208 MR STARK ON THE SUPPOSED PROGRESS OF HUMAN SOCIETY 



tendency of the human race is in most circumstances to degenerate from the civi- 

 lized to the savage state in place of rising from savage to civilized life ? What- 

 ever be the elements of this retrograde progress, there is no doubt of the fact. 

 All history is full of instances, of regions occupied by civilized people, being now 

 the abodes of hordes of barbarians. The almost obliterated remains of Babylon 

 the ruins of Thebes the monuments of Egypt the total disappearance of the 

 ancient commercial republics of Carthage and her allies even the ruins of Athens 

 and Rome teach the lesson, that neither science nor art, neither philosophy nor 

 religion, have been hitherto effective in stopping this downward progress this 

 descent to barbarism and savage life. 



With regard to the progress of this degradation, it must necessarily have 

 been gradual, as to the first emigrants from the centre of civilization and know- 

 ledge. Removed by choice or from necessity, as then* numbers augmented, to 

 greater distances in the yet unpeopled wastes, much of the original knowledge in 

 the arts might have been lost, from no call being made in their circumstances for 

 their use. The occupations of the new settlers would naturally depend much 

 upon the nature of the country and climate in which they found themselves even- 

 tually placed. And it is no stretch of imagination to suppose, that many of these 

 scattered families or tribes, in then- migrations through unpeopled wastes, might 

 gradually lose much of the knowledge of their forefathers. It is besides not im- 

 probable, that many parties of the earlier wanderers, cut off by accidental circum- 

 stances easily supposed driven out to sea or carried down a river in their primitive 

 boats might in many cases be transported beyond reach of communication with 

 other families of then* race; and thus, deprived of the domesticated animals and the 

 use of the grains, degenerate into a ruder and more savage mode of life.* That in 

 some such way as this the American Continent has been peopled is rendered pro- 



* " Very few of the numerous coral islets and volcanoes of the vast Pacific, capable of sustaining a 

 few families of men, have been found untenanted ; and we have therefore to inquire whence and by what 

 means, if all the members of the great human family have had one common source, could these savages 

 have migrated. COOK, FORSTER, and others, have remarked that parties of savages in their canoes must 

 often have lost their way, and must have been driven on distant shores, where they were forced to re- 

 main, deprived both of the means and of the requisite intelligence for returning to their own country. 

 Thus Captain COOK found on the island of Wateoo three inhabitants of Otaheite, who had been drifted 

 thither in a canoe, although the distance between the two isles is 550 miles. In 1696, two canoes, con- 

 taining thirty persons, who had left Ancorso, were thrown by contrary winds and storms on the island of 

 Samar, one of the Philippines, at a distance of 800 milesr In 1721 two canoes, one of which contained 

 twenty-four, and the other six persons, men, women, and children, were drifted from an island called 

 Farroilep to the island of Guaham, one of the Marians, a distance of 200 miles." LYELL'S Principles 

 of Geology, iii. 157. 



KOTZEBUE mentions an instance of four persons being drifted in an open boat to the distance of 1500 

 miles. Captain BLIGH with eighteen persons in an open boat traversed, in forty -one days, a distance of 

 3618 miles, from near Otaheite to Timor in the Indian Ocean ; and a number of other instances might 

 be mentioned from the narratives of travellers, of the spread of the race in circumstances where the know- 

 ledge and habits of civilized life might be so far lost in the necessities of their situation. 



