The Quest for a Lost Race

by Thomas Edward Pickett

JOSEPH HAMILTON DAVEISS.

But that accomplished philologist, Dr. Craik, seems to be quite in sympathy with the views of Du Chaillu touching the ancestral relations of the Scandinavian to the English race; and Dr. Craik's eminent American compeer, Mr. George P. Marsh, is not hopelessly wedded to fixed conclusions, and has by no means overlooked the obvious Scandinavian affinities of the English tongue. "Almost every sound," says the latter, "which is characteristic of English orthoëpy, is met with in one or other of the Scandinavian languages, and almost all their peculiarities, except those of intonation, are found in English; while between our articulation and that of the German dialects the most nearly related to the Anglo-Saxon there are many irreconcilable discrepancies." If to determine the relative proportions of linguistic and ethnic elements in dialect and race were "a hopeless and unprofitable task," this would seem to invalidate all general conclusions in the matter.

A few days after the very lively discussion of M. Du Chaillu's epochal paper in the Free Library of Newcastle, there appeared in a great newspaper a contemporary estimate of his views, which was received by its multitudinous constituency with profound interest and respect. It was the rolling voice of "the Thunderer"—the famous London Times. In all crises in the national life, the influence of this journal is felt. It is not a mere priestly oracle, silent except at times, but a divinity that never ceases to speak; clothed with strangely beneficent powers, and in the exercise of legitimate influence as resistless as the fabled might of the Scandinavian Thor. It forms opinion;—it fixes opinion;—it reflects opinion;—it gives effect to the popular will. It has been felicitously characterized as the "vast shadow of the public mind."

On the 21st of September, 1889, the Times, after a full report of the ethnological discussion in Section H, had this to say by way of editorial comment: "Perhaps the great sensation of the Section was M. Du Chaillu's paper, intended to prove that we are all Scandinavians.... This paper, combined with that of Canon Taylor, and the discussion that followed both, seemed to show that the time is ripe for a perfectly new investigation of the whole question of the origin and migration of the races which inhabit Europe and Asia; and, that, on lines in which language will play only a subordinate part."

Thus much for the startling theory discussed by the Anthropological Section at Newcastle.

In a subsequent correspondence, which appeared in the London Times, M. Du Chaillu challenged archæologists to point out remains in any other part of Europe so like those of the early Anglo-Saxons in England as the relics he figures from Scandinavia in England. It is not always easy to indicate with precision the cradle of an ancient race; and even if such remains were found on the coasts of Holland and North Germany, the discovery would not seriously affect the conclusions that seem to have been reached as to ancestral relations of the Scandinavian and the Norman to the English race in England and the United States. One might abandon altogether the main line of M. Du Chaillu's argument, (1) his careful analysis of the Sagas and other ancient documents and (2) his comparison of the antiquities upon which the challenge rests, and yet there would remain something more than a strong presumption that the animating principle of the English race, in its leading branches, is the Scandinavian blood. It would seem to be quite in conformity with the law of nature that the daring, crafty, and indomitable race which still shapes the political destinies of men, which is historically traceable in its schemes of conquest and subjugation for a thousand years, and which is precisely traceable upon geographical lines in its movements of colonization or war, should have derived its enterprising characteristics from the only race which has demonstrably transmitted its conquering and colonizing traits within historic times: to wit, the Scandinavian pirates that were conceived upon stormy waters, spawned upon an icy coast, and swept, apparently in a career of predestined conquest, from the waters of the Baltic to the ends of the earth. The nations shrank from the Rover in fear. The Frenchman, at least, learned to dread his power, and the Saxon submitted with sullen acquiescence to his rule. He sowed the seed of conquest with his blood, and upon whatever shore he drove his keel he planted himself fiercely upon the soil to stay. Is it to be supposed for an instant that this puissant racial force was dissipated and lost? Not so. The light, the fire, the sweep, the coruscating energies, the resistless currents, the driving forces are still there. The power is not "off"!

HONORABLE HENRY CLAY.

Nevertheless, it may be—to use the phrase of the London Times—that "the time for a new investigation of the whole question is now ripe."