
tool with their hands is not merely the labor of Fang women
nor of the natives of the Pacific islands who cultivate taro, nor
even of the Chinese or Javanese who transplant their rice ; it is
also the work of the practiced market-gardeners of the suburbs
of Paris or Brussels, it is the perfected work of all horti
culturists. Where cultivation reaches the highest degree of
intensity, in those chosen spots near the centers of a highly
developed civilization, it seems that human muscles must get
ever closer to the fertile mold and that in very truth the
earth must be touched, handled, and, as it were, kneaded by
the hands of men.
In the Congo forest, where there is no domestic animal, all
transportation is on the backs of men, just as in the high
mountains of Austria, Italy, Switzerland, or France men and
women carry on their backs enormous loads of hay to the
fenili or to the mayens. Now what becomes of transportation
in the intense economic life of our largest industrial cities?
If there are tribes of "porters" in the Congo, are there not
innumerable groups of "porters" in the warehouses of London
or Hamburg and in the railroad stations of Paris or New York ?
The Congo carriers are obliged to make long trips from one
post to another through the forest, while the "dockers," the
dibardeurs, or the Trager of our civilized cities must make
over and over again a shorter trip — always nearly the same —
from the landing-dock to the trucks or from the loading-dock
to the coal bunkers; but they cover more miles daily than the
social," Rev. internal, de sociol., 1900, Emile Worms, emphasizing and commenting on
the importance given by Ratzel to the soil as the foundation of the state, says: "With
out doubt the number of human beings is increasing, but the soil which they inhabit
and which is the enforced theater of their activity will remain the same. This soil,
then, is obliged to yield harvests for men and to bear fruits in an ever-increasing
quantity, a fact which tends to make it ever more sought after and to increase its value.
This results in relations constantly closer between the people and the soil, and the
significance of the soil in and for the state becomes more and more obvious." The
chief memoir by Ratzel here discussed is undoubtedly, Der Staat und sein Boden
geographisch betrachtet (Abhandlungen der philologisch. hist. Classe der Konigl. Sach-
sischen Ges. der Wissenschaften, XVII, 1896, No. 4, 127 pages and 5 drawings).

616 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
African blacks. They must bend their necks and backs
beneath the crushing weight of sacks of grain, bales of cotton,
beams of iron, huge trunks, etc., instead of keeping the erect-
ness of living caryatids (Fig. 223); far from having loads
limited to 50 or 75 pounds (25 or 30 kilograms) like those
of the negroes, they must often handle and carry more than
225 pounds (100 kilograms).1
Does not all Verkehrskultur, all "civilization of circulation,"
such as ours increase the number of persons engaged in trans
portation as well as the total weight of the merchandise
carried by the strength of our fellow men? May we not say
that nearly all the materials, raw or manufactured, which feed
the system of world trade must, at least for a few moments, be
lifted by human muscles? All progress that adds to the
amount and rapidity of economic exchange literally bears
down with a heavier and heavier weight upon the shoulders
of ever larger groups of our fellow men.
Is it not then an illusion to believe that where the masses
of most advanced humanity are found and where the geo
graphic evidences of the means or methods of the most
complicated economic activity, factories, railroads, telegraph
and telephone lines, etc., are most numerous, the most
elementary and brutish forms of human labor are suppressed
or at least ameliorated?
Is it not another illusion to believe that the accumulation
of human beings, and therefore of human forces, upon the
same points of the earth must bear witness to a greater mastery
over the earth? Is not a city like Paris more strongly bound
to its site than ancient Paris — the old city of Lutetia — or
than those ephemeral villages of dried mud in the valley of
the Nile which we have described above? Has Paris not
'In France the minister of labor obtained the passage of a bill, dated December
28, 1909, fixing the limit of the loads which may be carried, dragged, or pushed, either
by children under eighteen years of age or by women of every age employed in the
following establishments: manufactories, mills, foundries, lumber or coal yards,
workshops, laboratories, etc.:
Carrying of loads. — Boys or men; under fourteen years, 22 pounds (10 kilos);
fourteen or fifteen years, 33 pounds (15 kilos); sjxteen or seventeen years, 44 pounds
(20 kilos); Girls or women: under fourteen years, 11 pounds (5 kilos); fourteen or
fifteen years, 17 pounds (8 kilos); sixteen or seventeen years, 22 pounds (10 kilos);
eighteen years and over, 55 pounds (25 kilos), etc.
This excellent innovation was made because of great abuses. It goes without saying
that no minister of labor in a European or an American stale would dare to undertake
to regulate the maximum loads which may be carried by the adult man.

THE GEOGRAPHIC SPIRIT

617

been made so dependent by necessities of food and of eco
nomic life that the slightest interruption of normal traffic
would become a catastrophe? Do not masses of human

Jean Brunhes
Fig. 223. How Most Semi-Civilized or Primitive People Do Their Carrying
This scene is on the trail from Wadi Haifa to Khartum. The Nubian is moving
and carries all her household goods on her head.
beings such as those of India foil all efforts that can be made
to feed them when once the wheat or rice happens to fail
and the reign of hunger begins?
A nation, a province, and a city are great and fragile master
pieces of human geography. Their equilibrium is unstable
to the very extent to which men have increased the number of
their unavoidable daily connections with the natural environ
ment. The necessity of maintaining this equilibrium at any
cost strengthens the bonds that attach a given group to a
given place. How much suffering, how many efforts and
years are required for a small town to change its form and
place, for one of those modest Mediterranean cities to tear

618 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
itself from the rocky mound of its acropolis and draw near
to the railroad station ! If, on the other hand, this bond that
attaches men in groups to a portion of the surface of the globe
happens to be suddenly broken, not by man himself but by
the earth, days and months do not suffice to reestablish it.
Can it ever be reestablished as it was? The earthquake of
December 28, 1908, destroyed Messina. The victims were not
only the dead but the living. They were completely and
disastrously cut off from those small points of the earth's
crust where their lives were organized, where they had adapted
themselves to the ever-recurring demands of eating, sleeping
and clothing. And more than that, their psychical life, their
intellectual, civic and social life was bound and anchored to
those material facts which are the outgrowth of the city, the
houses and streets of that Messina that had disappeared.
Workshops, meeting-places, titles and values, state archives,
etc., all that was tangible, were destroyed and at the same
time those beings who survived became, so to speak, anony
mous, with no authentic social label. They were, in the
strictest sens^of~thJe word, uprooted, and because their sub
stratum of/urban geography had been annihilated, they all
resembled more or less that class of orphan children whose
exact age it has been impossible to ascertain, and whose
family or name cannot be discovered.
Individual man has a power of movement which has
increased more than a hundred fold in the last century, but
this facility of movement of individuals should not blind us
to the relative but real fixity with which human groups and
masses are rooted to the soil. A group is uprooted only under
the irresistible impulse of a crisis of death, poverty or hunger.
The inhabitants of an Alpine village, driven out by an ava
lanche, by a landslide, by fire, or by economic ruin, may to a
certain extent move and emigrate, while on the morrow of a
catastrophe San Francisco or Messina must remain almost
fatally bound to its original site or its immediate neighbor
hood. Each individual inhabitant of London or Berlin is at
perfect liberty to take the train any day and leave the city.
But it is none the less certain that the population of those
cities as a whole, if it wishes to continue to eat and to have

THE GEOGRAPHIC SPIRIT 619
shelter, is, as a mass, irrevocably forced to remain at the
place where it is.
As human forces are increased and concentrated, it is true
that the fine shades of difference between human efforts and
human geography become fainter or disappear; they vanish
in spots of more homogeneous and harsher color. But it
must not be thought, for that reason, that man's dependency
upon natural conditions has been eliminated; it is merely
different. And fundamental geographical facts are becoming
more and more the sovereign masters of men. These facts
which tend to influence more and more the destinies of human
groups, these tyrannical factors of the human geography
of to-morrow are: (a) space; {b) distance; (c) difference of
level. Space, i.e., surface not only occupied but able to be occupied,
is a boon which is indisputably the basis not only of every
great city but of every powerful collective being. Modern
states fight with each other to win space. The decided advan
tage of the United States comes from the immense space that
it covers. All the struggles for imperialism are struggles for
space. Ratzel has strongly emphasized the value of this
geographical fact and we wish here only to call to mind the
thoughtful significance that he has given to it.1 Likewise
the population stifles in all the great cities of the Old and the
New World and the birth-rate decreases because space is
lacking, because a large number of beings are deprived of the
indispensable minimum of "a place in the sun and on the
earth." Is it not after all a minimum of space that is the
'Even in 1893, Schrader rightly noted the geographic importance of dimension in
the question of general geography (Rev. de I'icole d' anthropologic, 1893, p. 214).
Ratzel's last memoir on space is the following: "Der Lebensraum, Eine biogeographi-
sche Studie," from Feslgaben fiir Albert Schajfie zur siebzigsien Wiederkehr seines
Geburtstages, Tubingen, 1901, pp. 103-189. Note also two previous memoirs : "Studien
iiber politische Raume," Geog. Zeitschr, I, 1895, pp. 163-182 and 286-302; "Die Gesetze
des raumlichen Wachstums der Staaten, ein Beitrag zur wissenschaftlichen politischen
Geographie," Petermanns Milt., XLII, 1896, pp. 97-107. Ratzel seems, however,
somewhat to exaggerate the importance of the role of space. Nations of small extent
still count for much in the life of humanity, and it is not completely demonstrated that
"the extent of states increases with civilization." On the other hand, how accurate it
is to emphasize what we might call the crude participation of a factor like space in the
growing power of the United States, and how worth while it is to mention that the five
enormous political aggregates, the United States, Brazil, the British Empire, China, and
pre-war Russia, covered almost half of the politically usable earth! See above, p. 229,
the real meaning that one ought to attribute to space. See, above all, the excellent
criticisms put forward by C. Vallaux against Ratzel's conception of "space in itself,"
in Giographie sociale, Le sol et Vilat, Chapter, V, pp. 145 ff.

620 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
expressive foundation, the geographic mark and guaranty
of the first and inalienable right of every human being, the
right to life?
Distance means an obstacle to be overcome, an obstacle
that is measured by time. In economic relations in the midst
of a reign of civilization based upon traffic, time is the other
standard of wealth and power. Let the reader recall, from the
point of view of distance crossed and the necessary results in
human facts, the vicissitudes of the very recent struggles
between Spain and the United States, between England and
the Transvaal, between Russia and Japan. What a numerical
superiority of human beings would have been or was required
to make up for and overcome, in these different cases, the
inferiority resulting from the thousands of miles which for
the Spanish, the English, and the Russians separated the
theater of war from their base of operations!
In the strictly geographical field there is the well-known
competition between rival railroad companies to establish the
shortest line, for, in the large majority of cases, it is
simply the number of miles that determines the path of
merchandise.1 Finally, difference of level allows gravity to act upon
water, a form of economic wealth, a measure of available
power. It is a new wealth, or rather a potential wealth,
which hitherto has expressed itself negatively by a real
inferiority in the economic struggle to the account of popula
tions installed at high altitudes and which is seen to-dav as
representing gratuitous advantages that nothing can rival
or replace.
All this is the consequence of the efforts of men and of the
significance which, by their labor, they have given to these
natural facts — facts as old as the world, but facts whose
'For a work on botanical geography showing very well the natural part played
by distance in the dissemination and in the migration of plants, and consequently in
the actual composition of the Alpine vegetal carpet, see the study which one of my
pupils made under the direction of the professor of botany at Geneva, Chodat:
Renato Pampanini, "Essai sur la geographie botanique des Alpes et en particulier
des Alpes sud-oricntales," thesis of Fribourg, published in the Memoires de la Soc.
fribour geoise des Sciences naturelles, sirie: "Giologie et Geographie," Vol. Ill, 1903-
see especially p. 204. For examples of the part played by distance in human problems'
of communication, we refer to our numerous publications on the Simplon, on the means
of access to the Simplon, on the Gotthard and the Simplon, etc., particularly " Gotth-
ard el Simplon," Rev. des dcttK inondes, November 15, 1909, pp. 373-395.

