Note 1263 — Chapter XVI · —Influences Of A Mountain Environment

If we turn to Switzerland, a country poor in the resources of its land but rich in the resourcefulness of its people, we find a high average density, 218 to the square mile; but this is due to the surprising industrial development of the marginal plains, which show in the Canton of Geneva 1356 to the square mile, and in Canton Zurich 705, while the rugged upland of Graubünden (Grisons) shows only 38 to the square mile, Uri only 48, and Wallis (Valais) only 59. How limited is the food supply of the country is evident from the fact that only 2400 square miles, or fifteen per cent. of its area, can be ranked as arable land, fit for garden, orchard or grain field, while a larger proportion, or twenty-eight per cent. is made wholly useless by watercourses, glaciers, rock and detritus. One half of the entire country lies above the region where agriculture is possible. In the Cantons of Uri and Valais, more than half the area is absolutely unproductive, scarcely less in the Grisons, and a third even in sunny Ticino.1263 The three strictly Alpine provinces of Austria, Tyrol, Salzburg and Carinthia, reproduce approximately these geographic conditions. Nearly half of their area is uninhabited, and only one-seventh consists of arable land. In consequence they support only 75 inhabitants to the square mile, while just outside the mountains, in the piedmont or Alpine foreland, this density is doubled.1264 Many tracts of the Carpathians, especially about the sources of the Theiss and Pruth and the wooded mountain borders of Transylvania, are among the most sparsely inhabited parts of Europe.1265 Japan, ridged by steep volcanic ranges, drenched by mountain-born rains, strewn with detritus from plunging torrents, can cultivate only 15.7 per cent. of its area, and is forced to leave 59 per cent. in forest reserves.1266