The International Monthly, Volume 4, No. 4, November 1, 1851Various
History
The International Monthly, Volume 4, No. 4, November 1, 1851
Various
Art, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals; Literature, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals; Science -- History -- Periodicals
the North American; and, here it must be remembered,
that we are passing from one moiety of the new
hemisphere to the other. With a skin which is
olive-colored rather than red, they have small limbs
and undersized frames; whilst their habits are,
_mutatis mutandis_, those of the intertropical African.
This means, that the exuberance of soil, and the heat
of the climate, make them agriculturists rather than
shepherds, and idlers rather than agriculturists, since
the least possible amount of exertion gives them roots
and fruits, whilst it is only those wants which are
compatible with indolence that they care to satisfy.
They presume rather than improve upon the warmth of
their suns, and the fertility of the soil. When they
get liquor, they get drunk; when they work hardest,
they cut mahogany. Canoes and harpoons represent the
native industry. Wulasha is the name of their evil
spirit, and Liwaia that of a water-dog. I cannot but
think that there is much intermixture amongst them. At
the same time, the data for ascertaining the amount are
wanting. Their greatest intercourse has, probably, been
with the negro; their next greatest with the
Englishman. Of the population of the interior we know
next to nothing. Here their neighbors are Spaniards.
They are frontagers to the river San Juan. This gives
them their value in politics. They are the only well
known extant Indians between Guatemala and Veragua.
This gives them their value in ethnology. The
populations to which they were most immediately allied
have disappeared from history. This isolates them; so
that there is no class to which they can be
subordinated. At the same time, they are quite as like
the nearest known tribes as the American ethnologist
is prepared to expect. What they were in their truly
natural state, when, unmodified by either Englishman or
Spaniard, Black or Indian, they represented the
indigenous civilization (such as it was) of their
coast, is uncertain."
GOLD-QUARTZ AND SOCIETY.
The Burns Ranch Union Mining Company in California have published a
prospectus--we suppose to facilitate the sale of their stock--and the
writer indulges in some speculations respecting the influence of the
discovery that the chief mineral riches of the new state are in mines,
instead of the sands of rivers, thus:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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