16 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



est average, i,oco feet, and all over the continent, as a rule, these people are ag- 

 ricultural. Below that, and at 500 feet and less, comes what we call the 

 planting population in Southern latitudes, and the great seafaring, mercantile and 

 very largely, the manufacturing. At and about 2,000 feet we find the pastoral 

 plains and the equivalent of the Arabic population of Asia, and above that the 

 miners and delvers after the mineral wealth of the globe. 



Looking at this table, then, and taking what we know of the products of the 

 soil at these different altitudes in different latitudes, we are just what the law of our 

 habitat makes us, an intensely agricultural and commercial people combined, and 

 until the great interior plains and table lands are populated, we cannot be anything 

 else. When we get 10,000,000 people above 3,000 feet, then we will develop a 

 civilization based more upon the imagination than we can have now, and aesthetic 

 and scientific influences will have a larger and molding, effect upon the national 

 character. 



The movement of the human race within the historic period has been from 

 the interior of the continents to the seashore. When the caravan was the means 

 of commercial carriage, the great capitals of the world, Babylon, Nineveh, Pal- 

 myra, etc., were in the interior of the continents, but when the seas began to be 

 traversed by improved methods of navigation, the great commercial marts were 

 transferred to the shores of the sea, at harbors and at the mouths of great rivers, 

 and so it has gone on until the facts disclosed by such tables as the above have 

 become the chief features of modern civilization. 



But we may date the reversal of this tendency from the discovery of steam. 

 While it has intensified the developments to the seashore in one sense, owing to 

 the speedy navigation of the oceans, yet it has also enabled water craft to ascend 

 the rivers and found great cities once more in the interiors of the continents. But 

 the radical influence in this direction has been the railway. The iron horse and 

 his train have taken the place of the ancient caravan, and the movement of the 

 race to the interior has begun with decided force and volume. For example, 

 ten years ago the railroad had barely got beyond an elevation of 4,000 feet, and 

 there were then living at that altitude and above, but 363,583 people, while to-day 

 there are 754,449. This population has more than doubled in ten years. 



This drift of the population will grow in intensity as the facilities increase 

 and as men learn to adapt themselves to the life and industries that belong to this 

 elevated region ; when irrigation becomes fixed, organized and understood, 

 and the riches of the mines are supplemented by the wealth of the soil, there 

 will be developed a civilization akin in direction to that of the ancient 

 times, and with it characteristics and qualities — physical, intellectual and moral — 

 such as it is now impossible to realize. We will then be a completely developed 

 nation, balanced in all respects, and less one-sided and imperfect than we are 

 now, and more so than any nation can be without the physical geography that 

 belongs to us. In fact, the configuration of other continents and their latitudes 

 are not adapted to a great, diversified yet homogeneous people, and it is this 

 fact of topography which has been one source of diversity in character, language 



