Topic: Climate Considered Especially in Relation to Man 1908/1918

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CLIMATE

so far as occupation by the white race is concemed.
Many elderly persons and those who are overworked
may find rest from nervous tension in the enervating
climate of the tropics. The drier districts are to be
preferred to the moister, the higher altitudes to the
lowlands, coasts and islands well ventilated by pre-
vailing winds, to regions where the air is stagnant.
Much-needed relief from the heat at sea-level may
be obtained by resort to tropical mountain stations,
and many of these have become well-known health
resorts. Tropical mountain climates resemble the
climate of the temperate zones in their lower tem-
peratures and in certain other ways, but they can
never be the equivalent of a temperate zone climate,
for they lack the seasonal changes. Some tropical
climatic characteristics disappear with altitude, while
others change little. The non-seasonal character of
tropical mountain climates, the so-called “ perpetual
spring,” is not by any means the best fitted for man’s
physical and mental development, however pleasant
it may be for a time. With increase of altitude, there
is a decrease in, or a disappearance of, some of the dis-
eases which prevail near sea-level, such as malaria,
yellow fever, liver abscess, etc. When introduced
from the lowlands, such diseases are not likely to be
severe, or to spread. In their stead, however, may
come an increasing frequency of diseases which are
characteristic of high latitudes, such as rheumatism,
and heart and lung troubles. Tropical hill stations
in India show a smaller mortality among the troops
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203

than do lower levels. In India, as elsewhere in the
tropics, hill stations are beneficial in restoring those
who are exhausted by overwork or by the heat of the
lowlands. They are especially advantageous for
delicate women and children. Nevertheless, climates
which are temperate because of altitude in the tropics
cannot replace climates which are “temperate” be-
cause of latitude.

The acclimatisation of the white race in the tropics
is a question of vast importance. Upon it depend
the control, government, and utilisation of the tropics.
It is a very complex problem, and it has been much
discussed. It is complicated by the Controls exercised
by race, diet, occupations, habits of life, and the like.
To discuss it fully is impossible in this place. The
gist of the matter is this: White residents from cooler
latitudes on coming into the tropics must adjust
themselves physiologically to the new climatic condi-
tions. During this adjustment there is more or less
strain on various organs of the body. The strain
may be too severe; then the individual suffers. The
adjustment is usually much retarded and hindered by
a persistence in habits of food, drink, and general
mode of life which, however well suited to the home
climate, do not fit tropical conditions. During the
adjustment, especially if complicated by irrational
habits, the body is naturally sensitive to the new dis-
eases to which it is exposed. Even should no specific
disease be contracted, there are anaemic tendencies and
other degenerative changes. Experience teaches
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that white men cannot with impunity do hard man-
ual labour under a tropical sun, hut that they may
enjoy fairly good health as overseers, or at indoor
work, if they take reasonable precautions. Accli-
matisation in the full sense of having white men and
women living for successive generations in the tropics,
and reproducing their kind without physical, mental,
and moral degeneration,—*. ecolonisation in the
true sense,—is impossihle. Tropical disease and
death-rates, as has been abundantly shown, can he
much reduced by proper attention to sanitary laws,
so that these rates may he not much, if any, higher
than those in the extra-tropics. And with increas-
ing medical knowledge of the nature and prevention
of tropical diseases, as well as by means of modern
sanitary methods, a white resident in the tropics will
constantly become better ahle to withstand disease.
As Manson has put it, acclimatisation is less “an
unconscious adaptation of the physiology of the
individual” than “an intelligent adaptation of his
habits.” For greater comfort, for better health, and
for greater success, properly selected hill stations
will, however, always be essential to northemers who
have to live in the tropics, especially to white women
and children.

It has heen well said that the white soldier in the
tropics is “ always in campaign; if not against the
enemy, at least against the climate.” This sentence
may he made to fit the case of the white civilian in
the tropics by making it read: the white race in the
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205

tropics is always in campaign against its enemy, the
climate.

Temperate Zones: General. Far from being
temperate as regards the general climatic conditions
over much of the land area of the so-called temper-
ate zones, these beits rightly deserve their name only
in the sense that in their physiological effects they are
intermediate between the equatorial and the polar
zones. In the temperate zones the organs of the
body act more equally than in the warmer or the
cooler latitudes. In the central part of the temper-
ate zones, especially over the continents, are found
the four seasons. The winter cold is met by means
of warm clothing, heated houses, and other means of
protection. Unless too severe, or too prolonged, when
deaths by freezing may occur, the cold of a Continen-
tal winter in the north temperate zone acts as a health-
ful stimulant upon body and mind. In the tropics,
the body is unused to adjusting itself to tempera-
ture changes, because such changes are there slight,
and is readily affected by them. But the frequent,
sudden, and severe changes of many parts of the tem-
perate zone are usually borne without serious dis-
comfort or injury, if the body is in good health, and
is accustomed to adjusting itself readily to these
changes. The habit of keeping houses very warm
during the winter, and of having the air indoors very
dry, weakens the body’s power to resist the great cold
outdoors, especially if the air be damp, and causes
affections of throat, lungs, and nose. The summers,
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CLIMATE

although hot in the lower latitudes of these zones,
and marked by spells of warm weather even to their
polar limits, are not characterised by such steady,
uniformly moist heat as is typical of the tropics.
When the heat is extreme, and the relative hu-
midity is high, night and day, sunstroke and kin-
dred affections are occasionally noted in places,
but the invigorating cool of autumn and winter are
never far off, and may always be trusted to bring
relief.

Winter and Summer Diseases. It is natural that
marked seasonal and sudden weather changes, such
as those which characterise much of the temperate
zones, especially in the northem hemisphere, should
be reflected in the character, distribution, and fre-
quency of the diseases which are found in these zones.
Diseases of the respiratory system, bronchial and
rheumatic affections, diseases that result from colds
and chills, pneumonia, bronchitis, influenza, diphthe-
ria, whooping cough, are all common in climates with
sudden marked temperature changes, especially if
those changes are accompanied by cold, damp winds.
These diseases are also most frequent in the winter
months, when the weather changes are more common
and more severe, and when, in consequence, the vital-
ity of the body is lowered and its power of resistance
against the attack of disease germs is weakened. A
greater prevalence of diseases of the respiratory or-
gans, catarrhs, and rheumatic affections in cool, moist
weather, with sudden changes, has been shown by
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Weber, and several investigators have found a higher
mortality after a greater variability of temperature.
Many contagious or infectious diseases, such as diph-
theria, influenza, measles, and scarlet fever, for ex-
ample, are also more common in the colder season, not
because the lower temperatures are the direct control-
ling factor, but largely because the colder weather
drives people indoors; houses and buildings generally
are less well ventilated; more clothing is worn, less
attention is paid to personal cleanliness, and there
is increased opportunity for contagion, especially
among the poorer classes. Obviously, these are in-
direct effects of meteorological conditions. Other
factors, also, must be taken into consideration. Thus
one reason why the natives of the farther north, where
the winters are very severe, suffer less from some of
the diseases which are common in warmer latitudes
is not because of the lower temperatures, but because
they are less exposed to contagion owing to less com-
munication with the outside world.

In the warmer months, fevers and diseases of the
digestive system, diarrhoea, malaria, typhoid fever,
are prevalent. Thus there are usually two maxima
of mortality: one in the colder season, when the vari-
ability of temperature is greatest, chiefly due to re-
spiratory diseases, and another in the warmer months,
largely due to infant mortality from diarrhoeal
disorders.

Tvberculosis. “ A nationally self-inflicted, un-
necessary, and preventable pestilence ”; world-wide
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CLIMATE

in extent; found in every variety of climate, and at
all altitudes; causing from 10 to 15 per cent. of all
deaths; the scourge of the temperate zone, tuber-
culosis is, on the whole, less frequent in higher
latitudes, on mountains, and in arid or semi-arid dis-
tricts. Climate, however, is not the controlling fac-
tor in the latter cases, but sparseness of population
and infrequency of communication with the outside
world. The density of population; the social and
economie conditions; the occupations and habits of
the people,—these are important Controls. Over-
crowding amid unsanitary surroundings, absence of
sunlight, impure air, are predisposing causes.
Weather, or other conditions which decrease the vi-
tality, increase the susceptibility to tuberculosis.
Sudden temperature changes, especially with high
relative humidity at low temperatures, cause chills
and lower vitality.

Consumption, it is clear, can be successfully treated
where pure air, abundant sunshine, good food, and
outdoor exercise are to be had. The first of these
desiderata, pure air, and plenty of it, is the most im-
portant of all. It is usually found on desert, ocean,
mountain, and in forest. Hence such climates are
generally advantageous m the treatment of tuber-
culosis of various kinds. Yet climate is no longer
believed to play as important a róle in the matter
as was formerly assigned to it. Good hygiene has
to a large extent replaced climate. A health resort
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where a patiënt can find comfortable quarters, con-
genial company, plenty of diversion, and where
favourable climatic conditions, such as abundant sun-
shine, absence of disagreeable winds, dust, and sudden
weather changes, encourage outdoor life, is to be
recommended. The climate does not cure; it is an
important help in the treatment of the disease. Some
patients, especially elderly people and those suffer-
ing from nervous, cardiac, or bronchial affections,
fare better at lower altitudes; but higher altitudes,
with the stimulating effects, deep respiration, and ac-
tive use of the lungs which they induce, often offer
many climatic conditions favourable to outdoor life
and hence of great benefit in the treatment of the
disease. The dry, pure air and abundant sunshine
of many of the well-known mountain health resorts
are very favourable climatic helps. Moreover, the
smaller temperature ranges of mountain and marine
climates are also helpful. In many, if not in
most cases, any change of climate is beneficial, but
especially so if such a change is accompanied by the
favourable conditions just enumerated. Ocean air,
although damp, is beneficial to many patients because
of its purity, its salinity, and its small temperature
ranges. Hence an ocean voyage, with its relief from
unsanitary or harmful occupations, may be an ex-
cellent restorative. Results obtained in the treat-
ment of tuberculosis by climatic change vary through
a wide range. The reasons for such discrepancy are
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to be sought in the difference in the stage of the dis-
ease treated, and in the habits, food, and mode of life
of the patients.

Pneumonia. Pneumonia is found almost every-
where, in the tropics probably quite as conunonly as
in colder latitudes, and at high altitudes as well as at
sea-level. A greater frequency of pneumonia gen-
erally follows cold, damp weather, with marked
changes of temperature, which lower the vitality and
are conducive to chills. Hence the disease is most
prevalent in the colder months. Among the predis-
posing causes, physical weakness following other dis-
eases is potent, as are mal-nutrition and similar
debilitating agencies. Severe cold spells are likely
to he followed by an increase of pneumonia, espe-
cially among elderly persons and children. Negroes
who have gone to cold climates are very subject to
the disease.

Diphtheria. Although geographically widely dis-
tributed, diphtheria is chiefly a temperate zone dis-
ease, occurring sporadically or epidemically, however,
in tropics and polar latitudes. Like other infectious
diseases of the temperate zone, diphtheria is most
frequent in the colder months, because the conditions
of life are then most favourable to contagion, and
because vitality is then most lowered by the prevail-
ing weather conditions. Diphtheria is more common
at low altitudes than high.

Influenza. The well-known disease, “grippe,”
caused by a specific organism discovered in 1892, is
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211

occasionally very serious, and is apt to be closely
followed by epidemics of pneumonia and other dis-
eases of the respiratory organs. Although very
carefully studied, there is no certain evidence of any
influence of weather, climate, or soil upon the disease.
The last great epidemie of influenza, in 1890 and
thereabout, is believed by Assmann to have been
associated with dry spells and with the carriage of
dust. The worst outbreaks have been in the colder
season, when indoor life, less fresh air, and overcrowd-
ing would naturally help to spread the contagion.
The fact that those who are suffering from influenza
are often not kept indoors explains a general spread
of the disease.

Bronchitis. Bronchitis is most common in the
higher latitudes, and in the cold months, when the
temperature is low and when sudden and rapid varia-
tions of temperature are frequent. Dust, blown from
the dry surface of streets and the like, helps to irritate
the throat and nasal passages. Belief from bron-
chitis may be found where the climate is warm and
uniform; the air soft and balmy; where there are no
irritating winds driving the dust to and fro, and
where sunshine is abundant.

Rheumatism. Rheumatic affections are, as a whole,
more common in colder than warmer, and in damper
than drier climates, but may be classed under the
temperate zone. Exposure to cold and wet, bring-
ing on chills, and sudden temperature changes, es-
pecially in damp climates, while not the cause of
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rheumatism lowers the vitality in such a way that the
specific cause may assert itself. In many cases a
change of altitude makes no difference whatever; it
may, in fact, aggravate the trouble.

Measles and Scarlet Fever. Both measles and
scarlet fever are independent of weather and climate,
except in so far as the colder, more inclement, months
involve an unhealthier mode of life, with less atten-
tion to sanitary measures. A maximum is usually
found in the colder months, when infection is most
likely. Measles occurs in all climates, but usually
most commonly and most severely in temperate lati-
tudes. Scarlet fever is essentially a disease of the
temperate zone. Isolation from sources of infection
is more important than any climatic control in these
diseases, which show very various relations to season,
altitude, and race.

Typhoid Fever. Typhoid fever is found in al-
most all parts of the world. Although common in
the tropics, being one of the most generally fatal
diseases there, especially among recent European
arrivals, it is not, according to Manson, properly
classified as a tropical disease. It is very prevalent in
the temperate zone, having a maximum frequency in
late summer and autumn, and is certainly largely
preventable by good sanitation and pure food and
water. The germs of typhoid fever are killed in a
few hours under direct sunshine, and their growth is
slow even in diffused daylight. The well-known
studies of Pettenkofer, at Munich, showed an inverse
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213

relation between the ground-water level and the pre-
valence of typhoid, but this appears not to he a
universal relation. The view formerly held regard-
ing a connection between temperature and humidity
and typhoid epidemics has now generally been
abandoned.

Whooping Cough. Whooping cough is more
prevalent in temperate and cooler climates, where the
temperature changes are marked and where the
respiratory organs are most affected, and is rare and
less severe in warmer latitudes. But the absence of
whooping cough is doubtless often to he explained
on the ground that it has not been imported, rather
than on any direct climatic basis. Although com-
moner and more severe in the cooler months, epi-
demics may occur at all times, without relation to
altitude. Croup, also, prevails chiefly in damp, cool
weather, with sudden changes.

Cholera Infantum. Among the summer diseases
of the temperate zone, cholera infantum occupies a
very prominent place. It increases with rising, is at
a maximum with maximum, and decreases with fall-
ing, temperatures. The greater and more continu-
ous the heat, the more general is the disease. Cool
spells check it immediately. It is more common in
the overcrowded and overheated quarters of the city
than in the country, and may be greatly checked by
the use of pure milk and fresh food.

Hay Fever. The specific cause of hay fever has
been much debated, but is generally regarded as

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vegetable pollen of some sort. The particular kind
of pollen may differ in different cases. The irrita-
tion is naturally confined to the season of plant'
growth. Belief may generally be secured by seek-
ing a higher altitude, where the cause of irritation is
absent, and where the air is pure and dean. Sea
voyages, also, are beneficial.

Polar Zones: General. The north polar summer,
as has been- pointed out, in spite of its drawbacks, is
in some respects a pleasant and healthful season.
But the polar night is monotonous, depressing, re-
pelling. Parry said that it would be difficult to con-
ceive of two things which are more alike than two
polar winters. An everlastingly uniform snow cov-
ering, rigidity, lifelessness, silence—except for the
howl of the gale or the cracking of the ice. Small
wonder that man feels like an intruder. Small won-
der that the polar night has sometimes unbalanced
men’s minds. Extraordinarily low winter tempera-
tures are easily bome if the air be dry and still. Nan-
sen notes “ not very cold ” at a temperature of — 22°,
when the air was still. Another Arctic explorer, at
— 9°, says “ it is too warm to skate.” Zero weather
seems pleasantly refreshing if clear and calm. But
high relative humidity and wind—even a light breeze
—give the same degree of cold a penetrating feeling
of chili which may be unbearable. Thus the damper
air of spring and summer usually seems much colder
than the drier air of winter, although the temperatures
may be the same. Large temperature ranges are
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215

endured without danger in the polar winter when the
air is dry. When exposed to direct insolation, the
skin bums and blisters; the lips swell and crack. In
severe cold the vitality of the body is lowered, the
pulse slackened, and the ability to bear.hardships de-
creased. The surface of the body cools first; the
blood circulates more slowly; the surface blood-ves-
sels contract, and the blood then becomes intemally
congested; the lungs and heart may be affected, and
in extreme cases death results. The danger of freez-
ing is naturally greatest in the case of the hands, feet,
ears, and nose, which are most exposed and can least
well be kept warm. The skin may swell, become
thick and hard, and break open. The power of re-
sistance to extreme cold depends on the physical con-
dition, clothing, food, exercise, exposure to sunshine,
dampness, wind, and other factors. The feeling of
cold is increased by hunger, and rheumatic people
usually suffer most.

The physiological effects of polar cold and dark-
ness have been fully reported upon by Arctic and
Antarctic explorers. The recent expeditions, on
which very careful attention has been given to pick-
ing the men, as well as to their health, diet, exercise,
and general hygiene, have shown much less marked
effects than did the earlier expeditions. Among the
effects which have often been observed are a weaken-
ing of the senses of taste and of smell, as a result of
congestion and over-secretion on the mucous mem-
branes; depression, apathy, and sleepiness, often
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followed by nervous excitement and even in some
cases by insanity; anaemia; tendency to digestive dis-
orders and dyspepsia; constipation or diarrhoea;
greatly lessened perspiration; fading of hair and
beards; change of colour of the skin to pale and yel-
low; a lowering of the body temperature. The mo-
notony of the polar night is depressing to a degree.
Thirst has heen one of the greatest plagues of
Arctic explorers in the past. The result of a large
evaporation from the lungs into the dry, cold air,
thirst is a characteristic of the deserts of snow and
ice as it is of the deserts of sand. The relief of this
thirst hy eating snow is dangerous, for it leads to
inflammation of the throat and to digestive and bowel
troubles. Moreover, such relief is but tèmporary.

It has heen pointed out by Dr. F. A. Cook that,
like the polar animals, the Eskimos can withstand long
periods without food; that their intestinal capacity
is increased in such a way that they can assimilate a
constant meat diet, and that they are protected
against the cold by thick, fatty tissues and by their
profuse peripheral circulation.

Life is hard in the polar zones. Deaths hy drown-
ing in gales at sea, hy freezing, and in snowstorms
are frequent. Yet, on the other hand, most of the
diseases which have been discussed in this chapter are
rare or absent in the far north. There is a remark-
able infrequency of infectious diseases. Polar air is
very free from micro-organisms—a fact which is due
chiefly to lack of communication with other parts* of
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217

the world; colds are reported as rare or unknown, al-
though changes of temperature are often frequent
and large. The summer sun, both by direct and by
reflected radiation, bums and bronzes the skin, and
may cause snow-blindness. An Arctic summer, with
its long days, crisp, clean air, and sunshine, offers
conditions which are doubtless excellent for many
nervous and gastric troubles, and one may predict a
considerable development of summer resorts within
the Arctic circle for the pleasure-loving, wealthy, and
unoccupied persons of the north temperate zone.

Scurvy. Scurvy has been considered a polar dis-
ease par excellence, because it has, in the past, been
prevalent on Arctic expeditions, and is found to-day
in northem latitudes. Scurvy is, however, known
also in many other parts of the world. It is found
under conditions of overcrowding, and of poor ven-
tilation, which are natural consequences of extreme
cold. Cold is not the cause of the disease, for scurvy
is found in warm countries also; but rigorous climatic
conditions, poor food—especially the lack of fresh
vegetables, over-exertion, depression, lowered vi-
tality by exposure to cold, etc., are predisposing
causes. The best preventives of scurvy are good
food, an active outdoor life, and mental stimulation.
With these precautions and good hygiene, 'scurvy has
almost disappeared among civilised nations.

Climate and Health: General Conclusions. The
old view conceming the paramount influence of cli-
mate upon health is being replaced by the view that
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CLIMATE

good hygiene is of more importance than climate
alone. Medical Science has done much to stamp out
some diseases like small-pox, and it will in time prob-
ably largely stamp out others, like malaria, or yellow
fever, or even tuberculosis and diphtheria. Man
himself, not climate, is being held responsible for the
occurrence of this or that disease or epidemie, for its
distribution, and for the death-rates resulting from
it. Man has lowered the death-rate from disease
most wonderfully. He can lower it still further.
Vaccination for small-pox; preventive inoculation for
plague; antitoxin for diphtheria; good food, pure air,
and exercise for scurvy; draining swamps 'and pools
and the use of mosquito netting for malaria; pure
water for cholera, typhoid fever, and dysentery—
these are but a few of the methods now employed by
man in his war against disease.

The influence of climate is by no means to be dis-
carded as of no account, for that it acts, in many
ways, both directly and indirectly, has been shown in
this chapter. The newer view regarding the influence
of a change of climate as a preventive, or restorative.
is that a change of residence, habits, occupations, food,
is usually of more importance than the change in
atmospheric conditions. If pure air, good food, free-
dom from worry, time for rest, proper exercise, out-
door life, and a congenial occupation are provided,
many bodily and mental ailments will yield to the
treatment. Climate is to be considered, because it
affects our bodily comfort; it may be dull, rainy, and
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219

cheerless, or bright, sunny, and exhilarating; it may
tend to keep us indoors, or it may tempt us
to go out. Thus some climates will naturally be
avoided, and others sought out, and the choice of a
suitable climate will depend upon the disease to he
dealt with. As a recent writer has well said, climate
may “ play an important part in the curative process,
but the climate of certain localities does not possess
any peculiar properties which act as a specific on cer-
tain diseases.”
  CHAPTER VIII

THE LIFE OF MAN IN THE TROPICS

Climate and Man: General—Some Old Views Regarding the Effects
of Climate on Man—Factors in the Problem Other than Cli-
mate—Climate and Habitability—The Development of the
Tropics—The Labour Problem in the Tropics—The Govern-
ment of Tropical Possessions—Primitive Civilisation and the
Tropics—Dwellings in the Tropics—Clothing in the Tropics—
Food in the Tropics—Agriculture, Arts, and Industries in the
Tropics—Some Physiological Effects of Tropical Climates—
The Equatorial Forests—The Open Grass-Lands of the
Tropics: Sa vannas—Trade Wind Beits on Land: the Deserts
—Trade Wind Beits at Sea—Monsoon Districts—Tropical
Mountains.

Climate and Man: General. Man’s climatic en-
vironment affects him in many ways. His clothing,
dwellings, food, occupations, and customs; his physi-
cal and mental characteristics; his systems of gov-
emment; his migrations; his history—all are affected
to a greater or less degree.

Civilised man protects himself more or less suc-
cessfully against unfavourable climatic features.
Thus, there is a gradual transition from the primitive
shelter made of branches of trees, of skins, or leaves,
to the permanent and highly elaborate modern build-
ing, which is both heated and cooled artificially. The
building materials; the methods of uniting these ma-

220
  THE LIFE OF MAN IN THE TROPICS 221

terials, as by braiding, or binding, or by the use of
mortar, usually show the control of climate. More-
over, the material often determines the general plan
of the building. There is also the transition from the
primitive and scanty clothing made of leaves or bark
where trees grow, or the skin of an animal where
trees are lacking, or warmer clothing is needed, to the
manufactured and perhaps imported garment of
wool, or cotton, or silk. Again, there is the increas-
ing variety of food, from that of primitive man, sup-
plied directly where he lives, to the highly varied diet
found in a civilised community to-day, to which dis-
tant latitudes are made to contribute their local
delicacies.

All these changes man has brought about. But he
cannot change his climate. Slight local modifica-
tions may be secured here and there, as by planting
trees to serve as wind-breaks, or perhaps by in-
creasing the relative humidity a little through the
construction of an artificial reservoir. No such modi-
fïcation is possible in man’s climatic environment as
has been accomplished on the surface of the land un-
der human agency. The atmosphere is as essentially
unalterable as it is all-pervading. When we see how
plants and animals are affected by atmospheric con-
ditions, it is not unreasonable that we should expect
man to show effects of a similar kind.   1

Some Old Views Regarding the Effects of Climate
on Man. It is, however, easy to go too far in calling
upon climate to explain phenomena which we may
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CLIMATE

otherwise find it difficult to account for. This was
the mistake formerly made by many writers on this
subject, as has been clearly pointed out by Ratzel in
his Anthropogeographie, where he gives an outline
of many of these earlier views. Maupertius and
others held that the colour of man’s skin becomes
paler with increasing distance from the equator.
Livingstone wrote that in Africa religious ideas also
seemed to depend on distance from the equator. One
writer held that cold produces a small stature; an-
other believed that the Pygmies are small because of
the heavy seasonal rains which fall in hot equatorial
Africa. Climate was believed to explain the over-
hanging eyebrows and partly-closed eyes of the ne-
gro; the small eyes and beardless faces of the Chinese;
the (supposed) fact that more twins were bom in
Egypt than elsewhere. And so on. The broad
generalisations of Montesquieu, Voltaire, Buffon,
Hume, Buckle, and others, furnish interesting read-
ing, and contain much that is suggestive and in-
structive, but they usually carry us well beyond the
range of reasonable probability. Even Hippoc-
rates’s observations on climatic Controls are not
without value to-day.

Factors in the Problem Other than Climate. To
most of these older writers climate meant more than
it does to-day. It included much of what is nows
termed our whole physical environment. Moreover
they based their conclusions upon incomplete records,
covering far too short periods of time. It must be
  THE LIFE OF MAN IN THE TROPICS

223

remembered that we are dealing here with large,
important, highly complex phenomena. Man moves
readily from place to place, from climate to climate.
His food, drink, habits, occupations; to some extent
his physical and mental characteristics, change in
consequence. Inheritance, intermarriage, environ-
ment, opportunities, soil, and many other factors
enter in to determine what changes individual man and
the race as a whole shall undergo. Time is a very im-
portant element in the final result, for in time a
gradual adaptation to new conditions takes place.
Climate is but one of many Controls, albeit a most
important one, for it largely determines what many
of the other factors, such as diet, customs, and occupa-
tions, for example, shall be. The task of giving
climate its proper place as a factor controlling the
life of man as a whole is a difficult one, which cannot
be definitely and satisfactorily solved to-day, or
to-morrow.

It would take us far beyond the limits set for our
present volume were we to attempt any consideration
of the many complex problems in connection with the
possible influences of climate upon the physical and
mental characteristics of man. Investigations along
these lines have given rise to much debate. It is our
present purpose merely to point out some of the more
simple and obvious ways in which the life of man is
controlled by climate. This control, it should be ob-
served, is either direct, where physical and mental
changes under climatic stimulus are concemed, or
  224

CLIMATE

indirect, as when climate acts upon man through its
influence over the distribution of the animals and
plants upon which man depends for his food, cloth-
ing, and materials of various kinds.

