The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1870-09-12
The German Race and tho Territories
That IL Occupies.

That le Occupies.
The ger-men, or spears-men, Gas the old
Teutonc words united in the name may be in
terpreted), now known as the people of Ger
many-or, In other terms, the Germans-are a
mighty race. We shall not attempt any de-
tailed narrative of the wanderings by which,
in the long succession Of ages, stray tribes
migrated from Western Asia into Eastern
Europe, and, sweeping over the wide steppes
of Russia and the plains Of Finland, at length
poured down through Scandinavia and, cross
ing the narrow straits and inlets which divide
Sweden and Zealand from what is now the
German mainland, peopled the central region
of the old Continent with innumerable Teutonic
tribes, the ancestors of the modern Germans.
The Danish archipelago, the island of Rdgen,
Pomerania, Mecklenburg, Holstein and
Northern Prussia are dotted everywhere with
tumuli in which, beside the bones of the an
Client Teutonic warriors, are found implements
and weapons of unmistakable Eastern origin.
In fact many of these relics, which we have
personally inspected in the Danish and Swe-
dish museums, bear no slight resemblance to
articles of similar use found in the mounds of
North America and the ruined mausolea of
Yucatan and Peru
When Caesar, pursuing his conquests in
Gaul, reached the Rhine, he found the vast
territory beyond it peopled by some threescore
tribes of different names, local manners and
dialects, whose general title Strabo, the his
@o, - in, fho Gorn,api tho
origin of which we indicate in the first lines
of our article. Although the Germans, even
of that remote epoch, had certain fixed
civilization, laws and agricultural life, and prac-
tised in their sacred Druidical groves religion
that embraced the Immortality of the soul,
their position as nationality was underlined,
and many centuries elapsed before the igno-
rance or Indifference of the West could peer
far enough through the dazzle Of the Roman
empire to discover beyond it, stretching away
to the eastward, mighty race, wondrously
endowed with both intellectual and physical
power. But few hundred years have
wrought magical change. The scattered
tribes between the Rhine and the Danube
have just become transformed into one vast
people, still temporarily and slightly divided
here and there by foreign boundary line,
but spiritually welded together by common
blood, common language, common glory and
common aspirations.
The Germany of to-day comprises ter RI
circuit in its entire measurement, and an area
of two hundred and forty-four thousand square
miles, without including the eastern provinces
of Prussia not embraced in the old Germanic
Confederation, which would swell the total to
two hundred and eighty thousand square miles.
The population of this vast region is about
thirty-eight million souls, which, with the
Germans in Austria, variously computed at
nine and at eleven millions, would make the
Germanic race in Central Europe number
from forty seven to forty-nine millions. But
this is not the sum total of the family on the
elder Continent The Baltic provinces of
Rnss;a-viz., Livonia, Esthonia, st. Peters
burg and Courland-contain about two mil
lion five hundred thousand souls of German
kindred, and Alsace and Lorraine, still COM
posing part of France, have two million more.
This would increase the aggregate Of the Ger
manic European family to nearly ffty-three
million five hundred thousand souls. Adopting
the higher numbers, and fully considering
the matrimonial, business and social alliances
of 80 active, enterprising and nomadic race,
the result becomes imposing.
But when we have done with the statement
of communities recognized as German we
have by no means finished the muster roll of
German settlement. In France proper there
are fully five hundred thousand, in Italy five
hundred thousand, in Spain and Portugal two
hundred and fifty thousand, in Turkey, Syria
and Egypt two hundred and fifty thousand, in
Switzerland two hundred and fifty thousand,
in the Scandinavian States, Belgium and Hol-
land FIVE hundred thousand and in the British
Islands five hundred thousand Germans.
But it is in America that the outside Ger
man emigration has developed into the
grandest proportions. In our own city and in
Philadelphia, Milwaukee, Cincinnati and St.
Louis whole wards are almost entirely peopled
by Germans. In Pennsylvania they are so nume-
rous in some counties that the local laws are
officially printed in German as well as in
English, and in several of the Western States
they compose almost the majority. In round
numbers the Germanic race and it's offshoots
in the United States may be estimated at five
million souls. Again, they are surprisingly
numerous in Mexico and Central America. In
Brazil, ever since the enlistment there of the
disbanded Germans who had served in the
tanned firm foothold, and in Buenos
Ayres, Colombia, Chile and Peru they
own some of the best enterprises and are
rapidly increasing. They have recently
founded thriving colonies in some of the
island groups of the Pacific, and are an infu-
al nd al IN ia