Influences of Geographic Environment Part 61

Where a broad, complex mountain system contracts to narrow compa.s.s, or is cut by deep reentrant valleys leading up to a single pa.s.s, the transmontane route here made by nature a.s.sumes great historical Importance. The double chain of the mighty Caucasus, from 120 to 150 miles wide and 750 miles long, stretches an almost insuperable barrier between the Black Sea and the Caspian. But nearly midway between these two seas it is constricted to only 60 miles by a geographical and geological gulf, which penetrates from the steppes of Russia almost to the heart of the system.[1224] This gulf forms the high valley of the Terek River, beyond whose headstream lies the Dariel defile (7503 feet or 2379 meters), which continues the natural depression across to the short southern slope. All the other pa.s.ses of the Caucasus are 3000 meters or more high, lie above snow line and are therefore open only in summer. The Dariel Pa.s.s alone is open all the year around.[1225] Here runs the great military road from Vladicaucas to Tiflis, which the Russians have built to control their turbulent mountaineer subjects; and here are located the Ossetes, the only people among the variegated tribes of the whole Caucasus who occupy both slopes. All the other tribes and languages are confined to one side or the other.[1226] Moreover, the Ossetes, occupying an exposed location in their highway habitat, lack the courage of the other mountaineers, and yielded without resistance to the Russians. In this respect they resemble the craven-spirited Kashmiri, whose mountain-walled vale forms a pa.s.sway from Central Asia down to the Punjab.

[Sidenote: Brenner route.]

The Pa.s.s of Dariel, owing to its situation in a r.e.t.a.r.ded Brenner corner of Asia, has never attained the historical importance which attaches to the deep saddle of the Brenner Pa.s.s (4470 feet) in the Central Alps.

Uniting the reentrant valleys of the Inn and Adige rivers only 2760 feet above the Inn's exit from the mountains upon the Bavarian plateau, it forms a low, continuous line of communication across the Central Alps.

The Brenner was the route of the Cimbri invading the Po Valley, and later of the Roman forces destined for frontier posts of the Empire on the upper Danube. In the Middle Ages it was the route for the armies of the German Emperors who came to make good their claim to Italy. By this road came the artists and artisans of the whole north country to learn the arts and crafts of beauty-loving Venice. From the Roman road-makers to the modern railroad engineer, with the concomitant civilization of each, the Brenner has seen the march of human progress.

[Sidenote: Pa.s.s of Belfort.]

Farther to the west, the wall of highlands stretching across southern Europe is interrupted by a deep groove formed by the mountain-flanked Rhone Valley and the Pa.s.s of Belfort, or Burgundian Gate, which lies between the Vosges and Jura system, and connects the Rhone road with the long rift valley of the middle Rhine. This pa.s.s, broad and low (350 meters or 1148 feet) marks the insignificant summit in the great historic route of travel between the Mediterranean and the North Sea, from the days of ancient Etruscan merchants to the present. This was the route of the invading Teuton hordes which the Roman Marius defeated at Aquae s.e.xtiae, and later, of the Germans under Ariovistus, whom Caesar defeated near the present Muhlhausen. Four centuries afterward came the Alamannians, Burgundians and other Teutonic stocks, who infused a tall blond element into the population of the Rhone Valley.[1227] The Pa.s.s of Belfort is the strategic key to Central Europe. Here Napoleon repeatedly fixed his military base for the invasion of Austria, and hither was directed one division of the German army in 1870 for the invasion of France. The gap is traversed to-day by a ca.n.a.l connecting the Doubs and the Rhine and by a railroad, just as formerly by the tracks of migrating barbarians.

[Sidenote: Mohawk route.]