THE GEOGRAPHIC SPIRIT 621
interpretation and utilization are new and even revolutionary
because of, and in proportion to, human ingenuity and
intelligence. Space, distance, and difference of level become in fact
geographic values, because men conquer them and make them
serve their needs. Now, how does this domination show
itself if not — once more and always — by the building of fac
tories and fortresses, of roads, of canals, or of railroad stations,
by the creation and maintenance of fields and gardens, of
transport animals or herds, by the exploitation of the natural
vegetal carpet or of mineral riches? Space, distance, differ
ence of level are conditions and factors of human work and
settlement; let us never confound them with the forms of this
work, with the material marks of this settlement. They are
means more or less propitious or contrary to life, wealth, or
power; they are not the direct ends pursued by individuals,
tribes, or nations. They are in themselves only pure natural
geography; they exercise an influence and find a place in the
geography of man only if they are, -as it were, "animated" by
man's spirit and mingled with our lives. Does not that
mean that they must find expression in some of the six types
of facts that have been pointed out and described? By this
path we arrive at the same main conclusion: Physical phe
nomena, like human phenomena, rightly find a place in human
geography only in so far as they .are connected with the actual
surface phenomena which are included within one of the three
groups of unproductive occupation of the soil, of plant and
animal conquest, or of destructive exploitation.
The, essential facts are not all of human geography, but all
human geography is rigorously in direct relation with one or
more of the essential facts. Very evidently everything in the
essential facts is far from being explicable by geography alone.
Nevertheless everything that forms a part of the essential
facts becomes for that very reason an observable geographical
reality. It is thus that even those imponderable and immaterial
factors which make the life of societies, which make manners
and customs, history and civilization, are translated into
geographic terms.

622 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
Every people, every human settlement covers the surface
of the earth with those outward and visible signs which reveal
its presence, reflect its manner of being and its power of
action, and allow us to divine its past, and sometimes even
its future.

INDEX OF SUBJECTS

Ackerbau, 309, 615
Activity: effects of terrestrial, 5-13;
causes of terrestrial, 5-13; human,
27. 533, 537-541. 596-599
Adobe, houses of, 79
Age, role of, in orography, 8-9
Agricultural geography, 41
Alimentation, geography of, 37
Altitude: conditions of, influencing
population, 190-194, 472-474, 477-
479; limit of human habitation, 155-
165, 468
Andes: natural units in the, 453-498;
study of canyon country of the, 456 ;
study of intermont basins in the,
459-463 ; valleys of the, 465-469
Animals: destructive exploitation of,
330, 340-346; facts of the conquest
of, 18-19; geography of, in relation
to climate, 230, 239; markets of, 329;
origin of domesticated, 247, 251-."" 52
Anlhropo-geographie, 31-35
Aoul, 118
Astronomic movements, effect of, 6
Atmospheric phenomena, effects Oi",
2-14
Avalanches: effect of, on nomadism,
324-325; influence of, in restiicting
human habitation, 144-146, 618
Baite, 159-161, 163
Baleares: cities of, 555-507; cultiva
tion in, 500-510; gardens of, 504-
506; population of, 502, 506; study
of, 500-512, 594-595
Barley, distribution of cultivation of,
263-264
Barraca, 100
Bee, honey, 252, 281
Beer, 264
Be^t: distribution of cultivation of
sugar, 284-286; geographical con
ditions affecting, 284
Bergbou, 332
Bialets, 21
Biological geography, 3-4, 571
Biological optimum, 231
Dirch, climate of the, 238
Birds: destruction of, 341-343; migra
tions of, 571
Bison, extermination of, 343
Bolivia: cultivation of plateau of,
496-497; highlands of, 491-498;

nomadism in, 494-495; population of
plateau of, 493
Botanical geography, first principles of,
I6. 231, 570
Boulevards, 199, 205-207
Buron, 90
Cacao, 250, 286
Camelia, climate of, 238, 247, 295
Cannibalism, 346, 587
Cannibals, limiting of hunting by, 331
Casella, 96, 97
Casera, 158-165
Casoni, 160
Castles, 203-204
Cattle, 309, 318; pastoral migrations
of, 322-326, 327
Cereals, comparative statistics of pro
duction of, 265
Chansons de geste, 584
Circulation: facts of urban, 196-208;
geography of, 208-229; influenced by
trade, 228-229; limited by altitude,
227-228; limited by latitude, 227-
228; maritime, 208-211
Cities : age of, 11; appearance of
modern, 185-186; canal, 181; clas
sification of, 1 81-186; comparative
study of, at high altitudes, 186-189;
effects of crowding in industrial,
542-543; height of, 179-181; situ
ated for defense, 141-142, 597; the
result of coal, 540-543
City: depopulation of center of, 389;
development of, 389; influence of
situation in development of, 178;
manufacturing, 184-185; plan of, 178
"Civilization of circulation," 616
Citybildung, 389
Classification: method of positive, 35;
of facts of human geography, 46-52
Climate: distribution of zones of, 241-
246; geography of, 234-247; human
will and, 525; world commerce and,
567; zones of transition of, 241-246
Climates, geographic distribution of,
571
Climatic divisions of the earth, 239-
247
Climatic units, 243
Clothing, 38-40; of material facts, 520
Coal, 7, 552, 593; cause of displace
ment of historic and economic poles

623

624

INDEX OF SUBJECTS

of activity, 390-39 1 ; characteristics
of, 377; exploitation of, 333, 368-
369, 377; exploitation of, and capi
tal, 541; geography of, 391-413; his
tory of exploitation of, 379-381;
industries using, 379-381 ; labor con
ditions in exploitation of, 386; mari
time circulation of, 410-413; origin
°f 1 377; regional geography of, 391-
413; relation of, to development of
cities, 184-185; relation of, to devel
opment of communication, 390;
relation of, to industrial agglomera
tions, 387-391; statistics of produc
tion of, 413-414; transportation of,
385; use of, 379; where found, 378
Coal fields: of France, 408-410; of
Germany, 403-407; of Great Bri
tain, 391-396; of other countries,
407-413
Coal mine, 540-542
Coal miners, relations between stock
holders of mine and, 541-542
Coal products, 383-385
Coffee, regulation of production of,
286, 613
Collective regulation of natural re
sources, type of, 536-537
Commerce, 208-229, 567; interstate,
213
Commercial geography, 273
Communication: ease of, in relation
to the habitation, 169; means of,
developed by coal, 390; means of,
in high altitudes, 195; points of con
centration of, 221-225
Corn, climate of, 266-267; use of, 266-
267; use of, as human food, 266
Cotton, 251, 291; geographical condi
tions of, 292-293; labor in cultiva
tion of, 293-295, 300; soil best for,
293
Cultivation: by the Fang, 357-363;
by the Mozabites, 436-438; by the
Soafas, 420-423 ; climates of, 235-247 ;
concomitants of, 287-291; destruc
tive exploitation of, 334-340; geog
raphy of, 234; in Japan, 513; in the
Andes, 457"458, 463, 468, 478, 479,
483, 489-491; of barley, 263-264;
in the Baleares, 501-512; of cacao,
286; of coffee, 286; of corn, 265-267;
of manioc, 274-275; of oats, 264-
265; of olives, 275-277; of rice, 267-
274; of rye, 262-263; °f sorghum,
274; of sugar cane, 281-286; of the
beet, 281-286; of the vine, 277-281 ;
of wheat, 252-262; on the Bolivian

plateau, 495-497; tea, 286; textiles,
291-300
Currents, 6-7
Date, climate of the, 235-237
Defense: cities situated for, 141-142,
597-598; facts of, 200-207
Deforestation caused by sheep and
goats, 145, 312-313
Destructive economy, facts of, 51, 55
Destructive exploitation : facts of, 332-
346; by civilized peoples, 331-350;
modes of, 330-331 ; reaction against,
346-35?
Devastation: by the Fang, 357; char
acteristics of, peculiar to civilization,
331-332; effect of, 332; plant and
animal, 334-350; the result of burn
ing for cultivation, 332
Diagram, regional, 453
Diseases: geography of, 570-577; rela
tion of, to study of human geog
raphy, 526-527
Distance, 620-621
Dry farming, 56, 314, 507
Dunes, of the Erg, 417-419
Earthquake, 606-607
Economic activity, influence of, in
localization of the habitation, 168
Economic facts: and geography, 565-
567; localization of, 572
Economic geography, foundations of,
39
Electricity, 59-60
Elephant, destruction of, 343, 348, 366,
367
Erg, setting of, 417
Eskimos, habitations of American, 77
Essential facts of human geography,
34, 36-37, 5'7, 525, 529, 552. 567,
621
Ethnical geograph3r, 587
Ethnography, relation of, to human
geography, 517-529
Ethnology, distinguished from human
geography, 521-529
Exchange, ease of, as factor in locali
zation of population, 168
Exploitation: destructive, 330-331;
facts of, 331-346; geography of the
earth's, 41-42: reaction against
destructive, 346-350
Factory cities; effects of crowding in,
542-543; social condiions in, 540-
543

INDEX OF SUBJECTS

625

Facts of geography, relationship of,
13-15
Facts of human geography, 34, 48-52,
517, 524-525, 529; accessories to,
519-521 ; positive classification of,
46-52
Facts of unproductive occupation of
the soil, 48-49 ¦
Fang: climate of country of the, 354-
355; cultivation practiced by, 359-
361 ; facts of devastation by the,
358-361 ; fishing and hunting by
the, 362-364; geographic environ
ment of the, 351-354; nomadism of
the, 350, 364-368; social customs of
the, 356-357; villages of the, 356
Fenili, 85, 158, 160, 615
Finns, 452
Fish, extermination of, 344-345
Fishing and political groupings, 547-
548
Floods: and localization of house, 144;
effects of, 6 1 0-6 1 1
Foods, geography of, 273
Forest: conservation of, 346-347; de
structive exploitation of, 335-343,
346, 347; mulberry excluded from
boreal, 296; percentage of, to total
surface, 337; preservation of, 337-
338, 346-347; reserves, 336, 346-348
Forest zone, wooden house in, 79-94
Fortifications, influence of, on urban
circulation, 199-207
Fox, climate of white, 239
Frontiers, study of natural, 600-603
Fur-bearing animals, devastation of,
343
Game laws, 348
Gas, obtained from coal, 383
Geographical conditions, human adap
tation to, 608-620
Geographical study: basal phenomena
of, 1-3; scope of, 1-4
Geography: administrative, 44; agri
cultural, 41 ; classical conceptions of,
29; relation of ethnographic geog
raphy to human, 517-529; history
of, 28-35; historical, 43-46; impor
tance of regional, 5 1 4-5 1 7 ; industrial,
42; methods of study of, 30-31;
military, 44; of climate, 234-247; of
diseases, 576-577; pastoral, 41;
political, 44; regional, of coal, 391-
413; relations between history and,
544-568; study of regional, 453-498,
500-5^17; social, 529-543; spirit of,
569; transformation of facts of, 5

Geological boundary line, cities
grouped at, 19-21, 168
Geothermic zones, 240-245
Glass, dependence of industry of, upon
devastation, 368-369
Goats, 159, 251, 308, 327, 349-350
Gold: attraction of, 374-375; destruc
tive exploitation of, 368-369, 372,
374-375, 376
Gospels, episodes explained by geo
graphical environment, 544-545
Gravity, effects of, 7-8
' ' Green coal, " 59
Guanaco, 331
Habitation: and the road, 169-177; as
human fact, 39, 48-49, 65; as shelter,
40; distribution of, determined by
the geological boundary line, 19-21;
distribution of, determined by water,
19; loftiest, 468; mountain, 74-196,
468-472 ; temporary, in mountain
lands, 157-165
Hackbau, 309, 615
Hannibal, 591
Hay, drying of, 288, 609
Hekistothermal climate, 235, 238-239
Historic activity, displacement of, by
coal, 401, 406
Historical geography, 44-45, 543~568
History: based on facts of physical
geography, 588-592; geography as
explanatory cause of, 45; relations
between natural conditions and, 23;
relations between social and eco
nomic facts and, 544-545
Homeric poems, as geographical docu
ments, 584-585
Horse, 237, 307, 309, 318
House: as geographical fact, 585; as
historical fact, 585-587; dependence
on natural conditions of form of, 74-
110; destruction by fire of wooden,
91-94; form of, 74-110; future of
wooden, 91; geographical limits of
wooden, 89; geographical zone of
wooden, 89; materials of construc
tion of, 76; of adobe, 79; of earth, 79,
89, 101-108, 126; of stone, 80, 90,
95-101, 117; orientation of, with re
gard to the sun, 1 31-134; orientation
of, with regard to water, 134-144;
relation of type of, and geographical
surroundings, 94; renewal of wooden,
109; types of stone, 96
Huerta, 100
Human activity: adapted to geogra
phical environment, 537-541 ; as

