Influences of Geographic Environment by Ellen Churchill Semple (i love reading books .TXT) 📖
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"To have and to hold" is the motto of the mountains. Like remote islands, they are often museums of social antiquities. Antiquated races and languages abound. The mountaineers of the Southern Appalachians speak to-day an eighteenth century English. Their literature is the ballad poetry of old England and Scotland, handed down from parent to child. Clan feuds settle questions of justice, as in the Caucasus and the Apennines. Religion is orthodox to the last degree, sectarianism is rigid, and Joshua's power over the sun remains in some lonely valleys undiscounted.1404 These are all the marks of isolation and retardation which appear in similar environments elsewhere. Especially religious dogmas tend to show in mountains a tenacity of life impossible in the plains. The Kafirs, inhabiting the high Hindu Kush Mountains of Badakshan, and apparently of Pelasgic, early Greek, or Persian origin, have a religion blended of paganism, Zoroastrianism and Brahmanism.1405 One intruding faith has been unable to dislodge the previous incumbent, so the three have combined. The great historical destiny of the small, barren, isolated Judean plateau was to hold aloof the chaste religion of the desert-bred Jews from the sensuous agricultural gods of the Canaanites; to conserve and fix it; if need be, to narrow it to a provincial tribal faith, to stamp it with exclusiveness, conservatism, and formalism, as its adherents with bigotry,1406 for this is always the effect of geographical seclusion. But when all these limitations of Judaism are acknowledged, the fact remains that that segregated mountain environment performed the inestimable service for the world of keeping pure and undefiled the first and last great gift of the desert, a monotheistic faith.
Buddhism, once the official religion of Korea but disestablished three centuries ago, has taken refuge in the Diamond Mountains, far from the main roads; there a dull, moribund form of the faith dozes on in the monasteries and monastic shrines of these secluded highlands.1407 Driven out of India, Buddhism survives only in the Himalayan border of the country among the local Tibeto-Burman peoples, and in Ceylon, whose mountain city of Kandy is its stronghold. The persecuted Waldenses, a heretic sect who fled in 1178 from the cities of France to the Alps, took refuge in the remote valleys of the Pellice, Chisone, and Augrogne some thirty miles southwest of Turin. There, protected equally against attack and modification, the Waldenses have maintained the old tenets and organization of their religion.1408
The mountain-dweller is essentially conservative. There is little in his environment to stimulate him to change, and little reaches him from the outside world. The "spirit of the times" is generally the spirit of a past time, when it has penetrated to his remote upland. He is strangely indifferent to what goes on in the great outstretched plains below him. What filters in to him from the outside has little suggestion for him, because it does not accord with the established order which he has always known. Hence innovation is distasteful to him. This repugnance to change reaches its clearest expression, perhaps, in the development and preservation of national costumes. Tracht, which is crystallized style in dress, appears nowhere so widespread and so abundantly differentiated as in mountain districts. In Switzerland, every canton has its distinctive costume which has come down from a remote past. The peasants of Norway, of the German and Austrian Alps, of the Basque settlements in the Pyrenees, of mountain-bound Alsace and Bohemia, give local color to the landscape by the picturesqueness of their national dress.
With this conservatism of the mountaineer is generally coupled suspicion toward strangers, extreme sensitiveness to criticism, superstition, strong religious feeling, and an intense love of home and family. The bitter struggle for existence makes him industrious, frugal, provident; and, when the marauding stage has been outgrown, he is peculiarly honest as a rule. Statistics of crime in mountain regions show few crimes against property though many against person. When the mountain-bred man comes down into the plains, he brings with him therefore certain qualities which make him a formidable competitor in the struggle for existence,—the strong muscles, unjaded nerves, iron purpose, and indifference to luxury bred in him by the hard conditions of his native environment.
NOTES TO CHAPTER XVI
1255.
J. Thomson, Through Masai Land, pp. 78-82, 113-115, 122, 140-141, 163-167, 406-407. London, 1885.
1256.J. Russell Smith, Plateaus in Tropical America, in Report of Eighth International Geographical Congress, pp. 829-831. Washington, 1905.
