Dr. Watson F. Quinby of Wilmington has written an odd pamphlet on mongrelism in races. His belief is that population tends to become homogeneous, but this is not an averaging process. When two races mingle and intermarry, the mongrel product does not exhibit the balanced characteristics of both, but the traits of the higher race are absorbed and hid in those of the lower. Asia, he says, "was formerly powerful, with white peoples all along its northern and eastern borders, and far into the interior. But they first enslaved the black race, then mingled their blood, and have finally become merged in them." The resulting mongrel people always lacks the intellectual force necessary to maintain the civilization of the higher. Arts decline and national decay sets in. In this way is explained the existence of noble ruins among inefficient and barbarous nations, who practise a much ruder style of architecture. The Mexicans are the type of this retrogression. Dr. Quinby predicts for them an increasing decline until Aztec civilization is restored. If the Doctor's theories could be established, there are enthusiastic ethnologists who would not hesitate to say that the Mexicans could not be put to a better use than this. Shut them up and compel them to breed themselves back into Aztecs! Dr. Quinby's speculations are, to a great extent, based on studies of language, and of lingual affinities he is a bold, not to say reckless, expounder. Some of his work reads as if Mark Twain had turned philologist. For instance:
"Eighty miles from the mouth of the Indus was a place called Hingliz. The people of this part celebrate the festival of Bhavani on the first day of May, when their custom is to erect a pole in the field and adorn it with pendants and garlands. They also celebrate another festival on the last day of March, called Huli (Phulee), when they amuse themselves by sending one another on foolish errands. All this has a very Hinglish look(!). This is probably the place where the Hinglish people came from, for though the Romans called themselves angles, they call themselves English."
To explore libraries, to sift out from masses of irrelevant matter what alone is of value to the naval student, to subject the poetical descriptions of great battles to the cold eye of professional criticism, and to give the results in a condensed, well written, and interesting form, is the task Commodore Parker has assumed, and so far as the volume under consideration is concerned[11]—the first of a series—the task has been well and faithfully performed. The amount of labor involved is immense! The author passes rapidly over the navies of antiquity for the reason, probably, that we are more familiar with that history than with the naval history of a period nearer to us both in time and relationship. What schoolboy has not read of Xerxes sitting in his golden chair overlooking the Piræus and the galleys of his immense fleet strung along the coast of Attica as far as the eye could reach?
He counted them at break of day,
But when the sun set where were they?
Such was Salamis.
When his narrative reaches the navies of the Italian republics of the middle ages, however, our author seems all aglow with love of his theme, and well he may be! Venice, in her day of glory, possessed the finest navy of the times. Captain Pantero Pantera, writing of it in 1614, speaks with enthusiastic admiration of its fine arsenals, numerous stores, and numbers of workmen on permanent pay. These things, he says, were always most "carefully attended to by the republic of Venice, which indeed in this respect not only equals, but excels all the naval powers of the Mediterranean." There is so much of romance and poetry, indeed, in connection with the naval history of Venice, that it requires a cool head and steady hand to steer along the courses of sober truth; but that truth we must not be surprised to find, in that clime of sunshine and beauty, often out-vieing the wildest efforts of fiction. Very similar is the history of the sister republic of Genoa. Unfortunately these lovely sisters were great rivals, and during wars which covered a period of about one hundred and thirty years wasted each other's strength and resources without achieving a particle of good to either. As a judgment, it would almost seem, for such stupendous and long-continued folly, the seeds of destruction were planted without their own bosoms. Both attained the pinnacle of earthly glory, but from both issued forth a wanderer who was destined in time to set his seal upon the fate of his native city. The Genoese Columbus, followed by the Venetian Cabot, led the way to the great western continent which, by diverting the course of trade and commerce from its old channels, caused the loss of wealth and the final decay of the Italian republic. The spirit of discovery once aroused, other navigators followed, and Vasco da Gama, by opening the road to the East Indies by the way of the Cape of Good Hope, so injured the trade of Venice with the east as to render her downfall inevitable. But the history of the old sea kings of the north, and the tracing of their line of descent through old England to the hardy seaman of New England, is still more interesting to our naval students.
The Vikings—"sons of the fiords"—were undoubtedly the most arrant pirates of all history. They were the dread of all Europe. "A furore Normanorum librera nos Domine," prayed the Church throughout Christendom. Many of these piratical princes became, through habitual success, so devoted to their calling that they never extinguished it, but rather gloried in passing their lives on board their ships. It was their fond boast that they never reposed under an immovable roof, nor drank their beer in peace by their fireside, and the ships in which they had led their wild and adventurous lives formed in death their sepulchre. Passing over the discovery of North America by Eric the Red (about 700 B.C.), we may come at once to Harold Harfagra—Harold the Fairhaired, or Harold Fairfax, a name so well represented to-day in our own navy. Having made himself master of all Norway, the restless young spirits of the realm took themselves off on one of their accustomed expeditions. Led by a youth named Rollo, son of the celebrated sea-rover Jarl Ragnvald, they ascended the Seine and laid siege to Paris. So successful were these Normans that Charles the Simple ceded to Rollo that part of Neustria since called Normandy. By the terms of the treaty, Charles was to give his daughter Gisele in marriage to Rollo, together with the province of Normandy, provided he would do homage, and embrace the Christian religion. To do homage was to kiss the feet of the king. All that the sturdy Rollo could be prevailed upon to do, however, was to place his hand in that of the king, and to depute one of his followers to do homage for him. The gentleman to whom this duty was assigned raised the king's foot so high that his majesty was thrown upon his back; whereupon the rude Normans burst out laughing, so little respect for royalty had these wild rovers of the sea. Two hundred years later the descendants of these same Normans achieved the Conquest of England. They became by the heat of much and continued contest and attrition gradually fused, with the Angles and the Saxons, already inhabitants of the island, into the modern Englishman and his representative on the shores of New England.
This volume not only shows the reader—the general as well as professional reader—the large scope embraced in a proper study of history, but it also demonstrates that naval archaeology is not a mere idle amusement, suited to the elegant leisure of the scholar. It has a great and practical value, enabling an officer to understand his own profession the more thoroughly in all its branches. Commodore Parker has conferred a material benefit on his profession by the valuable contribution he has made to its literature. He has, moreover, by his straightforward narration, pleasant style, and copious illustrations from standard authorities, rendered agreeable and entertaining to the general reader what otherwise might have proved technical, and of too special a character.