. Physical and commercial geography; a study of certain controlling conditions of commerce. istence, trade, succeeding war, musthave been found a better and more economic expedient in the sameconflict. What trade has done for the development of the race weshall try later to show ; for our present purpose it is enough to haveindicated the origin of exchange as a form of specifically human adap-tation through the activity of the mind, this being, as has been seen,a sort of corollary to the economy adaptation secured by a division ofoccupation (§ 181). 183. The ways of trade. We have seen how dif
. Physical and commercial geography; a study of certain controlling conditions of commerce. istence, trade, succeeding war, musthave been found a better and more economic expedient in the sameconflict. What trade has done for the development of the race weshall try later to show ; for our present purpose it is enough to haveindicated the origin of exchange as a form of specifically human adap-tation through the activity of the mind, this being, as has been seen,a sort of corollary to the economy adaptation secured by a division ofoccupation (§ 181). 183. The ways of trade. We have seen how different types ofnatural environment have called forth in varying degrees the respon-sive, adaptive powers of man. Commerce, being one of his expedientsin the struggle for existence, would thus be conditioned in its formsand determined in its ways by the different types of natural environ-ment to which are subjected. This might be called the directdependence of commerce upon natural conditions, a topic which hasalready been touched upon above (§§ 172 ff.). It goes without saying i. Fig. 21. Trade Areas and Routes NATURE OF TRADE. ITS ROUTES AND STATIONS 197 that the materials of commerce of any district are determined by thegeologic, physiographic, and other natural conditions of the cannot be mined in the coral rocks of Bermuda, nor can palmsthrive in Antarctica. Furs are not a prominent import of the Congoregion, and tapa cloth would profit the Eskimo but little. In thissection, however, we wish to fix our attention rather upon the deter-mining influence exercised by various conditions of the natural envi-ronment upon the location of the ways of trade. Man, as we have seen, works constantly along what he conceives tobe lines of least resistance ; it is thus that trade routes are man had learned to react strongly on nature, the routes of histransportation represented roughly his skill in selecting the easy andavoiding the difficult, as the
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