welt 
THE MIGRATIONS OF Man. 15 
certain very simple and obvious facts. He travelled not for 
pleasure but for food. Every improvement in his social state, 
every economic discovery, had this for its inevitable result that 
more people came into existence, and that, therefore, eventually 
some of them had to wander away. 
There are certain places where one would expect but a smal] 
population, and living in a very savage state of civilisation. 
Thus, for example, the uttermost ends of the earth, such as the 
Arctic regions and the West Coast of Tierra del Fuego, are still 
the home of the Eskimo and of the Yaghan. Other “ refuges ”’ 
for the less developed forms of mankind are tropical jungles, arid 
deserts, and rugged mountain chains. In such country no human 
being would be content to live if it was possible to obtain sub- 
sistence anywhere else. The weaker races are inevitably forced 
into such refuges ; stronger and more numerous peoples annex the 
pleasant places of the earth. The main streams of travelling 
mankind avoid these refuges, and inevitably follow certain well- 
defined roads, which are not difficult to discover. Sometimes 
there are great stretches of forest or of more or less fertile grass 
land, in passing which the human flood seems to lose any definite 
direction, and to percolate or diffuse away for great distances. 
These are best compared to wide river valleys or great alluvial 
flats, over which the water slowly and shallowly spreads itself. 
Yet the main*stream exists nevertheless, and may be discovered 
issuing from this area of diffusion. 
In America there is a very distinct main road of migra- 
tion which is by way of Behring’s Straits. The forefathers 
of the Eskimo when driven up into the north-east corner of 
Asia, found themselves in a desperate condition. To the north 
lay cold starvation in the Arctic, south and west were forests 
swarming with fierce savages better armed, more numerous than 
themselves, and yearly increasing in numbers. So_ they 
hardened their hearts, launched their frail skin canoes on the 
ocean, and paddled across to the New Continent, America, 
which was clearly visible to them looming blue in the distance. 
They might even have crossed by the ice in winter, stopping at 
the Diomed Islands which lie between.* Soon after came the 
ancestor of the American Indian (Homo Americanus of Keane). 
* Peschel Races of Man, Keane Man Past and Present, Ethnology. 