40

^

626

INDEX OF SUBJECTS

geographical facts, 27, 32; connec
tion between physical environment
and, 593-603 ; expression of, 32 ^re
strictive conditions affecting, 533;
variability of the influence of nature
upon, 596-599
Human agglomerations, 47-52, 176-
184. 328-329, 542-543
Human establishments, 117; perfec
tion of, determined by unfavorable
conditions, 452; unequal distribu
tion of, 146-155
Human facts: method of observation
of, 47-52 ; relation of natural phe
nomena and, 24-27
Human geography: analysis of, 4; and
sociology, 573, 576; antecedents of,
28; classification of primary facts
of, 36-67; explanation of, 28-29,
32-35 ; facts of, 34-67 ; field of, 46-47 ;
influencing factors of, 619-621; pas
sive or static, 606; relation between
physical geography and, 19-25;
scope of, 524-525, 573
Human phenomena, evolution of, 13
Human settlements, physiognomy of,
117-122, 130
Hunting, as devastation, 341-346
"Hydraulic communities," 537
Hydrography: and human distribu
tion, 57-60; influence of, on history,
555-560
Hygiene, 55, 542, 577
Igloos, 77
Igneous center of earth, action of, 5
Industrial city, 540-543
Industrial geography, 42
Industry, localization of, 168, 340
Insolation, controls of, 453
Instability, solar heat as cause of, 5-6
Iron, 380-381
Irrigation, 21, 22, 56, 62, 292, 293,
420-422, 432-436, 453, 457, 479,
<r 508, 533, 594
"Islands": geography of, as true re
gional geography, 500-517; of the
desert, 415-452; of the high moun
tains, 453-498; of the inhabited
earth, 52; of the sea, 500-517;
study of, as wholes of humanity,
513-517.
"Isochronic lines," 572
"Isotimal lines," 571-572
Japan, agriculture in, 513
Jenghiz Khan, 542

Labor, factor in study of human facts,
66
Lake dwellings, 77
Languages, and the geographic spirit,
578
Latifundia, 532, 547
Latitude, factor in distribution of pop
ulation, 155
Level, difference of, 620
Lianas, climate of, 235
Limits of human life, 607
Literature, and the geographic spirit,
583-585
Logge, 159
Maize: climate of, 238; cultivation of,
25?
Manioc, distribution of cultivation of,
274
Maps: of distribution of population,
67, 154-155; of water, 67
Maritime circulation, 208-211
Market, 600
Material forms, evolution of, 8
Mayens, 324, 328
Mazot, 83-84
Megathermal climate, 235—236
Mesothermal climate, 235, 237-238,
241, 301
Microthermal climate, 235, 238-239,
2«
Military geography, 44; and military
history, 557-561 _
Minerals: destructive exploitation of,
51, 330, 332-333. 368-382; good re
sults of devastation of, 333; influ
ence in determining distribution of
population of, 194-195
Mines: catastrophes caused by im
proper exploitation of, 333; sur
face appendages of the, 386-389
Mining, 453 ; on Bolivian plateau, 368-
414, 497-498
Monoculture, danger of, 613
Monopolization, tendency to, 401
Mosque, 101
Mountain border region, study of, in
the Central Andes, 482-485
Mozabites, 415; characteristics of,
444-447, 448
Mulberry, 296-297
Mzab: comparison of cultivation and
environment of the Suf and the,
450-451; environment of the, 430-
432; gardens of, 436-438; habita
tions of, 438-444; irrigation works
in the, 435-436; oases of, 416-417;
wells and dams of, 432-436

INDEX OF SUBJECTS

627

Napoleon, 567
Natural conditions, psychological ef
fect of, 527, 535
Natural forces, and man, 52-67
Natural geography, 3
Natural units, study of, 415
Nitrate, exploitation of, 333
Nodality, 566
Nomadism, 157; and cultivation, 312-
319; and history, 316-318, 328; and
plant and animal devastation, 350;
causes of, 308-309; conditions af
fecting, 309-329; degrees of, 311; in
Alpine valleys, 322-329; lines of,
367-368; of the Fang, 350, 364-368;
on Bolivian plateau, 494-496; pas
toral, 307; types of, 328-329
Nuraghi, 96
Oaks, climate of deciduous, 238
Oases: causes of devastation, 345; of
the Mzab, 416-417; of the Suf, 416,
417-430
Oats, cultivation of, 264
Observation, human geography and
principles of, 35
Odyssey, 584
Olive, 59, 295; climate of the, 237; dis
tribution of, 251,275-277; geograph
ical conditions of production of, 275;
effect of human element on geo
graphical distribution of, 299-3CO
Orographic systems, common type of,
9
Orography, 8
Ostraks, yurt of the, 77
Ostrich, destruction of, 343-344

Peneplain, 10
Penguin, climate of the, 239
Petroleum, exploitation of, 369, 394-
395
Physical facts, organic development of,
80
Physical geography, basal facts of, 3
Physiognomy: of human settlements,
117-131; of vegetal carpet of the
earth, 16; of the earth, 524-525
Kg, 251, 267, 307
Pigeon house, 125-126
Place, question of, in geography, 570-
571
Place names, 578-583
Plants: and soil conditions, 231; asso
ciations of, 16-18; climatic condi
tions affecting, 232-233; concomi
tants of cultivation of, 287-291;

cultivated textile, 251, 291-295;
destructive exploitation of, 51-52,
330, 339, 361; facts of conquest of,
49-50; facts of distribution of, 18;
geography of, 37; geography of, in
relation to climate, 230-247; group
ings of, 16-17; human environment
of, 234; origin of cultivated, 247;
primitive centers of, 250; proportion
to entire species of cultivated, 251-
252; transportation of, 250
Political facts: explained by geography,
549-55 1, 553-568; natural founda
tions of, 23-24
Political geography, 44, 567
Population: characteristics of, in high
mountain regions, 462-463, 478-481 ;
comparative statistics of world, 70;
distribution of, 63-65, 147-165;
expansion the result of density of,
604 ; growth of, 12; increase near
water of, 134-139; influence of coal
in spread of, 390, 400, 406-407;
map of distribution of, 67-70; pri
mary factors in distribution of, 71;
unequal distribution of, 67-70
Positive classification of human facts,
46-52
Potato, and the Irish question, 547-549
Primitive centers of plant cultivation,
250; precautions against plant and
animal devastation, 331
Progression of human phenomena, 13
Property: collective, 532; Fang idea of,
529-532; relation between nomad
ism and, 532
Psychological factor, 592-608; the
intermediary between man and
nature, 598-599
Psychological influence: of geographi
cal causes on man, 605; of natural
conditions, 535-536; the interme
diary between natural facts and
economic facts, 535-537
Pueblo, 96-98
Racart, 1 10
Railways, 1 1 5-1 16; rivalry between
waterways and, 2 1 1 -2 1 3
Rainfall, 6, 7, 14, 26, 67-70, 103, 104,
191, 233, 236, 237-239, 242, 254,
255, 267, 268, 271, 272, 283, 292,
354-355, 361, 435, 47i, 474-475,
488, 493, 494
Raubban, 332
Raubwirtschaft, 331-333
Reforestation, 338
Regional diagram, 453-456

628

INDEX OF SUBJECTS

Regional geography, 453-498, 500-
517; importance of, in study of
geography, 514-517, 454"456; of
coal, 39 1-413
Regional zones: of Belgium, 516; of
France, 514
Regulation, collective, of natural con
ditions, 534-537
Reindeer, 239, 307
Relationship, geographical principle of,
x9:25
Religion, history of, 587
Retrogression, of human phenomena,
1.3
Rice, 266-274; consumption of, 270;
distribution of cultivation of, 271-
273; geographic conditions affecting,
268-273; statistics of production of,
273-274
Ricoveri, 159
River: evolution of, 10; floods, 144,
610-611; traffic, 212
Road: as geographical fact, 49, 55, 65;
expression of human geography,
114-115; influence of, in develop
ment of city, 1 71-177; in relation to
the habitation, 49; in relation to
water, 55; material characteristics
of, 110-116; types of, 111-113
¦Rubber, destructive exploitation of,
339 . .
Rye: conditions affecting cultivation
of, 262-263,;. distribution of cultiva
tion of, 263

Savages: devastation by, 331, 335-336;
extermination of, 346
Seals, slaughter of, 344
Sennhiitte, 90
Sheep, 159, 251, 308-309, 310, 312-
3'9, 320, 322, 327, 349, 350
Silk, 295; production of, 296-300
Silk worms: geographical co.iditions
favoring, 296; labor conditions af
fecting raising of, 297-300; raising
of, 252, 296-300
Silver, exploitation of, 333, 372-374
Site of habitation : factors determining,
165-169; historical factor deter
mining, 166-167; political factor de
termining, 166; religious factor de
termining, 165; restrictive condi
tions affecting, 144-145; with re
gard to defense, 141 ; with regard to
topography, 139-144; with regard
to water, 134-139; with relation to
geological boundary line, 19-21

Slave trade, form of devastation, 346
Sleep shelter, 38
Soafas, 415; characteristics of, 429-
430; compared with Mozabites, 451
Social geography, 42-43, 529-543;
incident of, in the Baleares, 594-595
Sociology, 524
Soils, geographical distribution of, 571
Solar heat, 1 ; cause of activity, 5-7
Sorghum, 274
Space, 619
Spartacus, 591
Stabbuhr, no
Stavolo, 158, 161, 163, 328
Steam, 62
Steamship lines, 209-211
Steppes, influence of, 546
Stina, 88
Street, in; as a geographical fact,
196-200; determined by city ram
parts, 199-207; plan of city, 199;
types of city, 198-200, 205-207
Suf, 449 ; distribution of settlements in
the, 425-430; gardens of the, 420-
423; human habitations in the, 423-
424; oases of the, 416, 417-430
Sugar beet, 284-286
Sugar cane, 283; distribution of cane,
283; geographical conditions affect
ing cultivation of cane, 283; history
of, 281-283; statistics of production
of, 286
Sun, relation of, to site of habitation,
131-134
Taiga, 83
Talayot, 96
Tamerlane, 546
Tea, 238, 250, 286
"Terrestrial whole," 13
Textiles: distribution of, 251; types
of, 291-295
Tobacco, 250, 295
Topographical forms, age of, 9-10
Topology, 584
Trade regions, 217
Trade routes, interrelation of, 215-216
Transformation: forces of, 5-13; of
geographie facts, 5
Transportation: of coal, 208-211, 385;
of plants, 250; old and new methods
of, 218-219
Trees, palm, 126, 12 8- 131
Troglodytes, 78-79
Truth, 96-97
Unproductive occupation of soil, facts
of, 48-49

INDEX OF SUBJECTS

629

Urban agglomerations : geographical
study of, 176-184; result of coal,
184-185, 387-391; social conditions
in, 542-543
Urban zones, 391
Vegetation: distribution of, 37; geog
raphy of, 37, 49-51; maps of zones
of, 246-249
Vicufia, 331
Village: characteristics of, 117; ap
pearance of, 1 1 8-13 1; localization
of, 131; types of, 1 1 7-1 31
Vine: geographical conditions affect
ing, 277-279; distribution of, 250,
27Q-28I, 291
Vital necessities, geography of, 36-41
Vodka, 263
Volcanic eruptions, 609-610
War, as devastation, 345
Water: action of, 2-3, 6; and cultiva
tion, 55-56, 103, 253-255, 267-268,
272-273, 283, 292, 301, 348-349,
419-423, 4327436, 460, 471, 490,
495; and distribution of man, 52-60;
and facts of destructive economy,
55; and distribution of habitations,
19, 134-139; and roads, 55; distribu
tion for irrigation of, 533, 535~537;

influence of, in development of
city, 173—1 7'5 ; map of, 67; necessity
of, for cultivation, 348-349
Waterfalls, 59-60
Weltverkehr, 567-568
Whales, slaughter of, 344
Wheat: distribution of cultivation of,
257-262; geographical conditions
affecting distribution of, 257-262;
kinds of, 253; world production of,
261-262
Whiskey, 263
"White coal," 39, 59, 349
Wind, 60; motors, 61-62
Winds, 2, 6; as determining factor in
localization of house, 144-145
Wine, influence on Roman history of,
500-591
Wood: replacement of, as fuel, 336;
transportation of, 337
Wool: climatic conditions fa\oring
production of, 301 ; distribution of
production of, 303-306; human en
vironment as influence in production
of, 301-303; statistics of, 306
Xerophilous climate, 235-237, 301
Yak, climate of the, 239, 521
Yurt, 77

