d range of influence, a concentrated brilliant history, precocious
and short-lived as is that of all limited areas; that the Euxine has
exercised more far-reaching influences, despite a slow and still
unfinished development. The Black Sea rivers in ancient times opened
their countries to such elements of Hellenic culture as might penetrate
from the Greek trading colonies at their mouths, especially the Greek
forms of Christianity. It was the Danube that in the fourth century
carried Arianism, born of the philosophic niceties of Greek thought, to
the barbarians of southern Germany, and made Unitarians of the
Burgundians and Visigoths of southern Gaul.[637] The Dnieper carried the
religion of the Greek Church to the Russian princes at Kief, Smolensk,
and Moscow. Owing to the southward course of its great rivers, Russia
has found the crux of her politics in the Black Sea, ever since the
tenth century when the barbarians from Kiev first appeared before
Constantinople. This sea has had for her a higher economic importance
than the Baltic, despite the latter's location near the cultural center
of western Europe.

[Sidenote: Baltic and White Sea rivers.]

In other seas, too, rivers play the same part of extending their
tributary areas and therefore enhancing their historical significance.
The disadvantages of the Baltic's smaller size and far-northern
location, as compared with the Mediterranean, were largely compensated
for by the series of big streams draining into it from the south, and
bringing out from a vast hinterland the bulky necessaries of life. Hence
the Hanseatic League of the Middle Ages, which had its origin among the
southern coast towns of the Baltic from Lubeck to Riga, throve on the
combined trade of sea and river.[638] The mouths of the Scheldt, Rhine,
Weser, Elbe and Thames long concentrated in themselves the economic,
cultural and historical development of the North Sea basin. So the White
Sea, despite its sub-polar location, is valuable to Russia for two
reasons; it affords a politically open port, and it receives the
Northern Dwina, which is navigable for river steamers from Archangel
south to Vologda, a distance of six hundred miles, and carries the
export trade of a large territory.[639] Similarly in recent years, Bering
Sea has gained unwonted commercial activity because the Yukon River
serves as a waterway 1,370 miles long to the Klondike gold fields.

[Sidenote: Atlantic and Pacific rivers.]

If