Climate and Habitability. Climate determines
both how and where man shall live. It classifies the
earth’s surface for us into the so-called habitable and
uninhabitable regions. The deserts of sand and the
deserts of snow and ice, whether the latter be near sea-
level or high up on mountain tops, are alike climatic,
the former because of aridity; the latter because of
cold. The only non-climatic deserts are recent lava-
flows. Where a soil is present which is not frozen
for much over half the year, and where there is
reasonable temperature and sufficiënt rainfall, plants
and animals are found, ranging from few and lowly
forms where conditions are the hardest and where
all organic life is especially adapted to these condi-
tions, to the greatest abundance where conditions are
most favourable.

Man is influenced by much the same Controls as
those which affect plants and the lower animals.
From the highest latitudes he is excluded by cold.
The higher altitudes are hostile both because of cold
and of diminished pressure. The deserts qf sand are
uninhabited, or thinly populated, by reason qf aridity.
Forests, where rainfall is abundant, are unfavourable
to a dense population. The trees must be cleared
away bef ore settlement is easy. Man is widely dis-
tributed over the earth’s surface. In his migrations
  THE LIFE OF MAN IN THE TROPICS

225

he has carried with him, beyond their original limits,
many plants and animals. Ratzel points out that
the coldest place in the world in January is a large
Siberian city, Verkhoyansk, while one of the hottest
places in the world is Massowa, on the Red Sea, the
Capital of the Italian colony of Eritrea. But the life
of man is harder here and easier there, according to
climatic conditions and the scarcity or abundance of
plant and animal life.

Man is distributed in great beits around the world,
corresponding roughly to the broad zones of vege-
tation, desert, steppe, and forest, the limits of which
are set by temperature and rainfall, but man is much
more dependent on rainfall than upon temperature.
Water he must have, directly from the plouds, or in-
directly through rivers, or springsr-or^wells, or from
melted snow and ice. There^are certain common
conditions of life which afféct the people who live in
the same zone in the sazóe broad, general way, just as
these zones have similar general conditions of winds
and of rainfall. This, as Ratzel has pointed out,
means that there is a climatic factor at work to main-
tain differences between the people of different zones,
in spite of the great movements which are constantly
tending to produce uniformity. Obviously, the dif-
ferences in the life of man which depend upon climate
will be most noticeablè, and will be likely to have the
greatest historical significance, when marked differ-
ences of climate are found dose together, as in the
case of mountain ranges like the Alps, or of a pro-

IS
  226

CLIMATE

nounced lowland, plateau, and mountain topography
like that of Peru or Mexico.

All the regions of sparse population are gradu-
ally being encroached upon by an invasion from their
borders. Forests are being cleared and replaced by
open agricultural, lands.   Wheat and corn are re-

placing grass on the steppes and savannas, especially
where irrigation can be practised. Deserts are being
redaimed for farming here and there where water
is available. The more civilised man becomes, 4he
denser the population which the different parts of the
earth can be made to support. From the wandeling
hunting and fishing tribes of the African forest or of
the borders of the Arctic sea, through the farming
populations of the cleared forest and of the steppe,
to the crowded industrial centres of the modem city,
there is such a gradation. It is the story of a more
complete to a less complete mastery of man by his
environment. But in spite of all that man can do,
the larger climatic limitations persist. The Green-
land desert of snow and ice, and the Saharan desert of
sand, must remain practically deserted.

The Development of the Tropics. Within the
tropics, under the equatorial sun, and where there is
abundance of moisture, animal and plant life* reach
their fullest development. Here are the lands which
are most valuable to the white man because of the
wealth of their tropical products. Here are the
tropical “ spheres of influence ” or “ colonies ” which
are among his most coveted possessions. It is in this
  THE LIFE OF MAN IN THE TROPICS

[Prometheus]

227

belt that food is provided for man throughout the
year without labour on his part; in which frost and
drought need not be feared; where shelter and cloth-
ing are so easily provided, and often so unnecessary,
that life becomes too easy. Nature does too much;
there is little left for man to do. The simplicity of
life, so far as providing food is concerned, has been
emphasised by many writers. We are told that three
bread-fruit trees furnish enough food for one man;
that a labourer needs only twelve bananas for his
daily food; that one day a week is enough time to
spend in caring for a manioc plantation; that two
days’ work a week is often enough to enable a man to
support a family; that a month’s labour will provide
for a Malay more sago than he can use in ajear, etc.
Stories are told of shipwrecked seamen in the tropi-
cal Pacific who lived for many days on one cocoanut
a day for each man. Captain Cook put the case very
emphatically when he said that a South Sea Islander
who plants ten bread-fruit trees does as much to-
wards providing food for his family as does a man in
northem Europe who works throughout the year.

In a debilitating and enervating climate, without
the necessity of work, the will to develop both the
man who inhabits the tropics, and also the resources
of the tropics, is generally lacking. Voluntary pro-
gress toward a higher civilisation is not reasonably
to be expected. The tropics must be developed un-
der other auspices than their own. “ Where nature
lavishes food and winks at the neglect of clothing and
  228

CLIMATE

shelter, there ignorance, superstition, physical prow-
ess, and sexual passion have an equal chance with
intelligence, foresight, thought, and self-control.” 1

There is no superfluous energy for the higher
things of life. Thus it has come about that the na-
tives of the tropics have the general reputation of
being indolent and untrustworthy; of always being
ready to put off until “ to-morrow.” Obviously, no
such sweeping generalisation is to .be taken too liter-
ally, for the lower latitudes have produced many men
far from deficiënt in physical and intellectual power.
Moreover in those parts of the tropics where natural
conditions are more severe, the natives are usually
more industrious. But it is true that the energetic
and enterprising races of the world have not devel-
oped under the easy conditions of life in the tropics.
As Edward Whymper’s Swiss guide said of the na-
tives of Ecuador, “ it would be good for tropical
peoples to have a winter.” Guyot has put the case in
this way:

A nature too rich, too prodigal of her gifts, does not
compel man to snatch from her his daily bread by his daily
toil. A regular climate, the absence of a dormant season,
render forethought of little use to him. Nothing invites him
to that struggle of intelligence against nature which raises
the forces of man to so high a pitch, but which would seem
here to be hopelcss. Thus he never dreams of resisting this
all-powerful physical nature; he is conquered by her; he sub-
mits to the yokc, and becomes again the animal man,—for-
getful of his high moral destination»

The movements of the body, the habit of carrying

'John R. Commons, The Ckautauquan, May, 1904, p. 222.
  THE LIFE OF MAN IN THE TROPICS 229

loads on the head, even the native dances, have been
thought by some to show the enervating effects of the
climate. One writer has even gone so far as to see
similar effects in the domestic animals, which he be-
lieves to be more docile than those in extra-tropical
latitudes.

The Labour Problem in the Tropics. “What
possible means are there of inducing the inhabitants
of the tropics to undertake steady and continuous
work, if local conditions are such that from the mere
bounty of nature all the ambitions of the people can
be gratified without any considerable amount of
labour? ” In these words, Alleyne Ireland well sums
up the labour problem in the tropics. If the natives
are, on the whole, disinclined to work of their own
accord, then either forced native labour, which is con-
trary to the spirit of the times, or imported inden-
tured labour, becomes inevitable if the tropics are to
be developed. With few exceptions, and those where
the pressure of a large population necessitates labour,
effective development has been accomplished only
where imported Chinese, Japanese, or coolie labour
has been employed, under some form of contract.
Negro slavery began in the West Indies, under early
Spanish rule, and its perpetuation was certainly in
part aided by climatic Controls. The best develop-
ment of many tropical lands depends to-day upon
Chinese labour. It will be so in the Philippines. In
Java, Holland has succeeded by forcing the natives
to work.   ^
  230

CLIMATE

With a large native class which is indolent, work*
ing intermittently for low wages, or which is bound
under some form of contract, it follows that the na-
tive or imported labouring classes are separated by a
broad gulf from the upper, employing class, which is
usually essentially foreign and white. The latter
class tends to become despotic; the former, to become
servile. Marked social inequalities thus result, ac-
centuated by the fact that the foreign-born white is
usually debarred from all hard labour in a hot tropi-
cal climate. White labourers are not likely to be-
come dominant in the tropics for two reasons:—first,
because the climate is against them; and second, be-
cause the native is already there, and his labour is
cheaper. White men are not doing the hard daily
labour of India, or of Java, or of the Philippines, or
even of Hawaii. They are directing it.

The Government of Tropical Possessions. The
govemment of European possessions in the tropics
has thus far been determined chiefly by three con-
siderations: (1) The general incapacity of the na-
tives, through ignorance, or lack of interest, or
their undeveloped condition, to govem them-
selves properly. (2) The fact that the white resi-
dents are generally comparatively few in number and
are only temporarily in the country, to make money
and then to go home again. The white population
is often composed chiefly of men—soldiers, officials,
merchants, adventurers. There is little inducement
to found permanent homes. (3) The marked class
  THE LIFE OF MAX IN THE TROPICS

231

distinctions already referred to. These generalisa-
tions must obviously not be carried too far.
Hawaii, very favourably situated as regards climate,
will in time become an American State, and Brazil,
most of whose immense area is typically tropical, has
an increasing European immigration of permanent
settlers. But what has been said is, in the main, true.
The white residents constitute a caste, and naturally
become the rulers, the home govemment retaining
general control, often by force of arms. The native
population, although largely in the majority, may
have little or no voice in its own government. This
is clearly not a democracy. It thus comes about that
the tropics are governed largely from the temperate
zone; the standards, ideals, motives, come from an-
other land. And where governed under their own
auspices, as independent republics, the success has not
been great. Buckle first strongly emphasised the
point that hot countries are conducive to despot-
ism and cold countries to freedom and independence;
and James Bryce has recently clearly set forth the
climatic control of govemment in an essay on “ Brit-
ish Experience in the Govemment of Colonies ”
(Century, March, 1899, 718-729). The very Euro-
peans who exercise the controlling power in the trop-
ics, themselves tend to become enervated if they live
there long; they lose many of the standards and
ideals with which they started; they not uncommonly
tend to fall towards the level of the natives rather
than to raise the standards of the latter. The pecu-
  232

CLIMATE

liar situation which may arise from the govemment
of a tropical possession in which the white race does
not become acclimated has been emphasised by Dr.
Goldwin Smith in a recent discussion of British rule
in India. “ British Empire in India,” he says, “ is in
no danger of being brought to an end by a Russian
invasion. It does not seem to be in much danger of
being brought to an end by internal rebellion. Yet
it must end. Such is the decree of nature.' In that
climate British children cannot be reared. No race
can forever hold and rule a land in which it cannot
rear its children.” The future of tropical possessions
and “ spheres of influence ” offers many problems of
great complexity, the solution of which is largely con-
trolled by the factor of climate.

Primitive Civilisation and the Tropics. There are
reasons for thinking that primitive, pre-historic man,
in his earliest stages, when most helpless, was an in-
habitant of the tropics; that he lived under the mild,
uniform, genial climate of that zone, where food was
easily obtained and protection against the inclemen-
cies of the weather least necessary. There has been
a belief that southem Asia, bordering on the Indian
Ocean, with its numerous bays, was probably the
cradle of humanity. Civilised man is believed by
many to have appeared first on the delta formed at
the head of the Persian Gulf by the Tigris and Eu-
phrates rivers, where also wheat was very likely first
grown. Ancient civilisations seem to have developed
in the drier portions of the tropics, where irrigation
  THE LIFE OF MAN IN THE TROPICS

233

was necessary in order to insure abundant and regu-
lar crops, and where lived races more energetic and
more hardy than those of the damper and rainier por-
tions of the tropics, with more luxuriant vegetation.
As Professor Hilgard1 has well said:

It is hardly doubtful that the ancient ‘ Kulturrölker *
recognised these advantages (of irrigated lands) by experi-
ence,'and eschewed the laborious task of rendering cultivable
the comparatively infertile, or, at least, readily exhausted,
lands of the forest regions. . . . And it is also clear that,
inasmuch as the establishment and maintenance of irrigation
canals necessarily involve coöperation, and therefore a rather
high degree of social organisation, the conditions of the arid
regions were exceptionally conducive to the establishment of
the highly complex polities of which the vestiges are now be-
ing unearthed in what we are in the habit of calling deserts.

Civilisation was thus probably first developed,
not where the overwhelming superabundance of
nature’s gifts seems to offer the best conditions,
but where man was under some stress of labour,
some spur to effort, in less favourable natural
conditions, but such as developed him. Within
the tropics, the greatest progress later came, not on
the damp lowlands, but on the less fertile plateaus of
Mexico and of Peru, where the Aztecs and Incas
made their marvellous progress in the drier, cooler,
and more rigorous climates of altitudes over 7000 or
8000 feet above sea-level. Ratzel has pointed out,

1E. W. Hilgard: "The Causes of the Development of Ancient
Civilisations in Arid Countries/’ No. Amer. Rev.9 vol. 175, 1902,
p. 314.
  234

CLIMATE

in the case of the mins found on the lowlands of
Yucatan and of farther India, that when such build-
ing operations are carried through by the autocratie
rule over a subject class, the situation is very different
from that in which we see spontaneous action on the
part of a whole people.

The nations living in ease on the tropical lowlands
were naturally, from early days, the object of fre-
quent attacks and invasions at the hands of the more
active and more warlike races living in more rigorous
climates farther north, or at greater altitudes on
mountains or plateaus. The invading tribes, having
in time become enervated by an easy existence on the
warm lowlands, have themselves often been later
overcome by a new enemy from the north. Some of
the greatest migratory movements in history have
taken place from colder to warmer climates, as part
of this general equatorward tendency in both tem-
perate and tropical zones. The barbarous tribes
broke through the northern passes and descended onto
the more genial and more fruitful lowlands of India,
being helped to do this by the ease of the descent.
Such mountain systems as the Himalayas, or the
Alps, stretching east and west, are natural climatic
divides between more genial and more severe cli-
mates, and have often been crossed by invading arm-
ies from the north. The descent of the Aryans into
India; the Manchurian conquest of China; the in-
vasions of Greece and Italy from the north; the
southward movement of Toltecs and Aztecs in Mex-
  THE LIFE OF MAN IN THE TROPICS

235

ico, have been cited as illustrations of this equator-
ward tendency. In the southem hemisphere, it has
been suggested that the Kaffirs have shown the same
tendency—there northward,—as did the native Pata-
gonians in their predatory expeditions to the north.
The equatorward tendency may be seen to-day in
the extension of European “ spheres of influence,”
especially in Africa, the object now being essentially
a mercenary one, and not a seeking for new homes in
a more genial climate.

Dwellings in the Tropics. Dwellings, clothing,
and food are easily provided in the hot climates of
the moist tropics. In the deserts and on the moun-
tains the conditions of life are harder. The protec-
tion that is needed against sun and rain, and the
lowered temperatures of the tropical night, is usually
very simple. Man spends most of his life outdoors.
The building materials are ready at hand and simple.
Many of the primitive native huts are loosely made
of bamboo or other pliable trees, where such are
available (e. g., the mimosa used by the Hottentots);
of palm and cocoanut leaves, sugar-cane, or grass.
Pointed roofs, supported on poles, and wooden
frames with mats for walls, are a characteristic style
of architecture. In some places temporary huts are
made of skins, while more permanent dwellings are
better built, with good roofs. The permanent dwell-
ings in tropical cities are oftenest built of stone, with
thick walls. The old Spanish and Portuguese idea
was also to have narrow streets, in order that the sun-
  236

CLIMATE

light might be shut out as much as possible. In the
newfer portions of tropical cities, however, wide
streets and fine boulevards are being laid out. In
the modern houses built for European residents in
the tropics, the rooms are large, airy, and well venti-
lated; there is a minimum of furnishings; there are
broad verandas with sereens for protection against
the sun; there is a proper air space between roof and
ceiling. Stoves and fireplaces for heating purposes
are unnecessary, and the absence of chimneys on the
tops of city houses has often attracted the attention
of neweomers from colder latitudes. Nevertheless,
in some places the natives are so sensitive to the
noctumal cooling that they keep themselves warm by
fires at night. Much difficulty is experienced on
account of the destructive action of ants and other
insects, and of the dampness, as well as of sudden
tropical rains and floods. Even in dry climates,
buildings do not last well, unless built of stone. As
the prevailing winds are easterly, the eastern quarters
of the cities are usually the more desirable and the
more fashionable, and are therefore inhabited by the
wealthier classes. It is the habit of those who live
in the tropics to stop work and stay indoors during
the hottest part of the day. Business is done in
moming, or later afternoon, and the afternoon siësta
has become a characteristic of the people. The late
afternoon is the time for the fashionable outdoor life
in the park, on the promenade, or at the club.
  THE LIFE OF MAN IN THE TROPICS

237

Clothing in the Tropics. The clothing of the na-
tives of the tropics is of the simplest kind, often so
scanty as hardly to be called clothing at all.
In the moister portions it not infrequently consists
solely of aprons made of grass, leaves, bark, or
reeds. The children generally go naked. Where
the diurnal temperature changes are marked, heavier
clothing is usually wom at night. The clothing of
Europeans and Americans is loose and light in colour
and weight, but thin woollens are by no means to be
discarded altogether, for they are useful during the
cooler evening hours. Light headgear, for protec-
tion against the sun, such as wide-brimmed straw
hats or pith helmets, sun umbrellas, and low shoes
are used. Great care has been taken to devise the
most suitable uniform for white troops in the tropics,
even down to the most minute details of equipment.
The kind of material, the number and cut of the dif-
ferent garments, even the best kind of belt and
shoulder-straps, have received attention. Campaign-
ing in the tropics is very different from ordinary ser-
vice in the temperate zones, and all these details need
care. It is the general opinion that a loose,
light uniform, of porous material, with a minimum of
straps, beits, and pouches, is the best. As to ma-
terials, khaki has come into extensive use and is very
popular. “ Keep the head cool and the abdomen
warm” is the best rule for white resident» of the
tropics to follow.
  238

CLIMATE

Food in the Tropics. Fruits, especially the ba-
nana, cocoanut, and bread-fruit, and rice, manioc,
yams, sago, and sugar-cane are staple articles of food.
Meat and fish are not much used. In the deserts the
date-palm is an important article of food, and where
irrigation is practised a variety of cereals and fruits
is usually grown. Of late years, much attention has
been paid by military officials to the question of the
best ration for white troops who serve in the tropics.
The general feeling' is that a light diet consisting
chiefly of fruit, vegetables, and cereals, with a mini-
mum of nitrogenous, heat-producing foods, is the
most likely to keep the men in good health. A light
midday meal is recommended. There are, however,
those who hold that the prevailing anaemic condition
of the tropical natives is largely due to the deficiency
of meat in their diet, and who therefore urge that
meat should be eaten in reasonable quantity.

There is much difficulty in preserving perishable
food-products. Such articles sent from cooler lati-
tudes for use in, or for transportation across, the
tropics, need special protection, by refrigeration or
quick carriage. The increase of transportation by
steam in place of sail, and the opening of the Suez
Canal, have both been factors of importance in meet-
ing this difficulty. It is distinctly an advantage for
a country to sell its food products to other countries
on its own side of the equator. Frozen meat,
carried long distances by sea across the tropics, is
not as good as fresh meat, and is also poorer than

[Prometheus]

  THE LIFE OF MAN IN THE TROPICS 239

meat carried at sufficiently low temperatures to pre-
serve, without actually freezing it. The need for
preserving perishable food has led to an increasing
demand for ice, and hence to the multiplication of
artificial-ice plants. Recently there comes a demand
from one tropical country (India) for refrigerator
cars for the transportation of milk.

Agriculture, Arts, and Industries in the Tropics.
The need of labour in order to procure a good return
from the ground is so slight that agriculture has not
yet made much progress in the tropics as a whole.
Where frost need not be feared, where crops ripen all
the year around, and where the soil is rich with de-
caying vegetable matter, agriculture is naturally
slow to improve. Yet there are native peoples who
have advanced much farther than might be expected,
as is seen, for example, in the cultivation of rice in
the Malay archipelago and in farther India; in the
state of Polynesian agriculture; in the success at
farming attained by many negroes in Africa. Tropi-
cal soils are by no means all as fertile as is generally
believed. The warm rains throughout the year
leach out the soil, carrying off many salts and
leaving the land poor; the laterite soils which are com-
mon in the tropics are very poor in plant-food
ingredients.

There have thus far been comparatively few native
industries in the tropics, for the reason, doubtless,
that the necessjties of life are readily supplied with-
out the need of manufacture. In the future, with
  240

CLIMATE

increasing exploitation by the white race, and under
the control of it, and with growing demands on the
part of the natives themselves, tropical industries are
certain to develop. Yet many tropical natives show
great ingenuity in the use and adaptation of the
simple natural products to which they have access.
Thus the shell of the cocoanut is made into bowls and
other utensils; the cocoanut fibres are plaited into
thatch, baskets, and mats; the cocoanut sterns are
used in the building of houses and boats. Grass
and reeds are plaited, and the bark-cloth of the Pa-
cific islanders and of central Africa is so widely used,
and serves its purposes so well, that it has very prob-
ably kept the natives who use it from advancing to
weaving and spinning. Bamboo and rattan are
widely used for domestic utensils of all sorts; for
hunting and agricultural implements; in construct-
ing houses, boats, rafts, and vehicles for transporta-
tion; in making pipes and musical instruments; and
for other purposes; even for food, rope, and string.
From the tropics man procures many things in ad-
dition to the plant products. For example, the
warm tropical oceans yield him pearls and corals. It
is an interesting fact that, at the present time, Euro-
pean countries, particularly Germany, are devising
and manufacturing machines especially intended for
harvesting and preparing for export the products of
the tropics, such as machines for splitting cocoanüts;
for preparing and extracting oil from the palm fruit;
for making caoutchouc from the sap of the rubber
  THE LIFE OF MAN IN THE TROPICS

241

tree, etc. Germany is also devising plans for tropi-
cal cultivators, railroads, and houses.

Special precautions are necessary in packing many
manufactured goods that are to be transported
across the equator, in order to protect them from in-
jury by the dampness. Leather goods, textiles, and
paper are liable to be stained. Arms, cutlery, and all
metal goods need the utmost care to keep them from
rusting. These are best preserved when packed in
cases lined with some absorbent wood well saturated
with hot paraffine wax. It has recently been pointed
out in a Vienna trade journal, that the preservation
of lacquered shoes sent from Europe to Australia
depends upon the circumstance whether they may be
kept moderately cool by the ocean water, low down
in the ship’s hold, or are near the deck, exposed to the
heat. In Indian warehouses woven goods are affected
by the dampness in such a way that they have different
lengths, although all uniformly woven. Even in the
dry month of February, at Bombay, closely woven
imported calicoes, exposed to the air, experience
changes in length from day to day amounting to 8
per cent. Ordinary salt absorbs so much moisture
in the damp latitudes that it has been necessary to
prepare a salt which shall escape this difficulty.

Some Physiological Effects of Tropical Climates.
We are not here concemed with the many complex
questions, physiological and ethnological, which have
arisen in connection with the effects of tropical cli-
mates upon man. There has been much debate con-

16
  242

CLIMATE

eenling the effect of the climate upon the colour of
the skin. It was natural that many early writers
should see in the black skin of the negro an effect of
the tropical sun, and should explain the paler colours,
and white, as resultiiig from residence in higher lati-
tudes. It was pointed out, e. g., that among certain
tropical natives the women, who live indoors, are
lighter in colour than the men, who are more ex-
posed. It may be remembered that Darwin, in his
Descent of Man, pointed out that the distribution of
coloured races does not coincide with corresponding
differences of climate, and that no change in colour
has taken place in the Dutch who have lived for sev-
eral generations in south Africa. Darwin also
thought it not an improbable conjecture that the im-
munity of negroes from certain diseases might be
correlated with the colour of their skins, and that this
colour might have been acquired because darker in-
dividuals escaped during successive generations from
these diseases. However opinions may differ con-
cerning the origin of the black skin qf the negro, it is
clear that this colour is an advantage, rather than
otherwise, in helping to cool the body through profuse
perspiration and the resulting evaporation. Black
skin, however it may have been developed, seems to
be well suited to a hot climate. Major Charles E.
Woodruff, of the United States Army, has lately
maintained that the failure of the .white races to col-
onise the tropics.is due to the excess of light which
there prevails, and not to the heat or humidity. He
  THE LIFE OF MAN IN THE TROPICS

243

believes that the white man, especially the blond,
gradually becomes disinclined to work on this ac-
count, grows neurasthenie, and finally breaks down.
An effect of climate upon the kind of hair has also
been claimed, but on this point, again, Darwin has
noted that although there are reasons for thinking
that the growth of hair is affected by cold and damp-
ness, he had “ not yet any evidence on this head in
the case of man.” Schlagintweit called attention to
the fact that the inhabitants of Nepal wore much
less head-covering than Europeans, and did not suf-
fer. The sallow, ansemic complexions of white in-
habitants of the tropics are a subject of general
comment.

There are other physiological matters which must
also be passed over without discussion. For example,
it is alleged that a preponderance of females in warm
climates is the effect of the light diet of mothers in
the tropics, whereas a meat diet produces more
males.1 Direct proof of the assertion that sterility
in the white race ensues after three generations in the
tropics is hard to find.

The Equatorial Forests. In the equatorial belt
we find the hot, sultry, cloudy conditions of the
•doldrums, with frequent heavy rains. When the
doldrums migrate north and south, and the trade
winds take their place, there are clearer skies for a
time, and little or no rainfall. There are two rainy
seasons near the equator (equatorial type), and one

1Schenck: Einfluss auf das Geschlechtsverhdltniss, 1898.
  244

CLIMATE

rainy season farther away (tropical type). The life
of man in the equatorial belt as a whole is controlled
by the rains. The dense tropical forests of equa-
torial Africa, South America, the Malay peninsula
and archipelago, grow where the rainfall is heaviest.
These forests are dark and depressing; crowded with
creepers and plants of innumerable varieties; rich in
valuable woods such as mahogany, ebony, and rose-
wood; in sap-products such as rubber, and in drugs
such as quinine. Poppig has compared the native
South American tribes with their forest trees. Man
develops rapidly there, as does the vegetation. He
also ages rapidly, like the tree which decays at the
time of its best development. The tropical tree does
not strike its roots firm and deep into the soil; it
spreads them out near the surface, and a high wind
overtums it. So it is, according to Poppig, with the
native. Both he and his trees lack the stability and
endurance of northern forests and of temperate zone
man. There are comparatively few animals in the
dense tropical forests. Reptiles, birds, and mon-
keys are found. The large mammals are in the more
open country.

Such a superabundance of vegetation is unfavour-
able to human occupation. The population is small,
and generally at a very low stage of civilisation, as
illustrated by the Indians of the Amazonian forests
or the Pygmies of the Congo, who wander about with-
out settled homes. The trees and undergrowth act
as a very effective barrier to the advance of civilisa-
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245

tion from the margins of the forest. The difficulty
and expense of travel and transportation, and of
clearing the forest for purposes of agriculture, oper-
ate to retard the advance of civilised man. The
waves of civilisation, as one writer has put it, beat up
against the forest, but only occasionally break
through it. The northern forests of Argentina,
inhabited by wandering tribes of Indians; the
densely wooded Amazonian provinces of Peru; the
equatorial forests on the west coast of Africa; the
forests of Achin, in northem Sumatra, in the protec-
tion they have afforded the natives in their resistance
against the Dutch; the eastern forested slopes of
Central America, left longest to the native tribes,
while the western, more open, and drier slopes were
first settled by white men and are best developed—
these are all examples of the repelling effects of dense
tropical tree-growth where the advance of civilised
man is concerned. Even the earlier American civil-
isations, the Aztec and the Inca, halted before
forested areas. It has been pointed out that the
Incas were almost as much hemmed in by the forests
on the east as by the Pacific on the west.

