* * * * *

Let us begin with Europe, so as to proceed gradually from the more
known to the less known. Lecky has spoken of "the European epoch of
the human mind." What is the geographical and physical theatre of that
epoch? We may distinguish--I borrow the suggestion from Professor
Myres--three stages in its development. Firstly, there was the
river-phase; next, the Mediterranean phase; lastly, the present-day
Atlantic phase. Thus, to begin with, the valleys of the Nile and
Euphrates were each the home of civilizations both magnificent and
enduring. They did not spring up spontaneously, however. If the rivers
helped man, man also helped the rivers by inventing systems of
irrigation. Next, from Minoan days right on to the end of the Middle
Ages, the Mediterranean basin was the focus of all the higher life
in the world, if we put out of sight the civilizations of India and
China, together with the lesser cultures of Peru and Mexico. I will
consider this second phase especially, because it is particularly
instructive from the geographical standpoint. Finally, since the time
of the discovery of America, the sea-trade, first called into existence
as a civilizing agent by Mediterranean conditions, has shifted its
base to the Atlantic coast, and especially to that land of natural
harbours, the British Isles. We must give up thinking in terms of an
Eastern and Western Hemisphere. The true distinction, as applicable
to modern times, is between a land-hemisphere, with the Atlantic coast
of Europe as its centre, and a sea-hemisphere, roughly coinciding with
the Pacific. The Pacific is truly an ocean; but the Atlantic is becoming
more of a "herring-pond" every day.

Fixing our eyes, then, on the Mediterranean basin, with its Black Sea
extension, it is easy to perceive that we have here a well-defined
geographical province, capable of acting as an area of
characterization as perhaps no other in the world, once its various
peoples had the taste and ingenuity to intermingle freely by way of
the sea. The first fact to note is the completeness of the ring-fence
that shuts it in. From the Pyrenees right along to Ararat runs the
great Alpine fold, like a ridge in a crumpled table-cloth; the Spanish
Sierras and the Atlas continue the circle to the south-west; and the
rest is desert. Next, the configuration of the coasts makes for
intercourse by sea, especially on the northern side with its peninsulas
and islan