Gttyot on Carl Bitter. 55 



most articulated, and, in its smallness, the most perfectly or- 

 ganized of all the continents. 



Eitter traces the vast influence of these individualized por- 

 tions of the landmasse^ which surround the main body of a conti- 

 nent, on civilization. Climates are diversified, the formation of 

 distinct nations favored, a greater variety of human faculties 

 called into action, mutual relations and reciprocal influences 

 increased, which, in the indented continents, unfold the hid- 

 den powers of man to a degree unknown in the continents less 

 favored in this respect. The coincidence between the unciv- 

 ilized state of the nations which possess Africa, and the im- 

 penetrability of that continent, between the brilliant develop- 

 ment of mankind in Asia, and above all in Europe, and the 

 variety and perfection of their geographical organization, is too 

 striking to be called a fortuitous one. It forces us to acknowl- 

 edge, in that remarkable peculiarity of structure, one of the 

 causes which have determined so great a difference of functions 

 in these three mainlands of the Eastern Hemisphere. 



The views to which I thus briefly allude, are among those 

 which have acted most immediately on the reform of the geo- 

 graphical method used in the schools. The valuable works of 

 Eoon, Voelter, Kloeden, and a host of others in Germany, the 

 highly suggestive manuals of such genial writers as F. de 

 Bougemont in Switzerland, derive their special excellence 

 from the application of these principles to geographical teach- 

 ing. The whole system of school cartography had to be 

 changed, and accommodated to the new wants thus created. 

 As Berghaus'' Physical Atlas, the only original foundation for 

 all the others, which have appeared under different names, was 

 called forth by Humboldt's labors in Physical Geography, so 

 the crowd of the new German school atlases and wall maps, 

 which seek by the best possible method, still to, be found, to 

 make clear to the eye, by drawing, by colors, or otherwise, the 

 main features of the relief of the continents, were called into 

 existence by the wants suggested by Eitter's method. 



The relative situation of the continents and their climatic 

 position, gives them a distinct historical character. For man- 

 kind Asia is the land of the rising sun, as also the cradle 

 of rising humanity. It is the Orient par excellence. Europe 

 is the land of the setting sun, the Occident, the land towards 

 which the brilliant orb advances. Africa is the burning South, 

 the Soudan of the earth, as Eitter calls it, the land of the mid- 

 day sun. In Asia the nations look backward towards a lu- 

 minous past. Traditions, carefully preserved, of glories gone 



