438 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



scantiness of property itself. If, however, through the prevalence of 

 an esj^ecially quarrelsome disposition in any tribe, altercations and 

 murders increase in numbers, the far greater calamities of retaliation 

 are aggravated in the same proportion, and, where one life is taken in 

 original altercation, whole families and generations are consumed in 

 retaliatory feuds. 



Hence, wherever we catch glimpses of societies before they have 

 commenced to administer a general criminal justice, we find them 

 already busy in devising expedients for the amelioration of feuds. 

 Tacitus, in enumerating the affairs of state transacted at the great 

 feasts of the Germans, mentions first in the order of business " the 

 reconcilement of enemies." 



The large place occupied by blood-feuds in ancient Semitic socie- 

 ties and the dark shadow which they cast over social life have been 

 vividly portrayed by Michaelis in his work on the Mosaic laws. The 

 notoriously blightful prevalence of such feuds among the American 

 Indians is such as to prepare us for Schoolcraft's account of a tribe to 

 the south of Lake Superior, which he found almost extinct through, 

 intestine feuds. Indeed, such instances are by no means uncommon. 

 A passage in which Mr. Bellew describes the condition of the feud- 

 ridden Berdurani, or northeastern Afghan tribes, so forcibly illustrates 

 the demoralization ensuing from feuds as to justify its quotation at 

 length : " Indeed," he says, " the quarrelsome character of this people 

 and the constant strife that they lead are declared by a mere glance at 

 their villages and fields, which bristle in all directions with round 

 towers. These are constantly occupied by men at enmity with their 

 neighbors in the same or adjoining villages, who, perched up in their 

 little shooting-boxes, watch the opportunity of putting a bullet into 

 each other's body with the most persevering patience. The fields, 

 even, are studded with these round towers, and the men holding 

 them most jealously guard their lands from any one with whom 

 they are at feud. Nothing belonging to their enemies is safe from 

 their vengeance. If even a fowl strays from its owner into the 

 grounds of another, it is sure to receive a bullet from the adversary's 

 tower. So constant are their feuds that it is a well-known fact that 

 the village children are taught never to walk in the cenxer of the road, 

 but always from force of early habit walk stealthily along under cover 

 of the wall nearest to any tower." These, it must be conceded, are 

 extreme cases ; yet they are a perfectly logical outgrowth of unaided 

 and unhampered private retaliation. If most nations have outgrown 

 the system without suffering so extreme wretchedness from its preva- 

 lence among them, it is to be ascribed to the promptness and ingenuity 

 with which they have applied themselves to its modification. Instead 

 of being, as has been considered, a necessary though rude expedient of 

 primitive communities for the suppression of crime, it was from the 

 beginning and under all circumstances preeminent in its fruitfulness 



