98]

The rugged configuration of the Alps, from the Rhone to the Danube, has
preserved the broad-headed Alpine race, which was perhaps the primitive
stock of Central Europe. The great river valleys leading into this
massive highland, like the Rhine, Aar, Inn and Adige, show the intrusion
of a long-headed race from both north and south; but lofty and remote
valleys off the main routes of travel, like the Hither Rhine about
Dissentis, the little Stanzerthal of the upper Inn, and the Passierthal
of the upper Adige above Meran, show the race preserved in its purity by
the isolating environment.[1399] Here each segregated lateral valley
becomes an area of marked linguistic and social differentiation; only
where it opens into the wider longitudinal valleys are its peculiarities
of speech and custom diluted by the intrusive current of another race.
Switzerland has received three different streams of language, and broken
them up into numerous rivulets of dialect. On its small area of 16,125
square miles (41,346 square kilometers) thirty-five dialects of German
are spoken, sixteen of French, eight of Italian and five of Romansch, a
primitive and degenerate Latin tongue, surviving from the ancestral days
of Roman occupation.[1400] The yet smaller territory of the Tyrol has all
these languages except French, whose place is taken by various forms of
Slavonic speech, which have entered by the western tributaries of the
Danube.[1401]

[Sidenote: Constriction of mountain areas of ethnic survivals.]

Rarely is a polyglot mountain population able to work out its own
political salvation, as the Swiss have done. More often political union
must be forced upon them from without. Oftener still, when the
highlanders are primitive survivals, ill-matched against the superior
invaders from the plain, they are doomed to a process of constriction of
territory and deterioration of numbers, which proceeds slowly or rapidly
according to the inaccessibility of their environment and the energy of
the intruders. Deliberate, unenterprising nations, like the Chinese,
Turks and Indo-Aryans long tolerate the presence of alien mountain
tribes, who remain like enemies brought to bay in their isolated
fortresses. The conquerors throw around them at their leisure a cordon
of settlement, which, slowly ascending the piedmont, draws closer and
closer about the mountaineers. The situation of many mountain tribes
reminds one of a besieged stronghold. Russian wars