is very large-and it is larger in the case of Europe than any other-the access of perturbing influence will be frequent; if it is small the reverse will be true."

Asia, largest in absolute area, stands midway with reference to the ratio which its coast-line bears to its area between the six great divisions into which the earth's surface is usually divided, three of which were known to the earliest geographers of the region of which we are treating-a region which stands at the junction of the three. The ratio is smaller than it is in the case of Europe or North America; it is larger than that of Australia, Africa, or South America. A priori, therefore, we might simply, with these relations before us, if we were dealing with the affairs of an unknown planet of which we knew only the facts presented by these areas and circles, conclude that the most mobile conditions would exist in the continent named Europe; that these would be shared by North America; that the affairs of Asia would offer a mean between the extreme activity of Europe and the extreme immobility in the history and development of Australia. The problem which we have to consider with our larger knowledge is to determine the interaction which these varying relations of area and coast-line have created between the three contiguous continents with which we have to

deal, whose natural mean term and link is southwestern Asia.

THE RED SEA RIFT

With the general characteristics of Asia you are already familiar. As I present to you the Eurasian continent," you recognize instantly that its central core is that great east-and-west uplift whose western center is the Alps and whose eastern upheaval is the great boss of central Asia, too large to be designated by any one term. This great and continuous chain is crossed at right angles upon the earth's spheroid by that long drawn rift or gap which extends from the hollow valleys of Coele-Syria to Lake Tanganyika and beyond, to which attention was first called by Suess, and which has been more fully discussed by the English geographer, Mr. J. W. Gregory. This range extends in its subordinate forms to the very edge of that other great rift-part of that circle of fire which rings the Pacific. Properly speaking, one might say there are three great lines of volcanic action : one old, which lies at right angles to the great Eurasian uplift, and which is in a condition which, in the case of a river, we should call its last stage; one in its mid-stage of activity, extending parallel to it along the eastern coast of Asia, and a third, which appears,

though one cannot say certainly, not to have yet reached its maximum of activity, but in an area like that crowded volcanic region in Central America, to be still in what one might call the torrent stage of a river. The great eastand-west line which divides Asia has to the north great plains, but recently (speaking in a geologic sense) submerged, and to the south groups of river valleys, which, in the case of the IndoAsian, the Indian, and the Euphrates Valley, abut on more southern regions of an older type and now wholly or partially submerged. Asia has, in short, an abrupt scarp to the south, a sloping desert plain to the north, and the greatest of earth's mountains between.

THE DISTRIBUTION OF CITIES

This area presents itself to us as divided into countries settled and inhabited. Broad tracts there are to the north almost without population, but the un

conscious impression which we have in regard to Asia is, as with most parts of the earth's surface where men exist, of a uniform film of population spread over the entire region, not greatly differentiated. But the test of organized population is the existence of cities. The presence or absence of cities measures not only the density of population, but the extent to which population is organized in society. From a map of this region indicating cities of over 50,000 population, the smaller dots indicating cities of this size and the largest going up to cities of 1,000,000 population, it is apparent that the city population of the Eurasian area is centered in three distinct groups. These lie in the two river systems of China, in north India, principally on the Ganges, and in the western

5" Villes sur la Surface du Globe," Almanach Hachette, 1900, p. 293. This map has, as most will see, another origin, but I have referred to the form in which I found it most suitable for reproduction.

part of Europe. China is throughout. a thickly populated country, but its greater cities are drawn toward the coast and lie principally in a crescent-shaped mass from the mouth of the Hoang-ho to the mouth of the Si-kiang. In the same way the cities of India crowd into the valley of the Ganges, and the great bulk of the city population of Europe lies in the narrow ellipse of which Berlin and London are the two foci.

THREE ORGANIZED AREAS

The area which we are considering, therefore, instead of being one of a general and indiscriminate population, is differentiated into three masses, into cities far apart on the east, the west, and the south of the Eurasian mass. The history of the world for many thousand years has been the history of the interaction of these three great masses of city population. Each demands in part what only the other two can furnish. For each of the three great masses, as in all economic integers, prosperity rests not merely upon the continuous and symmetrical development of internal resources, but also and still more upon that narrow margin of advance and

profit which comes from advantageous exchange. When these three masses of population, which early formed themselves into cities-for the present cities of northern Europe are the direct descendants of a similar ellipse of cities. along the Mediterranean and which still have their representatives there -enjoy a full, unbroken exchange, these three groups

are prosperous. When an interruption occurs in this exchange, there come, in any one of the three which is in a position most to feel the interruption, economic depression, disaster, revolution, extending perhaps to a social cataclysm. This often arises not because interruption of free intercourse between these three great groups of cities would alone have caused catastrophe, but because when many other causes of an internal character had combined to weaken the social fabric, the shock which came by the loss of this profit was sufficient to destroy unstable equilibrium and to bring a sudden ruin which otherwise would have gone through a normal degeneration and deterioration. So far as communication appears easy. these groups appear on an ordinary map, A broad

extent of land connects all three, and the ordinary impression is one of connection, and not separation, between the different parts of this great land mass.