INDEX OF GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES

Aa, 555
Aalesund, 94
Aar, 153
Aarburg, 179
Aargau, 92, 150, 152
Abancay, 462, 463
Abanga, 351, 362
Abbaye, 93
Abyssinia, 77, 188, 191, 192, 193, 238,
335
Aden, 165
Adirondacks, 65, 92
Adriatic, 94, 335
Aegeri, Lake, 557
Africa, 38, 56, 70, 78, 223, 236, 241,
242, 270, 271, 272, 274, 295, 303,
315, 3i6, 339, 341, 343, 348, 521, 546
Aguas Blancas, 481
Aigle, 141
Aigues-Mortes, 11, 203
Airdrie, 399
Ajarnola, 1 63
Akaba, Gulf of, 552
Akron, Colorado, 56
Alabama, 21
Alaro, 500
Alaska, 241, 307, 374, 376, 413
Albania, 275, 303
Alberobella, 96
Albertville, 167
Albufera, 502
Alcherfluh, 152
Alcudia, 500, 503, 505
Alderney, 58
Alembe, 353, 356
Aletsch, Glacier, 326
Alexandria, 438
Algarrobal, 490
Algeria, 179, 250, 260, 275, 276, 310,
3U, 312, 313, 315, 319, 321, 329.
344, 348, 383, 402, 423, 427, 509,
602, 612
Algiers, 95, 198, 316, 317, 411, 445, 446
Algonquin, 346
Alicante, 322, 504
Alps, 10, 49, 50, 60, 86, 112, 157, 158,
173, 192, 193, 216, 225, 233, 263,
276, 303, 322, 327, 532, 553, 555,
557, 58i, 586
Alsace-Lorraine, 561
Alzette, valley of the, 1 79
Amazon, 10, 47, 340, 588

America, 4, 26, 40, 70, 71, 85, 200, 271,
283, 292, 339, 343, 348, 507
Amsterdam, 181
Andalusia, 24, 275, 308
Andes, 141, 190, 195, 453, 454, 463,
47 1, .473, 476, 480, 482, 491, 592
Andraitx, 505
Annam, 268
Annecy, 167
Antabamba, 468, 470
Antartic, 219
Antibes, 179
Antofagasta, 497
Antwerp, 75, 214, 223, 604
Aosta, 554
Aouras, 309
Appalachians, 338
Apulia, 96, 97
Apurimac, 459
Aquileia, 611
Arabia, 36, 188, 191, 217, 237, 307, 310
Arc, 167
Ardennes, 10
Arequipa, 190, 470
Argentine Republic, 195, 211, 260,
261, 277, 280, 285, 303, 306, 334,
346, 348, 412, 459, 474, 484, 485
Argonne Forest, 93
Arizona, 96, 317
Arkansas, 273
Arlberg, 113
Arma, 467
Armenia, 217
Armorican Peninsula, 23
Aroma, 485
Arosa, 155
Arpajon, 169
Arta, Grotto of, 500
Asia, 43, 70, 77, 157, 218, 238, 242, 253,
268, 274, 275, 292, 296, 297, 307, 315,
320, 545, 546, 595
Asia Minor, 217, 218, 260, 275, 301,
303, 306, 597
Assuan, 105, 107, 126
Astrakhan, 279
Atacama Puna de, 476, 484, 488
Atlantic City, 181
Atlantic Ocean, 26, 58, 208, 209, 210,
221, 246
Atlas Countries, 303, 306, 435
Aubarca, 506
Aubrac, 302

630

INDEX OF GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES

631

Aures, 535
Aurillac, 20
Ausserbinn, 326
Australia, 4, 55, 166, 199, 223, 246,
250, 260, 277, 279, 285, 305, 306,
320, 335, 346, 347, 375, 412, 561, 588
Austria, 22s, 260, 284, 285, 337, 413,
615
Auvergne, 19, 92, 448, 601, 602
Auxerre, 200
Auxois, Mt., 581
Avallon, 93
Avenches, 580
Ayais, 365
Ayata, oasis of, 434
Ayen-nkago, 366
Bactria, 007
Bahamas, 336
Bahr Yusuf, 108, 129
Baktchi-Serai, 129
Baku, 369
Balakhany, 369
Balaton Lake, 288
Balearic Islands, 96, 500, 512, 513,
594-595
Balkan, 582
Balta, 309
Baltic, 211, 333, 406
Bafialbufar, 594, 595
Banff, 346
Barbary States, 55
Barcelona, 199, 504
Basel, 92, 121
Basses-Pyrenees, 341
Bavaria, 542, 586
Beauce, 53, 54, 150, 254, 255
Beirut, 217
Bel-Abbes, 509
Belfort, 225
Belgian Congo, 38, 340, 343, 339
Belgium, 93, 186, 223, 262, 280, 284,
285, 337, 379, 396, 413, 5i6, 557.
57i, 603
Belledonne, 167
Belpberg, 153
Beman, 309
Bengal, 268, 274, 606
Benian, 309
Beni-Isguen, 432, 433, 437, 440
Berchtesgaden, 347
Bergamo, 173, 599
Bergen, 577
Berlin, 116, 197, 199. 223, 225, 388,
389, 400, 406, 407, 542, 558, 572, 668
Bern, 87, 150, 152, 153, 179
Berrian, 431, 437
Besancon, 225

Bethlehem, 118
Betie Cordillera, 79
Bibi-Eibat, 369
Bienne, Lake of, 150
Binisalem, 502
Binn, 323, 325, 326
Birkenhead, 399
Birmingham, 185, 390, 398, 401, 551
Biskra, 423
Blackburn, 399
Black Forest, 80, 109, 120
Black Sea, 238, 279
Blanc, Mt., 374, 553
Bleone, 277
Blitzingen, 326
Blois, 198
Blumenstein, 153
Bochum, 392
Bogota, 192
Bohemia, 80
Bois-Noir, 141
Bolivia, 77, 182, 184, 190, 192, 193,
194, 195, 459, 462, 476, 492, 494,
495, 496, 497
Bolton, 399
Bombay, 410
Bone, 427
Bonn, 279
Bonneval, 23
Bordeaux, 13
Borneo, 600
Boston, 196, 209
Bouches-du-Rhone, 378
Bourg-en-Bresse, 225
Bourges, 601
Bramois, 141
Brazil, 195, 272, 284, 285, 412, 613, 619
Breslau, 403, 404
Brest, 31
Brianconnais, 328
Brie, 53, 54, 254
Brieg, 558
Brignoud, 167
Brigue, 114, 141
Brissago, 95
Bristol, 40*
British Columbia, 92, 330
British Guiana, 285
British Isles, 26, 45, 57, 262, 595
Brittany, 23, 53, 58, 232, 565
Brives, 78
Broc, 144
Bruggli, 558
Bruges, 181, 198, 199, 217, 604
Brugge, 558
Brunnen, 557
Brunswick, 116, 206, 210
Brussels, 199, 223, 281, 561, 604, 615

632

INDEX OF GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES

Brux, 333
Budapest, 223
Bulgaria, 93, 260, 303, 306
Bu-Nura, 432, 439, 443
Bu-Ourmes, 418, 425, 427
Burgdorf, 151, 179
Burgundy, 223, 543, 581
Bu-Saada, 423, 435, 533
Bussang, 168
Caceres, 322
Cadiz, 181
Cadore, 158
Cairo, 101, 124, 196, 199, 438
Calabria, 95
Calcutta, 166, 182, 184, 410, 593
Caleta Buena, 486
California, 34, 59, 194, 195, 246, 250,
277, 279, 333, 335, 368, 374
Camberlands, 284
Cambodia, 600
Cambridge, 398
Campagna, Roman, 516
Campine, 410
Campo, Lake, 163
Campos, 500
Canada, 10/93, 256, 260, 261, 330, 334,
337, 343, 346, 4H. 566, 593
Canary Islands, 281
Canberra, 166
Canchones, 491
Candia, 116
Canea, 116
Cantal, 90, 97, 98, 601
Cape Colony, 306
Capua, 114
Carcassonne, 203, 206
Cardiff, 399, 412
Caribbean, 210
Carmel, Mt., 100
Carnic Alps, 158
Carpathians, 88, 328, 525
Casamazzagno, 163
Catalonia, 504, 506
Catarpe, 479
Caucasus, 80
Cenis, Mt., 113, 581
Central America, 191, 210
Cere, 448
Cerro de Pasco, 190, 193, 195, 372, 373
Cerro de Potosi, 373
Cette, 504
Cevennes, 49, 302, 303
Ceylon, 4, 223, 274, 336
Chacarilla, 485, 490, 491
Chad, Lake, 43
Challapata, 497
Chambery, 167

Champagne, 19, 53
Chandolin, 155
Charolais, 409
Chartres, 93, 200, 599
Chateau d'Oex, 148
Chaumont, 596
Chavieres-sur-Pralignan, 21
Chermignon, 144
Chester, 398
Chicago, 257
Chile, 76, 189, 260, 264, 273, 280, 333,
412, 474, 484, 485, 487, 488, 493, 494
Chili, 335
China, 50, 64, 201, 209, 218, 238, 246,
250, 251, 253, 254, 256, 260, 268,
270, 271, 272, 274, 297, 316, 318,
335, 545, 615, 619
Chinon, Forest of, 93
Choquetira, 464, 467
Choroloque, 374
Chosen (Korea), 273
Chuquicamata, 51
Circle City, 376'
Ciudadela, 509, 510, 511
Clapier de Fodane, 23
Cleibe, 93
Clermont, 596
Cleveland, England, 397
Cliza, 462
Clyde, 399
Coalbrookdale, 381
Cobija, 485
Cochabamba, 190, 462
Cochinoca, 194
Cologne, 185, 199, 223, 403, 404, 405
Colombia, 76, 189, 192, 194
Coltrondo, 163
Columbus, Christopher, 29
Comelico, 161
Como, 135
Compostella, 583
Conches, 93, 133, 144, 323, 324, 326,
327, 328
Congo, 38, 51, 236, 350, 546, 577, 588,
615
Connecticut, 142
Constantine, 427
Constantinople, 391
Coolgardie, -55
Copenhagen, 55S, 596, 597
Copiapo, 485, 488
Cordova, 198
Corinth, 614
Corsica, 18, 92, 161, 301, 499
Cossonay, 580
Costa, 163
Costalissoio, 163
Costalta, 163

INDEX OF GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES

633

Cotahuasi, 459, 468, 470
Cote-d'Or, 117
Courrieres, 386, 606
Cracow, 199
Cresta, 155
Crete, 116, 275
Crimea, 80, 129, 303, 512, 516
Cripple Creek, 376
Crkvice, 95
Crueero, 190
Crystal Mts., 351
Cuba. 34, 284, 285
Cucuter, 479
Custozza, 561
Cuzco, 190, 460, 461, 462, 463, 470
Cyprus, 281
Daghestan, 118, 532
Dakar, 367
Dakleh, oasis of, 432
Dakotas, 62, 334
Daiet ben Daua, oasis, 450
Damascus, 202, 217
Damietta, 129
Danzig, 181
Dar Banda, 78
Darfur, 601
Darlington, 381
Dauphine, 167, 195, 581
Dazio, 175
Debila, 425, 428
Deccan, 293
Delhi, 166'
Denis, Mt., 581
Denmark, 260, 286, 337, 400, 596, 597
Denver, 168
Desaguadero River, 402
Detroit, 451
Deya, 506
Dijon, 200, 581
Djebel Mela, 78
Dmirini, 425
Dnieper, 201
Dniester, 525
Dobruja, 565
Dogger Bank, 58
Domene, 167
Dompierre, 581
Donetz, 407
Dora Baltea, 554
Dosoledo,.l63
Douai, 31
Drac, 167
Dresden, 62, 205, 404, 405, 505, 542
Dublin, 410
Dilsseldorf, 388
Duluth, 257
Duran, 195

