THE HUMAN SPECIES. 217 



From conquests by military invasion, there thus arose privi- 

 leged families and tribes, a master class, in nearly every nation, 

 marked, even at present, in many instances, by a distinct 

 exterior, notwithstanding that, with scarcely an exception, it is 

 issued from a cognate stem. Only time softened the bonds by 

 gradual interunions, and by new conquerors again subduing both 

 master and slave. In Europe, where the history of foreign 

 subjugation is best preserved, there are instances of three or 

 more having passed over the same people, each in turn crush- 

 ing the former privileged orders. All were originally pastoral 

 tribes, and they continued to conquer so long as agriculture 

 had not yet fostered the other sciences of civilization ; and 

 defensive war was unavailing to scattered husbandmen, whose 

 masters' subdivided power thwarted each other, and left the 

 masses little worth defending. The nations who seem to have 

 escaped servitude, it may be remarked, retreated to mountain 

 regions, where cavalry had no advantage. Such are the 

 Nilgherries, the Yindayan system, the western or modern Cau- 

 casus, the Alps, the Pyrenees, &c, all peopled by refugees, not 

 by Autochtones. Mere insular situations did not afford equal 

 security, because boats conferred the same invading facilities 

 which the horse produced on land ; and hence even the more 

 remote South Sea Islands are not without a master race, which, 

 in whatever way attention is turned, will ever be found to be 

 directly or indirectly of the Caucasian stock, excepting only in 

 those centres of existence where the two other typical forms of 

 Man reside ; for one of these, sensible of an inferior innervation, 

 is possessed of a well-founded jealousy of the bearded race, and 

 by political precaution endeavors to exclude it, while the other 

 rests secure in the effects of climate ; and both abuse their good 

 fortune by, at least, inflicting subjection each upon kindred 

 tribes; but much more restricted in the extent by the increasing 

 progress of the Caucasian. 



kings (Franks) could direct the slaughter of every male whose height sur- 

 passed the length of the conqueror's sword. 



19 



