are still the places that are least accessible to despotism. BOOK In Thrace, the Sarres, inhabitants of the mountains, main- XXIII. tained for a long time their independence ;* in these same mountains, as well as in Macedonia, we find at this day hordes of Turcomans who live in the enjoyment of liberty.† The Illyrians bravely resisted the kings of Macedonia, and the Roman Legions. The Arnauts, or Albanians wandering upon these same mountains, obey the Turks only when payed by them. The Greeks, in spite of the yoke of tyranny under which they are oppressed, exhibit still in some mountainous cantons, the manly character and republican spirit of their ancestors. Without mentioning the Mainotes, so often referred to, let us look to the town of Ambelákia, situated on the declivity of Mount Ossa, above Tempé; its inhabitants, as brave as they are industrious, have twice repulsed the Ottoman troops, and no Turk dare shew himself on their rocks. The small town of Parga, whose unhappy and unmerited catastrophe we shall afterwards have occasion to describe, has often presented the spectacle of women taking up arms and fighting for liberty. The Spachiotes, who inhabit the white mountains in the Isle of Crete, have been only lately subjugated, rather by intestine discords than by the arms of the Turks. They still preserve severål institutions of the ancient Cretans. It is perhaps to the peculiar nature of the soil of Europe, to its being more intersected, more rugged, and more unproductive, than that of Asia or America, that we owe that presence of mind, and that spirit of bold enterprise and perseverance by which the natives are in general so much distinguished. These qualities eminently characterize the inhabitants of the Alps, the Dofrines, and the Cevennes. BOOK Nations that occupy mountainous districts, especially XXIII. when jealous of their liberty, and living in small separate states, speak generally a number of dialects, which, in process of time, become so many languages. In Caucasus, there are twenty-six different dialects spoken.* As a farther proof of this, we may also refer to the numerous dialects of Greece and Scandinavia. People inhabiting plains. Tribes that inhabit vast plains destitute of large rivers and forests, naturally betake themselves to a wandering life, and the tending of flocks and cattle. The patriarchal government, the parent of despotism, had its origin amongst Nomades. wandering tribes or Nomades. An insulated mode of life retards the progress of population; and the facility with which food is procured, obstructs the growth of industry and the arts. Such is the cause of the barbarism in which the tribes of central Asia remain. But if these tribes meet with considerable rivers, bordered by meadows affording rich pasture to their herds, they follow their course, and, Fishermen descending into fertile valleys, become fishermen and agriculturists. culturists. As soon as they have fixed their abode, we see the arts and sciences gradually spring up in the midst of them. The Mongols descending from their upland plains, have become the founders of numerous towns in China; and an African horde, following the Nile from Meroe and upper Ethiopia, has been able successively to create the wonders of Thebes and of Memphis. and agri Tribes living in Forests. Forests must have been the primitive abodes of the European tribes, when they lived upon acorns. Even now the palm forests afford shelter to the nations of Africa. The hunting of animals was the natural occupation of these people; but at the dawn of civilization, the tribes of hunters, having both the body and the mind formed by violent exercise, by dangers, and incessant toil, must have made more rapid progress in improvement than the pas Strabo, xi. Reineggs, Voyage, &c. + Compare Deguignes, Histoire des Huns, ii. p. 5. toral tribes, and must have built houses and towns at a BOOK much earlier period. The forests would furnish them with XXIII. the materials and the model of their architecture. Trunks of trees supporting a verdant roof, suggested the first idea of Grecian and Indian colonnades, whilst Chinese architecture consists only of tents imitated in wood and stone; and in the Gothic architecture, we recognise the image of gloomy caverns and steep rocks.* Mountains, rivers, and forests, having directed the first tribes in their emigrations, and having influenced their physical and moral character, have also given rise to the Original geographifirst geographical divisions and denominations,† as we shall cal divioften have occasion to show in our particular descriptions. sion. But what has most accelerated the extension of the human species, and the progress of civilization, is the invention of navigation. What lively and strange emotions must the first men Maritime have felt, when, descending from their paternal mountains, people. after having wandered in the thick forests which covered them, they saw, all at once, their further advance impeded by an immense plain of water, which, in the distance, appeared to be lost in the sky, and to mingle with the clouds! The hunters, accustomed as