south, and settled among the Cashau mountains, have also been in continual war with the Bechuana tribes of that neighborhood.*

At the Portuguese settlement of Tete, the colonists have been at war for several years with the neighboring tribes.f

Even the African colonies, planted in pure philanthropy, and for the sole purpose of benefiting the black race, form no exception to the rule. Sierra Leone has had frequent wars with the neighboring blacks. Only a year or two ago it was necessary to burn the town of the Mooriah chiefs, and by news lately arrived from that colony, an attacking party of English had just returned from chastising some of the natives.

In Liberia, peace prevails at present; but they, too, have had their wars with the surrounding tribes. Yet in neither of these colonies has there been any pressure caused by the advance of civilization; nor have any diseases been carried to the natives by the colonists.

In the United States, since the May-Flower landed on the coasts of New-England, more than fifteen millions of men have been swept from the earth by the sword, the diseases, and vices of civilization. Of this number, the chief destroyer was small-pox, by which, according to Catlin, six millions of Indians have lost their lives. During the year 1837, the ravages of this disease were so terrible among some of the tribes in the west, that 25,000 persons died in a few months; two villages of the Mandans, on the Missouri river, were reduced, by one attack, from 1,600 to 31 souls. The Pawnee tribe lost, in a few years, one half its numbers, and many other tribes suffered in proportion. The Indians have no remedy for this disease, and resign themselves in despair to its ravages; or sometimes they will plunge into the water, and thus aggravate the violence of its attack. Many tall, handsome fellows, who happen to recover, on seeing the changed appearance of their faces after the ravages of the malady, destroy themselves by shooting or drowning. Whiskey, various other diseases, and the sword, have finished what the small-pox had left undone, and there are now, out of the sixteen millions of Indians who once roamed over the North American continent, less than half a million left. T

And we are informed by Dr. Livingstone, in this case the Dutch are entirely to blame. See Travels, pp. 37 and 119. † Ibid., pp. 589. Par. Rep. 1855 Catlin's North American Indians, vol. ii., pp. 24, 258, &c. Ibid. Also History. Condition. &c.. of the Indians in the United States, by Henry R. Schoolcraft, vol. i., p. 257.

According to a census, taken in 1847, their numbers were 388,229, besides some 25,000 to 35,000 roaming over the unexplored territories of the United States.-Schoolcraft.

The United States government has adopted every expedient that humanity could suggest in the endeavor to save those unfortunate creatures. They have established an Indian Bureau solely to guard and protect their interests, and the annual expenses of this branch of government are $121,500. Since the year 1795, and up to 1839, an aggregate consideration of $85,088,803 has been paid them for their lands, and the annuities now annually paid by the government to the Indians, amount to $2,300,000.* Besides this, teachers, missionaries, physicians, superintendents, agents, interpreters, &c., have been sent among them; the arts of agriculture have been taught them, vaccination introduced, and the sale of spirituous liquors forbidden-but all in vain-the hot breath of civilization withers them away like a sirocco.†

Thus then, we find, that wherever civilization comes in contact with barbarians, the latter are inevitably forced to give way, and either become slaves, or are destroyed; and, sometimes, even the former state is only the precursor of the latter. During the last few centuries we do not know of a single exception to this rule, and we doubt if, in that period, one example can be given of a barbarous people being raised from its degradation, and so elevated as to be able to stand alone, and defend its position from the encroachments of civilization, or rather to walk along with it. All the piety and self

*See Schoolcraft's History, vol. ii., p. 601.

↑ Some earnest hopes are indulged, that the Choctaws, Chickasaws, Cherokees, and Creeks, or, at least, remnants of them, may be preserved. They formerly inhabited the Southern States of Alabama, Mississippi, &c., but have since removed west of Arkansas. Says Schoolcraft, they have learned the great truths of Christianity, and the arts of agriculture, and civilized life: and have made fruitful and rich farms, and flourishing villages in the midst of the wilderness." Some of their schools are of a high order. The Gospel ministry is well attended. Some of their constitutions are purely republican. The people are increasing in numbers; peace dwells within their limits, and plenteousness within their borders. Vol. i., p. 280.

