Though the people living on the uttermost boundaries of this island world are 6,000 miles (or 10,000 kilometers) apart, and might be expected to be differentiated by the isolation of their island habitats, nevertheless they all have the same fundamental characteristics of physique, language and culture from Guam to Easter Isle, reflecting in their unity the oneness of the encompassing ocean over which they circulate.[553]

[Sidenote:  Mediterranean versus Atlantic seamanship.]

Midway between these semi-aquatic Polynesians and those Arctic tribes who are forced out upon the deep, to struggle with it rather than associate with it, we find the inhabitants of the Mediterranean islands and peninsulas, who are favored by the mild climate and the tideless, fogless, stormless character of their sea.  While such a body of water invites intimacy, it does not breed a hardy or bold race of navigators; it is a nursery, scarcely a training school.  Therefore, except for the far-famed Dalmatian sailors, who for centuries have faced the storms sweeping down from the Dinaric Alps over the turbulent surface of the Adriatic, Mediterranean seamanship does not command general confidence on the high seas.  Therefore it is the German, English and Dutch steamship lines that are to-day the chief ocean carriers from Italian ports to East Africa, Asia, Australia, North and South America, despite the presence of native lines running from Genoa to Buenos Ayres.  Montevideo and New York; just as it was the Atlantic states of Europe, and only these and all of these, except Germany, who, trained to venture out into the fogs and storms and unmarked paths of the mare tenebrosum, participated in the early voyages to the Americas.  One after the other they came—­Norwegians, Spaniards, Portuguese, English, French, Dutch, Swedes and Danes.  The anthropo-geographical principle is not invalidated by the fact that Spain and England were guided in their initial trans-Atlantic voyages by Italian navigators, like Columbus, Cabot and Amerigo Vespucci.  The long maritime experience of Italy and its commercial relations with the Orient, reaching back into ancient times, furnished abundant material for the researches and speculations of such practical theorists; but Italy’s location fixed the shores of the Mediterranean as her natural horizon, narrowed her vision to its shorter radius.  Her obvious interest in the preservation of the old routes to the Orient made her turn a deaf ear to plans aiming to divert European commerce to trans-Atlantic routes.  Italy’s entrance upon the high seas was, therefore, reluctant and late, retarded by the necessity of outgrowing the old circumscribed outlook of the enclosed basin before adopting the wider vision of the open ocean.  Venice and Genoa were crippled not only by the discovery of the sea route to India, but also by their adherence to old thalassic means and methods of navigation inadequate for the high seas.[554] However, these Mediterranean sea folk are being gradually drawn out of their seclusion, as is proved by the increase of Italian oceanic lines and the recent installation of an Hellenic steamship line between Piraeus and New York.