SCIENCE. 



197 



every habitable region of the world, it is most important 

 to observe the very adverse conditions to which, in the 

 course of this distribution, particular portions of the hu- 

 man family must have been, and to which we do now find 

 them actually exposed. 



The ''New World " — the American continent — is that 

 which presents the most uninterrupted stretch of habit- 

 able land from the highest northern to the lowest southern 

 latitude. No part of it was without human inhabitants 

 when the civilized children of the Old World first came 

 upon it, and when, from its mountain tops, they first 

 " stared on the Pacific." On its extreme north there was 

 the Eskimo or Inuit race, maintaining human life under 

 conditions of extremest hardship, even amid the perpetual 

 ice of the Polar regions. On the extreme south — at the 

 opposite extremity of the great American continent — there 

 were the inhabitants of Cape Horn and of the island off it, 

 both of which project their desolate rocks into another of 

 the most inhospitable climates of the world. Let us take 

 this case first — because it is a typical one, and because it 

 happens that we have from a master-hand a description 

 of these people, and a suggestion of the questions which 

 they raise. The natives of Tierra del Fuego are one of 

 the most degraded among the races of mankind. How 

 could they be otherwise ? " Their country," says Mr. 

 Darwin, " is a broken mass of wild rocks, lofty hills, and 

 useless forests ; and these are viewed through mists and 

 endless storms. The habitable land is reduced to the 

 stones of the beach. In search of food they are compell- 

 ed to wander unceasingly from spot to spot ; and so steep 

 is the coast that they can only move about in their wretch- 

 ed canoes." They are habitual cannibals, killing and eat- 

 ing their old women before they kill their dogs, for the 

 sufficient reason, as explained by themselves, " Doggies 

 catch others : old women, no." Of some of these people 

 who came round the Beadle in their canoes the same 

 author says : " These were the most wretched and miser- 

 able creatures I anywhere beheld. They were quite naked, 

 and even one full-grown woman was absolutely so. It 

 was raining heavily and the fresh water, together with the 

 spray, trickled down her body. In another harbor not far 

 distant, a woman who was suckling a new-born child, 

 came one day alongside the vessel and there remained out 

 of mere curiosity, whilst the sleet fell and thawed on her 

 naked bosom, and on the skin of her naked baby. These 

 poor wretches were stunted in their growth, their hideous 

 faces bedaubed with white paint, the:r skins filthy and 

 greasy, their hair entangled, their voices discordant, and 

 their gestures violent. Viewing such men, one can hardly 

 make one's self believe that they are fellow-creatures and 

 inhabitants of the same world." Such are the facts, or 

 one aspect of the facts, connected with this people. But 

 there are other facts, or another aspect of the same facts, 

 not less important which we have on the same evidence. 

 Beneath this crust of savagery lay all the perfect attri- 

 butes of humanity — ready to be developed the moment the 

 unfavorable conditions of Fuegian life were exchangedjor 

 conditions which were different. Captain Fitzroy had, in 

 1830, carried off some of these poor people to England, 

 where they were taught the arts and the habits of civiliza- 

 tion. Of one of those who was taken back to his own 

 country in the Beagle, Mr. Darwin tells us that " his intel- 

 lect was good," and of another that he had a " nice dispo- 

 sition." 



Let us look now at the questions which the low condi- 

 tion of the Fuegians suggests to Mr. Darwin. " Whilst 

 beholding these savages, one asks whence have they come? 

 What could have tempted, or what change compelled, a 

 tribe of men to leave the fine region of the North, to travel 

 down the Cordillera or backbone of America, to invent 

 and build canoes which are not used by the tribes of Chili, 

 Peru, and Brazil, and then to enter one of the most inhos- 

 pitable countries within the limits of the globe ? " 



These questions of Mr. Darwin, it will be observed, as- 

 sume that Man is not indigenous in Tierra del Fuego. 



They assume that he has come from elsewhere into that 

 savage country. They assume farther that his access to it 

 has been by land. They assume that the progenitors of 

 the Fuegians who first came there were not skilled navi- 

 gators like the crew of the Beagle, able to traverse the 

 Atlantic or the Pacific in their widest and stormiest ex- 

 panse. These assumptions are surely safe. But these 

 being accepted, it follows that the ancestors of the Fue- 

 gians must have come from the North, and have passed 

 down the whole length, or a great part of the length, of 

 the American continent. In other words, they must have 

 come from regions which are highly favored into regions 

 of extremest rigor. If external circumstances have any in- 

 fluence upon the condition of Man, this great change 

 cannot have been without effect. Accordingly. Mr. Dar- 

 win at once, instinctively as it were, connects the utter 

 savagery of the Fuegians with the wretched conditions of 

 their present home. " How little," he says, " can the 

 higher powers of the mind be brought into play ! What 

 is there for imagination to picture, for reason to compare, 

 for judgment to decide upon." It is in perfect accordance 

 with this view that on every side of them, and in propor- 

 tion as we pass northwards from their wretched country, 

 we find that the tribes of South America are less wretched, 

 and better acquainted with the simpler arts. None of the 

 depressing and stupefying conditions which attach to the 

 present home of the Fuegians can be alleged of the re- 

 gions in which some distant ancestors of the Fuegians 

 must have lived. In Chili, in Peru, in Brazil, in Mexico, 

 there are boundless tracts in which every condition of na- 

 ture, soil, climate, and productions, are comparatively as 

 favorable to men as they are unfavorable on the desolate 

 shores of Cape Horn and Tierra del Fuego. Yet one or 

 other of these many well-favored regions must have been 

 on the line of march by which the Fuegian shores were 

 reached. One and all of them present attractions which 

 must have induced a long encampment, and must have 

 made them the home of many generations. Why was 

 that march ever resumed in a direction so uninviting and 

 pursued in a destination so desolate and so miserable ? 



But the moment we come to ask this question in respect 

 to the Fuegians, we find that it is a question which arises 

 equally out of the position and life of many other portions 

 of the human family. The northern extremity of the Am- 

 erican continent presents exactly the same problem as the 

 southern. If it is impossible to suppose that Man was 

 first created, or born, or developed in Tierra del Fuego, it 

 is not less impossible to suppose that he had made his first 

 appearance on the frozen shores of Baffin's Bay. Watch- 

 ing at the blow-hole of a seal for many hours in a temper- 

 ature 75 below the freezing point, is the constant work of 

 the Inuit hunter. And when at last his prey is struck, it 

 is his greatest luxury to feast upon the raw blood and 

 blubber. To civilized man it is hardly possible to conceive 

 a life so wretched, and in some aspects at least so brutal, 

 as the life led by this race during the continual night of the 

 Arctic winter. Not even the most extravagant theorist 

 as regards the possible plurality of human origins can be- 

 lieve that there was a separate Eskimo Adam. Man, 

 therefore, is as certainly an immigrant into the dreary re- 

 gions round the Pole as he is an immigrant to the desola- 

 tions of Cape Horn. But the whole conditions of his life 

 there are necessarily determined by the rigors of the 

 climate. They are conditions in which civilization, as it 

 has been here defined, is impossible. And the importance 

 of that definition is singularly apparent in the case of 

 the Eskimo. Although essentially uncivilized, he is not, 

 in the ordinary sense of the word, a savage. Many 

 of the characteristics usually associated with that 

 word are altogether wanting in the Eskimo. They 

 are a gentle, inoffensive, hospitable, and truthful 

 race. They are therefore a conspicuous example 

 of the fallacy of supposing that there is any necess- 

 ary connection between a backward condition of knowl- 

 edge in the useful arts, and violent dispositions, or 



