The Rhine, its valley and history . , while yet another valley, knownas the Wetterau, offers a way from Giessen on the Lahnto Frankfurt on the Main which does not rise above600 feet, although no river flows through it. The valleys of these five rivers, the Rhine, the Neckar,the Main, the Lahn, and the Moselle, together withthe Wetterau, are etched into a tableland, whose highsurface is relatively exposed and infertile. The shelteredbottoms on the other hand have the most fruitful soilsin Germany, and are densely peopled. The contrast wasalready established in Roman times, when the AgriDecumate
The Rhine, its valley and history . , while yet another valley, knownas the Wetterau, offers a way from Giessen on the Lahnto Frankfurt on the Main which does not rise above600 feet, although no river flows through it. The valleys of these five rivers, the Rhine, the Neckar,the Main, the Lahn, and the Moselle, together withthe Wetterau, are etched into a tableland, whose highsurface is relatively exposed and infertile. The shelteredbottoms on the other hand have the most fruitful soilsin Germany, and are densely peopled. The contrast wasalready established in Roman times, when the AgriDecumates were occupied beyond the Rhine frontier,and a line of entrenchment was thrown up, knownto-day as the Pfahlgraben, to protect the settlementsalong the Neckar, and on the lower Main, and in theWetterau. Thus has the Rhine shaped history, not5 The Rhinemerely by offering a way from north to south, but alsoby concentrating a rich agricultural population in themidst of the early wilderness. If the Scheldt and the Meuse be deemed Rhine. tributaries, as they should be for most purposes, since the mouths are separated only by recent deltaic islands, 6 The Rhi?iethen the Rhine basin, Switzerland excepted, forms agreat quadrilateral set obliquely in the map of side is the coast of Belgium and of most of Hol-land. Two other sides are lines striking inland in roughlyparallel south-eastward direction, the one just withinFrance, round the sources of the Scheldt, Meuse andMoselle almost to Basle, the other through the midstof Germany outside the sources of the Lippe, Ruhrand Lahn, to the source of the Main, almost withinBohemia. The quadrilateral would be closed by thefourth side, a line from the Main source, outside theNeckar sources, almost to Basle. But here, at the sou-thern angle, where the second and fourth sides shouldintersect, the Swiss Rhine enters through the slenderspace that is left between the head streams of the Da-nube flowing away to the Black Sea, and of the Dou
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, bookpublisherlondo, bookyear1908
