609 



PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY. 



when the President Sharp assumed the administration of the island, which was in 1706. 

 Allowing her to be fourteen years old at that time, we must conclude her age to be 

 upwards of one hundred and thirty years. 



The same authority received from a physician at St. Vincent's, as an answer to his 

 query, the statement : "I have known a great many very old Negros whose exact ages 

 could not be ascertained. At the time of the hurricane in 1831, I had a record of the 

 mortality in the whole of my practice from the year 1813, and in every year there were 

 deaths of Negros computed to be sixty, seventy, or eighty years of age, and upwards. 

 My father will be eighty-four years old in May next, and the Negro woman who carried 

 him about as a child is still living, and at the age of ninety-six enjoying good health, 

 upright in figure, and capable of walking several miles." It may be true that the Negros 

 regarded in mass exhibit a shorter term of life than the European average ; but this is 

 sufficiently explained by the privations of their lot in the colonies to which they have 

 been transported, and by an imfavourable climatic influence and geographical site in 

 their native country. The preceding facts show, that there is no law forbidding the 

 Negro to attain a longevity equal to that of the European in circumstances friendly to it ; 

 while placing the European in subjection to the same amount of toil in the West Indies, 

 or planting him amid the swamps, the luxuriant vegetation, the inundations, and heat of 

 Western Africa, and his term of life in general would not come up to the Negro standard. 

 It appears from the researches of Major Tulloch, as embodied in statistical reports 

 printed by the House of Commons, that neither the Saxon, nor Celtic, nor mixed race, 

 composing the troops of Great Britain, can withstand, even under the most favourable 

 circumstances, the deleterious influence of a tropical climate. It is shown, also, that this 

 result is not to be attributed to intemperance, the besetting vice of all soldiers ; for though 

 temperance diminishes the effects of climate, and adds to the chances of the European, it 

 is by no means a permanent security. So far as regards the vast regions of the earth, 

 the most fertile, the richest, the question as to their permanent occupancy by the Saxon 

 and Celt, as Britain, or France, or any other country, is now occupied by its native 

 inhabitants, appears, from these reports, to be answered in the negative. " The Anglo- 

 Saxon is now pushing himself towards the tropical countries ; but can the Saxon maintain 

 himself in these countries ? It is to be feared not. Experience seems to indicate that 

 neither the Saxon nor Celtic races can maintain themselves, in the strict sense of the 

 word, within tropical countries. To enable them to do so, they require a slave population 

 of -native labourers, or of coloured men at least, and, in addition, a constant draught from 

 the parent country. The instances of Cuba, Brazil, Mexico, and Columbia, where the 

 Spanish and Portuguese seem to be able to maintain their ground, do not bear so directly 

 on the question as many may suppose ; for, in the first place, we know not precisely the 

 extent to which these have mingled with the dark and native races ; and secondly, the 

 emigrants from Spain and Portugal partook, in all probability, more of the Moor, Pelasgic, 

 and even Arab blood, than of the Celt or Saxon." 



A careful comparison of different tribes leads to the conclusion, that the general 

 phenomena of human life, or those processes which are termed the natural functions, the 

 laws of the animal economy, are remarkably uniform, making allowance for the influence 

 of climates, of modes of living, of localities, and of the accidents which interrupt the 

 natural course. The age of puberty announces itself by corresponding symptoms, and that 

 of advanced life by analogous signs of decrepitude, the decrease of the humours, the loss 

 or decay of sight and of the other senses, and a change in the colour of the hair. All 

 communities of men appear open to the attack of all kinds of disease, though a few haunt 

 particular districts, and of course only prey upon those who are exposed to their invasion. 

 In some cases, it is only the old inhabitants of these neighbourhoods that are attacked, as 



