Gulf of Corinth, we see the Phocians, the Locrians, and the Etolians, clustered together on the highest and poorest lands; while the rich plains of Thessaly and of Thrace remained almost entirely unpeopled.

Crossing the Mediterranean we see the mountainous and rocky Crete to have been occupied from the earliest ages, while the Delta of the Nile remained a wilderness. Ascending that river, cultivation becomes more and more ancient as we rise, until at length far towards its head we reach Thebes, the first capital of Egypt. With the growth of population and of wealth we find the city of Memphis becoming the capital of the kingdom; but still later, the Delta is occupied, and towns and cities rise in places that to the earlier kings were inaccessible-and with every step in this direction there was increased return to labor.

Turning eastward from the Nile, we see the most civilized portion of the people of Northern Africa clustering round the mountains of the Atlas, while the richer lands in the direction of the coast remain in a state of nature. Looking next south, the Capital of Abyssinia is found at an elevation of no less than 8,000 feet above the sea, while lands of unbounded capability remain entirely uncultivated. Everywhere throughout Africa, the greatest amount of population and of wealth, and the nearest approach to civilization, are found on the elevated table lands whose natural drainage fits them for early occupation-while everywhere on the rich lands, towards the mouths of the great streams, population is small, and man is found in the lowest state of barbarism.

§ 8. Passing by the Red Sea and entering the Pacific, we see almost innumerable islands whose lower lands are unoccupied, their superior richness rendering them dangerous to life; while population clusters round the hills. Farther south, are rich valleys in Australia, uninhabited, or, where inhabited at all, it is by a people standing lowest among the human race; while on the little highpointed islands of the coast, but a few miles distant, are found a superior race, with houses, cultivation, and manufactures. Turning our steps northward, towards India, we meet Ceylon, in the centre of which are found the dominions of the king of Candy, whose subjects have the same aversion to the low and rich lands, unhealthy in their present state, that is felt by the people of

Mexico and of Java. Entering India by Cape Comorin, and following the great range of high lands, the back-bone of the peninsula, we find the cities of Seringapatam, Poonah, and Ahmednugger; while below, near the coast, are seen the European cities of Madras, Calcutta and Bombay, the creation of a very recent day. Intermediate between the two, are seen numerous cities, whose positions, sometimes far away from the banks of the rivers, and at other times near their sources, show that the most fertile lands have not been those first cultivated. Standing on the high lands between Calcutta and Bombay, we have on the one hand the delta of the Indus, and on the other that of the magnificent Ganges. Through hundreds of miles the former rolls its course, almost without a settlement on its banks; while on the higher country, right and left, exists a numerous population. The rich Delta of the latter is unoccupied, and if we desire to find the seat of early cultivation we must follow its course until far up towards its head, we meet Delhi, the capital of all India while yet the government remained in the hands of its native sovereigns. Here, as everywhere, man avoids the low rich soils that need clearing and drainage, and seeks in the higher lands that drain themselves, the means of employing his labor in the search for food-and here, as always when the superficial soil alone is cultivated, the return to labor is small. Hence it is that we find the Hindoo working for a rupee, or two, per month; sufficient only to give him a handful of rice per day, and to purchase a rag of cotton cloth with which to cover his loins. The most fertile soils exist in unlimited quantity on land that is untouched; and close to that which the laborer scratches with a stick for want of a spade, raking his harvest with his hands for want of a reaping hook, and carrying home upon his shoulders the miserable crop, for want of a horse and a cart.

Passing northward, by Caubul and Affghanistan, and leaving on our left the barren Persia, whose weak dry soils have been cultivated through a long series of ages, we attain the highest point of the earth's surface; and here, even among the Himalayas themselves, we find the same order of cultivation-the villages being everywhere placed upon slopes upon which their people grow scanty crops of millet, maize, and buckwheat; while the bottom lands are generally a mass of jungle, unappropriated and unculti

vated.* Immediately around is the cradle of the human race, where head the streams that empty into the Frozen Ocean and the Bay of Bengal, the Mediterranean and the Pacific. It is the land, of all others, suited to the purpose; that which will most readily afford to the man who works without a spade or an axe, a small supply of food-and therefore the one least fitted for his uses when he has acquired power to direct the forces of nature to his service.

