396 EVOLUTION OF MENTAL CHAEACTEES 



are distinctly higher than those of the coloured.' ^ Here again, 

 as in the case of Miss Strong's investigation, it is not improbable 

 that the conditions are to some extent weighted against the 

 coloured race. 



5. A third method of arriving at some indication of the relative 

 degree of mental capacity is to notice what has happened where 

 for some generations the two races have lived under more or 

 less similar conditions. ' One of the best places for comparing 

 the two races is in the Bahama Islands ', writes Huntington. 

 For reasons which I shall present later, the process of making 

 * poor whites ' has probably gone farther in the Bahamas than in 

 almost any other Anglo-Saxon community. Part of the white 

 population are like their race in other regions, but a large portion 

 have unmistakably degenerated. Witness their intense and 

 bigoted speech, their sunken cheeks and eyes, their sallow com- 

 plexion, and their inert way of vvorking. In spite of racial 

 prejudice, there is no real colour line in the Bahamas. Persons 

 with more or less negro blood are worthy occupants of the highest 

 positions, and are universally accepted in the most exclusive 

 social circles. The British Government gives the negro every 

 possible opportunity. The state of affairs may be judged from 

 the remarks of a ' poor white ' sailor, who said to me : ' You 

 want to know why I like the Southern States better than the 

 North. It is because they hate a nigger and I hates him too. 

 What kind of a place is this where they do everything for the 

 nigger and nothing for the white man ? It is bad enough to have 

 to go to jail, but it 's pretty hard for a white man to be taken 

 there by a nigger constable.' In one Bahaman village I saw 

 negro girls teaching white children in the public school. In that 

 same village a number of the leading white men cannot read or 

 write. 



' When they were children, their parents would not send them 

 to school with negroes. The despised negroes learnt to read and 

 write but have now largely forgotten these accomplishments. 

 The proud whites grow up in abject ignorance. To-day the same 

 thing is going on. I visited two villages where the white children 

 are staying away from school because they will not go to negro 

 teachers. The homes of such whites are scarcely better than 

 those of their coloured neighbours, and their fathers are called 



* Huntington, Civilization and Climate, p. 12. 