Durance, 167
Durham, 398
Ecbatana, 188
Echallens, 580
Ec6ne, 233
Ecuador, 76, 192, 194
Edfu, 107
Ed Dis, oasis of, 435
Edinburgh, 400
Egesse, 324
Eggishorn, 326
Egypt, 64, 101-108, 250, 253, 260, 266,
281, 284, 285, 293, 348, 401, 423,
.437, 537, 578, 595, 610
Eisenach, 333
Eismeer, 227
El Ateuf, 432, 443
Elbe, 228, 403, 405
El-Behima, 425, 428
El-Golea, 435
El Kalabsheh, 126
El Wed, 417, 423, 425, 426
Emmenthal, 152, 153
Ems, 405, 586
Engadine, 195
England, 10, 23, 45, ,58, 165, 212, 259,
260, 261, 264, 265, 266, 302, 344,
348, 379, 381, 390, 391, 396, 398,
402, 404, 540, 547, 549, 583, 620
English Channel, 58
Epirus, 275
Epoisses, 117
Erg, 416, 417
Ernen, 326
Erzgebirge, 333
Essen, 392, 401
Estallenehs, 594, 595
Esterel, 92, 378
Etna, Mt., 609 -A'"? '"^ '
Eugene, Lake, 362 .**' , ' ,
Euphrates, 272 '"' .'A-H*!
Europe, 12, 18, 26, 39, 43, 48, 58, 65,
70, 77, 79, 80, 90, 95, 232, 237^241,.
242, 246, 255, 256, 273, 281, 284,
286, 299, 320, 321, 322, 334, 340,
341, 346, 347, 378, 390, 391, 404,
405, 500, 543, 551, 56i, 565, 593,
603, 609
Faido, 175
Fayum, 108, 128, 129, 533
Felanitx, 500, 501
Fiesch, 326
Findelen, 155
Finland, 10, 80, 83, 337
Flanders, 217, 223
Fleurus, 557
Florence, 129

634

INDEX OF GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES

Florida, 213, 341
Fontainebleau, forest of, 93
Forez, 601
Formentor, Cape, 505
Fort Francis, 176
Four, 582
France, 16, 26, 30, 31, 32, 52, 53, 58,
59, 62, 78, 93, 97, 198, 200, 203, 204,
217, 256, 259, 260, 261, 262, 263,
264, 265, 277, 299, 302, 303, 306,
337, 34i, 347, 348, 379, 381, 382,
383, 396, 397, 402, 409, 410, 413,
421, 506, 512, 514, 529, 561, 571,
579, 581, 583, 59i, 601, 613, 615, 616.
Franconia, 165
Frankfurt, 561
Franzensfeste, 93
Fraubrunnen, 151, 152
Freiburg, 93, 295, 580, 583
French Equatorial Africa, 531
Fribourg, 78, 92, 109, 144, 167, 168,
179, 620
Frienisberg, 150, 153
Friesland, 282
Froges, 167
Furth, 116
Fuveau, 378
Gail, 161
Galatzo, 594
Galicia, 284
Galilee, 171, 544, 545
Galveston, 210, 211
Gampel, 141
Ganges, 256
Gap, 167
Gard, 93 -
Garda, 558
Garonne, 112
Gateshead, 397
Gaul, 587, 589, 590, 595
Gebel Silsileh, 126
Gellivara, 227
Geneva, 134, 179, 288
Genoa, 181, 197, 198, 225, 411, 421, 561
Gerardner, 168
Gerenthal, 324
Germany, 18, 24, 33, 34, 61, 89, 109,
205, 217, 228, 260, 261, 263, 264, 265,
273, 284, 285, 306, 337, 344, 347,
348, 384, 391, 397, 401, 402, 404,
4°5. 407. 413. 421, 552, 561, 571,
583, 586
Gerrara, 432, 439, 443
Gessenay, 148, 155
Ghadames, 607
Ghardaia, 431, 432, 433, 434, 435, 438,
439, 440, 443, 448, 450, 533

Ghent, 198
Gibloux, Mt., 580
Giornico, 175
Girgenti, 198
Givet, 279
Glane, 580
Glasgow, 399, 400
Gliere-de-Pralognan, 23
Glishorn, 93
Gorner Grat, 227
Gobi, 36
Gosehenen, 145
Gottingen, 206, 403
Gotthard, 113, 620
Gozzo, 96
Graisivaudan, 167
Grammont, 93
Granada, 79, 535, 536, 540
Grande Feiche, 23
Grand-Marais, 151, 152
Granges, 141, 233
Great Britain, 4, 57, 209, 273, 302, 306,
337, 39i, 396, 400, 401, 404, 407, 412,
413, 499
Great Lakes, 209, 212, 272
Greece, 95, 198, 217, 303, 323, 337, 597
Greenland, 232
Grenoble, 167
Grignon, 254
Grimisuat, 142
Grimsel, 326
Grindelwald, 131
Grisons, 76, 147, 187, 308
Grotto of the Dragon, 500
Griitli, 557
Gruyere, 144, 155
Gruyeres, 148, 140
Gsteig, 148, 155
Guadalajara, 189
Guadix, 79
Guanajuato, 374
Guatemala, 76, 606
Guemar, 423, 427, 428
Guerande, 109
Guil, 328
Guinea, 272
Guyenne, 543
Gyangtse, 188

Hacienda Pasaje, 457
Halle, 403, 405
Hamadan, 188
Hamburg, 181, 22}, 22=,, 347, 406, 407,
615
Hamish, 426, 442, 443
Han, 137
Hankow, 137

INDEX OF GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES

635

Hanover, 403
Hanyang, 137
Harrar, 77
Hartlepool, 397
Harz Mts., 80, 404, 541
Hauran, 97
Haut-Conches, 323
Haute-Isle, 78
Haut-Garonne, 144
Haut- Valais, 326
Havre, 412
Hawaii, 211, 284, 285, 499
Hebrides, 96
Heidelberg, 121
Heniaia, 614
Heracleion, 116
Herault, 93, 378
Hermon, Mt., 97
Hodna, 313
Holland, 24, 61, 260, 410, 578
Hong Kong, 209, 214
Honolulu, 413
Huancayo, 192
Huanchaco, 190
Huari, 497
Huasquina, 485
Huataconda, 485
Hudson, 92
Humboldt, California, 211
Hummling, 586
Hungary, 260, 265, 279, 306, 337, 413,
421, 545
Huynuni, 498
Hwangho, 254, 611
Iberia, 537
Iceland, 26, 89, 150
Icogne, 144
Illgraben, 141
Imerina, no, 272
Inca, 500
Incahuasi, 454, 457
India, 64, 166, 181, 188, 246, 250, 254,
260, 261, 264, 265, 270, 272, 274,
284, 285, 297, 316, 348, 360, 401,
4U, 545, 548, 572, 600, 617
Indo-China, 250, 268, 270, 348, 360,
600
Inn, 187, 586
Interlaken, 181
Intra, 75
Iowa, 463
Iquique, 486, 490
Iran, 190, 191, 275, 317, 380, 381, 435
Ireland, 96, 306, 547, 548, 549, 551
Irkutsk, 94
Iselle, 114
Iseran, 582

Isere, 167
Ispahan, 188
Istria, 303
Italy, 78, 92, 117, 185, 198, 217, 225,
238, 265, 273, 275, 286, 303, 306,
337, 516, 582, 591, 597, 615
Jaen, 79
Jaffa, 100
Jamaica, 210
Japan, 209, 254, 260, 268, 273, 274,
283, 293, 297, 412, 499, 513, 545,
571, 620
Jasper Forest, 346
Jauja, 192
Java, 50, 211, 268, 274, 281, 284, 285,
499, 513, 532, 600, 615
Jemappes, 557
Jerba, 535
Jerusalem, 95, 165, 198
Johannesburg, n, 199
Jordane, 448
Judea, 165, 545
Juf, 155
Jura, 60, 514, 580
Kabul, 188
Kabylia, 535
Kalahari, 4
Kalgoorlie,376
Kaligh, 196
Karst, 335
Kashmir, 239
Kentucky, 390
Keweenau Point, 51
Key West, 213
Kharguch, 432
Khenchela, 319
Kirghiz Steppe, 303
Kirin, 92
Konigsee, 347
Korea, 268, 273
Korosko, 105, 131
Kotel, 93
Koweit, 552
Kuinine, 423, 425, 427
Kursk, 83
Laghuat, 423, 535
Lago di Garda, 92, 118, 290
Lahn, 173
Lahore, 182
La Mure, 167
Lancashire, 398
Lancaster, 399
Lancey, 167
Landes, 341
Langres, 596

636

INDEX OF GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES

Langtaufererthal, 21
Languedoc, 301, 506
La Paz, 169, 190, 193, 497
Lapland. 50
La Puebla, 500
La Tine, 149
Lauenen, 148
Laupen, 167
Laurentides Park, 346
Lausanne, 134, 273, 387
Lavoir, 23
Lavorgo, 175
Lebanon, Mt., 49, 95
Lebe, 351, 352, 356
Leeds, 398
Leicester, 398
Leipzig, 403, 404
Le Mont Dore, 181, 601
Lens, 142, 144, 557
Lenta, 23
Leon, 189, 565
Les Baux, 113
Les Marches, 558
Les Moulins, 149
Les Ponts, 558
Les Traverses, 558
Levallois, 388
Lhasa, 115, 188
Lichana, 181
Liguria, 95, 121, 135
Ligurian Appenines, 228
Limagne, 601
Limousin, 262
Lipari Islands, 513
Lisbon, 223, 606
Liverpool, 381, 399, 401
Loa River, 485
Lotschberg, 113
Lotschenthal, 557
Loire, 370, 596
Lorn River, 366
Lombardy, 121, 297
Lonato, 561
London, 54, 184, 196, 197, 207, 214,
225, 280, 379, 388, 389, 400, 401,
410, 543, 572, 615, 618
Long Island, 451
Lorca, 533, 534
Lorraine, 19, 382
Lot-et-Garorme, 13
Louisiana, 285
Lucca, 583
Lucerne, 179, 555, 557
Lu, 155
Liibeck, 186, 206
Lutetia, 616
Luxemburg, 179
Luxor, 126

Lyons, 167, 168, 181, 225
Macaya, 491
Machacamarca, 497
Madagascar, no, 272, 606
Madeira, 112
Madeira Islands, 281
Madras, 182
Madrid, 322
Magadino, 175
Magdeburg, 403
Magellan, 29
Maggiore, Lake, 75, 135, 176
Mahon, 509, 510, 511
Majorca, 56, 500, 501, 504, 505, 506,
507, 508, 594-595
Malabar, 268
Malay Peninsula, 369
Malplaquet, 557
Malta, 513
Manacor, 500, 501, 503, 505
Manchester, 381, 388, 398, 399, 401,
4H, 545
Manchuria, 92
Mangeis, Lake, 365
Manina, 485
Manosque, 378
Marnia, 319
Marrakesh, 435
Marseilles, 411, 504, 561
Martigny, 141, 233
Martinique, 606
Maryland, 399
Masdavoi, 163
Massachusetts, 561
Matilla, 490
Maure, 378
Mauriac, 20
Maurienne, 581, 582
Mauritius, 336
Mbomi, 351
Mchounech, 309
Mecca, 552
Mecheria, 319
Medina, 309
Medinet, 129
Mediterranean, 26, 50, 86, 90, 94, 95,
100, 137, 193, 216, 218, 221, 225,
233, 237, 246, 275, 277, 297, 301,
303, 307, 317, 336, 391, 508, 584,
5?o, 591, 595, 597, 598, 617
Meiringen, 94
Melika, 432, 439, 442, 443
Melino, 163
Menehia, oasis of, 435
Mentone, 179
Mersey, 399
Mesopotamia, 250, 275, 317

IXDEX OF GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES

637

Messina, 336, 507, 606, 618
Metlili, 438, 439, 442, 443, 444
MetomSe, 365
Metz, 181
Mexico, 34, 189, 190, 191, 192, 194,
238, 260, 266, 277, 336, 373, 502
Mexico, Gulf of, 191, 210, 266, 272, 273
Michigan, 92
Michoacan, 373
Middlesborough, Kentucky, 390
Miege, 142
Milan, 199
Minden, 403
Minnesota, 51, 334
Mino-ca, 56, 508-512
Missanga, 352, 365
Mississippi River, 10, 212, 266, 267,
272. 293, 401
Missouri River, 212
Modane, 21, 23
Modica, 336
Molines, 328
Mollendo, 195, 435
Monaco, 577
Mongolia. 237, 303, 317, 528
Montana, France, 142, 144
Montbovon, 148
Montceau-Blanzy, 390, 409
Mont Dore, Le, 601
Mo.itlugon, 200, 204
Montreux, 134
Morat, Lake, 580
Moravia, 279
Morbihan, 93
Morges, 134
Morion, 23
Morlaix, 198
Morocco, 260, 276, 303, 435, 603
Morvan, 19, 409, 514
Moscow, 83, 186, 199
Moselle, 173
Moudon, 580
Mozambique, 272
Msila, 534, 537
Miilde, 403
Miilhausen, 225
Minister, 403
Munich, 80, 223, 225, 542, 586
Muotta, 585
Murat, 31
Murcia, 534
Murray Basin, 370
Mzab, 118, 328, 416, 417, 422, 431,
432, 433, 434-447, 593

