All races of men, like animals, possess a certain degree of constitutional
pliability, wbich enables tbem to bear grekt changes of
temperature or latitude ; and those races that are indigenous to
temperate climates, having a wide thermometrical range, support
best the extremes of other latitudes, whether hot or cold. Hence
such races might be regarded almost as’ cosmopolites. In accordance
with this idea, the Jews, who were originally scattered between 30°
and 40 north latitude (where they were subjected to considerable
heat in summer and cold in winter), were already well prepared to
become acclimated to far greater extremes of temperature in other
latitudes. The inhabitants of the Arctic, also, as well as those of
the Tropics, have a certain pliancy of constitution ; but, while the
Jew and other inhabitants of the middle latitudes may migrate 30
degrees south, or 30 degrees north, with comparative impunity, the
Eskimau on the one extrême, or the Negro, Hindoo, and Malay
on the other, have no power to withstand the vicissitudes of climate
encountered in traversing the 70 degrees of latitude between Greenland
and the equator. Each race has its prescribed salubrious limits.
The fair races of Northern Europe, below the Arctic zone, 3f which
the Anglo-Saxons are impure descendants, will serve as another
illustration. These races are now scattered over most parts of the
habitable globe ; and, in many instances, they have undergone far
greater physical changes than the Jews. The climates, for instance,
of Jamaica, Louisiana, and India, are to them much more extreme
than to the Jewish race. The Israelite may be recognized anywhere
; but not so with the Scandinavian and his descendants in the
tropics. The latter becomes tanned, emaciated, debilitated; his
countenance, energy, everything undergoes a change : and were we
not familiar, from daily observation, with these effects of climate
upon northern races, we should not suspect the original ancestry of
many of the present inhabitants of hot climates. In these cases we
behold, not simply a healthful modification of the physical and
intellectual man, but a positively morbid degradation. The pure
white man carried into the tropic deteriorates both in mind and
body; the average duration of his life is lessened; and, without
fresh importations, his race would in time become extinct. When,
however, his descendants are taken back to their native climes, they
revert to the healthful standard of their original types : the latter
may have been distorted, but can never be lost, except in death.
[This fact may be familiarly exemplified by the habits of English
sojourners {colonist» they cannot be termed) now scattered throughout
Hindostàn and the Indian Archipelago, on both sides of Africa
a few hundred miles north of the Cape, along the southern shores
of the Mediterranean, in the West Indies, South America, and elsewhere.
Such emigrants are, moreover, out of all proportion, athletic
adults before quitting their birth-place; who set forth with the
intention, and are ever cheered by the hope, of returning home the
moment their ambition is realized. Eew, notwithstanding, come
back to their native land with constitutions unimpaired; but, in no
cases do those English whose means are not absolutely insignificant,
attempt to rear up their children in any of the above tropical
regions. I f they do so, parents mourn over the graves of lost
offspring, or sigh on beholding the sickly appearance of the surviving^:
of the latter, an adult generation, especially amongst the
females, suffering under hourly-increasing morbific /influence, is
destined to succumb far within the average limits of longevity that
would have been accorded to them by a life-insurance actuary, had
they grown up in Europe. On the contrary, every sacrifice is made,
under the name of “ education,” to send them homeward, in order
that they may become constitutionally retempered, before they are
once more exposed to such deleterious intertropical influences. So
true is this rule, that, on the authority of a friend of Mr. Gliddon’s,
Major General Bagnold, of the Hon. East India Company’s Service
—a veteran who now, with his family, in London, practically carries
into effect half a century of Oriental experiences—we know that the
oldest purely-English regiment in India, the “ Bombay Tufts,” notwithstanding
that marriages with British females are encouraged,
has never been able, from the time of Charles H. to the present
hour, to rear, from births in the corps, boys enough to supply its
drummers and fifers.
The same rule holds good with the Dutch in Batavia and other
Indian islands. Their children, when of pure blood, in health are
weakly; when half-caste, worse. Where, however, as frequently
happens in our Gulf States, such half-caste is produced by the union
of South {dark) Europeans with negresses or squaws, a hardier
animal appears to be the result. Hear D e s jo b e r t :
“Le Fran$ais s’acclimale-t-ii? ses enfans s’élivent-ils en Algérie? We speak of Frenchmen,
and not of those Spanish, Italian, and Maltese populations which, coming from a country
more analogous in climate [and being in type dar* races, also], hear better than our fellow-
countrymen the influence of the African climate.
“ Algerian oolonists have always confounded, under the same name of colony, every
establishment of Europeans out of Europe. They have not reflected that, in climates
erent from those of Europe, he [the European] labors but little in body. He more
requently commands, administrates, or follows mercantile pursuits in the cities [not in the
country], . L
“ French and English races labor in Canada, in the northern parts of the United States,
™ m New Holland; but, in the Southern States of the Union, a t the Antilles, Guayanas,