Nyasaland has, in spite of all previous handicaps in transport, always held its own as a cotton producer within the Empire on a small scale. The Empire is being called upon to make every effort to be selfsupporting in cotton, and when once Nyasaland is sure of her transport to the coast over the Zambesi bridge there is nothing to hinder that colony from multiplying her cotton output indefinitely.

African countries are beginning to doubt the financial expediency of creating large plantations of cotton or maize worked by native labourers

FIG. 6. Maize cobs. The plant produces twenty bags to the acre.

under European supervision, and are inclined to veer round to the opinion that cotton and maize would be better left to the natives themselves to produce and sell, under proper protection from exploitation, to European agents. Certainly this latter system has worked wonders in West Africa. It is a pleasing reflection that if the natives of Nyasaland could be brought up to the pitch of growing for export three million bags of maize, the profit on the transport to Beira would go a long way towards paying interest on the cost of building the bridge across the Zambesi.

Tobacco-growing has become an established industry both in Nyasaland and Rhodesia, and, stimulated by Imperial preference, is bound to be extended, as is also the production of oranges.

From the one valley of the Mazoe it

is calculated that a million cases of oranges will be shipped from Beira

annually before ten years have passed. Sisal production too is increasing, and the export of sugar has already assumed large proportions, both in the neighbourhood of Beira and on the banks of the Zambesi.

Beira possesses another advantage which enhances its value as a port, viz. that of being remarkably healthy for a town within the tropics, and during the six months of the dry season (May to October) forms an attractive holiday resort for the up-country folk from Rhodesia, Nyasaland, and Katanga, and also for people from the enervating Zambesi Valley. It can boast of a golf course second to none in South Africa, several tennis clubs, sports, yachting and social clubs, and visitors are catered for by beach amenities, while a sufficiently foreign atmosphere adds the charm of novelty to a holiday. Motoring must not be set aside nowadays, and the Mozambique Company is wisely improving the roads through the territory, all of which converge upon Beira.

ECONOMIC RESOURCES AND PROBLEMS OF YUGOSLAVIA.

(With Sketch-Maps.)

By Miss M. R. SHACKLETON, B.A., University College, London.

THE economic importance of the area now forming Yugoslavia has been overshadowed by its political importance, owing largely to the presence of great world-highways which thread their way through this mountainous country. At least one of these routes has been of importance to the whole of Europe, since it assisted the Turkish penetration of our Continent in the Middle Ages, and in recent years has been the coveted line of advance of the "Drang nach Osten" policy of the Central Powers. The presence of this route to the Near East was not only a prime factor in keeping Serbia for centuries under the Turk, whose blighting influence, here as elsewhere, nipped economic development in the bud, but also has involved Serbia in constant warfare since her liberation from Turkish control. For this reason, also, economic development has been retarded. It is apparent, therefore, that the economic geography has been bound up with the political, and that in the past the latter has very largely controlled the former.

In other directions, also, the political situation has been closely bound up with economic development, for instance, in the matter of outlets to the sea. In the fourteenth century, at the time of Stephen Dushan, the short-lived Serbian Empire had "windows" on both the Adriatic and Egean; and, after the removal of the Turkish shadow enabled the Serbs to obtain a view of other problems, the question of outlets to the sea for their inland country became of absorbing interest. Their hopes of the Drin outlet to the Adriatic being annihilated by the Central Powers, whose engineers stated that it was impossible to build a railway along this corridor (in spite of the fact that the Romans had

been able to transport iron-ore in ox-waggons along the same route), the Serbs turned their attention, as the Central Powers had presumably expected, to the Egean outlet. Here, however, there were already two other claimants, a fact which largely contributed to the outbreak of the second Balkan War in 1913. It was only in 1918, when the collapse of the Central Powers enabled the South Slavs to unite into a single state, that Serbia acquired access to the Adriatic, through territory which, formerly under Austria and Hungary, became part of Yugoslavia, i.e. the land of the South Slavs, known officially as the Serb, Croat, Slovene State.

Yugoslavs, before 1918, were living under four different governments, and their lands have never before been united into a single state. In order to form an opinion as to the future of this country it is essential to know something of her economic resources and economic problems. What can she produce? What does she need? With whom, therefore, are her commercial relations? With whom, therefore, should it be her policy to be friendly? As the late war advanced, it became apparent that the underlying motives were largely economic, that the quarrel of the Central Powers with Serbia was really based on their desire to obtain command, ria the Balkan route, of the economic wealth of the Orient. Similarily, Austro-Hungary's efforts to prevent the South Slavs from uniting to form a single state were based on the fact that the Dual Monarchy's outlets to the sea lay across land peopled by the Yugoslavs. It is obvious that the foreign policy of Yugoslavia, now that the South Slavs have solved their "nationalist" problem, will be influenced in the future more by her economic interests than by any other factor. The political future is therefore indissolubly bound up with the economic.

