sea. They tend to develop,
therefore, the activities appropriate to both. A fertile soil and
abundant local resources, as in tidewater Maryland and Virginia, make
the land more attractive than the sea; the inhabitants become farmers
rather than sailors. On the other hand, an embayed coastland promising
little return to the labor of tillage, but with abundant fisheries and a
superior location for maritime trade, is sure to profit by the
accessible sea, and achieve the predominant maritime activity which
characterized the mediaeval Hanse Towns of northern Germany and colonial
New England.

[Sidenote: Maritime activity on steep embayed coasts.]

Subsidence that brings the beat of the surf against the bolder reliefs
of the land produces a ragged, indented coast, deep-water inlets
penetrating far into the country, hilly or mountainous tongues of land
running far out into the sea and breaking up into a swarm of islands and
rocks, whose outer limits indicate approximately the old prediluvial
line of shore.[451] Such are the fiord regions of Norway, southern
Alaska, British Columbia, Greenland, and southern Chile; the Rias or
submerged river valley coast of northwestern Spain; and the deeply
sunken mountain flank of Dalmatia, whose every lateral valley has become
a bay or a strait between mainland and island. All these coasts are
characterized by a close succession of inlets, a limited amount of level
country for settlement or cultivation, and in their rear a steep slope
impeding communication with their hinterland. Inaccessibility from the
land, a high degree of accessibility from the sea, and a paucity of
local resources unite to thrust the inhabitants of such coasts out upon
the deep, to make of them fishermen, seamen, and ocean carriers. The
same result follows where no barrier on the land side exists, but where
a granitic or glaciated soil in the interior discourages agriculture and
landward expansion, as in Brittany, Maine, and Newfoundland. In all
these the land repels and the sea attracts. Brittany furnishes one-fifth
of all the sailors in France's merchant marine,[452] and its pelagic
fishermen sweep the seas from Newfoundland to Iceland. Three-fifths of
the maritime activity of the whole Austrian Empire is confined to the
ragged coast of Dalmatia, which furnishes to-day most of the sailors for
the imperial marine, just as in Roman days it manned the Adriatic fleet
of the Caesars.[453] The Haida, Tsimshean, and Tling