Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/481

Rh burst of Greek colonizing activity which peopled Italy and Sicily was followed by a pause of forty years. After the Puritan exodus there was no emigration to New England for nearly a century. The rush to the Australian gold fields more than doubled the population in ten years, and then fell permanently to half. An eloquent propaganda sent a tidal wave of emigration to New South Wales in 1861-'63, only to sink in just the same space of time to its former level.

Migration and emigration are alike periodic. Swiss cowherd and Lapland deerherd, French workman and British invalid migrate only for the season. Fishermen emigrate for the season. Most of the first emigrants to new colonies intended to return, and many of them did and do return, but ever fewer with successive years. They compensate for this ascent above the animals by being migratory within their new area. Americans and Australians, New-Zealanders and South Africans have no homes.

There is a heightened temperature in plants before flowering, in lower organisms before budding or fission, in the lower animals at pairing, and in human beings during courtship. So is there among peoples at great colonizing periods. A "fever of emigration" partially depopulated Spain after the discoveries of Columbus and again of Balboa. The settlement of New England and Pennsylvania was preceded by growing and widespread, if subdued, excitement. Three successive waves of colonizing enthusiasm swept over England and Scotland in the forties. The gold rushes to California and Australia in 1847-'51, and the milder sensations of Kimberley and the Transvaal, Coolgardie, and Klondike, partook of the same character. And still, in some remote Swedish village, an emigrant to the United States or Australia will create a "fever" by the tidings he sends home of success or better days. Then it gets into the blood, and they can not stay. A "colonizing fever" is admitted by observers like the Due de Broglie to reign at present in France, and is alleged to exist with equal intensity in Germany and Italy, while it is said to be redoubled in England, where it is normal and in the temperament.

At efflorescence, fission, budding, and parturition there is a "disruptive climax." So is there in colonization and emigration. Esquiros has given a pathetic account of a visit to an emigrant ship at the London docks. William Black has described, and some artist has painted, the departing Highland emigrants as they sing Lochaber No More. As the white or the dark cliffs fade, the lump rises in the throat, the eyes fill with unwonted tears, and those who are gifted that way break into verse. Byron's wild Good Night!, Edward Bliss Emerson's melancholy Last Farewell, Hugo's vicarious Sea Song of the Exiles, and Australian Gordon's Exile's Farewell