Of the total population of about twelve millions in Yugoslavia, 80 per cent. are engaged in agriculture, so that any consideration of the economic geography of the area must be concerned primarily with the cultivation of the soil.

From the point of view of agricultural production, the country can be divided into four main regions (see Fig. 1), each of which has its own specific agricultural conditions. Along the Mediterranean coast there is a narrow strip of land (A) which is different in climate, and therefore in many of its crops, from the rest of the country. This coastal belt, with its mild, wet winters and hot, arid summers has a "Mediterranean" type of vegetation, being the only part of Yugoslavia where the olive grows; but the amount of productive land is small, partly because the mountains are near the sea, actually reaching the coast in many places, and partly because the very pure limestone of which they are composed provides very little soil. It is only where such soil, known as terra rossa, occurs, or in the limited Flysch-covered zones, where the soils are derived from the sandstone and shales of this formation, that the olives, figs, vines and other fruits of this region are grown. Owing, therefore, to the small amount of arable land, this is

one of the least important regions from the agricultural point of view, although it may become important in the future as an outlet for the products of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Serbia. Fig. 5, showing the distribution of vineyards, indicates clearly the agricultural lands of the Adriatic coast.

Behind this coastal strip is a belt of mountainous country which is also of little agricultural importance (B). Here, too, the Dinaric Alps, in the region nearest the sea-the Zagora region-consist of limestone

so pure that it contains practically no insoluble material. Accordingly, much of this karst country is either entirely barren, or covered only with scattered scrub which provides scanty pasture for sheep and goats. It is only in isolated depressions, known as polya and dolina, that soil has collected so that agriculture can be carried on.

East of the karst-lands, the country is still mountainous-practically all over 1000 feet in height and mainly above 3000 feet-and in relief is therefore unfavourable to agriculture, but there are extensive Flysch beds; although these are not very fertile, they are able to support thick forests. This area (C) forms part of the third and largest agricultural

zone in Yugoslavia, an area which displays a considerable amount of variety, but is mainly mountainous or hilly. It is, therefore, more suitable for fruit-trees and mixed farming than for grain-growing. At the same time, since the peasants are largely self-supporting, cereals are grown throughout for home consumption and give a surplus in the most. favoured areas, and the continental climate with its hot, rainy summers is also suited to grains. In addition, a good deal of the higher and less fertile land is still forested.

Leaving aside for the moment the subdivisions of this large third zone, the fourth and last agricultural region (D) may next be considered. This consists chiefly of the lowlands north of the Danube and in the angle between the Danube and the Save, which include the Yugoslav portions of the Banat, Bačka, and Baranja, together now known as Voivodina, with the addition of Srem (Syrmia) These plains, which are among the most fertile in Europe, are thickly floored with Tertiary sediments covered with recent deposits, mainly loess and alluvium; they present a monotonously uniform surface, except where forested masses of older rock stand up above the general level. The area contains both marshy and sandy tracts, but most of it is covered with exceedingly fertile soils, on which the crops of maize and wheat are the heaviest in the kingdom. Yugoslavia possesses no area of greater agricultural importance. The plain sends two tongues of lowland up the Drave and Save to Maribor (Marburg) and Zagreb (Agram) respectively, thus embracing the hilly region of the Croatia-Slavonia Uplands.

This brings us back to a further consideration of the third agricultural region (Fig 1, C), where a detailed examination reveals several subdivisions. In the north-west of the kingdom, in north-east Slovenia and Croatia, there is an area which, although mountainous near the Austrian border, becomes merely hilly farther east. Further, even the mountainous area contains some well-cultivated valleys, such as the smiling basin of Ljubljana (Laibach), and the somewhat analogous basin round Celj (Cilli). Here, in a land originally covered with forests, some of which still exist, mixed farming is carried on, including the rearing of dairy cattle. The second subdivision of this third region is the mountainous land already mentioned, drained by the right-bank tributaries of the Save, and mainly forest-covered. It includes the mass of Bosnia, without Herzegovina, which comes within the karstic The third subdivision consists of the mountainous Morava basin, but includes a fair amount of lowland in the lower Morava valley, and bordering the Danube, and also includes the platform of the Sumadia ("The Forest"). The Sumadia, limited on the east by the Morava, on the south by the West Morava, on the west by the Kolubara and on the north by the Danube, is developed on the fertile Miocene and Pliocene. deposits overlying the northern end of the old crystalline block of the Rhodope. Only the higher southern part is now forested, the greater part being devoted to agriculture, and, with the lower Morava valley, this region formed the chief maize and pig lands of the old kingdom, and

area.