The natural depression of the Mohawk Valley, only 445 feet (136 meters) above sea level, is the only decided break across the entire width of the long Appalachian system. This fact, together with its ready accessibility from the Hudson on the east and Lake Ontario on the west, lent it importance in the early history of the colonies, as well as in the later history of New York. It was an easy line of communication with the Great Lakes, and gave the colonists access to the fur trade of the Northwest, then in the hands of the French. So when French and English fought for supremacy in the New World, the Mohawk and Hudson valleys were their chief battleground; elsewhere the broad Appalachian barrier held them apart. Again in the Revolution, control of the Mohawk-Hudson route was the objective of the British armies mobilized on the Canadian frontier, because it alone would enable them to co-operate with the British fleet blockading the coast cities of the colonies. In the War of 1812, it was along this natural transmontane highway that supplies were forwarded to the remote frontier, to support Perry's fight for control of the Great Lakes. The war demonstrated the strategic necessity of a protected, wholly American line of water communication between the Hudson and our western frontier, while the commercial and political advantage was obvious. Hence a decade after the conclusion of the war, this depression was traced by the Erie Ca.n.a.l, through which pa.s.sed long lines of boats to build up the commercial greatness of New York City.

[Sidenote: Height in mountain barriers.]

Other structural features being the same, mountains are barriers also in proportion to their height; for, with few exceptions, the various anthropo-geographic effects of upheaved areas are intensified with increase of elevation. Old, worn-down mountains, like the Appalachians and the Ural, broad as they are, have been less effective obstacles than the towering crests of the Alps and Caucasus. The form of the elevation also counts. Easy slopes and flat or rounded summits make readier transit regions than high, thin ridges with escarpment-like flanks.

Mountains of plateau form, though reaching a great alt.i.tude, may be relatively hospitable to the historical movement and even have a regular nomadic population in summer. The central and western Tian Shan system is in reality a broad, high plateau, divided into a series of smoothly floored basins and gently rolling ridges lying at an elevation of 10,000 to 12,000 feet above the sea. Its pamirs or plains of thick gra.s.s, nourished by the relatively heavy precipitation of this high alt.i.tude, and forming in summer an island of verdure in the surrounding sea of sun-scorched waste, attract the pastoral nomads from all the bordering steppes and deserts.[1228] Thus it is a meeting place for a seasonal population, spa.r.s.e and evanescent, but its uplifted ma.s.s holds asunder the few sedentary peoples fringing its piedmont. The corrugated dome of the Pamir highland, whose valley floors lie at an elevation of 11,000 to 13,000 feet, draws to its summer pastures Kirghis shepherds from north, east and west; and their flocks in turn attract the raids of the marauding mountaineers occupying the Hunza Valley to the south. The Pamir, high but accessible, was a pa.s.sway in the tenth century for Chinese caravans bound from "Serica" or the "Land of Silk" to the Oxus River and the Caspian. Here Marco Polo and many travelers after him found fodder for their pack animals and food for themselves, because they could always purchase meat from the visiting shepherds. The possibilities of the Pamir as a transit region are apparent to Russia, who in 1886 annexed most of it to the government of Bukhara.

[Sidenote: Contrasted accessibility of opposite slopes.]

Mountains are seldom equally accessible from all sides. Rarely does the crest of a system divide it symmetrically. This means a steep, difficult approach to the summit from one direction, and a longer, more gradual, and hence easier ascent from the other. It means also in general a wide zone of habitation and food supply on the gentler slope, a better commissary and transport base whence to make the final ascent, whether in conquest, trade or ethnic growth. Mountain boundaries are therefore rarely by nature impartial. They do not umpire the great game of expansion fairly. They lower the bars to the advancing people on one side, and hold them relentlessly in place to the other. To the favored slope they give the strategic advantage of a swift and sudden descent beyond the summit down the opposite side. The political boundary of France along the watershed of the Vosges Mountains is backed by a long, gradual ascent from the Seine lowland and faces a sharp drop to the rift valley of the middle Rhine, Its boundary along the crest of the Alps from Mont Blanc to the Mediterranean brings over two-thirds of the upheaved area within the domain of France, and gives to that country great advantages of approach to the Alpine pa.s.ses at the expense of Italy. With the exception of the ill-matched conflict between the civilized Romans and the barbarian Gauls, it is a matter of history that from the days of Hannibal to Napoleon III, the campaigns over the Alps from the north have succeeded, while those from the steep-rimmed Po Valley have miscarried. The Brenner route favored alike the Cimbri hordes in 102 B.C. and later the medieval German Emperors invading Italy from the upper Danube. The drop from the Brenner Pa.s.s to Munich is 2800 feet; to Rovereto, an equally distant point on the Italian side, the road descends 3770 feet.

