an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a life for a life. The Roman system of penal justice was also founded on this conception. At the time of the laws of the Twelve Tables, retribution was still exacted, at least for severe bodily injuries, unless the person wronged preferred a compromise. 14

In every part of the world where man has taken possession of a thing either for use or pleasure, he has considered himself its proprietor. Even animals exhibit some apprehension of the rights of possession; birds seem to feel this in regard to the nest which they have built. A monkey which was in the Zoological Gardens in London, and which had weak jaws, made use of a stone to open nuts, always hiding it in the straw after using it, nor would he allow it to be touched by any other monkey.15 The Pomeranian dogs of our carters watch the goods of their masters, and evidently behave as guardians of the property. Appun, who spent many years among the natives of Guayana, assures us that the property of the individual is held sacred by the other inhabitants of his hut.16 At a very early stage the conception of rights of property even in immovable objects arises. Hunting tribes always regard the hunting-ground as the property of the tribe collectively. The Brazilians avail themselves of rivers, waterfalls, mountains, rocks, and trees, as boundary marks. A fight between two hordes of the Botocudos, at which the Prince of Wied was present, was the consequence of an invasion by one tribe of the hunting-ground of another tribe.18 Among the Australians, whom ethnology was wont to look down upon as the most degraded people, property in soil and territory was strictly respected. Benilong, a native of New South Wales, had inherited Goat Island from his father, and intended to leave it to a friend. 19 Divisions of the inheritance during the lifetime of the owner occur among them, and the rights of the proprietor

14 Si membrum rupit, ni cum eo pacit, talio esto; Table VIII. Dirksen, Uebersicht der Zwölftafel-Fragmente.

H. E.

Ownership of Land.

241

were so rigidly respected that no one was allowed to fell trees or kindle fire on the territory of another without his leave. A state of society in which ownership is not recognized is therefore unknown.

Where stationary populations have fields under cultivation, the boundaries of the land are carefully and clearly marked out. Boundary stones are to be seen on the northern Nicobar Islands, which are densely peopled, while there are none in the southern islands, in which there is still sufficient space. 20 Among the old inhabitants of Cumaná on the Caribbean Sea, the Spaniards saw the field marked off by cotton strings, and to tamper with these was looked upon as a crime." The inhabitants of the Venezuelan shores regarded theft as the most reprehensible offence, and punished it by a cruel death. 22 It is a most arbitrary act on the part of a despotic government when, in districts so densely peopled as British and Malayan India, the Crown exalts itself into the sole proprietor of soil and territory, farming out the land to the subjects. The same state institution existed in ancient China.23 In Peru, during the time of the Incas, private property was impossible, for a strict community of goods prevailed, or rather, there was one sole proprietor, the Son of the Sun, who through his officials imposed the statute-service on his subjects, and divided amongst them all the produce of their labour. Nor was this system confined to Peru; the Caziques of the Antilles 24 and the chiefs of the Otomaks in the modern Venezuela used it also. Where a divine origin is ascribed to the chiefs, and they are regarded as superior beings, property can only be held by them. Among the true Polynesians, and the hybrid Polynesian nations, all that the prince touches or treads upon becomes taboo, or not lawful for any one to touch. The troublesome precautions to which the chiefs were obliged to submit in order to avoid the unwished-for consequences of the law have often been told; how, for example, they are carried across tracts of land to prevent tabooing them.

20 Waitz, Anthropologie, vol. i. p. 440.

21 Petrus Martyr, De orbe novo, Dec. viii. cap. 6.

22 Gomara, Historia de las Indias, cap. 28, 68.

23 Plath, Gesetz und Recht im alten China.

24 Peschel, Zeitalter der Entdeckungen.

R

The organization of the national life is most closely dependent on the mode of gaining a livelihood. Where man associates with his fellow-men, a governing authority springs up. The loosest of all social bonds are those of the nomadic hunting tribes of Brazil, which consist of a few families or often of only one. But even these have their hunting-grounds to protect, and require a leader, at least in times of war. Among all hunters and fishermen the power of the chiefs is very limited, and often not even hereditary. The Indians of North America, the Australians, the Bushmen, and the Eskimo, allow their chiefs very slight authority: for hunting and fishing are the employments in which the individual least requires the aid of his fellows. "In an ant's nest," exclaims Peter Gumilla, 25 with reference to the Indians of the Orinoco, "there is more order and authority than in the nations concerning which I have been writing." Another Jesuit, Charlevoix,26 judges more favourably of the North American Indians. "Without any visible ruler," he says, "they enjoy all the advantages of a wellregulated government."

