Modern Geography Part 7

Two other important plants of American origin are tobacco and the potato. The latter plant is little grown in the Mediterranean, but a considerable amount of tobacco is produced. Another American plant, the p.r.i.c.kly pear, besides furnis.h.i.+ng an edible fruit, is important as a hedge plant within the area.

Cereals in the Mediterranean are grown, as we have seen, on ploughed land, as elsewhere. A more characteristic form of cultivation is garden-culture, practised where water can be obtained for irrigation.

Such gardens consist primarily of fruit trees, all the citrus fruits, peaches, apricots, pomegranates, pistachio, almonds, and many other forms of nuts, plums, even apples and pears, being grown in this way. So productive is the ground once water is supplied, that plants are grown in a.s.sociation in a fas.h.i.+on hardly suggested in the north. Thus among the fruit trees many different kinds of vegetables, such as garlic, cuc.u.mbers, leeks, salad plants, many sorts of melons, tomatoes, egg-plants, beans, and peas, etc., are grown. Elsewhere one may see corn sown beneath the olive trees, and the vine sharing the same ground with them.

The picture of Mediterranean life may be completed by adding a few words about the domesticated animals. These are naturally in essence the same as those further north, but their relative numbers and the uses to which they are put are different.

The dog and cat both occur, but the former has little importance in the pastoral industries, and is largely a watch animal, insufficiently fed, and therefore important as a sanitary agent in that it devours garbage.

Among the ungulates or hoofed animals, the a.s.s was domesticated in the region long before the horse, and it and the mule are still more important than the horse, partly, no doubt, because both are hardier, and the problem of food is a difficulty in the largely pastureless Mediterranean region.

Few camels now occur in Europe, where they have been always closely a.s.sociated with Mahometans, appearing and disappearing with them.

The pasturage difficulty greatly reduces the importance of cattle, which are draught animals rather than a source of food. As draught animals cattle go back to the dawn of history, but their numbers are small and the use of either their flesh or their milk as food is insignificant.

Philippson in his book on the Mediterranean gives some striking figures to ill.u.s.trate the difference in numbers between the cattle of the Mediterranean countries and those of Central Europe. Spain has only 2.1 million cattle, and yet it is scarcely smaller than Germany, which has 19 millions; Switzerland has 1,340,000 head of cattle, and Greece, which is about half as large again, has only 360,000. It is to be noted, however, that the irrigated plains of North Italy now support a considerable amount of cattle, whose milk gives rise to a considerable cheese industry; but, then, the olive will not grow in North Italy, which is therefore not strictly within the Mediterranean area.

The Arabs introduced the Indian buffalo which has spread considerably, and is now found in South Italy and the Balkan peninsula. The pig has been banished from parts of the region on religious grounds, but elsewhere it chiefly thrives where oak forests grow, the acorn being an important part of its food. The really important ungulates, however, are sheep and goats, which are often very numerous, and which, apart from birds and fish, furnish the most important part of the animal food of the inhabitants. The milk furnishes cheese, which is an important element of diet, while leather, wool and hair are also important products.

The goats chiefly feed upon the young shoots of shrubs, and frequent the denser thickets, while the sheep browse upon the gra.s.ses and herbs to be found in the more open forms of maquis. The climate permits the animals to remain in the open during the whole year, and this prevents the collection of the manure for the arable lands. Further, the summer drought makes it difficult for even these hardy animals to obtain food, and necessitates in many regions a curious form of nomadism, to which the name of transhumance is given. Transhumance, still well developed in Spain, is the periodic and alternating displacement of flocks and herds between two regions of different climate.

As we have had frequent reason to remark, the rainlessness of the Mediterranean summer is locally modified by many causes, notably by elevation. Mountains may receive frequent showers, while the plains are parched and brown, and therefore there may be pasture on the mountains while there is none in the plains. On lofty mountains also the winter snow lingers long enough to promote the growth of summer pasture. While there are considerable herds of sheep and goats, then, it may be necessary for the flocks and their keepers to travel to the mountains in summer and back to the plains in winter. In Spain these periodic migrations, now largely made by means of the railway, formerly took place by well-defined routes, along which the immense army of sheep, accompanied by a smaller army of attendants, pa.s.sed twice a year, causing enormous destruction to the cultivated lands through which they pa.s.sed. Everywhere the conflict between shepherd and husbandman is more or less acute, but it seems to have been especially acute in Spain, which is in some respects a link between Africa and Europe. Its constant liability to Arab invasion made agriculture especially difficult, while frequent wars favoured the pastoral industry; for flocks may be removed to a place of safety on an alarm, but agriculture must have some security before it can develop. In the semi-desert regions of North Africa some form of pastoral nomadism, with the social polity which comes from pastoral nomadism, was the natural result of the physical and climatic conditions, and Spain, like the lands of the eastern part of Europe, has been constantly liable to have its nascent agriculture destroyed by incursions of such pastoral nomads. In both cases the slow victory of the agriculturists, marked by many temporary reverses, affords an extraordinarily interesting chapter in human history. A stable civilisation must always be based upon agriculture, but every disturbance of an old and stable civilisation has temporarily encouraged the pastoral as contrasted with the agricultural industries.

