ia, most parts of Africa, and long
stretches of the Pacific littoral of the Americas. The highland that
backs the Norwegian coast is crossed by only one railroad, that passing
through the Trondhjem depression; and this barrier has served to keep
Norway's historical connection with Sweden far less intimate than with
Denmark. The long inlet of the Adriatic, bringing the sea well into the
heart of Southern Europe, has seen nevertheless a relatively small
maritime development, owing to the wall of mountains that everywhere
shuts out the hinterland of its coasts. The greatness of Venice was
intimately connected with the Brenner Pass over the Alps on the one
hand, and the trade of the eastern Mediterranean on the other. Despite
Austro-Hungary's crucial interest in the northeast corner of the
Adriatic as a maritime outlet for this vast inland empire, and its
herculean efforts at Trieste and Fiume to create harbors and to connect
them by transmontane railroads with the valley of the Danube, the
maritime development of this coast is still restricted, and much of
Austria's trade goes out northward by German ports.[442] Farther south
along the Dalmatian and Albanian coasts, the deep and sheltered bays
between the half-submerged roots of the Dinaric Alps have developed only
local importance, because they lack practicable connection with the
interior. This was their history too in early Greek and Roman days, for
they found only scant support in the few caravans that crossed by the
Roman road to Dyrrachium to exchange the merchandise of the Aegean for
the products of the Ionian Isles. Spain has always suffered from the
fact that her bare, arid, and unproductive tableland almost everywhere
rises steeply from her fertile and densely populated coasts; and
therefore that the two have been unable to cooeperate either for the
production of a large maritime commerce or for national political unity.
Here the diverse conditions of the littoral and the wall of the great
central terrace of the country have emphasized that tendency to
defection that belongs to every periphery, and therefore necessitated a
strong centralized government to consolidate the restive maritime
provinces with their diverse Galician, Basque, Catalonian, and
Andalusian folk into one nation with the Castilians of the plateau.[443]

[Sidenote: Accessible hinterlands.]

Where mountain systems run out endwise into the sea, the longitudinal
valleys with their drainage streams