Public ledger. [volume] (Memphis, Tenn.) 1865-1893, 1872-07-24
CLIMATE AND PHYSIQUE.

that the heat takes all energy out oi
them, that they cannot work, and that
they understand why tropical peoples arc
so easily conquered, he comes forward tc
tell them Of his love for heat, of his
preference for glare, Of his hunger when
a lad for more warmth, of the suffering
he underwent from fool with theory,
who thought he could harden him by
exposure to cold water, cold rain, and
cold wind, and only succeeded in i'm.
planting the seeds of rheumatism which
has lasted through life. He should
have issued his preface in March, when
Englishmen, chilled to the bone by the
east wind, full of aches from the cold
draughts, and dispirited by the cold rain,
are sometimes almost inclined to believe
that little warmth, little pressure OF
| light, a little softness in the air, would
be endurable event If slightly immoral in
novations. Even then, however, they
would only sympathize with him in part;
would regard his love of the sun as in
dicative of latent tendencies to volup-
tuousness; and would resolutely main
tain that his pedagogue was only not in
the right because of the Southern blood
in his victims veins. The belief that
there is something morally good in bad
weather; that the great races have come
| from goldfish climes; that sleet is an aid
to manliness; that Polynesian luxury
Of weather breeds a Polynesian laxity
of life, is instilled into the English
man from boyhood, is strengthened
by all he reads of Bengal, and pene-
trates his entire theory of social life.
1t is the hard, gray weather makes hard
Englishmen," says Kingsley, and it is
difficult to convince an average English
man that an athletic or martial or in
dustrious race can grow up under a
blazing sky, or in the sweet, soft air of
the half-heated lands, amidstthe heat Of
the tropics, or in any climate so perfect
that it suffices by itself to supply the
need Of enjoyment. The notion that
man hourishes best in o temperate cline
survives all evidence to the contrary
and viii be repeated with perfect cool
ness by the man who has just informed
you that the two most perfect OF earthly
climates, the Tasmanian, which is the
English climate etherealized, and the
Californian, which is the Greek climate
cooled, produce the two feeblest races Of
mankind. The native Tasmanian and
the Digger Indian are with the Veddah
the lowest specimens of humanity hith-
erto observed. So far as the very imper-
feet evidence attainable will prove the
physical qualities, strength, size, cour-
age, and perhaps industry-we doubt if |
that is a physical quality, but it is
counted as one-are independent of
climate altogether, and specially inde-
pendent of the thermometer. The big |
gest and strongest race of earth the |
Nubian Of the Upper Nile, hourishes in
a heat which almost boiled Verne, the
tr raveler, who has most carefully OBJ
served his wonderful muscular develop
ment, and can live and grow fat in stoke
rooms from which the most powerful |
are carried out fainting and
half dead. Kaiser Williams Pomera-
mans are scarcely the equals of these
men in physique, and are not when
they chose more steadily Industrious. a
humal of Constantinople or Cairo would
carry a railway porter on his shoulders
and all his baggage besides, and Beng
alec boatman would row q London wa
.erman, as far as endurance is concern
ID, into an apoplectic fit. The Bengalse
S weak and the Peguan is not brave, but
he Malay, born under precisely the same
very condition to which
Macaulay attributed the effeminacy of
he Bengalees, has the courage of fer
'et, the activity Of monkey, and the
endurance of a thoroughbred horse.
some day or other, when we reign in
Jairo, Englishmen will officer an army
f Arabs, men bred in a desert where
he sun seems to hate human beings and
,ursues them with kind of conscious
and then Asia will know
ace more why the Moor seemed to the
nailed knights Of France and Spain so
errible an enemy. Few human beings
re so powerful as the Parsees, whose !
Trestlers defeat picked men from the
British army, and they have dwelt for
ges in a climate to WHICH that of Italy {
) cold, and for two centuries In Western
ndiaj and none are so industrious as
he Chinese Of the South, the men of
hose streaming superheated deltas
here the earth being water, the men,
p the popular theory. should be wo-
zen. The Peruvian Is soft creature,
ut his climate is cooler than that Of the ;
egious Of Panama and Guiana, where
be brayest and fercest of Rhorignes, a
be Carib, still maintains his hereditary Q
-eedom. Out Of the softly enervating Y
Innate, as we n0rthernors deem Il, of q
entral Italy come the sternest, bravest,
nd most efficient human beings that
yer walked the world, the fighting Ro- f
ian patriciau, who, after q thousand 4
ears Of heat, and luxury, and sated vs. /
iptuousness, was still the most form 3
liable officer with whom an enemy could 4
ONE in contact; and he was outdone in n
ourage BY the men who swarmed up /,
ON the blazing slopes Of Palestine and v