DISPLACEMENT AND EXTINCTION OE EACES. 11 



generations of their race, yet even in that line a singularly remarkable 

 exception is admitted ; and the son of Ham, and the seed of Canaan, 

 haye also their links in the genealogy of the Messiah. 



Turning to another portion of the same subject, we trace in the 

 Xoahic genealogies the primitive occupants of ancient Phoenicia 

 among the descendants of Ham, while, looking to other and indepen- 

 dent sources of evidence pertaining to the people of historical Phoenicia, 

 we find them a race philologically Semitic, but in so far as their my- 

 thology and legislation, and those of their Carthaginian offshoots, 

 supply data, we should class them as a race psycologically Hamitic. 

 The legitimate inference would seem to be, that in Phoenicia, as in 

 Palestine, the Semitic and Hamitic races were brought together by 

 the extension of the former over the area primarily occupied by the 

 latter ; and that then, unrestrained by any of the checks which so 

 materially circumscribed the tendency to intermixture between the 

 conquerors and the conquered, in the inheritance of the Hebrews, a 

 complete amalgamation took place, though with such predominancy 

 of the later intruded Semitic conquerors, as history supplies abundant 

 illustrations of in the well-detailed pages of more recent national 

 annals. 



From all this it would seem to be justly inferred that ethnological 

 displacement and extinction must be regarded in many, probably in 

 the majority of cases, not as amounting to a literal extirpation, but 

 only as equivalent to absorption. Such doubtless has been the case 

 to a great extent with the ancient European Celta?, notwithstanding 

 the definite, the distinct historical evidence we possess of the utter 

 extinction of whole tribes both of the Britons and Gauls, by the 

 merciless sword of the intruding Roman ; and such also is being the 

 case with no inconsiderable remnant of the aboriginal Eed Indians of 

 this continent. Partially so it is the case even with the Negro 

 population of the United States, in spite of all the prejudices of cast 

 or colour. It is impossible to travel in the far West of this American 

 continent on the borders of the Indian territories, or to visit the 

 reserves where the remnants of the Indian tribes displaced by us in 

 Canada and the States, linger on in passive process of extinction, 

 without perceiving that they are disappearing as a race, in part at 

 least by the same process by which the German, the Swede, or the 

 Frenchman, on emigrating into the Anglo-saxonised States of America, 

 becomes in a generation or two amalgamated with the general stock. 



I was particularly impressed with thin idea during a brief residence 

 at the Sault Ste. Marie this .summer (1855). When on my way to Lab 

 Superior, I had passed a large body of Christianised Indians, assem- 



