ds, the remains of a foundered and drowned mountain-country.
This same configuration, considered in connection with the flora and
fauna that are favoured by the climate, goes far to explain that
discontinuity of the political life which encouraged independence
whilst it prevented self-sufficiency. The forest-belt, owing to the
dry summer, lay towards the snow-line, and below it a scrub-belt,
yielding poor hunting, drove men to grow their corn and olives and
vines in the least swampy of the lowlands, scattered like mere oases
amongst the hills and promontories.

For a long time, then, man along the north coasts must have been
oppressed rather than assisted by his environment. It made
mass-movements impossible. Great waves of migration from the
steppe-land to the northeast, or from the forest-land to the north-west,
would thunder on the long mountain barrier, only to trickle across
in rivulets and form little pools of humanity here and there. Petty
feuds between plain, shore, and mountain, as in ancient Attica, would
but accentuate the prevailing division. Contrariwise, on the southern
side of the Mediterranean, where there was open, if largely desert,
country, there would be room under primitive conditions for a
homogeneous race to multiply. It is in North Africa that we must
probably place the original hotbed of that Mediterranean race, slight
and dark with oval heads and faces, who during the neolithic period
colonized the opposite side of the Mediterranean, and threw out a wing
along the warm Atlantic coast as far north as Scotland, as well as
eastwards to the Upper Danube; whilst by way of south and east they
certainly overran Egypt, Arabia, and Somaliland, with probable
ramifications still farther in both directions. At last, however, in
the eastern Mediterranean was learnt the lesson of the profits
attending the sea-going life, and there began the true Mediterranean
phase, which is essentially an era of sea-borne commerce. Then was
the chance for the northern shore with its peninsular configuration.
Carthage on the south shore must be regarded as a bold experiment that
did not answer. The moral, then, would seem to be that the Mediterranean
basin proved an ideal nursery for seamen; but only as soon as men were
brave and clever enough to take to the sea. The geographical factor
is at least partly consequence as well as cause.

* * * * *

Now let us proceed farther north into what wa