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PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY. 



his growth the variety of his wants, and the numerous diseases to which he is exposed ; 

 and while animals directly adapt to their support the food that is suited to them the lion 

 his flesh, and the ox his grasses the greater part of the human aliment, according to the 

 practice of all nations, is subject to preparing processes, more or less rude or perfect, in 

 order to be rendered agreeable and nutritious. These are apparently the hardships of the 

 human condition : but a regard to their moral and intellectual effect will strip them of the 

 character of disadvantages. If endowed with a high degree of physical force, if free from 

 the necessity of culinary preparation, if naturally arrayed against the exigencies of 

 climate, and thus constituted with a greater amount of personal independence, it may 

 reasonably be inferred, that civilisation would not have made its present advances, that 

 mental capacity would have remained largely undeveloped, and the career of man have 

 exhibited a succession of melancholy oscillation, between intemperate ferocity and selfish 

 indolence. The sense of his weakness and the pressure of his wants have contributed to 

 call forth his resources, to stir up " the gift and faculty divine," to rouse inventive powers 

 to action, which would otherwise have continued dormant, and to excite benevolent 

 affections, by the demand he is compelled to make for the society of his kind ; and thus the 

 very disabilities of his mere animal being tend to evoke his higher nature, and to 

 accomplish one of the designed ends of his creation by sheer intellectual power, that of 

 havino- " dominion over the fowl of the air, and over the fish of the sea, and over the 

 cattle, and over every creeping thing that creepeth on the earth." 



The aggregate number of individuals belonging to the human family has been very 

 variously estimated by geographers. Berghaus, the most recent authority, has carried it 

 higher than any of his predecessors. His estimate is as follows : 



Of the total population, 83 per cent., or 1,056,000,000, are supposed to be agricultural 

 nations; 16 per cent, or 203,000,000 are nomadic; and 1 per cent., or 13,000,000, are 

 fishers or hunters. 



But however uncertain the numbers of the human race, maritime and inland discovery 

 show the wide dispersion of the species, to the extreme bounds of vegetable life ; and the 

 extraordinary facility of the human frame in accommodating itself to diverse circumstances. 

 There are but few tracts of land which have not within their limits an indigenous human 

 population. The antarctic continent, the Falkland Isles, and Kerguelen's Land, with Nova 

 Zembla and Spitzbergen in the northern zone, are the principal exceptions. St. Helena 

 is also another ; for when that island was discovered, in 1501, it was only occupied by sea- 

 fowl, occasionally visited by seals and turtles, and covered with forest-trees and shrubs. 

 However small the coral islands of the Pacific, and remote from continents, they have in 

 general their families of men. The New World, though very scantily peopled, has the 

 Esquimaux at its northern extremity, within ten degrees of the pole, and the Fuegians at 

 its southern end, perhaps in the lowest condition in which humanity exists upon the face 

 of the globe. In the Ancient World, we every where meet with traces of man and of his 

 works, except in the zone of deserts ; and even here he has planted his race in the oases, 

 the verdant islets of the great ocean of sand. In situations, high and low, dry and nioist, 

 cold and hot, we find members of the family to which we belong, enduring the extremes 



