EUROPE 



(NATIONALITIES) 



English Miles 



Europe. Map showing the main distribution of the nationalities of Europe, 

 are omitted. 



Scattered peoples such as the Jews and Gypsies 

 The Celts of Scotland, Ireland, and Wales are included under British, and those o! Brittany under French 



are lowland rivers which have 

 found their way to the Black Sea or 

 the Caspian across the plain. 



But the most important rivers of 

 Europe are the three great Alpine 

 streams, the Rhone, Rhine, and 

 Danube. Their sources lie near 

 together, but their mouths are as 

 far apart as they could well be. The 

 Rhone leaves the Alps at Lake 

 Geneva and flows to the Mediter- 

 ranean in the trough between the 

 central massif of France and the 

 W. Alps, the trough occupied in 

 the N by the Saone, the principal 

 tributary of the Rhone. 



The Rhine suddenly turns N. at 

 Basel, and by a geological accident 

 flows through the gorge between 

 Bingen and Coblenz, ultimately to 

 the North Sea. The Danube flows 

 along the N. edge and round the E. 

 end of the Alps, fed first by streams 

 from the transverse valleys of the 

 Central Alps and later by streams, 

 such as the Drave, from the longi- 

 tudinal valleys of the E. Alps. Its 

 lower course is along the N. edge of 

 the mountainous Balkan penin- 

 sula ; here it receives only one 

 great tributary, the Theiss, not of 



Alpine origin. Next hi importance 

 is the Elbe, which issues from the 

 Bohemian plateau to cross the Ger- 

 man plain to the North Sea. 



The most useful rivers are those 

 which cross the plain to the Chan- 

 nel, the North and Baltic Seas; 

 there is considerable river traffic 

 on the Rhine and the Elbe, and a 

 fair volume of traffic on the Seine, 

 the Schelde, Oder, and Vistula. E. 

 of the Rhine there is some trouble 

 with winter ice and spring floods. 

 Rivers and Canals 



But the greatest value of these 

 streams lies in their use in con- 

 nexion with canal systems, which 

 are being developed hi order to 

 join them all together ; these 

 canals have been made more or less 

 parallel to the coast and some. 



The lakes of Europe are not so 

 large or important as those of 

 Africa or N. America. The largest, 

 Wener, Ladoga, Onega, and the 

 Finnish lakes are shallow expanses 

 on the plains, due to dams across 

 the lower ends of hollows scraped 

 in the rock surface during the 

 Great Ice Age The most beautiful, 

 those of the Alps, Como, Maggiore, 

 Lucerne, etc., are long, narrow, 

 deep lakes due to dams across the 

 ends of glacier-moulded valleys. 



The Arctic coast of Europe is 

 flat. The Norwegian coast, like the 

 W. coast of Scotland, has a well- 

 developed system of fiords, sub- 

 merged glacier-moulded valleys. 

 For 100 m. along the coast o| the 

 great European plain there is a 

 belt of sand dunes, best known in 



distance inland, so that eventually' Holland, Belgium, and S.W.France 



it will be possible to send goods by 

 barge from Paris to Bromberg 

 through a series of canal ports, 

 Hanover, Berlin, etc., which lie 

 parallel to the seaports Havre, 

 Antwerp, Rotterdam, Bremen, 

 Hamburg, Stettin, and Danzig, 

 with which they will have barge 

 and steamer connexions. 



(the Landes). The rocky coast of 

 the French peninsulas, the Coten- 

 tin and Brittany, is a break in this 

 belt. The N. coast of Spain drops 

 sheer from the mountains to the 

 great depths of the Bay of Biscay. 

 The W. Iberian coast, like that of 

 S.W. Ireland, consists of drowned 

 river valleys, known technically as 



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