they were to danger, would feel a great degree of repugnance to commit themselves to the waves. But no sooner was the first skiff launched upon the ocean, than the whole physical and moral state of that tribe, which, in consequence of its situation, was enabled to profit by this great discovery, would be changed. A small territory, abounding in fisheries, is enabled to accumulate a numerous population. Civilized islands are asylums inaccessible to the attacks of savages. These small corners of the earth, insulated by nature itself, gave rise to the first ideas of country and of national independence. Even the inclemency of the maritime air must have had Hodge's Travels in India, part i. Rudbeck, Atlant. i. 55-57. Eccard, Orig. Gerinan, p. 86. Torfæi. Hist. Norweg. i. 130-150. XXIII. BOOK some influence upon the progress of civilization. In the interior of the country, a tent or hut of verdant turf afforded a sufficient shelter from the rain and the wind. Near the sea, the dampness of the atmosphere rendered it necessary to build habitations of firmer materials and a closer construction. Great towns arose upon the banks of a river, or upon the shores of the sea. Character of insular nations. Influence of navigation. The character of insular nations is always distinguished by originality. Attached to their native soil, and unjust towards a foreign one; faithful to national remembrances, but strongly biassed by superstitions and prejudices, they generally exhibit more energetic virtues and vices than the inhabitants of continental plains. In the history of the human species, the progress of navigation will always hold the first place after that of agriculture. The civilization which agriculture gives rise to, is purely local; it stops as soon as the supply of the wants of the nation is secured; agricultural societies, generally composed of only two classes, masters and slaves, insulate themselves from the rest of the world more by their laws and customs, than by the lofty walls they have sometimes raised to defend themselves against foreign aggression. But navigation disturbs this Chinese felicity, and interrupts a repose so opposed to the destinies of human nature. A vessel unites the most distant regions of the world; cities, nay even whole nations, are transported to other climates; the tumult and the hum of civilization is heard amongst indolent savages; an universal movement pervades all classes; and man is unconsciously drawn on to the conquest of the globe. The fate of the great human families has been decided by the direction which they took in their emigration, by the nature of the soil which they occupied, but, above all, by the positions of the great seas of the globe, and the advantages which men were able to derive from them. Is not the perpetual infancy of the Chinese chiefly owing to their ignorance of the art of navigation? On the contrary, around the if the Japanese and the Malays exhibit a character, manly, BOOK enterprising, and different from that of the other Asiatics, XXIII. it was formed at the epoch when their squadrons traversed the great eastern Ocean, which is at present filled with their colonies. The people of Africa are, as it were, buried in the midst of a great continent, destitute of gulphs and arms of the sea. This circumstance, by hindering navigation from carrying industry thither, has powerfully contributed to brutify the nations of that continent. The Europeans alone were called by Providence to extend their empire over the globe. The nations who have peopled Europe had to cross the mountains of Caucasus and of the Alps, the Black Sea, the Baltic, the Archipelago, the Adriatic, and the Mediterranean. Obstacles so formidable, retarded them at Civilizafirst in their progress; but, at the same time, they served to tion spread develope and to fortify that character of activity and courage Mediterwhich is common to the European nations. The descend- ranean. ants of Canaan, the Phenicians, soon lost the empire of the sea; Athens rivalled Tyre; a Grecian city ruled over conquered Egypt; Carthage submitted to Rome; Europe seized the sceptre of the world. At this first epoch, all civilization was collected around the Mediterranean; it was almost the only sea upon which there was any navigation. A second epoch commenced, and the march of civilization was still intimately connected with the progress of navigation. The compass and Columbus appeared. A new world saw our vessels land on its shores. A new Europe has ari- Civilizasen, and continues to advance with giant steps in the career tion spread of improvement. The Atlantic ocean has become what the Atlantic Mediterranean was before, the great highway and thoroughfare of civilized nations. around the ocean. But the march of civilization is far from being terminated; the wonders we have witnessed may still be surpassed. The Europeans have not confined themselves to the shores. of that Atlantic ocean which, immense as it appeared to the Views Phenician and the Greek navigators, is only an arm of the upon the sea, compared to that great ocean which, under the names great ocean. |