generally is scanty, the pastoral industries will not pre-
dominate in the lowlands, and cattle especially will be generally
few. Goats, sheep, and, where oak, chestnut or beech woods



130 THE EARTH AND MAN

occur, pigs are the most characteristic animals, the sheep
chiefly where considerable tracts of elevated land are
present.

Let us turn next to those parts of Central Europe where
the chmate we have called continental reigns. Here culti-
vated plants must be either short-Uved, or, if perennial,
tolerant of winter cold. If short-hved, so that the winter
cold does not affect them, then the fact that they require
a combination of warmth and moisture is rather an advantage
than otherwise, for, as we have seen, in the continental climate
rain tends to come in summer. Thus a plant Hke maize,
which requires moisture to swell its huge stem and leaves,
will flourish better in parts of Central Europe than in the
Mediterranean region. Generally, however, this region suffers
as compared with the Mediterranean from the fact that plant
growth is confined to one part of the year ; the cereal crops
ripen in summer, and only in exceptional cases is it possible
to get two crops off the same land, while the simultaneous
growth of two or three kinds of plants, so common in the
Mediterranean, is almost unknown here.

Where the plains of Central Europe abut upon the mountain
regions, the possibility of cultivation diminishes, and the
mountaineer is typically pastoral, feeding his cattle on the
rich grassland of the heights.

In Central Europe man has largely destroyed the original
forest, starting, as we have seen, from the thinly wooded areas,
the motive being the desire to extend the range of his ploughed,
cereal-producing fields. But where the oceanic chmate reigns
to the west and north-west, the very extensive deforestation
has not notably extended the zone of wheat. Typically, the
oceanic chmate is too damp, too sunless for the more valuable
cereals, and the inhabitants must grow the more tolerant and
less valuable forms, hke oats, rye, and barley, with moisture-
demanding plants hke potatoes and turnips. Even so the
farmer finds at present that his constantly watered land is



CULTIVATION IN CENTRAL EUROPE 131

best suited for pasture, on the low grounds for cattle, and on
the higher for sheep.

If we sum up these facts in their simplest form we may
say that just as the different climatic belts of Europe have
their characteristic native plant formations, so also they have
their characteristic cultivated plants and modes of land
utilisation. In the Mediterranean region the land bears both
short-hved moisture-demanding crops requiring only moderate
temperatures, such as wheat, vegetables, fodder plants, and
so forth, and heat-demanding but drought-tolerating trees,
like vine, oHve, etc. In Central Europe, only a portion of
the year can be used for plant growth, but then both moisture
and warmth are available, and a considerable range of crops,
including wheat, is possible. On the oceanic border, and on
the uplands, cultivation becomes difficult, save for hardy
plants, and there is a continual tendency for pastoral pursuits
to predominate.

So far, then, it may seem that the cultivated plants do
but emphasise the conclusions which we have already drawn
from the natural plant formations — but they have also a
deeper significance, for they determine, or once determined,
the possible modes of human hfe within each region. This
is a subject which demands some consideration, for the full
meaning of the statement is not at once grasped by those who
have grown up in a complex and artificial civiHsation. To us
it may seem as though man had an almost infinite power of
modifying the conditions under which he fives, and yet there
is no doubt that those conditions first made him.

Let us elaborate this point a little. Most of us are, or were
in youth, probably more or less susceptible to the charm of the
kind of book best represented by Robinson Crusoe, but also —
if on a very different level — by that edifying work The Swiss
Family Robinson. Wherein does this charm lie ? It may be, as
some psychologists tell us, that part of our joy in the descrip-
tions we find in these books of life in trees or caves is due



132 THE EARTH AND MAN

to the fact that our far-off ancestors made the great discovery
that in such places could safety, shelter, warmth, even an
elementary form of comfort be found. So deeply, they tell
us, has the emotion aroused by this epoch-making experience
interpenetrated our souls, that the appropriate stimulus from
outside will cause it to flood our consciousness with something
of its first freshness. On this view we obtain in reading
Robinson Crusoe something of that primeval gladness which
he of the Early Stone Age felt when his cavern had been
safely blocked at the mouth, and within, in the red glare of
the fire and of the smoky torches, he was safe from the terror
which walks by night, and from the known and unknown
dangers which lurk in the gloomy forest.