In the equatorial forests the men hunt and fish;
collect rubber or other forest products; do a little
planting in the forest clearings, without paying much
attention to the erop when planted. By clearing
away the forest, these people might extend the area
devoted to agriculture, and become farmers. In the
clearings at the margins of the forests there is a eer-
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CLIMATE

tain amount of agriculture, carried on chiefly by the
women, who are also occupied with domestic duties
while the men are hunting or fighting. Settlements
in these clearings are often abandoned. In the
Malayan forest the natives are graded from those
who are simple nomads to those who have settlements
where they cultivate rice in the wet jungles. Rice
needs much water, and its cultivation in Java is
closely allied with the general question of deforesta-
tion. Where the sago palm grows, and provides
food without the need of much labour, the natives are
least advanced.

Travel through the forest is difficult. Darwin
thought it not unlikely that the habit of carrying
knives for the purpose of cutting down vegetation
contributes much to the frequency of murder among
the tropical peoples. Narrow paths, along which
travellers move in Indian file, are natural ways of
communication unless travel can be by boat, which is
obviously quicker and easier. The natives thus nat-
urally live along the rivers. It has been pointed out
that there is a connection between the method of
carrying goods in the African forests, on the backs or
heads of negro porters, and the slave trade, which
sells the man as well as the goods. Many of the
natives who secure the rubber from the Amazonian
forests, or from those of the Congo, are to-day sub-
jected to hardships which equal those of slavery.

The seasonal floods on many rivers, the Amazon
for example, oblige the natives to build huts on piles
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247

to keep them above the water. When the waters rise
higher than the platforms, the people take to their
canoes, until the flood is over. In some places the
floods drive the people to the towns, which are built
on natural eminences. In New Guinea and in the
Mosquito Territory the natives live much in their
boats during the rainy season. In fact, in the former
country so much time is spent on the water that the
people partly lose their ability to walk. They al-
most become amphibious beings. Sir Charles Eliot
reports that some of the native tribes along the
Bahr-el-Gebel, at seasons when mosquitoes are
abundant, use platforms on poles ten or twelve
feet high, as these insects do not fly far above the
ground.

The food supply along the Amazon is dosely re-
lated to the rise and fall of the water. WTien the
river is in flood, the turtles, fish, and aquatic birds
migrate to the northem tributaries, or even to the
Orinoco, where the dry season is on. With the re-
turn of the dry season on the Amazon comes the op-
portunity of the natives to catch the fish and turtles,
and to secure turtles’ eggs. There is thus a very
general seasonal migration among the people. The
flood time is the time of deficiënt food supply. This
explains the origin of the native prayer for a good
dry season. The conditions of life on the Mosquito
Coast are very similar (lat. 10°-15° N.). The
north-east trade there brings the dry season
(spring), when the Indians collect the eggs of alli-
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CLIMATE

gators and turtles on the dry sand-banks. Living-
stone pointed out that during the great floods in the
inland lake region of Africa the natives live upon,
and cultivate, the large ant hills, in the Bangweolo
and Moëro districts. On the plateau of western
Nyassa, the Ba Bisa profit by the heavy rains in an
interesting way. At such times the hollows are
swampy, so that elephants driven into them become
helpless and are readily killed. Similarly, as reported
by Livingstone, the natives of the islands in the Zam-
bezi River utilise the floods and canoes to hunt buf-
faloes, these animals being easily caught in the wa-
ter. One writer has pointed out that certain African
tribes purposely go naked during the rains, know-
ing that they are thus less likely to becomé chilled.

The great value of the tropical forest products is
leading, and will still further lead, to the settlement
of considerable numbers of whites on the margins of
these forests, and along the rivers which flow through
them. Thus in Brazil, along the lower Amazon and
its tributaries, there are cacao, sugar, coffee, tobacco,
manioc, and rice plantations; in some cases also, sugar
factories, rice and lumber mills. Large cities and
towns thus gradually grow up, like Para and Manaos,
and the native tribes come more and more into con-
tact with civilisation.

Travel and transportation are emphatically con-
trolled by climate throughout the equatorial belt.
Roads become almost or quite impassable during the
rainy season. Lowlands, as in central Africa and in
  THE LIFE OF MAN IN THE TROPICS

249

equatorial South America, turn into swamps or tem-
porary lakes, so that all travel may be stopped. In
other places, where boats are used at all seasons, the
•rains give high water and aid, rather than hinder,
travel. The control of the floods of the Chagres
River, on the Isthmus of Panama, is one of the most
difficult problems with which the engineers ' have
dealt. Work on railroads is always much interfered
with difring the rainy season, if not interrupted
altogether. Dense tropical vegetation seriously
obstructs railroad construction and operation. The
roadway is constantly being overgrown, and men
must be kept at work cutting down the weeds, under-
brush, and trees. This involves great expense, and
seriously reduces the earnings of the roads. Recently,
tank-cars which frequently spray the right of way
with a strong poison have come into use, as on
the Guayaquil-Quito line in Ecuador, and on the
Tehuantepec Railroad. Ties and trestles rot quickly,
or are destroyed by insects. Special kinds of ties,
such as Ugnum vitte, or camphor wood, or even iron,
have therefore been used. Although vegetation is
thus a serious handicap to railroads in the moist
tropics, it serves a useful purpose in preventing the
sides of steep cuts from sliding down. The absence
of frost makes possible cuts with steeper sides than in
colder latitudes. Along the older portion of the
Panama Canal, which has been built for some years,
no masonry was needed to keep the banks from cav-
ing in. The heavy vegetation served the purpose of

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CLIMATE

stone and cement. Fevers and other diseases com-
mon in the rainy season of the tropics are also a seri-
ous handicap, and floods and landslides add to the
difficulties. The sultry heat is another obstacle. *
Curious complications in the employment of several
different kinds of labour arose on the Uganda
Railway. For four castes among the Indian work-
men, four separate water-tanks had to be provided,
and if the water in one tank gave out, that particular
one had to be sent by train to be filled, although the
remaining three tanks were full. Dr. H. R. Mill
has pointed out that there are many features on the
Uganda Railway which show climatic control. The
cars are built of metal, in order to defy wood-boring
insects. They have deep ventilators, protected by
wire gauze against mosquitoes. The Windows are of
green glass to give protection against the glare of
the sun.

During the dry season the difflculties are similar to
those noted later under deserts. At that time dust
makes travelling disagreeable, and instead of streams
being impassable, they often dry up, and their beds
serve as roads.

A curious relation of thunder-storms and naviga-
tion is reported by Hann from Maracaibo, Venez-
uela. The lightning flashes from rainy-season
thunder-storms at the south-westem end of the lake
of Maracaibo are used by captains in navigating their
vessels through the strait of Maracaibo. “ El Faro
de Maracaibo,” as these lightnings are locally called,
  THE LIFE OF MAN IN THE TROPICS

251

gives a good compass-direction for steering a ship on
dark nights.

The Open Graas Lands of the Tropics: Savannas.
Between the forests on one side and the deserts on the
other comes a transition zone of moderate rainfall.
Here the forests are replaced by an intermediate belt
of more or less open, grassy country, known as the
savanna. There are usually a long dry and a shorter
wet season (summer). Vegetation has but a short
season for growth. Savannas are found in Africa
and in South America both north and south of the
equator. In Africa they include the Sudan; in
South America, the llanos of Venezuela and the cam-
pos of Brazil; in Australia, the downs. The open
Country and the grass cover, which forms natural hay
in the dry season, fit the savannas for grazing pur-
poses. The people are essentially pastoral. Popu-
lation is denser than in the tropical forest, and the
people are more energetic and more advanced. The
African savannas are abundantly supplied with large
animals such as lions, tigers, antelopes, elephants,
rhinoceroses, and giraffes.

Their dependence upon grass and water for their
cattle forces the inhabitants of the savannas to be
more or less nomadic, the more so the more pastoral
the people are. They move their tents and household
goods easily over great distances, stopping where
there are pasturage and water. Their food is supplied
chiefly from their flocks and herds, of cows, goats, or
camels. Agriculture of a somewhat primitive kind
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CLIMATE

is often combined with grazing in the better-watered
portions of the savannas, the seed being sown at the
beginning of the rains. The population there be-
comes more sedentary. Thus in the Sudan there is
a belt of agriculture nearer the equator, where the
rainfall is heavier, and a pastoral zone farther from
the equator, where there is less rainfall. In these
districts the rainfall varies much from year to year,
and there are frequent droughts and famines.
Thousands of persons may then die of starvation, as
has happened in parts of the Sudan, in Nubia, and
elsewhere within a few years. At such times the
cattle die in large numbers, and where the herds have
been lost by famine or disease it has happened that
certain native tribes (e. g.} the Galla, in eastern
Africa), after suffering terribly from hunger, have
changed their place of residence, turning in part to
plunder and hunting, and in part to farming. A
curious case of seasonal migration into the desert has
been reported of the Tuaregs, who inhabit part of the
region about Lake Chad. The upper class of these
people is nomadic, and during the rainy season re-
tires into the desert with its camels, which do not
like the rains.

All the savannas will in time be more thickly popu-
lated and more valuable than now, owing to the
availability of considerable portions of them for agri-
culture, especially where irrigation can be practised.
Under the supervision of white overseers, the natives
will become better agriculturists and cattle-raisers.
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253

In South America, as well as in Australia, the sa-
vannas are in part being sown to wheat. From the
savannas and the neighbouring deserts, ivory, ostrich
feathers, palm oil, dates, gums, and so on, are
secured.

Trade Wind Beits on Land: the Deserts. The
major part of the earth’s surface in the trade wind
beits is a desert, which forms a marked feature of
every rainfall map of the world. These trade wind
deserts, because of their great extent, are of immense
importance from a human standpoint. They are
beits of scanty population. They form great bar-
riers, across which even to-day travel and transporta-
tion are difficult and expensive. The interior of
Africa has been out of contact with the civilised world
largely because of the deserts to the north and south
of it. Goods and passengers go around, rather than
across them. Trails across the desert are easily
effaced by blowing sand, or are shifted as some oasis
dries up. Along their margins, where there is a
moderate rainfall, or where oases, wells, or streams
make permanent settlement possible, the population
is more or less sedentary, agricultural, pastoral, and
commercial, but even here droughts and famines may
occur, and agriculture is not absolutely sure. Riv-
ers which cross the desert gain their water from the
rainier lands beyond, and then flow long distances
without tributaries. The Nile is the classic example
of this. Along such rivers population naturally
gathers; irrigation and agriculture are practised, and
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CLIMATE

the entire valley becomes an oasis. The Nile and the
rivers of the Coastal desert of South America are
illustrations; in the Deccan, also, the river systems
are the centres of the densest population. It is dif-
ficult to overestimate the effect which the Nile had
upon the civilisation of ancient Egypt. It has been
asserted with good reason that the annual overflow,
by depositing silt and by wiping out the boundaries
of individual tracts of land, obliged the ancient
Egyptians to develop mathematical skill in re-sur-
veying these lands, as it also led to canal and dam
building. Where deserts are irrigated, it is some-
times necessary to guard the water supply, as in Chile
and Peru.

In the desert proper, a nomadic life and a scat-
tered population are characteristic and inevitable re-
sults of the aridity. As Schirmer has expressed it,
“ the purer the desert, the more the inhabitants dis-
perse themselves.” The Saharan nomads camp for
a few months in winter, it may be near the towns,
and then travel with their flocks in summer. The
Bedouins, although they wander to and fro over a
wide area, nevertheless keep within certain recog-
nised limits. In the desert, population gathers
in the oases, as on islands. Here the trails followed
by the caravans come together, like sailing routes at
sea. Thus there is naturally developed a settlement,
in which the people are in places so crowded that
they may be on the verge of starvation all the time.
There are small Arabian towns where the houses are
  THE LIFE OF MAX IX THE TROPICS

255

almost crowded on top of one another, producing
something not unlike the modem “ sky-scraper ” of
an American city, where land is scarce and expensive.
When such oases dry up, or are encroached upon by
the desert sands, they are abandoned, and the ruins,
later discovered by some explorer, give the impres-
sion of a diminishing population.

The climate of the trade wind deserts is drier and
more stimulating, and has larger temperature ranges,
than that of the forests and of the savannas. The
need of protection against heat and cold is greater;
food more difficult to obtain; life a harder struggle.
Therefore the desert produces more active, more
energetic, and more Progressive men. They are inde-
pendent, bold, and strong. Nachtigal has pointed
out the difference between the healthy and vigorous
tribes of the Sahara and the less active Sudanese.
The hardy, warlike inhabitants of the desert of Per-
sia and Baluchistan have frequently held in subjec-
tion the people of the richer lowlands on the west.
There is a well recognised difference between the true
nomad desert-dweller and the weaker sedentary.
From the latter, the former often takes tribute, and
if the exactions become unbearable, the unfortunate
sedentary farmer may be forced in self-defence to be-
come a nomad himself. The nomadic life of the des-
ert-dwellers tends to make robbers of them, so that
pillaging of caravans is not an uncommon occurrence.
The utter hopelessness of the isolated Australian
desert seems to have led to a most degraded condition
  m

CLIMATE

among its inhabitants. Nearly naked, living on the
lowest forms of desert life, and practising cannibal-
ism and the murder of the weak and helpless, they
have ranked among the lowest human beings in the
world.

The trade wind deserts are gaps in the map of the
world’s civilisation. When the tribes or individu-
als who live along the margins of the deserts are
forced into the deserts, they tend to scatter and dis-
appear. There are also migrations out from the des-
ert into the more fertile regions adjoining, as in the
case of the Tuaregs in the Sudan. The advance of
the nomadic Arabs from the Sahara into the lands of
the more peaceable agricultural negroes to the south
has been compared with the encroachment of the
desert sands over some fertile grass-covered land
along its border,

The more permanent dwellings often have flat
roofs, and are built of stone or adobe, wood and vege-
table products being scarce or entirely lacking. Slop-
ing roofs are not needed, as the protection desired is
not against rain, but against sun and wind. In hot,
dry climates the flat roofs are generally used for
sleeping at night. The houses are low, sometimes
even partly underground, for better protection
against the wind. When the people are on the move
tents are taken, made of skins or, where the materials
are obtainable, of thatch, palm leaves, or grass. The
timber usually comes from the date tree. On the
arid west coast of South America the Incas used
  THE LIFE OF MAN IN THE TROPICS

257

adobe bricks chiefly in the regions with least rainfall,
and granite and porphyry on the rainier plateaus.
Even the great Inca temples, built of massive stone
blocks, had light thatched roofs, because but little pro-
tection against rain was necessary. In the Chilean
desert many of the richest mines were discovered in
the early days by men who were hunting for firewood
or tending cattle.

The nights are often cool, and heavier clothing is
wom than by day. Both clothing and food are
simple, and are supplied chiefly from thé flocks and
herds, which are the desert inhabitants’ most precious
possession, or from desert plants, such as the date.
Along the shores of the Persian Gulf, where there is
no wood supply, even boats are made of date leaves,
The dry desert air preserves rather than destroys.
Sun-dried meat may become an article of food, as in
the charq-ui of Peru. Livingstone and others have
noted that the desert peoples of Africa are much less
clean than those who inhabit the moister parts of the
tropics. The lack of water, as well as the belief that
water makes the skin sensitive to the heat, leads to a
great lack of cleanliness. In Abyssinia, Nubia, and
elsewhere, a kind of sand bath is substituted for the
usual bath with water. Protection against dust and
sun is found by covering the head and wearing a veil,
as is done, for example, by the Tuaregs, who are com-
pletely covered with the exception of their eyes.
Some tribes blacken their eyelids and their faces, just
as is done by people in the Himalayas as a protection

«7
  258

CLIMATE

against snow-blindness. During dust storms and
high winds all protection may be inadequate» and
death may result.

Utensils of all sorts are made chiefly of leather.
In Nubia, as reported by Speedy, baskets are so
closely woven of leather strips that they are fluid-
proof. As these cannot be placed on the fire, milk
is warmed by dropping red-hot stones into them.
Many desert people become adepts at plaiting and
weaving in leather. Well-digging is an occupation
in which many of the Saharans have by nature been
forced to become skilled. Here and there salt, nitrate,
or borax deposits locally give an exceptional eco-
nomie value to the desert, and furaish employment to
many. Salt may become an important article of ex-
change. The amount of nitrate exported from
Chile is determined largely by the weather and erop
conditions of Europe.

That deserts have had a significant relation to re-
ligious ideas has been suggested by several writers.
Emest Renan points out that the desert is mono-
theistic, its uniformity suggesting a belief in the unity
of God. The desert is conducive to a solitary, medi-
tative life; even to a morbid and fanatical state of
mind. Such conditions, it is believed, fumished good
ground for the growth of such a religion as Moham-
medanism. In his Seas and Skies in Many Lati-
tudes (London, 1888, pp. 42-48), Abercromby
gives two maps, showing respectively the areas of
  THE LIFE OF MAN IN THE TROPICS

259

Mohammedanism and the districts in Asia and
Africa with a mean annual rainfall of less than ten
inches. The maps are strikingly similar. The
author adds: “Whether this distribution of a great
creed is the result of chance, or of some deep connec-
tion between the tenets of that religion and climatic
influences, I cannot say;—but still the relation is so
remarkable that I have thought it well to bring the
matter forward.” The rain-ceremonies and rain-
dances among the native tribes of central Australia;
the Indian celebrations of the rise of water in the
Peruvian rivers; the ancient Aztec sacrifices to the
god of rain in Mexico, and other similar customs in
tropical deserts, are natural in a region where water
is of supreme importance. In one of the Australian
rain-ceremonies, the men dance around a mimic water-
hole, imitating the calls and motions of aquatic ani-
mals. These dances are reported as being carefully
timed, by experienced individuals, to come at the
seasons when rain is likely to fall.

The night is cooler and less dusty than the day,
and is the best time for travelling. The camel, which
can go long without food and water, is the natural
beast of burden. Trade is still largely carried on by
means of caravans, which require camels and driv-
ers, and give employment to many men. The con-
struction of railroads across these deserts will present
the same difficulties which have already been met
in the arid regions of the temperate zone. Ties dry
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CLIMATE

up and twist; the danger from fire is greatly in-
creased, often necessitating fire patrols; fuel is ex-
pensive and must be imported, unless a poor local
fuel, like sheep or llama dung, is used; water for men
and locomotives must be brought in by water-trains,
tank cars, or pipe line, or locally distilled, at consid-
erable expense; cloud-bursts sweep away bridges and
tracks; the number of working hours by day is re-
duced by the heat; drifting sands cover the track and
must constantly be shovelled off; the blowing sand
hinders seeing, and increases friction and wear on the
rolling stock; watchmen to guard against accidents
from blowing sand on the track must be employed;
proper non-dusty ballast is difficult to secure; all
lumber must be brought from moister regions. On
the other hand, the trade wind deserts are, on the
whole, healthy regions. When the Sahara and the
Australian desert are bridged by railroads, and when
the South American Coastal desert is traversed by a
longitudinal line of track from north to south, the
relations of these great arid regions to man will in-
evitably be greatly changed.

Trade Beits at Sea. At sea, the trade wind beits
are closely related to man through their control over
sailing routes, and over voluntary and involuntary
migrations. A glance at any pilot chart will show
that all sailing routes which pass through the trade
wind beits in any ocean are determined by the course
of these winds. The route from Europe to India
furnishes a good example of the advantage that is
  THE LIFE OF MAN IN THE TROPICS 261

taken, by mariners of the present day, of the prevail-
ing wind systems of the world. In former times a
vessel was kept close in along the west coast of
Africa, amid calms and adverse winds, and then, after
passing the Cape of Good Hope and leaving Moz-
ambique, she waited for the blowing of the south-west
monsoon, with which she continued her voyage to
India. In 1500, Cabral sailed from the Cape Verde
Islands out into the open sea with the north-east
trades, avoiding the African coast. Keeping farto
westward he discovered Brazil; continued across the
south-east trade, rounded the Cape of Good Hope
with the westerlies, and then proceeded up the east
coast of Africa as had previously been the custom.
In the 17th century the Dutch struck off on the new
route from the Cape of Good Hope, making their
easting in the prevailing westerly winds of the South
Indian Ocean, and then sailing up to India with the
south-east trade. The passage across the equatorial
belt of calms (doldrums), which was formerly much
dreaded, is now so carefully worked out that vessels
may cross where the helt is narrowest, and where
there is therefore the least danger of delay.

Steady winds like the trades certainly tempted the
early navigators to put to sea. The famous voyage
of Columhus, when he discovered America, was fa-
cilitated, if not made possible, by the north-east trade.
The easy outward voyages of the early Spanish
adventurers and colonists took them naturally to that
portion of the Americas where they found climates in

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CLIMATE

which they and their descendant» could live, while to
the Anglo-Saxon originally feil the North American
continent, with its more rigorous climate. The
monsoons of India have, from the earliest days of
trade with the East, been important agents in aiding
commerce. In the Mediterranean, the Etesian winds
—the northward extension of the trade—favoured
early commerce. The migrations of the Malays
to the Melanesian Islands, of the Folynesians,
and of other Pacific islanders, found their occasion
and their possibility in the prevailing winds of those
latitudes. The islands from the Philippines to the
Gilbert Islands are in the north-east trade and from
the Moluccas to the Society Islands in the south-east
trade. Thus intercourse and migrations are easy. In^
the archipelago of the monsoon belt south-east of Asia
trade depends largely upon monsoons. An inter-
esting case is cited by Ratzel, on the authority of von
Maltzan. Two small ports, Bir Ali and Megdaha,
lie opposite one another on the southem coast of
Arabia, in a small bay. The former is protected on
the west, and the latter on the east. Hence the former
is sought by shipping in summer, and the latter in
winter. Both places have grown and really make one
town, the officials and many of the inhabitants mov-
ing twice a year with the seasonal change of wind.
The war expeditions of the native tribes of this
great island region have always been governed by the
monsoons. In many places to-day native boats do
not venture to sea at the height of the monsoon. In
  THE LIFE OF MAN IN THE TROPICS 263

the discussions regarding the relative advantages of
the Nicaragua and Panama Canal routes, much em-
phasis was laid upon the prevailing winds in the two
cases. Many of the optimistic predictions concern-
ing the use of the Panama Canal by sailing ves-
sels did not take account of the calms and variable
or adverse winds to be encountered before entering
and on leaving the canal, which necessitate trans-
portation by steamer, or at least some towing of
sailing vessels.

To leeward of the west coast of Africa navigation
is not infrequently interfered with by the so-called
“ tomadoes,” which move westward off the land, and
by dust-storms, which obscure the air and delay
progress.

Tropical cyclones at certain seasons and in certain
parts of the trade wind beits at sea not only damage
shipping, but often devastate towns, bridges, and
crops, bringing starvation, poverty, and not infre-
quently pestilence as well, owing to decaying animal
matter, or fish thrown up by the sea. Thousands
of lives have been lost as the result of such disasters.
The Pacific islands are particularly unfortunate in
this respect. The storm waves produced by these
cyclones are especially severe at the head of the Bay
of Bengal. Native huts are easily blown over by
the cyclonic winds, and it has been pointed out that
the huts elevated on high posts in New Guinea, and
swaying with the wind, fumish good evidence that
the district in which they are found is not visited by
  264

CLIMATE

tropical cyclones. In some places, Mauritius, for
example, houses are provided with shutters to be used
in case of a cyclone, and in many places the natives
have resistance to cyclones in mind when they build
their huts. In time, buildings must be erected in the
tropics which will withstand these storms better.
Worcester reports of the Philippines that in order to
save the banana Irees from destruction by typhoons,
some of the natives cut off all the larger leaves when
the approach of a typhoon becomes evident.

Monsoon Districts. Of the monsoon districts on
land, India is the largest example. The two seasons
are strongly contrasted. The success or failure of
the crops depends upon the amount, distribution, and
time of occurrence of the summer monsoon rains.
Famine follows when these rains are deficiënt or un-
favourably distributed, with terrible suffering and
the loss of thousands of lives among men and cattle.
Lately the government of India, at great expense,
has undertaken relief works during times of famine,
including irrigation works. The amount and regu-
larity of the water supply is the (hief factor in deter-
mining the density of population in India.

Travel and transportation in monsoon districts de-
pend closely upon the season. During the rains, the
roads are likely to be bad or impassable, and land-
slides and washouts are common. In the Philippines
the mud is so deep that sledges are used instead of
wheeled vehicles. Communication may be entirely
interrupted by floods. Campaigning under such
  THE LIFE OF MAN IN THE TROPICS 265

conditions is extremely difficult, as was abundantly
proved during the American occupation of the
Philippines. Horses, and even water-buffaloes, were
often unahle to haul the guns, one of the difficulties
with the buffaloes being their need of a mud bath in
the hottest part of the day. During the early part of
the American campaign in the Philippines the success
of the American army was achieved in the dry sea-
sons, the natives gaining the upper hand, or at least
making the most progress, during the rains, when
conditions were hardest for the white men.

Native dwellings are adapted to the different sea-
sons, as on the island of Mindoro, where the Mangy-
ans erect simple shelters of rattan and leaves wherever
they happen to be in the dry season, while in the rainy
season the dwellings are more elaborate and more se-
cure. The rain hat and coat of the Filipinos; the
preparations made in north-western Mysore, on the
summit of the western Ghats, in laying in provisions
to last during the long rainy season, as if it were for
an extended voyage at sea; the general use of
punkahs, tatties, grass mats, etc., for cooling pur-
poses during the hot and dry season in India and
Persia, these being often wet, and kept in motion by
coolies; the habit of closing houses during the day
and of staying indoors during the hottest hours,—
. these few cases may suffice to illustrate the con-
trol of climate over the life of man in the monsoon
beits.

