I. The human species, springing originally from a single centre of appearance, is now universally distributed. In their innumerable travels, its representatives have encountered the widest difference of climate and the most opposite conditions of life, and now inhabit both the polar and equatorial regions. It must, therefore, have possessed the necessary aptitudes for accommodating itself to all the natural conditions of existence; in other words, it must have had the power of becomingacclimatisedandnaturalisedin every place where we meet with it.
The possibility of man living and prospering in other regions than those in which his fathers lived, has been denied in a more or less emphatic manner by the greater number of polygenists. Without going as far as this, certain monogenists have held that a human race, when constituted for given conditions of life, was, so to speak, a prisoner to them, and could not effect a change without losing his life. Other writers have maintained precisely opposite opinions, and have held that any human group could at once become acclimatised in any given spot.
There are exaggerations and errors in all these extreme doctrines.
II. In spite of the assertions of Knox, Frenchmen can live perfectly well in Corsica, provided only, that they avoid the marshes of the eastern coast, which the islanders themselves cannot inhabit. After the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, the fugitives from Provence and Languedoc founded villages in the valley of the Danube, thus contradicting beforehand one of the assertions of the English doctor. English and French emigrants to the United States, and to Canada, have not degenerated, in spite of the assertions of the same author. Though modified, often in a very striking manner, as we shall presently see, the Yankeesquattersand the Canadianbackwoodsmenare certainly not inferior to the first colonists who planted the European standard in the midst of the Red-Skins.
Knox, and the anthropologists who agree either entirely or partially with him, attribute to emigration alone the maintenance and growth of the white population in America and elsewhere. In their opinion the European emigrant loses, after several generations, the power of reproduction. If the human current, which sets from Europe towards the Colonies were to be stopped, they maintain that the population would rapidly diminish, and the local races regain the ascendancy, that the United States would return to the Red-Skins, and Mexico to the descendants of Montezuma.
This assertion will easily be answered by a few statistics. They are taken from the history of French races, which, since the treaty of Paris in 1763, have, although in a slight degree, directly contributed to the peopling of Canada. There were in this country:
In Ottawa State there were:
The history of the Acadians furnishes statistics which are quite as convincing. From the information obtained by M. Rameau, it appears that the entire population was descended from forty-seven families, numbering 400 souls in 1671. In 1755 there were 18,000. Dispersed and driven out by the English they were reduced to only 8,000. In 1861, the number rose to 95,000 persons.
If we calculate from the preceding figures the annual increase of French populations in America, we shall find the ratio equal or superior to that furnished by the most favoured European populations. This proves that the French race shows no sign of disappearance, even in the country chosen as an example by Knox.
Without entering into too many details, let us remember that the French have lived and increased in number at Constantia, not far from the Cape, since the revocation of the Edict of Nantes; that this same region has been colonized by the Dutch, whose descendants, the Boers, have migrated, and now form the Transvaal Republic; that they have been succeeded at the Cape by the English, who, by degrees, have overrun the whole country. We must also remember the rapid growth of the Anglo-Australian colonies, etc.; and, finally, let us not forget those nine families of missionaries visited by M. de Delapelin in Polynesia, which, in all, numbered sixty-nine children, that is to say, a mean of more than seven and a half each, and we shall be forced to acknowledge that the most highly characterised European white can live and increase in number in both hemispheres, at the antipodes, and in the native countries of the most different races.
Further, the great race to which he himself belongs was not originally European. It probably sprang from the mountain district of the Bolor and the Hindoo-koh, where the Mamogis still represent the original stock. In any case, the Zend-Avesta informs us that it issued from a region where the summer lasted but two months, a climate which almost corresponds to that of Finland. Step by step it advanced,on the one hand as far as the Gangetic peninsula and Ceylon, on the other to Iceland and Greenland. Afterwards, when the era of great discoveries had commenced, it distributed its colonies over the whole world, peopling continents, and replacing indigenous races.
The consideration of these general facts alone, and the result of this perpetual activity, make it impossible to deny to the Aryan race the faculty of acclimatisation, under the most diverse conditions of existence. All the assertions of Knox, and of his more or less avowed disciples, fall before these facts.
What is true for the Aryan race is equally true for the Negro. The White has transported the Black to almost every part of the globe, and in the most distant places the Black lives side by side with his master. Our experience as to the Yellow Races is still slight, but we can already foresee that the result will be the same. Chinese and Coolies have passed over into America from Asia; we shall perhaps soon see them in Africa and in Europe.
Certain branches detached from the great ethnical stocks have already offered similar evidences. The Gipsies, Aryans mixed, perhaps, with Dravidians, have overrun the whole of Europe, and are now met with everywhere. As to the Jews, we know that they are really cosmopolitan, and that almost everywhere, in Prussia as in Algeria, their fecundity surpasses that of the local races.
