But when a people has advanced to a higher conception of colonization as an outlet for national as well as commercial expansion, and when it sees that the permanent prosperity of both race and trade in the new locality depends upon the occupation of larger tracts of territory and the development of local resources as a basis for exchanges, their settlements spread from the outer rim of the coasts to its inner edge and yet beyond, if alluvial plains and river highways are present to tempt inland expansion.  Such was the history of many later colonies of the Greeks[438] and Carthaginians, and especially of most modern colonial movements, for these have been dominated by a higher estimate of the value of land.

After the long Atlantic journey, the outposts of the American coast were welcome resting-places to the early European voyagers, but, owing to their restricted area and therefore limited productivity, they were soon abandoned, or became mere bases for inland expansion.  The little island of Cuttyhunk, off southern Massachusetts, was the site of Gosnold’s abortive attempt at colonization in 1602, like Raleigh’s attempt on Roanoke Island in 1585, and the later one of Popham on the eastern headland of Casco Bay.  The Pilgrims paused at the extremity of Cape Cod, and again on Clark’s Island, before fixing their settlement on Plymouth Bay.  Monhegan Island, off the Maine coast, was the site of an early English trading post, which, however, lasted only from 1623 to 1626;[439] and the same dates fix the beginning and end of a fishing and trading station established on Cape Ann, and removed later to Salem harbor.  The Swedes made their first settlement in America on Cape Henlopen, at the entrance of Delaware Bay; but their next, only seven years later, they located well up the estuary of the Delaware River.  Thus for the modern colonist the outer edge of the coast is merely the gateway of the land.  From it he passes rapidly to the settlement of the interior, wherever fertile soil and abundant resources promise a due return upon his labor.

[Sidenote:  Interpenetration of land and sea.]

Since it is from the land, as the inhabited portion of the earth’s surface, that all maritime movements emanate, and to the land that all oversea migrations are directed, the reciprocal relations between land and sea are largely determined by the degree of accessibility existing between the two.  This depends primarily upon the articulation of a land-mass, whether it presents an unbroken contour like Africa and India, or whether, like Europe and Norway, it drops a fringe of peninsulas and a shower of islands into the bordering ocean.  Mere distance from the sea bars a country from its vivifying contact; every protrusion of an ocean artery into the heart of a continent makes that heart feel the pulse of life on far-off, unseen shores.  The Baltic inlet which makes a seaport of St. Petersburg 800 miles (1,300 kilometers) back from the western