Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 5.djvu/227

Rh will exert its characteristic influence. Nowhere in the tropics do we find Anglo-Saxon settlements spreading over large stretches of country and developing into towns, counties and great self-governing commonwealths as they have done in North America and Australia. Indeed, in Australia the difference between the settlements in Queensland and those in the southern part of that continent furnishes a striking object-lesson.

The reason is that the tropical climate is not congenial to men of Germanic blood. They may seek the tropics as adventurers, succeed in making their fortunes, and then depart again. But when they go there to establish permanent homes for themselves and their posterity, the succeeding generations, if not the first settlers, will always prove a deterioration of the race in physical as well as in mental and moral vigor. The American tropics form no exception to this rule. If the United States acquired them, they would, no doubt, be overrun by American adventurers trying to get rich quickly, and then to enjoy their wealth somewhere else. There would be branch establishments of American business houses in the towns, with a more or less frequently changing personnel. There would be short-lived attempts by speculators to draw American farmers into agricultural settlements, to end as all such enterprises have ended, but little beyond this. Only Europeans belonging to the so-called Latin races have ever in large masses become domesticated in tropical America. They adapt themselves more easily to the influences and requirements of a hot climate, and commingle readily with the natives. Thus was produced that Spanish-Indian mixture which, with a strong African ingredient in some regions, forms so large a part of the population of the American tropics. It is evidently far more apt to flourish there than people of the Germanic stock, and will under climatic influences so congenial to