Man and His Migrations

by R. G. Latham

Hence the phænomena of the African slave-trade, of English emigration, and of other similar elements for observation are no experiments; since it has not been Science that either the slaver or the settler ever thought about. Sugar or cotton, land or money, was what ran in their heads.

The revolting operation by which the jealous Oriental labours to secure the integrity of his harem is in its end a scientific fact. It tells how much the whole system sympathises with the mutilation of one of its parts. But it is nothing for Science to either applaud or imitate. It is repeated by the sensual Italian for the sake of ensuring fine voices in the music-market; and Science is disgusted at its repetition. Even if done in her own name, and for her own objects, it would still be but an inhuman and intolerable form of zootomy.

Still the trade in Africans, and the emigration of Englishmen are said to partake of the nature of a scientific experiment, even without being one. They are said to serve as such. So they do; yet not in the way in which they are often interpreted. A European regiment is decimated by being placed on the Gambia, or in Sierra Leone. The American Anglo-Saxon is said to have lost the freshness of the European—to have become brown in colour, and wiry in muscle. Perhaps he has. Yet what does this prove? Merely the effect of sudden changes; the results of distant transplantation; the imperfect character of those forms of acclimatization which are not gradual. It was not in this way that the world was originally peopled. New climates were approached by degrees, step by step, by enlargement and extension of the circumference of a previously acclimated family. Hence the experience of the kind in question, valuable as it is in the way of Medical Police, is comparatively worthless in a theory as to the Migrations of Mankind. Take a man from Caucasus to the Gold Coast, and he either dies or takes a fever. But would he do so if his previous sojourn had been on the Gambia, his grandfather’s on the Senegal, his ancestor’s in the tenth degree on the Nile, and that ancestor’s ancestor’s on the Jordan—thus going back till we reached the first remote patriarch of the migration on the Phasis? This is an experiment which no single generation can either make or observe; yet less than this is no experiment at all, no imitation of that particular operation of Nature which we are so curious to investigate.

What follows applies to Ethnology. The first result we get from our observations is a classification, i. e. groups of individuals, families, tribes, nations, sub-varieties, varieties, and (according to some) of species connected by some common link, and united on some common principle. There is no want of groups of this kind; and many of them are so natural as to be unsusceptible of improvement. Yet the nomenclature for their different divisions is undetermined, the values of many of them uncertain, and, above all, the principle upon which they are formed is by no means uniform. Whilst some investigators classify mankind on Zoological, others do so on what may be called Mineralogical, principles. This difference will be somewhat fully illustrated.

In Africa, as is well known, a great portion of the population is black-skinned; and with this black skin other physical characteristics are generally found in conjunction. Thus the hair is either crisp or woolly, the nose depressed, and the lips thick. As we approach Asia these criteria decrease; the Arab being fairer, better-featured and straighter-haired than the Nubian, and the Persian more so than the Arab. In Hindostan, however, the colour deepens; and by looking amongst the most moist and alluvial parts of the southern peninsula we find skins as dark as those of Africa, and hair crisp rather than straight. Besides this, the fine oval contour and regular features of the high-cast Hindus of the North become scarce, whilst the lips get thick, the skin harsh, and the features coarse.

Further on—we come to the great Peninsula which contains the Kingdoms of Ava and Siam—the Indo-Chinese or Transgangetic Peninsula. In many parts of this the population blackens again; and in the long narrow peninsula of Malacca, a large proportion of the older population has been described as blacks. In the islands we find them again; so much so that the Spanish authorities call them Negritos or Little Negroes. In New Guinea all is black; and in Australia and Van Diemen’s Land it is blacker still. In Australia the hair is generally straight; but in the first and last-named countries it is frizzy, crisped, or curling. This connects them with the Negroes of Africa; and their colour does so still more. At any rate we talk of the Australian Blacks, just as the Spaniards do of the Philippine Negritos. Moral characteristics connect the Australian and the Negro, much in the same manner as the physical ones. Both, as compared with the European, are either really deficient in intellectual capacity, or (at least) have played an unimportant part in the history of the world. Thus, several populations have come under the class of Blacks. Is this classification natural?

It shall be illustrated further. On the extremities of each of the quarters of the world, we find populations that in many respects resemble each other. In Northern Asia and Europe, the Eskimo, Samoeid, and Laplander, tolerant of the cold of the Arctic Circle, are all characterized by a flatness of face, a lowness of stature, and a breadth of head. In some cases the contrast between them and their nearest neighbours to the south, in these respects, is remarkable. The Norwegian who comes in contact with the Lap is strong and well-made; so are many of the Red Indians who front the Eskimo.

At the Cape of Good Hope something of the same sort appears. The Hottentot of the southern extremity of Africa is undersized, small-limbed, and broad-faced; so much so, that most writers, in describing him, have said that, in his conformation, the Mongolian type—to which the Eskimo belongs—Asiatic itself—re-appears in Africa. And then his neighbour the Kaffre differs from him as the Finlander does from the Lap.

Mutatis mutandis, all this re-appears at Cape Horn; where the Patagonian changes suddenly to the Fuegian.

But we in Europe are favoured; our limbs are well-formed and our skin fair. Be it so: yet there are writers who, seeing the extent to which the islanders of the Pacific are favoured also, and noting the degree to which European points of colour, size, and capacity for improvement, real or supposed, re-appear at the Antipodes, have thrown the Polynesian and the Englishman in one and the same class.