Note 745 — Chapter XI · —The Anthropo-Geography Of Rivers

The uniting power of lakes manifests itself in the tendency of such basins to become the nuclei of states. Attractive to settlement in primitive times, because of the protected frontier they afford—a motive finding its most emphatic expression in the pile villages of the early lake-dwellers—later because of the fertility of their bordering soil and the opportunity for friendly intercourse, they gradually unite their shores in a mesh of reciprocal relations, which finds its ultimate expression in political union. It is a significant fact that the Swiss Confederation originated in the four forest cantons of Lucerne, Schwyz, Uri and Unterwalden, which are linked together by the jagged basin of Lake Lucerne or the Lake of the Four Forest Cantons, as the Swiss significantly call it, but are otherwise divided by mountain barriers. So we find that Lake Titicaca was the cradle of the Inca Empire, just as Lake Tezcoco was that of the Toltecs in Mexico and an island in Lake Chalco later that of the Aztec domain.745 The most stable of the short-lived native states of Africa have apparently found an element of strength and permanence in a protected lake frontier. Such are the petty kingdoms of Bornu, Bagirmi and Kanem on Lake Chad, and Uganda on Victoria Nyanza.