Pastoral tribes are usually found under patriarchal leaders, for the flocks generally belong to a single master who is served by the other members of his tribe in the capacity of domestics, or by former flock-owners once independent and subsequently impoverished. In the northern parts of the Old World, as well as in Southern Africa, great national migrations are nearly if not quite peculiar to pastoral life; the history of America, on the contrary, tells only of the invasions of barbarous hunting tribes into the civilized territories of prosperous populations. That entire nations should desert their former dwellings, press onwards, and wander over vast regions of the world, is inconceivable, unless they are accompanied by flocks yielding the requisite sustenance on the march. Cattle-breeding on steppes necessitates a change of abode. When nations become stationary, and husbandry commences, the desire for slave labour at once arises. Hunters who support themselves and their families only by constant exertion, can find no employment for bondsmen in their household. It is different even where fishing is practised, for in that case we some26 Nouvelle France.

25 El Orinoco ilustrado.

times find slavery, as on the north-west coast of America, among the Koniaks and Kolushs, and among the Ahts of Vancouver's Island 27 who, we may remark in passing, cut the hair of their bondsmen. Sooner or later slavery invariably leads to despotism, for he who possesses the greatest number of slaves is apt to use them to oppress the weaker. Slavery prevails throughout the whole of Central Africa, and therefore, whichever way we look in those regions, we see nothing but despotisms growing up on the ruins of other despotisms.

By the distinction of freemen from bondsmen, society becomes organized into ranks: an order of nobility is found even among negroes, although but rarely, as on the Gold Coast or in Congo. 28 The same occurs where a conquering race subjugates an alien nation. Physical characters are then usually regarded as tokens of superior descent; indeed, the Indian expression for caste, varna, is equivalent to colour,29 alluding to the colour of the skin. When the kings of Spain raised a native American to the nobility, the formula was "that he might henceforth consider himself as a white man." It is difficult to explain how distinctions according to descent arise in hunting tribes. Yet among the Australians there are three castes which allow no intermarriages, 30 although it has nowhere been observed that any members of a tribe enjoyed a preference over the others. Our information concerning the supposed order of nobility among these races is still very imperfect. If it is confined to the Coburg peninsula in the north, 32 it is probably due to an immigration from the islands to the north. For among the Malays, as well as among their kinsmen the Polynesians, there is an order of nobility which is generally subdivided into many grades. 33 Among the Tongans Mariner found, besides

27 Waitz, Anthropologie, vol. iii. and Sproat in the Anthropological Review. 1868. Even among the Botocudos, slaves made prisoners in war are said to have been seen. Prinz zu Neuwied, Reise nach Brasilien.

28 Antonio Zucchella, Missione di Congo, ix. 1712.

29 Adalbert Kuhn in Weber's Indischen Studien.

30 Earl, in the Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, vol. xvi.

31 Reise in der Fregatte Novara, Anthropologie.

32 Waitz (Gerland) Anthropologie, vol. vi.

33 For instance, in the district of Holontal, in the Northern Celebes. Ricdel, Zeitschrift für Ethnologie. 1871.

the princes, a higher and lower nobility, and two classes of plebeians.34 Aristocratic privileges and the institutions of caste are rampant also among the Papuan-Polynesian hybrid nations as well as among the inhabitants of the Fiji group or the Palau Islands. As we possess very inadequate information respecting the true Papuans of New Guinea, and the power of the chiefs is described as very dubious, and as the New Caledonians (who are, however, probably not pure bred) seem to recognize no distinctions of rank, save the dignity of the chief, it is probably due to Polynesian influence alone that so many Papuan hybrid races have organized themselves into castes.

In America we find aristocracy of birth among the Kolushs on the coast of Alaska, and among their neighbours the Haidahs of Queen Charlotte's Island. In both these places families bear the figures of animals as crests.35 Among the more southerly tribes on the north-west coast of America, those of noble birth were distinguishable by the artificial flattening of the head, for this mark, as we have seen, was conferred only on the free-born.36 The Iroquois made no differences of rank; the Algonkins and their southern neighbours, on the contrary, separated themselves into nobles, commons, and slaves. 37 In South America the Peruvian children of the sun founded a twofold nobility in their empire; for, in addition to the numerous Incas or descendants of the blood royal,38 they established the curacas, or local chiefs, in the vanquished provinces, and these were allowed to pierce their ears like the children of the Sun.39 Among the Guarani tribes and the Abipones there is also a marked distinction between people of high and low descent. Old women, as Dobrizhoffer relates, whose wealth consisted solely in the wrinkles of their faces, boasted loudly that they were not descended from plebeian

38 Clements Markham is of opinion that the title of Inca was originally given not only to the ruling house, but to all the tribal heads of the Inca nation. Journal of Royal Geographical Society, vol. xli.

39 Garcilasso, Commentarios, lib. i. cap. xxi.