[Sidenote:  Baltic and White Sea rivers.]

In other seas, too, rivers play the same part of extending their tributary areas and therefore enhancing their historical significance.  The disadvantages of the Baltic’s smaller size and far-northern location, as compared with the Mediterranean, were largely compensated for by the series of big streams draining into it from the south, and bringing out from a vast hinterland the bulky necessaries of life.  Hence the Hanseatic League of the Middle Ages, which had its origin among the southern coast towns of the Baltic from Lubeck to Riga, throve on the combined trade of sea and river.[638] The mouths of the Scheldt, Rhine, Weser, Elbe and Thames long concentrated in themselves the economic, cultural and historical development of the North Sea basin.  So the White Sea, despite its sub-polar location, is valuable to Russia for two reasons; it affords a politically open port, and it receives the Northern Dwina, which is navigable for river steamers from Archangel south to Vologda, a distance of six hundred miles, and carries the export trade of a large territory.[639] Similarly in recent years, Bering Sea has gained unwonted commercial activity because the Yukon River serves as a waterway 1,370 miles long to the Klondike gold fields.

[Sidenote:  Atlantic and Pacific rivers.]

If we compare the Atlantic and Pacific oceans in respect to their rivers, we find that the narrow Atlantic has a drainage basin of over 19,000,000 square miles as opposed to the 8,660,000 square miles of drainage area commanded by the vastly larger Pacific.  The Pacific is for the most part rimmed by mountains, discharging into the ocean only mad torrents or rapid-broken streams.  The Atlantic, bordered by gently sloping plains of wide extent, receives rivers that for the most part pursue a long and leisurely course to the sea.  Therefore, the commercial and cultural influences of the Atlantic extend from the Rockies and Andes almost to the heart of Russia, and by the Nile highway they even invade the seclusion of Africa.  Through the long reach of its rivers, therefore, the Atlantic commands a land area twice as great as that of the Pacific; and by reason of this fundamental geographic advantage, it will retain the historical preeminence that it so early secured.  The development of the World Ocean will mean the exploitation of the Pacific trade from the basis of the Atlantic, the domination of the larger ocean by the historic peoples of the smaller, because these peoples have wider and more accessible lands as the base of their maritime operations.

[Sidenote:  Lack of coast articulations supplied by rivers.]