Narrative of the surveying voyages of his majesty's ships Adventure and Beagle (vol.2): between the years 1826 and 1836 : describing their examination of the southern shores of South America, and the Beagles's circumnavigation of the globe

OF THE HUMAN KACE. 649 I must pause for a monient to explain why I consider these explorers as savages, although they were spoken of before as descendants of Abraham and his countrymen, who were ci- vilized. Let us suppose, for illustration, that a party of men and women left Asia Minor in a civilized state. Before they had wandered far, no writing materials or clothes would have remained (had they even possessed them), and their children would have been taught only to provide for daily wants, food, and perhaps some substitute for clothes, such as skins. Their grand-children would have been in a still worse condition as to information or traces of civilization, and each succeeding generation would have fallen lower in the scale, until they be- came savages in the fullest sense of the word ; from which de- graded condition they would not rise a step by their own exer- tions ; so long as they received no assistance, no glimmerings of intelligence, from others who had branched off from the main trunk at a much later period, and had means of preserv- ing more knowledge. The degree of degradation would de- pend upon climate, disposition, description and quantity of food, recollection of origin and traditions, keeping up old ob- servances, and intercourse with other families, tribes, or nations, among whom more traces of their common origin and descent might have been preserved. Were a dozen men and women now cast away upon unknown land — supposing that not one of the party could read or write— that there was no substance with which they could clothe themselves except the skins of animals — that the climate was variable — that they had neither tools nor arms — that the extent of habitable land admitted of their wandering — that it had no other human inhabitants, and that it should be visited by none for the space of some hundred years after the arrival of this party, — in what state would their descendants be found by the next adventurers who might land on the shores of that country ? India, China, Mexico, Peru, regions separated from the cen- tral seat of population, but advanced in civilization at the earliest period of their history with which we are acquainted, preserve traditional accounts of superior men who arrived