has
divided Norway from her neighbour on the east; it has been a _band_ of
desert land, up to hundreds of miles in width. So utterly desolate and
apart from the area of continuous habitation has this been, that the
greater part of it, the district north of Trondhjem, was looked upon
even as recently as the last century as a common district. Only nomadic
Lapps wandered about in it, sometimes taxed by all three countries. A
parcelling out of this desert common district was not made toward Russia
until 1826. Toward Sweden it was made in 1751."[340] In former centuries
the Bourtanger Moor west of the River Ems used to be a natural desert
borderland separating East and West Friesland, despite the similarity of
race, speech and country on either side of it. It undoubtedly
contributed to the division of Germany and the Netherlands along the
present frontier line, which has been drawn the length of this moor for
a hundred kilometers.[341]

[Sidenote: Primitive waste boundaries.]

Any geographical feature which, like this, presents a practically
uninhabitable area, forms a scientific boundary, not only because it
holds apart the two neighboring peoples and thereby reduces the contact
and friction which might be provocative of hostilities, but also because
it lends protection against attack. This motive, as also the zone
character of all boundaries, comes out conspicuously in the artificial
border wastes surrounding primitive tribes and states in the lower
status of civilization. The early German tribes depopulated their
borders in a wide girdle, and in this wilderness permitted no neighbors
to reside. The width of this zone indicated the valor and glory of the
state, but was also valued as a means of protection against unexpected
attack.[342] Caesar learned that between the Suevi and Cherusci tribes
dwelling near the Rhine "_silvam esse ibi, infinita magnitudine quae
appelletur Bacenis; hanc longe introrsus pertinere et pro nativo muro
objectam Cheruscos ab Suevis Suevosque ab Cheruscis injuriis
incursionibusque prohibere_."[343] The same device appears among the
Huns. When Attila was pressing upon the frontier of the Eastern Empire
in 448 A.D., his envoys sent to Constantinople demanded that the Romans
should not cultivate a belt of territory, a hundred miles wide and three
hundred miles long, south of the Danube, but maintain this as a
March.[344] When King Alfonso I. (751-764 A.D.) of mountain Asturias
began the reconquest