. Ripley, Races of Europe, pp. 294-295. New
York, 1899.

[738] Herodotus, II, 137, 140.

[739] Thucydides, I, 110. Brugsch-Bey, History of Egypt, Vol. II, p.
333. London, 1881.

[740] John Richard Green, History of the English People, Vol. I, chap.
III, p. 71.

[741] Miller and Skertchley, The Fenland Past and Present, pp. 83, 101,
104, 107, 108. London, 1878.

[742] Tacitus, History of the Germans, Book VI, chap. VI. Motley, Rise
of the Dutch Republic, Vol. I, pp. 2-5, 13. New York, 1885.

[743] J. Partsch, Central Europe, p. 299. London, 1903.

[744] Miller and Skertchley, The Fenland Past and Present, pp. 113-114.
London, 1878.

[745] Edward John Payne, History of the New World Called America, Vol.
I, pp. 327-328, 502-503. Oxford, 1892. Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol.
II, p. 163. London, 1896-1898.

[746] U.S. Report of Commission of Navigation, p. 10. Washington, 1901.

CHAPTER XII

CONTINENTS AND THEIR PENINSULAS

[Sidenote: Insularity of the land-masses.]

The division of the earth's surface into 28 per cent. land and 72 per
cent. water is an all important fact of physical geography and
anthropo-geography. Owing to this proportion, the land-masses, which
alone provide habitats for man, rise as islands out of the three-fold
larger surface of the uninhabitable ocean. Consequently, the human
species, like the other forms of terrestrial life, bears a deeply
ingrained insular character. Moreover, the water causes different
degrees of separation between the land-masses, according as it appears
as inlet, strait, sea, an island-strewn or islandless ocean; it
determines the grouping of the habitable areas and consequently the
geographic basis of the various degrees of ethnic and cultural kinship
between the divisions of land. Finally, since the sea is for man only a
highway to some ulterior shore, this geography of the land-masses in
relation to the encompassing waters points the routes and goals of human
wanderings.

Each fragment of habitable land, large or small, continent or islet,
means a corresponding group or detachment of the vast human family. Its
size fixes the area at the service of the group which occupies it. Its
location, however, may either endow it with a neighborliness like that
subsisting between Africa and Europe and involving an interwoven
history; or remoteness like that of South America from Australia, so
complete that even the close net of intercourse thrown by modern
com