Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 75.djvu/596

590 a comparatively small portion of these people established themselves in the large cities; the great bulk of them went west and settled, side by side with the pioneers from the eastern states, the broad and fertile prairies of the Mississippi Valley and the sunny slopes of the Pacific Coast. It is true, a general intermixture of the various branches of this northern race did not take place equably throughout the country. There are large territories in many states where certain nationalities established distinct and separate settlements. Extensive tracts in Pennsylvania, Illinois, Missouri, Iowa, Texas and other states were settled by Germans alone. The Swedes and Norwegians established their new homes mostly in the northwest. The purest Anglo-Saxon blood we find in the southern states. The Celtic immigrants formed nowhere large separate settlements; they are scattered equably all over the union. One important fact must be noted here. A very large portion of the people of Celtic origin did not settle in the rural districts, but established themselves in the great cities, in New York, Boston, Chicago, St. Louis, etc., where, as we shall see later, they will disappear in the course of a few generations.

About the middle of the ninth decade of the last century an entirely new immigration began to set in. The new arrivals came from southern and eastern Europe, from Italy, Greece, Hungary, Bohemia, Russia. Hailing from an entirely different region of Europe, they differ completely in their racial characteristics from the earlier immigration. Considering only the head form, some of these people would show no marked difference from the Anglo-Saxon or Teuton. The Sicilians, the Neapolitans, the Greeks, are more or less dolichocephalic. But some anthropologists lay entirely too much stress on the headform. It is evident that purity of race is of far greater importance than the shape of the head. But these Mediterranean countries have probably the most mixed population of any region on the globe. This manifold intermixture began during the later periods of the Roman republic. The numerous prisoners taken in the many and frequent wars were sold as slaves in Italy and the provinces bordering on the Mediterranean Sea. Mommsen estimates the slave population of the Italian peninsula in the times of Sulla at twelve to fourteen millions, twice as numerous as the free population. These slaves came from the most distant regions, and were mostly barbarians, in every respect dissimilar from the Roman people.

The island of Sicily presents perhaps the best example of this manifold intermixture of the Mediterranean peoples. In the earliest