1257.Isaiah Bowman, The Distribution of Population in Bolivia, Bulletin American Geographical Society, pp. 74-78, Vol. VII. 1909.
1258.D.G. Hogarth, The Nearer East, p. 157. London, 1902.
1259.Roosevelt, Winning of the West, Vol. I, pp. 52-56. New York, 1895. C.C. Royce, The Cherokee Nation of Indians, Fifth Annual Report of Bureau of Ethnology, pp. 140-143. Washington, 1887.
1260.W.Z. Ripley, The Races of Europe, pp. 253-254. New York, 1899.
1261.G.L. Gomme, The Village Community, pp. 72, 75-95. New York, 1890.
1262.H.R. Mill, International Geography, pp. 148, 154, 155. New York, 1902.
1263.J. Partsch, Central Europe, pp. 204, 207. London, 1903.
1264.H.R. Mill, International Geography, p. 304. New York, 1902.
1265.J. Partsch, Central Europe, p. 221. London, 1903.
1266.Alfred Stead, Japan by the Japanese, p. 425. London, 1904. Henry Dyer, Dai Nippon, p. 241. New York, 1904.
1267.Boyd Winchester, The Swiss Republic, pp. 307-308. Phila., 1891.
1268.Wilhelm Deecke, Italy, pp. 190, 358-361. London, 1904.
1269.Elisée Reclus, Europe, Vol. I, p. 284. New York, 1882.
1270.S.P. Scott, History of the Moorish Empire in Spain, Vol. III, pp. 610-613. Philadelphia, 1904.
1271.M. Niebuhr, Travels Through Arabia, Vol. I, pp. 290-291, 300. Edinburgh, 1792. S.M. Zwemer, Arabia the Cradle of Islam, pp. 57, 68, 69, 415. New York, 1900.
1272.D.G. Hogarth, The Nearer East, pp. 75, 140, 267. London, 1902.
1273.E.F. Knight, Where Three Empires Meet, p. 10. London, 1897.
1274.Ibid., pp. 312, 460, 463, 468, 475.
1275.Ibid., 118, 119, 160, 200.
1276.Isabella Bird Bishop, The Yangtze Valley and Beyond, Vol. I, pp. 176, 183, 294; Vol. II, p. 107. New York and London, 1900.
1277.F.H., Nichols, Through Hidden Shensi, pp. 51, 54. New York, 1902.
1278.E.J. Payne, History of the New World, Vol. I, pp. 375-378. Oxford, 1892.
1279.Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. II, p. 162. London, 1896-1898.
1280.E.F. Knight, Where Three Empires Meet, pp. 86-87. London, 1897.
1281.A.B. Ellis, West African Islands, p. 248. London, 1885.
1282.Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. I, p. 254. London, 1896-1898.
1283.Ibid., Vol. I, pp. 426-428.
1284.A.E. Wallace, The Malay Archipelago, p. 122. New York, 1869.
1285.Ibid., 174.
1286.W.E. Griffis, The Mikado's Empire, Vol. I, p. 90. New York, 1903.
1287.Census of the Philippine Islands, Vol. I, pp. 458, 541, 543; and Vol. IV, pp. 88-89. Washington, 1905. Gazetteer of the Philippine Islands, photographs, pp. 352-353. Washington, 1902.
1288.Boyd Alexander, From the Niger to the Nile, Vol. I, pp. 96-97. London, 1907.
1289.V.L. Cameron, Across Africa, p. 221. London, 1885.
1290.Count Gleichen, The Egyptian Sudan, Vol. I, p. 190. London, 1905.
1291.Prescott, Conquest of Peru, Vol. I, pp. 134-136. New York, 1848.1291
1292.Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. II, p. 176. London, 1896-1898.
1293.Ibid., Vol. II, p. 176.
1294.E.J. Payne, History of the New World, Vol. I, p. 377. Oxford, 1892.
1295.Pallas, Travels Through the Southern Provinces of Russia, Vol. II, p. 346. London, 1812.
1296.B.H. Baden-Powell, The Indian Village Community, pp. 57, 58, 61. London, 1896.
