82 SAVAGE SUE^^VALS 



less as a race is because their ancestors were that 

 kind of a people — sea-rovers. Suppose the Eng- 

 lish had come from land animals — beings who 

 lived in the interior of Europe, a quiet, home-lov- 

 ing, peaceful people. Don't you suppose the his- 

 tory of England would have been a very different 

 thing from what it is today? The adult English 

 people merely reflect the character of the infant 

 peoples from whom they have grown, just as a 

 grown man is in a general way like what he was 

 when he was a child. 



3. Other Modem Peoples. 



The French came from the Gauls, scattered 

 tribes that lived in the region of what is now 

 France at the time of the Koman Empire. 



The Germans came from the Goths, Vandals, 

 and Cimbri, three barbarous tribes that lived in 

 central Europe and assisted in overrunning the 

 Eoman Empire. 



The Italians came from the Komans, a people 

 who spoke the Latin language and lived in the 

 peninsula of Italy and other Mediterranean lands 

 about the time of Christ and later. 



The modern Greeks are from the ancient 

 Greeks. 



And all of the modern white peoples — Eussians, 

 Germans, French, English, Swedes, and Ameri- 

 cans — can trace their ancestry back, by means of 

 common languages and common legends, to a peo- 

 ple who came long ago out of the East, out of the 