[Sidenote: Its ethnic effects.]

The inequality of slope has ethnic as well as political effects, especially where a lat.i.tudinal direction also makes a sharp contrast of climate on the two sides of the mountain system. Except in the Roman period, the southern face of the Alps has been an enclosing wall to the Italians. The southern cultivator penetrated its high but sunny valleys only when forced by poverty, while the harsh climate on the long northern slope effectively repelled him. On the other hand, Switzerland has overstepped the Alpine crest in the province of Ticino and thrust its political boundary in a long wedge down to the lowland of the Po near Como; and the Alpine race, spilling everywhere over the mountain rim into the inviting Po basin, has given to this lowland population a relatively broad skull, blond coloring and tall figure, sharply contrasted with the pure Mediterranean race beyond the crest of the Apennines.[1229]

The long northward slope of the Alps in Switzerland and Tyrol, and the easy western grade toward France, have enabled Germanic and Gallic influences of various kinds to permeate the mountains. A strong element of blond, long-headed Germans mingles in the population of the Aar and Rhine valleys up to the ice-capped ridge of the Glarner and Bernese Alps,[1230] while the virile German speech has pushed yet farther south to the insuperable barrier of the Monte Rosa group. The abrupt southward slope of the Himalayas has repelled ethnic expansion from the river lowlands of northern India, except in the mountain valleys of the Punjab streams and Nepal, where the highland offered asylum to the Rajput race when dislodged by a later Aryan invasion, or when trying their energies in expansion and conquest.[1231] The Tibetan people, whose high plateaus rise almost flush with the Himalayan pa.s.ses, have everywhere trickled through and given a Mongoloid mountain border to Aryan India,[1232] even though their speech has succ.u.mbed to the pervasive Aryan language of the piedmont, and thus confused the real ethnic boundary. [See map page 102.] The r.e.t.a.r.ded and laborious approach of British "influence" up this steep ascent to Lha.s.sa, as opposed to the long established suzerainty of the Chinese Emperor in Tibet, can be attributed in part to the contrasted accessibility from north and south.

[Sidenote: Persistence of barrier nature.]

Mountains influence the life of their inhabitants and their neighbors fundamentally and variously, but always reveal their barrier nature. For the occupants of one slope they provide an abundant rainfall, hold up the clouds, and rob them of their moisture; to the leeward side they admit dry winds, and only from the melting snow or the precipitation on their summits do they yield a scanty supply of water. The Himalayas are flanked by the teeming population of India and the scattered nomadic tribes of Tibet. Mountains often draw equally clear cut lines of cleavage in temperature. The Scandinavian range concentrates upon Norway the warm, soft air of the Atlantic westerlies, while just below the watershed on the eastern side Sweden feels all the rigor of a sub-Arctic climate. In history, too, mountains play the same part as barriers. They are always a challenge to the energies of man. Their beauty, the charm of the unknown beyond tempts the enterprising spirit; the hards.h.i.+ps and dangers of their roads daunt or baffle the mediocre, but by the great ones whose strength is able to dwarf these obstacles is found beyond a prize of victory. Such were Hannibal, Napoleon, Suvaroff, Genghis Khan, and those lesser heroes of the modern work-a-day world who toiled across the Rockies and Sierras in the feverish days of '49, or who faced the snows of Chilkoot Pa.s.s for the frozen gold-fields of the Yukon.