THE CORE OF ASIA

These city groups lie outside the main core of the continent. If the rude trapezium which can be inscribed within the continental mass of Asia be drawn

upon its surface, as in the accompanying diagram, the city regions lie outside of this great central mass. This is true of both the earlier lines of cities which stretch from Ctesiphon to Italica, of the present group in northern Europe, and of the more modern group which extends from Moscow to Manchester, of the cities of India, and of the cities of China. In fact, if the eastern line bounding the continental core of Asia be drawn from the head of the Gulf of

The Continental Core of Asia Courtesy of Messrs. D. Appleton & Co.

Tonkin to the head of the Gulf of Pechi-li, the entire city area of China will lie to the east of this line. It is true, therefore, of the highly organized parts of the Asiatic continent that its 1,500, 000 square miles of mainland all lie outside of the great land mass.

The space within the central core, which amounts in all to between 12,000,000 and 13, 000,000 square miles, is a great region, which, as it stretches before us on the map, is seen to be without history, without product, without letters, and without art. Within this vast area one-fifth of the world's surface, whose history began early, over which men have moved through all the annals of man, there is no spot where any book has been produced which men cherish;

thence has come no painting or statue which men admire. There is no lack in this area of battle, murder, and sudden death; of the noise of the captains and the shouting; of garments rolled in blood, and all the uproar of siege and sack. But as we remember its wars, they seem to us, however wide our historical knowledge, as fought

On a darkling plain, Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night.

ASIA'S ARID CLOSED BASIN

One reason why this main core is without history is because in larger part it consists of a closed basin, the largest on the earth's surface. This closed basin, whose irregular outlines bound the great sea which once matched the Mediterranean and extended in a great L-shape projection to the Arctic Ocean, along the low trough in which. the Obi runs, and which constitutes the real division between Asia and Europe, rather than the Ural Mountains, is divided into two portions by the Kuenlun range, the southern and elevated plateau from 12,000 to 15,000 feet high; the northern, lower, but still having an average elevation of 5,000 or 6,000 feet, extending to the low watershed which divides the series of rivers that flow toward the Arctic from the group of lakes that extends across Asia. area is, in the first place, closed; this cuts it off from the sea. The sea-flowing river leads to the sea, and the sea leads the world around. Still more; this is not only a closed basin; it is a closed basin because it is arid; for wherever there is sufficient rainfall, an inner basin (as has been the case with several on our own continent) is certain

This

7 Arid Regions, Enclosed Basins; "Earth and Its Inhabitants; " Asia; I, p. 11. Reclus, E. 1884.

The Natural Boundary of Europe; "Earth, &c. ;" Europe; I, p. 11. Reclus, E.

Deserts.

Tracts with no outlet seawards. 8,000 Miles.

of valleys previously sepa

rate.

The eastern part of this enclosed area, the Great Plain of Turkestan, extends to a level below the surface of the ocean; but all the three parts, the elevated plateau of Tibet, the less elevated area of Chinese Turkestan, and the plains of the Khanates, constitute to gether a great block interfering with free communication between the two city centers of Asia and the successive city centers of Europe, first south and then north of the Alps. Over all this area a dense population has never been possible. Only at points where irrigation is feasible has the population ever reached a high degree of civilization in tracts essentially insular in their character, cut off by oceans of desert, and able to develop insular cultures in the midst of a continental area. Two great highways extend across this enclosed basin. Of the two areas on each side which are open to the ocean, connecting the Eurasian centers of population, the one to the north is closed by cold.

to establish connection with the sea. The streams on one side or the other eat back through the watershed, "steal" the source of an earlier and less vigorous stream, and bring about that continuous drainage across the previous dividing line which is the mark of so much of our Appalachian region. Nothing of this kind has happened with this closed basin, which from the earliest history has remained closed. The greater streams of Asia, like the Indus and the Ganges, have eaten longitudinally in the folds of the great system in which they sprang, and have not cut across the watershed. The different conditions of China from those of India appear in large measure due, however, to a somewhat different action of the streams there, though this awaits further investigation.

The great curve of the HoangHo and sundry conditions of the upper Yangtze Kiang indicate the coalescence.

THE LINK REGION

There remains, therefore, in the great land stretch which apparently connects the different civilizations of the Eurasian system only the narrow strip of oceandrained lands which extends from the Indus to Asia Minor. This constitutes the natural highway of the Eurasian system. It is the link land of the continent. Its history has had an internal development. Its external relations, however, the growth of its dynasties, the course of its culture, the development of its wealth, and the channels of its trade have throughout this entire region