mberment,
their low morals and culture, which ranked them little above the brutes.
In contrast, all the large and superior Indian groups of North America
belonged to the interior of the continent.[517]

[Sidenote: Cultural contrast of coast and interior.]

The long, indented coast of the Mediterranean has in all ages up to
modern times presented the contrast of a littoral more advanced in
civilization than the inland districts. The only exception was ancient
Egypt before Psammeticus began to exploit his mud-choked seaboard. This
contrast was apparent, not only wherever Phoenicians or Greeks had
appropriated the remote coast of an alien and retarded people, but even
in near-by Thrace the savage habits of the interior tribes were softened
only where these dwelt in close proximity to the Ionian colonies along
the coast, a fact as noticeable in the time of Tacitus as in that of
Herodotus five hundred years before.[518] The ancient philosophers of
Greece were awake to the deep-rooted differences between an inland and a
maritime city, especially in respect to receptivity of ideas, activity
of intellect, and affinity for culture.[519]

If we turn to the Philippines, we find that 65 per cent. of the
Christian or civilized population of the islands live on or near the
coast; and of the remaining 35 per cent. dwelling inland, by far the
greater part represents simply the landward extension of the area of
Christian civilization which had Manila Bay for a nucleus.[520]
Otherwise, all the interior districts are occupied by wild or pagan
tribes. Mohammedanism, too, a religion of civilization, rims the
southernmost islands which face the eastern distributing point of the
faith in Java; it is confined to the coasts, except for its one inland
area of expansion along the lake and river system of the Rio Grande of
Mindanao, which afforded an inland extension of sea navigation for the
small Moro boat. Even the Fiji Islands show different shades of savagery
between coasts and interior.[521]

[Sidenote: Progress from thalassic to oceanic coasts.]

Coasts are areas of out-going and in-coming maritime influences. The
nature and amount of these influences depend upon the sea or ocean whose
rim the coast in question helps to form, and the relations of that coast
to its other tide-washed shores. Our land-made point of view dominates
us so completely, that we are prone to consider a coast as margin of its
land, and not also as margin of its s