Influences of Geographic Environment | Page 6

itself largely owing to this steady, unchanging
geographic element. If the ancient Roman consul in far-away Britain
often assumed an independence of action and initiative unknown in the
provincial governors of Gaul, and if, centuries later, Roman
Catholicism in England maintained a similar independence towards the
Holy See, both facts have their cause in the remoteness of Britain from
the center of political or ecclesiastical power in Rome. If the
independence of the Roman consul in Britain was duplicated later 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