4 JOHN EEADE ON 



Whatever were the reasous for the difFereutiatiou, it is known, as already pointed out, 

 fhat between B.C. 3000 and B.C. 2000, the bhick. brown, yellow, red and white races, had 

 assumed the characteristics bj^ which they are still distinguished. And who can tell by 

 what breaking-up and regrouping, often repeated, that stage was finally attained ? All 

 kinds of inA^estigation have been brought to bear on the early movements of our race over 

 the surface of the earth. The spade of the archœologist has raised to the light of day invalu- 

 able treasures of knowledge regarding a past of which the world hardly dreamed. 

 Beneath the historic ficdds of Europe there laj^ for ages, awaiting the seeing eye and the 

 undei'standing brain of the Nineteenth Century scientist, the monuments of races compared 

 with which the great civilizations of the historic past may be considered modern. Nor is 

 it in Europe alone that these relics of forgotten peoples have rewarded the zeal of the 

 searcher. Already science has begun to gather from beneath the soil of China the eviden- 

 ces of occupation by rude tribes whose presence long antedated the earliest of its historic 

 races. According to Pauthier,' when the founders of Chinese civilization first arrived in 

 the country, they, like the early settlers in the New "World, encountered the primeval 

 forest, peopled only by tribes of savages with which they had frequently to wage war. In 

 the mountains and otherwise inaccessible parts of the empire, still linger the descendants 

 of such of those aborigines as escaped extermination or absorption at the hands of the 

 conquerors. 8ome of them, it is said, have maintained their wild independence and isola- 

 tion for 5,000 years. But those wild men of the woods were not the only people with 

 whom the in-coming Chinese came in contact. The}^ are but one of several races that 

 looked tipou the region as their possession by right divine. S. Wells Williams, who 

 spent many years among the Chinese, ascribed to the Middle Kingdom a diversity of race 

 which places it on a par with the most mixed of western nations. Besides the Miavtsze 

 or " children of the soil," the Mongol and Mnnchu, and their many varieties, there are 

 almost countless types scattered through the empire, some of them in the maritime regions, 

 others hidden away in the far interior where travellers seldom reach them. Such names 

 as " Mongol " and "Tatar" (commonly called "Tartar") are entirely misleading, when 

 regarded, as they often are, as implying a common origin. When G-enghis rose to power, 

 Williams tells us, he called his own tribe Kukai Mongol meaning " celestial people," 

 designating the other tribes Tatars or " tributaries."- 



Besides the " children of the soil," there are other relics of the occupants, in early 

 times, of both mainland and islands. Lieut. -Col. Chas. Hamilton Smith says that in the 

 northern mountains there are tribes of men over six feet high.'^ There is also an aboriginal 

 race in the centre of the Island of Hainan, and many other instances might be mentioned. 

 Enough has, however, been adduced to show that, even those races that seem most uni- 

 form in their type are really made up of repeated interblendiugs with other families of 

 mankind". The little communities that, in their seclusion, preserve the features of tlie 

 primitive possessors of the land, thus render an important service to science, though they, 

 too, have probably in their veins some share of the blood of the victorious intruders. 



If the Chinese, whom Prof. Winchell pronounces " the most homogeneous family of 

 mankind," can be shown to be of mixed origin, we have less difficulty in assigning su«h 



' Chine Ancienne, p. 5G. ' The Middle Kingdom, i. ](J5. 



^ Natnral History of the Human Species, p. 185. 



