Year: 1879

Decaying Races.


The native difficulty in New Zealand
again calls attention to the last
dwindling Maori people, one OF the most
remarkable races of savageS with winch
Europeans have been brought in con-
tact. The race will vanish because there
are not enough children born to supply
the gaps caused by death. It's curl
GUS fact that this tendency to die OUT
observable in SO many savage races,
does not depend upon their capacity 1or
civilization, nor even upon their wiling,
ness to abandon the life Of hunters ana
to cultivate the soil. Certain branches
of the human race have robust vitality,
rendering them capable OF WithStandtiinlg
any change in their condition OF lie,
and causing them to send up TeSh
shoots, like hardy plants, under the
most disadvantageOus conditions. vi
such races are the African negroes, who
can not be eXterminated, and who are so
rapidly increasing in all countries TO
which they have been brought as slaves
as to threaten in some instances to
swamp entirely the white and colored
population. The KaffirS, also, when
brought under British rule in such a
colony as Natal, show a distinct ten
dency to increase. Other races lacking
that robust vitality pine away and die.
The Caribs of the West Indies, once
numbering many millions, have van,
ished, leaving only a faint trace here and
there of petty communities formed by
escaped negro slaves who married Carlb
women. The allied races in Central and
South America have also dwindled at a
rate which can not be accounted for by
any amount of war and massacre. The
sentence of death which seems
to lie on whole branches OF
the human race appears to issue
from the action of some unknown phys
ical law, and not to be avertible by any
improvement in their condition. We
have striking illustration of this law
under our actual observation. Leaving
out of consideration our own aborigines,
it is evident that the whole PolyneSian
race is likely to succumb under the same
mysterious blight that destroyed the
Caribs. As a people they are remarka-
bly, ready to accept the lessons of civili-
zation, not merely with the parrot-hke
acquiescence of the African negro, but
with the intelligent appreciation of men
who understand what they learn. The
Maoris illustrate our meaning, but the
Hawaiians give more striking instance
of it. The short history of this interest
ing little people since Capt. Cook dis
covered their group of islands discloses
an adaptability never before displayed
by any community; no such complete
change from utter savagedom has ever
been made in so short space of time,
and in no other instance has race taken
the initiative in sef-improvement in so
marked manner. Yet the civilized
Hawaiians are dying out as swiftly and
surely as the more barbarous Maoris.
That school of social philosophers which
is so often and so greatly troubled by
the probable future overcrOwding of hui
man beings on the face of the globe does
not give sufficient attention to the rapid
process of depopulation which in one
quarter of the world equals the increase
in another. Yet we may be al
lowed an occasional short pause in the
hymn of self-laudatiOn which we are
eternally chanting, in order to consider
for a moment the fate of the millions Of
our fellow-creatures who are withering
and dying away before our boastful ad-
vance; more particularly as the process
in Queensland is accompanied by so very
little trouble and eXpense,-BriSJane
(Eng.) Courier.