Note 286 — Chapter V · —Geographical Location

As territorial expansion is the mark of growth, so the sign of decline is the relinquishment of land that is valuable or necessary to a people's well-being. The gradual retreat of the Tartars and in part also of the Kirghis tribes from their best pasture lands along the Volga into the desert or steppes indicates their decrease of power, just as the withdrawal of the Indians from their hunting grounds in forest and prairie was the beginning of their decay. Bolivia maimed herself for all time when in 1884 she relinquished to Chile her one hundred and eighty miles of coast between the Rio Lao and the twenty-fourth parallel. Her repeated efforts later to recover at least one seaport on the Pacific indicate her own estimate of the loss by which she was limited to an inland location, and deprived of her maritime periphery.286