act, teeming, yet absolutely small social group, like that crowding
Malta or the Bermudas. Whether sparsely or compactly distributed, such
groups suffer the limitations inherent in their small size. They are
forever excluded from the historical significance attaching to the
large, continuously distributed populations of fertile continental
lands.

[Sidenote: Effect upon movements of peoples.]

IV. The next class belongs exclusively to the domain of geography,
because it embraces the influence of the features of the earth's surface
in directing the movements and ultimate distribution of mankind. It
includes the effect of natural barriers, like mountains, deserts,
swamps, and seas, in obstructing or deflecting the course of migrating
people and in giving direction to national expansion; it considers the
tendency of river valleys and treeless plains to facilitate such
movements, the power of rivers, lakes, bays and oceans either to block
the path or open a highway, according as navigation is in a primitive or
advanced stage; and finally the influence of all these natural features
in determining the territory which a people is likely to occupy, and the
boundaries which shall separate from their neighbors.

[Sidenote: River routes.]

The lines of expansion followed by the French and English in the
settlement of America and also the extent of territory covered by each
were powerfully influenced by geographic conditions. The early French
explorers entered the great east-west waterway of the St. Lawrence River
and the Great Lakes, which carried them around the northern end of the
Appalachian barrier into the heart of the continent, planted them on the
low, swampy, often navigable watershed of the Mississippi, and started
them on another river voyage of nearly two thousand miles to the Gulf of
Mexico. Here were the conditions and temptation for almost unlimited
expansion; hence French Canada reached to the head of Lake Superior, and
French Louisiana to the sources of the Missouri, To the lot of the
English fell a series of short rivers with fertile valleys, nearly
barred at their not distant sources by a wall of forested mountains, but
separated from one another by low watersheds which facilitated lateral
expansion over a narrow belt between mountains and sea. Here a region of
mild climate and fertile soil suited to agriculture, enclosed by strong
natural boundaries, made for compact settlement, in contrast to the wide
diffu