[Sidenote: Importance of mountain pa.s.ses.]

For migrating, warring and trading humanity therefore, the interest of the mountains is centered in the pa.s.ses. These are only dents or depressions in the great up-lifted crest, or gaps carved out by streams, or deeper breaches in the mountain wall; but they point the easiest pathway to the ultramontane country, and for this reason focus upon themselves the travel that would cut across the grain of the earth's wrinkled crust. Their influence reaches far. The Brenner, by its medieval trade, made the commercial greatness of Augsburg, Ratisbon, Nuremberg, and Leipzig to the north, and promoted the growth of Venice to the south. The Khaibar Pa.s.s and the Gates of Herat in Afghanistan have for long periods dominated the Asiatic policy of Russia and British India. The Mohawk depression and c.u.mberland Gap for decades gave direction to the streams of population moving westward into the Mississippi basin in the early history of the Republic. Where Truckee Pa.s.s (7017 feet) makes a gash in the high ridge of the Sierra Nevada, the California Trail in 1844 sought the line of least resistance across the barrier ma.s.s, and deposited its desert-worn immigrants about the Sacramento Valley and San Francis...o...b..y. There they made a nucleus of American population in Mexican California, and in 1846 became the center of American revolt.

[Sidenote: Persistent influence of pa.s.ses.]

Though modern engineering skill, especially when backed by a political policy, may cause certain pa.s.ses to gain in historical importance at the cost of others, the rule holds that pa.s.ses are never quite insignificant. Their influence is persistent through the ages. They are nature-made thoroughfares, traversed now by undisciplined hordes of migrating barbarians, now by organized armies, now by the woolly flocks and guardian dogs of the nomad shepherd, now by the sumpter mule of the itinerant merchant, now by the wagon-trains of over-mountain settlers, now by the steam engine panting up the steep grade. Nowhere does history repeat itself so monotonously, yet so interestingly as in these mountain gates. In the Pa.s.s of Roncesvalles, notching the western Pyrenees between Pamplona in Spain and St. Etienne in France, fell the army of Charlemagne surprised and beset by the mountain tribes in 778;[1233]

through this breach the Black Prince in 1367 led his troops to the victory of Navarette; in the Peninsular War a division of Wellington's army in 1813 moved northward up this valley, driving the French before them; and by this route Soult advanced southward across the frontier for the relief of the French forces shut up in Pamplona. The history of Palestine may be read in epitome in the annals of the Vale of Jezreel, where the highlands of Palestine sink to a natural trough before rising again to the hill country of Galilee and the mountain range of high Lebanon. This was the avenue for war and trade between the Nile and Euphrates, between Africa and Asia. Here the Canaanites expanded eastward from the coast, cutting off northern Israel in Galilee from Samaria and Judea. Here Gideon turned back the incursions of the Midianites or western Arabs. Here was the open road for a.s.syrians, Egyptians, for Greek armies under Antiochus, and Roman armies under Pompey, Mark Antony, Vespasian and t.i.tus. Hither came the Saracens from the east in 634 A. D. to rout the Greek army, and later the Crusaders from the west, to secure with castle and fortress this key to the Holy Land. Finally, hither came Napoleon from Egypt in 1799 on his way to the Euphrates.[1234]

[Sidenote: Geographic factors in the historical importance of pa.s.ses.]

The historical importance of pa.s.ses tends to increase with the depth of the depression, since the lowest gap in a range relegates the others to only occasional or local use; and with their rarity, in consequence of which intercourse between opposite slopes is concentrated upon one or two defiles. The low dips of the Central American Cordilleras to 262 feet (80 meters) at Panama, 151 feet (46 meters) in the Nicaraguan isthmus, and 689 feet (210 meters) at Tehuantepec, present a striking contrast both orographically and historically to the South American Andes, where from the equator to the Uspallata or Bermejo Pa.s.s (12,562 feet or 3842 meters) back of Valparaiso, a stretch measuring 33 degrees of lat.i.tude, the pa.s.ses all reach or exceed 10,000 feet or 3000 meters.

