The New Orleans crescent. [volume] (New Orleans, La.) 1866-1869, 1868-11-15
THE HAT rQuAroR AND NEGRO LAND.

the human race, the transitions of history,
the varying forms Of civilization are strictly
referable to climate that is to say, they visi-
bly, represent so many notifications Of the
principle of heat. According TO DR.. Meiss-
ner, however, they are all SO many manifes-
tations of the principle of motion, which he
holds to be identical with the cosmical ele-
ment of life, a palpable, measurable, but
exquisitely mercurial substance, capable of
more changes than were ever dreamed of by
old Proteus. But as heat is inseparable from
the multiplicity of developments observed in
the vital substance, it seems to us to come to
the same thing, whether we refer all the facts
of ethnology, of history, of sociology, to eli
mate or to motion. At all events, for logical,
if not for philosophical purposes, one would
be justified, under the two theories compared
and construed together, in assuming heat,
motion and life to be essential ly identical.
Hence, it does not follow that the disciples of
DR.. Draper are to be instantly and violently
upset, in respect to his teachings about the
influence of climate, by the wondrous discov-
cries which the German savant announces.
We are not disciple of DR.. Draper. On
the contrary, we regard his history of the
civil war in the United States, which Mr..
Stephens, in his book on the same subject,
declares to be prominently philosophical,
as egregiously unphilosophical- the
most so, when judged as whole, of all the
works, pretending to be history, that were
ever written. But, in the history above men,
toned, DR.. Draper offers one illustration of
his climatic theory which we are disposed to
treat as worthy of consideration on account Of
the facts comprised in it, and the speculations
suggested by it. We refer to what he calls
the cheat equator" He describes this line
as crossing and recrossing the astronomical
equator, but no where widely divergent from
it. About the heat equator lies the black
zone in which the negro is supposed to be
indigenous. This zone, traversing Ethiopian
Africa, q portion of India, and Polynesia,
strikes the American continent at the Isthmus
of Panama, and then, as regards terra frma,
is almost wholly lost in the Caribbean sea, the
Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic ocean. DIR.
Draper is led to doubt, from the extreme
tenuity of the territorial domain allowed to
it in this part of the world, that the negro
type of mankind ever had any indigenous
existence in the Western hemisphere The
waters of the Caribbean sea and of the Gulf
of Mexico would seem to have swallowed up
almost entirely those portions of the Ameri-
can continent which might otherwise have be-
come Western Ethiopia. Nevertheless, since
the black zone, as traced by DIR. Draper, takes
in, besides the Isthmus Of Panama, a portion
of Central America and of the Antilles,
and touches at its northern limit the Gulf bor-
ders of Texas, Louisiana and Florida, he con-
cludes that these regions may be regarded as
belonging to negro land. In his opinion these
meager scraps of territory constitute the only
part of America which offers the conditions of
the natural habitation for the negro. Within
these narrow limits only, he thinks, can the
negro be expected to assert his African gen.
ealogy, traditions and instincts in their un-
adulteratHd purity. and to make stand
against an adverse civilization ; and, the GEN.
ter of this negro domain being in Panama, it
would naturally follow that he would fight this
battle with the most vigor and tenacity at
that point. 1t cannot be denied that the pre-
sent situation of affairs on the isthmus is in
singular coincidence with this conclusion in
somuch that the New York Herald is induced
to protest against that situation in this de-
cided language:
1t Is curious fact that the finest geographical
point relative to the commerce of the world is
governed by nggers. Panama is absolutely under
the control Of few hundred half clothed, half.
fed, miserable men. who give local laws relative
to trade and interoceanic intercourse and dictate
to the whole world the policy of a highway in
which millions Of human beings are intensely in
terested. There Is no right existing. in view of
the advancement Of this century, where few
half breeds and negroes can place themselves as
barrier to the development of commercial rela-
tons which are constantly expanding and linking
the old world with the new.
To-day 1t may be said that few ignorant and
revolutionary men hold 1t in their power to stop
the Panama Railway and interrupt the already
vast trade that flows across it, as was lately the
case in fact. When Chiriqui rebelled all the work
men of the Panama railway were seized and
pressed into the mob of variegated Ethiopians
who we're organized to resist an anticipated in.
vasion.
But it is safe to say that the commercial in
terest mentioned by the Herald is destined to
prove SO imperious and crushingAs to neu-.
tralize the natural advantages of temperature
and vegetation in favor of the Attenuation
of Panama and the foreshadowing of this
victory of commerce over climatic conditions
of barbarism may be seen in these words of
the same paper
To-day, when new railway enterprises across
the Isthmus are being brought to q practical
reality, when the long contemplated ship canal
is taking tangible form, when the South Ameri-
can Pacific trade is being. turned into our own
cities instead of Europe, when China and the
Indies are about to open their doors and pour
millions Of treasure across the Isthmus into our
commercial centers, it is time that we looked to
the condition of the route over which all this
trade is to pass 1t Is not for New Granada
with its countless changes of government, to
direct all this. At Panama, above all other places
on the face of the globe, the world demands sta
bility.
Dr.. Draper appears to have overlooked the
decisive part which commerce is to play in
regard to social and political facts in the 18TH
mean region he but dimly recognizes, if he
does not altogether forget, the invincible
force with which Caucasian civilization would
press upon the negro when standing upon