Link Relations of Southwestern Asia 255 



The Mediterranean Basin 



Courtesy of Messrs. D. Appleton & Co. 



which on our maps today is covered by 

 Afghanistan, Baluchistan, and the Per- 

 sian and Turkish Empires — been gov- 

 erned by its position as a narrow cause- 

 way between the populations which 

 grew up in the river basins of China and 

 India and the populations which devel- 

 oped on European islands and penin- 

 sulas, large and small, old and new, 

 from the days of the Phoenician gallej^ to 

 the days of the English tramp steamer. 

 The primal basal fact in regard to any 

 part of the earth's surface, the fact which 

 conditions all the rest and inexorably 

 determines and defines human devel- 

 opment, history, and civilization, is 

 whether it partakes in its coast line of 

 the Atlantic or Pacific Coast type. 

 The first type, now a familiar common- 

 place in geography, is represented by 

 coasts like those of the Atlantic, of 

 which the eastern coast of North and 

 South America is the standard, which 

 show a minimum of change, constitut- 

 ing an even coast-line in which the hun- 

 dred-fathom line through most of its 

 course preserves so steadfast a distance 

 from soundings that the position of a 

 vessel can over most of this area be in- 

 stantly, though approximately, deter- 

 mined by its .discovery. Such a coast is 



continuous in its outline, quiescent in 

 its mutations, unbroken in its develop- 

 ment. To such a coast-line history can 

 be transplanted. On such a coast-line 

 history has never originated. The sig- 

 nificant example of the Pacific type of 

 coast, on the other hand, is represented 

 by the western half of that rim of fire 

 which girdles the Pacific and which 

 gives the eastern coast of Asia its island 

 continent and the successive volcanoes 

 which appear at brief intervals from 

 Krakatoa to the Arctic Circle. This 

 type marks the true coast of Asia ; on 

 the east it exists in northern India, and 

 reappears in one of its most characteristic 

 forms on the northern edge of the Medi- 

 terranean. If we reproduce here a sum- 

 mary of the distribution of these types of 

 coast," it is immediately apparent that 

 the coast of China, the region in north 

 India in which its two great river valleys 

 lie, and the Mediterranean region are 

 connected by a narrow strip of such coast 

 along the Persian Gulf and the Bay of 

 Bengal of the same mobile type. On 

 the other hand, the east coast of Africa, 

 all the coast of Arabia, including that 

 on the Red Sea, represent coasts of an 



^ Der Atlantischer und Stiller Ozean Typus. 