1297.E.F. Knight, Where Three Empires Meet, pp. 148, 151, 154, 163, 203, 238 et passim. London, 1897.
1298.Ibid., 70-73.
1299.F.H. Nichols, Through Hidden Shensi, p. 52. New York, 1902.
1300.Isabella Bird Bishop, The Yangtze Valley and Beyond, Vol. I, pp. 163, 176; Vol. II, pp. 126, 147. New York and London, 1900.
1301.Boyd Winchester, The Swiss Republic, p. 307. Philadelphia, 1891.
1302.Wilhelm Roscher, National-oekonomik des Ackerbaues, p. 656, Note 1. Stuttgart, 1888.
1303.Norway, Official Publication, p. 307. Christiania, 1900.
1304.Roscher, National-oekonomik des Ackerbaues, p. 656, Note 4. Stuttgart, 1888.
1305.Norway, Official Publication, p. 325. Christiania, 1900.
1306.Roscher, National-oekonomik des Ackerbaues, p. 657, Note 7. Stuttgart, 1888.
1307.Ibid., p. 655, Note 1.
1308.Norway, Official Publication, p. 310. Christiania, 1900.
1309.B.H. Baden-Powell, The Indian Village Community, pp. 58-59. London, 1896.
1310.McCullough, Geographical Dictionary, Article Nepal. J.O. White, Journeys in Bhutan, Geographical Journal, Vol. 35, p. 33. London, 1910.
1311.E.F. Knight, Where Three Empires Meet, p. 10. London, 1897.
1312.Boyd Winchester, The Swiss Republic, p. 310. Philadelphia, 1891. A. von Miaskowski, Die schweizerische Allmend, pp. 88-89, 155, 178, 179, 198. Staats- und socialwissenschaftliche Forschungen, Vol. II, No. 4, Leipzig, 1879.
1313.E.F. Knight, Where Three Empires Meet, pp. 98, 248, 329. London, 1897.
1314.Isabella Bird Bishop, The Yangtze Valley and Beyond, Vol. II, pp. 181, 187, 224. London and New York, 1900.
1315.Carter Harrison, A Race with the Sun, p. 63. New York, 1889.
1316.Boyd Winchester, The Swiss Republic, pp. 325-327. Phila. 1891.
1317.A von Miaskowski, Die schweizerische Allmend, pp. 164-166. Staats- und socialwissenschaftliche Forschungen, Vol. II, No. 4. Leipzig, 1879.
1318.Norway, Official Publication, p. 325. Christiania, 1900.
1319.Ibid., p. 59.
1320.Roscher, National-oekonomik des Ackerbaues, p. 655, Note 1. Stuttgart, 1888.
1321.E.F. Knight, Where Three Empires Meet, pp. 40, 41, 77. London, 1897.
1322.M. Hue, Travels in Tartary, Thibet and China in 1846, Vol. II, pp. 151-156. Chicago, 1898.
1323.W.W. Rockhill, The Land of the Lamas, p. 228. New York, 1891.
1324.Perceval Landon, The Opening of Tibet, pp. 110, 111, 205-206. New York, 1905.
1325.J. Partsch, Central Europe, pp. 197, 248. London, 1903.
1326.Wilhelm Deecke, Italy, p. 220. London, 1904.
1327.J. Partsch, Central Europe, pp. 269-270. London, 1903.
1328.Malthus, Essay on Population, Book II, chap. V.
1329.Cliffe Leslie, Auvergne, Fortnightly Review, p. 741, Vol. XVI. 1874.
1330.Wilhelm Deecke, Italy, pp. 243, 409. London, 1904.
1331.Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol. III, p. 252. London, 1896-1898.
1332.L. Higgin, Spanish Life in Town and Country, pp. 27, 29, 292-293. New York, 1902.
1333.James Bryce, Impressions of South Africa, p. 350. New York, 1897.
1334.Von Bremer, Land of the Battaks, Geographical Journal, Vol. VII, pp. 76-80. London, 1896.
1335.B. Winchester, The Swiss Republic, pp. 229-232. Phila., 1891.
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