Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 34.djvu/698

680 islands, belonged apparently to that branch which is variously styled Hamitic, Proto-Semitic, Libyan, and North African. Issuing probably from Asia in the earliest ages, it peopled Egypt and Barbary, and made its way even to the Canary Islands. That it spread northward at various points across the Mediterranean there can hardly be a doubt. Its purest modern representatives are the Berbers, the hardy mountaineers of the Atlas range, of features and complexion almost European, and in character possessing precisely the traits which the Aryans lacked. This character can not be better shown than by copying the concise description given by Dr. Topinard in his "Anthropology." Of the Berber, regarded as the type of this race, he says: "A lively sentiment of equality, of charity, of his own dignity and of his personal liberty, a great desire for activity, love of labor, economy, attachment to his home, are his moral characteristics." All these traits appear in those most famous members of the Proto-Semitic stock, the ancient Egyptians, and with them a love of science and art and a strong inclination for literary production. Such, apparently, were the people in Greece and the adjacent islands and coast-lands of the Mediterranean, on whom the Aryans imposed their government and language and certain traits of their character How large an element of the Hellenic people this aboriginal population contributed is shown by the language. In that, as in all mixed tongues, the grammar is mainly from one source; it is almost purely Aryan. But the vocabulary shows a large infusion of words which can not possibly have come from any other source than from a subject race thus conquered and absorbed. Prof. Sayce, in the address already referred to, informs us that "Mr. Wharton has found, by a careful analysis of the Greek lexicon, that out of twenty-seven hundred and forty primary words only fifteen hundred can be referred with any probability to an Indo-European origin." To what linguistic stock this non Aryan element in the Greek language belonged is a question which remains for philologists to determine; but every indication of locality and of physical type, of moral and mental traits, and of early Hellenic tradition embodied in the legends of Ægyptus, Danaus, and Cadmus, points to a Proto-Semitic origin. To this primitive race, whatever it may have been, were evidently due all the finer and nobler qualities of the Greek character and intellect. To their Aryan conquerors they owed, along with an increased comeliness and grace of shape and feature, their martial energy, their amenability to discipline, and doubtless certain barbarous usages, such as their custom of putting to death in cold blood their enemies taken in battle.

The Iberian race resembles the North African so closely in physical, mental, and moral traits that, but for the total difference