Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 51.djvu/453

Rh of the division is, to put it in Dr. Beddoe's words, that "the Walloons and their hilly, wooded country are a Belgic cliff against which the tide of advancing Germanism has beaten with small effect, while it has swept with comparatively little resistance over the lowlands of Flanders and Alsace, and penetrated into Normandy and Lorraine." Had it not been for this geographical area of isolation, political boundaries would have been very different from those of to-day. Belgium is a piece of pie-shaped stop-gap between France and Germany. Being internationally neutralized in the military sense, it covers the main line of contact between the two powerful neighbors—the plains of Flanders. This is, in the eyes of the natural scientist, its main excuse for separate existence as a political entity. The Franco-German hatred is nothing but a family quarrel after all from our point of view. It is a reality, nevertheless, for historians. The only country whose population is really homogeneous is the tiny kingdom of Luxemburg in the very center of the plateau, scarcely more than a dot on the map. It deserves its independence for a like reason with Belgium. Were Alsace-Lorraine also a neutralized and separate kingdom, the prices of European government bonds would be considerably higher than they are to-day.

Let us now return to France again. We have still to cover the most interesting part of all in many ways. Cæsar's third division of Gaul, from the Loire River southwest to the Pyrenees, was inhabited, as he tells us, by the Aquitani. Strabo adds that these people were akin to the Iberians of Spain, both in customs and race. Detailed study, however, reveals a population far less homogeneous than these statements of the ancients imply.

A glance at the map of the physical geography of France, on page 435, shows that this southwestern section is centered in the broad, fertile valley of the Garonne. From Bordeaux in every direction spreads one of the most productive regions in France, favored alike in soil and in climate. Ascending the river valley, it narrows gradually until we reach a low pass, leading over toward the Mediterranean. This little axis of fertility, along which will run the projected canal to unite the two seacoasts of France, divides the plateaux of Auvergne from the highlands which lie along the Pyrenees. In this latter region fertility decreases as we approach the Spanish frontier in proportion to the increase in altitude, although most of the region is fairly capable of supporting a considerable population. The only extensive area which is extremely unfavorable in character is the seacoast department of Landes, along the Bay of Biscay south of Bordeaux. This region is a vast sandy plain, but little raised above the sea level. It is a flat district underlaid by an impermeable clay subsoil, which is, except