Barbarism. 13 



it but the fractured relics of facts, traditions and 

 histories, of arts and crafts, and even of the very 

 means and methods of subsistence. If, then, in the 

 lands of its colonization, the dire evil of famine, and 

 the intense cold of an age of ice overtook it, what 

 else should we expect but to find it in holes and 

 dens, with the bear and the deer in its very midst, 

 destitute and soon degraded, in numbers few, like 

 the Esquimaux or Alaskans, and with families ex- 

 tremely small? This last circumstance, of a limited 

 offspring, seems to follow in such surroundings, 

 either because of other reasons that we might think 

 of, or, as the latest official report from Alaska men- 

 tions, simply because of the hardships of their con- 

 dition. And what hardships those are, when the 

 wife so inevitably becomes a mere drudge, a slave, 

 even to her youngest sons ! On these terms a few 

 generations would plunge the most civilized of us 

 into barbarism. 



6. Barbarism is a state of things which results 

 from the composition of two factors, human beings 

 to become destitute, and desperate con- 

 ditions of life to make them so. There 

 is plenty of room to imagine well-nigh desperate 

 conditions of existence, and therefore impossible 

 conditions of civilization. The caves and holes of 

 an icy cold age, with wild beasts prowling about, 

 and, instead of lending us their skins to keep us 

 warm, choosing rather to make their meals on us, 

 and on our children — these and other such inter- 