In regard to the other animals of the Mediterranean, mention need only be made of the domesticated birds. The fowl has long been known; it is believed to have been introduced from the East eight centuries B.C. Both the eggs and the flesh are of great importance as a source of food. In spite of Roman history, geese are relatively unimportant, as are also ducks, but the turkey, late introduction from America, is well suited to the climate and has become important. Pigeons are everywhere abundant, sometimes so much so that their manure is extensively used as a fertiliser. We have already mentioned silkworms, and students of cla.s.sical history know that bees have long been kept.

If we sum up what has been said about Mediterranean cultivated plants, we may note that these have been derived partly from native plants, partly from plants native to the warm forest country of eastern Asia, and partly from American plants. Regarding for a moment the Eurasiatic continent as a whole, we may say that the old civilisations, both to the east and to the west, arose in the forest regions--in the monsoon forests to the east, in the drought-resisting forest or scrub of the west. The temperate forest of Asia has produced no great civilisation, and the civilisation of the temperate forest zone of Europe has owed much to the earlier civilisation of the Mediterranean, with which it has always had free communication.

This free communication has taken place chiefly by means of the Mediterranean seaboard of France, especially by means of the great Rhone valley, which forms a natural highway to the north. France, with both an Atlantic and a Mediterranean seaboard, has been the natural intermediary between the Mediterranean scrub land, with its characteristic civilisation, and the temperate forest region, with its colder climate, and its greater rainfall, which produce a corresponding difference in the cultivated plants.

We have seen that wheat is the great bread plant of the Mediterranean, and it is interesting to note that in this respect France is almost purely Mediterranean. It is, above all, the country of white bread, which plays a very important part in the dietary of the people. In ordinary years the country produces nearly as much wheat as it consumes.

In addition to this large use of wheat as a bread plant, France shows strong Mediterranean influence in the part which wine plays in the dietary of the people, in the variety of vegetables, especially kinds of pulse, which are grown; in the fact that fowls and pork form a large part of the animal food consumed, and in that flax has been grown in considerable amounts for long ages, so that linen is an important part of household wealth. The Midi is of course definitely Mediterranean in culture, but just as the vine extends far to the north and west so also do Mediterranean influences extend far beyond the region of Mediterranean climate and Mediterranean flora.

But fertile as much of France is, it must not be regarded as consisting of nothing but fields of waving wheat. To complete and correct the picture we must add that, as in Russia, considerable amounts of buckwheat are grown for use as human food. Buckwheat, the "black wheat"

of the French, perhaps introduced by the Arabs, is not a true cereal, but a relative of the knot-gra.s.s of British fields. It is very easily grown, even on poor land, and in France replaces wheat where the conditions are unfavourable, or where agriculture is backward. It is not without interest to note that while its use in France as human food is an indication of extreme poverty, in the United States buckwheat cakes take a place as a luxury. Oatcakes in lowland Scotland, "black bread" in well-to-do households in Germany, are other similar instances of the reappearance of a despised food-stuff as a luxury. Such foods become luxuries when they can be used to supplement, not to replace, white bread. Most of the buckwheat of France, however, is now grown as food for domesticated animals.

Again, fruit trees are extensively grown in France as in the Mediterranean region, with a gradual increase in the forms which require more moisture and less heat as we travel northwards. The typically Mediterranean forms early disappear, while many kinds of plums, pears and apples increase in numbers and in value. As we travel northwards also, the various forms of berries, scarcely represented in the south, increase in importance. The strawberries of Brittany form a good example, but throughout Europe generally this change takes place, culminating in the enormous wealth of wild berries--cranberries, whortleberries, and so on, which is a characteristic feature of the Scandinavian uplands in late summer.

