EFFECT OF CLIMATE ON CIVILIZATION. 599 



of 34,000, not one. It is by bringing into these discussions the singu- 

 lar and widespread error that all the aboriginal American tribes are 

 alike, and by not making due allowance for their habits of life, their 

 physical and mental endowments, that this mistake has arisen; but 

 whoever will consider the facts as they actually stand must come to the 

 conclusion that there are just as well-marked differences among these 

 people as there are in the climates and circumstances in which they live. 

 Intellectually, there is even a greater difference between the Indian of 

 the United States and the Indian of Peru than there is in their physical 

 aspect. The one is an intractable savage, the other docile and easily 

 led; the one has never yet been enslaved, the other prospers and in- 

 creases in number, though he has sustained all the consequences of the 

 atrocities of the Spanish Conquest. By chance, or perhaps, as we should 

 more truly say, through Providence, the field of Catholic labor has been 

 among the more docile races, that of Protestant among the more untam- 

 able, and the result is exactly such as, under those circumstances, the 

 philosopher would be led to expect. 



I can not here avoid recalling to the attention of the reader what I have 

 said respecting the comparative progress of Christianity and Mohammed- 

 anism in Africa, for we find upon our own continent a repetition of the 

 facts which were presented to us there. The chances, if such a term can, 

 on this occasion, with propriety be used, of the diffusion of Christian civ- 

 ilization, are directly proportional to the existing intellectual development 

 of the community among whom the attempt is made. Mohammedanism 

 has diffused itself in Africa for precisely the same reason that Catholi- 

 cism has succeeded in America because its operation was commenced 

 upon those tribes best prepared to receive it. 



We can not have a more striking instance of the effect of climate on 

 civilization than that which is offered by the American In- Illustration of 

 dians. As is well known, though throughout all those lati- 

 tudes in which life is maintained with difficulty, by reason iiizatkm. 

 of their inclemency, all the tribes, both of the north and south continent, 

 were in a barbarous state, yet in those more pleasant countries toward 

 the equator, in which, by reason of the natural fertility of the soil and a 

 higher mean temperature, the inhabitants had little occasion to work, and 

 passed their lives in comparative plenty and ease, a special civilization 

 had arisen. It is of no little interest to observe how the main features 

 of Asiatic and European civilization were presented in this case, doubt- 

 less without any communication with those continents, for it shows how 

 the human mind is ever prone to unfold itself in the same way, to give 

 birth to the same ideas and to the same inventions. The . .,. 



Civilization of 



civilized Americans of Mexico and Peru were organized in the tropical in- 

 communities not unlike those with which the white man is dians * 



