elements constituting the soil in which empires are rooted;
they rise in the sap of the nation.

[Sidenote: Strength of the land bond in the state.]

The geographic basis of a state embodies a whole complex of physical
conditions which may influence its historical development. The most
potent of these are its size and zonal location; its situation, whether
continental or insular, inland or maritime, on the open ocean or an
enclosed sea; its boundaries, whether drawn by sea, mountain, desert or
the faint demarking line of a river; its forested mountains, grassy
plains, and arable lowlands; its climate and drainage system; finally
its equipment with plant and animal life, whether indigenous or
imported, and its mineral resources. When a state has taken advantage
of all its natural conditions, the land becomes a constituent part of
the state,[105] modifying the people which inhabit it, modified by them
in turn, till the connection between the two becomes so strong by
reciprocal interaction, that the people cannot be understood apart from
their land. Any attempt to divide them theoretically reduces the social
or political body to a cadaver, valuable for the study of structural
anatomy after the method of Herbert Spencer, but throwing little light
upon the vital processes.

[Sidenote: Weak land tenure of hunting and pastoral tribes.]

A people who makes only a transitory or superficial use of its land has
upon it no permanent or secure hold. The power to hold is measured by
the power to use; hence the weak tenure of hunting and pastoral tribes.
Between their scattered encampments at any given time are wide
interstices, inviting occupation by any settlers who know how to make
better use of the soil. This explains the easy intrusion of the English
colonists into the sparsely tenanted territory of the Indians, of the
agricultural Chinese into the pasture lands of the Mongols beyond the
Great Wall, of the American pioneers into the hunting grounds of the
Hudson Bay Company in the disputed Oregon country.[106] The frail bonds
which unite these lower societies to their soil are easily ruptured and
the people themselves dislodged, while their land is appropriated by the
intruder. But who could ever conceive of dislodging the Chinese or the
close-packed millions of India? A modern state with a given population
on a wide area is more vulnerable than another of like population more
closely distributed; but the former has the advan