and the isles of Mauritius and Bourbon, it is the [exotie] blacks who work ; in India, it is
the Hindoo.
“ Spaniards, it is true, do labor a little at Cuba and at Porto Rico. But they had inhabited,
in Europe, a hotter climate' than'the French and English. [For the same reason
joined to their dark race, our white fishermen, in the bayous from Charleston, S. C., to
Galveston, Texas, are the only men who, with comparative security, ply their vocation the
whole year round: and they are Spaniards, Portuguese, Maltese, or else mulattos.'] They
work also a little in America, especially when the altitude of the soil makes up for the
latitude of the country, as in Mexico and Peru; or when the climate is far more temperate,
as in Buenos Ayres ; and even then, this labor cannot be compared to the work performed
in France and in England [and north of “ Mason and Dixon’s line”]. At the Philippines,
it is the native that labors.
“ The Dutchman works not out of Europe: at Java, it is the Malay; at Guyana, it is
the black who labors.
“ The Portuguese never labors in India. In Brazil and at. Guyana it is the black who
works for him ;” [m Central America, it is the Carib, the Toltecan Indian, or the half-
caste.]6
In Egypt, no European nor Turk risks ¿is own person as an
agriculturist: the labor is performed there, as in Mesopotamia, by
the indigenous Fellàh. At Madagascar the Frenchman, as in Sierra
Leone the Englishman, dies off if he attempts it. In Algeria, the
French are beginning to find out that, unless the Arab or the Kabyle
will plough the fields for them, colonization is hopeless.6 And, lastly,
were not this fact of the non-acclimation of white races, a few
degrees north and south of the equinoctial line, now recognized hy
experience, why should Coolies from India and Malayana, as well as
Chinese^ “ apprentices,” he eagerly contracted for at Bourbon, the
Mauritius, the West Indies, and in Southern America ?
The truth of these propositions null he investigated hereinafter.]
The negro, too, obeys the law of climate. Unlike the white man,
6 Desjobert, L ’Algérie, Paris, 1847, pp. 6, 7, and 26, notes.
“ Nous ne comptons ici les hommes morts dans les hôpitaux [i. e. 71 per 1000, in 1846
nlone !], et nous ne parions pas de ceux qui, réformés, vont mourir dans leurs familles.
Nous ne parlons pas non plus de ceux tués par le feu de l’ennemi: ils sont peu nombreux.
Nous perdons par an, en Afrique, environ................................................... 200 hommes
“ Nous avons perdu en 1846...... j jg „
“ A la prise de Constantine ,i„.. 100 “
“ A la bataille d’Isly............................... ^......... 27 «
“ À là Smalah. ........ 9 «
‘“ Tout homme faible qu’on envoie en Afrique est un homme perdu.’ M a r é c h a l
B ugeaud, discours du 19 février, 1838.”
• See Discours prononcé par M. Desjobert (Representative in the Assemblée Nationale),
Paris, 1850; Idem, Documents Statistiques sur l’Algérie, 1851; Boudin, Histoire Statistique
de la Colonisation et de la Population en Algérie, Paris, 1853, passim.
It is with much disappointment that I am compelled to go to press with these evidences '
of the non-acclimation of races, without having received a copy of the work which D r .
B oudin has m press (Traité de Qêographie et de Statistique Médicales, 2 vols. 8vo., at Bail-
lière’s, Paris). Mr. Gliddon tells me that he perused some of its proof-sheets at the author’s
house, in Oct., 1855.
his complexion undergoes no change by climate. While the white
man is darkened by the tropical sun, the negro is never blanched in
the slightest degree by a residence in northern latitudes. Like the
quadrumana of the tropics, he is inevitably killed by cold; but it
never changes his hair, complexion, skeleton, nor size and shape of
brain.7 We do not propose, however, to enter into this discussion
here. Our object is simply to call attention to the independence of
existing types, of all climatic causes now in operation.
While naturalists have been accumulating so much useful information
concerning the history, durability, &c., of species in the
animal kingdom, they leave us still in utter darkness as to the time
or manner of their origin. Our actual Flora and Fauna extend, it
is now ascertained, many thousand years beyond the chronologies
taught in our schools to children; but whether man and his associates
have existed ten or one hundred thousand years, we have no
data for determining. Lepsius tells us that he regards even the
records of the early (Illd and IYth) dynasties of Egypt, as a part
of the modern history of man.
That , organized beings have existed on earth (in the language of
the great geologist Lyell) “ millions of ages,” no naturalist of our
day will doubt; and although our knowledge is not sufficiently
complete to enable us to follow Nature’s great chain, link by link,
yet it appears probable that there has been an ascending series,
commencing with the simplest forms and ending with man. Geologists
have arranged the materials which compose the crust of the
earth into igneous and sedimentary. The first, as the name implies,
are formed by the action of heat under superincumbent pressure,
and are composed of an aggregate of crystalline particles, without
any order or stratification. Sedimentary rocks are composed of the
fragments of older rocks, worn down by the action of the elements,
and deposited in the ocean, whence, by pressure, heat, and chemical
agency, they are re-formed into new masses, assuming a stratified and
more or less slafy structure.
To say nothing of subdivisions, the whole series have been divided
into igneous rocks, primary stratified formations, secondary formations,
tertiary formations, and diluvial formations. In the first two
divisions we find no traces of life, animal or vegetable; in the secondary
we find numerous plants, mollusks, reptiles, and fishes ; and,
7 The negro raoea are peculiarly liable to consumption out of the tropics, or even within
t|tem. They are never agriculturists, either in Egypt or in Barbary: nevertheless, in both
oountries, negroe3 are the shortest lived of the population. Monkeys suffer to a great
extent with the same disease, in the Garden of Plante, at Paris. Nowhere in North Europe
or in our Northern States, can the Orang-utan live.