As we travel to the north-west also, with the increase in the rainfall and the consequent increase in pasturage, the number of cattle increases, and with them the increased use of beef as food, and the increased use of cows' milk and milk products. This is well seen in the broad fields of Normandy, while still further west, in the British Islands, pastures become more and more extensive, and only the existence of a well-marked "rain shadow" on the eastern seaboard, which is robbed of much of its rainfall by the hills of the west, makes the extensive growth of wheat possible in south-eastern England. With the increase of pasture, and the increased cold of winter, as compared with the Mediterranean area, we have stall-feeding, with the possibility of collecting manure for the fields. The consequence is that England, with a climate very different from that which wheat experiences elsewhere, has a yield per acre greater than that of any other country in the world. France, despite her warmth and suns.h.i.+ne, only gets an average of 19 bushels to the acre from her wheat fields, while in England, where wheat can only be grown at a profit when the conditions are especially favourable, the average yield is 30 bushels per acre.

In those parts of Europe where the climate or soil does not suit cereals, even such cereals as oats and rye, there is a tendency for these to be partially replaced as the basis of the diet by plants requiring less suns.h.i.+ne and tolerant of greater moisture. Thus in Ireland and North Germany, the potato is a very important article of diet, while in France and in Mediterranean regions generally it is unimportant. Similarly, towards the north the "fowl in the pot" tends to be replaced by fish, in the case of those who cannot afford beef or mutton.

In the more northern regions also, with their relatively large rainfall, root crops play a very important part. Most of these are grown for the domestic animals, as turnips, mangels, swedes, etc., a phenomenon which does not occur in the Mediterranean area to any extent; but the sugar beet, whose cultivation is spreading greatly in northern and central Europe, is of course grown for its yield of sugar.

We have seen that wine is the universal drink through the greater part of France, and this in spite of the fact that the northern limit of the vine, so far as wine-making is concerned, is in France about lat.

47-1/2, that is, about the north of the Loire. In Germany, the vine reaches to the east, in the Province of Posen, a lat.i.tude of nearly 53 N., owing to the fact that the summers grow warmer as we pa.s.s eastward.

Nevertheless, in Germany, as a general rule, wine is a luxury, the influence of Mediterranean culture being less felt than in France.

Throughout Germany, as throughout northern Europe generally, wine is replaced by beverages made by the fermentation of cereals or other plant products rich in starch. Throughout Germany, as throughout much of England, beer is the characteristic drink, and a.s.sociated with it we have the growth of hops, used as a flavouring material. Further north stronger beverages tend to be used.

Another plant which is widely grown in the more northerly parts of Europe, especially in Russia and the Baltic countries, is flax, which, though originally Mediterranean, is now grown for its fibre chiefly in the north, partly because it is especially suited for flat moist land.

Having now looked at the cultivated plants of the Mediterranean in their bearing on the life of the inhabitants, and compared with them the plants cultivated in extra-Mediterranean areas, let us conclude this chapter by a few words on the purely pastoral peoples. These do not now occur in Europe in unmodified form, but the Asiatic steppes still contain pastoral folk, diminis.h.i.+ng with the progress of civilisation.

There can be no doubt that such pastoral folk have repeatedly invaded Europe, and have there undergone modifications owing to the different conditions which prevail.

Of pastoral folk in the unmodified form the Kirghiz of the Asiatic steppes form perhaps the best example. They are pure nomads, wandering about in search of pasture for their numerous herds, and dwelling in a movable tent, or yurt, which can be readily carried from one place to another. The herds consist of horses, sheep, goats, cattle, and camels, and the females of all these animals are milked. The Kirghiz do not cultivate land, or only to a very slight extent, and practically do not eat bread, though flour and rice, obtained by barter, are employed by the richer. Milk and milk-products, with the flesh of the flocks, form the basis of the diet, and a milk-wine or koumiss, produced by the fermentation of milk, is the characteristic drink. This brief description is based upon that of the traveller Brehm, and as it was written some fifty years ago, matters have doubtless changed considerably since, but it remains as the typical picture of the nomadic pastoral life. In the smaller s.p.a.ces of densely populated Europe it would of course be impossible, and here pastoral nomadism is mostly replaced by that modified form known as transhumance upon which we have already touched.

As the European peoples of Asiatic origin are specially found on high ground, we may conclude by contrasting briefly with the above the life of the pastoral folk of Switzerland. Here there is no yurt or movable tent, but the old conditions are suggested by the fact that each family may possess as many as four houses. Thus in some of the valleys tributary to the Rhone in the canton Valais the following conditions occur.

