I5C» SEA AND LAND 



in the Mediterranean the cHmate is tempestuous, and ships 

 have to be well built and equipped to meet the heavy waves, 

 and sailors must be masters of their art. Moreover, in that 

 continent the Aryan people have their principal seat of em- 

 pire, and tliis race, by stern proof through centuries of trial, 

 has been shown to contain the preeminently seafaring men of 

 the world. The Semitic and Chinese races have exhibited a 

 comparable skill in various other arts, but the Aryans have 

 ploughed the seas with a courage and success unapproached 

 by any other variety of men. 



The subdivisions of European people show a variation 

 in the measure of their maritime success generally propor- 

 tionate to the degree in which the physical conditions of the 

 countries the)' occupy favor training in the seafaring art. The 

 great peninsulas and islands of the northern part of the con- 

 tinent, Norway and Sw^eden, Denmark, and the British Isles, 

 have developed the preeminently maritime states and peoples. 

 The best of these nurseries of seamen was of old in the Scan- 

 dinavian peninsula, where our ancestors formed the cruising 

 hal)it, where they developed the courage and address required 

 for journeys over wide and unknown seas. The folk of these 

 peninsulas were nurtured in a country wdiich could not have 

 been better contrived for the maritime development of a 

 people. The shore is so intersected w^ith deep reentrants, 

 penetrating far into the land, that the navigating habit was in 

 a way imposed upon the people. No vigorous race could 

 develop in such a country without learning how^ to manage 

 a boat and without being invited to extend their voyages from 

 the simplest essays in narrow land-locked channels to ever- 

 enlarging ventures which finally led them to face the wide 

 ocean. The Northmen took with them their seafarine habit 