Here we are surrounded by man in a state of barbarism; and standing here, we may trace the course of successive tribes and nations passing towards the lower and more productive lands; but compelled in all cases to seek the route least disturbed with watercourses-and therefore keeping the ridge that divides the waters of the Black Sea and the Mediterranean from those of the Baltic. Standing here we may mark them, as they descend the slope, sometimes stopping for the purpose of cultivating the hilly land that can, with their indifferent machinery, be made to yield a small supply of food; at others marching on and reaching the neighborhood of the sea, there to place themselves, not on the rich lands, but on the poor soils of the steep hill-side-those on which water cannot stand to give nourishment to trees, or to afford annoyance to settlers whose means are inadequate to the draining of marshes and of swamps; or on little peaked islands, from which the water passes rapidly, as is the case with those of the Ægean, cultivated from so early a period. Some of these tribes are seen reaching the Mediterranean, where civilization is first found, and soonest lost under the pressure of successive waves of emigration; while others are passing farther west, and entering Italy, France, and Spain. Others, more adventurous, reach the British isles. Again, after a few centuries of rest, we see them crossing the broad Atlantic, and commencing the ascent of the slope of the Alleghany, preparatory to the ascent and passage of the great range dividing the waters of the Pacific from those of the Atlantic ; and in all cases we mark the pioneers gladly seizing on the clear dry land of the steep hill-side, in preference to the rich and highly wooded land of the river bottoms. Everywhere we see them, as population gradually increases, descending the sides of the hills and mountains towards the rich lands at their feet; and every

* See Hooke's Himalayan Journals.

where, with the growth of numbers, penetrating the earth to reach the lower soils, to enable them to combine the upper clay, or sand, with the lower marl, or lime-and thus to compound for themselves, out of the various materials with which they have been provided by the Deity, a soil capable of yielding a larger return than that upon which they were at first compelled to expend their labor. Everywhere, with increased power of union, we see them exercising increased power over land. Everywhere, as the new soils are brought into activity, and as their occupants are enabled to obtain larger returns, we find more rapid increase of population, producing increased tendency to combination of exertion, by help of which their powers are trebled, quadrupled, and quintupled, and sometimes fifty-fold increased; enabling them better to provide for their immediate wants, while accumulating more rapidly the machinery by means of which further to increase their power of production, and still more fully to bring to light the vast treasures of nature. Everywhere, we find that with increasing population the supply of food becomes more abundant and regular, and clothing and shelter are obtained with greater ease-famine and pestilence tend to pass away-health becomes more universal-life becomes more and more prolonged-and man becomes more happy and more free.

In regard to all the wants of man, except the single and important one of food, such is admitted to be the case. It is seen that with the growth of population and of wealth men obtain water, and iron, and coal, and clothing-and the use of houses, and ships, and roads--in return for less labor than had been at first required. It is not doubted that the gigantic works by means of which great rivers are carried through our cities, enable men to obtain water at smaller cost than was required when each man took a bucket and helped himself on the river bank. It is seen that the shaft which has required years to sink, and to discharge the water from which the most powerful engines are required, supplies fuel at far less cost of labor than has been required when the early settlers carried home the scraps of half-decomposed timber, for want of an axe with which to cut the already fallen log-that the grist-mill converts the grain into flour more cheaply than was the case when it was pounded between stones-and that the gigantic factory supplies cloth more cheaply than the little loom; but it is denied

that such is the case in reference to the soils required for cultivation. In regard to every thing else, man commences with the worst machinery and proceeds upward towards the best; but in regard to land, and that alone, he commences, according to Mr. Ricardo, with the best and proceeds downward towards the worst; and with every stage of his progress finds a decreasing return to labor, threatening starvation, and admonishing him against raising children to aid him in his age; lest they should imitate the conduct of the people of India and of the islands of the Pacific,-where land, however, is abundant and food should be cheap,— and bury him alive or expose him on the river shore, that they may divide among themselves his modicum of food.

How far all this is so the reader will now determine for himself. All others of the laws of nature are broad and universally true, and he may now agree with us in believing that there is one law, and one alone, for food, light, air, clothing, and fuel-that man, in all and every case, commences with the worst machinery and proceeds onward to the best— and that he is thus enabled, with the growth of wealth, of population, and of the power of association, to obtain with constantly diminishing labor an increased supply of all the necessaries, conveniences, comforts, and luxuries of life.

In further proof, if proof can yet be required, it may be mentioned that almost everywhere tradition carries back the early settlement of the various portions of the world to the higher lands. The traditions of the Chinese place their ancestors at the heads of the great rivers, in the high table-lands of Asia. The Brahmins derive their origin from the Vale of Cashmere, and throughout Asia that region is recognised by a term, equivalent to that of "the roof of the world." The name of Abram, father of the high land, became in time Abraham, father of a multitude; and the Northmen placed the city of Odin in Aasgard, or the castle of Aas, "which word," says Mr. Laing, "still remains in the Northern languages, signifying a ridge of high land.'*

:

Again rivers never, as we are told by Agassiz, establish a line of separation between terrestrial animals; and it is as a consequence of this that "the watersheds, not the rivers," are "found * Chronicle of the Sea Kings, Saga 1.

VOL. I.-10