The southern or Pennine range of the Alps, stretching as a snow-wrapped barrier from Mont Blanc 90 miles to the central Alpine dome of the St.

Gotthard, is notched only by the Great St. Bernard and Simplon pa.s.ses, which have therefore figured conspicuously in war and trade, since very early times. The Pa.s.s of Thermopylae, as the only route southward along the flank of the Pindus system, figures in every land invasion of Greece from Xerxes to the Greek war of independence. All movements back and forth across the Caucasus wall have been confined to the Pa.s.s of Dariel and the far lower Pa.s.s of Derbent, or _Pylae Albaniae_; of the ancients, which lies between the Caspian and the last low spurs of the mountains as they drop down to the sea. The latter, as the easier of the two pa.s.ses, has had a longer and richer history. It alone enabled the ancient Persians temporarily to force a wedge of conquest to the northern foot of the Caucasus, and it has been in all ages a highway for peoples entering Persia and Georgia from the north. It has so far been the only practicable route for a railway from the Russian steppes to the southern base of the Caucasus. While Vladicaucas and Tiflis have direct connection by the military highway over the Pa.s.s of Dariel, the railroad between these two points makes a detour of 300 miles to the east.

[Sidenote: Intermarine mountains.]

Intermarine mountains as a rule offer the easiest pa.s.sways where they sink to meet the flanking seas. The Pyrenees are crossed by only two railroads, the Bayonne-Burgos line, along the sh.o.r.e of the Bay of Biscay, and the Narbonne-Barcelona line, overlooking the Mediterranean.

Between these extremities the pa.s.ses are very high and only two are practicable for carriages, the Col de la Perche (5280 feet or 1610 meters) between the valleys of the Tet and the upper Segre, and the Port de Canfranc (7502 feet or 2288 meters) on the old Roman road from Saragossa to Oloron. The coastal road around the eastern end of the Cheviot Hills has been the great intermediary between England and Scotland. It was the avenue for early Teutonic expansion into the Scotch Lowlands, the thoroughfare for all those armies which for centuries made Berwick a chronic battleground.

For purposes of trade these intermarine mountains are less serious barriers, because they can be avoided by an easier and cheaper sea route. Hence on each side of such ranges grow up active ports, like Narbonne and Barcelona, Bayonne and Bilbao with San Sebastian, on the piedmont seaboard of the Pyrenees; Petrovsk and Baku on the Caspian rim of the Caucasus, balancing the Crimean ports and Poti with Trebizond on the Black Sea. a.n.a.logous is the position of Genoa and Ma.r.s.eilles in relation to the Maritime Alps. Such ports are inevitably the object of attack in time of hostilities. In the Peninsular War almost the first act of the French was to seize Barcelona, San Sebastian and Bilbao; and throughout the seven years of the conflict these points were centers of battle, blockade and siege. If Russia ever tries to wrench the upper Euphrates Valley from Turkey, Trebizond will repeat the history of Barcelona in the Peninsular War.

[Sidenote: Pa.s.s roads between regions of contrasted production]

As the world's roads are used primarily for commerce, pa.s.s routes rank in importance according to the amount of trade which they forward; and this in turn is decided by the contrast in the lands which they unite.

The pa.s.ses of the Alps and the Pa.s.s of Belfort have been busy thoroughfares from the early Middle Ages, because they facilitate exchanges between the tropical Mediterranean and the temperate regions of Central Europe. Or the contrast may be one of economic and social development. The Mohawk depression forwards the grain of the agricultural Northwest in return for the manufactured wares of the Atlantic seaboard. The pa.s.ses of the Asiatic ranges connect the industrial and agricultural lowlands of India and China with the highland pastures of Mongolia, Tibet, Afghanistan and Russian Turkestan.

