MIGRATIONS OF RACES OF MEN CONSIDERED HISTORICALLY. 587 



all the best laud has already been taken up, can support a far larger 

 population than they uow haA'e, and the same may be said of large 

 tracts along the Alleghanies. But the attractions to emigrants 

 become daily slighter as the conditions of agriculture grow less favor- 

 able through theinlerior(iuality of the untouched land and theapproach- 

 ing exhaustion of that which has been tilled for two or three decades, 

 not to speak of that vast natural increase of the population already on 

 the spot, which intensities the competition for employment. We may 

 conjecture that within the lifetime of persons now living the outflow 

 from Europe to North America will have practically stopped. A some- 

 what longer time will be required to fill not only the far less attractive 

 parts of I*Torthern Asia 1 have mentioned, but also such scantily 

 inhabited though once flourishing regions as Asia Minor, Mesopotamia, 

 and Persia, because a more torrid sun, and atrocious misgovernment, 

 keep these regions, so to speak, out of the market. In the Southern 

 Hemisphere, whose land area is far smaller, there are the temperate 

 districts of Australia and South Africa, of which, so far as our present 

 knowledge extends, no very large part has moisture enough to be 

 available for tillage; while in South America there are La Plata, 

 northern Patagonia, and the highlands of Bolivia, I'eru and Ecuador.* 

 The elevation above the sea of these latter tracts gives them a tolera- 

 ble climate, but their wealth lies chiefly in minerals, and the parts 

 which are both healthy and fit for agriculture are of comparatively 

 small extent. There remain the tropics. Vast regions of the tropics 

 are at present scantily peopled. Most of equatorial South America is a 

 forest wilderness. Much of tropical Africa — where it is not condemned 

 to sterility by the want of water — seems to have a population far 

 below what it could support, owing not merely to the wars and slave 

 raids which devastate the country, but also to the fact that peoples 

 unskilled in tillage can not make the soil yield anything like its full 

 return of crops. The same remark applies to Borneo, Celebes, ISew 

 Guinea, Luzon, and some of the other isles of the Eastern Archipelago, 

 among which only Java has as yet seen its resources duly developed. 

 That there will be considerable migrations and shiftings of population 

 among the races that now inhabit the tropics is probable enough. 

 India ( except the central provinces and Assam ) and China are both 

 filled to overflowing, and will doubtless continue to send out streams 

 of emigrants which may in time fill up the vacant spaces in the Eastern 

 Archipelago, perhaps in South America, perhaps even in Africa, unless 

 some of its indigenous races should ripen into a greater capacity for 

 patient and steady toil than any, except the Egyptian, has yet shown. 

 But none of these tropical peoples, save the Chinese — for Japan hes 

 outside the tropics— has a native civilization, or is fitted to play any 

 part in history either as a conquering or as a thinking force, or in any 



*The elevated parts of ei(natorial Africa an- mnch smaller, though possibly large 

 enough to support a European population of some few millions. 



