Whether it is due to wholly external circumstances, such as climate, geographical situation, geological constitution of the soil, its nature and that of its productions, that such differences should exist between different races, that some should reign as sovereigns over the earth, while others, in their pretended liberty, are given up to all the horrors of slavery, ignorance, misery, and cannibalism, I am not called upon to determine. It seems both probable and possible. "To understand any people thoroughly," says Mr. Helps, "we must know something of the country in which they live, or at least of that part inhabited by the dominant race. The insects partake the colour of the trees they dwell upon, and man is not less affected by the place of his habitation on the earth." We cannot pretend to undervalue the importance of race. We cannot deny that one is the ruler, the other the ruled. As Emerson says,[182] "It is race, is it not? that puts the hundred millions of India under the dominion of a remote island in the north of Europe. Race is a controlling influence in the Jew, who, for two millenniums, under every climate, has preserved the same character and employments." It is race that has planted the Anglo-Saxon on every shore, and that for ages has subjected the negro to the yoke of bondage. At all events, it is certain that, even in the present day, savagery is the exclusive portion of certain races, perfectly distinct in a physiological point of view from the white and yellow races (the Caucasian and Mongolian), which, either in antiquity or the modern age, have arrived at more or less advanced degrees of civilization. The savage races may be divided into four great groups:-- The _Negro_, in Africa and North America; The _Malayo-Polynesian_, in Polynesia and the Indian islands. The _American_, or Red Indians; and The _Hyperborean_, chiefly represented by the Eskimos. * * * * * The _Negro_ or _Black_ races are distributed over the whole of Africa, from the Cape of Good Hope to the frontiers of the Saharan region. The name of Negro is also given to the natives of Australia and Papouasia. But most anthropologists agree in considering the Australian branch wholly distinct from, and independent of, the African branch; which, nevertheless, it resembles in several organic peculiarities, and especially in the deep colour of the skin. This characteristic, which is the most conspicuous at the first glance, is, however of secondary importance: it is extremely marked on the east African coast, among the Nubians and the Abyssinians; on the banks of the Cuzamance, not far from the Sierra Leone coast, among the Feloupas, and on the Guinea coast, among the Aminas. All these peoples are black as ebony; but their oval countenances, their regular features, the elegance of their forms and the development of their faculties, evidently connect them, some with the Semites, others with the Aryan-Hindus.