But surely there is more in it than this — more even than a
pride in human ingenuity, a swelUng consciousness of our
own resourcefulness ! When we follow the rise of Robinson
Crusoe's stockade, or track, with a dehcate avoidance of the
didactic father's morahsing, the progress of the Robinson
family from destitution to the time when most of the re-
sources of civiUsation proved within their reach, do we not
feel that we are following, in as it were an epitome, the
history of the human race, are climbing the tree of social
evolution, are becoming conscious of fundamental facts ?
Do we not all of us feel that the castaways are not ' playing
fair ' when they find in the too-useful ship necessities which
they ought to have contrived from the contents of their
wonderful islands ? Do not unsophisticated country people
still feel a little shame in ' buying in a shop ' some article
which in a more virile or less sophisticated age would have
been home-manufactured ? Do not all observant travellers
point out that the first sign of racial decay is the replacement
of the products of native arts and crafts by imported factory-
made goods ?

Perhaps this may seem rather obvious, but in point of
fact only within the last few years have geographers dis-



EFFECTS OF INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 133

covered that man is, always and everywhere, in some sort
a Robinson Crusoe, using as he can what Ues within reach
of his hand. He and his environment act and interact ; his
societies and institutions no less than his material possessions
bear the mould of the physical circumstances under which
they first arose, and, since human intelhgence works every-
where along somewhat similar hues, and human needs are
everywhere more or less the same, he accompUshes every-
where approximately similar ends by diverse means, means
which reflect the physical conditions under which he Uves,
and from which the conditions can be reconstructed and
interpreted.

In a sense of course this is a commonplace, but a forgotten
commonplace brought afresh to men's minds has all the
glory of a new discovery — indeed a greater glory, for by
definition it must make a wider and more immediate appeal
than a discovery, which has always to win a slow and
grudging acceptance.

How did this commonplace come to be lost sight of ?
With the industrial revolution, and the resultant enormous
development of means of communication, the bonds of
space and time with which man had always been fettered
seemed to be suddenly loosened. When he could flash his
will over the world at large, when he could travel with the
swiftness of a bird, when his railway trains and steamships
could annihilate space, the entire dependence of groups of
human beings upon their immediate surroundings seemed
to be gone for ever. In earher days he must build with the
materials at his hand, for no others were, broadly speaking,
obtainable ; he must depend for food upon what he could
catch, rear or grow, or he must starve, and necessarily,
therefore, his mode of Hf e varied with the cUmate and physical
conditions, and was determined by them. But with the
industrial revolution this old dependence seemed to be gone,
more especially in countries hke our own, where its effects



134 THE EARTH AND MAN

have been most marked. Throughout the length and breadth
of the British Islands the articles of daily use are not those
which are the natural products of the region, but those which
can be obtained from the utmost ends of the earth, in exchange
for our cotton goods, machinery or coal. We hve, as it were,
no longer on a definite patch of the earth's surface, by whose
•haracters all our activities are controlled, but in a dreamland,
and are served by the dusky djinns of the coal mine. That
this, the condition into which all living men and women
have grown up, is a speciaHsed and not a primitive one, is
an obvious commonplace, but one nevertheless which till
recently had been forgotten. The human geographers, or
anthropogeographers as they love to call themselves, are in
the act of re-discovering it, and their emphasis on what ought
to be, but has ceased to be, the obvious adds at least a new
interest to travel.

