Climatic Limits to Distribution. 19 Although Darwin has not been able to give strict proof of his theory of the transmutation of species, he has, nevertheless, thoroughly shaken the credit of the opposite theory of the immutability of specific characters, and, in the sphere of ethnology, has corroborated the conjecture that all races have sprung from a single primordial form, and by the accumulation of small differences, rendered persistent by undisturbed transmission, have developed into varieties. This opinion is favoured by a number of facts, which lead us to infer the high antiquity of our race as well as the capacity of man to adapt himself to the greatest contrasts of temperature found on the face of the earth. As far as man has hitherto advanced in the direction of the poles, traces of inhabitants have been discovered; for not long before the sailor Morton and the Eskimo Hans reached Cape Constitution on the west coast of Greenland (81° 22′ north lat.), on June 24th, 1854, they noticed the fragments of a sledge.34 Traces of inhabitants, such as walrus ribs which had been used as sledge-runners, an old knife handle, and some circular stones for fastening tents, were found by the crew of the Polaris at the extremity of West Greenland. 35 These testified to the previous presence of Eskimo, whom in Homeric language we must regard as the "uttermost men" (coxaτoi avopŵv). With the men we also discover the tracks of at least one domestic animal, for the dog has always been his companion. That portion of the earth has yet to be found which could not be inhabited, or at least visited by some race or other. It is true, the transitions from different climates must not be too sudden. Even Icelanders who immigrate to Copenhagen, are apt to perish from consumption,36 although they are of common origin with the Danes, and only eight hundred years ago spoke the same language. While in the New World, and in the Philippine Islands, the Spaniards have adapted themselves to a tropical life,37 the English have been unable to populate India, and the Dutch to people Su 34 Kane, Arctic Explorations, i. 297. Philadelphia, 1856. 38 Waitz, Anthropologie, vol. i. p. 145. 37 Jäger, Reisen in den Philippinen, p. 29. Berlin, 1873. matra and Java with the descendants of Europeans. Children born of English parents in India, sicken and die when they pass the age of about six years. Hence the English send their children to Europe on the approach of the dangerous moment, and the same occurs among the Dutch. In the Dutch possessions in India a European woman reflects maturely before she consents to a marriage, for the first child-bed usually costs the life of the mother. Even the Portuguese women at Tete, on the Zambesi, succumb to this fatality, as is stated by Rowley, the English missionary. But if the transitions to other climates follow gradually and at great intervals of time, there is no doubt that men of the same breed can people every zone of the earth, for no one disputes that the Hindoo of high caste, whether in Bengal, in Madras, or in Scinde, or any other tropical portion of his own country, is of the same Aryan origin as the old northern inhabitants of Iceland, and that the unknown primordial ancestors of both must have dwelt in a common home. Nor will any one maintain that the Gothic conquerors on the other side of the Pyrenees did not long preserve the purity of their "blue blood," and give birth to children of their own stock, Spaniards in Spain. From the Spanish peninsula again were derived the settlers in Madeira and the Canary Islands who, some twenty years ago, after the outbreak of the vine disease, emigrated in multitudes to Trinidad and British Guiana. All ethnologists agree that the aborigines of America, with the exception perhaps of the Eskimo, constitute a single race, and that this race has succeeded in adapting itself to every climatic condition in both hemispheres from the Arctic circle to the equator, and beyond it as far as the 50th latitude. We meet the Chinese at Maimaitchin (Kiakhta) on the Siberian boundary, where the mean temperature is below freezing point, and the thermometer falls in winter to 40° Reaumur ; and we find them also on the island of Singapore, which almost touches the equator. 38 Turkish races, such as the Yakuts, are settled on the Lena, where Kennan found them 39 gossiping in the open air at a temperature of 32° Reaumur, clad only in a shirt and 38 Pumpelly, Across America and Asia, p. 256. London, 1870. 39 Tent Life in Siberia, p. 218. R Psychical Identity. 21 a fur coat. The Kirghiz pasture their flocks on the Pamir plateau, perhaps the highest steppe in the world, and they dwell as the dominant race in the tropical part of South Egypt,4° as well as at the ill-famed Massowah on the Red Sea. In the examination of racial characters, we shall show how little these great fluctuations permit fixed limits to be drawn ; but meanwhile we may prove by a number of facts, that nations and races of men the most remote from, and least resembling each other, are so analogous in their mental habits, that at least it is impossible to question the unity and identity of the intellectual faculties of the human species. We shall refer later on to the fact that the language of signs and gestures used by the deaf and dumb of Europe coincides with the method of communication employed under similar circumstances by the North American Redskins. With but few exceptions, all nations have arrived at a single or double decimal system, because they have used their fingers in counting. Skin-painting and tattooing reappear in every part of the world. Knocking out the front teeth is not only a negro custom, but occurs also in Australia. Again, the teeth are filed to a point in Brazil, as well as by the Otando, Apono, Tshogo, and Ashango tribes in Western Africa. 