Scientific Intdligence — Anthropology. 183 



is no other example in this continent, it is chiefly indebted for 

 these advantages to the circumstance, that there are extremely 

 icw people of colour among its citizens. Those various transi- 

 tions of one race into the other are here unknown, which stran- 

 gers find it so difficult to distinguish, and which, in countries 

 like Brazil, must lead, sooner or later, to a dreadful war of ex- 

 termination, and in Peru and Columbia will defer to a period 

 indefinitely remote the establishment of general civilisation.* * ♦ 

 If it is a great evil for a state to have two very different races 

 of men for its citizens, the disorder becomes general, and the 

 most dangerous collisions ensue, when, by an unavoidable mix- 

 ture, races arise which belong to neither party, and in general 

 inherit all the vices of their parents, but very rarely any of their 

 virtues. If the population of Peru consisted of only Whites and 

 Indians, the situation of the country would be less hope- 

 less than it must now appear to every calm observer. Des- 

 tined as they seem by Nature herself, to exist on the earth 

 as a race, for a limited period only, the Indians, both in the 

 north and the south of this vast Continent, in spite of all the 

 measures which humanity dictates, are becoming extinct with 

 equal rapidity, and in a few centuries will leave to the whites 

 the undisputed possession of the country. With the Negroes 

 the case is different ; they have found in America a country 

 which is even more congenial to their nature than the land 

 of their origin, so that their numbers are almost everywhere 

 increasing in a manner calculated to excite the most serious 

 alarm. In the same proportion as they multiply, and the white 

 population is no longer recruited by frequent supplies from the 

 Spanish peninsula, the people of colour likewise become more 

 numerous. Hated by the dark mother, distrusted by the white 

 father, they look on the former with contempt, on the latter 

 with an aversion which circumstances only suppress, but which 

 is insuperable, as it is founded on a high degree of innate pride. 

 All measures suggested by experience and policy, if not to amal- 

 gamate the heterogeneous elements of the population, yet to or- 

 der them so that they might subsist together without collision, 

 and contribute in common to the preservation of the machine of 

 the state, have proved fruitless. * * * The late revolutions have 

 made no change in this respect. The hostility, the hatred, of the 

 many coloured classes will continue a constant check to the ad- 