Tropical Mountains. Their “ temperate ” climates
  266

CLIMATE

have given many tropical mountains and plateaus a
deserved popularity, and the increasing settlement
of the tropics by white men and women will constant-
lv tend to bring such elevations into greater use.
Under these conditions the usual law of the decrease
of population with increase of altitude is locally re-
versed, at least up to a certain height. Mountains
within the polar zones do not increase the habitable
parts of the earth’s surface. Mountains within the
tropics certainly give white men and women a larger
area and more comfortable conditions of habitability.
There is observable a tendency for the altitude of
human settlements to increase from polar latitudes
towards the equator. In the far north man lives close
to sea-level; within and near the tropics there is often
a large population at considerable altitudes, as in the
Himalayas and on the Andean plateaus. In parts of
South America at the present day (e. g., Colombia)
the plateaus are the chief seat of the Spanish and
Spanish-Indian population, and the lowlands are oc-
cupied by the negroes. The talk of removing the Bra-
zilian Capital from Rio de Janeiro to a more elevated
location in the interior province of La Goyaz, and
the govemment offices of the Italian colony of Eritrea
from Massowa, on the Red Sea, to the high plateau
of the Hinterland, shows the upward tendency of
the white man in the tropics. On the other hand,
the production of sugar-cane, coffee, and other valu-
able products will obviously lead more and more to
the development of the lowlands under white control.
  THE LIFE OF MAN IN THE TROPICS 267

To the greatest altitudes man is attracted by mineral
wealth, and lives under very hard conditions. Some
of the Tibetans live more or less underground, and
melt ice in order to secure water. High mountains
within the tropics show a vertical succession of cli-
mates from tropical at their base to eternal snow on
their summits. A very striking illustration of this
may he secured by a passenger who travels over the
famous Oroya Railroad, in Peru. This road runs
from sea-level to a height of 15,665 feet, and then de-
scends again to about 12,000 feet. The first part of
the journey is through fields of sugar-cane and cot-
ton; at about 5000 feet a zone of fruit trees is passed
through; at 10,500 feet there is a district famous for
its potatoes, where little else is grown; above this, the
altitude is so great as to preclude the growth of any-
thing but grass. At the highest point reached, the
snow lies on the mountain summits throughout the
year, and the traveller may enjoy a snowstorm in the
middle of summer (December-February). In the
interior valley, farm produce is again seen growing.
This whole succession of climates may be passed
through in the short space of ten hours. Tropical
mountains may thus produce temperate zone crops.
In the deserts, mountains may be covered with for-
ests and other vegetation, by reason of the rainfall
which they provoke. Here man naturally settles,
finding water and perhaps favourable conditions for
agriculture. Such mountains become “ islands ” of
denser population, as do the streams which run out
  268

CLIMATE

from them to wither away in the desert. In Dar
Fur, in the eastern Sudan, most of the inhabitants
live in or near, and in close dependence upon,
the Marra Mountains. Kilimanjaro, in equatorial
Africa, rises as an island above the surrounding
steppes, and is in the centre of a large population.
At the southem foot of the Atlas Mountains there
are three ethnological zones, from the nomadic desert-
dwelling Tuareg to the Berber tribes scattered in the
mountains, with a denser population in the strip of
oasis between.

Thè permanent physiological effects of tropical
mountain climates have not as yet been carefully
studied. Junghuhn has noted an improvement in
the physical condition of people who live at altitudes
of 6000 to 6500 feet in Java; in Africa, the Zulus and
Hovas have been instanced as fumishing an example
of the strengthening influence of mountain climates,
and other cases are cited of mountain tribes who rob,
or rule over, lowland tribes. On the other hand, in
Mexico, Jourdanet has described the anemie condi-
tion, poor physical development, low birth-rate, and
short lives of the inhabitants of the plateau of Ana-
huac, and Chamay noted the fact that the Indians
who brought sulphur from Popocatepetl feil off in
bodily vigour at an early age. Prescott, however, in
his Conquest of Mexico, noted that the physical
development of the Tlascalans on the plateau was bet-
ter than that of the people of the lowlands. The en-
larged lung-capacity of the inhabitants of the lofty
  TEE LIFE OF MAN IN THE TROPICS 269

punas on the west coast of South America has natu-
rally been attributed to the effect of the rarefied at-
mosphere. It is interesting to observe that it often
happens that plateau and mountain peoples sicken
and are unable to work when taken to sea-level, and
the same thing is true of lowlanders who are taken
to considerable altitudes. The Aymara Indians of
Peru, when taken down to sea-level by the Spaniards,
could not stand the change. Great difficulty has
been found, as pointed out by Spence, in securing
labourers on coffee plantations at altitudes of 4000
to 6000 feet in South America. Labourers from
greater altitudes and from near sea-level alike become
ill and unfit for work. Additional examples might be
cited.

Special mention may be made here of a peculiar
relation between climate and man on certain lofty
tropical mountains, which are snow-capped, and
which fumish a supply of snow or ice for refrigerat-
ing purposes in the towns below them. Thus in
Ecuador, snow is carried to Quito from the upper
slopes of Pichincha; to Riobamba and Ambato from
the slopes qf Chimborazo. Ambato used to supply
its brewery with snow from the same mountain.
Guayaquil was formerly supplied with ice in the same
way. In Colombia, Popayan, in the department of
Cauca, is also supplied with ice and snow from
neighbouring mountains. In parts of Syria, also,
snow, gathered in the mountains, is packed firmly
in pits dug in the ground, and covered with straw
  270

CLIMATE

and leaves. It is later sold. In Mexico, snow is
carried from the summit of Colima to the towns on
the hot plains below. Howarth notes the discovery
of an “ ice factory ” in one of the highest valleys in
Oajaca, in Mexico, at an altitude of 8000-9000 feet.
In this case the active nocturnal cooling by radiation
is the effective climatic factor at work. “ The
ground was covered with a vast number of shallow
wooden troughs, which are filled at nightfall with
water from the dividing stream, and during the nights
of the winter months this becomes covered with a film
of ice not more than one-eighth of an inch thick. In
the moming this is removed and shovelled into holes
in the ground, and covered up with earth, after which
it consolidates and is cut out in blocks and sent down
by mules, where there seems to be a ready market at
all seasons.” On the high veldt the Boers keep their
provisions by letting them cool outdoors at night.
The peculiarly dry climate of the plateaus of the west
coast of South America is due to the leeward posi-
tion, west of the Cordilleras. The Incas preserved
their dead by allowing them to mummify naturally
in the dry, rare atmosphere.

The construction of railroads at high altitudes in
the tropics, as on the west coast of South America,
has been delayed and rendered expensive by moun-
tain sickness, and by man’s decreased efficiency for
work; by cloud-bursts, flooded rivers, and landslides.
In the higher passes over the mountains, diurnal
winds are sometimes met with of such velocity that
  THE LIFE OF MAN IN THE TROPICB 271

travelling by day is impossible at certain seasons.
Moritz Wagner has described the down-cast winds
from the snowfields near Quito, which at certain
times are of such violence as entirely to interrupt
travel across the Chimborazo passes. Darwin and
many others have noted the diurnal variation in the
height of water in rivers fed by melting snow. Such
streams are easiest to ford in the early moming,
when the water is lowest.
  CHAPTER IX

THE LIFE OF MAN IN THE TEMPERATE ZONES

Climate and Man in the Temperate Zones: General—Northward
Movement of Civilisation in the North Temperate Zone—
Present-day Migrations within the Temperate Zones—The
Continents and the Temperate Zones—Differences between
Northerners and Southemers—Variety of Conditions in the
Temperate Zones: Classification—Life of Man in the Forests
of the Temperate Zones—Forest Clearings—The Steppes—
Climates and Crops in the Temperate Zones—The Des-
erts—Mountains—Climate and Weather: Some Mental Effects
—Climate and Weather and Military Operations—Railroads—
Transportation by Water—Various Effects of the Weather*

Climate and Man in the Temperate Zones: Gen-
eral. Intermediate in location, in mean temperature,
and in their physiological effects, the temperate
zones, whatever was the condition in the past, are to-
day clearly the centre of the world’s civilisation, as
they have also been the scenes of the most important
historical developments for several centuries. From
the temperate zones have come the explorers and ad-
venturers of the past, and are coming the exploiters
and colonisers of to-day. In the occurrence of the
temperate zone seasons lies much of the secret—who
can say how much of it?—of the energy, ambition,

272
  LIFE OF MAN IN TEMPERATE ZONES 273

self-reliance, industry, thrift, of the inhabitant of the
temperate zones. Guyot did not exaggerate when
he wrote:

Li the temperate zones all is activity, movement. The
alternations of heat and cold, the changes of the sea-
sons, a fresher and more bracing air, incite man to a
constant struggle, to forethought, to the vigorous employ-
ment of all his faculties. A more economical Nature yields
nothing except to the sweat of his brow; every gift on her
part is a recompense for effort on his. . . . Invited to
labour by everything around him, he soon finds, in the exer-
cise of all his faculties, at once progress and well-being.

The monotonous heat of the tropics and the con-
tinued cold of the polar zones are both depressing.
Their tendency is to operate against man’s highest
development. The seasonal changes of the temper-
ate zones stimulate man to activity. They develop
him physically and mentally. They encourage higher
civilisation. A cold, stormy winter necessitates fore-
thought in the preparation of clothing, food, and
shelter during the summer. Carefully planned,
steady, hard labour is the price of living in these
zones. Development must result from such condi-
tions. In the warm, moist tropics, life is too easy.
In the cold polar zones it is too hard. Temperate
zone man can bring in what he desires of polar and
tropical products, and himself raises what he needs
in the great variety of climates of the intermediate
latitudes. Near the poles the growing season is too
short. In the moist tropics it is so long that there is

[Prometheus]

  262

CLIMATE

which they and their descendant» could live, while to
the Anglo-Saxon originally feil the North American
continent, with its more rigorous climate. The
monsoons of India have, from the earliest days of
trade with the East, been important agents in aiding
commerce. In the Mediterranean, the Etesian winds
—the northward extension of the trade—favoured
early commerce. The migrations of the Malays
to the Melanesian Islands, of the Folynesians,
and of other Pacific islanders, found their occasion
and their possibility in the prevailing winds of those
latitudes. The islands from the Philippines to the
Gilbert Islands are in the north-east trade and from
the Moluccas to the Society Islands in the south-east
trade. Thus intercourse and migrations are easy. In^
the archipelago of the monsoon belt south-east of Asia
trade depends largely upon monsoons. An inter-
esting case is cited by Ratzel, on the authority of von
Maltzan. Two small ports, Bir Ali and Megdaha,
lie opposite one another on the southem coast of
Arabia, in a small bay. The former is protected on
the west, and the latter on the east. Hence the former
is sought by shipping in summer, and the latter in
winter. Both places have grown and really make one
town, the officials and many of the inhabitants mov-
ing twice a year with the seasonal change of wind.
The war expeditions of the native tribes of this
great island region have always been governed by the
monsoons. In many places to-day native boats do
not venture to sea at the height of the monsoon. In
  THE LIFE OF MAN IN THE TROPICS 263

the discussions regarding the relative advantages of
the Nicaragua and Panama Canal routes, much em-
phasis was laid upon the prevailing winds in the two
cases. Many of the optimistic predictions concern-
ing the use of the Panama Canal by sailing ves-
sels did not take account of the calms and variable
or adverse winds to be encountered before entering
and on leaving the canal, which necessitate trans-
portation by steamer, or at least some towing of
sailing vessels.

To leeward of the west coast of Africa navigation
is not infrequently interfered with by the so-called
“ tomadoes,” which move westward off the land, and
by dust-storms, which obscure the air and delay
progress.

Tropical cyclones at certain seasons and in certain
parts of the trade wind beits at sea not only damage
shipping, but often devastate towns, bridges, and
crops, bringing starvation, poverty, and not infre-
quently pestilence as well, owing to decaying animal
matter, or fish thrown up by the sea. Thousands
of lives have been lost as the result of such disasters.
The Pacific islands are particularly unfortunate in
this respect. The storm waves produced by these
cyclones are especially severe at the head of the Bay
of Bengal. Native huts are easily blown over by
the cyclonic winds, and it has been pointed out that
the huts elevated on high posts in New Guinea, and
swaying with the wind, fumish good evidence that
the district in which they are found is not visited by
  264

CLIMATE

tropical cyclones. In some places, Mauritius, for
example, houses are provided with shutters to be used
in case of a cyclone, and in many places the natives
have resistance to cyclones in mind when they build
their huts. In time, buildings must be erected in the
tropics which will withstand these storms better.
Worcester reports of the Philippines that in order to
save the banana Irees from destruction by typhoons,
some of the natives cut off all the larger leaves when
the approach of a typhoon becomes evident.

Monsoon Districts. Of the monsoon districts on
land, India is the largest example. The two seasons
are strongly contrasted. The success or failure of
the crops depends upon the amount, distribution, and
time of occurrence of the summer monsoon rains.
Famine follows when these rains are deficiënt or un-
favourably distributed, with terrible suffering and
the loss of thousands of lives among men and cattle.
Lately the government of India, at great expense,
has undertaken relief works during times of famine,
including irrigation works. The amount and regu-
larity of the water supply is the (hief factor in deter-
mining the density of population in India.

Travel and transportation in monsoon districts de-
pend closely upon the season. During the rains, the
roads are likely to be bad or impassable, and land-
slides and washouts are common. In the Philippines
the mud is so deep that sledges are used instead of
wheeled vehicles. Communication may be entirely
interrupted by floods. Campaigning under such
  THE LIFE OF MAN IN THE TROPICS 265

conditions is extremely difficult, as was abundantly
proved during the American occupation of the
Philippines. Horses, and even water-buffaloes, were
often unahle to haul the guns, one of the difficulties
with the buffaloes being their need of a mud bath in
the hottest part of the day. During the early part of
the American campaign in the Philippines the success
of the American army was achieved in the dry sea-
sons, the natives gaining the upper hand, or at least
making the most progress, during the rains, when
conditions were hardest for the white men.

Native dwellings are adapted to the different sea-
sons, as on the island of Mindoro, where the Mangy-
ans erect simple shelters of rattan and leaves wherever
they happen to be in the dry season, while in the rainy
season the dwellings are more elaborate and more se-
cure. The rain hat and coat of the Filipinos; the
preparations made in north-western Mysore, on the
summit of the western Ghats, in laying in provisions
to last during the long rainy season, as if it were for
an extended voyage at sea; the general use of
punkahs, tatties, grass mats, etc., for cooling pur-
poses during the hot and dry season in India and
Persia, these being often wet, and kept in motion by
coolies; the habit of closing houses during the day
and of staying indoors during the hottest hours,—
. these few cases may suffice to illustrate the con-
trol of climate over the life of man in the monsoon
beits.

Tropical Mountains. Their “ temperate ” climates
  266

CLIMATE

have given many tropical mountains and plateaus a
deserved popularity, and the increasing settlement
of the tropics by white men and women will constant-
lv tend to bring such elevations into greater use.
Under these conditions the usual law of the decrease
of population with increase of altitude is locally re-
versed, at least up to a certain height. Mountains
within the polar zones do not increase the habitable
parts of the earth’s surface. Mountains within the
tropics certainly give white men and women a larger
area and more comfortable conditions of habitability.
There is observable a tendency for the altitude of
human settlements to increase from polar latitudes
towards the equator. In the far north man lives close
to sea-level; within and near the tropics there is often
a large population at considerable altitudes, as in the
Himalayas and on the Andean plateaus. In parts of
South America at the present day (e. g., Colombia)
the plateaus are the chief seat of the Spanish and
Spanish-Indian population, and the lowlands are oc-
cupied by the negroes. The talk of removing the Bra-
zilian Capital from Rio de Janeiro to a more elevated
location in the interior province of La Goyaz, and
the govemment offices of the Italian colony of Eritrea
from Massowa, on the Red Sea, to the high plateau
of the Hinterland, shows the upward tendency of
the white man in the tropics. On the other hand,
the production of sugar-cane, coffee, and other valu-
able products will obviously lead more and more to
the development of the lowlands under white control.
  THE LIFE OF MAN IN THE TROPICS 267

To the greatest altitudes man is attracted by mineral
wealth, and lives under very hard conditions. Some
of the Tibetans live more or less underground, and
melt ice in order to secure water. High mountains
within the tropics show a vertical succession of cli-
mates from tropical at their base to eternal snow on
their summits. A very striking illustration of this
may he secured by a passenger who travels over the
famous Oroya Railroad, in Peru. This road runs
from sea-level to a height of 15,665 feet, and then de-
scends again to about 12,000 feet. The first part of
the journey is through fields of sugar-cane and cot-
ton; at about 5000 feet a zone of fruit trees is passed
through; at 10,500 feet there is a district famous for
its potatoes, where little else is grown; above this, the
altitude is so great as to preclude the growth of any-
thing but grass. At the highest point reached, the
snow lies on the mountain summits throughout the
year, and the traveller may enjoy a snowstorm in the
middle of summer (December-February). In the
interior valley, farm produce is again seen growing.
This whole succession of climates may be passed
through in the short space of ten hours. Tropical
mountains may thus produce temperate zone crops.
In the deserts, mountains may be covered with for-
ests and other vegetation, by reason of the rainfall
which they provoke. Here man naturally settles,
finding water and perhaps favourable conditions for
agriculture. Such mountains become “ islands ” of
denser population, as do the streams which run out
  268

CLIMATE

from them to wither away in the desert. In Dar
Fur, in the eastern Sudan, most of the inhabitants
live in or near, and in close dependence upon,
the Marra Mountains. Kilimanjaro, in equatorial
Africa, rises as an island above the surrounding
steppes, and is in the centre of a large population.
At the southem foot of the Atlas Mountains there
are three ethnological zones, from the nomadic desert-
dwelling Tuareg to the Berber tribes scattered in the
mountains, with a denser population in the strip of
oasis between.

Thè permanent physiological effects of tropical
mountain climates have not as yet been carefully
studied. Junghuhn has noted an improvement in
the physical condition of people who live at altitudes
of 6000 to 6500 feet in Java; in Africa, the Zulus and
Hovas have been instanced as fumishing an example
of the strengthening influence of mountain climates,
and other cases are cited of mountain tribes who rob,
or rule over, lowland tribes. On the other hand, in
Mexico, Jourdanet has described the anemie condi-
tion, poor physical development, low birth-rate, and
short lives of the inhabitants of the plateau of Ana-
huac, and Chamay noted the fact that the Indians
who brought sulphur from Popocatepetl feil off in
bodily vigour at an early age. Prescott, however, in
his Conquest of Mexico, noted that the physical
development of the Tlascalans on the plateau was bet-
ter than that of the people of the lowlands. The en-
larged lung-capacity of the inhabitants of the lofty
  TEE LIFE OF MAN IN THE TROPICS 269

punas on the west coast of South America has natu-
rally been attributed to the effect of the rarefied at-
mosphere. It is interesting to observe that it often
happens that plateau and mountain peoples sicken
and are unable to work when taken to sea-level, and
the same thing is true of lowlanders who are taken
to considerable altitudes. The Aymara Indians of
Peru, when taken down to sea-level by the Spaniards,
could not stand the change. Great difficulty has
been found, as pointed out by Spence, in securing
labourers on coffee plantations at altitudes of 4000
to 6000 feet in South America. Labourers from
greater altitudes and from near sea-level alike become
ill and unfit for work. Additional examples might be
cited.

Special mention may be made here of a peculiar
relation between climate and man on certain lofty
tropical mountains, which are snow-capped, and
which fumish a supply of snow or ice for refrigerat-
ing purposes in the towns below them. Thus in
Ecuador, snow is carried to Quito from the upper
slopes of Pichincha; to Riobamba and Ambato from
the slopes qf Chimborazo. Ambato used to supply
its brewery with snow from the same mountain.
Guayaquil was formerly supplied with ice in the same
way. In Colombia, Popayan, in the department of
Cauca, is also supplied with ice and snow from
neighbouring mountains. In parts of Syria, also,
snow, gathered in the mountains, is packed firmly
in pits dug in the ground, and covered with straw
  270

CLIMATE

and leaves. It is later sold. In Mexico, snow is
carried from the summit of Colima to the towns on
the hot plains below. Howarth notes the discovery
of an “ ice factory ” in one of the highest valleys in
Oajaca, in Mexico, at an altitude of 8000-9000 feet.
In this case the active nocturnal cooling by radiation
is the effective climatic factor at work. “ The
ground was covered with a vast number of shallow
wooden troughs, which are filled at nightfall with
water from the dividing stream, and during the nights
of the winter months this becomes covered with a film
of ice not more than one-eighth of an inch thick. In
the moming this is removed and shovelled into holes
in the ground, and covered up with earth, after which
it consolidates and is cut out in blocks and sent down
by mules, where there seems to be a ready market at
all seasons.” On the high veldt the Boers keep their
provisions by letting them cool outdoors at night.
The peculiarly dry climate of the plateaus of the west
coast of South America is due to the leeward posi-
tion, west of the Cordilleras. The Incas preserved
their dead by allowing them to mummify naturally
in the dry, rare atmosphere.

The construction of railroads at high altitudes in
the tropics, as on the west coast of South America,
has been delayed and rendered expensive by moun-
tain sickness, and by man’s decreased efficiency for
work; by cloud-bursts, flooded rivers, and landslides.
In the higher passes over the mountains, diurnal
winds are sometimes met with of such velocity that
  THE LIFE OF MAN IN THE TROPICB 271

travelling by day is impossible at certain seasons.
Moritz Wagner has described the down-cast winds
from the snowfields near Quito, which at certain
times are of such violence as entirely to interrupt
travel across the Chimborazo passes. Darwin and
many others have noted the diurnal variation in the
height of water in rivers fed by melting snow. Such
streams are easiest to ford in the early moming,
when the water is lowest.
  CHAPTER IX

THE LIFE OF MAN IN THE TEMPERATE ZONES

Climate and Man in the Temperate Zones: General—Northward
Movement of Civilisation in the North Temperate Zone—
Present-day Migrations within the Temperate Zones—The
Continents and the Temperate Zones—Differences between
Northerners and Southemers—Variety of Conditions in the
Temperate Zones: Classification—Life of Man in the Forests
of the Temperate Zones—Forest Clearings—The Steppes—
Climates and Crops in the Temperate Zones—The Des-
erts—Mountains—Climate and Weather: Some Mental Effects
—Climate and Weather and Military Operations—Railroads—
Transportation by Water—Various Effects of the Weather*

Climate and Man in the Temperate Zones: Gen-
eral. Intermediate in location, in mean temperature,
and in their physiological effects, the temperate
zones, whatever was the condition in the past, are to-
day clearly the centre of the world’s civilisation, as
they have also been the scenes of the most important
historical developments for several centuries. From
the temperate zones have come the explorers and ad-
venturers of the past, and are coming the exploiters
and colonisers of to-day. In the occurrence of the
temperate zone seasons lies much of the secret—who
can say how much of it?—of the energy, ambition,

272
  LIFE OF MAN IN TEMPERATE ZONES 273

self-reliance, industry, thrift, of the inhabitant of the
temperate zones. Guyot did not exaggerate when
he wrote:

Li the temperate zones all is activity, movement. The
alternations of heat and cold, the changes of the sea-
sons, a fresher and more bracing air, incite man to a
constant struggle, to forethought, to the vigorous employ-
ment of all his faculties. A more economical Nature yields
nothing except to the sweat of his brow; every gift on her
part is a recompense for effort on his. . . . Invited to
labour by everything around him, he soon finds, in the exer-
cise of all his faculties, at once progress and well-being.

The monotonous heat of the tropics and the con-
tinued cold of the polar zones are both depressing.
Their tendency is to operate against man’s highest
development. The seasonal changes of the temper-
ate zones stimulate man to activity. They develop
him physically and mentally. They encourage higher
civilisation. A cold, stormy winter necessitates fore-
thought in the preparation of clothing, food, and
shelter during the summer. Carefully planned,
steady, hard labour is the price of living in these
zones. Development must result from such condi-
tions. In the warm, moist tropics, life is too easy.
In the cold polar zones it is too hard. Temperate
zone man can bring in what he desires of polar and
tropical products, and himself raises what he needs
in the great variety of climates of the intermediate
latitudes. Near the poles the growing season is too
short. In the moist tropics it is so long that there is

[Prometheus]

 274

CLIMATE

little inducement to labour at any special time. The
regularity and the. need of outdoor work during a
part of the year are important factors in the develop-
ment of man in the temperate zones. Where work is
a universal necessity, labour becomes dignified, well-
paid, intelligent, independent.

Behind our civilisation there lies what has been well
called a “climatic discipline,”—the discipline of a
cool season which shall refresh and stimulate, both
physically and mentally, and prevent the deadening
effect of continued heat. On the other hand, a very
long winter is about as unfavourable as a very long
summer. If outdoor work is seriously interrupted,
progress is retarded. Buckle based certain too broad
generalisations on this consideration, and saw in it
an explanation of similar national characteristics
among peoples whose outdoor work is interrupted for
the same length of time. But it is clear that the
length of the farming season is a large factor in con-
trolling the return from the soil, the kind of work
done, and the manner of doing it. It is not sur-
prising to leam that the difficulty of keeping farm
labourers through the long winter has in the past been
a handicap in western Canada, and that it was urged
against the abolition of slavery in Russia that it would
be impossible, without some form of compulsion, to
keep farm-hands through the winter.

Northward Movement of Civilisation in the North
Temperate Zone. The gradual migration of the
centre of civilisation away from the tropics, and the
  LIFE OF MAN IN TEMPERATE ZONES 275

highest development of the human race, not where
life is easiest, but in extra-tropical latitudes, are
significant.

“ Slowly but surely,” as Benjamin Kidd says [Control of
the Tropic», 51-52], “ we see the seat of empire and au-
thority moving like the advancing tide northward. The
evolution of character which the race has undergone has
been northwards from the tropics. . . . Underneath all the
outward national quarrels of Europe there has been going
on for centuries what is really a struggle between what we
might call the Latin type of civilisation, represented by the
Southern races, and that type of civilisation which has been
developed in northem Europe.”

From the Mediterranean region, where the world’s
civilisation, its commerce, and its power were long
centred, westward through Spain and Portugal, the
migration continued farther and farther north in
Europe, until Holland and then England became the
dominant power. From lands of more genial cli-
mates to lands of colder and longer winters, but also
of the most active and energetic races, the migration
has taken place. The advance of Christianity, from
its origin in the subtropical belt of Eurasia into higher
latitudes, has been pointed to as another illustration
of the same tendency. Together with this northward
tendency of civilisation there has run through the past
an equatorward movement, already noted in the case
of the tropics, of the stronger peoples of the north
toward the milder and more genial Southern latitudes,
involving historical events of great importance.
  276

CLIMATE

Present-day Migrations within the Temperate
Zones. Within the north temperate zone especially,
and also across from the north to the south temper-
ate, vast, peaceful migrations are taking place, deter-
mined largely by climatic considerations. From
Europe and Asia to the United States alone, a million
people a year are now migrating. These immigrants
have shown marked tendencies to settle where cli-
mate, soil, and occupations are most like those of their
old homes, although the fact that most of them land
at one port on the eastern seaboard, the concentra-
tion of industries in certain sections, and other Con-
trols, have operated very effectively to counteract
and interfere with this tendency. Scandinavians,
for example, have gone largely into the north-west;
and in the future the southem parts of the United
States will doubtless have a large Latin popula-
tion, chiefly of Italians and Spaniards, who will there
find homes and occupations in climates best suited to
their needs. Canada has grown slowly, partly on ac-
count of the repelling effect of her long, cold winters
and her generally severe climate. Of late years,
however, the rapid settlement of farming lands in the
United States, the attraction of free, or cheap, lands
in western Canada, and the success which has been at-
tained in raising wheat and other crops during the
short but favourable Canadian summer, have com-
bined to induce a considerably increased immigration
of farmers from the United States, and of Europeans,
into Canada. This migration within the temperate
  LIFE OF MAN IN TEMPERATE ZONES 277

zone is peopling Canada, South Africa, and Aus-
tralia with the same stock that occupies the home-
land of the British Isles. Therefore institutions and
govemment essentially similar to those at home are
possible in these colonies of England beyond the sea.
The case is very different in tropical climates, as has
been seen. Russia will later be found to gain great
strength from the fact that she has expanded east-
ward within the same zone.

