TOPOGRAPHY. The southern two-thirds of Ger many is highland; the northern third is low land, a part of the low plain of Europe. Three topographic forms predominate in Central Eu rope. The most southern is the high Alps of Switzerland. North of the high Alps are the Mittelgebirge (secondary mountains) or high lands of Germany. North of the highlands is the German low plain. The highlands consist in part of high plains, rolling or hilly areas, and, in part, of short mountain chains or groups of mountains, which extend from southwest to northeast or from southeast to northwest, seldom from south to north. Only a few summits among these mountains exceed 3500 feet in height. The mountain systems inclose high plains, as, for example, the plains of Bavaria and of the Mid dle Rhine basin. This division of the south ern part of Germany by natural barriers was a powerful influence in separating the German people into many different States, each having its own government.
The most northern system of these mountain chains has' a general east and west direction, roughly at right angles with the more southerly mountains. It extends through the middle of Germany, and forms the boundary between North and South Germany, or, in other words, between the highlands and the low plain. This zigzag boundary wall begins in the east with the Sudetic Mountains (including the Giant Mountains, or Riesengebirge), and is extended farther west by the Erzgebirge, the Fichtelgebirge, and the Thu ringian Forest. The valley of the Elbe is the only break in these 390 miles of boundary mountains. Then comes the wide gap formed by the Hessian upland, broken only by the volcanic uplifts of the Mountains and the Vogelsberg. Through this break in the barrier mountains flows the Weser to the north. In the west the boundary wall rises again in the Taunus, around which is one of the finest wine regions of Germany, and, across the Rhine Valley, in the Hunsriick. Out lying elevations to the north of this wall in the Middle Weser and Rhine basins push the high lands a little farther north in that region, and the low plain in front of them is correspondingly contracted. The culminating feature of these out liers is the Harz Mountains. The more south
erly of the highlands mountains comprise among other chains or ridges the Schwarzwald, or Black Forest, the Swabian and Franconian Jura, and the Bavarian Forest. The Alps enter in the ex treme south. A dominant mountain mass west of the Rhine is constituted by the Vosges. Phys iographieally interesting is the eolcanic region, north of the Moselle, known as the Eifel. The highest point of land in the Empire is the Zug spitze, in Bavaria, 9725 feet in elevation.
In sharp contrast with the broken and divided character of the lands of South Germany is the nearly uniform low plain of the north, which merges on one side without any distinct natural boundary into the plain of Russia, and on the other into the lowlands of the Netherlands. As the course of the chief rivers shows, the whole country slopes gradually north to the Baltic, and northwest to the North Sea.
On the sea frontage there are, many inlets, but few good harbors. The shore waters are quite shallow, and large vessels are usually unable to approach the land except where the rivers have worn a channel. Most of the harbors there fore are at the mouths of rivers or some dis tance inland on their banks. Wherever the sand-dunes along the low North Sea do not prevent the sea from breaking in, dikes have to be built for the protection of the coast. The shores of the Baltic are higher, but the commer cial facilities they afford are much impaired by a series of very shallow lagoons, called Haffs, which extend parallel with the coast in front of them for long distances. The islands are not important. Riigen, in the Baltic, is the largest. Sand-dunes run along the Baltic coast in place of marsh-lands, but the North Sea dunes are now represented only by the line of the Frisian Islands, all that is left of the former coast-line, which once extended farther out into the sea. The most important North Sea ports are Ham burg, on the Elbe, and Bremen, on the Weser, together with the subsidiary ports of Bremen, Bremerhaven, and Geestemunde. The principal Baltic ports are Stettin, Danzig, Kiel, and Lii beck.