42 Hippocrates even, or whoever else may have been the author of the book on "Air, Water, and Situation," mentions that by the people of the steppes of Southern Russia, the skulls of free-born children were pressed between boards to give them a more upright form; 43 and we meet the same fashion among the Conivos on the Ucayali, in South America; 44 it was observed by Ch. Bell and Berthold Siemann in the Mosquitia among the Smu; 45 it is practised also on the northern continent, especially by the Tshinuks of British Columbia, and generally by all the so-called Flatheads, who further only permit the pressure of the skulls of the children of the 40 Latham, Varieties of Man, p. 77. 41 Von Martius, Ethnographie, i. 536. Du Chaillu, Equatorial Africa, p. 74, and Ashango Land, p. 431. 43 Cap. 80. "Grandidier, Perou et Bolivie, p. 129. 45 Journal Royal Geogr. Society, vol. xxxii. p. 256, and Siemann, Nicaragua, Panama, and Mosquitea, p. 308. free-born.46 Sanitary considerations have induced many nations to introduce circumcision. Herodotus 47 considered that the Egyptians and Ethiopians were the inventors of this preventive measure, which was only borrowed from them by the Phoenicians and Syrians. At the time of the conquest, the Spaniards found circumcised nations in Central America,48 and on the Amazon, the Tecuna and Manaos tribes still observe this practice. 49 In the South Seas it has been met with among three different races, but it is performed in a somewhat different manner. On the Australian continent, not all, but the majority of tribes practise circumcision. Among the Papuans, the inhabitants of New Caledonia 50 and the New Hebrides adhere to this custom. In his third voyage, Captain Cook found it among the inhabitants of the Friendly Islands, in particular at Tongataboo,51 and the younger Pritchard bears witness to its practice in the Samoa or Fiji groups. 52 Another Mosaic statute requires that the Jew should endeavour to raise posterity to his brother's widow.53 This view of fraternal duty was met with by Plan Carpin, the ambassador of St. Louis to the Mongols,54 and by Martius among the Brazilian tribes of Tupinamba,55 and it prevails also among the Kolush, in the north-west of America,56 and the Ostiaks in Northern Russia.57 We even find an instance in which we come upon two Mosaic statutes, namely, circumcision and the above-mentioned duty of brothers-in-law, which is quite beyond suspicion of any connection with Judaism, that is to say, among the Papuans of New Caledonia. 58 The strange custom of greeting by rubbing noses, is not only peculiar to all Eskimo even as far as Greenland, 59 but is also ascribed to the Australians.60 46 Paul Kane, Indians of North America, p. 181. 49 Von Martius, Ethnographie, i. 582. 47 Book ii. 104. 50 Cook, Voyages in the Australian Hemisphere, vol. iii. p. 156. 51 Cook and King, vol. i. p. 384. 52 Polynesian Reminiscences, p. 393. 53 Deut. xxv. 5-10. 55 Ethnographie, i. 153. 54 Receuil de Voyages, iv. 613. 56 Waitz, Anthropologie, iii. 328. 57 Castrèn, Ethnolog. Vorlesungen, p. 119. 58 Rochas, Nouv. Caledonie, p. 232. 59 Barrow, Arctic Voyages, p. 30. 60 Waitz (Gerland), Anthropologie, vol. vi. p. 749. Psychical Identity. 23 Darwin observed it among the Maori of New Zealand, Lamont noticed it among the Polynesians of the Penrhyn and Marquesas islands.62 Wallace, who was startled to see it in practice among his crew on taking leave of Mancassar, calls it the Malay kiss,63 and Linnæus observed it in Lapland.64 The descriptions of Cook's first and second voyages by Hawkesworth and the two Forsters, made us acquainted with the Polynesian custom of ratifying a bond of friendship by an exchange of names. The same practice prevailed among the Mohawks in North America,65 and in South Africa, a bond of fraternity was concluded in the same manner by a Makololo and a Zulu Kaffir in Livingstone's presence.66 Every possibility that such community of custom is the result of intercourse is removed, when we find that both among the Fuegians of South America, and the inhabitants of the Andaman Islands in the Gulf of Bengal, widows are obliged to wear the skulls of their dead husbands suspended round the neck 67 by a cord. From the lofty plains of Peru and Bolivia may be seen cairns or so-called Apachetas on the mountain tops, which no mule driver will pass without adding a new stone to the memorial.68 This custom extends all over the world. Captain Speke observed it in the region of Usui to the south of Karagve and southwest of the Ukerewe Lake.69 Colonel Meadows Taylor in a romance 7o esteemed for its ethnographic delineations, describes the same custom in the Mahratta districts of India. Adolphe Bastian saw similar pyramids of stones in the mountain passes in Burmah, and among the Kayans in Borneo," the brothers Schlagenweit 70 61 Voyage in the Beagle, vol. ii. p. 198. "Wild Life among the Pacific Islanders, pp. 18, 269. 63 Malay Archipelago, ii. 165. Tylor, Early History of Mankind, p. 66. 65 Ibid. 161. 66 Zambesi, p. 149. 67 Frederick Mouat, Andaman Islanders, p. 327. 68 Grandidier, Perou et Bolivie. In more detail in J. J. von Tschudi, Reisen durch Südamerika, vol. v. p. 52. Leipzig, 1869. 69 Source of the Nile, p. 193. 70 Tara, a Mahratta tale, i. 144. " Völker des östlichen Asiens, vol. ii. p. 483; vol. v. p. 47. |