New
York, 1901.

[410] Alfred Rambaud, History of Russia, Vol. II, pp. 45, 50. Boston,
1886.

[411] Justin Winsor, The Westward Movement, p. 366. Boston, 1899.

CHAPTER VIII

COAST PEOPLES

[Sidenote: The coast a zone of transition.]

Of all geographical boundaries, the most important is that between land
and sea. The coast, in its physical nature, is a zone of transition
between these two dominant forms of the earth's surface; it bears the
mark of their contending forces, varying in its width with every
stronger onslaught of the unresting sea, and with every degree of
passive resistance made by granite or sandy shore. So too in an
anthropo-geographical sense, it is a zone of transition. Now the
life-supporting forces of the land are weak in it, and it becomes merely
the rim of the sea; for its inhabitants the sea means food, clothes,
shelter, fuel, commerce, highway, and opportunity. Now the coast is
dominated by the exuberant forces of a productive soil, so that the
ocean beyond is only a turbulent waste and a long-drawn barrier: the
coast is the hem of the land. Neither influence can wholly exclude the
other in this amphibian belt, for the coast remains the intermediary
between the habitable expanse of the land and the international highway
of the sea. The break of the waves and the dash of the spray draw the
line beyond which human dwellings cannot spread; for these the shore is
the outermost limit, as for ages also in the long infancy of the races,
before the invention of boat and sail, it drew the absolute boundary to
human expansion. In historical order, its first effect has been that of
a barrier, and for the majority of peoples this it has remained; but
with the development of navigation and the spread of human activities
from the land over sea to other countries, it became the gateway both of
land and sea--at once the outlet for exploration, colonization, and
trade, and the open door through which a continent or island receives
contributions of men or races or ideas from transoceanic shores. Barrier
and threshold: these are the _roles_ which coasts have always played in
history. To-day we see them side by side. But in spite of the immense
proportions assumed by transmarine intercourse, the fact remains that
the greater part of the coasts of the earth are for their inhabitants
only a barrier and not an outlet, or at best only a base for timorous
ventures seaward that rarely lose sight of the sho