There is first the true village, where each house is a miniature homestead, with dwelling, cow-house, hayloft, and granaries or store-houses. Round about are fields, where rye, the characteristic cereal, is grown, with some fodder plants. Higher up the valley is the spring pasture or "mayen," whither the cows are driven in May, to feed until the alps or high pastures are clear of snow. At the mayen there are cow-houses, and also human habitations, though not of an elaborate type. Further up, again, there are necessarily huts near the high pastures, whither a few men only go with the cows as herds, and where the cheese is made. The fourth village is placed on the hot plain of the Rhone valley, and here are the vineyards whose produce gives the much-prized wine, and orchards which yield fruit. We find here therefore a curious combination of pastoral and agricultural life. Mostly of the race called Alpine, believed to be of Asiatic origin, these Swiss folk have borrowed the vine and the use of wine from the Mediterranean peoples. The large part played in their diet by milk products, especially various forms of cheese, must be an inheritance from their nomad ancestors, while the rye, which is their bread plant, is also a heritage from Asiatic ancestors. The occurrence of four sets of dwellings instead of a movable one is an adaptation to life in a settled community, confined to a limited s.p.a.ce. The whole social polity is thus a curious example of a transitional condition.

We have thus, in successive chapters, shown that in Europe three chief zones of vegetation exist, the Mediterranean scrub land, the temperate forest zone, the steppe or pasture land, and that as each of these is determined by climate, each, again, has special types of cultivated plants and domesticated animals, involving a special social polity in each case. Now it is interesting to note, what cannot be a pure coincidence, that in Europe three races of men exist, which show a certain rough correspondence to the three zones of vegetation.

The Mediterranean type of vegetation and climate is a.s.sociated with a particular race, to which the name of Mediterranean has been given. The race is by no means confined to the Mediterranean region--we find representatives of it, _e. g._ in western Ireland,--nor does it occupy the whole of that region, for in many places it is pressed hard by other races, but it reaches its fullest development within the Mediterranean basin. Curiously enough, also, its presence in western Ireland is a.s.sociated with the presence of certain representatives of the Mediterranean flora, notably the arbutus or strawberry tree and St.

Dabeoc's heath.

The characteristic inhabitants of the temperate forest region of Europe are the members of the race called Teutonic or Nordic, whose particular type of civilisation is deeply stamped by the lessons they learnt in their early struggle with the forest.

Finally, the steppe and pasture lands, whether in parts of Russia, in the Hungarian plain, or in the Alps and in the uplands of Brittany and Central Europe, etc., tend to be occupied by a third race, which seems to have originated in the steppes of Asia, and to which the somewhat inappropriate name of Alpine has been given, though it occurs in lowlands to the east as well as in uplands to the west. This race seems to be accompanied throughout Europe by plants and animals of Asiatic origin.

The full meaning of this a.s.sociation between racial peculiarities and types of vegetation cannot perhaps be formulated meantime, but it is interesting to note that there are some curiously close connections between human life and the distribution of vegetation. For instance, all travellers in Switzerland must have been struck by the curious fact that in following up the Rhone valley from the lake of Geneva to the Rhone glacier the French language is found to extend up to the town of Sion, and beyond, without any obvious cause, German prevails. It has been pointed out recently that the eastward extension of the French language here marks also the eastward extension of the sweet chestnut--a curious coincidence.

Again, the same writer points out that the battle-ground between the French and German peoples round the Rhine is the region where the growth of the sweet chestnut as a planted tree reaches its eastward limit. Such facts must not, of course, be over-emphasised. Both must indicate a climatic change, but it can hardly be supposed that this change of climate is sufficient to affect man directly. It seems at least justifiable to point out that every human group which reaches any degree of civilisation and stability must depend for its permanence in the early stages on some special skill in the growing of certain cultivated plants, and the rearing of certain domesticated animals. We have much reason to believe that this skill is often difficult to acquire by other groups. The great difficulties which have been experienced in introducing _e. g._ Smyrna figs and dates into the United States; the fact that Europeans seem to find it impossible to manage camels without native help, and that they have been hitherto unable, despite most elaborate and costly experiments, to tame the African elephant, seem to be minor ill.u.s.trations of this fact. Given, then, an evolving group spreading over the surface of the globe, and taking with it its characteristic plants and animals, it is probable enough that such a change of climate, even a minor change, as may be sufficient to render it impossible to cultivate these plants, or to rear these animals, may give a definite and more or less permanent check to the spread of the race. There is at least some evidence to this effect, and it gives an additional interest to the study of plant geography.