In Argentina, the climatic control of migrations is
even more clearly marked than in the United States,
the Italians tending to settle towards the north, where
the climate is most like their own, while the races
from northern Europe show a tendency towards the
south.

It is interesting to observe how immediately con-
trolled by the special weather conditions of even one
season these voluntary migrations may be. Years of
sufficiënt rainfall and abundant crops in the United
States are always followed by a larger immigration.
A failure of crops in Europe, whether it be of wheat
in one country, or of fruit in another, or of potatoes in
another, resulting from drought, or storms, or exces-
sive rainfall, always promotes a larger exodus from
the country concerned. There is, furthermore, a
considerable seasonal migration across the Atlantic.
Thousands of Italians come to the United States in
the spring to work during the warmer months, when
farm and outdoor labourers are in demand, and re-
turn to the milder climate of Italy for the winter.
  278

CLIMATE

Similarly there is a seasonal migration, also chiefly of
Italians, to Argentina at harvest time. The possible
effects of the advancing ice-sheet of the glacial period
in producing forced migrations equatorward may be
mentioned, in passing, as another example of climatic
Controls over human movements.

There is also an interesting tendency westward,
observable not only in the westward “ course of em-
pire,” but in the advantages enjoyed, in the belt of
prevailing westerly winds, by those who live in the
western quarters of cities. The “ west ends ” are
usually the most fashionable and the newest sections
of these cities, while the quarters to leeward, the
“ east sides ” and “ east ends,” are inhabited by the
poorer classes. Ratzel points out that among
the Arabs of Syria the tent farthest west is that of
the sheik.

The Continent8 and the Temperate Zone. Europe
is well situated climatically, being almost altogether
in the temperate zone, and open to the ocean on the
west, so that nearly all parts of it are well watered.

Asia is an overgrown continent. Much of it is in
the temperate zone, it is true, but the interior is so
far from the sea that the climate is severe and the
rainfall very deficiënt. This condition of hopeless
aridity is depressing, in the extreme, and this region
is prevented from becoming thickly populated or im-
portant on that account.

Most of Africa is within the tropics. lts plateaus
will furnish considerable areas not wholly unfavour-
  LIFE OF MAN IN TEMPERATE ZONES 279

able for white settlement. The southem part of
Africa is just within the marginal sub-tropical belt
of the south temperate zone. The same is true of
Australia.

North America is widest in the temperate zone,
which is one of its greatest assets. It suffers from the
extreme cold of its winters in the north, and from the
rain-shadow effect of its western mountains, which
gives the interior basin and part of the western plains
deficiënt precipitation.

South America is widest within the tropics. lts
west coast is peculiar in having the tempering in-
fluence of high plateaus in the interior and of a cool
ocean current along the coast. Its southem portion
tapers off into the south temperate zone. This part
of South America, and the sc&ttering islands of the
ocean area in these latitudes, suffer from an equable
but cheerless, depressing, and inhospitable climate.
The forlorn natives of Tierra del Fuego, most inade-
quately clothed and housed; living on shell-fish and
other sea-food; with the poorest kind of utensils and
implements; nomadic in habits; shifting their single
fur garment from side to side according to the wind
direction—these fumish a good illustration of man’s
mastery by a climate which Darwin described in the
following words: “ It would be diflicult to imagine a
scene where he (man) seemed to have fewer claims or
less authority. The inanimate works of nature—
rock, ice, snow, wind, water—all warring with each
other, yet combined against man—here reigned in
  280

CLIMATE

absolute sovereignty.” The Falkland Islands, by
reason of their dull, moist, cool, and windy climate,
produce nothing but a few poor potatoes and some
berries. All other food, excepting mutton and beef,
has to be imported. Very different is the life of man
in the same latitudes of the continents in the northem
hemisphere, where a more severe climate has given
better opportunity for man’s development.

Differences between Northerners and Southemers.
There are certain broad, distinguishing charac-
teristics of man in the temperate and tropical zones,
in determining which it is reasonable to believe
that climate has played a part. Similarly, there
has been a natural tendency to attribute certain
differences between northerners and southerners in
the temperate zones to a difference in climate.
There is an opinion that the former, living in
a duller, harsher climate, with long and dreary
winters, are more serious, more industrious, more
enterprising, and act after more mature delibera-
tion, than the latter who, reflecting their brighter
skies, are more cheérful, more emotional, more
impulsive, more genial, more generous, but also
less energetic, and more easy-going. It has recently
been pointed out by Professor Jerome Dowd that
labour organisations in the southem United States
are hampered by their liability to hasty, ill-advised
action. The northemer must exercise more fore-
thought, care, industry, and prudence; he has to work
harder, and is usually better paid than the southemer.
  LIFE OF MAN IN TEMPERATE ZONES 281

These national differences are proverbial between
northem and Southern Germans, French, Spanish,
Russians, Italians, Arabs, and other peoples. The
influence of climate has likewise been traced in the
sad, even pessimistic tone of much of the northern
literature, and in the gravity and melancholy of mod-
ern northem music, as well as of the older northem
folk-songs.

The question is a very complex one, often much
complicated by actual racial differences between the
northem and southem people of the same country.
Yet even racial distinctions are more or less directly
traceable, in many instances, to climate. Thus a re-
cent writer, Gustave Michaud (The Century, March,
1908), has told us that the Baltic race

is probably the result of the natural selection by a cold
climate over emigrants who belonged to the primitive Medi-
terranean race, and who gradually moved northward. Many
of their mental as well as their physical characteristics find
an ezplanation in that hypothesis; those individuals who,
through lack of ingenuity, foresight, or activity, were un-
able to meet the rcquirements of 'a severe winter, perished
generation after generation; their posterity was constantly
decreased, and the posterity of the active, energetic, and
thoughtful was thereby relatively increased.

Sir Archibald Geikie, in his Scottieh Reminiscences,
has emphasised the climatic influence in producing
the grim character of the Scot in the following
words: “ The gloom of his valleys is deepened by the
canopy of cloud which for so large a portion of the
  282

CLIMATE

year rests upon the mountain ridges and cuts off
the light and heat of the sun. Hence his harvests
are often thrown into the late autumn, and in many
a season his thin and scanty crops rot on the ground,
leaving him face to face with starvation and an in-
clement winter. Under these adverse circumstances
he could hardly fail to become more or less subdued
and grim.”

Draper emphasised the important historical con-
sequences of the difference in the characteristics of
northerners and southemers in the United States,
which he attributed largely to climate, and which
found expression in the Civil War. The climate
of Virginia, somewhat more genial than that of New
England, may not unreasonably be supposed to have
made its mark upon the early settlers in the former
state, while the Puritans were struggling against the
harsher forces of nature in the north-east. The
Boers in Africa have developed along lines different
from those of the Dutch in the United States. The
climate, soil, and crops of the Southern States made
negro labour highly desirable, even necessary, and
the presence of the negro invölved some form of com-
pulsion—slavery.

Variety of Conditions in the Temperate Zones:
Classification. The temperate zones embrace so great
a variety of climates that it is not practicable to con-
sider the relations of climate and man according to
any rigid climatic scheme. It is simpler, as well as
more logical, to consider the typical examples here
  LIFE OF MAN IN TEMPERATE ZONES 283

selected according to the broad classification of for-
ests, steppes, and deserts. This is essentially a scheme
which depends upon rainfall, and is, therefore, a
reasonable one for adoption by those who approach
the subject from a climatic standpoint.

Life of Man in the Forest8 of the Temperate
Zones. The forests of the temperate zones are
chiefly coniferous on highlands and in colder climates,
and deciduous on lowlands and in lower latitudes.
They are found, as a rule, where the mean summer
temperature is over 50°, where the rainfall is reason-
ably heavy, and is well distributed, and where soil
and other factors are not unfavourable. Forests are
characteristic at the present time of the rainy west
coasts of the continents, as in southem Chile and on
the northem Pacific coast of North America; of
much of the interior of North America and of Siberia;
of the Scandinavian highlands. On the north, the
great forest beits merge into the tundra through a
zone of scattering trees and stunted bushes. On the
south, they grade into the open steppe country of the
Continental interiors. Much of the temperate zones,
except where too dry, was originally forest-covered,
but the trees have been gradually cleared away and
an open country, devoted to agriculture, or the seat
of modem manufacturing and industiïal settlements,
has taken their place. The southem portions of the
great forest beits, because of their more favourable
climates, are better adapted to agriculture than
the northem portions, and are therefore first attacked,
  284

CLIMATE

as is now the case in Siberia. The more severe cli-
mate of the latter, and their greater inaccessibility,
will help to preserve them from destruction for farm-
ing districts, with the primitive life of the trapper
and woodsman as their distinguishing characteristic.
The temperate zone forests, hampering man’s move-
ments, preventing dense population, and being re-
placed by more profitable farming country, have
thus gradually been driven back from the lowlands
onto the mountains and highlands of Europe, where
scattering forests alone remain. These are in most
cases protected by govemment. In the United
States, similar clearing has been going on, with simi-
lar consequences. Many of the forests which still
remain on the mountains have been set apart as na-
tional forest reserves, in order that they may serve
as regulators of water supply and as parks
for future generations. The slow spread of the
white population in the United States, from the
originally forested eastern section where it so long
had its seat, to the open country farther west, was
certainly in part due to the great difficulty which
the early settlers experienced in clearing away
the forests which they found on the Atlantic
slope. A larger population, better means for clear-
ing the forests, and improved transportation, later
changed this.

The foregoing statements must not, however, lead
us to jump at the conclusion that all open areas were
once forested, and thus to infer that a supposed de-
  LIFE OF MAN IN TEMPERATE ZONES 285

forestation, which may never have taken place, has
produced a change of climate which has not been
proved. Many such cases have been reported for the
sub-tropical belt of the Mediterranean, and for South
Africa, but sub-tropical climates, with their dry sea-
son and light rainfall, are not favourable to heavy
forest growth. It is significant that the ancient
Greeks imported their most valüable woods from the
north.

Before the forest cover—the natural product of
soil and favourable climate—is cleared away, man is
chiefly occupied in hunting fur-bearing animals in
the colder latitudes; in fishing, and in lumbering.
The latter occupation is greatly facilitated by the
winter snows in northem latitudes, which make sledg-
ing easy, and by the spring freshets, which carry the
logs down to the saw-mills. Where there is no snow,
the difficulty and expense of getting out the timber
are usually considerably greater. The woodsman’s
life is primitive and hard, and retains many nomadic
tracés. The resort to “ the woods ” for hunting and
fishing by a good many people from the north tem-
perate zone for a part of the year brings for a time a
relief from the restraints of civilisation, and the rest
that comes from a return to more primitive condi-
tions of life. There is a considerable seasonal change
of occupation among the lumbermen of the northem
United States and of Canada, many of them becom-
ing farmers or sailors in summer. Industries which
depend upon a supply of lumber, such as paper and

[Prometheus]

286

CUMATE

pulp mills, shipbuilding, fumiture, carriage and bar-
rel manufactories, and the like, are often found on or
near the streams down which the logs are floated.
The simple log hut of the early settler in the Ameri-
can forest is one of the most typical forest dwellings,
which are naturally built of wood. The Japanese
houses of bamboo and wood are not unsuitable in a
region of tree-growth, of a modified Continental cli-
mate, and of earthquakes. Forest fires are often
very destructive, not only to the trees themselves but
to the wooden dwellings in the forest.

Fish and game are the natural food of forest peo-
ples, and clothing is chiefly made of fur or leather.
Forest products are brought to the edge of the forest
for sale or exchange. Thus the trappers in North
America played an important part in the early history
of that continent. Settlements, which were originally
trading posts, grew up along the streams, and
later became towns and cities. Almost all the large
cities of the north Pacific coast of the United States
owe their prosperity to the lumber industry, and the
same is true of other cities in or near the forested
portions of the country east of the Rocky
Mountains.

The dense Alaskan coast forests, which extend far
north where the moisture, even without high tem-
peratures, is favourable to them, have to-day certain
noteworthy effects on the native Indian tribes who
live along their borders. The density of vegetation
and the difficulty of agriculture force them to turn
  LIFE OF MAN IN TEMPERATE ZONES 287

to the sea, on which they spend most of their time,
on which they travel, and from which they obtain
their food. They become expert canoe-builders,
sailors, and fishermen; are finely developed in the
upper portions of their bodies, but spend so much of
their life in their boats that they dislike walking and
are poor hunters and porters. Their food, and the
material for some of their utensils and implements,
they secure from the sea. They wander about to dif-
ferent fishing-grounds, living a more or less nomadic
life; some of them even going into the State of
Washington in harvest-time. It is an interesting
fact that the best canoes are built by the Indians who
live in the most stormy locations, and these same peo-
ple are also the best sailors. On the coasts of South-
ern Chile the dense forests have kept the population
close to the sea; have made clearing for farming dif-
ficult, and have resulted in making lumbering, hunt-
ing, and fishing the chief occupations. Darwin
reported of this region that the constant rains keep
everything so wet that to clear the forest by fire is
almost impossible.

Foreat Clearings. Man gradually makes clearings
in the virgin forest, and then cultivated crops take
the place of the natural tree-cover, except where ex-
tremely favourable conditions for tree growth, or
poor soil, or steepness of slope, make forests more
profitable than agriculture. At present, much of the
population of the civilised world lives in such clear-
ings. Where the clearings are small, as in parts of
  288

CLIMATE

Scandinavia, the life is simple, combining lumbering,
hunting, and fishing of the forest with agriculture.
If the sea is near by, boat-building, as in Norway,
also becomes an important industry, with deep-sea
fishing and sailing. Simpler industries, like wood-
carving and match-making, are also found. Com-
munities are scattered, and are largely independent
of one another. Each community is selfsupport-
ing, and each individual is more or less of a “ Jack-of-
all-trades.” Isolated clearings, where civilised man
is making the first inroad into the primeval temper-
ate forest, may still be seen in several parts of North
America, and will become increasingly common in
the Siberian forest belt.

With the destruction of the forest and the growth
of agriculture, with settled places of abode and a
reasonably certain food supply following steady,
careful, and intelligent labour, comes the gradual ac-
cumulation of a surplus, and the increasing diversity
of interests and occupations which characterise the
modem, highly civilised community. Here we find
a very complex life, with industries and manufactures
of all sorts; where raw materials and supplies are
imported from other lands and climates and exported
to them, and where the immediate climatic control
often becomes difficult to see. It is under such con-
ditions that civilised man lives to-day, using the
products of the forest, the farm, the mine, the sea,
the lake, the river; making the most of his opportuni-
ties; overcoming more and more the disadvantages
  LIFE OF MAN IN TEMPERATE ZONES 289

i

!

of his immediate surroundings. It remains a fact,
nevertheless, that one of the most important Controls
in determining the location of modem industries, next
to neamess to materials and markets and water-
power, is climate.

The Steppes. In the intermediate beits, between
the heavier rainfall of the forested districts and the
deficiënt rainfall of the deserts, come the grass-lands
of the temperate zones, commonly known as steppes
(“unwooded tracts in middle latitudes, of consider-
able extent and covered with useful vegetation”).
These are found where the rainfall is small because
of distance from the sea, or by reason of the rain-
shadow effect of enclosing mountains, and over
broad, more or less level topographic areas, of fairly
uniform climatic conditions. The general severity
of the climate, the small rainfall, the shortness of
the growing season, and other factors, such as high
winds, favour grass rather than tree growth. The
central Asiatic plateau, except where so arid as to be
a true desert, with uniformity of climate and of popu-
lation, is the great steppe region of the world.
Southern Siberia, Southern Russia and Hungary,
and parts of Arabia, Persia, and Asia Minor belong
to this same area. The Great Plains between the
Rocky Mountains and the lOOth meridian are classed
as steppes, as are the grass-lands of eastern temper-
ate South America. The Asiatic steppe is extremely
unfavourable, so far as occupation and development
by man are concerned. At the centre of a great

*9
  290

CLIMATE

overgrown continent, with the trade of the world
naturally passing around it, largely by water, rather
than across it; with few rivers and deficiënt precipita-
tion, the effect on man, whatever may have been the
conditions of the past, is such as to depress, retard,
overcome him. Civilisation there lags behind that in
the rainier lands of the temperate zone. The grass-
lands of North America, it may be noted, have the
advantage of being a narrow belt between two well-
watered and fertile regions. The dry season
scorches the grass and dries up the rivers; the spring
rains bring out the carpet of grass and flowers.
Winter storms and cold sweep over the steppe, often
fatal to man and beast.

The primitive inhabitants of the Eurasian steppe,
like the Kirghiz, Mongols, Kurds, are nomads, mov-
ing about during the summer in search of water and
pasturage for their animals. Their migrations often
take them to the higher country, where there is more
chance of finding water, and where the grass is bet-
ter. A dry year forces migration into the adjacent
rainier districts. In the colder months the people
settle down in more permanent abodes. Thus also
we find the inhabitants of the Hungarian plain
townspeople in winter and semi-nomadic farmers in
summer. Professor W. M. Davis has noted the use
of small farm-houses on wheels in Bosnia, which
“ are drawn forward on the plain in the dry season,
so as to stand near the pasture fields; and back again
towards the higher margin in the wet season.” The
  LIFE OF MAN IN TEMPERATE ZONES 291

driving of cattle from Argentina across the moun-
tains into Chile during the dry season is another in-
stance of seasonal migration in search of pasturage
in grass-lands.

The primitive steppe-dweller depends on his flocks
and herds for his food and clothing, and for his tent-
coverings and utensils. From their wool, or hair, he
makes his cloth, or carpets. The summer dwellings
of the Asiatic steppe-dweller are usually feit tents,
adjustable, portable, skilfully constructed. These,
with simple household goods made principally of
leather, at once the most available and most useful
material, are easily transported from place to place.
In winter, encampments are carefully selected
where there are water and grass, and where hay
is collected. The winter dwellings are better built,
of the willows or reeds found along the streams, and
the animals are sheltered against cold and storm.
As on the Coastal desert of South America, so here,
a common fuel (in winter) is the dried dung of ani-
mals. Horses are a precious possession, essential to
the wandering life of people some of whom call
themselves The Horsemen (Kazak). The trade of
the Asiatic steppe is carried on with China on the
one side and Russia on the other. Hides and other
products obtained from the flocks and herds are ex-
changed for tea, flour, opium, clothing, etc. In-
dependent, conservative, and proud, the natives
retain their traditional customs, and resist the en-
croachments of civilisation. The life of man in

I
  292

CLIMATE

steppe and in tundra has many points of resem-
blance, but the steppe is the more favourable to
improvement.

The early life of the white man on the Great Plains
of North America has been similar in many ways to
that on the Asiatic steppes. Immense herds of cattle
have grazed at will over a vast extent of territory,
driven here and there in search of pasturage and wa-
ter, and tended by semi-nomadic cowboys spend-
ing most of their lives in the saddle. The gradual
destruction of the natural grass forage by over-stock-
ing, and by the introduction of sheep, has not in-
frequently led to armed conflicts between those in
charge of different herds of cattle. The United
States has also illustrated what has been observable in
other lands, viz., the conflict between the divergent
interests of those who want grass-lands for agricul-
ture and those who want them for grazing. In
North America the conflict was not waged with
bloodshed, but history furnishes examples of the war-
like encroachment of pastoral nomads into the peace-
ful farming communities on the borders of the steppe.
China, for example, was invaded by steppe-dwellers,
as was Europe at one time; even to-day, Kurds and
Armenians are struggling in a similar way. In the
United States, the facility of communication and the
rapid advance of population from the east have led,
in recent years, to a considerable change in the use
of certain portions of the Great Plains steppe region.
After an almost exclusive use of these plains for cat-
  LIFE OF MAN IN TEMPERATE ZONES 293

tle, farming without irrigation was tried over their
central portion in the latter part of the decade 1880-
1890, during and closely following a series of years
with a rainfall somewhat above the average. The
experiment proved to be a failure when a series of
drier years followed. Since then, local irrigation by
means of wind-mills has been introduced to a con-
siderable extent, and diversified farming under irri-
gation, with cattle-raising on a much smaller scale
than formerly, has been found to be a far more profit-
able undertaking than farming on a large scale with-
out irrigation. The cattle are fed, when necessary,
with alfalfa or other forage raised for that purpose;
are bred under supervision, and are protected against
the severe winter storms and cold. The climatic
limitations of the Great Plains are now clearly re-
cognised. By far the greater portion must forever
remain pastoral, but where irrigation can be prac-
tised, farming and cattle-raising together are more
profitable than either alone. Irrigation, together
with the proper preparation of the soil and the plant-
ing of crops suited to the climate, has worked a com-
plete change in the appearance and in the economie
value of many parts of the Great Plains. The large
modern cattle ranch in the western United States is
very different from the wandering cattle herd of a
few years ago. There are summer - and winter
ranges for the stock, the winter range being sheltered
as much as possible. On a well-equipped ranch, a
barometer is watched as carefully as on board ship.
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CLIMATE

When a storm is expected, the sheep or cattle are
brought to shelter if possible, or if not, are driven to
windward, so that they will be driven home by the
storm. In Australia the grass-lands have been oc-
cupied by British sheep-owners, employing native
stockmen, and the conditions of life are much like
those of the ranchmen on the Plains of North
America.

Obviously, wherever irrigation is possible, steppes
become more valuable for farming than for grazing.
There is a limit to the water supply, whether that
come from rivers or from underground, and an in-
creasing population, with increasing demands for
water, must in time reach the limits of the supply.
In many of the western states of the American
Union, where with increasing population the need of
irrigation has been feit more and more, much litiga-
tion has arisen concerning the right to water. The
difficulties have come in great measure from the fact
that the laws were imported from rainier regions,
where irrigation was unnecessary. On the Asiatic
steppes, Russian influences are encouraging irriga-
tion and agriculture. As a rule, the steppes of the
temperate zone have been cultivated where settled
by people who had formerly been farmers in more
humid regions.

The wide expanse of the steppes, with their un-
obstructed surface, situated as they usually are in
the extreme climates of the Continental interiors, ex-
posés them to sudden temperature changes. The far-
  LIFE OF MAN IN TEMPERATE ZONES 295

reaching sweep of cold storm winds from higher lati-
tudes, such as the cold norther or blizzard of North
America and the buran of Siberia, may destroy
thousands of cattle in a few hours and not infre-
quently human lives as well. Depressing hot winds
from lower latitudes, which carry high temperatures
far poleward, sometimes injure crops by their heat
and dryness. In dry times, fires once started have
a free sweep over the open steppe country.

Climates and Crops in the Temperate Zones.
The variety of climates found over the temperate
zones, especially in the northern heimsphere, is very
large, ranging from the modified marine climate on
the west coasts to the extreme Continental of the in-
teriors and the modified Continental on the east
coasts, and also varying greatly with latitude. No
such simple discussion according to climatic sub-
divisions is possible as in the case of the tropics.
Forests are found on the rainy west coasts and also
in the interiors. Agriculture is practised where the
forest has been cleared, and also on the steppes and
even in the deserts, wherever irrigation is possible.
These variations in climate from east to west and
north to south across a continent, are such as to
necessitate great differences in the season and
methods of agriculture, and in the crops that are
grown.

In the sub-tropical beits, favoured as they are in
many ways as to climate, man fights against frost in
Califomia; protects his crops by walls or hedges
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CLIMATE

against high winds, as in the Azores, in Malta, and
in Southern France; manufactures artificial ice in
Falestine; retards the ripening of his fruit under the
spring sun by screening it. The latter is an interest-
ing phase of man's effort to make the most of his
climate, regulating it so far as may be possible. In
parts of Italy it is customary to cover the lemons
with sereens of cloth or rushes, so that they may not
ripen until the summer demand is at its height in
England and America, and prices are good. The
equable climate of the Pacific coast of the United
States makes it possible to keep farm animals out-
doors most, or even all, of the year, thus saving the
expense of bams and stables necessary in more rigor-
ous climates. In summer on this coast, advantage is
taken of the dry season to leave wheat out in sacks,
sometimes for weeks at a time, without much fear of
damage by rain. This is a great convenience for the
farmer. Raisins are usually dried outdoors, although
some of the larger growers are now introducing dry-
ing houses. The damage done by one rain is so great
when raisins are partially dry, that the field labourers
at such critical times, when rain is forecasted, insist
on being paid extra high wages to bring in the fruit.
The kind of agricultural machinery depends largely
upon conditions of climate and crops. The com-
bined harvester and thresher used in California could
not be successfully employed under other conditions
of dryness and ripeness of the grain. The use of this
machine is much restricted farther north, in Oregon
  LIFE OF MAN IN TEMPERATE ZONES 297

and Washington. It may here be noted, in passing,
that in Norway agricultural machinery has been well
received on account of the shortness of the summer
and the need of accomplishing outdoor work quickly.
Cereals are a winter erop in the regions of winter
rains, and many fruits can be very successfully
grown, such as lemons, figs, olives, oranges, etc. The
sub-tropical vine-growing districts of Italy, Spain,
southem France, California, southem Australia, and
Cape Colony are natural centres for the wine industry.

The great cereal lands of the world are found in
the Continental interiors, in the regions of summer
rains, where the precipitation is sufficiënt. Roughly,
between latitudes 40° and 52°, other conditions be-
ing favourable, we find the principal wheat belt; hut
wheat is cultivated much farther north, for example
in Asia, and also farther south than the above limits.
Barley grows over a much wider belt, both poleward
and equatorward; oats grow north of wheat, and corn
grows south of it. In the higher latitudes, with
shorter summers, it is more and more difficult for
cereals to ripen. All over the cleared farm-lands and
cultivated steppes of the temperate zone, droughts,
or excessive rains, or frosts, or other harmful condi-
tions are always to be feared. On the whole, the
struggle against adverse conditions of climate, and
weather, and soil, is so hard that it constantly de-
mands man's best energies, his best methods, his best
implements.

Climate has, in a large way, set apart certain great
  298

[Prometheus]

CLIMATE

areas where agriculture may be best carried on.
Similarly, it has determined that one area shall be
adapted for grazing and another for forests. For-
ests will always grow chiefly in the rainier regions,
because, although trees can be made to grow, by care-
ful selection and proper care, over a good deal of
steppe country, they will always grow better, and
faster, and more cheaply, where the rainfall is heavier.
A map of the products of any country, in crops, or
cattle, or forests, will show, when compared with a
rainfall map, the broad, general relations which are
here referred to. There is, it may be noted, often an
intimate connection between a product of one sort
and one of another sort, as, for example, in the case
of hogs in the United States, which are raised in
largest numbers in the region which produces the
most corn, on which the hogs are fed. The climatic
control of occupations is beautifully illustrated in
Chile. In the rainy south, the forests, with lumber-
ing and fishing; in the arid north, the deserts, which
would be uninhabited were it not for the nitrate and
other mineral deposits which have given the region an
extraordinary value; in the central portion, with a
climate neither too wet nor too dry for agriculture,
we have the great farming, cereal, and stock-raising
districts.

