Such in brief are the striking features of this portion of the Hittites’ land. On these breezy highlands the ancient people found all the elements of contentment: hunter, woodman, shepherd, and peasant found each his home, in which Nature provided him with all the ordinary requirements of his life. Nor was the development of his civilisation to be arrested by his settlement: the resources of his country were inexhaustible; mines of useful and precious minerals are not uncommon;[24] and the means of providing other commodities was at hand, for the walls of the plateau were not without openings to foster some relations with the coast and so with other lands. But, on the whole, the uplands which he had occupied were economically self-contained; and for the stimulus to his civilisation we look naturally to the East, and especially to the old-established culture on the Euphrates, the communications with which, by the nature of his settlement, were open and in his power.[25] In the foregoing general view of Central Asia Minor we have seen that the interior tableland may be divided conveniently for description into five main regions, not for the most part separated from one another by any definite boundary, but each characterised by some special feature. These are, in the south, the plains that lie northward and eastward from Iconium; in the west, the pine-clad hills and verdant pastures of Phrygia, where several great rivers rise that descend in different directions; in the north, the upland but not highland country around Angora, in which also is the divide between some tributaries of the Sangarius and of the Halys; in the north-east, the broad tract enclosed by the convex curve of the Halys River, to which we shall presently return; and, in the south-east, the tract of which Tyana is the centre, with which we shall include the eastern portion of the plain of Konia and the range of Taurus that bounds it on the south. Of these regions, the two latter may be regarded as an eastern or inner group as opposed to the three former lying to their west, from which they are physically separated, more clearly, at any rate, than the components of either group from one another, by the broad expanse of desert, the great central lake, and especially by the middle course of the Halys. This distinction between eastern and western will be found to have a real significance as our story develops: it is clear from the outset, however, that the former group would first receive and longest retain contact with Eastern civilisation, whether by the natural approaches over the watershed between the Euphrates and the Halys, or by the several crossings of the Anti-Taurus which converge upon Cæsarea, or by what is now the chief channel of communication through the Taurus Mountains by way of Cilicia. This distinction will be found further emphasised by the comparative plenty of Hittite monuments on the one side, and their paucity in the west.