we compare the Atlantic and Pacific oceans in respect to their
rivers, we find that the narrow Atlantic has a drainage basin of over
19,000,000 square miles as opposed to the 8,660,000 square miles of
drainage area commanded by the vastly larger Pacific. The Pacific is for
the most part rimmed by mountains, discharging into the ocean only mad
torrents or rapid-broken streams. The Atlantic, bordered by gently
sloping plains of wide extent, receives rivers that for the most part
pursue a long and leisurely course to the sea. Therefore, the commercial
and cultural influences of the Atlantic extend from the Rockies and
Andes almost to the heart of Russia, and by the Nile highway they even
invade the seclusion of Africa. Through the long reach of its rivers,
therefore, the Atlantic commands a land area twice as great as that of
the Pacific; and by reason of this fundamental geographic advantage, it
will retain the historical preeminence that it so early secured. The
development of the World Ocean will mean the exploitation of the Pacific
trade from the basis of the Atlantic, the domination of the larger ocean
by the historic peoples of the smaller, because these peoples have wider
and more accessible lands as the base of their maritime operations.

[Sidenote: Lack of coast articulations supplied by rivers.]

The geographic influence of abundant rivers navigable from the sea is
closely akin to that of highly articulated coasts. The effect of the
Hardanger or Sogne Fiord, admitting ocean steamers a hundred miles into
the interior of Norway, is similar to that of the Elbe and Weser
estuaries, which admit the largest vessels sixty miles upstream to
Hamburg and Bremen. Since river inlets can, to a certain extent, supply
the place of marine inlets, from the standpoint of anthropo-geographic
theory and of human practice, a land dissected by navigable rivers can
be grouped with one dissected by arms of the sea. South America and
Africa are alike in the unbroken contour of their coasts, but strongly
contrasted in the character of their rivers. Hence the two continents
present the extremes of accessibility and inaccessibility. South
America, most richly endowed of all the continents with navigable
streams, receiving ocean vessels three thousand miles up the Amazon as
far as Tabatinga in Peru, and smaller steamers up the Orinoco to the
spurs of the Andes, was known in its main features to explorers fifty
years after its discovery. Afr