The Deserts. In the Continental interiors, where
the distance from the ocean is great and the endosure
by surrounding mountains is effective in intercepting
the moisture brought by the winds, grass-land is

\
  LIFE OF MAN IN TEMPERATE ZONES 299

replaced by sparser and sparser vegetation; steppe
merges into desert; population decreases more and
more. Such arid regions are found in the deserts
of south-eastern Califomia, Arizona, and New Mex-
ico; in northem Mexico; in the interior of the great
overgrown continent of Asia. These deserts are
the extreme product of Continental climate. With
moderate or cold winters and hot summers, the life of
man in them is controlled in much the same way as
in the deserts of the tropics.

No more striking illustration of this control over
the primitive desert-dwellers of the temperate zone
has been given than in the study made by McGee of
the Papago Indian tribes of Southern Arizona. “ The
Papago prefers to live where other people famish;
he is able to do so by reason of his remarkable adjust-
ment of his habits, his food and raiment, his indus-
tries, his social organisation, to a peculiar assemblage
of conditions.” These people can go long without
food and water; in emergencies they secure water
from the barrel cactus (biznaga) 1 : they chase rain-
storms for miles across the desert, and plant wherever
water or damp soil is found; their houses, built of
mesquite saplings, protected against the ravages of
cattle by thorns, or of adobe, are located near damp
soil, or a water supply. The Papago’s life is nomadic
for much of the year because he migrates in search of
the means of subsistence, of which, as McGee puts it,

1A good illustration may be found in PI. xviii of the "Desert
Botanical Laboratory of the Carnegie Institution,” 1903.
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CLIMATE

“the first, and the second, and the third are water,
water, water, to alleviate his own thirst in the sun-
parched deserts, water to sustain his horses and burros
and kine, water to vivify the plants of which man and
his creatures eat.” The seasons of planting and of
harvest depend on storms, come when these may;
when the local water-supply fails, water is carried
long distances on burros, or on the head; the springs
are protected by a corral or stockade made of cactus,
and even of the dried carcasses of bulls killed in the
battle for water; only the simplest arts of pottery-
making are practised. All this shows a climatic
control of which no better illustration can be found
anywhere in the world. The thick adobe walls of the
Indian dwellings of the south-western United States
in general are well adapted for keeping the inside
temperature equable, in spite of the large diurnal
ranges outside. The Pueblo Indians show the in-
fluence of climate in their use of stone, and in the
absence of wood in their buildings and utensils. Heat
and cold split the rocks of their mesas and furnish
material for building. The reckoning of a man’s
wealth according to the number of horses in his pos-
session; the open and easily-transported huts óf the
Navahoes, which furnish sufficiënt protection against
the heat and the wind of the hotter months, with more
permanent winter houses of adobe, better fitted as a
protection against the severe weather of the colder
season; the rain-dances and rain-gods of the south-
westem United States,—all this is but a repetition of
  LIFE OF MAN IN TEMPERATE ZONES 301

what is found among the native tribes of the hot
tropical desert. It has been well said by one
writer that u the whole religion of the south-west
may be summed up in a single phrase—a prayer for
rain.”

In the arid interior of Asia we see the same no-
madic life, the same difficulty of travel, the same semi-
pastoral, semi-industrial population along the borders
or in the oases of the desert, as in the tropics. But in
the temperate zone deserts there comes always the
greater need of protection against more severe cold.
It has been believed by many writers that a Progres-
sive desiccation in central Asia drove the inhabitants
out onto the lowlands, and was followed by the
Asiatic invasion of Europe; but there are not want-
ing those who do not believe such desiccation proved,
and who doubt, as H. J. Mackinder has said, whether
these changes, even if proved, have “ in historical
times vitally altered the human environment.”

In time, civilised man will make use of every avail-
able drop of water which is supplied in these arid re-
gions, whether by streams, or in the form of rain, or
from underground, and the irrigated desert will de-
velop in man those qualities of coöperation which have
been conspicuous in the irrigated communities of
Peru, among the Indians of the south-westem United
States, in ALfrica and in Asia, in Utah and in Cali-
fornia. Where every drop of water has a money
value, there results a unification of interests in the
common water supply which is as striking as it is
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CLIMATE

interesting. But there is a limit to the population
whose needs can be supplied in these deserts, even
when every available water supply is drawn upon;
and the temperate deserts, like those of the tropics,
must always remain sparsely populated, as a whole,
with their inhabitants collected here and there around
oases, or in the larger, modem, irrigated areas. The
immense public irrigation works recently completed,
or now being carried out by the United States gov-
ernment, furnish striking illustrations of the effective
use which civilised man now makes of water in an
arid region, while the Mormon irrigation, practised
in Utah, still remains a model of what can be accom-
plished by individuals working in harmony.

A typical desert industry is the harvesting of salt,
as from Great Salt Lake in Utah, at Salton in the
California desert, in Turkestan, Patagonia, and
China. In the last-named country salt was formerly
used as money, the salt industry being a govemment
monopoly, protected by a prohibition of the importa-
tion of foreign salt. In Chinese Turkestan blocks
of rock salt are sometimes used in building walls, and
huts built of rock salt have also been reported. The
difficulty of securing water in the temperate deserts
is often serious. Baku is to-day supplied in part
with water obtained by distilling the brackish waters
of the Caspian Sea.

Railroad construction and operation in the tem-
perate deserts, e. g., in Arizona and south-eastem
California, or on the new trans-Caspian railroad in
  LIFE OF MAN IN TEMPERATE ZONES 303

Asia, and on the projected trans-Australian railroad,
have to contend with difficulties similar to those in the
tropical deserts, to which reference has already been
made. A curious effect of sand-blasting is noted
from the California desert, where the telegraph poles
along the railroad are so wom near their bases by the
blowing sand that they have to be protected by
piles of stones. The Southern trans-continental rail-
roads of the United States, which traverse the hottest
and dustiest part of the interior desert, lose much
travel in summer because passengers pref er the more
northerly, cooler, and less dusty joumey.

Mountains. The mountains of the temperate zones
are often forest-covered on their upper slopes, with
pasture lands farther down, and below these, the
lower slopes are used for agriculture. The variety
of occupations within a restricted area is thus consid-
erable, e. g., lumbering, forest industries, and hunting
above; farming and fruit-growing below. Moun-
tains which rise from steppes or deserts have the char-
acter of oases, or islands. The general conditions
of climate and of life on mountains are so different
from those on lowlands that it is not surprising to
note the differences, often observed, between moun-
tain and lowland peoples. The decreasing mean tem-
perature, the inaccessibility, the smaller amount of
land available for profitable use (except in the case of
mines), and the decrease in plant and animal life for
food, suffice to set a limit of height to the habitability
of these mountains by man. Human settlements, as
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CLIMATE

a whole, therefore decrease in number and impor-
tance with increasing altitude, except where mineral
wealth or forests are an attraction.

The successive vertical zones or beits of vegetation
vary much in altitude above sea-level, according to
the slope on which the plants grow, the warmer
Southern slopes (in the northern hemisphere) giving
vegetation more favourable conditions at a greater
altitude than the northern. A similar effect of
favourable exposure is commonly seen in the dis-
tribution of population in mountainous districts.
Human settlements are usually found at greater ele-
vations on the sunnier slopes, where the conditions for
agriculture and for grazing are most favourable,
but temporary lumbering or mining operations may
locally induce higher settlements on the shady slopes,
and more favourable rainfall on the latter may also
bring about a departure from the general rule. The
average upper limit of settlements in the Alps coin-
cides fairly well with the upper limit of grain. It is
reported that in. the Oetz Valley, in the Alps, consid-
erably more than 75 per cent. of the population live
on the sunny side of the valley. Lugeon’s study of
the principal valley of the canton of Valais, between
Martigny and the Rhone glacier, has brought out
similar interesting facts. In a certain part of this
district, the villages, with but one or two exceptions,
are on the sunny side. In fact, a certain distinction
of classes results from this difference. There is de-
veloped an aristocracy of the sun, so to speak. The
  LIFE OF MAN IN TEMPERATE ZONES 305

people on the sunny side are, on the whole, more pros-
perous and better educated, and look with some con-
tempt upon the people on the shady side. The
marked avoidance of the lower parts of valleys in the
Alps, and in other temperate mountain regions, and
the building of houses on the mountain slopes or the
hill-tops, depend upon the frequent occurrence of
inversions of temperature. Löwl has pointed out
that in parts of the Alps, terraces, fan-cones, and
other topographic forms elevated somewhat above
the valley floors, are thus sought out as locations for
houses.

The value of land is obviously determined largely
by its position with reference to slope, exposure, and
liability to frost occurrence. Southem slopes (in
the northem hemisphere) are usually more desirable
as well as more expensive, and many examples might
be given of the difference in value of land which
is more exposed to frost and of that which is less
exposed. California fumishes many excellent ex-
amples. A grain ranch lying in a frosty pocket may
there be next to land which is practically frost-free.
The latter is worth two hundred or more times as
much per acre when well established in oranges. The
kind of erop which can be grown, and hence the
financial return, also depends largely upon exposure
to sunshine and frost, protection against destructive
winds, and the like, as well as upon soil.

It is a characteristic habit in many parts of the
temperate zones to drive cattle up onto the higher
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CLIMATE

slopes of the mountains for pasturage in the summer
months, whereas, on the approach of the winter, they
are brought back to the permanent settlements be-
low. Examples are found, among other places, in
Switzerland, where the cattle and goats, with their
herders and shepherds, spend the summer far up on
the alpl in S weden and Norway; in south-eastem
France; on the Balkan peninsula; among certain In-
dian tribes and also on some of the great cattle ranches
of the United States; in much of the plateau bountry
of Asia, as on the Pamir, and in parts of Armenia,
the Thian Shan, and the central Himalayas; in north-
em Africa, and in the Urals. The modem develop-
ment of summer resorts in mountains is but another
manifestation of this seasonal control of migrations
by the climatic conditions resulting from the presence
of mountains. Special cases of a peculiar kind are
found in the Sary-Tur and Thian Shan mountains,
among the Boginzes and the Kirghiz, who in winter
drive their horses and herds up above the level of the
winter clouds and snows to the upper pastures, which
are well waterpd by the summer rains, and furnish
abundant grass for fodder. Again, in Sistan, Ells-
worth Huntington reports an occasional migration
down from the relatively cool mountains during a
dry season, and across the desert to the lake waters
beyond. But these are exceptions to the general
mie of upward migrations in summer.

The forests above the grass zone are frequently
the last resort of wild animals which have retreated
  LIFE OF MAN IN TEMPERATE ZONES 307

from the lower slopes, and hunting expeditions in
search of this game are often made.

Mountain peoples have special conditions to meet.
Their dwellings are usually better built and furnish
better protection than is the case on the lowlands. In
some cases the people live almost or quite under-
ground, in order to secure the maximum protection
against cold, or heat, or high winds. In Kashmir
some of the natives carry about, under their loose
clothing, earthenware pots filled with live coals, to
keep them warm. Severe winters on mountains, with
little or no possibility of doing outdoor work, pro-
mote home industries. Foehn or chinook winds lo-
cally favour the raising of special crops or fruits;
melt the snow rapidly, so that cattle may find susten-
ance through the winter; or necessitate strict regula-
tions against fires, as in parts of Switzerland. The
bora interferes with shipping along the eastern shore
of the Adriatic. Mountain and valley winds some-
times locally attain such violence as to make travel or
habitability difficult or impossible.

A peculiar custom which prevails among certain
native tribes of the Himalayas, and which is an
interesting result of climate, has been reported
by Ellsworth Huntington (in manuscript). Certain
Kashmiris, who live in the Himalayas between Kash-
mir and Ladakh, at an altitude of about 10,500 feet,
spread earth on the snow in order to make the snow
melt more quickly.

“ Those whom I saw,” reports Huntington, were Kash-
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CLIMATE

miris who had come to the country within a generation or
two, and had learned the practice from the long-settled
Ladakhi or Tibetan inhabitants. The snow, April 11, 1905,
was unusually deep, about 10 feet, and was not expected,to
disappear for nearly two months, some two weeks later than
usual. In the drier region of Ladakh, nearly to the east,
the practice is followed by people living as high as 14,000
feet. Sometirqes a snowstorm covers the layer of soil on
the old snow, and new soil has to be gathered and spread.”

Travel and transportation meet with many ob-
stacles in mountains, apart from the natural difficul-
ties which come from steepness of slope and from
forest cover. In all latitudes where snow falls in
winter, obstruction by snow-blockades is a serious
matter, and the question whether it is better to tunnel,
or to build above the ground and keep the tracks clear
by means of ploughs and snow-sheds, is an important
one for the engineers to settle. The northem trans-
continental railroads in North America, where they
pass over the western mountain ranges, are protected
for long distances at critical points by snow-sheds.
These, being of wood, are apt to take fire, and fire
watches and fire apparatus are provided for such
emergencies. Below the latitudes where snow
falls in considerable quantities, sheds are not needed.
Some railroads in mountains are abandoned alto-
gether in winter. Floods and washouts, landslides
and avalanches, are additional handicaps. The fa-
mous Uspallata Pass, between Chile and Argentina,
is not used by travellers in winter, on account of the
  LIFE OF MAN IN TEMPERATE ZONES 309

snow. Traffic then goes by steamer, by way of the
Strait of Magellan. Fierce, cold winds, and the alti-
tude, have been effective barriers in keeping Tibet so
long isolated, and will remain effective barriers in the
way of any movement of troops across the Tibetan
plateau.

Cümate and Weather: Some Mental Effects. The
frequent and sudden weather changes of the temper-
ate zones affect man in many ways, as do the larger
seasonal changes. The relations between weather
and conduct have frequently been investigated.
Professor E. G. Dexter has made an extended em-
pirical study of the effects of the weather in relation
to deaths, suicides, the number of errors made in
banks, and misdemeanours generally. It appears, as
one of the most interesting. general condusions, that
physically exhilarating weather conditions are accom-
panied by an abnormal prevalence of excesses in de-
portment, while deaths, suicides, and errors in banks
show a decrease. So many indirect effects come into
play in these conditions that care must be taken not
to draw too hasty condusions. Thus H. H. Clay-
ton has pointed out that errors in banks may be more
likely on cloudy days because of the greater difficulty
in seeing figures, and also that fine weather tempts
people out of doors and thus brings them into con-
tact with others, giving opportunities for crime.
Light wind movement seems to be accompanied by
fewer misdemeanours in schools; low relative humidity
by a larger percentage of misdemeanours; great cold

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CLIMATE

by more suicides, and so on. Bertillon has collected
data on suicides and seasons in France, and Leffing-
well has investigated illegitimacy and the influence of
seasons on conduct in Great Britain.

The difference in the effects of a bright, crisp day,
when work is well and quickly done, and of a dull,
depressing, and enervating day is well known. A dis-
mal day is a dies mali. Strong cyclonic winds, blow-
ing polewards from lower latitudes, are characteristic
of the temperate zones, and are proverbially disagree-
able and irritating, in strong contrast with the cooler
winds from higher latitudes. The sirocco in Italy;
the solano in Spain; the norte in Argentina, for ex-
ample, are such winds. The sirocco has been described
as “ not fatal to human life,” but “ deadly to human
temper.” In Spain there is a proverb, “Ask no
favour during the solano.” The nervous effects of
the dry foehn and chinook are well known. The
zonda of the Argentine is reported as not infrequently
making people temporarily insane, and leading to
suicide. Many other mental effects of the weather
might be noted.

Climate, Weather, and Military Operations. His-
torical consequences of great importance have fol-
lowed from special conditions of climate or weather.
Maguire’s OutUnes of Military Geography (Cam-
bridge, 1899) contains a chapter on the influence
of climate on military operations, but this subject has
hitherto received little attention. More recently,
Bentley, in a presidential address bef ore the Royal
  \

LIFE OF MAN IN TEMPERATE ZONES 311

Meteorological Society, London, considered the
matter. A few illustrations only can here be
given.

The fleet of Xerxes was lost in a storm on the
coast of Greece. In 54 b.c., owing to a preceding
drought and scanty harvest, Caesar was obliged to
scatter his army in separate winter quarters, and in
this situation one of these isolated bodies of Romans
was attacked and destroyed. The consequences came
near being very disastrous for Caesar. A storm de-
stroyed the Spanish Armada. The French Revolu-
tion was precipitated by a severe winter. Napoleon
was defeated in 1796, owing to the ground being too
heavy for the movement of the French artillery. In
1796, also, Gen. Hoche’s fleet, sailing for Ireland,
was scattered by a storm. The terrible winter retreat
of the French from Moscow fumished a vivid illus-
tration of the' strength of the two invincible Russian
generals, January and February (to use a Russian
expression). The battle of Waterloo was postponed
on account of a heavy rainfall. The siege of
Sebastopol fumished another illustration of the suf-
fering which a severe winter may produce. The
“ Boxer ” outbreak in China, in 1900, was precipi-
tated by a scarcity of rain in the preceding autumn,
bringing on destitution and famine, and driving the
people to pillage and robbery. During the fighting
around Tientsin, early in July, the situation of the
allied troops was very critical when a torrential rain-
fall compelled the Chinese to retire. During the Boer
  312

CLIMATE

war there were many instances of weather Controls
over military operations. On January 9, 1900, a
heavy rain checked the fighting near Ladysmith, and
cloudy weather often prevented the use of the helio-
graph in communicating with Ladysmith. During
the recent British campaign in Tibet, great difficulty
was experienced at the higher altitudes, owing to the
hardening of the oil in the guns on account of the
cold, and the low boiling point made it difficult to
cook food properly in the absence of cooking utensils
adapted for use at low pressures. In the Russo-
Japanese war, the cold and heat and rain made them-
selves feit as powerful factors in the campaign.

The effect of even one rain may be far-reaching.
It has been said that a shower of rain acts like a wet
blanket on a mob. Numerous recent illustrations of
the truth of this statement are available. A rain in
Paris on the day of the Dreyfus verdict, in Septem-
ber, 1899, doubtless helped to prevent, if it did not
actually prevent, an outbreak. During a great strike
in Moscow at the end of January, 1905, a snowstorm
greatly helped the authorities in keeping the people
off the streets. Again, on April 6, 1906, at St.
Petersburg, a steady downpour of rain all day pre-
vented an open-air meeting which would doubtless
have led to conflict with the military.

Railroads. Railroads have reached their greatest
development in the Continental climates of the tem-
perate zones, and the influence of these climates upon
the construction and operation of these roads is far-
  LIFE OF MAN IN TEMPERATE ZONEB 313

reaching, varied, and of the greatest economie im-
portance. Transportation by rail is necessarily
closely affected by weather conditions, for trains have
no protection against snow, or wind, or heat. The
extremes of heat and cold have a racking effect
upon all iron and steel work, and careful allowance
has to be made for this factor. Floods wash away
bridges, tracks, and ballast. In the Mississippi basin
of the United States, floods in 1908 cost the Santé Fé
Railroad alone $1,000,000. Stormy weather means
bad country roads, and this may prevent the trans-
portation of farm products to the railroads, and thus
result in irregularity in the supply of freight. It is
believed that were freight delivered regularly, the
railroads would find it possible to use less rolling
stock, with better returns.

Many of the most obvious climatic handicaps are
seen in the more northem latitudes of the north tem-
perate zone, where the winter brings snow and ice.
The trans-Siberian Railway was constructed with
great difficulty because of frozen soil, spring thaws,
and upheaved tracks. Across the rivers and across
Lake Baikal, rails were laid on the ice during con-
struction times. Later, the trains were carried across
the lake in winter on ice-breaking ferryboats. The
houses for the labourers were also built on the ice.
Work was greatly interrupted during the winter.
On the Great Lakes of North America, temporary
rails are laid on the ice during the ice-cutting season.
The new trans-Canadian railway lines will traverse
  314

CLIMATE

a region of severe cold in winter, but generally of
moderate snowfall, and although situated far to the
north, they will draw upon a splendid wheat erop,
favoured by the warmth and well-distributed rains
of summer. The snow-blockades on the northern
railroads of America led to the invention and use of
the ingenious and effective rotary snow-plough; to the
planting of trees along the right of way to serve as
snow-breaks, and to the construction of snow-fences.
In Siberia, the snow itself is occasionally piled up in
heaps by means of ploughs or shovels, and is thus
made to serve as a windbreak. The campaign of a
modem electric Street railway system, in an American
city, against the winter’s snow, is carefully planned in
the preceding summer, and every detail is worked out
beforehand. A mild, open winter in latitudes where
winter snowfall is an important factor in railroad
operation, means a saving of money, time, and labour,
which results in increased eamings and even in larger
dividends. The motive power which is otherwise
employed in fighting snow is then earning money for
the company.

In the warmer latitudes and drier seasons the blow-
ing sand and dust are disagreeable, and even delay
transportation at times. High temperatures and
heavy rainfall hasten the decay of railroad ties. The
growth of weeds on the right of way of earth-ballasted
roads is a considerable difficulty in many parts of the
temperate zones, as well as in the tropics. In the
United States, the Union Pacific Railroad has used
  LIFE OF MAN IN TEMPERATE ZONES 315

a gasoline weed-burner, which scorches off the vegeta-
tion, and the salt water of Great Salt Lake, sprinkled
over the road-bed, has also been found to serve well
as a weed-destroyer.

The state of the weather sometimes fixes the load
of an engine, as in the case of freight trains running
west from Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. According to
the weather forecast of favourable, reasonably good,
bad, and very bad weather, the load of a freight en-
gine varies from 1750 tons to 1225 tons. The busi-
ness of railroads depends largely upon the season,
but the time at which these roads are generally the
most useful, and also the most overburdened, is after
harvest-time. Then, in the great wheat regions of
North America, the immense crops can with difficulty
be handled and stored, and the need of money to
“ move the crops ” not infrequently leads to financial
readjustment and stringency in the money market.

Transportation by Water. The oceans at the
equatorward margins of the temperate zones have
the light, variable winds and calms of the horse lati-
tude beits, with the seasonal change from trades to
westerlies, and back again. From the Mediterranean,
a fairly calm sea with few storms, came many of the
early navigators and explorers, doubtless tempted to
sea by the regularity and steadiness of their winds
and by the cleamess of the air which, before the days
of lighthouse, compass, and telescope, aided naviga-
tion by making it easy to see distant landmarks. In
the higher latitudes, the prevailing westerlies, blowing
  316

CLIMATE

with moderate to high velocity and frequently
disturbed by storms, especially in winter, generally
favour voyages to the eastward, but are head winds
for vessels sailing westward. The voyage from
Europe to North America is not an easy one for sail-
ing ships, for, in addition to the head winds, there is
also the danger of ice and of fog on the Banks of
Newfoundland. The sailing route from Europe to
North America by way of the north-east trade, and
back, more directly, in the westerlies, makes effective
use of these two great wind systems. To keep clear
of ice and fog, the North Atlantic steamer routes at
certain seasons keep farther to the south, with the
disadvantage of lengthening the distance travelled.
Ocean currents, which are meteorological phenomena
because wind-driven, are important factors in con-
trolling the location of sailing routes. The voyage
around Cape Hom to the westward, in the teeth of
boisterous westerly gales, is much dreaded by sea-
men. Outward-bound vessels from England to
Australia find it convenient to sail by the Cape of
Good Hope, while on the homeward voyage they can
round Cape Hora to the eastward. By so doing
they have a good chance of fair winds all the way.
The most favourable weather condition for pass-
ing Cape Hom to the westward is the presence, dur-
ing the period necessary for rounding the Hom and
for Crossing latitude 50° S. in the Pacific, of a centre
of low pressure in the immediate vicinity of the Cape,
and not too far to the southward. This pressure dis-
  r

LIFE OF MAN IN TEMPERATE ZONES 317

tribution gives north-east, east, and south-east winds
in succession in the case of a west-bound vessel which
passes the centre to the southward. The cyclones of
the westerlies are always more or less of a hindrance
and danger to shipping. Storm winds have, it is
true, accidentally led to the discovery of new lands,
hut stormy seas do not tempt man to sail upon them.
Protected harbours are naturally sought; unprotected
harbours are provided with breakwaters and docks;
low-lying coasts, like those of Germany and Holland,
are subject to damage and flooding, and even loss of
life, by storm waves and high tides. Even on the
borders of the temperate zones, in the sub-tropical
beits, the winter cyclones of the westerlies occasion-
ally give rise to gales dangerous to shipping, as on
the coast of California and of Chile. When a strong
norte blows at Valparaiso, as it sometimes does in
the winter season, the vessels at anchor in the har-
bour are obliged to steam or to be towed out into the
open ocean, in order to avoid being blown ashore.
The vessels in this harbour are anchored at both bow
and stern, always facing the north.

The freezing of harbours at the termini of the north-
em railroads is a serious handicap in many countries.
Ice-breakers are used by Russia at Vladivostock; and
at Hango, Cronstadt, St. Petersburg, and other ports
on the Baltic. Germany’s northern ports suffer more
or less from the inconvenience of ice in winter. The
closing and opening to navigation of the grain ports
is a matter of the greatest importance in the world’s
  318

CLIMATE

grain trade. Canada is much handicapped by the
freezing of the St. Lawrence River. The trans-At-
lantic steamers change their sailings in winter to ports
that are accessible the year around. It has been pro-
posed to use an ice-breaker to keep the St. Lawrence
. open longer in the fall, and to break up the ice earlier
in the spring. The projected route from Canada to
Europe by way of Hudson’s Bay is obviously greatly
handicapped, if not rendered wholly impracticable,
by the winter ice. On the frozen Gulf of Finland a
considerable population of fishermen live on the ice
for several months; building houses for themselves
and abandoning for a time their usual occupation of
farming. On the frozen Neva, at St. Petersburg,
Street traffic goes on as on dry land; roads are made
over the ice; the streets are lighted; cars are run and
fairs are held.

Various Effects of the Weather. Effects of vary-
ing conditions of seasons and weather are observable
on all sides. The march of the seasons brings a suc-
cession of occupations. Thus farming, building,
painting, and outdoor work generally, are prominent
occupations in the warmer months in much of the
temperate zones. Lumbering, ice-cutting, and snow-
shovelling are distinctly occupations of the colder
months in the higher temperate latitudes in the United
States. In North America the harvesting of the
cereal crops calls for thousands of harvest hands
every summer, many of whom begin work in the south
and gradually work north into Canada, as the erop
  LIFE OF MAN IN TEMPERATE ZONES 319

comes later and later in the season with increasing
latitude. It is worth noting, in passing, that the
wheat harvest in Argentina usually begins late in
November in the north, and progresses southward
until February; in India, the harvest begins late
in February in the south and progresses northward
until early in May. The Indian and Argentine
wheat thus come to market in what is known as the
“ dead season ” in the other wheat countries, and
therefore have an important effect on prices.

