APPLETONS' 



POPULAR SCIENCE 



MONTHLY. 



JANUARY, 1899. 

 THE EVOLUTION OF COLONIES. 



By JAMES COLLIER. 



VI.— INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION. 



f I ^HE earliest nomadic stage of mankind has left traces in many 

 -*- of the colonies. The first age of French Canada, of New York, 

 of great pa -t of North America, was one of hunters and trappers, and 

 it has continued in the Northwest till recent times. The first brief 

 period of Rhodesia was that of the big-game hunter. The Boers of 

 the Transvaal are still as much hunters as farmers. The American 

 backwoodsman who clears a patch, then sells his improvements to the 

 first newcomer, and, placing his wife and children and scanty belong- 

 ings on a cart, proceeds da capo elsewhere, is a nomadic pioneer. The 

 stage is in one way or another perpetual, for the class never quite dies 

 out. The drunken English quarryman who, driven by a demon of 

 restlessness, continually goes " on tramp," and in his wanderings 

 covers on foot a space equal to twice the circumference of the globe, 

 is a demi-savage whose nomadism is only checked by the " abhorred 

 approaches of old age." If he emigrates, he repeats the old, wild 

 life as a pick-and-shovel man in Queensland or a quarryman in New 

 South Wales. The soberer colonial youth, who more luxuriously 

 canters from farm to farm in New Zealand on the back of a scrub, 

 is a tamer specimen who settles down when he marries. Nay, the 

 " restless man " who periodically applies for leave of absence from a 

 colonial legislature in order to travel in India, China, and Timbuctoo, 

 is a still milder but not less incorrigible example of the same inde- 

 structible type. 



The pastoral stage is all but universal. Wherever grass grows 



VOL. LIV. — 21 



