Page:The Relations of the Advanced and the Backward Races of Mankind.djvu/18

 From cases of Destruction I pass to cases of Absorption. When the aborigines among whom a stronger immigrant race comes are neither low savages nor physically feeble, it may befall them to be imperceptibly blent with and lost among the stronger and more numerous or more prolific race. This is of course most likely to happen when the interval between the peoples is not a wide one. Probably it was thus that the Celts of Britain absorbed, being perhaps modified by, their so-called Iberian predecessors, as the Russian settlers are to-day absorbing some of the tribes they have found in Siberia. The Yakut learns to speak Russian and becomes a sort of Christian, while the Russian, though he adopts the Yakut dress and way of life, does not sink into a savage; and the population ends by being Russian. So those natives who in the Canary Isles survived the strife with the Spanish settlers became in the end for all purposes Spaniards. So in India Hinduism has for many centuries been slowly spreading among the aboriginal hill-tribes, turning them into Hindus like those of the plains, and obliterating their distinctive tongues and customs. So in the Caucasus tiny peoples that had for ages dwelt apart in upland valleys, with mighty glaciers above them and forest gorges beneath, have now been brought under the yoke of Russia, and are losing their ancient faiths and modes of speech to become, if not Russians, yet Georgians or Imeritians of the low country. There are cases in which Absorption may proceed not so much by mixture of