THE HALF-BREED. 9 



"A thousand years ago," writes Mr. D. Mackenzie "Wallace,' " the whole of Northern 

 Eussia was peopled by Finnish tribes, and at the present day the greater part of it is 

 occupied by peasants who speak the language of Moscow, profess the Orthodox faith, 

 present in their physiognomy no striking peculiarities, and appear to the superficial 

 observer pure Eussians." And, for good reason, Mr. Wallace concludes that the Finnish 

 aborigines were neither expelled nor exterminated, but " had been simply absorbed by the 

 Slavonic intruders." In the rest of Europe how often has the same process of absorption 

 taken place ! 



But it is time to turn from the past to the present, and to inquire whether, where, and 

 to what extent, the intercrossing of the liuman races is going on in our own generation ? As 

 to the main question, we have no hesitation in replying in the affirmative. As to the 

 whereabouts of its occurrence, though, as we shall see, examples are not wanting in the 

 Old World, it is in the American hemisphere that racial interfusion most prevails. There 

 is not a State, indeed, in the entire range of territory from the Arctic regions to Patagonia, 

 which does not furnish chara -teristic varieties of mixed races. These varieties result from 

 the mixture in different proportions of the European, the Indian and the negro. In his 

 " Nan-ative of the Surveying Voyages of His Majesty's Ships ' Adventure ' and ' Beagle,' " 

 Captain (now Admiral) Fitz-Koy gives a table of twenty-three such varieties, enumerated by 

 Stevenson, as existing in Lima, all consequent on the union of the Spaniard, the aboriginal 

 Peruvian, and the negro. Substituting in Brazil, Portuguese for Spanish, and in the West 

 Indies and North America some other European nationality — French, Grerman, Dutch, 

 Scandinavian, or British — we may adopt the list without much inconvenience. Practically, 

 however, except during the prevalence of slavery, which held its grip on the unfortunate 

 in whose veins there was the least infusion of African blood, such minute distinctions are 

 unknown. When once the negro or Indian element is imperceptible to common observation, 

 the person of mixed blood is considered white. For this very reason, there are not a few 

 not only in the Northwest butin the older provinces of Canada who are, perhaps without sus- 

 pecting it themselves, of partial Indian descent. One of the most interesting chapters in 

 Dr. Wilson's valuable work, "Prehistoric Man," is devoted to a consideration of the share 

 which absorption in this way has had in reducing the number of the aborigines. " It is 

 impossible," he writes, "to travel in the far west of the American continent, on the borders 

 of the Indian territories, or to visit the reserves where the remnants of displaced Indian 

 tribes linger on in passive process of extinction, without perceiving that they are disap- 

 pearing as a race, in part at least, by the same process by which the German, the Swede, the 

 Irishman, or the Frenchman, on emigrating to America, becomes in a generation or two, 

 amalgamated with the general stock." - Dr. Wilson received striking evidences of the reality 

 of the process during a short stay at Sault Ste. Marie in the summer of 1855. A clergyman 

 of the place, in answer to his inquiries touching the amount of intermarriage or intercourse 



' Russia, p. 1.51- 



- ii. 250. James Siiiison makes the same claim on belialf of tliat singular jieopk', the Gijisies, whose fertility 

 ho contrasts with the unproductiveness of the Indians. While the latter, he says, "really die out, the 

 Gipsies are very jirolitic and become invigorated by mixture of white blood, under the cover of which they 

 gradually leave the tent and scatter themselves over and through society, enter into the various pursuits common 

 to the ordinary natives and become lost to the observation of the rest of the population." The Social Emancipation 

 of the Gipsies, p. 3. 



Sec, II., 188.5. 2. 



