[82]. E. H. Man, Journ. Anth. Inst., xv., p. 442.
Other sources of information were the works of the Jesuit missionaries of the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, such as José d’Acosta (1539-1600), J. F. Lafitau (1670-1740), and F. X. de Charlevoix (1682-1761), who worked among the Canadian Indians, and M. Dobrizhoffer (1717-1791).
Next come the missionaries of the nineteenth century, such as William Ellis (1794-1872), who laboured in South Africa and Madagascar, but is best known for his work in Polynesia; John Williams (1796-1839); George Turner (1818-1891); W. Wyatt Gill (1828-1896), and others who also worked in the Pacific. In Africa we may mention Bishop Callaway (1817-1890) and David Livingstone (1813-1873). At the same time the Roman Catholic missionary E. R. Huc (1813-1860) was working in China and Tartary, while the Abbé Dubois (1770-1848) was laboriously investigating the manners, customs, and ceremonies of the Hindus.
Besides the missionaries, we owe a deep debt of gratitude to the early explorers and civil servants in all parts of the world, who have provided, consciously or unconsciously, a vast amount of information about the peoples among whom they travelled or over whom they ruled. Scientific expeditions, even before these were undertaken in the interests of anthropology, collected further material. Lastly come the various anthropological expeditions, consisting of trained workers, who, besides amassing fresh evidence, check, correct, or amplify the work of earlier writers.
These were the data on which the science of Ethnology, in its restricted sense, was to be built. The earliest ethnologists utilised the material mainly with a view to elucidating ethnic relationships, and to producing systematic classifications of the various races of mankind. Later workers such as Ratzel and Reclus produced systematic descriptions of races, peoples, and areas. A third method was that of Tylor, the chief exponent of Comparative Ethnology.
Systematic Works on Ethnology.
The earlier attempts at race classification were based merely on physical characters, and are dealt with elsewhere (Chap. VI.). During the eighteenth and early part of the nineteenth centuries geographical discovery brought a mass of new facts to light, especially in the realm of natural history; and in no branch of that science were the effects so marked as in that of Anthropology.
The marshalling of a vast array of new observations and deductions required a broad mind, wide knowledge, and shrewd reasoning powers. These, together with a sound training in anatomy, an unusual acquaintance with philology, and some eminence in psychology, produced the monumental work of Prichard.
J. C. Prichard.