206 WESTWARD COURSE OF CIVILIZATION. 



Americas, separated from us by an immensity of waters, and revealed 

 to the world of the East but some four centuries ago, shall have 

 traversed in so brief a period the successive phases of conquest, 

 colonization, and emancipation ; why European emigration was 

 directed thitherward at the very beginning, and thitherward continues 

 still to flow from every quarter ; finally, by what tacit and unani- 

 mous agreement this New World has become the adopted country of 

 all the proscribed and disinherited of the Old ; while almost the 

 entire area of the African continent, which is so much more readily 

 accessible, is scarcely less favoured in its climatic conditions, and 

 upon which the white race has rested, from the remotest antiquity, its 

 political institutions, its arts, and its industry, has remained unin- 

 fluenced by the advancing tide of civilization. 



I limit myself to indicating this problem, which, however, it is 

 not within my present province to examine, but which naturally 

 suggests itself when we think of the swift development undergone by 

 the European societies planted on the American continent when we 

 remember how rapidly they are narrowing the area of the desert and 

 the wilderness. At the epoch of the discovery of the New World it 

 was one vast desolation, with the exception of Mexico and Peru ; and 

 these were but the seats of a civilization which seemed to have passed 

 without transition from infancy to old age, from vigour to decrepi- 

 tude, and which crumbled into dust under the pitiless blows of the 

 Spanish conquerors. Neither Cortez nor Pizarro would have over- 

 thrown a great empire with a handful of foot-soldiers and men-at- 

 arms, a squadron or two of horse, and a few unwieldy guns, had not 

 the Colossus already nodded to its fall, had not the Column been 

 hollow at the base. But soon the European nations shared among 

 themselves this immense country and the neighbouring islands. 

 The Slave race, whose destiny it seemed to be to reign among 

 the polar ice and snow, long contented itself with the inclement 

 and inhospitable region of the extreme north-west, which it has 

 but recently surrendered to the United States Government. The 

 Anglo-Saxon race, in the northern continent, has seized the lion's 