The condition of these tribes is still represented as being very good, as will appear by the following extract from the report of the Indian Bureau, presented to Congress in November, 1857. It says: "The reports in regard to the four great southwestern tribes-the Cherokees, Creeks, Choctaws and Chickasaws, are very favorable. Their regularly organized and stable governments and laws, well suited to their condition and circumstances, their general devotion to industrial pursuits, and their comparative national and individual prosperity, evince a most creditable and gratifying degree of advancement in the fundamental elements of eivilization. Some, if not all of them, appear to be expecting and preparing for an important change in their political and municipal relations with the United States, and there is no doubt that suitably organized territorial governments may, with great propriety and advantage, be extended to them at an early day."

Mr. Helps cites the province of Vera Paz as a signal instance of an aboriginal tribe being civilized and enlightened by their conquerors, and not being diminished in numbers nor restricted in territory. See Spanish Conquests, vol. iii., p. 396.

But we know what sort of civilization is that enjoyed by the Indians in various parts of Mexico, Guatemala, and South America. Many of them have been converted, as it is called, to the Christian faith, but they remain pretty much what they always have been. A very fair description is given of Indian Catholic converts by Stephens, when speaking of the Indians of Quiené, a province not far from Vera Paz. He says: "Here they still exist, in many respects, an unchanged people, cherishing the usages and customs of their ancestors; and though the grandeur and magnificence of the churches, the pomp and show of religious ceremonies, affect their rude imaginations, the padre told us, that in their hearts they were

denial of devoted missionaries-all the civilizing influences of commerce, all the efforts of philanthropists, and even the strong arms of the mightiest governments in the world, aided by unlimited wealth, ingenuity, and resources-all these combined have been unable to protect savage races from that fell destroyer, CIVILIZATION. This is exceedingly melancholy, and yet in the face of these facts, we find hundreds of thousands at this day proposing, in the name of philanthropy, to place a body of four millions of men (notoriously incapable of selfprotection) unprotected in the midst of the fiercest civilization the world has ever seen! Do not history and reason teach us that such an act will be wholesale murder? Is it not morally certain that freeing the black race in the United States would be the first step toward their extermination? Hitherto, three hundred thousand masters in the United States have done what all the missionaries, philanthropists, and most powerful governments in the world, have failed to do; they have protected a barbarous race from extermination, and are rapidly elevating it to a position in which, in God's own time, it may be able to take care of itself. These three hundred thousand masters are a standing army holding guard over a nation of four million negroes, and absolutely preserving their lives from destruction. Remove this army, as most Northerners, either directly or indirectly, are endeavoring to do, and we know of nothing but a miracle that could preserve the helpless negroes from that fate, which, in the present state of our world, history proclaims, inevitable for all degraded races-extinction!

full of superstitions, and still idolaters; had their idols in the mountains and ravines, and in silence and secrecy practised the rites received from their fathers. He was compelled to wink at them; and there was one proof which he saw every day. The church of Quiché stands east and west. On entering it for vespers the Indians always bow to the west, in reverence to the setting sun."-Central America, vol. ii., p. 192.

Humboldt says, "I have seen Indians, masked and adorned with grelots, perform savage dances around the altar, while a monk of St. Francis raised the host."-La Nouvelle Espagne, vol. i., p. 411.

See also, for similar accounts, Bonelli's Bolivia, vol. i., p. 217; Von Iscudi's Peru, p. 466; Madame Calderon de la Barca's Mexico, p. 298, &c., &c.,

It will generally be found that in these so-called conversions of savage tribes and peoples there is no vitality; the history of the Paraguay and Congo missions is generally the his-' tory of all the Catholic missions since the seventeenth century.

ART. IV.-INFLUENCES OF CLIMATE ON ANIMALS AND PLANTS.

