Page:The Native Races of the Pacific States, volume 2.djvu/64

46 parallel with climatic zones, thereby forming in themselves distinctly marked lines between peoples, forcing the African to remain under his burning sun, and the northmen in their cooler latitudes; so that in the several climatic zones of the old world, we see the human race distinctly marked, Aryan, Semitic, and Turanian—white, black, and yellow—while throughout the two Americas, from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego, type and color are singularly uniform.

Who can picture the mighty tide of humanity, which, while the eastern hemisphere has been developing so high a state of culture, in America has ebbed and flowed between barbarisms and civilizations? Through what long and desperate struggles, continuing age after age through the lives of nations, now advancing, now receding, have these peoples passed? Asia, from its central position and favorable climate, would seem naturally to encourage a redundant population and a spontaneous civilization; the waters of the Mediterranean invite commerce and intercommunication of nations, while the British Isles, from their insular situation and distance from hypothetical primitive centres, would seem necessarily to remain longer in a state of barbarism. In the Pacific States of North America we find the densest population north along the shores of the ocean, and south on the cordillera table-land, from the fact that the former offers the best facilities for food and locomotion until the latter is reached, when the interior presents the most favorable dwelling-place for man.

Climate affects both mental and moral endowments, the temperament of the body, and the texture of the brain; physical energy, and mental vigor. Temperate climates are more conducive to civilization, not for the reason given by Mr Harris, "as developing the higher qualities, and not invigorating the baser feelings", for the Hyperborean is as unchaste and as great a slave to passion as the sub-equatorial man—but because a