Hence they forward the wool, skins, felts, cloth and carpets of the wandering shepherds in exchange for the food stuffs and industrial products of the fertile, crowded lowlands. Where pa.s.ses open a highway for inland countries to the sea, their sphere of influence is greatly increased. San Francisco, New York, Ma.r.s.eilles, Genoa, Venice, Beirut and Bombay are seaports which owe their importance in no small degree to dominant pa.s.s routes into their hinterland.

[Sidenote: Pa.s.ses determine trans-montane roads.]

In plains and lowlands highways may run in any direction expediency suggests, but in mountain regions the pa.s.s points the road. In very high ranges there is no appeal from this law; but in lower systems and especially in old mountains which have been rounded and worn down by ages of denudation, economic and social considerations occasionally transcend orographical conditions in fixing the path of highways.

Scarcely less important than pa.s.s or gap is the avenue of approach to the same. This is furnished by lateral or transverse valleys of erosion.

The deeper their reentrant angles cut back into the heart of the highlands, the more they facilitate intercourse and lend historical importance to the pa.s.s route. The Alpine pa.s.ses which are approached by a single valley from each side are those crossed by railroads to-day,--Mont Cenis, Simplon, St. Gotthard and the Brenner. The Alpine chain is trenched on its inner or southern side by a series of transverse erosion valleys, such as the Dora Baltea, Sesia, Tosa, Ticino, Adda, Adige, and Tagliamento, which carry roads up to the chief Alpine pa.s.ses. The coincidence of the Roman and medieval roads over the Alps with the modern railroads is striking, except in the single point of elevation. Railroads tend to follow lower levels. Modern engineering skill enables them to tunnel the crest, to cut galleries in the perpendicular walls of gorges, and to embank mountain torrents against the spring inundation of the roadbed, where it drops to the valley floor.

[Sidenote: Navigable river approaches to pa.s.ses.]

Where gaps are low and the approaching waters are navigable, at least for the small craft of early days, they combine to enhance the historical importance of their routes. The Mohawk River, navigable for the canoe of Indian and fur trader, greatly increased travel and traffic through the Mohawk depression. The Pa.s.s of Belfort is the greatest historic gateway of western Europe, chiefly because it unites the channels of the Rhone, Saone and Rhine. Lake Lucerne brings the modern tourist by boat to the foot of the railroad ascent to the St. Gotthard Pa.s.s, as the long gorge of Lake Maggiore receives him at the southern end. Lake Maggiore is the water outlet also of the Simplon Pa.s.s from the upper Rhone, the Lukmanier (6288 feet or 1917 meters) from the Hither Rhine, and the San Bernadino (6766 feet or 2063 meters) from the Hinter Rhine.[1235] This geographical fact explains the motive of Swiss expansion in the fifteenth century in embracing the Italian province of Ticino and the upper end of Lake Maggiore. A significance like that of the Swiss and Italian lakes for the Alpine pa.s.ses appears emphasized in the Sogne Fiord of Norway. This carries a marine highway a hundred miles into the land; from its head, roads ascend to the only two dents in the mountain wall south of the wide snowfield of the Jotun Fjeld, and they lead thence by the valleys of Hallingdal and Valders down to the plains of Christiania.

[Sidenote: Types of settlements in the valley approaches.]

