THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE. 



291 



cities of France with a population of fifty thousand or over. The 

 major one extends from Flanders at the north to Bordeaux in the 

 southwest. Shaped like an hourglass, it is broadened about Paris 

 and in Aquitaine, being pinched at the waist between Auvergne 

 and Brittany. The seventy- five miles of open country which lie 

 between Paris and Orleans have rightly been termed by Kohl 

 " the Mesopotamia of France." This district is not only surpass- 

 ingly fertile; it is the strategic center of the country as well. 

 At this point the elbow of the Loire comes nearest to the Seine 



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in all its course. An invader possessed of this vantage ground 

 would have nearly all of France that was worth having at his 

 feet. If the Huns under Attila, coming from the east in 451, 

 had captured Orleans as Clovis did with his Frankish host at 

 a later time, the whole southwest of France would have been 

 laid open to them. The Saracens, approaching from the oppo- 

 site direction along this axis, had they been victorious at Tours, 

 could in the same way have swarmed over all the north and 

 the east, and the upper Rhone Valley would have been within 

 reach. The Normans in their turn, coming from the north- 



