Ganges, Brahmaputra, Irrawady, Salwen, Menam, Mekong, Songho, Sikiang, Yangtse, Hoangho, Peiho, Liauho, Amur. Most of them are navigable from their mouths for some hundreds of miles; a British battleship once steamed up the Yangtse to Hankow, five hundred miles from the sea. There is not much space for such large rivers in peninsular Europe, but the Danube, Rhine, and Elbe carry a great traffic in direct connection with the ocean. Mannheim, three hundred miles up the Rhine, was one of the principal ports of Europe before the War; barges a hundred yards long and of a thousand tons burden lay beside its wharves. For the rest, the peninsulation of Europe, which limits the development of rivers, itself offers even greater facilities for mobility by water.
The similarity of these two 'Coastlands' is not limited to the navigability of their rivers. If we clear away from the more arid zone on the rainfall map of the World-Island the patches indicative of merely local rains, due to mountain groups, we perceive at once the pre-eminence of the coastlands in fertility, owing to their widespread rainfall on the plains as well as in the mountains. The Monsoon winds of the summer carry the
