PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF PRE-HISTORIC MEN. 187 



boundaries and extent. Changes in physical character 

 may also have occurred, as feeble races driven to the 

 more bleak and unproductive districts became for that 

 reason more feeble, or as the less muscular races suc- 

 ceeded by superior energy and sagacity in overcoming 

 and reducing to subjection the stronger, as the Hebrews 

 did in Syria, the Eomans in Germany, and the Nor- 

 mans in England. Further, all such movements and 

 conquests lead to intermixtures of these divers races. 



In any case we have these parallel facts, that while 

 the Esquimaux are a small race corresponding to the 

 Laps, and to the extinct elves and dwarfs of other 

 parts of Europe, the American Indians are men of 

 large stature and of great muscular development, 

 corresponding in this to the pre-historic men of Men- 

 tone and of the Perigord caves in Europe. This sta-rf 

 ture, and the great development of muscular processes | 

 in the bones of the limbs, are consequences of abundant 

 food and a temperate climate, and of roving habits in 

 a wild country, and without beasts of burden. Cartier 

 mentions on several occasions the stature of the Indians 

 as compared with his Breton sailors ; and in his visit 

 to Hochelaga, when his men were tired with a long 

 walk, the savages took them up like children and 

 carried them on their shoulders. This accords per- 

 fectly with the great power of limb of the American 

 Indian, and with his known capability of carrying 

 immense burdens over portages. The strongly carinate 

 thigh-bone, the flattened tibia, and large fibula, ob- 

 served in the oldest pre-historic skeletons of Europe, 