Namur, 199
Naples, 116, ic
Narvik, 227

1, 609

Natal, 281
Natisone, 161
Nazareth, 544, 545
Nebraska, 334
Neckar, 120
Neerwinden, 557
Nefzaua, 435
Neirivue, 93, 94
Netherlands, 284, 285, 337, 596, 611
Neuchatel, Lake, 345, 580
Newcastle, 379, 388, 390, 397, 399,
400, 410, 411, 412
New England, 10
New Guinea, 588
New Hampshire, 448
New Jersey, 21
New Mexico, 43, 96, 98, 317
Newport News, 209
New South Wales, 375, 410
New York, 65, 92, 263
New York City, 181, 197, 209, 214,
400, 490, 542, 543, 576, 609, 615
New Zealand, 227, 260, 282
Nice, 196
Niger, 286
Nile, 101, 105, 107, 108, 122, 126,
272, 421, 437, 607, 610, 616
Njole, 352, 353, 354, 355, 357, 358,
363, 366
Nkam, 352
Nome, 376
Norfolk, 211
Normandy, 302
North America, 92, 218, 227, 237, 246,
255, 272, 277, 279, 346
North Dakota, 264
North Sea, 26, 223, 406, 549, 611
Norway, 59, 84, 91, 94, no, 139, 152,
239, 260, 264, 295, 337, 344, 400,
549, 551, 571
Novara, 228
Ntem, 367
Nubea, 105, 131
Nuestra Senora de Lluch, 507
Nuremberg, 116, 129, 198, 206
Nyon, 134
Nzum, 352, 356
Obergestelen, 145
Oceania, 546
Oder, 405
Odessa, 199
Oetzthal, 21
Ofoten Fjord, 227
Ogowe River, 351, 352, 354, 355, 358,
365
Oise, 169, 408, 409
Oker, 206

638

INDEX OF GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES

Oklahoma, 394, 395
Oldham, 399
Omsk, 223
Ontario, 93, 176
Oran, 316, 445, 509
Orival, 78
Orleanville, 436
Oroya, 190, 195
Orsieres, 92
Ortygia, 558
Oruro, 190, 193, 496, 497
Osnabruch, 403
Otombi Mts., 351, 353
Ouled-Djellah, 314
Ourcq, 78
Ourmes, 418, 425, 427
Oxford, 398
Pacific Islands, 524, 615
Pacific Ocean, 410
Paisley, 400
Palestine, 97, 118, 272, 275, 303, 544
Pallanza, 75
Palma, 500, 502, 504, 505, 506, 507
Palm Beach, 181
Palmyra, 607
Pamir, 239
Panama, 76, 189, 212, 221, 223
Paraguay, 238
Pareys, 506
Paringu Mts., 88, 308
Paris, 12, 53, 116, 169, 1,76, 182, 197,
199, 207, 223, 254, 259, 288, 303,
329, 354, 387, 388, 389, 400, 408,
409, 448, 542, 543, 558, 563, 565,
576, 596, 609, 610, 611, 614, 615,
616
Pasadena, 1 1
Pasaje, 454, 459
Pas-de-Calais, 51, 390, 408
Passy, 388
Patagonia, 553
Patapampa, 454
Paterson, 168
Payerne, 580
Pays d'En-Haut, 76, 149
Payta, 488
Pearl River, 211
Pekin, 593
Pelee, Mt., 607
Peloponnesus, 275
Pennsylvania, 10, 92, 369
Pensacola, 209
Perim, 411
Persia, 188, 217
Peru, 76, 89, 190, 191, 192, 193, 194,
273, 285, 331, 412, 435, 456, 459,
476, 496

Petoskey, 341
Petra, 500
Petrograd, 94, 116, 199, 225, 329
Phari, 188
Philadelphia, 209
Philippeville, 427
Philippines, 288
Pica, 490, 491
Picardy, 223
Piedmont Belt, United States, 19
Pisa, 273
Pisagua, 485, 486
Pittsburgh, 368
Piura, 273
Planeze, 98
Planfayon, 93, 94
Pleaux, 20
Po River, 100, 225, 266, 272, 273, 326,
611
Podeze, 387
Poland, 260, 405, 525, 561
Pollensa, 503, 505
Polset, valley of, 2 1
Polynesia, 513
Pomerania, 206
Pompeii, 113
Pont-en-Royans, 181
Pontet, 558
Pont-Gueraud, 93
Poopo, Lake, 492, 497, 498
Popayan, 192
Portland, Maine, 209, 211
Porto Rico, 285
Portugal, 23, 24, 275, 277, 281, 322
Port Vendres, 504
Potosi, 190, 193, 373
Potsdam, 116
Prague, 199
Praz, 21
Preston, 399
Pripet marshes, 116
Provence, 95, 297, 302, 303, 506, 597,
606
Prussia, 263, 296, 542
Pruth, 525 '
Puebla, Baleares, 189
Puebla, Mexico, 594
Pueblo, Colorado, 168
Puerto Colon, 505
Puget-Theniers, 31
Puig Major, 500
Puna de Atacama, 193
Puno, 190, 195
Puquiura, 467
Puy-de-D6me, 93
Puys, 601
Puys-en-Velay, 141, 143
Pyrenees, 188, 338

INDEX OF GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES

639

Quebec, 173
Queyras, 327, 328
Quisma, 485
Quito, 192, 195
Rainier, Mt., 346
Rainy River, 176
Rambouillet, 93
Randa, 115
Randogne, 142
Ranfluh, 152
Rangoon, 274
Raon-1'Etape, 168
Ratisbon, 198, 206
Ravenna, 11
Reckingen, 134
Red Sea, 176, 188, 216, 411, 552, 607
Resia, 160
Reunion, 336, 344, 526, 577
Reuss, 555
Rheims, 596
Rhine, 121, 173, 187, 279, 403, 405, 603
Rhinelands, 228
Rhodope, 303
Rhone, 133, 139, 141, 144, 145, 233,
.276, 323, 324, 325, 326, 596, 610
Riom, 20
Rio Tinto, 369
Riviera, 225
Roche-la-Moliere, 379
Rocky Mts., 113, 195, 346, 451
Romanche, 167
Rome, 114, 121, 186, 558, 590
Roskilde, 596, 597
Rostoff, 577
Rothaar, 404
Roubaix, 185
Rouen, 200, 412
Rougemont, 148
Roumania, 238, 260, 265, 303, 306, 335,
337, 545
Rudolf, Lake, 43
Rtiderswyl, 152
Riidlingen, 152
Ruhr Basin, 393
Russia, 50, 79, 80, 83, 86, 89, 92, 112,
116, 117, 201, 241, 255, 256, 259,
260, 263, 264, 265, 279, 284, 285,
295, 3°6, 307, 329, 334, 336, 337,
338, 343, 413, 5i6, 532, 545, 554,
612, 619, 620
Ruthymno, 116
Saale, 403, 405
Saar, 404
Saas-Grund, 117
Sahara, 36, 55, 232, 236, 237, 243, 264,
307, 3H. 3H, 317, 321, 353, 417,
419, 423, 430, 448, 451, 546, 578

Saharan Atlas, 312
Saharan hamada, 47
Saigon, 274
Saint-Andre\ 579
Saint-Aubin, 579
Saint-Berain, 579
Saint Bernard, 553, 554
Saint-Blin, 579
Saint-Broing, 579
Saint-Etienne, 409, 579
Saint-Flour, 20, 98
Saint-Gaudens, 144
Saint-Georges, 579
Saint-Germain, 116, 579
Saint-Germain-en-Laye, 83
Saint Gotthard, 216, 225, 411
Saint Helena, 336
Saint-Hilaire, 579
Saint-Jean, 579
Saint-Julien, 579
Saint-Laurent, 579
St. Louis, 367
Saint-Martin, 579
Saint-Michel, 579
Saint- Moritz, 155
St. Nicholas, 115
Saint-Pe\ 579
Saint Pere, 579
Saint-Pierre, 579
Saint-Pons, 93
Saint-Saturnin, 579
Saint-Sernin, 75, 579
Saint-Sorlin, 579
Salcantay, 463
Salford, 399
Salo, 117, 118, 119
Salta, 462, 482
Samkita, 351, 367
Sana, 188
San Bartolomeo, 92
Sanef, 310
San Francisco, 412, 413, 606, 618
San Luis, 510
San Luis Potosi, 189
San Pedro, 479
San Remp, 198
Santa Catalina, 505
Santa F^, Argentina, 260
Santa F6 Trail, 113
Santa Rosa de los Osos, 192
Santiago, 211
Sa&ne, 596
Sao Paulo, 613
Saragossa, 322
Sardinia, 96
Sarine, 132, 146, 147, 148, 157, 167,
179, 58o
Sarthe, 93

640

INDEX OF GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES

Sauerland, 404
Saulxures, 168
Savannah, 381
Saviese, 142
Savona, 421
Savoy, 21, 23, 92, 553, 582
Saxony, 62, 228, 233, 263, 279, 403,
404,^ 542_
Scandinavia, 10, 93
Schwarzenwasserthal, 153
Schwyz, 555
Scotland, 10, 153, 260, 302, 396, 399,
549
Seattle, n
Seine, 409, 610
vSelkingen, 326
Selva, 503
Selvapiana, 163
Selzach, 92
Sempach, 557
Seneffe, 557
Senegal, 352, 367
Senones, 168
Separayo, 497
Sequoia Park, 346
Serbia, 306
Severn, 381, 401
Sevilla, 186
Shanghai, 39
Sharon, 100
Shebka, 416, 431, 432, 448
Sheriff, 534
Shensi, 335
Shigatze, 188
Shot-el-Jerid, 417
Shot Melrir, 416, 419
Shrewsbury, 398
Shropshire, 398
Siam, 274
Siberia, 47, 83, 112, 192, 216, 223, 241,
334, 335, 343, 593
Sicily, 95, 281, 303, 336, 369, 499
Sicuani, 190, 192
Sidi-Aoun, 425
Sidi-bel-Abbes, 534
Sidi-Yaya, oasis of, 434
Sidon, 595
Sierre, 141, 142
Silesia, 92, 281, 403, 404, 405
Silvella, 163
Simplon, 620
Singapore, 223
Sion, 141, 143, 233
Sliven, 93
Socaire, 478
Soiroccocha, 463
Solferino, 561
Soller, 502, 505, 506

Soncor, 478
Soray, 463
Sousse, 427
South Africa, 11, 39, 63, 246, 260, 277,
279, 344, 346, 412
South America, 192, 195, 210, 219,
227, 274, 277, 453, 454, 485
South Dakota, 264
Spain, 24, 43, 61, 95, 114, 198, 253,
273, 275, 281, 285, 302, 303, 306,
322, 333, 337, 402, 506, 595, 597,
612, 620
Spree, 406
Staffordshire, 397
Stanz, 557
Stargard, 206
Steenquerque, 557
Steinhaus, 326
Stockholm, 347, 558
Stockton, 381, 397
Straits Settlements, 274
Strassburg, 121, 181
Stuttgart, 347
Sucre, 190
Sudan, 4, 77, 236, 246, 291, 292, 295,
546
Sudetes, 405
Suez Canal, 101, 176, 216, 221, 223
Suf, 118, 328, 416, 417-424, 426-430,
529, 593
Suhr, 92
Sumatra, 77, 335
Sutherland, 561
Swansea, 399
Sweden, 239, 260, 337, 340, 347, 551,
573
Switzerland, 59, 74, 78, 84, 90, 91, 92,
93, 117, n8. 122, 131, 133, 134, 179,
198, 227, 254, 284, 295, 323, 337,
340, 347, 348, 349, 400, 554, 556,
558, 567, 583, 600, 609, 610, 615
Syracuse, 599
Syria, 272, 303, 595
Tahammamt, 309
Tahiti, 606
Taibet-el-Gueblia, 425
Taiwan, 284
Talagonga, 352, 355
Tampa, 211
Tarentaise, 582
Tarapaca, 485-491, 493, 494
Tarma, 192
Tarnowitz, 390
Tauern, 225
Tees, 397
Teheran, 188
Tell Atlas, 312, 313, 314, 315, 320, 445

