ica, historically the oldest of
continents, but cursed with a mesa form which converts nearly every
river into a plunging torrent on its approach to the sea, kept its vast
interior till the last century wrapped in utmost gloom. China, amply
supplied with smaller littoral indentations but characterized by a
paucity of larger inlets, finds compensation in the long navigable
course of the Yangtze Kiang. This river extends the landward reach of
the Yellow Sea 630 miles inland to Hanchow, where ocean-going vessels
take on cargoes of tea and silk for Europe and America,[640] and pay for
them in Mexican dollars, the coin of the coast. Hence it is lined with
free ports all the way from Shanghai at its mouth to Ichang, a thousand
miles up its course.[641]

[Sidenote: River highways as basis of commercial preeminence.]

Navigable rivers opening passages directly from the sea are obviously
nature-made gates and paths into wholly new countries; but the
accessibility with which they endow a land becomes later a permanent
factor in its cultural and economic development, a factor that remains
constantly though less conspicuously operative when railroads have done
their utmost to supplant water transportation. The importance of inland
waterways for local and foreign trade and intercourse has everywhere
been recognized. The peoples who have long maintained preeminence among
the commercial and maritime nations of the world have owed this in no
small part to the command of these natural highways, which have served
to give the broad land basis necessary for permanent commercial
ascendency. This has been the history of England, Holland, France and
the recent record of Germany. The medieval League of the Rhine Cities
flourished by reason of the Rhone-Rhine highway across western Europe.
The Hanseatic League, from Bruges all the way east to Russian Novgorod,
owed their brilliant commercial career, not only to the favorable
maritime field in the enclosed sea basins in front of them, but also to
the series of long navigable rivers behind them from the Scheldt to the
Neva and Volchov. Wherefore we find the League, originally confined to
coast towns, drawing into the federation numerous cities located far up
these rivers, such as Ghent, Cologne, Magdeburg, Breslau, Cracow, Pskof
and Novgorod.[642]

[Sidenote: Importance of rivers in large countries.]

In countries of large area, where commerce and intercourse must cover
great distances, these