GENERAL.

THE SCOTTISH

GEOGRAPHICAL

MAGAZINE.

ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS.

(Delivered at Edinburgh, 28th November 1890.)

RIVERS, PLAINS, AND MOUNTAINS.

BY E. G. RAVENSTEIN, F.R. G.S.,

Honorary Fellow, Royal Scottish Geographical Society.

INSTEAD of discussing some startling discovery, speculative hypothesis, or dry statistics, my intention to-night is to deal with a branch of geography that should interest us all-the department of Political Geography. Since the days of Strabo and Ritter we have had a good deal of speculative theorising in this department of knowledge, and in more recent times the names of Peschel and Ratzel are familiar to us in this respect. These speculations being based upon facts, it behoves us occasionally to consider them seriously. We are frequently told that man is the creature of circumstances, or at least of his surroundings, and that, knowing the configuration of a country, its climate and its products, we should be able to determine what manner of people must inhabit that country. This is, of course, a hasty conclusion, though it contains the fraction of truth that is found in most statements of the kind.

The motive of my lecture is to examine some of the more prominent physical features of the world in their effect upon the destinies of man and of nations.

We will commence with rivers-in many countries a life-giving element, and every where one of the leading factors of human progress. But there are rivers and rivers, just as there are Scotsmen and Scotsmen : we must observe a distinction. Some rivers there are which amply fulfil all promises, while others, though they figure more prominently on the map, are but of little use. Take, to begin with, the rivers of the

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Temperate regions, rivers with which we are most familiar. If they conduct to a navigable sea, or open their mouths towards a country that is prepared to receive the products of human industry, it follows that they must become seats of human activity, and, inferentially, of prosperity. There are such rivers even in a small country like Scotland: the Clyde, for example. The mouth of the Clyde is kept open, not only through the energy of municipal councillors, but also by the action of Nature. The Clyde not only faces Ireland, but also that New World, the discovery and development of which placed Great Britain in the very centre of the inhabited globe. It is a river which, though small, is important. Now, contrast the Clyde with those magnificent rivers you see on the map-say in Siberia, where they flow to waste in an ice-clad ocean. The lower Clyde is open throughout the year, but those Siberian rivers are available for local purposes only, and even that only during a brief period of the year. Even the Amur, which at one time it was hoped could be used as an outlet from the Siberian tracts into the Pacific, is covered with ice during the greater part of the year. It can never serve the purposes of a first-rate highway; and, in consequence, the Russians have been forced to seek a port further south, at Vladivostok. To communicate with the outside world at all times, they are therefore compelled to go by road or rail.

There are rivers which, though they may not communicate with the open ocean, offer considerable facilities as navigable highways. Of such is the Volga. Such rivers, draining inland basins, are not of as great human importance as those conducting to the ocean by a direct route.

Leaving the Temperate regions and entering the Tropical zone, we encounter rivers that are serviceable as highways during one-half of the year, but are useless during the other half, owing to their becoming either entirely dry or greatly reduced in volume. As the sun, in his apparent path through space, travels north and south, so will the rivers dry up or flow abundantly. It is not ice, but the absence of water, which in their case obstructs navigation and renders them less useful to man than they might otherwise be. There are, of course, exceptions even among such rivers as these. In the case of mighty rivers like the Amazons and Congo, fed by northern and southern tributaries, and flowing east and west respectively, in proximity to the Equator, the heavy rains which follow in the apparent path of the sun will always keep the parent streams well fed through their tributary branches. Thus the Amazons and Congo are pre-eminent among Tropical rivers.

Cataracts form another insuperable obstruction to the free navigation of rivers. In Great Britain, of course, they need not be taken into account. Our waterfalls are in some respects notable; but I know of no waterfalls in the British Isles that may be said to obstruct navigation. If, however, we go to Africa, the physical configuration of which is productive in a marked degree of such obstructions to river-navigation as waterfalls and rapids, you will find that they are among the chief hindrances to free fluvial access from the ocean into the Interior. If we were to draw a line on the map through all the cataracts that form the first obstruction, it would at once be seen how near to the coasts such