THE MIGRATIONS OF MEN. 



35 



documents, as positive as the charts on which we rely in writing the 

 history of our middle ages. 



These people came from Asia, from a point of the Indian Archi- 

 pelago that we can determine approximately. They reached the Mar- 

 quesas Isles in the beginning of our era, or in the years immediately 

 preceding. We know with still greater certainty that the emigra- 

 tion to New Zealand, that is to say, to the most distant portion of 

 Polynesia, took place in the beginning of the fifteenth century, and 

 that the emigration from New Zealand to people the Isles of Chatham 

 occurred scarcely a century ago. 



Here we meet with a significant fact. When these emigrants 

 established themselves in the islands of which we are speaking, they 

 found them deserted. This circumstance singularly facilitated their 

 new settlement. If the Calmucks, of whom I just sketched the his- 

 tory, suffered so much, it is because they found men on their route. 

 In our day, if it is still difficult to traverse Africa if the journey from 

 Timbuctoo has cost the lives of so many courageous travellers it is 

 because the Tuaregs close the passage to us. 



The more we study, the better we know that all over the surface 

 of the globe man surmounts every difficulty, so long as he wars only 

 against Nature. If he is arrested, it is when he encounters man. In 

 a word, man alone can arrest man. 



I wish to say a few words also on the last of the questions sug- 

 gested by this subject. 



Man, we have seen, took his departure from a particular place on 

 the globe, and now he is everywhere. Consequently, in his long and 

 multiplied journeyings, he has encountered climates the most extreme, 

 and conditions of existence the most opposite. He has adapted him- 

 self to all. Does it follow that a new-comer, that a European for 

 example, can establish himself anywhere on the globe and immediately 

 prosper there ? You know he cannot. He must become acclimated; 

 and you can easily understand that it ought to be so. The human 

 body, whioh has developed under certain conditions of existence, is in 

 harmony with them. If they change, and above all if they change 

 suddenly, it is evident that the entire organism receives a shock; and 

 this shock brings with it suffering, that you know often ends in death. 



Experience has shown that these sufferings have been more grave 

 and frequent when the course of emigration has been from cold tow- 

 ard warm countries whence a certain number of physicians and an- 

 thropologists have drawn the conclusion that there are some countries 

 on the globe that the European cannot inhabit in which he can never 

 prosper and multiply Some have even gone further. They have 

 maintained that men could only propagate where they were born ; so 

 that, in reality, the Frenchman can only live in France, the English- 

 man in England, the Dutch in Holland, etc. 



This exaggeration needs no refutation. It is already refuted by 

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