Influences of Geographic Environment Part 62

Turning to another part of the world, we find that the Afghan tribes commanding the pa.s.ses of the Suleiman Mountains have long been accustomed to impose transit duties upon caravans plying between Turkestan and India. The merchants have regularly organized themselves into bands of hundreds or even thousands to resist attack or exorbitant exactions. The Afghans have always enforced their right to collect tolls in the Khaibar and Kohat pa.s.ses, and have thus blackmailed every Indian dynasty for centuries. In 1881 the British government came to terms with them by paying them an annual sum to keep these roads open.[1249] Just to the south the Gomal Pa.s.s, which carries the main traffic road over the border mountains between the Punjab and the Afghan city of Ghazni, is held by the brigand tribe of Waziris, and is a dangerous gauntlet to be run by every armed caravan pa.s.sing to and from India.[1250] The Ossetes of the Caucasus, who occupy the Pa.s.s of Dariel and the approaching valleys, regularly preyed upon the traffic moving between Russia and Georgia, till the Muscovite government seized and policed the road.[1251]

[Sidenote: Strategic power of pa.s.s states.]

The strategic importance of pa.s.s peoples tends early to a.s.sume a political aspect. The mountain state learns to exploit this one advantage of its ill-favored geographical location. The cradle of the old Savoyard power in the late Middle Ages lay in the Alpine lands between Lake Geneva and the western tributaries of the Po River. This location controlling several great mountain routes between France and Italy gave the Savoyard princes their first importance.[1252] The autonomy of Switzerland can be traced not less to the citadel character of the country and the native independence of its people, than to their political exploitation of their strategic position. They profited, moreover, by the wish of their neighbors that such an important transit region between semi-tropical and temperate Europe should be held by a power too weak to obstruct its routes. The Amir of Kabul, backed by the rapacious Afridi tribes of the Suleiman Mountains, has been able to play off British India against Russia, and thereby to secure from both powers a degree of consideration not usually shown to inferior nations.

Similarly in colonial America, the Iroquois of the Mohawk depression, who commanded the pa.s.sway from the Hudson to the fur fields of the Northwest and also the avenue of attack upon the New York settlements for the French in Canada, were early conciliated by the English and used by them as allies, first in the French wars and afterward in the Revolution.

NOTES TO CHAPTER XV

[1186] For physical effects, see Angelo Mosso, Life of Man on the High Alps. Translated from the Italian. London, 1898.

[1187] W.Z. Ripley, Races of Europe, pp. 463-465. New York, 1899.

[1188] Strabo, Book IV, chap. VI, 3.

[1189] W.Z. Ripley, Races of Europe, pp. 31-32. New York, 1899.

[1190] Sir Thomas Holdich, India, pp. 32-33. London, 1905.

[1191] W.Z. Ripley, The Races of Europe, Map p. 439. New York, 1899.

[1192] Imperial Gazetteer of India, Vol. I, pp. 294-295. Oxford, 1907.

Sir Thomas Holdich, India, relief map on p. 171 compared with linguistic map p. 201. London, 1905.

[1193] Census of India for 1901, Risley and Gait, Vol. I, Part I, p. 2.

Calcutta, 1903. B.H. Baden-Powell, The Indian Village Community, pp. 40, 130, 131. London, 1896.

[1194] Count Gleichen, The Egyptian Sudan, Vol. I, pp. 184, 185, 190.

London, 1905.

[1195] Gustav Nachtigal, _Sahara und Sudan_, Vol. III, pp. 178, 188-192.

Leipzig, 1889.

[1196] Spencer and Gillen, The Northern Tribes of Central Australia, pp.

6, 13. London, 1904.

[1197] W. Deecke, Italy, p. 365. London, 1904.

[1198] Sir Thomas Holdich, India, pp. 295-296. London, 1905. G.W.

Steevens, In India, pp. 202-204. New York, 1899.

[1199] Francis Younghusband, The Heart of a Continent, pp. 138, 140, 145, 272-273. London, 1904.

[1200] E. Huntington, The Pulse of Asia, p. 87. Boston, 1907.

[1201] E.C. Semple, American History and Its Geographic Conditions, pp.

184-185. Boston, 1903.

[1202] Isabella Bird Bishop, The Yangtze Valley and Beyond, Vol. II, pp.

70-72, 88, 91. London, 1900.

[1203] Francis H. Nichols, Through Hidden Shensi, pp. 170-171. New York, 1902.

[1204] Otis T. Mason, Primitive Travel and Transportation, pp. 450-454, 474-475. _Smithsonian Report_, Washington, 1896.

[1205] Col. George E. Church, The Acre Territory and the Caoutchouc Regions of Southwestern Amazonia, _Geog. Jour_. May, 1904. London.

[1206] M. Huc, Journey through the Chinese Empire, pp. 39-40. New York, 1871.

[1207] Perceval Landon, The Opening of Tibet, pp. 54-55. New York, 1905.

[1208] Jean Baptiste Tavernier, Travels in India. Vol. II, p. 264.

Translated from the French of 1676. London, 1889.

[1209] E.F. Knight, Where Three Empires Meet, pp. 231, 274, 276, 286-289. London, 1897.

[1210] Census of the Philippine Islands, Vol. I, p. 544. Washington, 1905.

[1211] Joseph Partsch, Central Europe, p. 134. London, 1903.

[1212] M.S.W. Jefferson, Caesar and the Central Plateau of France, _Journal of Geog._, Vol. VI, p. 113. New York, 1897.

[1213] P. Vidal de la Blache, _Tableau de la Geographie de la France_, p. 276. Paris, 1903.

[1214] E.A. Freeman, Historical Geography of Europe, Vol. I, p. 450-453.

London, 1882.

[1215] William Morris Davis, Physical Geography, p. 183. Boston, 1899.

[1216] P. Vidal de la Blache, _Tableau de la Geographie de la France_, p. 260, map p. 261. Paris, 1903.

[1217] Indian Census for 1901, Risley and Gait, Vol. I, Part I, pp. 1, 2, Calcutta, 1905.

[1218] Hans Helmolt, History of the World, Vol. IV, p. 479. New York, 1902.

[1219] Sir Thomas Holdich, India, p. 67, cartogram of Hindu Kush orography. London, 1905.

[1220] _Ibid._, pp. 102-104.

[1221] _Ibid._, p. 26.

[1222] J. Partsch, Central Europe, p. 27. London, 1903.

[1223] B.H. Baden-Powell, The Indian Village Community, pp. 40-45, 111, 116. London, 1896.

[1224] H.R. Mill, International Geography, pp. 394-395. New York, 1902.

[1225] Gottfried Merzbacher, _Aus den Hochregionen des Kaukasus_, pp.