one between the mountains of the Caucasus and the Black Sea.

THE ORIGIN OF THE NAME EUROPE

On the map Europe is only an extension or prolongation of Asia; but to this prolongation its unique physical features and its resultant history have given a distinct preeminence.

Between Europe and Asia there is no natural boundary; neither does any official line of demarcation exist. The Russians sometimes imagine such a line in the "crest of the Urals." But in the wide region over which the broad, low Urals spread, no crest ever has been or can be traced. Moreover, the Urals them-selves traverse only a part of the space which subtends Europe from Asia. cause of the arbitrary or undetermined. nature of that eastern boundary, eminent authorities vary in their estimate of the total area of Europe by several hundred thousand square miles.

Be

The name Europe has been in use for more than twenty-five hundred years. Its origin and meaning are unknown. Perhaps it is derived, as the ancients believed, from the fair maiden Europa, beloved of Jupiter. Perhaps it comes from the word irib or creb, found on Assyrian monuments and supposed to mean darkness, or the setting sun, in distinction from asu, found on the same monuments and supposed to mean the rising sun, or Asia. Let us agree, however, with Herodotus who naïvely confesses that "no mortal can ever hope to find out the true meaning of this word inherited from the forefathers.'

WHY EUROPE'S RACES ARE PROGRESSIVE

Europe does not equal one-fourteenth of the land surface and is less than onefiftieth of the entire surface of the globe; yet upon it dwell 450,000,000 human beings, more than a fourth of all mankind. Nor are all Europeans found in Europe. They and their children have occupied and populated the whole Western Hemisphere, of which they were the discoverers. They have partitioned and subdued to themselves nearly the whole of Africa. With the exception of China.

and Japan, they control all Asia and all the islands of all the seas. During the last twenty-five centuries, from them as from a focus have radiated the art and science and thought of the world.

How has this stupendous result been brought about? What potent causes have produced such practical monopoly of universal leadership?

That the early ancestors of the present European peoples were more highly endowed than their kindred or contemporaries or possessed greater capacity for development, there is no reason to believe.

In the physical advantages Europe possesses are revealed the causes which have given to Europeans and the descendants of Europeans their unquestioned superiority.

Almost the whole of Europe is situated in the northern half of the North Temperate Zone. Its extreme northern point, the North Cape, is nineteen degrees from the Pole. Tarifa, its extreme southern point, is thirty-six degrees from the Equator.

Nowhere, except in the farthest boreal limits, does excessive cold stunt body and mind. Nowhere does excessive and continued heat sap energy and enervate the will. No spontaneous prodigality of Nature removes the necessity of exertion and induces sloth.

Here, where the air invigorates, man must labor if he would survive. The rewards of labor are reasonably sure, but something more is necessary than to satisfy one day's needs. The periodic succession, "the rhythmic swing," of the seasons, where winter invariably follows summer, compels him to take thought and make some provision of food, shelter, and clothing for the days to come. Even slight labor and little forethought, neither of which can be escaped, force him toward emergence from the primitive and. purely animal state toward higher exist

ence.

Much thus far said would apply to the parallel region of North America occupied by the Dominion of Canada and the United States. It applies to no other portion of the globe. The greater part

of Africa and South America is included in the Torrid Zone. The vast broken plateau of continental Asia is girdled west, south, and east by hills or mountains which shut out the influence of the

sea.

The climate of western Europe is determined by the Gulf Stream, the mightiest, most rapid and most beneficent of Ocean currents. Its heated mass, deflected eastward by the Banks of Newfoundland, reaches the shores of Europe, creating on its way the exhaustless fisheries of the North Sea. Its warmth breaks the force of the winter and keeps the harbors ice-free in the Norwegian fiords. It gives to Liverpool a milder climate than that of Washington, a thousand miles farther south, and in the British Islands, due east of Labrador, causes grass to grow throughout the year.*

As no formidable barrier to breezes from the sea is interposed, the prevailing winds of Europe, loaded with ocean. moisture, spread hundreds of miles inland, relieving the excesses of the seasons and fertilizing the soil.

EUROPE'S VAST COAST-LINE

The coast-line of Europe is remarkable for its length and its availability. South America is twice and Africa three

times as large, and yet, although Europe

is landlocked on its eastern or Asiatic side, it has a longer coast-line than that of those two continents combined. North America has double the area of Europe. But, except for what stretches along the inhospitable Arctic, the sea front of the two is nearly the same.

Europe is intersected by numerous vast, narrow, half-inland gulfs and seas which endlessly break its contour and multiply its length.

No other body of water rivals the incomparable sea which forms the southern boundary of Europe, the Mediterranean. Its general direction is east and west for nearly 2,200 miles, and it is wholly included in the southern, more genial, part

See also, in the NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE, "The Gulf Stream," by Rear Admiral John E. Pillsbury (August, 1912).

of the Temperate Zone. Bathing the shores of all the continents of the old world, its area of 900,000 square miles makes it seem like an inland ocean. Two great peninsulas cut half way across, one of them more than seven hundred miles in length.

A succession of great islands at almost equal distances follow one another along a line rudely parallel to its general direction. Innumerable other islands dot its main expanse and fringe its shores. Hence results a maze of connecting seas, which abound in deep, spacious, tideless harbors to invite the enterprise of the merchant and to provide refuge from the tempest.

THE INFLUENCE OF THE ÆGEAN

Of all those interconnecting seas the Ægean or Archipelago was to exert the earliest and most abiding influence. Nowhere else did the ancient world afford a like training school for seamanship. The dwellers on the peninsular shores of Greece and Asia Minor were impelled by the circumstances of their lot to venture upon, gradually to understand, and finally to master the sea. And the sea gave back something greater than mere material returns.

Inevitably the old land kingdoms, Egypt, Assyria, Persia, India, submerged the individual in the mass. As inevitably, in the men who singly or in groups of twos or threes wrestled with and overcame the sea, the sense of personal independence was roused. This was both achievement and revelation. It was the impelling motive at Marathon and in all the struggles for freedom since down. to the present day.

Classic Greece was the creation of the Mediterranean. Without the Mediterranean there would have been no Rome, of whose State it was at once the heart and the bond of union. Nor has its part in the world been less preeminent through the middle ages down to modern times. Until the sixteenth century the shifting capital of the world was located in some one of its three great peninsulas. Of all these causes which have given to