496 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



of Syene ? While we allow that the Aryan blood of the Hellenes had 

 much to do with the differences which mark them off from the Ne- 

 groid Egyptians, can we doubt that Hellenic civilization would have 

 been very different if the settlers of Attica had happened rather to 

 occupy the valley of the Nile ; and that the Egyptians would have 

 become a race of enterprising sailors and foreign merchants if they had 

 chanced to make their homes on the shores of the Cyclades and the 

 Corinthian Gulf ? 



Or, again, let us look for a moment at Britain. Who can suppose 

 that the destiny of our country has not been profoundly affected by 

 the existence of great coal-fields beneath its surface ? Even if we 

 possessed no mineral wealth, it is probable that our geographical posi- 

 tion would still have insured us a considerable commercial impor- 

 tance as the carriers of the civilized world. Britain happens to occupy 

 the central point in the hemisphere of greatest land, and this fact, aided 

 by its insular nature, could not fail to make it a great mercantile country 

 as soon as navigation, nursed in the Mediterranean, had advanced suf- 

 ficiently to embrace the whole ocean-coasts of Asia, Africa, and Amer- 

 ica. But without coal and iron we .should have been mere merchants, 

 not manufacturers. London, Liverpool, Glasgow, and Southampton 

 might possibly have been not inconsiderable marts for exchanging the 

 products of other countries, and for balancing the trade in raw cotton 

 or sugar from India and America against the textile fabrics and the 

 hardware of France and Belgium. But we should have had no Bir- 

 mingham, no Manchester, no Sheffield, no Leeds, no Bradford, no 

 Paisley, no Belfast. Our population would not have reached one half 

 its present size. Lancashire, the West Riding of Yorkshire, and the 

 busy mining district of South Wales would be as thinly inhabited as 

 Merionethshire and Connemara. The Black Country would be a quiet 

 pastoral and agricultural region like the remainder of Warwick and 

 Stafford. We should have no great towns except on the seaboard and 

 the navigable rivers, and even these would only attain a fraction of 

 their existing dimensions. Most of our people would be engaged in 

 farming, and there would be no great wealthy class to crowd into 

 Brighton, Scarborough, Cheltenham, Torquay, and the Scottish High- 

 lands. 



But this is not all : the difference in our national character would 

 no doubt be very great. Coal has stimulated our inventive faculties 

 and our enterprise, and has given an indirect impetus to science and 

 art. Without it we should have had fewer mechanical improvements, 

 fewer scientific discoveries, fewer railways, fewer colleges and schools. 

 All these things have reacted upon our general level of intelligence and 

 taste, and have enabled us to hold our own among the most advanced 

 European nations. But without coal and iron we should have fallen 

 back to somewhat the same position as that now held by Holland or 

 Scandinavia, allowance being made for a larger territory in the first 