We have limited ourselves in this chapter practically to a consideration of the European area, because the existing cultivated plants and domesticated animals of North America are almost all derived from Europe, with the exceptions already indicated, and a few others not of great importance, and their distribution in America is determined by the same conditions as in Europe.

CHAPTER VIII

THE RACES OF EUROPE AND THEIR ORIGIN

We have spoken in the previous chapter of the three chief races of Europe, but before proceeding to discuss them in detail it is necessary to clear the ground of certain misconceptions and difficulties.

The first of these is the notion that nationality has anything to do with race, in the anthropological sense. There is much to be said for the view that the European civilisations owe their development largely to the mingling of races which has occurred within the area; it is at least certain that no European nation, whatever the fervour of its citizens' patriotism, is of anthropologically pure race. There is no British race, no French race, no German race, even though the word Germanic is sometimes applied to one of the strains which occurs in the German Empire. We recognise this fact, of course, in our popular language, for the contrast between the Briton of Saxon race and the Briton of Celtic race is a favourite literary topic. Unfortunately for accuracy, the people within the British area who speak Celtic languages are not all of the same race, and there is nothing more certain than the fact that few of them, if any, have any distinct trace of Celtic blood.

Although in literature also the comparison between the "Celts" of Brittany and the "Celts" of Wales and western Great Britain generally is a favourite one, upon which many deductions have been based, it is certain that the Bretons are not h.o.m.ogeneous, and that they have language but not race in common with the dark-haired Welsh.

This naturally leads us to the second point of importance--that language has nothing to do with race. In his book on the _Races of Europe_, Ripley ill.u.s.trates this in a very interesting way by a consideration of the languages and races of the Iberian Peninsula. This peninsula shows at the present time relative purity of race--not absolute purity, for a mingling has certainly occurred, but nevertheless one race, that which we have called Mediterranean, enormously predominates. Yet in spite of this relative purity of race, the peninsula is divided between two nationalities and no less than three languages. Portugal forms a separate nation with its own language, while Spain, though forming one nation, has two languages, Castilian or Spanish, and Catalan. Catalan is nearly related to Langue d'oc, the language of Provence across the French border. Provencal again, before its gradual displacement by the Langue d'oeil, or true French, was spoken by men of the Mediterranean as well as of the Alpine race. Within both French and Spanish territory still another language, Basque, is spoken.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 13.--The Iberian Peninsula and part of France, to show the distribution of languages, and their independence of political boundaries. (After Ripley.)]

In other words, the almost uniform race of the Iberian peninsula speaks four separate tongues, the Portuguese, Castilian, Catalan, and Basque languages, and the political boundary of the Pyrenees separates at its eastern end two groups of Mediterranean man, speaking similar languages, Catalan or Provencal, the latter of which is also spoken, or was spoken, in France by the men of another race, the Alpine, found in the uplands of southern and central France, as well as elsewhere.

Ripley's explanation of the heterogeneity of language combined with h.o.m.ogeneity of race in Spain and Portugal is interesting. The peninsula was peopled from Africa before the dawn of history, by a division of the Mediterranean race called Iberian, which traversed the Strait of Gibraltar. This race established itself firmly in the peninsula and has persisted there despite infusions of other races from the north and north-east. But the road from Africa remained open, and the region was constantly liable to new invasions from the area of its prime origin.

Differences of culture produced fierce warfare between the incoming and the old established race, and led temporarily to the triumph of the invaders, known to history as Saracens and Moors. The original Iberians, like the people of the same stock in Wales and parts of the Scottish Highlands, were pushed back to the mountains of Galicia, to the hill country of Castile, to the hills of Aragon and round and over the Pyrenees to Languedoc and the south of France generally. Ultimately they rea.s.serted themselves, and drove the Moors out of Europe, but the driving force was exerted from three different centres, Galicia, Castile, and Aragon, which, owing to the configuration of the country, were isolated from each other. A political accident united Castile and Aragon, and imposed Castilian Spanish on a united Spain as the official language, but the geographical conditions have led to the long retention of the Catalan speech, though not of a Catalan nation. The Iberians who found a refuge in the mountains of Galicia, at a later date, formed the nucleus of the Portuguese nation.

With these preliminary considerations we may pa.s.s to the discussion of what is known, or surmised, as to the different races of Europe and their origin.