Note 638 — Chapter XI · —The Anthropo-Geography Of Rivers

In other seas, too, rivers play the same part of extending their tributary areas and therefore enhancing their historical significance. The disadvantages of the Baltic's smaller size and far-northern location, as compared with the Mediterranean, were largely compensated for by the series of big streams draining into it from the south, and bringing out from a vast hinterland the bulky necessaries of life. Hence the Hanseatic League of the Middle Ages, which had its origin among the southern coast towns of the Baltic from Lubeck to Riga, throve on the combined trade of sea and river.638 The mouths of the Scheldt, Rhine, Weser, Elbe and Thames long concentrated in themselves the economic, cultural and historical development of the North Sea basin. So the White Sea, despite its sub-polar location, is valuable to Russia for two reasons; it affords a politically open port, and it receives the Northern Dwina, which is navigable for river steamers from Archangel south to Vologda, a distance of six hundred miles, and carries the export trade of a large territory.639 Similarly in recent years, Bering Sea has gained unwonted commercial activity because the Yukon River serves as a waterway 1,370 miles long to the Klondike gold fields.