[We do not admit the soundness of the reasonings in the present paper, where they maintain the superior development of man in the higher latitudes. The Southern nations in ancient times are evidence against the theory, and the Georgian, South-Carolinian, or Mississippian, of the present day, in neither person nor mind, fall a whit short, to say the least, of the Canadian! Surely, no one would compare for an instant the native and feeble negro of Massachusetts with his bardy, prolific, and long-lived brother of the rice and the cane fields.

Nevertheless, the article of our correspondent is able and interesting, and we give a place to it with pleasure.-ED.]

In the May number of this REVIEW we undertook to prove that man attained to a higher nature, and consequently greater advancement in civilization, in regions considerably elevated above the ocean level, than in the valleys and plains below the average level of the continents; and that the elevated lands of the temperate zone had the advantage of the high lands in the torrid zone, of equal annual temperature in the alternation of seasons of heat and cold, in consequence of the increased sensibility accumulated in winter, to be operated on with greater force by the heats of summer. The climate of North America, in contrast with that of Europe, was represented as superior, by reason of its much wider range of heat and cold, carrying southward its vigor-giving cold air, in winter, to the high lands of the Southern States, almost to the Gulf of Mexico, and extending its summer heats northwestwardly, to the regions of Lake Winnipeg and the Saskatchawan river. This is what Humboldt calls a continental climate, which has proved itself capable of producing finer fruits than any maritime climate.

Mrs. Somerville, in her Physical Geography, Professor Guyot, in his Earth and Man, and other eminent European writers on physical geography, have undertaken to maintain a doctrine better adapted to the self-love of Europeans for whom they wrote. The climate of Europe has been characterized as insular and maritime; and the conformation of its lands, interpenetrated by seas, bays, and straits, would seem to warrant such designation for large portions of it. This maritime character has been credited, by these writers, with the superior development of civilization in that quarter of the globe. That maritime commerce has been the great civilizing, as well as enriching instrumentality of the past; and that Europe, for some centuries, has not only possessed the best position for this commerce, but has fully availed herself of it, is freely

admitted. But if all the facts were before us, it might be shown that the men who have been most successful in the prosecution of that commerce, have originated in the least maritime districts of the nations of Europe that have most distinguished themselves in this department of industry. So far from its being true that, as a general rule, the best men are nurtured on the borders of the ocean, near its level, the contrary can be proved, by all the great facts of history, and by the experience and observation of events now in progress of developinent. Guyot, himself, in his general remarks, may be offered in evdence against his specific theory In the introduction of his Earth and Man, pages fifteen and sixteen, he says: "But a third continent, unknown in the history of ancient days, North America, has also entered the lists, and is advancing with giant steps; for it has not to recommence the work of civilization; civilization is transported to them ready made. The old nations of Europe, exhausted by the difficulties of every kind which oppose their march, turn with hope their wearied eyes toward this new world, for them the land of the future. Men of all languages, of every country, are bringing hither the most various elements, and preparing the germs of the richest growth. The simplicity and grandeur of its forms, the extent of the spaces over which it rules, seem to have prepared it to become the abode of the most vast and powerful association of men that has ever existed on the surface of the globe. The fertility of its soil, its position in the midst of the oceans, between the extremes of Europe and of Asia, facilitating its commerce with those two worlds; the proximity of the rich tropical countries of Central and of South America, toward which, as by a natural descent, it is borne by the waters of the majestic Mississippi, and of its thousand tributary streams; all these advantages seem to promise to its labor and its activ. ity a prosperity without example. It belongs not to man to read in the future the designs of Providence, but science may attempt to comprehend the purposes of God, as to the destinies of nations, by examining with care the theatre seemingly arranged by Hin for the realization of the new social order toward which humanity is tending, with hope. For the order of nature is a foreshadowing of that which is to be."

Chemist tell us that the air near the ocean contains portions of saline ingredients of many kinds. Some of these, when brought in contact with the blood in the lungs, would seem to be decidedly injurious. This is the probable cause of the far greater prevalence of consumption, and other lung dis