INDEX OF GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES

641

Terra di Bari, 96
Terra d'Otranto, 96
Territet, 181
Tessin, 175
Tevinguiche, 479
Tewfik, Port, 176
Texas, 273, 369
Thessaly, 302
Thomery, 291
Thun, 153, 179
Thusy, 167
Tibet, 112, 115, 239, 242, 300, 301,
.521, 545
Ticino, 92
Tidikelt, 435
Tilamonte, 478
Timbuctoo, 587
Titicaca, 492
Toconao, 478, 481
Tocopilla, 486
Tola, 83
Toledo, 198
Tonkin, 297, 378 ,
Torre, 161
Tortosa, 535, 536
Toulouse, 75, 112, 186, 596
Tours, 78
Tozer, 535, 536
Transvaal, 620
Transylvania, 308
Trent, 199
Trieste, 225
Trondhjem, 93
Tsang Po, 188
Tsarskoe-Selo, 1 16
Tuat, 435, 587
Tugurt, 416, 418
Tunis, 95, 276, 315, 423, 424, 427,435,
43.6.
Tunisia, 303
Turkestan, 293, 317, 348
Turkey, 266
Tyne, 397
Tyre, 595
Tyrol, 93, 288
Uechtland, 153
Uindo, 366, 367
Ulrichen, 326
United Kingdom, 32, 391, 396, 549, 552
United States, 19, 48, 52, 64, 65, 92,
114, 168, 210, 212, 213, 238, 255,
256, 257, 260,-261, 263, 264, 265,
267, 273, 284, 285, 292, 293, 295,
303, 306, 334, 335, 336, 337, 341,
343, 346, 368, 369. 376, 391, 4",
412, 413, 571, 572, 588, 619
Ural, 112

Uri, 555 .
Urir, oasis of, 434
Urubamba, 461
Uruguay, 238, 306
Uyuni, 497
Valais, 83, 90, 93, 187, 323, 332, 553,
554
Val Champex, 92
Val Cluoza, 348
Val d'Anniviers, 323, 324, 328
Val d'Isere, 582
Valencia, 24, 100, 273, 504, 534, 537,
540
Valensole, 277
Valldemosa, 506
Valle de Lerma, 463
Vallenar, 474
Vallonet, 23
Vallussiere, forest of, 93
Valserthal, 21
Vancouver, 209
Vanil des Arches, 93
Vantadei, 163
Var, 378
Varese, 135
Vaud, 288, 296, 580
Velay, 601, 602
Venetia, 157
Venice, 181, 217
Venthdne, 142
Ventimiglia, 179, 225
Vera Cruz, 191
Vercelli, 228
Vercors, 181
Versailles, 116, 186
Vesuvius, 607, 609
Vevey, 134
Veyras, 142X
Victoria, 375
Vienna, 176, 199, 223, 389, 400
Vierwaldstattersee, 555, 557
Vilaine, 279
Vilcapampa, 454, 456, 463, 465, 466
Villars, 21
Virginia, 399
Visp, 115, 141
Vistula, 405, 525
Vladivostok, 223
Volga, 112
Vosges, 75, 514
Wadai, 601
Wadi-Halfa, 107
Wad Rir, 416, 417, 431
Wad Suf, 419
Wales, 16, 396, 398, 399, 407, 412

642

INDEX OF GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES

Wallachia, 309
Wargla, 416, 434, 436
Warsaw, 185, 223
Warwick, 398
Wasserburg, 586
Waterloo, 557
Weser, 228
West Indies, 211, 281, 285
Westphalia, 51, 152, 228, 403, 404
Whitney, Mt., 346
Wilseder, 347
Winnipeg, 11
Wolfenbuttel, 116
Wolverhampton, 398
Wood's Hole, 577
Worcester, 398
Wuchang, 137

Yakutsk, 58
Yangtse, 137
Yaroslav, 83
Yellowstone National Park, 346
Yemen, 188, 435, 547
York, 398
Yorkshire, 398
Yosemite National Park, 346
Yverdon, 580
Zacatecas, 373, 374
Zeeland, 596
Zermatt, 115, 181
Zernez, 348
Z'goum, 425, 427
Ziban, 179, 421, 535
Zurich, Lake, 179

INDEX OF AUTHORS

Accardo, F., 443
Aftalion, A., 295
Ahlenius, 154
Ahlquist, Aug., 75
Alfassa, Georges, 554
Almeida, P. Camena d', 381
Amat, Dr. Ch., 416, 431, 433, 435, 439,
443, 445, 446, 447
Ammann, A., 585
Amundsen, Captain Roald, 77
Andreades, A., 614
Andree, Karl, 577
Andree, Richard, 370, 588
Angot, A., 68
Ankermann, Bernard, 521
Ardouin, Dumazet, 561
Arenburg, Prince Auguste d', 101, 577
Aristotle, 29, 32
Arque, Louis, 165
Auerbach, A., 154
Auzias-Turenne, 374
Auzou, Emile, 109, no
Avenel, Vicomte d', 197
Aymard, Captain, 445

Bachmann, C, 267
Baker, 0. E., .230, 253, 262, 264, 266,
267, 274, 275, 277, 283, 292, 303
Balfour, J. B., 17, 230
Ballore, Montessus de, 570
Barnes, 17
Barrat, Charles, 59
Barre, Commandant, 570
Bartholomew, J. G., 280, 284, 570, 572
Baschin, Otto, 429
Basset, Rene, 446
Bastian, A., 76
Bauer, Stephen, 57,3
Baulig, H., 227
Beaumont, Elie de, 121
Becker, F., 556
Beefier, Joseph, 583
Behm, 154
Bengtson, N. A., 253
Benoist, Charles, 608
Benoit-Levy, Georges, 542
Berard, Madame V., 584
Berard, Victor, 401, 551, 565, 584, 585,
599
Berget, A., 280
Berghaus, 3

Bergson, Henri, 598
Bernard, Augustin, 56, 311, 313, 314,
315, 316, 317, 318, 319, 320, 416,
431, 446, 602
Bernegg, Sprecher von, 1 54
Bertaux, E., 97, 583, 585
Bertholon, Dr., 78 '
Berthoud, L., 579
Bertillon, Dr., 542
Bertrand, Jean, 577
Besson, Marius, 84
Bianchi, F., 134, 135
Bieler-Chatelan, Th., 233
Biermann, Charles, 144, 323, 327
Blache, P. Vidal de la, 24, 25, 26, 30,
64, 223, 246, 256, 382, 514, 515, 516,
588, 596, 599
Blanchard, Raoul, 86, 94, 134, 167,
217, 328, 516, 572
Blanchet, Paul, 427, 434, 436, 441
Blondel, Georges, 89, 586, 587
Bottger, Hugo, 404
Boguslawski, 34
Boileau, 45
Boman, Eric, 194, 370
Bonmariage, Dr., 577
Bonnet, Henri, 576
Borel, 177
Boule, Marcellin, 20
Boutmy, 396
Bowman, Isaiah, 212, 344, 453
Boysen, 58
Bramante, 121
Brand, J. E. Van Someren, 247, 259
Brault, Dr. J., 577
Braun, G., 9
Brenier, H., 284
Bresson, Henri, 59
Briggs, Lyman J., 56
BrighanvA. P., 45, 257
Broillet, Fred, 76
Brooks, E. C, 292
Brown, R. M., 612
Bruckner, Ed., 147, 562
Brunhes, Bernard, 338, 349
Brunhes, Jean, 45, 56, 60, 96, 102, 128,
129, 208, 233, 236, 284, 287, 313,
315, 317, 429, 434, 450, 509, 521,
527, 533. 573, 603, 612
Bruun, D., 78
Bruyere, La, 45
Bryce, Lord, 44, 588

643

644

INDEX OF AUTHORS

Bucher, Karl, 176, 177, 178
Busson, H., 287
Cagnat, R., 114
Cambon, J., 443
Candolle, A. de, 235, 247, 272
Carpentier, J., 306
Caullery, Maurice, 18, 577
Cauvet, Captain, 436, 443
Chaix, Emile, 240
Chamberlain, Joseph, 552
Chandler, S. E., 247
Chantriot, 516
Charles-Roux, J., '221
Charlet, Lieutenant, 416
Chatel, 274
Chaumeix, Andre, 583
Chenivesse, Father, 447
Chetioui ben Slimane, Si Mohammed,
439
Chevalier, Auguste, 287
Chevrillon, 131
Chipiez, 96
Chisholm, George G., 199, 213, 256,
259
Chodat, R., 17, 507, 620
Chudeau, R., 243
Chuquet, 561
Cicero, 552
Clements, F. E., 17, 230, 576
Clerget, Pierre, 134, 187, 277, 280, 292,
300, 411, 572
Clouzot, Etienne, 196, 204, 589
Collot, 378
Colson, L., 274
Coulter, 17
Cowan, T. W., 281
Cowles, 17
Coyne, A., 416, 446
Crequi-Montfort, G. de, 194
Cunisset-Carnot, 343
Curzon, Lord, 558
Cuvier, 121
Cvijic, 154
Dalemont, J., 60
David, J. EL, 398
Davis, W. M., 9, 10
Decoppet, Professor, 337
Deherain, Henri, 579, 589
Deherain, P. P., 284
Demangeon, A., 57, 165, 516, 561
Demenge, E., 382
Demolin, Edmond, 598
Deniker, J., 351, 587
Denis, Pierre, 256
Dereims, A., 194, 195
Desbussions, Leon, 323

Dohme, 75
Dominian, Leon, 587
Dondlinger, 253
Dowd, Jerome, 351
Drude, Oscar, 17, 235
Dubois, Louis Paul, 547
Dubois, Marcel, 29, 208, 334, 595
Dubrouillet, Father, 531
Ducamp, R., 336
Dugast, 276
Dunstan, W. R., 295
Dupuy, Paul, 196, 199
Durieu, Joseph, 517
Duveyrier, 416, 438, 447
Eberstadt, Rud., 543
Eckardt, W. R., 571
Eckert, Max, 219, 306, 512
Edmont, E., 579
Egerer, Ernst, 197
Egli, 579
Engelbrecht, 571
Eprevier, Captain de 1', 416, 447
Eratosthenes, 29, 30
Erdeljanovic, Joyan, 154
Ettmayer, von, 579
Fach, Jacques, 599
Famenne, 516
Fawcett, William, 287
Feliu, 416
Ferrero, Guglielmo, 590, 596
Finch, V. C, 230, 253, 262, 264, 266,
267, 274, 275, 277, 283, 292, 303
Fischer, Theobald, 23, 24, 33, 97,
236, 275, 276, 422, 435, 558, 577
Flach, Jacques, 78, 587, 589
Flahault, Ch., 17, 18, 234
Flamant, G. B. AL, 435
Fliickiger, Otto, 157
Forel, F. A., 134, 344
Foville, A. de, 12, 13, 55, 144, 215, 376
Fraissaingea, Louis, 208
Fraunberger, 69
Freeman, W. G., 247
Fribourg, Andre, 302, 322
Friedel, J., 547
Friedrich, Ernst, 31, 154, 331, 333, 58S
Fritz, J., 178
Froidevaux, H., 611
Friih, J., 78, 558, 570
Gaillard, E., 305
Gain, Edmond, 236
Gallois, L., 514, 553, 587
Gariel, Georges, 573
Gamier, Ch., 585
Gascuel, Lieutenant, 428
Gasparin, de, 299

INDEX OF AUTHORS

645

Gautier, E. F., 243, 387, 435, 445, 587
Gay, Jules, 383
Geerligs, H. C. Prinsen, 283
Geikie, Sir Archibald, 28
Genoud, Leon, 275
Genthe, Martha Krug, 142
George, H. B., 45
Germain, Louis, 570
Gibbon, 44
Gide, Charles, 542
Giering, 254
Gillieron, J., 579
Girardin, Paul, 21, 53, 115, 168, 351,
554, 5«2, 589
Girault, Arthur, 589
Giron, Dr. Joseph, 322
Gladbach, 76
Glangeaud, Ph., 601
Gobet, Louis, 116
Goetz, W., 216
Gonnard, R., 300, 589
Goyau, G., 114
Gradmann, Robert, 246, 589
Grandeau, L., 259
Grandidier, G., 589
Grange, E. Senechal de la, 194
Gravelius, Professor, 495
Gregoire, Achille, 256, 292
Gren^dan, J. Du Plessis de, 571
Griffith, 253
Grisebach, 235
Groffier, V., 300
Groom, Percy, 17, 230
Gruner, E., 409
Grund, A., 154, 585
Gunther, G., 30
Guernier, Charles, 563
Guizot, 44
Gulliver, F. P., 176
Guyot, Arnold, 30
Guyot, Yves, 212
Haberlandt, 56
Hahn, Edward, 18, 274, 307, 547, 615
Hahn, Fr., 348
Hall, Frederick S., 572, 573
Halle, von, 573
Haltenberger, M., 218
Hann, 34, 68
Hanotaux, Gabriel, 59
Hansen, Andr. M., 550
Hanssen, Pierre, 146, 147, 150, 155
Hantzsch, 33
Hardy, M. E., 230
Harnack, Adolf, 590
Harrison, Leslie, 273
Haskin, 221
Hassert, Kurt, 178

