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when the President Sharp assumed the administration of the island, which was in 1706. Allowing her to be fourteen years old at that time, we must conclude her age to be upwards of one hundred and thirty years.

The same authority received from a physician at St. Vincent's, as an answer to his query, the statement :-" I have known a great many very old Negros whose exact ages could not be ascertained. At the time of the hurricane in 1831, I had a record of the mortality in the whole of my practice from the year 1813, and in every year there were deaths of Negros computed to be sixty, seventy, or eighty years of age, and upwards. My father will be eighty-four years old in May next, and the Negro woman who carried him about as a child is still living, and at the age of ninety-six enjoying good health, upright in figure, and capable of walking several miles." It may be true that the Negros regarded in mass exhibit a shorter term of life than the European average; but this is sufficiently explained by the privations of their lot in the colonies to which they have been transported, and by an unfavourable climatic influence and geographical site in their native country. The preceding facts show, that there is no law forbidding the Negro to attain a longevity equal to that of the European in circumstances friendly to it; while placing the European in subjection to the same amount of toil in the West Indies, or planting him amid the swamps, the luxuriant vegetation, the inundations, and heat of Western Africa, and his term of life in general would not come up to the Negro standard. It appears from the researches of Major Tulloch, as embodied in statistical reports printed by the House of Commons, that neither the Saxon, nor Celtic, nor mixed race, composing the troops of Great Britain, can withstand, even under the most favourable circumstances, the deleterious influence of a tropical climate. It is shown, also, that this result is not to be attributed to intemperance, the besetting vice of all soldiers; for though temperance diminishes the effects of climate, and adds to the chances of the European, it is by no means a permanent security. So far as regards the vast regions of the earth, the most fertile, the richest, the question as to their permanent occupancy by the Saxon and Celt, as Britain, or France, or any other country, is now occupied by its native inhabitants, appears, from these reports, to be answered in the negative. "The AngloSaxon is now pushing himself towards the tropical countries; but can the Saxon maintain himself in these countries? It is to be feared not. Experience seems to indicate that neither the Saxon nor Celtic races can maintain themselves, in the strict sense of the word, within tropical countries. To enable them to do so, they require a slave population of native labourers, or of coloured men at least, and, in addition, a constant draught from the parent country. The instances of Cuba, Brazil, Mexico, and Columbia, where the Spanish and Portuguese seem to be able to maintain their ground, do not bear so directly on the question as many may suppose; for, in the first place, we know not precisely the extent to which these have mingled with the dark and native races; and secondly, the emigrants from Spain and Portugal partook, in all probability, more of the Moor, Pelasgic, and even Arab blood, than of the Celt or Saxon."

A careful comparison of different tribes leads to the conclusion, that the general phenomena of human life, or those processes which are termed the natural functions, the laws of the animal economy, are remarkably uniform, making allowance for the influence of climates, of modes of living, of localities, and of the accidents which interrupt the natural course. The age of puberty announces itself by corresponding symptoms, and that of advanced life by analogous signs of decrepitude, the decrease of the humours, the loss or decay of sight and of the other senses, and a change in the colour of the hair. All communities of men appear open to the attack of all kinds of disease, though a few haunt particular districts, and of course only prey upon those who are exposed to their invasion. In some cases, it is only the old inhabitants of these neighbourhoods that are attacked, as

in the instance of the plica polonica, which afflicts the Sarmatic race on and near the banks of the Vistula, from which the German residents are in a great measure free. But this proves no specific difference between the two, but only shows, that, to acquire a predisposition to certain local complaints is a work of time, and will probably appear in new settlers after the lapse of centuries. There is a well-marked variety in the constitution of nations, and in their liability to certain given disorders; but the difference between the torpid American and the irritable European is not greater than the common varieties of constitution which meet us within the bounds of the same family, and which render its different members peculiarly subject to different complaints. The conclusion to which these considerations point that of the identity of mankind as a species is strongly supported by the fecundity of the offspring of parents of different races. Hunter and other naturalists have advanced it as a law, that if the offspring of two individual animals belonging to different breeds is found to be capable of procreation, the parent animals, though differing from each other in some particulars, are of the same species; and if the offspring so engendered is sterile, then the races from which it descended are originally distinct. This is a position to which there are many exceptions; but it is undoubtedly true, that the energy of propagation is very defective in the product of a union of different species. Tried by this test, the inference is in favour of a common nature belonging to all mankind; for the mixture of originally far-separated human races has repeatedly resulted in a numerous population, physically equal, and in many instances superior, to either branch of the ancestral stock.

It has suited the views of some interested parties in time past, who have their representatives at present, to pronounce certain tribes of men to be distinct species from the whites, constituted upon a type physically and mentally inferior to that of the Caucasian nations. This assumption has been embraced in order to excuse the aggressions of the latter upon the persons and property of the former. Especially has the negro been subject to this treatment; and mental incapacity has been inferred from his retreating forehead and depressed vertex. But this favourite doctrine of the slave-owner has been amply refuted by the heroes, politicians, and legislators among the emancipated black population of Hayti,—by members of the same race, in other districts, when under cultivation, displaying a power of intellect, and loftiness of moral character, which would reflect honour upon any of the whites, -and by the testimony of travellers, that, apart from cultivation in his native wilds, the negro is capable of all the benevolent and social feelings of our nature, and merely developes the effect of unfavourable circumstances. The latter varying in nature and degree, will account satisfactorily for every case of physical and mental deterioration presented by the human races-the Australians, Fuegians, and Bosjesmans; for many an example has occurred of Europeans, brought under their influence, undergoing a marked degeneration.

