suckling, wars, accidents, sickness, licentiousness, the stealing of
women, infanticide, and especially lessened fertility. If any one of
these checks increases in power, even slightly, the tribe thus affected
tends to decrease; and when of two adjoining tribes one becomes less
numerous and less powerful than the other, the contest is soon settled
by war, slaughter, cannibalism, slavery, and absorption. Even when a
weaker tribe is not thus abruptly swept away, if it once begins to
decrease, it generally goes on decreasing until it becomes extinct.
(32. Gerland (ibid. s. 12) gives facts in support of this statement.)
When civilised nations come into contact with barbarians the struggle
is short, except where a deadly climate gives its aid to the native
race. Of the causes which lead to the victory of civilised nations,
some are plain and simple, others complex and obscure. We can see that
the cultivation of the land will be fatal in many ways to savages, for
they cannot, or will not, change their habits. New diseases and vices
have in some cases proved highly destructive; and it appears that a new
disease often causes much death, until those who are most susceptible
to its destructive influence are gradually weeded out (33. See remarks
to this effect in Sir H. Holland s Medical Notes and Reflections,
1839, p. 390.); and so it may be with the evil effects from spirituous
liquors, as well as with the unconquerably strong taste for them shewn
by so many savages. It further appears, mysterious as is the fact, that
the first meeting of distinct and separated people generates disease.
(34. I have collected ( Journal of Researches: Voyage of the Beagle,
p. 435) a good many cases bearing on this subject; see also Gerland,
ibid. s. 8. Poeppig speaks of the breath of civilisation as poisonous
to savages. ) Mr. Sproat, who in Vancouver Island closely attended to
the subject of extinction, believed that changed habits of life,
consequent on the advent of Europeans, induces much ill health. He
lays, also, great stress on the apparently trifling cause that the
natives become bewildered and dull by the new life around them; they
lose the motives for exertion, and get no new ones in their place.
(35. Sproat, Scenes and Studies of Savage Life, 1868, p. 284.)
The grade of their civilisation seems to be a most important element in
the success of competing nations. A few centuries ago Europe feared the
inroads of Eastern barbarians; now any such fear would be ridiculous.
It is a more curious fact, as Mr. Bagehot has remarked, that savages
did not formerly waste away before the classical nations, as they now
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