Greater Britain: A Record of Travel in English-Speaking Countries During 1866-7Dilke, Charles Wentworth, Sir
History
Greater Britain: A Record of Travel in English-Speaking Countries During 1866-7
Dilke, Charles Wentworth, Sir
Great Britain -- Colonies -- History -- 19th century; United States -- Description and travel; Voyages around the world
The resemblances between the Red Indians and the Pacific Islanders are
innumerable. Strachey‘s account of the Indians of Virginia, written in
1612, needs but a change in the names to fit the Maories: Powhátan‘s
house is that of William Thompson. Cannibalism prevailed in Brazil and
along the Pacific coast of North America at the time of their discovery,
and even the Indians of Chili ate many an early navigator; the
aborigines of Vancouver Island are tattooed; their canoes resemble those
of the Malays, and the mode of paddling is the same from New Zealand to
Hudson‘s Bay--from Florida to Singapore. Jade ornaments of the shape of
the Maori “Heitiki” (the charm worn about the neck) have been found by
the French in Guadaloupe; the giant masonry of Central America is
identical with that of Cambodia and Siam. Small-legged squatting
figures, like those of the idols of China and Japan, not only surmount
the gate-posts of the New Zealand pahs, but are found eastward to
Honduras, westward to Burmah, to Tartary, and to Ceylon. The fiber mats,
common to Polynesia and Red India, are unknown to savages elsewhere, and
the feather headdresses of the Maories are almost identical with those
of the Delawares or Hurons.
In the Indians of America and of Polynesia there is the same hatred of
continued toil, and the same readiness to engage in violent exertion for
a time. Superstition and witchcraft are common to all untaught peoples,
but in the Malays and red men they take similar shapes; and the Indians
of Mexico and Peru had, like all the Polynesians, a sacred language,
understood only by the priests. The American altars were one with the
temples of the Pacific, and were not confined to Mexico, for they form
the “mounds” of Ohio and Illinois. There is great likeness between the
legend of Maui, the Maori hero, and that of Hiawatha, especially in the
history of how the sun was noosed, and made to move more slowly through
the skies, so as to give men long days for toil. The resemblance of the
Maori “runanga,” or assembly for debate, to the Indian council is
extremely close, and throughout America and Polynesia a singular
blending of poetry and ferocity is characteristic of the Malays.
In color, the Indians and Polynesians are not alike; but color does not
seem to be, ethnologically speaking, of much account. The Hindoos of
Calcutta have the same features as those of Delhi; but the former are
black, the latter brown, or, if high-caste men, almost white. Exposure
to sun, in a damp, hot climate, seems to blacken every race that it does
not destroy. The races that it will finally destroy, tropical heat first
whitens. The English planters of Mississippi and Florida are extremely
dark, yet there is not a suspicion of black blood in their veins: it is
the white blood of the slaves to which the Abolitionists refer in their
philippics. The Jews at Bombay and Aden are of a deep brown; in Morocco
they are swarthy; in England, nearly white.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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