434 lERIGATION IlSr EUEOPE. 



modern times, spontaneously emerged from barbarism, and ere* 

 ated for itself tbe ai'ts of social life.* The improvements of the 

 savage races whose history we can distinctly trace are borrowed 

 and imitative, and onr theories as to the origin and natural de- 

 velopment of industrial art are conjectural. Of course, the rela- 

 tive antiquity of particular branches of human industry depends 

 much upon the natural character of soil, climate and spontaneous 

 vegetable and animal life in different countries ; and while the 

 geographical influence of man would, under given circumstances, 

 be exerted in one direction, it would, under different conditions, 

 act in an opposite or a diverging line. I have given some reasons 

 for thinking that in the climates to which our attention has been 

 chiefly directed, man's first interference with the natural arrange- 

 ment and disposal of the waters was in the way of drainage of 

 surface. But if we are to judge from existing remains alone, we 

 should probably conclude that irrigation is older than drainage ; 

 for, in the regions regarded by general tradition as the cradle of 

 the human race, we find traces of canals evidently constructed 

 for the former purpose at a period long preceding the ages of 

 which we have any written memorials. There are, in ancient 

 Armenia, extensive districts which were already abandoned to 

 desolation at the earhest historical epoch, but which, in a yet 

 remoter antiquity, had been irrigated by a complicated and highly 

 artificial system of canals, the hues of which can still be followed ; 

 and there are, in all the highlands where the sources of the Eu- 

 phrates rise, in Persia, in Egypt, in India, and in China, works of 

 this sort which must have been in existence before man had 

 begun to record his own annals. 



In warm comitries, such as most of those just mentioned, the 

 effects I have described as usually resulting from the cleai'ing of 



* I ought perhaps to except the Mexicans and the Peruvians, whose arts 

 and institutions are not yet shown to be historically connected with those of 

 any more ancient people. The lamentable destruction of so many memorials 

 of these tribes, by the ignorance and bigotry of the so-called Christian bar- 

 barians who conquered them, has left us much in the dark as to many points 

 of their civilization ; but they seem to have reached that stage where continued 

 progress in knowledge and in power over nature is secure, and a few more 

 centuries of independence might have brought them to originate for them- 

 selves most of the great inventions which the last four centuries have bestowed 

 upon man. 