Rainfall, insufficiënt in quantity or poorly dis-
tributed, leads to a failure of the crops, and one or
more years of erop failure may bring on a general
financial depression. Even political overturns, as
has been shown by Clayton for the United States,
have been brought about by deficiënt rainfall result-
ing in short crops, and a similar occurrence has not
been unknown in England. Political consequences
following erop failure have been traced to the oc-
currence of destructive hot winds in Kansas in 1890
and 1891, which gave the Populist Party national
importance. The financial value of one rain, at a
critical time of drought, can sometimes be approxi-
mately estimated. In Kansas and Nebraska, in 1900,
the value of one rain, lasting twenty-four hours,
in saving the com erop was put at over $80,000,000.
In Australia, the wheat erop, as has been shown by
Wills, is so closely related to rainfall that the ratio
of wheat in bushels per acre and the annual rainfall
in inches has been made out to be a remarkably
  320

CLIMATE

definite one. Similarly, the number of sheep per
square mile in Australia and in Argentina depends
very closely upon the rainfall, as has also been shown
by Wills. Unseasonable weather, at any time of year,
disturbs trade, which is very closely adjusted to the
normal weather conditions that may reasonably be
expected at any given time. Strikes have come to
an end because of the approach of cold weather, and
the prospects of suffering among the strikers; and
strikes have continued during great heat because of
the desire of the men to remain idle at such times.
Certain atmospheric conditions seem to be more
favourable than others to spontaneous combustion.
A dense London fog causes a heavy money loss in
the extra expense for gas and electric light, and in
the delay and damage to shipping. It has been esti-
mated that the cost of the gas bumed during one day
of an ordinary London fog approximates $15,000.
In New York city, the coming of a summer afternoon
thunder storm is reported by watchmen to the electric-
light power-houses, where the dynamos are set going
at full speed in order to supply the sudden demand
for extra light. In England, a good deal of business
is done by insurance companies in indemnifying
cricket clubs against loss in case an important game
happens to be interfered with by rain. So many
claims have arisen for the insurance money that it
has become customary in such cases to stipulate what
amount of rain shall fall in order that the claim shall
be paid. Insurance against damage by tornadoes,
  LIFE OF MAN IN TEMPERATE ZONES 321

lightning, hail, etc., illustr&tes the efforts of man to
guard against loss due to hostile features of his
weather and climate. The danger from tomadoes
on the western plains and prairies of the United
States has led to the building of underground “ dug-
outs,” or tornado cellars, which are somewhat akin to
the underground winter dwellings of some of the
natives tribes of northem Siberia, built as a protection
against winter storms. Such illustrations might be
multiplied indefinitely.
  CHAPTER X

THE LIFE OF MAN IN THE POLAR ZONES

General: A Minimum of Life—Culture—Subdivisions of the
Arctic Zone—Characteristics of the Tundra—The Reindeer—
Population and Occupations—Dwellings-^-Food and Clothing
—Iceland—The Polar Ice Cap: The Eskimo—Dwellings—
Food and Clothing—Travel and Transportation—Occupations
and Arts—Customs—Deserts of Sand and Deserts of Snow.

General: A Minimum of Life. The conditions of
life are necessarily very specialised under the peculiar
climatic features which are met with in the polar
zones. A “ monotony of cold ” replaces the “ mono-
tony of heat ” of the tropics, and instead of the spur
of the temperate zone seasons there is the depressing,
long, polar night. There is a minimum of life, but
life is more abundant in the north polar than the
south polar zone, and our knowledge is confined
chiefly to the former area. Plants are few and
lowly. In the farther north, only a few mosses and
lichens are found. Land animals which depend upon
plant food must therefore likewise be few in number.
Farming and cattle-raising cease. The reindeer,
which manages to find sufficiënt food in the lowly
Arctic vegetation, is the mainstay of many of the

[Prometheus]

323
  LIFE OF MAN IN POLAR ZONES

323

Arctic natives. But the reindeer must wander far
and wide in search of their moss. And many rein-
deer are needed to provide sustenance for one man.
Population is small and scattered. There are no
permanent settlements at all within the Antarctic
circle. And the few scattering islands in the im-
mediately surrounding, vast ocean area of the south
temperate zone are likewise uninhabited, except tem-
porarily by shipwrecked seamen or, lately, by mem-
bers of scientific parties. In the Arctic area human
settlements are fairly well scattered over a consider-
able range near the margins of the zone, but with
increasing latitude man is more and more rarely seen,
and finally he disappears entirely. There will never
be permanent human settlements at the poles. Life
is hard; a constant struggle for existence. Man seeks
his food by the chase on land, but chiefly in the sea.
Hardly a tenth of Greenland’s population could live
there without food from the sea. It has been well
said that with every degree of higher latitude man is
more forced to obtain his food supply from the sea.
He lives along, or near, the sea coast. The interior
lands, away from the sea, are deserted. Gales, and
snow, and cold, cause many deaths on land, and also
at sea, especially during fishing expeditions. It has
been estimated that about one twenty-fifth of the
population of Iceland perishes through being lost in
snowstorms, by freezing, or by drowning. In the
Faroe Islands about 8%, and in Greenland 7% of
the deaths have been reported as due to drowning
  324

CLIMATE

accidents of one sort or another. Rink has reported
of Greenland that most of the deaths occur at sea-
sons of most profitable sealing operations. Such dif-
ficult conditions of securing food make famine a likely
occurrence. If a successful hunting or sealing ex-
pedition follows a time of famine, the natives are
wont to indulge in the most revolting gorges. The
polar limit of permanent human settlements is be-
lieved by Bessels to be fixed, not by the decreasing
temperature, but by the increase in the length of the
night, which shortens the time during which man can
lay up food by hunting and fishing, to last him
through the polar night. The chase after land ani-
mals has helped to drive the latter farther and
farther north.

Culture. Under such adverse conditions it is not
hard to see that progress towards a higher culture is
not a reasonable expectation. There is no time in
which man may seek to develop and satisfy his higher
needs. Much truth is contained in Quyot’s some-
what picturesque statement: “ The man of the polar
regions is the beggar overwhelmed with suffering,
who, too happy if he but gain his daily bread, has no
leisure to think of anything more exalted.” Thus
the inhabitants of the north polar zone have not played
an important róle in the history of human progress.
A sparse population, not far advanced in culture or
in social relations, is inevitable under polar conditions
of climate. Yet the courage of the Eskimo in brav-
ing a raging sea in his kayak, or in facing a polar
  LIFE OF MAN IN POLAR ZONES

325

bear; the docility, industry, good nature, and other
attractive qualities of these people, which have been
described by more than one Arctic explorer; the in-
telligence and the patience with which they have
overcome the disadyantages of their environment;
the contributions made by Iceland to the world’s
literature—these and other similar considerations
make us pause bef ore passing too hasty a judgment.
Polar cold has not produced a distinct type of polar
man, but the general effect of the polar climate in
eliminating cattle-raising and agriculture—except to
a very limited extent, and in a few favoured localities
—from the list of human occupations; in tuming man
to the sea for his food; in magnifying the importance
of animal products, especially bones, in the produc-
tion of domestic utensils and weapons, is more or less
familiar among all Arctic tribes. There is no steady,
profitable occupation in which large numbers of men
may be regularly employed at good wages. Broad,
general analogies have been traced between the
northem Eskimos and the Fuegians of far southem
South America.

Subdixnsions of the Arctic Zone. For the purpose
of this consideration the north polar zone may con-
veniently be subdivided into (1) the lowlands of the
tundra, where the summer sun melts off the snow and
thaws out the upper few inches, or possibly few feet,
of the frozen ground, and (2) the permanently ice-
and snow-covered higher land, where the heat of the
summer does not remove the icy cover, and where
  326

CLIMATE

man, so far as he inhabits those districts at all, must
live along the margins of the ice-cap, near the sea. In
whichever portion of the Arctic man is found, his
general mode of life, his occupations, his dwellings,
food, clothing, arts, and so on, are rigidly controlled
by climate.

Characteristics of the Tundra. The low-lying
frozen desert along the shores of the Arctic Ocean
is known as the tundra. “ Barren Lands ” is the
name by which it goes in Canada. Through beits of
lowly, scattering trees, these lowlands gradually
merge on the south into the northernmost forests of
the temperate zone. To the north are etemal snow
and ice. Over the treeless tundra the soil is per-
manently frozen to a great depth, but the upper part
of the surface thaws out sufficiently during the sum-
mer to produce a great plain, more or less swampy,
which may become dry in places in midsummer.
Scattered dumps of trees, chiefly along the water-
courses, relieve the monotony of the dead-level here
and there, and during the summer the tundra is cov-
ered for a few weeks with lowly lichens, mosses, and
fems, or even with the green leaves of stunted berry-
bushes, whose roots are all near the surface. At this
season, also, brilliant flowers, insects, and birds give
life and charm to the scene. With their polar char-
acteristic of an extraordinarily rapid growth, under
the summer sun, the plants of the tundra awaken as
if hy magie. The summer is in striking contrast
with the winter, when these great plains are frozen
  LIFE OF MAN IN POLAR ZONES

327

solid, rivers and all, under a broad sheet of snow.

Joumeys by dog or reindeer sledge, or on skis, can
be made in any direction, regardless of the presence
of water or land beneath the snows, the routes to be
followed being accurately indicated by means of
landmarks. Thus in the Yukon country of Alaska,
as long as the rivers remain frozen, dog-sledges are
used in the interior to carry the mails and other
freight. This is much more expensive than the sum-
mer transportation by boat. When the snow is in
good condition, the natives can travel at the rate of
fourteen or fifteen miles an hour on skis. In spring
and early summer, when the upper portions of north-
ward flowing rivers melt, while the lower portions are
still frozen, floods are frequent over the lowlands. In
the transition season, when the rivers are not frozen
and the ground is not snow-covered, travel is usually
difficult or impossible. In the month of October, in
northem Russia, for example, the govemment mail
service is discontinued, labour contracts are off, and
the keepers of stages are freed from their usual obli-
gations. The fact that her northem ports are ice-
bound in winter is a serious handicap to Russia. This
was one of the principal reasons for her desire to se-
cure an ice-free port on the Pacific, Vladivostock, the
original terminus of the trans-Siberian Railroad,
being also ice-bound in winter. This led to the ac-
quisition of Port Arthur, and eventually to the war
with Japan. An open port would be an immense
gain for Russia, which has heen much handicapped
  328

CLIMATE

in training her sailors by the freezing of the Baltic
harbours in winter.

The Reindeer. The reindeer in Eurasia and the
caribou in North America are the most important ani-
mals of the tundra. They feed on lichens and mosses,
or stunted shrubs. The reindeer is wonderfully
adapted to the natural conditions under which it
lives. With wide hoofs, well-fitted for travel over
the snow, it moves very swiftly. Able to endure
great cold, it scrapes through the snow in winter to
find the reindeer moss on which it feeds. It migrates
northward in summer and southward to the forests
in winter, in search of food. The reindeer has been
partly trained as a domestic animal by the natives of
the tundra. To them, the reindeer is of the utmost
importance: a man’s wealth is rated according to the
number of these animals in his possession, and their
loss, by reason of famine or disease, usually means
that the owners are reduced to poverty. The rein-
deer supplies milk and flesh for food; it is an excel-
lent draught animal; its skin, and sinews, and bones
furnish material for clothing, tents, and utensils and
weapons of all sorts.

Population and Occupation. The scattered nom-
adic tribes of the tundra, a semi-pastoral and semi-
hunting population, wander about with their reindeer
over the vast stretches of the tundra, stopping wher-
ever the animals find food; having no settled abode;
making little progress in the cultivation of the higher
arts. Population is inevitably sparse, and will so re-
  LIFE OF MAN IN POLAR ZONES

329

main. The Lapps; the Eskimos, along the borders
of the Arctic Ocean; the Samoyads, Yakuts, Ostyaks,
Tunguses—all have a common mode of life. Hunt-
ers and fishermen by force of circumstances, they
can never become farmers. In winter» they hunt for
small fur-bearing animals or for larger game along
the borders of the southem forests. In summer, they
fish in the rivers or along the shores, storing away
food for the winter. They are always on the move.
Some of the tribes live along the forest borders in
the winter, for the saké of the shelter there provided.
The men procure food and make the needed imple-
ments and weapons. The women prepare the food
and clothing; watch the reindeer; collect berries in
summer; dry the fish; and even take charge, among
the Samoyads and Ostyaks, for example, of setting
up and taking down the tents, in order that the men
may have more time for the chase. The ill, the weak,
and the aged receive little attention.

Dwellings. The inhabitants of the tundra protect
themselves against the inclemencies of the weather in
summer by means of portable tents made of skins or
bark, supported by poles. In winter, the structure
is often more substantial, having more coverings or
being made of turf, or, in the case of some of the
Lapps, even of snow. Where timber is scarce, far
from forests, the Samoyads and Ostyaks consider
their tent-poles very valuable property, and carry
them along with the greatest care. The tribes who
live nearer the forests do not take the trouble to
  330

CLIMATE

transport the tent-poles when they move. In the
far north, away from the forests, driftwood is an im-
portant source of lumber supply. The furnishings
are very simple and easily moved when tents are
struck. Furs and skins are the principal articles of
trade among the inhabitants of the tundra.

Food and Clothing. The natural food is obtained
chiefly from the reindeer and other land animals and
wild fowl, whose flesh is often eaten raw. Reindeer
milk, fish, berries, and a little other vegetable food,
are occasionally added to the monotonous and unat-
tractive diet list, as is fresh or dried blood. Trade
with the neighbouring, more highly civilised people
on the south gives tea and coffee, tobacco, and other
articles of food. In northem Alaska caribou, bear,
salmon, rabbits, grouse, and ptarmigan make up the
principal food of the natives.

The clothing of the tundra tribes shows climatic
control in the character and in the simplicity of the
materials used. Furs and skins are universally em-
ployed. The Samoyads, Tunguses, and others often
ornament their furs with bands of brightly coloured
stuffs, when these can be secured. Mittens, caps,
and boots of fur are essential for protection against
the winter cold. Implements of the chase and do-
mestic utensils are ingeniously made of wood, when
available, or of the skin, sinews, and bones of the
reindeer. Needles and spoons are commonly made
of bone; for thread, gut is used. It is worth noting
that the fossil elephants found frozen in the gravelly
  LIFE OF MAN IN POLAR ZONES

331

river banks of the Siberian tundras have, ages later,
furnished ivory for the Chinese to fashion into their
delicate and beautiful carvings.

Iceland. Although outside of the Arctic circle,
Iceland is within the polar zone according to Supan’s
classification. Its climatic conditions are, however,
peculiar on account of its being an island, exposed to
the tempering influence of the warm Atlantic waters.
Favoured as it is, the climate is unsuitable for grain,
breadstuffs and other articles of food being imported.
Sheep, cattle, and horses are raised, and fish, feathers,
skins, horses, wool, tallow, and other local products
are exported. The summer is the natural time for
travel, by land or water, and for this reason, the
judicial assemblies have in the past been held in that
season. The natives of Iceland, although much
handicapped, have played their part in the world’s
progress, as enterprising sailors and discoverers, and
have developed a literature.

The Polar Ice-Cap: The Eskimo. The polar peo-
ple par excellence, the Eskimos, live characteristically
on the margins of the Arctic ice-cap, beyond the
tundra, along the shores of the Arctic seas. The
Eskimo, in common with other Arctic natives, must
secure his food almost wholly from the sea. When
he needs to travel to any distance for food, he moves
his dwelling. He is necessarily nomadic in his
habits. His existence is in many ways not unlike
that of the hunting tribes of the equatorial forests.

Dwellings. The rode but substantial dome-
  832

CLIMATE

shaped ice or snow hut (igloo) of the Eskimo fum-
ishes one of the most striking illustrations of the
climatic control over human dwellings. Built low,
and entered by a low passageway, the doorway may
be closed with a block of ice or snow, and thus cold
and drifting snow and prowling animals are kept
out. The igloo» are fumished with the simplest
utensils—a “ stove ” or lamp to give heat and light,
with blubber for fuel and oil, and dried moss for a
wiek; a dish for melting ice for drinking purposes, and
for heating the seal or other meat. A clear sheet of
ice, made air-tight by having water poured over it, not
infrequently does duty as a window as effectively as
a pane of glass, and is even preferred to glass. These
snow huts are carefully built, as pointed out by
Woeikof, not of freshly-fallen snow, but of snow well-
compacted by successive storms and winds. The
snow becomes dense by this means, and not by being
successively melted and frozen, as in a névé. In
the drier parts of Greenland, simple earth or stone
houses are also used, and in the larger towns wooden
houses, built of imported lumber, are the ordinary
residences of the inhabitants. The snow igloo is the
common type of the more permanent winter dwell-
ing. In summer, when these huts may be damp
with melting snow, the nomadic Eskimo travels with
tents made of skins, sewed with animal sinews or
strips of leather, and set up with tusks or bones.
Settlements, established during wanderings in search
of good hunting and fishing grounds, may fre-
  LIFE OF MAN IN POLAR ZONEB

333

quently be occupied and abandoned several times, and
the ruins of abandoned settlements north of the
present limits of human habitations may probably
often be thus explained. Even in winter, if the
food supply gives out, changes of residence are not
uncommon.

Food and Clothing. The clothing of the Eskimo
is made of skins of the reindeer, seal, or bëar, or óf
birds, wom almost in their natural state. As a pro-
tection against the cold, the face is often smeared
with fat. Food consists chiefly, or wholly, of heat-
producing materials, such as bear or seal meat, and
blubber from seal, walrus, or whale, eaten raw or
barely heated through. Any surplus food is usually
well preserved by the cold.

Travel and Transportation. The need of quick
travel, over great distances on land, in search of food,
makes the dog-sledge an indispensable possession of
the Eskimo. The dog, living on animal food, can
travel farther north-than the reindeer, and is the typi-
cal polar draught-animal beyond the reindeer coun-
try. The dog-sledge has spread the Eskimo far and
wide over the Arctic zone. Conditions are not always
equally favourable for sledging. Sometimes the
runners are covered with ice to make them smoother
and to prevent their sinking into the snow. In Lab-
rador, the winter storms which sweep off the loose
snow and leave the surface hard and smooth are wel-
comed as giving the best conditions for sledging.

Occupations and Arts. Hunting and fishing,
  334

CLIMATE

training the dogs, and making kayaka, sledges, weap-
ons, and utensils are the chief occupations of the men,
while the women make the clothing and chew the
skins to soften them. The Eskimo displays the
greatest mechanical skill and ingenuity in fashioning
all his tools and utensils. As trees do not grow in his
country, wood is so scarce that every bit of it is used,
small pieces even being bound together with leathem
thongs to make the handles of knives and harpoons,
and the like. Every piece of driftwood is a precious
possession, more valuable often than iron. Drift-
wood plays an important part in the history and laws
of Iceland, and Nansen says that the driftwood “ car-
ried down by the polar current along the east coast of
Greenland and up the west coast is . . . essential
to the existence of the Greenland Eskimo.” Wood
and iron are used instead of bone and skins. The
utensils of Arctic natives show at once whether or not
they have had access to supplies of driftwood. It has
been well said that where driftwood is found undis-
turbed this is good evidence that there are no Eski-
mos in the vicinity. The distribution of man thus
depends largely on the course taken by the driftwood.
The skill of the Eskimo is well shown in his construc-
tion of the kayak, made of skins sewn together and
stretched over a framework, a marvel of lightness, in-
destructibility, and portability, easily righted if over-
turned, which fits the boatman as if he and his boat
were one. Needles and thimbles are made of bone;
animal fibres are used for thread; narwhal tusks serve
  LIFE OF MAN IN POLAR ZONES

as tent-pegs. The Eskimo can make or mend any-
thing that he uses. Nothing is wasted. The Eski-
mos are naturally expert sailors, because of their life
on the sea. In towing their catches to land, they
make use of inflated bladders or skins.

Customs. The lack of water, and the cold, com-
bine to make personal cleanliness difficult, and the
people are characteristically very dirty. The winter,
when the Eskimos are living in their more permanent
huts, is the time for social visiting, and then they
travel for miles in the family sledges to visit their
friends. Marriages take place at an early age,
especially among the women, and the return of the
sun after the long winter has a stimulating effect on
the animal passions which leads to sexual excesses of
all kinds.1

[Prometheus]

Deserts of Sand and Deserts of Snow. The hot
deserts of sand near the equator and the frozen des-
erts of snow near the pole are singularly alike in many
ways in relation to man. Both alike repel him. Both
are largely or wholly destitute of vegetation, of wood,
and of water. The grey or yellow desolate waste of
the sand desert is matched by the monotonous white
surface of the snow desert. There are no opportuni-
ties for accumulating wealth in either. Travel is dif-
ficult in both. In one, the camel is the typical beast
of burden; in the other, the reindeer and the dog are
man’s most useful possessions. The monotonous

1Dr. P. A. Cook: “ Some Physiological Effects of Arctic Cold,
Darkness and Light,” Med. Ree., June 12, 1897, pp. 833-836.
  336

CLIMATE

heat and glare and silence of the sand desert find their
counterpart in the cold and glare and silence of the
snow desert. The air is generally clear in both, ex-
cept for the dust over the sand desert and the ice-
needles in the air of the snow desert. In both deserts
man in very limited in his food supply; in the Sahara,
the date, and in Greenland, the seal, are typical staple
articles of diet. The aridity in one, the cold in the
other, are man’s great enemies. The inhabitants of
both deserts are nomadic. Settlements of some per-
manency are found in oases or along the edges of the
sand desert where there is water; similarly, the natives
of the far north live along the edges of the ice
desert, where they can best find their food. The
sand deserts are deserts because they are and. The
snow deserts are deserts because they are cold.
Denudation of exposed rocks in both types of desert
is largely due to the action of wind, for running
water is seldom found. The dust of disintegration
is carried away by the winds, and sand-blasting has
been reported of the antarctic desert as well as of
the Sahara. The polar deserts are perhaps on the
whole better suited to life than the sand deserts, for
the former do supply water from melted snow and
ice, and over the tundra portion of the frozen desert
there is an abundance of water in the rivers in sum-
mer, with moss, berries, and other vegetation, as well
as animal food. Man has, however, a harder strug-
gle to protect himself against the cold than against
the heat. for he needs more clothing, and better shel-
  LIFE OF MAN IN POLAR ZONES

337

ter, and fire. In both deserts life is isolated and
primitive. The sand desert is crossed by caravans
and trade routes between the more populous lands on
either side, and the people of these deserts have more
contact with civilisation than do most of the natives
of the far north.
  CHAPTER XI

CHANGES OP CLIMATE

Popular Belief in Climatic Change—Evidence of Climatic Changes
Within Historie Times—What Meteorological Records Show
—Why the Popular Belief in Climatic Changes is Untrust-
worthy—Value of Evidence Concerning Changes of Climate—
Periodic OBcillations of Climate: The Sun-spot Period—Brück-
ner's 35-Year Cycle—Climatic Cycles of Longer Period—
Geological Changes in Climate—Condusion.

Popular Belief in Climatic Change. Belief in a
change in the climate of one’s place of residence,
within a few generations, and even within the mem-
ory of living men, is widespread. It is confined to
no special region or people. It finds support among
the most intelligent as well as among the uneducated.
Here it may be the view that the climate is growing
milder; there, that the winters are becoming more
severe; here, that there is increasing aridity; there,
that the rainfall is greater. Whenever a season
attracts attention because of weather conditions
which seem in any way unusual, this ‘belief is
strengthened. This popular impression has often
found support in the facts of distribution, or the
dates of flowering, or ripening, of certain cereals or
fruits. It is asserted that because grapes, or com,

338
  CHANGES OF CLIMATE

339

or olives, for example, are now no longer grown in
parts of Europe where their cultivation was once
an important occupation, we must conclude that
the climate has changed from a favourable to an
unfavourable one.

Evidences of Climatic Changes within Historie
Times. Evidence is constantly being brought for-
ward of apparent climatic variations of greater or
less amount which are now going on. Such reports,
largely those of travellers or explorers in little-known
regions, are usually based on fluctuations in the ex-
tent of inland lakes; on the discovery of abandoned
dwelling sites, the ruins of aqueducts and irrigating
canals, and the like. Thus we have accounts of a
gradual desiccation which seems to have been going
on over a large region in central Asia, during histori-
cal times. In eastern Turkestan the lakes have been
reported as drying up, Lake Balkash falling one
metre in about fifteen years, and Lake Alakul gradu-
ally becoming a salt deposit. In his work on Turkes-
tan, Muschketoff gives numerous examples of
Progressive desiccation, and Rossikoff speaks of the
drying up of the lakes on the northem side of the
Caucasus. The same thing is reported of lakes in
the Pamir. Prince Kropotkin believes that the desic-
cation of central Asia in the past drove the inhabit-
ants out onto the lowlands, producing a migration
of the lowland peoples and thus bringing on the in-
vasions of Europe during the first centuries of our
era. In his recent work on the basin of eastern
  340

CLIMATE

Persia, Transcaspia, and Turkestan, Huntington be-
lieves that, so far as it can be made out, the history
of these countries indicate* a gradual desiccation from
early historical times down to the present day. His
study of climatic changes in that region is one of the
most thorough ever made, for the evidences of archae-
ology, of tradition, of history, and of physiography
have been carefully matched and found to accord in a
very striking manner. Evidence has heen found of
the abandonment of successive village sites as the in-
habitants moved farther upstream in search of more
water, and patches of dead jungle show that vegeta-
tion once flourished where aridity now renders plant
growth impossible.

In northem Africa, certain ancient historical re-
cords have been taken by different writers to indicate
a general decrease of rainfall during the last 8000
years or more, the remains of cities and the rains of
irrigating works pointing to a larger population and
a greater water supply formerly than at present.
The presence of certain animals, now no longer found
there, is implied by ancient records, and from this
fact also, a change of climate is inferred. In his Cross-
ing of the Sahara between Algeria and the Niger,
Gautier found evidence of a former large population.
A gradual desiccation of the region is, therefore, be-
lieved to have taken place, but to-day the equatorial
rain-belt seems to be again advancing farther north,
giving an increased rainfall. Gautier divides the
history here into three periods: (1) dense population;
  CHANGES OF CLIMATE

341

(2) aridity; and (3) the present change to steppe
character.

Farther south, several lakes have been reported as
decreasing in size, e. g., Chad, Ngami, and Victoria;
and wells and springs as running dry. In the Lake
Chad district, Chevalier reports the discovery of
vegetable and animal remains which indicate an in-
vasion of the Sudan by a Saharan climate. Neolithic
relics indicate the former presence there of prosper-
ous communities. Again, to note another instance,
it is often held that a steady decrease in rainfall has
taken place over Greece, Syria, and other eastern
Mediterranean lands, resulting in a gradual and in-
evitable deterioration and decay of their people.
These examples might be multiplied, for reports of
climatic changes of one kind or another are numerous
from many parts of the globe.

