ucted it.

The security of such unproductive highlands lies more in their failure
to attract than in their power to resist conquest. When to abundant
natural resources, a single spot adds a reputation for wealth,
magnificence, an exceptional position for the control of territory or
commerce, it becomes a geographical magnet. Such was Delphi for the
Gauls of the Balkan Peninsula in the third century, Rome for the
Germanic and Hunnish tribes of the _Voelkerwanderung_, Constantinople for
the Normans, Turks and Russians, Venice for land-locked Austria, the
Mississippi highway and the outlet at New Orleans for our
Trans-Allegheny pioneers.

[Sidenote: Psychical influences in certain movements.]

Sometimes the goal is fabulous or mythical, but potent to lure, like the
land of El Dorado, abounding in gold and jewels, which for two centuries
spurred on Spanish exploration in America. Other than purely material
motives may initiate or maintain such a movement, an ideal or a dream of
good, like the fountain of eternal youth which brought Ponce de Leon to
Florida, the search for the Islands of the Blessed, or the spirit of
religious propaganda which stimulated the spread of the Spanish in
Mexico and the French in Canada, or the hope of religious toleration
which has drawn Quaker, Puritan, Huguenot, and Jew to America. It was an
idea of purely spiritual import which directed the century-long movement
of the Crusades toward Jerusalem, half Latinized the Levant, and widened
the intellectual horizon of Europe. A national or racial sentiment which
enhaloes a certain spot may be pregnant with historical results, because
at any moment it may start some band of enthusiasts on a path of
migration or conquest. The Zionist agitation for the return of oppressed
Jews to Palestine, and the establishment of the Liberian Republic for
the negroes in Africa rest upon such a sentiment. The reverence of the
Christian world for Rome as a goal of pilgrimages materially enhanced
the influence of Italy as a school of culture during the Middle Ages.
The spiritual and ethnic association of the Mohammedan world with Mecca
is always fraught with possible political results. The dominant tribes
of the Sudan, followers of Islam, who proudly trace back a fictitious
line of ancestry to the Arabs of Yemen, are readily incited to support a
new prophet sprung from the race of Mecca.[211] The pilgrimages which the
Buddhists of the Asiatic highlands make to the sacr