The weekly pioneer and Democrat. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn. Territory) 1855-1865, 1861-01-18

will not admit the English hand, nor the
bracelet of the Kafir warrior the English
arm. The swords found in Roman tumuli
have handles inconveniently small; and the
great medieval two-handed sword is now
supposed to have been used only for one or
two blows at the first onset, and then ex.
changed for smaller one. The enormous
savage races have turned out, as has been
shown, to be travellers tales-even the ia.
tagonians being brought down to an aver
age of five feet ten inches, and being, more
over, only part of race, the Abipones,
of which the other families are smaller. In
deed, we can all learn by our own experi-
ence how irresistible is the tendency OF the
imagination to attribute vast proportions to
all hardy and warlike tribes. Most persons
imagine the Scottish Highlanders, for in.
stance, to bave been race of giants yet
Charles Edward was said to be taller than
any man in his Highland army, and his
height was but five feet nine. We"have the
same impression in regard to our own abo-
riginees. Yet, when first, upon the prairies
of Nebraska, came in sight of tribe OF
genuine, unadulterated Indians, with no pos.
session on earth but bow and arrow and
bear skin-bare skin in double sense, /
might add-my instructive exclamation Was,
"What race of dwarfs is this?" They were
the descendants OF the glorious Pawness of
Cooper, the heroes of every boys imagine,
ton yet, excepting the three chiefs, who
were noble looking men of six feet in height
the tallest of the tribe could not have mea.
sured five feet six inches.
PHYSICAL STRENGTH.
The most careful Investigations give the
same results in respect to physical strength.
Early travellers among our Indians, as
Hearne and Mackenzie, and early mission
aries to the South Sea Islands, as Ellis, re.
port athletic contests in which the natives
could not equal the better.fed, better
clothed, better>trained Europeans. When
the French savans, Peron, Regnier, Ran
sonnet, carried their thermometers to the
Islands of the Indian Ocean, they found with
surprise that an average English sailor was
fOrty-two per cent. stronger than the strong
est island tribe they visited. Even in COM
pairing different European races, it is un-
deniable that bodily strength goes with the
higher civilization. 1t is recorded in Robert
Stephenson's Life, that when the English
navies" were employed upon the Paris and
Boulogne railway, they used spades and
barr0ws just twice the size of those employed
by their Continental rivals, and were regu-
larly paid double. Quetelet's experiments
with the dynamometer on university stu.
dents showed the same results: first of all
ranked the Engllshman, then the French.
man, then the Belgian, then the Russian,
then the Southern European; for those races
of Sou thern Europe which once ruled the
eastern and western worlds by physical and
mental power have lost in strength as they
have passed in civilization, and the easy
victories of our armies in Mexico show US
the result.
LONGEVITY.
But it is the test of longevity which
exhibits the greatest triumph for civilization,
because here the life insurance tables furnish
ample, though comparatively recent stats.
tics. Of course, in legendary ages, all lives
were of enormous length and the Hindoos,
in their sacred books attribute to their
progenitors career of forty million years
or thereabouts-what may safely be termed
a ripe old age for if man were still unripe
after celebrating his forty .millionth birthday
be might as well give it up. But from the
beginning of accurate statistics, we know
that the duration of life in any nation is a
fair index Of its progress in civilization.
Quetelet gives statistics, more or less reliable,
from every nation of northern Europe,
showing gain of ten to twenty-five per
cent. during the last century. Where the
tables are most carefully prepared, the
result is least equivocal. Thus, in Geneva,
where accurate registers have been kept for
three hundred years, it seems that from
1860 to 1000 the average lifetime of the ci-
tizens was twenty-one years and two months;
in the next century, twenty-five years and
nine months in the century following,
thirty-two years and nine months; and in the
year 1888, forty years and FIVE months !;
thus nearly doubling the average age of
man in Geneva, within those three centuries
of social progress. In France, it is estimated
that in spite Of revolutions and Napoleon,
human life has been gaining at the rate of
two months year for nearly q century.
By manuscript of the fourteenth century,
moreover, it is shown that the rate of
mortality in Paris was then one in sixteen
-one person dying annually to every
sixteen Of the inhabitants. It is now one
in thirty-two-a gain of a hundred per
cent. in five years. In England the progress
has been far more rapid. The rate of
mortality in 1890 was one in thirty-three !;
in 1780 it was one in forty and it stands
DOW at one in sixty-the healthiest condition
in Europe-while in half barbarous Russia
the rate Of mortality is one in twenty. seven.
1t would be easy to multiply these statistics
to any extent /; but they all point one way,
and no medical statistician now pretends to
oppose the dictum Of Hufeland, that "a