od-quest, the pressure of foes, and the
resultant restlessness of an unstable primitive society.[139]

The earth's surface is at once factor and basis in these movements. In
an active way it directs them; but they in turn clothe the passive earth
with a mantle of humanity. This mantle is of varied weave and thickness,
showing here the simple pattern of a primitive society, there the
intricate design of advanced civilization; here a closely woven or a
gauzy texture, there disclosing a great rent where a rocky peak or the
ice-wrapped poles protrude through the warm human covering. This is the
magic web whereof man is at once woof and weaver, and the flying shuttle
that never rests. Given a region, what is its living envelope, asks
anthropo-geography. Whence and how did it get there? What is the
material of warp and woof? Will new threads enter to vary the color and
design? If so, from what source? Or will the local pattern repeat itself
over and over with dull uniformity?

[Sidenote: Geographical interpretation of historical movement.]

It was the great intellectual service of Copernicus that he conceived of
a world in motion instead of a world at rest. So anthropo-geography must
see its world in motion, whether it is considering English colonization,
or the westward expansion of the Southern slave power in search of
unexhausted land, or the counter expansion of the free-soil movement, or
the early advance of the trappers westward to the Rockies after the
retreating game, or the withdrawal thither of the declining Indian
tribes before the protruding line of white settlement, and their
ultimate confinement to ever shrinking reservations. In studying
increase of population, it sees in Switzerland chalet and farm creeping
higher up the Alp, as the lapping of a rising tide of humanity below; it
sees movement in the projection of a new dike in Holland to reclaim from
the sea the land for another thousand inhabitants, movement in Japan's
doubling of its territory by conquest, in order to house and feed its
redundant millions.

The whole complex relation of unresting man to the earth is the subject
matter of anthropo-geography. The science traces his movements on the
earth's surface, measures their velocity, range, and recurrence,
determines their nature by the way they utilize the land, notes their
transformation at different stages of economic development and under
different environments. Just as an understanding of animal