Genuine mountain pa.s.ses have only emergency inhabitants--the monks and dogs of the hospice, the road-keepers in their refuge huts or _cantoniere_, or the garrison of a fort guarding these important thoroughfares. The flanking valleys of approach draw to themselves the human life of the mountains. Their upper settlements show a certain common physiognomy, born of their relation to the barren transit region above, except in those few mountain districts of advanced civilization where railroads have introduced through traffic over the barrier. At the foot of the final ascent to the pa.s.s, where often the carriage road ends and where mule-path or foot-trail begins, is located a settlement that lives largely by the transmontane travel. It is a place of inns, hostelries, of blacksmith shops, where in the busy season the sound of hammer and anvil is heard all night; of stables and corrals crowded with pack and draft animals; of storehouses where the traveler can provide himself with food for the journey across the barren, uninhabited heights. It is the typical outfitting point such as springs up on the margin of any pure transit region, whether mountain or desert. Such places are Andermatt and Airolo, lying at an alt.i.tude of 4000 feet or more on the St. Gotthard road, St. Moritz below the Maloja Pa.s.s, Jaca near the Pa.s.s de Canfranc over the Pyrenees, Kugiar and Shahidula[1236] at an elevation of 10,775 feet or 3285 meters on the road up to the Karakorum Pa.s.s (18,548 feet or 5655 meters), which crosses the highest range of the Himalayas between Leh in the upper Indus Valley and Yarkand in Chinese Turkestan.

[Sidenote: Lower settlements.]

Farther down the transverse valley the type of settlement changes where side valleys, leading down from other pa.s.ses, converge and help build up a distributing center for a considerable highland area. Such a point is Chiavenna in northern Italy, located above the head of Lake Como at the junction of the Mera and Liro valleys, which lead respectively to the Splugen and Maloja pa.s.ses. It lies at an alt.i.tude of 1090 feet (332 meters) and has a population of 4000. Such a point is Aosta (1913 feet or 583 meters elevation) in the Dora Baltea Valley, commanding the Italian approaches to the Great St. Bernard Pa.s.s, and the less important Col de Fenetre leading to the upper Rhone, the Little St. Bernard highway to the valley of the Isere, and Col de la Seigne path around the Mont Blanc range to the valley of the Arve. Aosta was an important place in the Roman period and has to-day a population of about 8000. Kokan, in the upper Sir-Daria Valley in Russian Turkestan, commands the approach to the pa.s.ses of the western Tian Shan and the northern Pamir. Its well-stocked bazaars, containing goods from Russia, Persia and India, testify to its commercial location.

[Sidenote: Pa.s.s cities and their markets.]

When the highland area is very broad and therefore necessitates long transit journeys, genuine pa.s.s cities develop at high alt.i.tudes, and become the termini of the transmontane trade. Such is the Leh (11,280 feet or 3439 meters) on the caravan route from Central Asia over the Karakorum Pa.s.s down to Kashmir, and such is Srinagar (5252 feet or 1603 meters) in Kashmir. To their markets come caravans from Chinese Turkestan, laden with carpets and brick tea, and Tibetan merchants from Lha.s.sa, bringing wool from their highland pastures to exchange for the rice and sugar of lowland India.[1237] Leh is conveniently situated about half way between the markets of India and Central Asia. Therefore it is the terminus for caravans arriving from both regions, and exchange place for products from north and south. Seldom do caravans from either direction go farther than this point. Here the merchants rest for a month or two and barter their goods. Tents of every kind, camels, yaks, mules and horses, coolie transports of various races, men of many languages and many religions, give to this high-laid town a truly cosmopolitan stamp in the summer time when the pa.s.ses are open.[1238]

Kabul, which lies at an alt.i.tude of nearly 6000 feet near the head of the Kabul River, is the focus of numerous routes over the Hindu Kush, and dominates all routes converging on the northwest frontier of the Punjab.[1239] It is therefore the military and commercial key to India.

Its narrow winding streets are obstructed by the picturesque _kafilas_ of Oriental merchants, stocked with both Russian goods from the Oxus districts and British goods from India in evidence of its intermediary location.[1240]

Occasionally a very high market develops for purely local use. The Indian Himalayan province of k.u.maon contains the market town of Garbyang, at an elevation of 10,300 feet or about 3000 meters, on the Kali River road leading by the Lipu Lekh Pa.s.s (16,780 feet or 5115 meters) over to Tibet. It has grown up as a trade center for the Dokpa Tibetans, who will not descend below 10,000 feet because their yak and sheep die at a lower alt.i.tude.[1241] Farther east in the Sikkim border, Darjeeling (7150 feet or 2180 meters elevation) is center of the British wool trade with Tibet.

