XII.] THE CAUCASIC PEOPLES. 449 



need not here be pursued farther, as it will receive abundant 

 illustration in the details to follow. 



Since the discovery of the New and the Austral Worlds, the 

 Caucasic division as represented by the chief European nations 

 has received an enormous expansion. Here of course it is neces- 

 sary to distinguish between political and ethnical conquests, as, 

 for instance, those of India, held by military tenure, and of 

 Australia by actual settlement. Politically the whole world has 

 become Caucasic with the exception of half-a-dozen states such 

 as China, Turkey, Japan, Siam, Marocco, still enjoying a real or fic- 

 titious autonomy. But, from the ethnical standpoint, those regions 

 in which the Caucasic peoples can establish themselves and per- 

 petuate their race as colonists are alone to be regarded as fresh 

 accessions to the original and later (historical) Caucasic domains. 

 Such fresh accessions are however of vast extent, including the 

 greater part of Siberia and much of Caucasia, where the Slav 

 branch of the Aryan-speaking peoples are now founding per- 

 manent new homes ; the whole of Australia, Tasmania, and New 

 Zealand, which have become the inheritance of the Caucasic 

 inhabitants of the British Isles ; large tracts in South Africa, 

 already occupied by settlers chiefly from Holland and Great 

 Britain ; lastly the New World, where most of the northern con- 

 tinent is settled by full-blood Europeans, mainly British, French 

 and German, while in the rest (Central and South America) the 

 Caucasic immigrants (chiefly from the Iberian peninsula) have 

 formed new ethnical groups by fusion with the aborigines. These 

 new accessions, all acquired within the last 400 p asta nd 

 years, may be rousrhly estimated at about 28 million Present 



. . Range. 



square miles, which with some 12 millions held 

 throughout the historic period (Africa north of Sudan, most of 

 Europe, South-West and parts of Central and South Asia, Indo- 

 nesia) gives an extent of 40 million square miles to the present 

 Caucasic domain, either actually occupied or in process of settle- 

 ment. As the whole of the dry land scarcely exceeds 52 millions, 

 this leaves not more than about 12 millions for the now reduced 

 domains of all the other divisions, and even of this a great part 

 (e.g. Tibetan tableland, Gobi, tundras, Greenland) is barely or 

 not at all inhabitable. This, it may be incidentally remarked, is 

 K. 29 



