the interior, while civilized or Christianized Malays occupy the
whole seaboard, except where the rugged Sierra Madre Mountains, fronting
the Pacific in Luzon, harbor a sparse population of primitive
Negritos.[254] For centuries Arabs held the coast of East Africa, where
their narrow zone of settlement bordered on that of native blacks, with
whom they traded. Even ancient Greece showed a wide difference in type
of character and culture between the inland and maritime states. The
Greek landsman was courageous and steadfast, but crude, illiterate,
unenterprising, showing sterility of imagination and intellect; while
his brother of the seaboard was active, daring, mercurial, imaginative,
open to all the influences of a refining civilization.[255] To-day the
distribution of the Greeks along the rim of the Balkan peninsula and
Asia Minor, in contrast to the Turks and Slavs of the interior, is
distinctly a peripheral phenomenon.[256]

The rapid inland advance from the coast of oversea colonists is part of
that restless activity which is fostered by contact with the sea and
supported by the command of abundant resources conferred by maritime
superiority. The Anglo-Saxon invasion of England, as later the English
colonization of America, seized the rim of the land, and promptly pushed
up the rivers in sea-going boats far into the interior. But periphery
may give to central region something more than conquerors and colonists.
From its active markets and cosmopolitan exchanges there steadily filter
into the interior culture and commodities, carried by peaceful merchant
and missionary, who, however, are often only the harbingers of the
conqueror. The accessibility of the periphery tends to raise it in
culture, wealth, density of population, and often in political
importance, far in advance of the center.

[Illustration: PHILIPPINE ISLANDS. Distribution of Civilized and Wild
Peoples]

[Sidenote: Dominant historical side.]

The maritime periphery of a country receives a variety of oversea
influences, blends and assimilates these to its own culture, Hellenizes,
Americanizes or Japanizes them, as the case may be, and then passes them
on into the interior. Here no one foreign influence prevails. On the
land boundaries the case is different. Each inland frontier has to
reckon with a different neighbor and its undiluted influence. A
predominant central location means a succession of such neighbors, on
all sides friction which may poli