III. I do not mean by this that I consider the Aryan, or any races, capable of always becoming at once acclimatised in any given locality. On the contrary, there are regions which are fatal to man, to whatever group he may belong, and however well prepared he may seem to be to brave their influence. Such is the great estuary of the Gaboon, where the Negro himself cannot live. The general constitution of the inhabitants grows sensibly weaker; the reproductive organs appear to be particularly affected, and the number of women greatly surpasses that of the men. We know how dangerous the climate of this country is to the European, and it will beinteresting to see whether the Paouins will in their turn yield to the deleterious influence of these coasts, which they are gradually approaching.
We need not, moreover, go so far for examples. Who does not know the reputation of the Maremma, and the marshes of Corsica? At one time the swamps of the Dombe, and the mouth of the Charente, in France, were scarcely less dangerous.
Even where the conditions are much less severe, acclimatisation almost always demands numerous and melancholy sacrifices, which some anthropologists have done wrong to overlook. The fact is but too natural. A race, which has settled under the influence of certain conditions of existence, cannot effect a change without undergoing modification, and hence suffering. This fact will be noticed in some detail in the chapter dedicated to the formation of these derived groups from the species. I can here only point out the general law.
IV. Thus, every colonization of a distant country must be regarded in the first place as a conquest attempted by the immigrating race. Now, whether the battle has to be fought with man or with the conditions of life, the victory is only gained at the cost of human life. We must not, however, exaggerate the extent of inevitable losses, and deny the possibility of acclimatisation. We must put the problem clearly, and seek for experimental data, whence the solution may be naturally deduced.
Every question of acclimatisation comprises two terms, which are, so to speak, thecomponentsof theresultantwhich we are seeking for or studying. These terms areraceandconditions of life. We already know the exact significance of the former of these two words, and we shall presently consider in some detail what we are to understand by the latter. At present we will take it as simply representing all the conditions of existence presented by a given place, and proceed to point out its influence in acclimatisation.
We have seen that certain conditions of life appear to befatal to all races. In cases of this kind, we should distinguish how much of this insalubrity is due to the regions, and how much is the result of accidental circumstances, sometimes provoked by man himself. The plain of the Dombe in France was once as salubrious as the surrounding country. The exaggerated industry of the marshes transformed it into a pestilential region, where it was quite as fatal for foreign populations to live as it would have been in the swamps of the Senegal. Sanitary measures are now tending to restore it to its former condition. It is evident that we cannot reproach the Dombe with the deleterious influence which human intelligence seems to have undertaken to develop.
Even when the latter does not step in to vitiate the conditions of life, we cannot charge a country with opposing unfavourable conditions to an indigenous or foreign race, when these conditions may be attributed to the negligence of the inhabitants, or to some special cause, which human intelligence might modify. Deprived of the care which rendered it healthy and luxuriant, the Campagna of Rome has become a branch of the Pontine Marshes. On the other hand, the environs of Rochefort have become healthy; Bouffarik, once one of the most dangerous spots in Algeria, has become the centre of a flourishing population. It was not, therefore, the general natural conditions which rendered these localities dangerous, especially to strangers, but simplyaccident. As soon as the cause is removed, acclimatisation becomes not only possible, but easy.
Considered from this point of view, many countries, which now appear to repel all attempts at immigration, will, perhaps, at some future period, be particularly favourable to the development of colonizing races. It is clear that in all cases of this kind we must distinguish betweennormalandaccidentally vitiated conditions of life.
I cannot enter into all the details which this distinction would allow, and shall confine myself to quoting a few facts.
The very progress of civilization sometimes results in thevitiation of certain conditions of life. Such is the almost inevitable result of the crowding together of human beings in a relatively limited space. This is one of the points most clearly demonstrated in the statistical researches of M. Boudin upon the comparative mortality of the country and of barracks, for example. A comparison of our large towns and rural districts leads to the same result, and points to a special action upon the organs of reproduction. M. Boudin could not find a pure-blooded Parisian whose genealogy could be traced for more than three generations. At Besançon, town families become extinct in less than a century, and are replaced by others from the country. London, I have been assured, presents a similar phenomenon.
Do not ships, in which men live crowded together for months under very unsatisfactory sanitary conditions, develop deleterious principles, to which the crews become accustomed by degrees, but which are, nevertheless, capable of producing the most serious affections in the midst of surrounding populations, which, till then, had been in a flourishing condition. Have we here one of those phenomena to which, according to Darwin, we must attribute the terrible mortality and increasing sterility of the Polynesian races? Among the diseases introduced by European sailors, ought we not to reckon phthisis, which is said to have become epidemic, as well as hereditary, in those islands? The probabilities seem to me to be in favour of an answer in the affirmative. Neither land nor sky have changed in these archipelagoes since the time of their discovery, and yet the Polynesian Islanders disappear with a terrible rapidity, whilst their mixed races and even pure-blooded Europeans show a redoubled fertility—a double contradiction given by facts to autochthonic doctrines.