Let us look at one or two examples to illustrate the point.
In the valleys the Swiss peasant builds himself a chalet of
wood, because this convenient building material lies within
easy reach. He builds it with overhanging eaves and
balconies, for wood must be stored at hand for winter fuel,
and further, as the mists often hang low for days in the
valley, he wants a place where late crops may be sheltered
from wet, and yet exposed to the drying sun when it breaks
at last through the clouds. Though at times he must toil
from dawn to dusk, there are other periods of the year when
he has superabundant leisure, and therefore his house and
its furniture may be more or less elaborately carved. But
if the same peasant wishes to build a new cheese-making
shed high up on the mountain side, he uses not wood but
stone, with rough slabs for roofing material. Why ? Be-
cause no trees grow at this elevation, and he himseK is the
only transport animal who can overcome the difiiculties of
the ascent. Wood he must carry to heat his milk, but he
will not needlessly load himself with building material when



i'LATK X\J




One of tlif â–  lilack lio\is(.'s ' of llit- Hcliridus. Such 1io\isl-s are dark
or almost dai k, and are often shared by liunian beings and cows in
common. Tlie chimney is a ' modern " improvement. The original
black houses had no exit for the smoke, which was siip])osed to
filter thro\igh the thatch of the roof, this being later used as manure
for the croft. Note that the house is constructed of the materials
nearest at hand, utilised in practically unmodified condition.
(I'hoto hii Mr. II. Il'Chp.)




<)Iiland new type of liousts in the Hebrides. In such cases the
old black house (here without a chimney ) is kept for the cattle,
and there is generally free internal communication between the
two compartments. The new house is not built of local materials.

(Photn liij Sir Lvtlif Macken:U.)



HIGHLAND DWELLINGS 135

the stones which nature suppUes can be made to serve.
Further, since the hut is not a permanent dwelling-place,
but is used only for a short period of the year, he will waste
upon it no needless labour — it will be built to serve its
immediate purpose and with no other end in view.

Turn from the chalets and cheese-making huts of the Alps
to the more remote parts of the Scottish Highlands with their
rude dwelhngs. Wood is here scanty, stone abundant ; the
cottage, if so it may be called, is built of rough stone, is thatched
with the too-abundant heather (Plate XVI.) ; its inner walls
are hned by an ammonia-containing deposit given off by the
burning peat in the centre, a deposit which the frugal peasant
scrapes off at intervals and uses to fertiUse his httle croft.
Thither also, and with the same purpose, is transported from
time to time the discarded thatch, easily replaced by a new
one. Here is an adaptation to the natural conditions as close
as that of the chalet. But the Swiss peasant has not lost his
hold on his surroundings ; he has shared in the general rise
of prosperity in his country. He may alter his methods,
change a httle his mode of hfe, but on the whole he merely
increases the number of his possessions, or improves their
quahty, without greatly altering their nature. The High-
lander, on the other hand, has for the most part lost his
original relation to the natural conditions, and this is shown,
oddly enough, in the character of his new dwelhng. The
son in Glasgow or in Canada sends money home to the old
folks, and it is used not to adapt the old dwelhng to modern
needs, but to construct a new one (Plate XVI.), harled and
whitewashed, roofed with corrugated iron, ugly, staring, pro-
bably not more healthy than the old, and without any trace
of that natural fitness which made the thatched cottage
' picturesque ' against its background of rocky slope and
heather-clad hill. Indeed the staring ugHness of the new
house shows that the economic problem here has been evaded,
not faced ; that no longer is there a natural interrelation



136 THE EARTH AND MAN

between inhabitants and surroundings — they are but pathetic
paupers in a land that once was theirs.

Turn next to the food of the two men. The Swiss peasant
eats rye bread. Why ? Rye is the natural cereal of the
thin soil, the extreme climate of his native valleys. Further,
the meal has the power of retaining its moisture for a long
time ; the ' black bread ' is baked only at long intervals.
The peasant's hfe involves incessant migration from valley
to spring pasture, from spring pasture to high alp, from alp
to the arable land far below. It is therefore essential that
his staple food should be one which can be kept for long
periods, periods during which the operation of baking would
be difficult. Supplemented by cheese and milk, the product
of his flocks, it is a factor in his mobihty.

Originally the Highlander's staple showed the same re-
lation to natural conditions. The cereal oats is fitted for
a damp, sunless cHmate, and it is exceedingly tolerant of
a peaty soil, so poisonous to many plants. Though the
meal cannot be baked into bread, yet cooked in flat un-
leavened ' cakes ' on a girdle, or boiled into porridge it forms
an excellent article of diet, and we note that both modes of
cooking are well adapted to the open peat fire in the middle
of the floor — the primitive mode of heating the cottage.
When the whole social economy of the British Isles was upset
with the rise of the factory system, the Highlander, though
after a considerable interval, took to eating wheaten bread
like the rest of the community.

