THIS ETHNOLOGY Of SOUTH BAITSXN AIM. 28 



A region of which the physical features are io strongly marked 

 must always have powerfully influenced the distribution, movements 

 and condition of the human families located in it As in all other 

 parts of the world, this influence must have been gradually 

 modified as population and development progressed. The existence 

 of extremely rude tribes in different parts of the regiori,Hhe little 

 advancement which the Tibetan, eastern Tartarian and N. E. 

 Asian .-bribes have made, independently of their acquisitions from 

 China and India, the barbarity of the oldest Indonesian tribes, and, 

 above all, the very archaic character of the Chinese and Ultramdian 

 languages, compared with those of the surrounding races, lead us 

 to the inference that the tribes of the present families which first 

 inhabited S. E. Asia were ruder than the rudest of the peoples 

 which now encompass \L In the first era of their history they 

 must have slowly spread down the mountain vallies and 

 through the dense forests of the middle region. After they first 

 entered the river basins of the outer division, numerous scattered 

 families and Bcanty tribes would long continue to occupy each 

 lateral or secondary basin. We cannot conjecture when arts 

 first arose, but until they did, the whole region must have contained 

 almost innumerable separate ethnic locations. Amongst the 200,000 

 square miles of Alps of which the western part of China consists, 

 rude savages might be enclosed for an irdefinite number of ages 

 before any families emerged into the lower and more open land. 

 The great plains of the lower basins would oppose their progreRs 

 to the eastern shores, because they continued until a recent period 

 to be overspread with marshes, while the obstructions in the 

 rivers prevented their offering a free outlet to the vast bodies of 

 water that from time to time poured down from the upper regions 

 and inundated the low lands. The geography of a large part of 

 the region is too imperfectly known to enable us to examine the 

 details of its ethnic influences. But the leading characteristics are 

 easily seized. The inner and middle regions not only, as a whole, 

 form an enormous barrier between middle Asia and the southern 

 and eastern plains, but by the extraordinary reticulations of the 

 mountain chains which nse above the table land or are pressed 

 together so as to leave hardly room for vallies, each district 

 within the mountains is surrounded by barriers of its own. Even 

 now, with all the aids of civilisation, the routes by which China 

 can be reached from the valley of the Zangbo are full of difficulties 

 and dangers. Between the upper basin of the Hoang-ho and the 

 Zangbo several chains of steep and icy mountains have to be Grossed. 

 The pssage of one of them occupies twenty days, and the whole 

 journey over these ranges and the bleak and snowy steppes between 

 them, can only be accomplished by considerable companies, and 

 with a sacrifice of life. The routes across the mountain band to the 

 east of Tibet are still more formidable, for in addition to the great 

 elevation of the chains, they ore worn full of terrific ravines and 