What.Meteorological Records Show. As concerns
the popular impression regarding change of climate,
it is clear at the start that no definite answer can be
given on the basis of tradition, or of general impres-
sion, or even of the memory of the “oldest inhabi-
tant.” Human memories are very untrustworthy,
and there are many reasons for their being particu-
larly untrustworthy in matters of this kind. The only
answer of real value must be based on what the in-
strumental records of temperature, and of rain and
snowfall show. Accurate instruments, properly ex-
posed and carefully read, do not lie; do not forget;
are not prejudiced. When such instrumental records,
  342

CLIMATE

scattered though they are, and difficult as it is to
draw general condusions from them, are carefully
examined, from the time when they were first kept,
which in a few cases goes back about one hundred and
fifty years, there is found no evidence of any progres- ‘
sive change in temperature, or in the amount of rain
and snow. Apparent signs of a permanent increase
or decrease in one or another element have been fairly
easy to explain as due to the method of exposing the
thermometer, or of setting up the rain-gauge. Little
care was formerly taken in the construction and loca-
tion of meteorological instruments. They were usu-
ally in cities, and as these cities grew, the temperature
of the air was somewhat affected. The rain-gauges
were poorly exposed on roofs or in court-yards. The
building of a fence or a wall near the thermometer,
or the growth of a tree over a rain-gauge, is
enough, in many cases, to explain any observed
change in the mean temperature or rainfall. Even
when the most accurate instrumental records are
available, care must be taken to interpret them cor-
rectly. Thus, if a rainfall or snowfall record of sev-
eral years at some station indicates an apparent
increase or decrease in the amount of predpitation,
it does not necessarily follow that this means a per-
manent, Progressive change in climate, which is to
continue indefinitely. It may mean simply that there
have been a few years of somewhat more predpita-
tion, and that a period of somewhat less precipitation
is to follow.
  CHANGES OF CLIMATE

343

For the United States, Schott, some twenty years
ago, made a careful study of all the older records of
temperature and rainfall, including snow, from
Maine to California, and found nothing which led to
the view of a Progressive change in any one direc-
tion. There was evidence of slight variations of
temperature, occurring with the same characteristics
and with considerable uniformity over large areas.
These variations have the characteristics of irregular
waves, representing slightly warmer and slightly
cooler periods, but during the fluctuations the tem-
perature differed by only a degree or two on one side
or the other of the mean. Obviously, this is too
slight a range to be of any general or practical inter-
est, and in any case, these oscillations give no evidence
of a continuous change toward a warmer or a cooler
climate. Schott found that these waves of higher
and lower temperature followed one another at inter-
vals of about twenty-two years on the Atlantic coast.
In the interior, the intervals were about seven years.
The records of the closing of rivers to navigation, the
Hudson, for example, show no permanent change in
the dates for the last hundred years or so.

It has been well pointed out that if a list were care-
fully compiled of heavy snowstorms, of droughts, of
floods, of severe cold, of mild winters, of heavy rains,
and of other similar meteorological phenomena, for
one of the early-settled sections of the United States,
beginning with the date of the first white settlements
and extending down to the present day, we should
  344

CLIMATE

have the following situation: Dividing this list into
halves, each division containing an equal number of
years, it would be found, speaking in general terms,
that for every mild winter in the first half, there would
be a mild winter in the second; for every long-
continued drought in the first division, there would
be a similar drought in the second; for every “old-
fashioned ” winter in the first group, there would be
an “ old-fashioned ” winter in the second. And so
on, through the list. In other words, weather and
climate have not changed from the time of the land-
ing of the earliest pilgrims on the inhospitable shores
of New England down to the present day.

Why the Popular Belief in Climatic Changes. is
Untrustworthy. Why is the popular belief in a
change of climate so widespread and so firmly fixed,
when instrumental records all go to show that this
belief is erroneous? It is not easy to answer this
question satisfactorily, but several possible explana-
tions may be given. The trouble arises chiefly from
the fact that we place absolute trust in our memories,
and attempt to judge such subtle things as climatic
changes on the basis of these memories, which are at
best short, defective, and in the highest degree un-
trustworthy. We are likely to exaggerate past
events; to remember a few exceptional seasons which,
for one reason or another, made a deep impression
on us, and we thus very much overrate some special
event. To make use of an illustration given by an-
other, individual severe winters which, as they occur,
  CHANGES OF CLIMATE

345

may be some years apart, seem, when looked back
upon from a distance of several years later, to have
been close together. It is much as in the case of the
telegraph poles along a railroad track. When we
are near the individual poles, they seem fairly far
apart, but when we look down the track, the poles
seem to stand close together. The difference in the
impressions made upon youthful and adult minds
may account for part of this misconception regard-
ing changes of climate. To a youthful mind a heavy
snowstorm is a memorahle thing. It makes a deep
impression, which lasts long and which, in later years,
when snowstorms are just as heavy, seems to dwarf
the recent storms in comparison with the older. The
same is true regarding heavy rains, or floods, or
droughts.

Changes of residence may account for some of the
prevailing ideas about climate. One who was
brought up as a child in the country, where snow
drifts deep and where roads are not quickly broken
out, and who later removes to a city, where the tem-
peratures are slightly higher, where the houses are
warmer, and where the snow is quickly removed from
the streets, naturally thinks that the winters are
milder and less snowy than when he was a boy.
Similarly, a change of residence from a hill to a val-
ley, or vice versa, or from the coast to the interior,
may easily give the impression of a changing climate.
Even in cases where individuals have kept a record of
thermometer readings during a long series of years,
  346

CLIMATE

and are sure that the temperatures are not as low
or as high as they used to be, or who are convinced
that the rainfall is lighter or heavier than it was some
years before, the chances are that the location of the
thermometer, or the exposure of the rain gauge, has
been changed sufBciently to account for any observed
difference in the readings.

Value of Evidence Conceming Change» of CU-
mate. The body of facts which has been adduced as
evidence of Progressive changes of climate within his-
torical times is not yet sufliciently large and complete
to warrant any general correlation and study of these
facts as a whole, especially from the point of view of
possible causation. But there are certain considera-
tions which should be bome in mind in dealing with
this evidence, certain corrections, so to speak, which
should be made for possible Controls other than cli-
matic, before condusions are reached in favour of
climatic changes. In the first place, it has been noted
above that changes in the distribution of certain
fruits and cereals, and in the dates of the harvest,
have often been accepted as undoubted evidence of
changes in climate. Such a conclusion is by no means
inevitable, for it can easily be shown that many
changes in the districts of cultivation of various
crops naturally result from the fact that grapes, or
com, or olives, are in time found to be more profitably
grown, or more easily prepared for market in another
locality. Thus the area covered by vineyards in
northem Europe has been very much restricted in the
  CHANGES OF CLIMATE

347

last few hundred years, because grapes can be raised
better and cheaper farther south. Cultivation in one
district is abandoned when it is more profitable to im-
port the product from another. It is easy, but not
right, to conclude that the climate of the districts first
used has changed. Wheat was formerly more gen-
erally cultivated far north in the British Isles than is
the case at present, because it was profitable. Later,
after a readjustment of the taxes on breadstuffs, it
was no longer profitable to grow cereals in that
region, and the area thus cultivated diminished.
Changes in the facility, or in the cost, of importation
of certain articles of food from a distance are speedily
followed by changes in the districts over which these
same crops are grown. Similarly, the introduction of
some new plant, better suited to the local soil and
climate, will result in the replacement of the older pro-
duct by the newer. In France, Angot has made a
careful compilation of the dates of the vintage from
the fourteenth century down to the present time, and
finds no support for the view so commonly held there
that the climate has changed for the worse. The dates
of the vintage do, however, indicate some oscillation
of the climatic elements. In the period 1775-1875,
the average date of the grape harvest in Aubonne was
about ten days earlier than during the preceding cen-
tury, but three days later than during the second
century preceding. At the present time, the average
date of the grape harvest in Aubonne is exactly the
same as at the close of the sixteenth century. After
  348

CLIMATE

a careful study of the conditions of the date tree, from
the fourth century b. c., Eginitis concludes that the
climate of the eastern portion of the Mediterranean
basin has not changed appreciably during twenty-
three centuries. In China, a comparison of the
ancient and present-day conditions of cultivation, of
silk production, and of bird migrations, has led Biot
to a similar conclusion. In some cases, the reported
cultivation of cereals, or other soil products, in cer-
tain climates at present unfavourable has been shown
to be purely a myth; as in the case of a supposed
extended cereal cultivation in Iceland in former
times.

Secondly, a good many of the reports by explorers
from little-known regions are contradictory. Thus
Lake Aral, which was diminishing in area for many
years, is recently reported by Berg as increasing.
Lake Balkash, which was rapidly drying up, has also
begun to fill again. Partly submerged trees are
noted as having been seen by Berg, who in June,
1902, found the lake waters quite fresh. As the lake
has no outlet, this is an interesting fact. In Africa,
Lake Victoria, which, it was generally agreed, was
sinking in the period 1878-1892, has since shown a
tendency to rise. Lake Rukwa, east of Tanganyika,
has risen within the last few years. Reports that the
Sea of Azov is drying up have been explained as due
to a silting up of the lake. Lake Chad is very prob-
ably subject to oscillations, sometimes spreading be-
yond its usual limits as the result of several years of
  CHANGES OF CLIMATE

349

[Prometheus]

heavy rainfall. Such diverse reports show the need
of caution in jumping at condusions of climatic
change. An increased use of water for irrigation
may cause the level of water in a lake to fall, as has
been the case to some extent in Great Salt Lake.
Periodic oscillations, giving higher and then lower
water, do not indicate Progressive change in one di-
rection. Many writers have thus seen a law in what
was really a chance coincidence. Partsch believes
that the ancient settlements on the interior lakes of
northern Africa show that these lakes contained no
more water formerly than they do now. Some have
claimed that the supposed desiccation of the climate
of northem Africa resulted from deforestation, but
no certain evidence exists of the presence or destruc-
tion of such forests, and if deforestation did take
place, no considerable change of climate could have
resulted.

Thirdly, where a Progressive desiccation seems to
have taken place, the question should be asked, Is less
rain actually falling, or have the inhabitants less
capacity, less energy, less ability, than formerly? Is
the change from a once cultivated area to a barren
expanse the result of decreasing rainfall, or of the
emigration of the former inhabitants to other lands?
The difference between a country formerly well irri-
gated and fertile, and a present-day, sandy, inhospit-
able waste may be the result of a former compulsion
of the people, by a strong goveming power, to till
the soil and to irrigate, while now, without that com-
  350

CLIMATE

pulsion, no attempt is made to keep up the work.
The incapacity of the present inhabitants, or of their
rulers, is often responsible for effects which have been
interpreted as due to climatic change. Where irri-
gation is now being again resorted to in parts of the
districts about the Mediterranean which have been
reported to be drying up, there the former fruitful-
ness is returning. In Asia Minor, for example, the
rule of the Turk brought a change from a settled
and civilised to a semi-nomadic state of society; in-
dustries died out, the land to a great extent passed
out of cultivation; irrigation works were destroyed.
Recently the building of railroads and of roads has
been followed by a revival of industry and of agricul-
ture, and by the reclamation of waste land. In many
cases the reports of increasing dryness really concern
only the decrease in the water supply from rivers
and springs, and it is well known that a change in the
cultivation of the soil, or in the extent of the forests,
may bring about marked changes in the flow of
springs and rivers without any essential change in
the actual amount of rainfall. These conditions are
particularly likely to occur in regions where there is
no snow covering, and where the rain falls in a few
months only. In Tripoli, the Vicomte de Mathui-
sieulx finds that the Latin texts and monuments
seem to establish the fact that, so far as atmospheric
conditions and soil are concemed, everything is just
as it was in ancient times. The present condition of
the country is ascribed to the idleness of the Arabs,
  CHANGES OF CLIMATE

351

who have allowed wells to become choked and vegeta-
tion to perish. “ In a -country so little favoured by
nature, the first requisite is a diligent and hard-work-
ing population. The Romans took several centuries
to make the land productive by damming rivers and
sinking wells in the wady beds.” In an arid region,
man has a hard task if he is to overcome the climatic
difficulties of his situation. Irrigation; the choiceof
suitable crops adapted to arid conditions; steady,
thoughtful work, are absolutely essential. To a large
extent, an intelligent man may thus overcome many
of the obstacles which nature has put in his way. On
the other hand, a region of deficiënt rainfall, once
thickly settled and prosperous, may readily become
an apparently hopeless desert, even without the in-
tervention of war and pestilence, if man allows the
climate to master him.

Lastly, a region whose normal rainfall is at best
barely sufficiënt for man’s needs, may be abandoned
by its inhabitants during a few years of deficiënt pre-
cipitation, and not again occupied even when, a few
years later, normal or excessive rainfall occurs. It
is a very striking fact that the districts from which
comes most of the evidence of changes of climate
within historical times are sub-tropical or sub-equa-
torial, i. e., they are in just those latitudes in which
a slightly greater or a slightly less migration of the
rain-bringing conditions easily produces a very con-
siderable increase or decrease in the annual rainfall.

It is apparent, on examining the evidence thus far
  352

CLIMATE

at hand, that the fact of permanent, Progressive
changes in climate during historical times has not
yet been definitely established.

Periodic OscMatiom of Climate: Sunspot Period.
The discovery of a distinct eleven-year periodicity
in the magnetic phenomena of the earth, naturally
led to investigations of similar periods in meteorol-
ogy. Numerous and varied studies along this line,
extending back even into the seventeenth century,
but beginning actively about 1870, have been and
are still being prosecuted by a considerable number
of persons, and the literature on the subject has as-
sumed large proportions. The results, however,
have not been satisfactory. The problem is difficult
and obscure. It is natural to expect a relation of
this sort, and some relation certainly exists. But
the results have not come up to êxpectations. Fluctu-
ations in temperature and rainfall, occurring in an
eleven-year period, have been made out for certain
stations, but the variations are slight, and it is not
yet clear that they are sufficiently marked, uniform,
and persistent over large areas to make practical ap-
plication of the periodicity in forecasting possible.
In some cases, the relation to sunspot periodicity is
open to debate; in others, the results are
contradictory.

Koppen has brought forward evidence of a sunspot
period in the mean annual temperature, especially
in the tropics, the maximum temperatures coming
in the years of sunspot minima. The whole ampli-
  CHANGES OF CLIMATE

353

tude of the variation in the mean annual tempera-
tures, from sunspot minimum to sunspot maximum,
is, however, only 1.3° in the tropics, and a little less
than 1° in the extra-tropics. There are, however,
long periods during which there appears to be no in-
fluence, or at least, an obscure one, and the relation
before 1816 seems to have been opposite to that since
then. More recently Nordmann (for the years
1870-1900) has continued Köppen’s investigation,
using the mean annual temperatures of certain tropi-
cal stations, and finds that the mean temperatures
run parallel with the sunspot curve, but that the
minimum temperatures occur with the sunspot
maxima (amplitude 0.7°). This seems to contradict
the fact that the sun is hotter at a time of maximum
sunspots. The latter difficulty has been explained
on the ground that the rainfall and cloudiness, both
of which are at a maximum with the sunspot curve,
lower the temperature, especially in the tropics. It
is obvious that the condition of this matter is rather
confusing just at the present time, and that the rela-
tion of sunspots and terrestrial temperatures is not
wholly clear. The sunspots themselves are probably
not the immediate or sole control. “ There seems
little doubt,” says Sir Norman Lockyer, “that we
must look to the study of the solar prominences, not
only as the primary factors in the magnetic and at-
mospheric changes in our sun, but as the instigators
of the terrestrial variations.” These investigations,
however interesting and important they may be to
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CLIMATE

astronomers and physical meteorologists, are really
outside the field of climatology.

In 1872, Meldrum, then director of the meteoro-
logical observatory at Mauritius, first called attention
to a sunspot periodicity in rainfall and in the fre-
quency of tropical cyclones in the South Indian
Ocean. The latter are most numerous in years of
sunspot maxima, and decrease in frequency with the
approach of sunspot minima. Poëy later found a
similar relation in the case of the West Indian hurri-
canes. Meldrum's condusions regarding rainfall
were that, with few exceptions, there is more rain in
years of sunspot maxima. This is to he taken only
for means, and for a majority of stations, and is not
to be expected at all stations, or in every period. Hill
found it to be true of the Indian summer monsoon
rains that there seems to be an excess in the first half
of the cycle, after the sunspot maximum. The win-
ter rains of northem India, however, show the op-
posite relation; the minimum following, or coincid-
ing with, the sunspot maximum. Many studies
have been made of a possible relation between rain-
fall and the sunspot period, but the condusions are
not very definite, are sometimes contradictory, and do
not yet warrant any general, practical application
for purposes of forecasting the wet or dry character
of a coming year. Particular attention has been paid
to the sunspot cycle of rainfall in India, because of
the close relation between famines and the summer
monsoon rainfall in that country. In 1889, Blanford
  CHANQES OF CLIMATE

355

admitted that the rainfall of India as a whole did not
give evidence of the sunspot cycle in the records of
the twenty-two years preceding. More recently, the
Lockyers have studied the variations of rainfall in
the region surrounding the Indian Ocean in relation
to solar changes in temperature. They find that
India has two pulses of rainfall, one near the maxi-
mum and the other near the minimum of the sunspot
period. The famines of the last fifty years have oc-
curred in the intervals between these two pulses, and
these writers believe that if as much had been known
in 1886 as is now known, the probability of famines
at all the subsequent dates might have been foreseen.

Relations between the sunspot period and various
meteorological phenomena other than temperature,
rainfall, and tropical cyclones have been made the
subject of numerous investigations, but, on the whole,
the results are still too uncertain to be of any but a
theoretical value. Some promising condusions
seem, however, to have been reached in regard to
pressure variations, and their control over other cli-
matic elements.

Brückner’s Thirty-five-Year Cycle. Of more im-
portance than the results thus far reached for the
sunspot period are those which clearly establish a
somewhat longer period of slight fluctuations or
oscillations of climate, known as the Brückner cycle,
after Professor Brückner, of Beme, who has made a
careful investigation of the whole subject of climatic
changes and finds evidence of a thirty-five-year
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CLIMATE

periodicity in temperature and rainfall. Brückner
began with the long-period oscillations in the level
of the Caspian Sea. He then investigated the levels
of the rivers flowing into the Caspian, and next the
dates of the opening and closing of the rivers of the
Russian Empire, and finally extended his study over
a considerable part of the world, including data con-
cerning mean temperatures, rainfall, grape harvest,
severe winters, and the like. The dates of opening
and closing of Russian rivers go back in one case to
1559; the dates of rintage to the end of the fourteenth
century, and the records of severe winters to about
1000 a.d. In a cycle whose average length is thirty-
five years there comes a series of years which are
somewhat cooler and also more rainy, and then a
series of years which are somewhat warmer and drier.
Brückner has found that the price of grain averages
18 per cent. higher in the wetter lustrum than in the
drier. This thirty-five-year period is not to be
thought of as being a perfectly systematic recur-
rence, in exactly that term of years. The interval in
some cases is twenty years; in others, it is fifty. The
average interval between two cool and moist, or warm
and dry periods, is about thirty-five years. More-
over, not only the intervals, but the intensities of the
individual periods vary. The mean amplitude of the
temperature fluctuation, based on large numbers of
data, is a little less than 2°, which makes it greater
than that obtained by Koppen for the sunspot period,
and it is natural to expect it at a maximum in
  CHANQES OF CLIMATE

357

Continental climates. The fluctuations in rainfall,
also, are more marked in interiors than on coasts.
The general mean amplitude is 12 per cent., or, ex-
cluding exceptional districts, 24 per cent. In western
Siberia more than twice as much rain may fall in wet
as in dry periods. Regions whose normal rainfall is
small are thus most affected. In years of minimum
precipitation they may become uninhabitable, and
the population may be forced to move away, perhaps
never returning, and allowing towns and irrigating
works to fall to decay. Slight fluctuations in rain-
fall are most critical in regions having a normal
precipitation barely sufficiënt for agriculture. The
extent of land cultivated, and the returns of agricul-
ture here fluctuate directly with the temporary in-
crease or decrease of rainfall. A supplementary
study of the newer rainfall observations for Russia
and for the United States, as well as for certain sta-
tions in central Europe and eastern Siberia, has given
Brückner satisfactory conflrmation of his earlier
condusions in the fact that he finds a decrease of rain-
fall over these districts as a whole, beginning about
the middle of the decade 1880-90. The time of the
“boom” in western Kansas and Nebraska, and in
eastern Colorado, in the decade 1880-90, followed
one of Brückner’s wet periods, and the collapse of
the “boom” came when the drier period advanced.
Farmers who went out onto the high plains in the
years of slightly greater rainfall preceding the boom,
and who lost all their Capital, and more too, in the
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CLIMATE

vain attempt to raise their grain in the years which
followed, could with difficulty be convinced that the
climate of the plains had not permanently changed
for the worse. The impression left upon their
minds, and upon the mind of anyone who saw the
country later, was one of decreasing rainfall, unsuc-
cessful agriculture, and financial ruin. Within more
recent years, in this same region of Kansas, with a
somewhat increased rainfall during a wetter cycle,
but without any permanent change to a wetter cli-
mate, the intelligent choice of cereals better adapted
to the soil and climate, and the rational use of the
available water supply, have wrought a wonderful
change in the aspect and economie value of the state,
The following table shows the characters and dates
of Brückner’s periods:

Warm

Dry

Cold

Wet

1746-1755

1756-1770

i73i-i745

1736-1755

1791-1805

1781-1805

1756-1790

1771-1780

1821-1835

1826-1840

1806-1820

1806-1825

1851-1870

1856-1870

1836-1850

1841-1855

1871-1885

1871-1885

Interesting confirmation of Brückner’s thirty-five-
year period has been found by Richter in the varia-
tions of the Swiss glaciers, but as these glaciers differ
in length, they do not all advance and retreat at the
same time. The advance is seen during the cold and
damp periods. Supan has pointed out that the
Brückner periods appear to hold good in the south
polar regions. And Hann’s study of the monthly
and annual means of rainfall at Padua (1725-1900),
Klagenfurt (1818-1900), and Milan (1764-1900)
  CHANGES OF CLIMATE

359

brings to light an altemation of wet and dry periods
in harmony with the thirty-five-year cycle. It should
be noted that Brückner has found certain districts
in which the phases and epochs of the climatic cycle
are exactly reversed. These exceptional districts are
almost altogether limited to marine climates. There
is thus a sort of compensation between oceans and
continents. The rainier periods on the continents
are accompanied by relatively low pressures, while
the pressures are high and the period dry over the
oceans, and vice versa. The cold and rainy periods
are also marked by a decrease in all pressure differ-
ences. It is obvious that changes in the general dis-
tribution of atmospheric pressures over extended
areas, of the great centres of high and low pressure,
are closely associated with fluctuations in tempera-
ture and rainfall. An oscillation of a few hundred
miles one way or another may mean the difference
between drought and plentiful rainfall over extended
areas. These changes in pressure distribution must
in some way be associated with changes in the gen-
eral circulation of the atmosphere, and these again
must depend upon some extemal controlling cause,
or causes. W. J. S. Lockyer has called attention to
the fact that there seems to be a periodicity of about
thirty-five years in solar activity, and that' this cor-
responds with the Brückner period. This longer
cycle, underlying the sunspot period, alters the time
of occurrence of the sunspot maxima in relation to
the preceding sunspot minima. He makes out
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CLIMATE

three periods in solar activity, of between three and
four years, about eleven, and about thirty-five years,
respeetively. These are related as 1:3:9.

It is clear that the existence of a thirty-five-year
period will account for many of the views that have
been advanced in favour of a Progressive change of
climate. A succession of a few years wetter or drier
than the normal is likely to lead to the conclusion
that the change is permanent. Accurate observations,
extending over as many years as possible, and dis-
cussed without prejudice, are necessary before any
condusions are drawn. Observations for one sta-
tion during the wetter part of a cycle should not be
compared with observations for another station dur-
ing the drier part of the same, or of another cycle.

Climatic Cycles of Longer Period. There are
evidences of longer climatic cycles than eleven or
thirty-five years. Brückner calls attention to the
fact that sometimes two of his periods seem to merge
into one. Richter shows much the same thing for the
Alpine gladers. James Geikie, in Scotland, has
brought forward evidence of several climatic changes
in post-glacial times. Blytt, in Norway and Sweden,
finds some botanical evidence of four great climatic
waves since the last glacial period. Brögger esti-
mates that a mean annual temperature between 8°
and 4° higher than the present was found in the Chris-
tiana Fjord in post-glacial time. Lorié, in Holland,
finds confirmation of Blytt’s views. Gradmann, on
botanical evidence, believes in a warmer climate in
  CHANGES OF CLIMATE

[Prometheus]

361

central Europe after the last ice age, and then a cooler
onet Clough concludes that a three-hundred-year
cycle exists in solar and terrestrial phenomena, the
thirty-six-year cycle being, as it were, superimposed
upon the longer one. Kingsmill reports a period-
icity of three hundred years in droughts and famines
in northem China. And so on. As yet, nothing
sufficiently definite to warrant discussion here has
been brought forward.

Geological Change» in Climate. Changes of cli-
mate in the geological past are known with absolute
certainty to have taken place; periods of glacial in-
vasions, as well as periods of more genial conditions.
The evidence and the causes of these changes have
been discussed and re-discussed, by writers almost
without number, and from all points of view.
Changes in the intensity of insolation; in the sun it-
self; in the conditions of the earth’s atmosphere; in
the astronomical relations of earth and sun; in the
distribution of land and water; in the position of
the earth’s axis; in the altitude of the land; in the
presence of volcanic dust—changes now in cosmic,
now in terrestrial conditions—have been suggested,
combatted, put forward again. None of these hypo-
theses has prevailed in preference to others. No
actual proof of the correctness of this or that theorv
has been brought forward. No general agreement
has been reached. Under these conditions, and in
view of the fact that practical climatology is con-
cerned with climatic changes, not of the geological
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CLIMATE

past but of the historical present, this portion of our
subject may be dismissed with this brief mention.

Conclusion. There is a widespj-ead popular belief
in permanent, Progressive changes of climate during
a generation or two. This belief is not supported by
the facts of meteorological record. Abundant evi-
dence has been adduced in favour of secular changes
of climate in historical times. Much of this is un-
trustworthy, contradictory, and has been interpreted
without sufficiënt regard to possible Controls other
than climatic change. Without denying the possi-
bility, or even the probability, of the establishment
of the fact of secular changes, there is as yet no suf-
ficiënt warrant for believing in considerable perma-
nent changes over large areas. Dufour, after a
thorough study of all available evidence, has con-
cluded that a change of climate has not been proved.
There are periodic oscillations of slight amount. An
eleven-year period has been made out, with more or
less certainty, for some of the meteorological ele-
ments, but it has been of no practical importance as
yet. A thirty-five-year period is less uncertain, but
is nevertheless of considerable irregularity, and can
not as yet be practically applied in forecasting.
Longer periods are suggested, but not surely estab-
lished. As to causes, variations in solar activity are
naturally receiving attention, and the results thus far
are promising. But climate is a great complex, and
complete and satisfactory explanations of all the facts
will be difficult, perhaps impossible, to reach. At
  CHANGES OF CLIMATE

363

present, indeed, the facts which call for explanation
are still in most cases but poorly determined, and the
processes at work are insufficiently understood.
Climate is not absolutely a constant. The pendulum
swings to the right, and to the left. And its swing
is as far to the right as to the left. Each generation
lives through a part of one, or two, or even three,
oscillations. A snap-shot view of these oscillations
makes them seem permanent. As Supan has well
said, it was formerly believed that climate changes
locally, but progressively and permanently. It is
now believed that oscillations of climate are limited
in time, but occur over wide areas. Finally, it is
clear that man, whether by reforestation or deforesta-
tion, by flooding a desert or by draining a swamp,
can produce no important or extended modifications
of natural climate. This is governed by factors be-
yond human control.