But white bread is ' bakers' bread,' was never a natural
product, and we have the, at first sight, curious anomaly
that while it is not uncommon to find bread baked at home
in parts of England, where the eating of wheaten bread is
an old-estabHshed practice, in the Highlands, as indeed in
Scotland generally, the ability to bake bread is a rare accom-
pHshment ; not because it has been lost, as in parts of England,
but because it was never acquired. Scones, oatcakes, ' barley



BLACK BREAD AND OATCAKES 137

bannocks ' and so forth may be baked at home if the baker's
cart fail in the Highlands, but not bread. A pretty little
illustration is furnished by the comment of a Scottish country
body who had been to Yorkshire, and ' liked England fine — nice
ovens and that,' the oven being a rarity in her native village.

Perhaps we may complete the picture by pointing out
that when the mountain peasant in Central Europe becomes
a town-dweller he eats wheaten bread, if he can. But no
sooner is the habit established than sentiment — a nostalgia
for his mountains — makes him long for the food of his fathers,
and to satisfy his longing ' echtes Bauerbrod ' appears in the
shops. The travelled poUtician, with the muddled-headed-
ness of his tribe, seizes upon this fact, and regardless of the
perfectly plain truth that the inhabitants of Western Europe
take wheaten bread as their staple when they can — and are
probably justified on physiological grounds in so doing —
endeavours to demonstrate that * black bread ' is always
a luxury, and not fundamentally an indication of poverty.
In Lowland Scotland now and in England oatcakes are a
luxury, but the attempt to induce a Highland servant girl
to eat them in place of white bread would be fraught with
speedy disaster !

The point which we are striving to make clear is then
that under ' natural ' conditions all human groups show a
close relation to their immediate surroundings, and must
originally be self-sufficing in so far at least as the essentials
of life go. In the industrial parts of Western Europe generally,
and more especially in Great Britain, owing to the early
development of the factory system and the enormous magni-
tude of the overseas trade, this original relation has been
largely lost. Not only this, but with us, even more than on
the continent of Europe, though the phenomenon occurs
there also, those groups which have preserved more or less
their original dependence on their immediate surroundings,
are poor and depressed, as exemplified, for instance, in the



138 THE EARTH AND MAN

Scottish Highlands and in western Ireland. Thus we have
come instinctively to consider them as ' backward ' while
we regard ourselves as ' advanced/ There is no doubt that
this judgment is partly an illusion, and recent developments,
e.g. in ' Celtic ' hterature in Ireland, have helped to show that
in much that is essentially human such groups stand higher
than those which have grown rich by supplying cheap cotton
cloths and Birmingham goods to the world, and have at the
same time grown so poor in greater possessions.

It is one of the tragedies of the civihsed world at the present
time that, just as the upheaval of the Alps brought disturb-
ance to the stable lands to the north, so the rise of the industrial
nations has shaken the non-industrial civihsations to their
foundations, has turned what they regarded as their wealth
into poverty, their old glory into their shame. But we have
to remember that had man been a witness of the rise of the
Alps, as he was a witness of the devastation of the Ice Age,
he must have thought that here at least was a disaster whose
horror was unredeemed. Yet from both these great crises
sprang the possibihties of human civiUsation as we know it.
So may we hope in that great social disturbance which we
call the industrial revolution some future good Ues hidden.
Meantime our immediate purpose is to trace, as it is revealed
in agriculture and land utihsation, some indication of what
civiUsation in Europe was before, like some of the mountains
of the Alps, it ceased to have roots in mother earth ; to trace
also some of the processes by which the non-industrial nations
are seeking to readjust themselves to changed times.



CHAPTER XII

VINEYARD, OLIVE GROVE, AND GARDEN : THE
OLD CONDITIONS AND THE NEW

' I went down into the garden of nuts to sec the fruits of the valley,
and to see whether the vine flourished and the pomegranates budded.'

