No other has had such far-reaching results.  Since water covers three-fourths of the earth’s surface and permits the land-masses to rise only as islands here and there, it presents to man for his nautical ventures three times the area that he commands for his terrestrial habitat.  On every side, the break of the waves and the swell of the tides block his wanderings, unless he has learned to make the water carry him to his distant goal.  Spacially, therefore, the problem and the task of navigation is the most widespread and persistent in the history of mankind.  The numerous coaling-stations which England has scattered over the world are mute witnesses to this spacial supremacy of the water, to the length of ocean voyages, and the power of the ocean to divide and unite.  But had the proportion of land and water been reversed, the world would have been poorer, deprived of all these possibilities of segregation and differentiation, of stimulus to exchange and far-reaching intercourse, and of ingenious inventions which the isolating ocean has caused.  Without this ramifying barrier between the different branches of the human family, these would have resembled each other more closely, but at the cost of development.  The mere multiplicity of races and sub-races has sharpened the struggle for existence and endowed the survivors with higher qualities.  But it was navigation that released primitive man from the seclusion of his own island or continent, stimulated and facilitated the intercourse of peoples, and enabled the human race to establish itself in every habitable part of the world.

NOTES TO CHAPTER X

[579] Census of the Philippine Islands, Vol.  I, pp. 465, 563-567, 573.  Washington, 1905.

[580] Sir John Lubbock, Prehistoric Times, pp. 173-223.  New York, 1872.

[581] Ferdinand Keller, Lake Dwellings, Vol.  I, pp. 2-7, 576.  London, 1876.  English Lake Dwellings, Westminster Review, pp. 337-347. 1887.

[582] P.W.  Joyce, A Social History of Ancient Ireland, Vol.  II, pp. 65-66.  London, 1903.

[583] Herodotus, V. 16.

[584] Alexander von Humboldt, Aspects of Nature, pp. 148-149.  Translated by Mrs. Sabine, Philadelphia, 1849.  E.F. im Thurn, Among the Indians of Guiana, p. 203.  London, 1883.

[585] Sir Thomas Holdich, India, p. 184.  London, 1905.

[586] Verney L. Cameron, Across Africa, pp. 332-334.  London, 1885.

[587] David and Charles Livingstone, Narrative of Expedition to the Zambezi, p. 414.  New York, 1866.

[588] Census of the Philippine Islands, Vol.  I, pp. 464-466, 565.  Washington, 1905.

[589] Stanford’s Australasia, Vol.  II, pp. 256-257.  London, 1894.

[590] A.R.  Wallace, The Malay Archipelago, pp. 368, 381.  New York, 1869.

[591] Ratzel, History of Mankind, Vol.  I, pp. 262-263, 344.  London, 1896-1898.

[592] Richard Semon, In the Australian Bush, pp. 340-342, 347.  London, 1899.