208 THE DESCENT OF MAN. 



When civilized nations come into contact with barba- 

 rians the struggle is sliort, except where a deadly climate 

 gives its aid to the native race. Of the causes which lead 

 to the victory of civilized nations some are plain and sim- 

 ple, others complex and obscure. We can see that the 

 cultivation of the land will be fatal in many ways to sav- 

 ages, for they cannot, or will not, change their habits. 

 New diseases and vices have in some cases proved highly 

 destructive; and it appears that a new disease often causes 

 much death until those who are most susceptible to its 

 destructive influence are gradually weeded out;* and so it 

 may be with the evil effects from spirituous liquors, as well 

 as with the unconquerably strong taste for them shown by 

 so many savages. It further appears, mysterious as is the 

 fact, that the first meeting of distinct and separated people 

 generates disease, f Mr. Sproat, who in Vancouver Island 

 closely attended to the subject of extinction, believed that 

 changed habits of life, consequent on the advent of Euro- 

 peans, induces much ill-health. He lays, also, great stress 

 on the apparently trifling cause that the natives become 

 " bewildered and dull by the new life around them; they 

 lose the motives for exertion and get no new ones in their 

 place. ^^ J 



The grade of their civilization seems to be a most impor- 

 tant element in the success of competing nations. A few 

 centuries ago Europe feared the inroads of Eastern barba- 

 rians; now any such fear would be ridiculous. It is a more 

 curious fact, as Mr. Bagehot has remarked, that savages 

 did not formerly waste away before the classical nations as 

 they now do before modern civilized nations; had they 

 done so the old moralists would have mused over the event; 

 but there is no lament in any writer of that period over the 

 perishing barbarians. The most potent of all the causes 

 of extinction appears in many cases to be lessened fertility 



* See remarks to this effect in Sir H. Holland's "Medical Notes 

 and Reflections," 1839, p. 390. 



fl have collected ("Journal of Researches, Voyage of the 

 'Beagle,'" p. 435) a good many cases bearing on this subject; see 

 also Gerland, ibid, s. 8. Poeppig speaks of the " breath of civiliza- 

 tion as poisonous to savages." 



:j:Sproat, " Scenes and Studies of Savage Life," 1868, p. 284. 



Bagehot, "Physics and Politics," "Fortnightly Review," April 

 1, 1868, p. 405. 



