Note 3 — Chapter XXI · GEOGRAPHICAL

This interesting study of the structure of Asia, which is due to the researches of recent years, not only serves to explain the pronounced features of Asiatic landscapes, as integral members of a vast design, but also enables us to understand many of the movements of history and many of the phenomena of the human world.3 India is enclosed on all sides by the sea or by the outer mountains, and appears reserved by natural causes for herself. China, with her teeming millions, is separated from western Asia by the whole bulk of the broadest and least hospitable portion of the system of lofty plateaux with peripheral ranges. The echelon of chains, which seam the continent in a north-easterly direction, are the nurseries of the hardiest tribes. The valleys which space these ranges are the arteries of human movement, and they lead from west to east, from east to west. Thus during the period of armed migrations which is represented by the Tartar conquests, one division of the Tartar armies might be fighting in China on the Yellow River while another was laying waste Khorasan. The bend of the arcs towards the south places the framework of Nature in harmony with the migrations of man. The tablelands of Persia, Armenia and Asia Minor are members of a continuous system of elevated plains at a temperate altitude, which extend like some great causeway along the breadth of Asia, giving access from east to west, from west to east. This causeway forms the natural avenue of commerce and of conquest, by which the tide of war or of commercial intercourse ebbs and flows between the remote recesses of Central Asia and the Ionian shore of the Mediterranean Sea. Only on the east is the causeway blocked by Nature to human traffic, by the constriction of the arcs on the north of India, leading over by a gigantic knot of mountains into the impassable plateau of Tibet. The stream is therefore diverted from the highlands to the lowlands; great cities arise on the lowlands, at the mouths of the Tian-shan valleys, Merv, Bokhara, Samarkand. And when we contemplate and contrast the structure of Asia and of Europe—the vast forces which have produced the stately body of eastern Asia dying out towards the west in the insignificant but widely ramified elevations of the European mountain chains—we may readily understand how different has been the influence exercised by structural features upon the peoples of either continent. In Asia such features are a factor of the first importance, determining climate, controlling migrations, setting barriers to intercourse or relentlessly fixing the highways which it must pursue. In Europe, on the other hand, they have done little more than diversify the scenery, and for purposes of peaceful or hostile movements among the nations may with some exceptions be almost left out of account. What are our European mountains but arbitrary wrinkles on the face of the continent? One valley leads over into another of much the same height above sea-level by a pass which is not more lofty than the neighbouring ridges. One plain is succeeded by a companion expanse of similar character, and only some small diversity in the forms of the spires of the churches tells the tale of national distinctions. Differentiation rather than the presence of marked ethnological types is characteristic of the peoples of Europe. But once the narrow strait is passed we may no longer dally with our geography; and the further we proceed towards the east and the inner sanctuaries of Nature the greater grows the necessity of comprehending phenomena which must always exercise a dominant influence upon human affairs. It will not suffice in Asia to observe the latitude of a great plain in order to know beforehand the degree of heat which it will support in summer, the rigour or the suavity of the climate during winter. You will be freezing in Erzerum while Erivan is relaxed in sunshine; yet both cities are placed on the margins of level expanses, and the advantage of latitude is in favour of the temperateness of that first named. Not even the convenient distinction of highlands and lowlands will carry us very far. We must enquire into the nature of the highlands; are the mountains their prevailing feature, or are those mountains, as we see them from the floor of the lowlands, a mere buttress to a sequence of elevated plains? Penetrate the chain, and you rise by successive steps from valley to valley, while each ridge is higher than the last. Follow its extension upon the map and you will see it rising from the Mediterranean and terminating in the knot of mountains north of India. Mark the characteristics of the people who inhabit it, be they Kurds or Lurs or Lazes, they will not offer much divergence from a common standard. Yet what a gulf of human nature between these and the inhabitants of the lowlands—a gulf which is scarcely spanned by the equalising tendencies of a long spell of misgovernment! When at length these alps expand, and you overlook a more level country, everything—climate, the aspect of the sky as well as of the land, people, language, cities, villages are new. And yet our diplomatists who dwell on the Bosphorus, and ruminate Asiatic problems with the aid of indifferent maps which they would not pretend to understand, group the highlands and the lowlands, the shepherds of the mountains and the cultivators of the plains, all together—a strange collection of birds and beasts and fishes—in a single scheme of administrative reforms. The Turk is little wiser; but we may perhaps view with a large indifference his passive resistance to such reforms.