Note 212 — Chapter IV · —The Movements Of Peoples In Their Geographical Significance

A people or race which, in its process of numerical growth, spreads over a large territory subjects itself to a widening range of geographic conditions, and therefore of differentiation. The broad expansion of the Teutonic race in Europe, America, Australia and South Africa has brought it into every variety of habitat. If the territory has a monotonous relief like Russia, nevertheless, its mere extent involves diversity of climate and location. The diversity of climate incident to large area involves in turn different animal and plant life, different crops, different economic activities. Even in lowlands the relief, geologic structure, and soil are prone to vary over wide districts. The monotonous surface of Holland shows such contrasts. So do the North German lowlands; here the sandy barren flats of the "geest" alternate with stretches of fertile silt deposited by the rivers or the sea,212 and support different types of communities, which have been admirably described by Gustav Frenssen in his great novel of Jön Uhl. The flat surface of southern Illinois shows in small compass the teeming fertility of the famous "American bottom," the poor clay soil of "Egypt" with its backward population, and the rich prairie land just to the north with its prosperous and progressive farmer class.