Central Europe is not so fortunate as to be imme-
diately surrounded by water, but is enabled to take
part in international traffic by means of its four
seas opening in different directions. The importance of
these depends not only upon their size and the nature
of their junction with the great oceans which are the
arena of the world's commerce, but also upon the degree
to which they penetrate into the land, and admit sea
traffic into the interior of the Continent. The Adriatic
hardly allows any access at all. Steep shores and
rugged mountains arrest the course of sea-vessels; the
Narenta alone opens to them her sluggish lower reaches
as far as Metkovits. Very different is the stretch of
country opened to seafarers by the navigability of the
Lower Danube from the Black Sea. The chief har-
bours upon it for sea-ships lie nearly 100 miles inland,
while sea-going vessels of the smaller kind have often
ascended nearly to the Iron Gates. In the Baltic there
is no place much over forty miles from the coast which
is accessible to sea-going ships. The full oceanic tide
is only felt by Central Europe along the shores of
the North Sea, but the head of the tideway far in-
land does not mark the end of the traffic. Cologne
(180 miles from the sea) is the farthest point upon the
Rhine to which ships from the sea come up in great
number, and the size of the vessels is here limited
not so much by the depth of the river (10 feet), which
might easily be doubled, as by the inadequacy of the
Dutch channel.

There is hardly another spot among the seas of

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