Page:The Relations of the Advanced and the Backward Races of Mankind.djvu/17

 pasture lands have been enclosed for cultivation by the stronger immigrant. Even a change in housing or clothing may prove deadly. I was told in Hawaii that the reduction of the native population from about 300,000 in Captain Cook's time to about 30,000 in 1883 was largely due to the substitution of wooden houses for the old wigwams, whose sides, woven of long grass, had secured natural ventilation, and to the use of clothes, which the native, accustomed to nothing more than a loincloth, did not think of changing or drying when drenched with rain. Moreover, many primitive races are always on the verge of want; and when a famine occurs, they may be brought so low that the survivors scatter and disappear. Some of the hill-tribes of north-western and middle India, as for instance certain Bhil communities, are said to have been practically extinguished by the recent famines. It is through one or more of these causes—for they often act simultaneously—that the Red Indians have almost vanished from North America east of the Rocky Mountains (a few tribes having, however, been, peaceably transported to new seats); that the aborigines of Tasmania died out thirty years ago; that those of Australia have gone from the civilized south-eastern corner of that continent, and may soon be confined to its northern coasts; that the Ainos are diminishing in Northern Japan, as the Ostiaks and Tunguses are in Siberia; that the Bushmen are practically extinct in South Africa, and that the Veddas of Ceylon had, long before Europeans reached that isle, been driven into the recesses of the forests, where now only a handful are left.