A variety of evidence, psychical and moral, physical and philological, rebukes the ancient boast of Attica, that the Greeks descended from no other stock of men, the first occupants of the country springing out of the soil,-an opinion held by the populace, but not the creed of the philosophers. One of the most distinguished anatomists of the day, who cannot be suspected of any prejudice upon the question, Mr. Lawrence, draws this induction from an extensive series of facts and reasonings-"that the human species, like that of the cow, sheep, horse, and pig, and others, is single; and that all the differences which it exhibits, are to be regarded merely as varieties." In what particular spot the location of the primal pair was situated, and what race now makes the nearest approximation to the original type, are points of some interest, but of no importance, and are now involved in an obscurity which it is impossible to remove. That the primitive man occupied some part of the country traversed by the Tigris and Euphrates,

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appears to be the best supported opinion, as it is the most general; and from thence there is no difficulty in conceiving the diffusion of the race to the remotest habitable districts, in the course of ages. In the infancy of society, an increasing population would speedily outstrip the means of subsistence to be found in a limited district, inducing the necessity of emigration to an unoccupied territory-a proceeding which the natural love of adventure, with the spirit of curiosity and acquisition, so influential in later ages, could not fail to facilitate. Considering the connection of Asia, Africa, and Europe, the approximation of the northern parts of the two great continents, with the contiguity of the islands of Asia to it, we cannot marvel, that the races spreading out to these points should devise means to cross rivers, scale mountains, penetrate into deserts, and navigate the sea. The spur of necessity, the excitement of enterprise, the stimulus of ambition, the occurrence of accident, and sometimes the influence of fear, created by the commission of crime, have all contributed to this result; but perhaps man has more frequently than otherwise become the involuntary occupant of isolated and distant islets. Three inhabitants of Tahiti had their canoe drifted to the island Wateoo, a distance of five hundred and fifty miles; and Malte Brun relates, that, in 1696, two canoes containing thirty persons were thrown by storms and contrary winds upon one of the Philippines, eight hundred miles from their own islands. Kotzebue also states, that in one of the Caroline isles he became acquainted with Kadu, a native of Ulea. Kadu, with three of his countrymen, left Ulea in a sailing-boat for a day's excursion, when a violent storm arose, and drove them out of their course. For eight months they drifted about in the open sea, according to their reckoning by the moon, making a knot on a cord at every new moon. Being expert fishermen, they were able to maintain themselves by the produce of the sea, and caught the falling rain in some vessels that were on board. Kadu, being a diver, frequently went down to the bottom, where it is well known that the water is not so salt, taking a cocoa-nut shell with only a small opening to receive a supply. When these castaways at last drew near to land, every hope and almost every feeling had died within them; but by the care of the islanders of Aur, they were soon restored to perfect health. Their distance from home, in a direct line, was one thousand five hundred miles.

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by revolutions which have repeatedly submerged, elevated, and dislocated its framework. Disclosures of this nature surpassing the marvellous fancies of an oriental imagination-so novel to the great crowd of men-so contradictory to the prevailing sentiments in which they are educated-have been received with no little distrust, and have exposed the geologist to no small amount of obloquy, from the parties who prefer cleaving to the tradition received from their fathers, and to the more obvious optical impressions, than to engage in any laborious exercise of the reflective faculties upon the phenomena of nature. In fact, geology has had to encounter the precise difficulty with which astronomy had to contend in its early stages-that of being antagonistic in its decisions to habitual ideas, and to the first blush of sensible evidence: for as the eye recognises the revolution of the sun, and the fixedness of the earth, while science teaches the stability of the former, and the rotation of the latter, -so the idea conveyed to the mind by the Cyclopean masonry of the limestone mountains, mass piled on mass, till the height of the clouds is scaled, is that of a hard and refractory sub

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stance, which has sternly stood its ground from the era of primeval time; whereas the scientific investigator teaches, that its materials were once held in aqueous suspension, and its substance as susceptible of impression as the sand from which the tide of the ocean has just retired. Yet the proof is equally irresistible in the one case as in the other. The minute organisations which enter into the constitution of many of the towering cliffs which proudly throw back the impetuous dash of the billows, and the exquisitely delicate markings by organic structures which they present - the impressions of plants, leaves, and shells, and the foot-prints of birds - proclaim with undeniable evidence the fact of a former soluble condition, and of great vicissitude having stamped its character upon them.

It is a distasteful task to the generality of mankind to unlearn. They do not willingly abandon notions that have grown with their growth, and strengthened with their strength, and struck their roots deep and fast into their "heart of hearts." Besides being mortifying to intellectual vanity to admit an error, they disrelish the mental disturbance occasioned by the breaking up of old associations of ideas, and the toil which a correct conception of

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