The cultivated plants of a particular locality, we have
suggested in the previous chapter, show necessarily some
adaptation to that particular area, are in some sort a reflec-
tion of it. But this is not to say that the crops of a district
represent the only ones which could be grown there. Often
this is very far from being the case. What determines the
farmer's selection of certain crops out of all those which the
cUmate permits him to grow ? We shall devote this chapter
to an attempt to answer this question.

Primitively, it seems clear, no region can be permanently
inhabited unless it yields to its inhabitants the great neces-
sities of life. We must here interpret primitively as meaning
— before the development of trade and adequate means of
communication, for obviously there are now many perma-
nently inhabited regions which yield almost none of the
necessities of life. We need not go so far as the goldfields
of Western Austraha, or the nitrate deserts of Chili in search
of examples, for the hospices of the high Alpine passes, the
meteorological stations of many isolated hills, e.g. of the
Santis, are famihar cases, to say nothing of the artificially
steriHsed towns.

Further, not only the region in the broad sense, but in at
least the more primitive types of communities, the family

139



140 VINEYARD, OLIVE GROVE, AND GARDEN

group tends, as we have seen, to be self-sufficing. The aim
of the early agriculturist, that is, is to produce first of all,
so far as he can, sufficient to provide for the needs of his
household. One of the most important of these needs is,
obviously, food. In Europe at least, some cereal almost
always forms the basal food supply, but the particular cereal
employed depends upon the cUmatic and other factors domi-
nant in the district. The same statement appHes of course
to all other needs— the constituents of the clothing, material
for house-building, fuel, and so forth. We thus arrive at
the conception of a number of regions, in each of which a
special mode of hfe exists, dependent upon the products of
the region, natural or artificial.

But the family group can rarely be the highest unit. In
the general case it is itself a unit in a larger grouping, whose
members have common needs. These common needs must
be satisfied ultimately by the surplus crops. Obviously it
matters very httle whether, as in parts of the Alps, the
husbandman puts in so many days' work on the roads, paths
and irrigation channels in the year, or whether, as is more
generally the case, he submits to a levy which pays the wages
of special roadmen, etc. In both cases his working days on
his land must result in a yield greater than that necessary
to support him and his household during the working period.
Thus we must not think of even the simplest type of com-
munity as producing only enough for the needs of its working
members and their households. There must necessarily be
a surplus.

In the simpler cases, however, the surplus must be regarded
as primarily for the use of the surrounding district. In
addition to its agriculturists the community will normally
contain a number of non-agriculturists, including craftsmen
of various lands, who must be supphed with the necessities
of hfe out of the surplus products. But their mode of hfe
does not differ notably from that of the agriculturists from



SELF-SUFFICING COMMUNITIES 141

whom they have arisen. They eat approximately the same
food, wear similar clothes, and so forth, and thus constitute
a local market. Similarly, other charges on the husbandman,
such as rent, taxes, and so forth can be met by the sale of
surplus products in the adjacent market, and minor variations
in chmate, elevation, soil, etc., will always stimulate local
exchange.

To take an example, the peasant in the tributary valleys
of the Rhone in the canton Valais in Switzerland grows the
vine and some fruit in the warm lands close to the main
valley. Rye and vegetables, with flax, hemp and so forth,
he cultivates in the fields at higher levels. The pastures,
which constitute otherwise unutilisable land, supply the
needs of his flocks and herds, and each household or family
group possesses or rents lands at the various levels, so that
each is approximately self-sufficing. The forests supply
material for house-building and fuel, the surplus yield of the
flocks, itself due to the abundant summer growth of grass on
the high pastures, is disposed of to give the small amount of
money required for the essential outlays, and is for the most
part sold to a more or less steady adjacent market.

This condition of balance, more or less preserved in the
Valais, has been badly shaken in many other parts of the
mountain regions of Central Europe, more especially at
those levels and in those regions where the conditions are
less favourable to the pastoral industries, and yet the cultiva-
tion of the more valuable crops is difficult and precarious.

An interesting example, whi'.h has been recently the
object of a special study by a French geographer, is found
in a part of the southern Jura, the tract cut off from the
main chain by the river Ain, and called Revermont, that is,
' the mountain slope.' The region faces the plains of the