59Q THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



a comparatively small portion of these people established themselves 

 in the large cities; the great hulk of them went west and settled, side 

 by side with the pioneers from the eastern states, the broad and fertile 

 prairies of the Mississippi Valley and the sunny slopes of the Pacific 

 Coast. It is true, a general intermixture of the various branches of this 

 northern race did not take place equably throughout the country. There 

 are large territories in many states where certain nationalities estab- 

 lished distinct and separate settlements. Extensive tracts in Pennsyl- 

 vania, Illinois, Missouri, Iowa, Texas and other states were settled by 

 Germans alone. The Swedes and Norwegians established their new 

 homes mostly in the northwest. The purest Anglo-Saxon blood we 

 find in the southern states. The Celtic immigrants formed nowhere 

 large separate settlements ; they are scattered equably all over the union. 

 One important fact must be noted here. A very large portion of the 

 people of Celtic origin did not settle in the rural districts, but estab- 

 lished themselves in the great cities, in New York, Boston, Chicago, 

 St. Louis, etc., where, as we shall see later, they will disappear in the 

 course of a few generations. 



About the middle of the ninth decade of the last century an entirely 

 new immigration began to set in. The new arrivals came from southern 

 and eastern Europe, from Italy, Greece, Hungary, Bohemia, Russia. 

 Hailing from an entirely different region of Europe, they differ com- 

 pletely in their racial characteristics from the earlier immigration. 

 Considering only the head form, some of these people would show no 

 marked difference from the Anglo-Saxon or Teuton. The Sicilians, 

 the Neapolitans, the Greeks, are more or less dolichocephalic. But some 

 anthropologists lay entirely too much stress on the headform. It is 

 evident that purity of race is of far greater importance than the shape 

 of the head. But these Mediterranean countries have probably the 

 most mixed population of any region on the globe. This manifold in- 

 termixture began during the later periods of the Roman republic. The 

 numerous prisoners taken in the many and frequent wars were sold as 

 slaves in Italy and the provinces bordering on the Mediterranean Sea. 

 Mommsen estimates the slave population of the Italian peninsula in the 

 times of Sulla at twelve to fourteen millions, twice as numerous as the 

 free population. 9 These slaves came from the most distant regions, and 

 were mostly barbarians, in every respect dissimilar from the Roman 

 people. 



The island of Sicily presents perhaps the best example of this mani- 

 fold intermixture of the Mediterranean peoples. In the earliest cen- 



9 Mommsen, "Rom. Gesch.," 1857, II., 396. During the later times of the 

 Republic the aristocratic classes acquired immense estates throughout Italy. 

 They bought out or drove out the small landed proprietor and worked the land 

 with slaves. The disappearance of the great middle class, the small land- 

 holders, was one of the chief causes of the downfall of the great empire. 