Often the exchange point moves nearer the summit of the pa.s.s, dividing the journey more equally between the two areas of production. Here develops the temporary summer market. High up on the route between Leh and Yarkand is Sasar, a place of unroofed enclosures for the deposit of cotton, silk and other goods left there by the caravans plying back and forth between Leh and Sasar, or Sasar and Yarkand.[1242] Nearly midway on the much frequented trade route between Leh and Lha.s.sa, at a point 15,100 feet (nearly 500 meters) above sea level, just below the Schako Pa.s.s, lies Gartok in western Tibet, in summer a busy market surrounded by a city of tents, and the summer residence of the two Chinese viceroys, who occupy the only two substantial dwellings in the place.

Here at the end of August is held a great annual fair, which is attended by traders from India, Kashmir, Mongolia, Chinese Turkestan, China proper, and Lha.s.sa; but by November the place is deserted. The traders disperse, and the few residents of Gartok, together with the viceroys, retire down the Indus Valley to the more sheltered village of Gargunza (14,140 feet or 4311 meters elevation), which represents the limits of permanent settlement in these alt.i.tudes.[1243] The Sutlej Valley route from the Punjab to Lha.s.sa is capped near its summit at an alt.i.tude of about 5000 meters by the summer market, of Gyanema, whose numerous types of tents indicate the various homes of the traders from Lha.s.sa to India.[1244]

[Sidenote: Pa.s.s peoples.]

Natural thoroughfares, whether river highways or mountain pa.s.s routes, draw to themselves migration, travel, trade and war. They therefore early a.s.sume historical importance. Hence we find that peoples controlling transmontane routes have always been able to exert an historical influence out of proportion to their size and strength; and that in consequence they early become an object of conquest to the people of the lowlands, as soon as these desire to control such transit routes. The power of these pa.s.s tribes is often due to the trade which they command and which compensates them for the unproductive character of their country. In the eastern Himalayas the Tomos of the Chumbi Valley are intermediaries of trade between Darjeeling and Tibet, In the western Himalayas, the k.u.maon borderland of northern India, which commands some of the best pa.s.ses, has made its native folk or Bhutias bold merchants who jealously monopolize the trade over the pa.s.ses to the Tibetan markets. They stretch for a zone of thirty miles south of the boundary from Nepal to Garhwal along the approach to every pa.s.s, each sub-group having its particular trade route.[1245]

[Sidenote: Transit duties.]

It is always possible for such pa.s.s tribes to levy a toll or transit duty on merchandise, or in lieu of this to rob. Caesar made war upon the Veragri and Seduni, who commanded the northern end of the Great St.

Bernard Pa.s.s, in order to open up the road over the Alps, which was traversed by Roman merchants _magno c.u.m periculo magnisque c.u.m portoriis_.[1246] The Sala.s.si, who inhabited the upper Dora Baltea Valley and hence controlled the Little St. Bernard wagon road leading over to Lugdunum or Lyons, regularly plundered or taxed all who attempted to cross their mountains. On one occasion they levied a toll of a drachm per man on a Roman army, and on another plundered the treasure of Caesar himself. After a protracted struggle they were crushed by Augustus, who founded Aosta and garrisoned it with a body of Praetorian cohorts to police the highway.[1247] The Iapodes in the Julian Alps controlled the Mount Ocra or Peartree Pa.s.s, which carried the Roman wagon road from Aquileia over the mountains down to the valley of the Laibach and the Save. This strategic position they exploited to the utmost, till Augustus brought them to subjection as a preliminary to Roman expansion on the Danube.[1248]