early occupation,[22] and in the further fact that the mounds, or
barrows, are almost uniformly composed of stone, because those
memorials "are found most frequently where stone was more readily
obtained than earth."[23] Caesar found the Gauls occupying the high
lands surrounding the Alps, while the rich Venetia remained a marsh.
The occupation of the Campagna followed long after that of the Samnite
hills, and the earliest settlers of the Peloponnesus cultivated the
high and dry Arcadia, while the cities of the Argive kings of the days
of Homer, Mycenae and Tiryns, are found in eastern Argolis, a country
so poor as to have been abandoned prior to the days of the earliest
authentic history. The occupation of the country around Meroë, and of
the Thebaid, long preceded that of the lower lands surrounding
Memphis, or the still lower and richer ones near Alexandria. The negro
is found in the higher portions of Africa, while the rich lands along
the river courses are uninhabited. The little islands of Australia,
poor and dry, are occupied by a race far surpassing in civilization
those of the neighbouring continent, who have rich soils at command.
The poor Persia is cultivated, while the rich soils of the ancient
Babylonia are only ridden over by straggling hordes of robbers.[24]
Layard had to seek the hills when he desired to find a people at home.
Affghanistan and Cashmere were early occupied, and thence were
supplied the people who moved toward the deltas of the Ganges and the
Indus, much of both of which still remains, after so many thousands of
years, in a state of wilderness. Look where we may, it is the same.
The land obeys the same great and universal law that governs light,
power, and heat. The man who works alone and has poor machinery must
cultivate poor land, and content himself with little light, little
power, and little heat, and those, like his food, obtained in exchange
for much labour; while he who works in combination with his fellow-men
may have good machinery, enabling him to clear and cultivate rich