Hassinger, Hugo, 196
Haug, Emile, 378, 570
Hauser, H., 213, 374, 572, 596
Hauslik, Erwin, 589
Haussonville, Count d', 543
Heiderich, Franz, 577
Heilprin, Angelo, 230
Heim, 34
Heinemann, 228
Helm, Victor, 247
Helmholt, Hans F., 33, 44, 588
Henard, Eug., 207
Hennebicq, Leon, 567, 604
Herbertson, F. D., 35-
Herbertson, O. J., 35
Herndon, Lewis, 372
Herodotus, 32
Hettner, Alfred, i8>, 30, 79, m, 154,
168, 169, 179, 215, 216, 614
Hilgard, E. W, 232, 345
Hippocrates, 29, 32
Hirschfeld, G., 584
Hitier, Henri, 210, 323
Hoegbom, 154
Hofer, Th. E., 348
Holdich, Colonel Sir Thomas H., 553
Homer, 584
Hooker, Sir Joseph, 335, 336
Hornaday, W. T., 341
Hotz, 254
Hubbard, G. D., 369
Hubert, Paul, 287
Hiickel, G. A., 178, 215, 217, 223
Hugo, Victor, 121
Huguet, Dr. J., 416, 440, 446
Humboldt, Alexander von, 16, 30, 247
Hunt, 253
Huntington, Ellsworth, 197, 307, 527,
590
Hunziker, J., 76
Idoux, M., 446
Jacobi, Arnold, 18, 570
Janet, 587
Jecklin, C, 76
Jefferson, Mark, 73, 178, 196, 389, 401
Jevons, W. Stanley, 412
Joanne, 579
Johnson, E. R., 221
Johnson, W. H., 286
Jonghe, Ed. de, 529
Jordan, D. S., 344
Joubin, L., 570
Juillerat, Paul, 577
Jullian, Camille, 204, 589
Jumelle, H., 274
Jus, H., 419

646

INDEX OF AUTHORS

Kaindl, Raimund Friedrich, 578
Karsten, G., 247
Kassner, K, 95
Kemmann, 400
Khaldoun, Ibn, 446
Kiessling, M., 30
Kilian, W, 21
King, F. H., 335
Kirchhof, A., 23, 30
Klar, Max, 582
Klunziger, C. B., 105
Knapp, 177
Konig, A., 416
Koppen, W. P., 234, 235, 236, 238,
239, 240, 243, 246, 296
Kohl, J. G., 32, 117, 172, 370
Kovalewsky, Maxime, 588
Kraus, Alois, 35, 79
Krauske, Marie, 572
Krummel, 34
Kumaniecki, Kasimir Ladislaus, 284
Labb£, Paul, 329
La Bruyere, 45
Lacroix, N., 311, 313, 314, 315, 316,
317, 3i8, 319, 321, 416, 431, 435
Lair, Maurice, 341
Lalande, Philibert, 78
Laloy, Dr. L., 194, 370
Lamy-Torrillon, G., 340
Lane, E. W., 105
Langhans, Paul, 214
Lapparent, A. de, 10, 514, 570
Largeau, 416
Launay, L. de, 374, 376, 570
Laurent, Th., 382
Laveran, A., 577
Lavisse, 588
Leclerc, Max, 390, 396
Lecq, 276
Lefevre, Andr<5, 587
Lehmann, Louis, 325
Lehmann, Otto, 307
Lejeune, E., 340
Lenschau, Th., 221
Le Play, F., 517, 540, 541, 551
Le Roy, Mgr., 351
Leroy-Beaulieu, Paul, 573, 576, 588,
589
Lesne, P., 570
Levainville, Captain J., 516, 572, 579
Levasseur, E., 215, 260, 295
Linth, Escher von der, 145
Liotard, 351
Lowl, 21
Longnon, A., 579
Loomis, 68
Loze, E., 399, 400, 401

Luchaire, 589
Lugeon, Maurice, 133, 134, 142
Macara, C. W., 295
MacDonald, W., 56
Machat, J., 259
Mackenzie, 563
Mackinder, H. J., 28, 566
MacRitchie, David, 218
Magnus, Hagbart, 139, 140
Mahler, Richard, 76
Maine, Sumner, 573
Malthus, 573, 576
Mantoux, Paul, 396, 401
Maranelli, Carlo, 97
Margerie, E. de, 8
Margerie, Maxime de, 221
Marggraf, 281
Marignan, A., 84
Marinelli, Olinto, 154, 157, 161, 162,
163, 532
Markham, Sir Clements R., 28
Maroussem, Pierre de, 517
Martel, E. A., 500
Martin, CamiUe, 178
Martinet, G., 250
Martiniere, de la, 435
Martonne, Em. de, 3, 10, 88, 154, 308,
578
Martrou, Father Louis, 350, 351, 362,
529
Mason, O. T., 228
Masqueray, Emile, 309, 310, 416, 446
Masson, Professor Paul, 565
Mater, Andre, 587
Matlakowski, M. W., 75
Matruchot, L., 579
Mayr, Georg von, 176, 177, 542
Meitzen, August, 586, 587
Melard, A., 337
Mendelssohn, G. B., 32
Menegaux, A., 300
Mercier, L., 292
Merlin, Governor General, 531
Merveilleux, Dr. G., 577
Mesnil, F., 577
Metin, Albert, 181, 330, 573
Meuriot, P., 176, 542
Michel- Angelo, 121
Michelet, 45, 587
Michotte, P., 516
Mill, Hugh Robert, 2 1 3
Mill, John Stuart, 573,' 576
Monsegur, Com. A., 424
Montelius, O., 585
Morci, L., 92
M orris, William, 182
Moszkowski, M., 77

INDEX OF AUTHORS

647

Motley, 44
Motylinski, A. de C, 439
Moysset, Henri, 552
Miiller, Robert, 307
Nadaillac, Marquis de, 77
Nagel, J. W., 582
Napoleon, 567
Nepper, J., 273
Neumann, 35
Newbigin, M. I., 2^0
Newell, F. H., 56, 314
Nogaro, Bertrand, 376
Nussbaum, F., 153
Oberhummer, Eugen, 178
Oldham, Yule, 399
Oppel, Alwin, 267, 292
Ostwald, 349
Overbegh, Cyr. Van, 529
Palacky, J., 570
Pampanini, Renato, 620
Parat, Abbe, 78
Partsch, J., 35, 223, 572
Parville, H. de, 383
Payen, Edouard, 169
Pelet, Paul, 416, 417
Penck, Albrecht, 34, 214, 558, 562, 569
Perrin, E. Sainte-Marie, 547
Perrot, Em., 340
Perrot, Georges, 96, 116
Perruehot, L., 303, 340
Pervinquiere, L., 424
Peschel, Oskar, 30
Petermann, Th., 177
Philippson, A., 9
Pinon, Rene, 552, 589
Pirenne, 589
Pittard, Eugene, 332, 527
Plato, 137,
Poole, J. Stanley, 105
Pourcel, A., 382
Prescott, 44
Prestwich, 54
Price, 400
Prins, Pierre, 78
Prinzinger, August, 578
Privat-Deschanel, Paul, 55, 75, 153,
305, 320
Proost, A., 231, 571
Ptolemy, 29
Quatrefages, A. de, 524
Rabot, 77, 154, 218, 239, 338, 344
Racine, 45

Raffalovich, Arthur, 214
Rahn, 75
Rambaud, Jacques, 589
Ratzel, Friedrich, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35,
57, 65, in, 117, 154, 176, 177, 178,
187, 197, 215, 216, 239, 336, 345,
532, 59i, 600, 601, 613, 619
Raveneau, Louis, 3, 117
Ravn, 154
Reau, 284
Reclus, Elisee, 30, 45, 193, 271, 331,
341, 372, 389, 611 "
Reclus, On&ime, 271, 611
Reinach, Theodore, 587
Reinhardt, L., 247
Ren£, Henry, 587
Ricardo, 573, 576
Ricchieri, G., 336
Ricek, L. G., 198
Richthofen, Baron Ferdinand von,
.28, 33, 34, 215, 521
Rietschel, 589
Riis, Jacob, 543, 576
Rikli, M., 232
Ripley, William Z., 587
Ritter, Karl, 30, 32, 35, 528
Riviere, 276
Rode, F., 259
Rogers, Thorold, 396
Rolland, Georges, 416, 419, 420, 428,
432
Romburgh, P. von, 340
Romer, Eugene, 525
Ross, Donald, 563
Rougemont, 30
Rousiers, Paul de, 214
Rousseau, R., 416
Ruhland, G., 260, 261
Saint-Marie- Perrin, Antoine, 121
Salvator, Archduke Louis, 507
Saporta, G. de, 377
Saurin, Jules, 589
Saussaye, P. D. Chantepie de la, 587
Sauvaire-Jourdan, F., 382
Schaefer, »D., 177
Scharf, R. F., 18
Scharf etter, R., 246, 589
Schenk, H., 247
Schirmer, H., 313, 315, 416, 419
Schlagintweit, 187
Schliiter, Otto, 35, 177, 215, 521
Schmid, Hermann, 389
Schmidt, Everhard; 153
Schmidt, W., 351
Schneider, Arthur, 178
Schnorer, G., 583
Schrader, F., 108, 619

648

'INDEX OF AUTHORS

Schroter, C, 558, 570
Sclater, P. L., 230
Sclater, W. L., 230
Scobel, A., 69, 306
Semple, Ellen Churchill, 35, 44, 214,
335i 501, 513, 527, 588, 601
Shackleton, 219
Shantz, H. L., 56
Sieger, 577
Silbergleit, H., 406
Simmel, 177
Sion, J., 115, 188, 302
Sitte, Camillo, 178
Slane, 446
Slichter, W. S., 432
Smith, Adam, 573
Smith, George Adam, 590
Smith, Hugh M., 344
Smith, J. Russell, 78, 209, 210, 211, 413
Soleillet, P., 447
Sollas, 8, 611
Sombart, Werner, 403
Sommier, M., 77
Stadelmann, Jean, 580
Stanley, 287
Stolpe, Per, 154
Strabo, 29
Stiibben, 178
Such, Walter, 283
Suess, E., 8, 611
Supan, 68
Surface, 283
Sutter, A., 75
Tardieu, Andre, 558
Tassart, L. C, 369
Taylor, J., 166
Thales of Miletus, 29
Thiers, M., 116
Thomas, D. A., 411
Thucydides, 32, 599
Tourville, Henri de, 517
Tower, 344 _.
Trabut, 276
Trilles, R. P. H., 351, 362
Turmann, Max, 613
Turquan, 154

Unstead, J. F., 255, 262
Vacher, A., 178, 204
Vacher, Marcel, 255
Vallaux, C, 58, 546, 596, 600, 601
Van Cleef,l284
Van Gennep, 524
Van Muyden, B., 557
Van Overbegh, Cyr., 529
Varenius, Bernhard, 29, 30
Varigny, Henri de, 348, 526
Velain, Professor, 350, 351
Verger, R. du, 305
Verville, Captain Davy de, 428
Vierkandt, Alfred, 30, 35
Vilain, Georges, 382
Ville, 432, 435
Vincent, 340
Vogue, Marquis de, 571
Waagen, W., 378
Waenting, H., 177
Wagner, H., 30
Wahl, A., 331
Wallace, A. R., 230
Walser, Hermann, 150
Warburg, Otto, 247
Warming, E., 17, 230
Weber, Adna Ferrin, 176
Wendt, C, 406
Widtsoe, John A., 56, 314
Wieland, 344
Wildemann, E. de, 295, 340
Woeikof, A., 68, 232, 235, 254, 264,
269, 274, 338, 589, 612
Woodworth, J. B., 14
Worms, Emile, 615
Wright, Herbert, 340
Wrigley, G. M., 485
Wyssling, Dr., 59, 60
X, Colonel, 397
Zeiller, R., 18, 378
Zeys, E., 416, 446
Zimmerli, 587
Zimmermann, Maurice, 369, 526, 527
Zolla, D., 169, 259, 261, 275

3 9002 00495 7982