Influences of Geographic Environment | Page 7

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 highways history repeats itself. The maritime plain of
Palestine has been an established route of commerce and war from the
time of Sennacherib to Napoleon.[1] The Danube Valley has admitted
to central Europe a long list of barbarian invaders, covering the period
from Attila the Hun to the Turkish besiegers of Vienna in 1683. The
history of the Danube Valley has been one of warring throngs, of
shifting political frontiers, and unassimilated races; but as the river is a
great natural highway, every neighboring state wants to front upon it
and strives to secure it as a boundary.
The movements of peoples constantly recur to these old grooves. The
unmarked path of the voyageur's canoe, bringing out pelts from Lake
Superior to the fur market at Montreal, is followed to-day by
whaleback steamers with their cargoes of Manitoba wheat. To-day the
Mohawk depression through the northern Appalachians diverts some of
Canada's trade from the Great Lakes to the Hudson, just as in the
seventeenth century it enabled the Dutch at New Amsterdam and later
the English at Albany to tap the fur trade of Canada's frozen forests.
Formerly a line of stream and portage, it carries now the Erie Canal and
New York Central Railroad.[2] Similarly the narrow level belt of land
extending from the mouth of the Hudson to the eastern elbow of the
lower Delaware, defining the outer margin of the rough hill country of
northern New Jersey and the inner margin of the smooth coastal plain,
has been from savage days such a natural thoroughfare. Here ran the
trail of the Lenni-Lenapi Indians; a little later, the old Dutch road
between New Amsterdam and the Delaware trading-posts; yet later the
King's Highway from New York to Philadelphia. In 1838 it became the
route of the Delaware and Raritan Canal, and more recently of the
Pennsylvania Railroad between New York and Philadelphia.[3]
The early Aryans, in their gradual dispersion over northwestern India,
reached the Arabian Sea chiefly by a route running southward from the
Indus-Ganges divide, between the eastern border of the Rajputana

Desert and the western foot of the Aravalli Hills. The streams flowing
down from this range across the thirsty plains unite to form the Luni
River, which draws a dead-line to the advance of the desert. Here a
smooth and well-watered path brought the early Aryans of India to a
fertile coast along the Gulf of Cambay.[4] In the palmy days of the
Mongol Empire during the seventeenth century, and doubtless much
earlier, it became an established trade route between the sea and the
rich cities of the upper Ganges.[5] Recently it determined the line of the
Rajputana Railroad from the Gulf of Cambay to Delhi.[6] Barygaza,
the ancient seaboard terminus of this route, appears in Pliny's time as
the most famous emporium of western India, the resort of Greek and
Arab merchants.[7] It reappears later in history with its name
metamorphosed to Baroche or Broach, where in 1616 the British
established a factory for trade,[8] but is finally superseded, under
Portuguese and English rule, by nearby Surat. Thus natural conditions
fix the channels in which the stream of humanity most easily moves,
determine within certain limits the direction of its flow, the velocity
and volume of its current. Every new flood tends to fit itself
approximately into the old banks, seeks first these lines of least
resistance, and only when it finds them blocked or pre-empted does it
turn to more difficult paths.
[Sidenote: Regions of historical similarity.]
Geographical environment, through the persistence of its influence,
acquires peculiar significance. Its effect is not restricted to a given
historical event or epoch, but, except when temporarily met by some
strong counteracting force, tends to make itself felt under varying guise
in all succeeding history. It is the permanent element in the shifting fate
of races. Islands show certain fundamental points of agreement which
can be distinguished in the economic, ethnic and historical
development of England, Japan, Melanesian Fiji, Polynesian New
Zealand, and pre-historic Crete. The great belt of deserts and steppes
extending across the Old World gives us a vast territory of rare
historical uniformity. From time immemorial they have borne and bred
tribes of wandering herdsmen; they have sent out the invading hordes
who, in successive waves of conquest, have overwhelmed