PAST0RALI8T SYSTEMS 13 



slaves or convicts, often mechanics, as in Rome ; higher 

 still were tenant-farmers, who were often also emanci- 

 pated convicts, as the Romans were often emancipated 

 slaves ; then came the free settlers, farmers or agricul- 

 turists on a small or a large scale. Diffused among 

 them were superintendents of convict labour, who 

 easily, in time, passed into station managers, answering 

 closely to the superintendents of the ergastula or the 

 villici or bailiffs of the farms. 



We do not need, however, to go far back to past ages 

 in order to witness the beginnings of the pastoral oc- 

 cupation of the Earth. On the level steppes of Central 

 Asia, over the vast tracks that lie between the Altaic 

 and the Tauric ranges, in countries like MongoHa and 

 Tartary, stretching from the Caspian Sea to the Pacific 

 Ocean, we may view this old world of ours as it was in 

 the days when the Vedic Indians A\'andered from plateau 

 to plateau of the Hindu Kush, or when the early Semitic 

 patriarchs, Abram and Lot, Job and Lamech, Jacob and 

 the hunter Esau, fed their flocks and drove their herds 

 on the plains of Mamre or Shiuar, or folded them under 

 the skies of Mesopotamia and Chaldee. There Ave may 

 still see the nomad pastoralist with his tents, often 

 surrounded for leagues by immense flocks and herds, 

 ranging from ten to one hundred thousand, living on the 

 flesh and the milk of these, and making their clothes out 

 of the skins and their tents out of the hair of their 

 camels. Out of the canes that grow by the river-beds 

 the warlike bands carve bows and arrows. Govern- 

 ment, properly speaking, they have none, but the 

 taming and pasturing of wild cattle, John Millar long 

 ago perceived,* gave rise to a permanent distinction of 

 ranks such as could never have arisen in the hunting 

 stage of mankind. Greater industry or better fortune 

 enabled individuals to acquire more numerous herds 

 and flocks, live in greater affluence, maintain a number 



* The Origin of Ranks, p. 72. Third edition, 1871. The 

 treatise that initiated all subsequent speculations on the struc- 

 ture of the family. 