It is not always easy to determine, in judging of the more or less deleterious action of given conditions of life, what should be attributed to normal conditions, and what is the result of accidental vitiating elements. The soil, cold, heat, dryness, or humidity of a country are not all. The differencepresented from the point of view of acclimatisation by the two hemispheres is a striking example.
The hot regions of the southern hemisphere are, as a rule, more accessible to white races than those in similar latitudes in the northern hemisphere. From 30 to 35 degrees of N. lat. we find Algeria, and especially the southern part of the United States, which present serious difficulties against our acclimatisation. In the same latitude of the southern hemisphere, lie the southern portion of the Cape and New South Wales, where all European races prosper almost immediately. M. Boudin’s calculations give the differences exactly. He has found that the mean mortality of French and English armies was about eleven times greater in our hemisphere than in the southern hemisphere.
Struck by this contrast, M. Boudin endeavoured to discover its cause, and found that it lay in the greater or less frequency and gravity of marsh fevers. North of the equator these fevers may be traced in Europe as far as the 59th deg. of latitude. In the south they rarely pass the tropics, and often cease at an even smaller distance. Tahiti, which is only 18 deg. from the geographical equator, and almost beneath the thermal equator, is free from them. In the southern hemisphere, the mean annual number of cases of fever in the united English and French colonies was 1·6 in 1000; in the northern hemisphere it was 224·9 in 1000.
Thus, marsh fevers are almost 200 times more frequent to the north than to the south of the equator, although in South America and Australia, for example, vast tracts are covered with standing water under a burning sun. They are, moreover, of a far less serious nature in the southern hemisphere. The immense lagoons of Corrientes only occasion slight fevers. We know how dangerous, on the contrary, are those of the Pontine Marshes, which are situated at a much greater distance from the equator. It would be much more difficult for a European to live in Italy upon the banks of the Carigliano, than in America upon those of the Parana.
In spite of some experiments and ingenious theories, thesedifferences between localities, apparently presenting almost identical general physical conditions, have not yet been explained. The researches of M. Boudin, however, justify us in regarding these marsh miasmata as very probably the greatest and often the only obstacle to the acclimatisation of Europeans in the greater number of those places to which the spirit of enterprise has led them. There is something very encouraging and instructive in this fact. We know by what combination of circumstances these pestilential miasmata are engendered; we know how it is possible to resist them. Man can, then, wherever he may go, fight against nature, and at least somewhat ameliorate the conditions of acclimatisation. It has, until now, been impossible to make a whole country healthy in a short space of time. This was a work which time alone seemed to be able to accomplish, very often at a heavy cost of human life. It seems as if the introduction of the eucalyptus would, in a great measure at least, tend to diminish these sacrifices.
Should, however, the tree brought from Australia by M. Ramel justify all our hopes, we shall find that some care must still be taken in the choice ofstation. I shall presently show how, in countries which are apparently most dangerous, there are circumscribed spots where acclimatisation takes place almost immediately. It is clear that new comers ought to look carefully for these favoured localities, and pitch their tents there. The contrary has almost always been, and still is, the case. They allow themselves to be seduced by the beauty and fertility of the alluvial lands situated at the mouth of some river, or upon the shores of some bay calculated to facilitate commerce, without considering their unhealthiness. They settle down and build there, without being disturbed by the losses which overwhelm fresh arrivals; and thus it is that pestilential flats, like that of Batavia, have become inhabited.
V. I cannot here consider in any detail the action of conditions of life upon human races, without anticipating considerations which will be more appropriate in another chapter.I shall only point out a very general fact, and one of great interest in the problem of acclimatisation.
We know that the animal and vegetable races of one species, although in reality subject to the same influences, have, nevertheless, their special aptitudes; and, more especially, some affection which is very general in one will be very rare in another. The case is precisely similar with human races.
Marsh fevers act in the same manner upon all men. The Negro suffers and dies from fever on the banks of the Niger, but in a much less degree than the White. Moreover, the two races, when transposed to India, preserve, in this respect, almost the same relations. Compared with local races, the Negro still retains the ascendancy; he is everywhere the last attacked by malarious emanations. Born in a country where he is obliged almost incessantly and universally to breathe them, descended from ancestors, who from prehistoric times have lived in this poisoned air, he has become acclimatised to it more than any other race; on this account alone, he is able to prosper in places where the White would suffer for a long time.
On the other hand, the Negro has a delicate chest, and no race is so subject to consumption, whilst this malady is much more rarely fatal to the White or to the Malay.
From the extreme differences presented by the White and the Negro it follows that the general conditions of acclimatisation are reversed in the two races. A moderately warm air which is impregnated with malarious emanations is dangerous to the European. A moderate degree even of damp cold will be fatal to the Negro.
These few facts are sufficient to show that the conditions of acclimatisation vary with the race; that the same climate cannot exercise the same kind of action upon different races, and that complete acclimatisation, that is to say,naturalisation, can only follow upon the harmony of these two terms—race and conditions of life.