Billeder på siden
PDF
ePub

to the north of the Black Forest to scatter upon the Netherlands and Flanders, the valley of the Seine and that of the Rhine. Thence their swarms were divided by the central plateau of France; one stream being diverted into Italy, the other into Spain, and thence to North Africa.

The Roman conquest scarcely, if at all, affected the population of these five Departments, and it is more than certain that since then no foreign element has produced any result that can be traced, for all the barbarians, as well as the English, belonged to the fair race.

In a subsequent memoir on the anthropology of the Southwest of France (Mém. Soc. d'Anthrop. de Paris, i., 3o sér., 4° fascic., 1895), Dr. Collignon sums up his conclusions as follows:

Such is, after an examination of anatomical characters, the distribution of the races in the south-west of our country. Is it possible to draw therefrom reliable indications of what it was formerly? Regarding this we may lay down this rule: When a race is well seated in a region, fixed to the soil by agriculture, acclimatised by natural selection and sufficiently dense, it opposes (for the most precise observations confirm it) an enormous resistance to absorption by the newcomers, whoever they may be.

The most striking example of this stability of seated races, of this force of inertia which renders them victorious, is certainly presented to us by Egypt. The modern Fellah differs in nowise from his ancestors of several millenniums ago, who lived at the times of Thothmes and Rameses, although, according to the calculations of M. Hamy, slavery had introduced upon the borders of the Nile more than twenty millions of negroes. These, in a climate which at first sight would be favourable to their acclimatisation, were not able to perpetuate their race, either directly or indirectly, that is to say, by crossing. All the more reason, one may say,

that the same can be said of the historic conquerors of this unfortunate country, from the Hyksos and the Persians down to the Turks and the latest comers, the English. The waves of foreign blood that have spread over Egypt have disappeared never to return.

The reasons are many. If the aboriginal race is more numerous than its invaders, and this is nearly always the case, it cannot be entirely destroyed; whatever be the slaughter which accompanies the conquest, the women and the children are preserved. The importance of the subsequent crossings cannot then, at the maximum, attain more than one third. The stable condition that follows puts then, ipso facto, the newcomer in a minority from the commencement of the conquest, the work of selection by acclimatisation does the rest. It is a matter of a few generations.

The only case where the occupation can be definitive is that of an invasion by a very superior race emigrating with women and children to a region peopled by nomads or true savages, such as the occupation of the United States or of Australia by the Europeans. In Canada, despite the political occupation and the incessant arrival of emigrants of their own blood, the English are absolutely balanced by the old French element, who were masters of the soil before their arrival.

But the presence of woman at the time of a conquest, if she is indispensable to a real and definitive colonisation, since alone it ensures the perpetuity of pure descendants, is not, however, sufficient. Except in a savage country, the women of the conquering party would always be in a minority. Even in the case where restrictive laws would assure to their progeny particular privileges, making a kind of aristocracy, it could never happen that there would be only two strata of the population, a victorious aristocracy superimposed upon a conquered democracy. We know the fate

[ocr errors]

of all aristocracies. Their grandeur is their ruin; they survive thanks only to foreign relays, and on an average disappear in three or four centuries. One cannot say Væ victis, "but "Va victoribus"; everything comes to him who waits.

[ocr errors]

The Romans did not systematically depopulate Gaul-her submission satisfied them; the distribution of races at the time of the Roman peace did not undergo other changes than those which could operate quite locally, the deporting of a too obstreperous people or colonising by veterans. The Barbarians passed like a torrent, they destroyed much, but they have not made in their campaigns a true colonisation, ense et aratro" of Marshall Bugeaud. The sword sufficed to assure their domination; to the vanquished — work. They have disappeared, except perhaps in the towns where they crossed with the Gallo-Roman middle class, after having preserved the forms of the imperial administration, for want of knowing and of being able to do better. The Arabs traversed the country but to disappear immediately. It results, once more let it be repeated, that the present distribution of races should faithfully represent to us their ancient distribution, except in places where special economic conditions have been slowly modified, but in a constant manner, by foreign influences.

CHAPTER VI

THE EVOLUTION OF THE CART

T is a truism that the commonest objects, those that we

see around us every day, usually fail to arouse any interest as to their significance or origin. One of the great benefits of travel is to awaken interest in even the most trivial matters of daily life, and this is usually accomplished through the diversity in their appearance from that which we are accustomed to see at home.

We who live in Britain, for example, see carts every day, but do we ever wonder what has been their history? We accept the finished product and there leave it, little thinking that in the sister isle there still persist strange survivals from the twilight of history which afford suggestive clues of the forgotten stages in the evolution of our common cart.

In this case no distant travel is necessary; there is no need to go to Asia or Africa, nor even to the remote parts of Europe. At our very door, so to speak, have we the links in the chain of evidence; scarce one is missing. Probably such a sequence cannot be found in any other country in the world.

The history of the cart is one chapter of a much greater study that of transport. The civilisation of the world and the spread of culture are bound up with facility of transport, including in this term the means of conveyance and porterage, and the routes traversed.

Without doubt the most primitive means of transport was what an American anthropologist has termed "the human beast of burden." This has always been an important, but it tends to become a diminishing, factor, though it can never be entirely replaced by other means. The absence of any other method of porterage is a sure sign of that low stage of culture which is termed savagery. Its extensive employment in higher grades of culture is due to slavery. Slave raiders load their human chattels with objects of merchandise, to sell ultimately the whole caravan. The great architectural and engineering works of pagan antiquity were possible only through slave or forced labour. It would appear from this that under certain conditions human labour is more economical than beast labour, but sooner or later man has been in most places largely replaced by the beast, and the beast is being replaced by the freight train and other mechanical modes of transport.

A professional carrier can carry continuously greater weight than an ordinary man; and fifty, one hundred, two hundred pounds, and even greater weights are on record as usual weights for a day's journey. As soon as man learnt to domesticate animals he found that more could be carried upon their backs than upon his own. So the pack-animal marks the next stage of development.

In some parts of the west of Ireland there are no good roads, and everything has to be carried by human beings, or on packs by horses and asses. Even where the roads are good, as in the islands of Inishbofin and Inishshark, off the coast of Galway, they may be used only for foot traffic, as there are no wheeled vehicles of any description, and all goods are carried either in hampers slung on a person's back (the usual method of taking home potatoes and peats), or in two wicker panniers or cleaves, slung across the back of a pony or donkey.

Q

« ForrigeFortsæt »