Influences of Geographic Environment | Page 6

by the attitude of the Thirteen Colonies toward England, and again within the young Republic by the headstrong self-reliance, impatient of government authority, which characterized the early Trans-Allegheny commonwealths in their aggressive Indian policy, and led them to make war and conclude treaties for the cession of land like sovereign states; and if this attitude of independence in the over-mountain men reappeared in a spirit of political defection looking toward secession from the Union and a new combination with their British neighbor on the Great Lakes or the Spanish beyond the Mississippi, these are all the identical effects of geographical remoteness made yet more remote by barriers of mountain and sea. This is the long reach which weakens the arm of authority, no matter what the race or country or epoch.
[Sidenote: Effect of proximity.]
As with geographical remoteness, so it is with geographical proximity. The history of the Greek peninsula and the Greek people, because of their location at the threshold of the Orient, has contained a constantly recurring Asiatic element. This comes out most often as a note of warning; like the motif of Ortrud in the opera of "Lohengrin," it mingles ominously in every chorus of Hellenic enterprise or paean of Hellenic victory, and finally swells into a national dirge at the Turkish conquest of the peninsula. It comes out in the legendary history of the Argonautic Expedition and the Trojan War; in the arrival of Phoenician Cadmus and Phrygian Pelops in Grecian lands; in the appearance of Tyrian ships on the coast of the Peloponnesus, where they gather the purple-yielding murex and kidnap Greek women. It appears more conspicuously in the Asiatic sources of Greek culture; more dramatically in the Persian Wars, in the retreat of Xenophon's Ten Thousand, in Alexander's conquest of Asia, and Hellenic domination of Asiatic trade through Syria to the Mediterranean. Again in the thirteenth century the lure of the Levantine trade led Venice and Genoa to appropriate certain islands and promontories of Greece as commercial bases nearer to Asia. In 1396 begins the absorption of Greece into the Asiatic empire of the Turks, the long dark eclipse of sunny Hellas, till it issues from the shadow in 1832 with the achievement of Greek independence.
[Sidenote: Persistent effect of natural barriers.]
If the factor is not one of geographical location, but a natural barrier, such as a mountain system or a desert, its effect is just as persistent. The upheaved mass of the Carpathians served to divide the westward moving tide of the Slavs into two streams, diverting one into the maritime plain of northern Germany and Poland, the other into the channel of the Danube Valley which guided them to the Adriatic and the foot of the Alps. This same range checked the westward advance of the mounted Tartar hordes. The Alps long retarded Roman expansion into central Europe, just as they delayed and obstructed the southward advance of the northern barbarians. Only through the partial breaches in the wall known as passes did the Alps admit small, divided bodies of the invaders, like the Cimbri and Teutons, who arrived, therefore, with weakened power and at intervals, so that the Roman forces had time to gather their strength between successive attacks, and thus prolonged the life of the declining empire. So in the Middle Ages, the Alpine barrier facilitated the resistance of Italy to the German emperors, trying to enforce their claim upon this ancient seat of the Holy Roman Empire.
It was by river-worn valleys leading to passes in the ridge that Etruscan trader, Roman legion, barbarian horde, and German army crossed the Alpine ranges. To-day well-made highways and railroads converge upon these valley paths and summit portals, and going is easier; but the Alps still collect their toll, now in added tons of coal consumed by engines and in higher freight rates, instead of the ancient imposts of physical exhaustion paid by pack animal and heavily accoutred soldier. Formerly these mountains barred the weak and timid; to-day they bar the poor, and forbid transit to all merchandise of large bulk and small value which can not pay the heavy transportation charges. Similarly, the wide barrier of the Rockies, prior to the opening of the first overland railroad, excluded all but strong-limbed and strong-hearted pioneers from the fertile valleys of California and Oregon, just as it excludes coal and iron even from the Colorado mines, and checks the free movement of laborers to the fields and factories of California, thereby tightening the grip of the labor unions upon Pacific coast industries.
[Sidenote: Persistent effect of nature-made highways.]
As the surface of the earth presents obstacles, so it offers channels for the easy movement of humanity, grooves whose direction determines the destination of aimless, unplanned migrations, and whose termini become, therefore, regions of historical importance. Along these nature-made