Page:George Archdall Reid 1896 The present evolution of man.djvu/274

262 of the Old World—the white from Europe, the black from Africa, the yellow from Asia—penetrated, there the aboriginal inhabitants vanished or are vanishing. Some races, such as the Caribs and the Tasmanians, have become extinct; others are tending towards extinction, such as the Red Indians, the Polynesians, the Australians, and the Maoris; others again, such as the inhabitants of Central and some parts of South America, persist, though in diminished numbers, and possibly may persist long enough for the survival of the fittest to endow them with powers of resistance sufficient to save them from total extinction. It is to be observed, that these yet persistent though long-afflicted faces of the New World inhabit tropical or sub-tropical countries, where the heat renders pleasant the admission of much air to the dwellings. They are therefore subjected, generally speaking, only to syphilis and to airborne diseases,—small-pox, measles, scarlatina, &c.,—against which immunity may be acquired by the individual, and which are death- dealing to a far less degree than that earth-borne disease tuberculosis, to which the inhabitants of colder climates—e.g. the Red Indians and the Maoris—are subjected, as well as to the airborne diseases.

Writing of the Spanish occupation of the West Indies, the late Professor Fronde says—

"The Carib races whom the Spaniards found in Cuba and St. Domingo had withered before them as if struck by a blight. Many died under the lash of the Spanish overseers. Many, perhaps the most, from the mysterious causes which have made the presence of civilization so fatal to the Red Indians, the Australians, and the Maoris. It is with man as it is with animals. The races that consent to be domesticated prosper and multiply; those that cannot live without freedom pine