Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, December 1898
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Title: Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, December 1898
Author: Various
Editor: William Jay Youmans
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Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK APPLETONS' POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, DECEMBER 1898 ***
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Established by Edward L. Youmans
APPLETONS'
POPULAR SCIENCE
MONTHLY
EDITED BY
WILLIAM JAY YOUMANS
VOL. LIV
NOVEMBER, 1898, TO APRIL, 1899
NEW YORK
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
1899
COPYRIGHT, 1899,
BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY.
VOL. LIV. ESTABLISHED BY EDWARD L. YOUMANS. NO. 2.
APPLETONS' POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
DECEMBER, 1898.
_EDITED BY WILLIAM JAY YOUMANS._
CONTENTS.
PAGE
I. Wheat-growing Capacity of the United States. By E.
ATKINSON, 145
II. The Racial Geography of Europe. The Jews. By Prof.
WILLIAM Z. RIPLEY. (Illustrated.), 163
III. The Playgrounds of Rural and Suburban Schools. By
I. G. OAKLEY, 176
IV. Up the Skeena River. By GEORGE A. DORSEY, Ph. D.
(Illus.), 181
V. Light and Vegetation. By Prof. D. T. MACDOUGAL, 193
VI. The Stone Age in Egypt. By J. DE MORGAN, 202
VII. Superstition and Crime. By Prof. E. P. EVANS, 206
VIII. A Geological Romance. By Prof. J. A. UDDEN.
(Illustrated.), 222
IX. The Season of the Year. By GRANT ALLEN, 230
X. Brain Weights and Intellectual Capacity. By JOSEPH
SIMMS, M. D., 243
XI. Speleology, or Cave Exploration. By M. E. A. MARTEL, 255
XII. Sketch of Charles Henry Hitchcock. (With Portrait.), 260
XIII. Editor's Table: Evolution and Education.--David Ames
Wells.--A Borrowed Foundation, 269
XIV. Scientific Literature, 274
XV. Fragments of Science, 282
NEW YORK:
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY,
72 FIFTH AVENUE.
SINGLE NUMBER, 50 CENTS. YEARLY SUBSCRIPTION, $5.00.
COPYRIGHT, 1898, BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY.
Entered at the Post Office at New York, and admitted for
transmission through the mails at second-class rates.
[Illustration: CHARLES H. HITCHCOCK.]
APPLETONS' POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.
DECEMBER, 1898.
THE WHEAT-GROWING CAPACITY OF THE UNITED STATES.
BY EDWARD ATKINSON.
In 1880 it happened to fall to me to make a forecast of the very
great reduction in the price of wheat in Great Britain, which could
then be predicated on the lessening cost of transportation from
Chicago to the seaboard, thence to British ports, which was then
sure to be soon followed by a large reduction in the railway charges
for bringing the wheat to Chicago from the other Western centers of
distribution. I then alleged that the time was not far off when,
even if the price of wheat in Mark Lane were reduced from the then
existing rate of fifty-two shillings per quarter to thirty-four
shillings, it would still yield as full a return to the Western
farmer as it had yielded in previous years at fifty shillings and
upward. This forecast attracted great attention, and has since been
made the subject of very much bitter controversy, especially since
the fall in prices was much more rapid than I then thought it could
be, and was carried to a much lower point than any one could have
then anticipated. It will be remarked that thirty-four shillings in
Mark Lane is at the rate of one dollar and three cents per bushel of
sixty pounds.
From time to time I have almost been forced to defend the position
then taken, notably when asked to appear before the Royal Commission
on Depression in Agriculture at one of their sessions, where I was
kept upon the stand for two full days in the effort of the excellent
English farmers and landowners to prove that the American farmer
had been ruined by the reduction in the price of wheat, which the
majority of that commission attributed to the demonetization of
silver. The whole tone of that investigation and of a large part of
the treatment of the wheat question in Great Britain has been one of
complaint and of alleged wrong to British agriculture because the
United States had succeeded in supplying the masses of the people
of the United Kingdom with cheap bread, with sufficient profit to
themselves to keep up the supply.
Now comes what may be called a cry of alarm from a scientist of
highest repute lest England may be deprived even of an adequate
supply of wheat, and lest the price should be forced to an
exorbitant point. This view of the case was stated at great length
by Sir William Crookes when assuming the presidency of the British
Association for the Advancement of Science at the recent meeting in
Bristol. This address is published in full in the Times of September
8th, the portion devoted to the wheat question filling three out of
six columns of closely printed text; the other three are devoted to
a complete review of the existing conditions of science. I venture
to give a few extracts which will convey to the reader the aspect of
the wheat question from this essentially British point of view. Sir
William Crookes begins with a sort of apology, which the writer can
fully appreciate. He says:
"Statistics are rarely attractive to a listening audience, but
they are necessary evils, and those of this evening are unusually
doleful.... I am constrained to show that our wheat-producing soil is
totally unequal to the strain put upon it. After wearying you with a
survey of the universal dearth to be expected, I hope to point a way
out of the colossal dilemma. It is the chemist who must come to the
rescue of the threatened communities. It is through the laboratory
that starvation may ultimately be turned into plenty."
One of the singular facts which becomes quickly apparent to any one
who deals with this subject in Great Britain is the inability of the
English farmer to think about agriculture except in terms of wheat.
Now we have an example of our English scientist of the highest repute
who seems to ignore all other grain and to predict future starvation
on an expected deficiency in the supply of wheat. Sir William Crookes
proceeds:
"The consumption of wheat per head of the population (unit
consumption) is over six bushels per annum; and, taking the
population at 40,000,000, we require no less than 240,000,000 bushels
of wheat, increasing annually by 2,000,000 bushels to supply the
increase of population. Of the total amount of wheat consumed in the
United Kingdom we grow twenty-five and import seventy-five per cent."
He then deals with the impending scarcity, saying:
"To arrest this impending danger it has been proposed that an amount
of 64,000,000 bushels of wheat should be purchased by the state and
stored in national granaries, not to be opened except to remedy
deterioration of grain, or in view of national disaster rendering
starvation imminent. This 64,000,000 bushels would add another
fourteen weeks' life to the population."
After dealing with the fact that while it might be possible for the
United Kingdom to supply itself with its own wheat at an average
of twenty-nine and a half bushels to the acre, he goes on to say
that this would require thirteen thousand square miles of British
territory, increasing at the rate of one hundred square miles per
annum; but he says it would be clearly impossible to assign so large
a proportion of the area of the United Kingdom to a single crop
without suffering in other matters, adding:
"In any case, owing to our cold, damp climate and capricious weather,
the wheat crop is hazardous, and for the present our annual deficit
of 180,000,000 bushels must be imported. A permanently higher price
for wheat is, I fear, a calamity that ere long must be faced."
I can imagine with what a relish the Royal Commission on the
Depression of Agriculture would have received this prophecy of a
permanently higher price for wheat. Sir William Crookes goes on to
say:
"Wheat is the most sustaining food grain of the great Caucasian race,
which includes the peoples of Europe, United States, British America,
the white inhabitants of South Africa, Australasia, parts of South
America, and the white population of the European colonies."
He then points out how rapidly the consumers of wheat have increased,
yet failing to attribute this increase in part to the rapid reduction
in the cost. He says:
"In 1871 the bread-eaters of the world numbered 371,000,000; in 1881,
416,000,000; in 1891, 472,600,000; and at the present time they
number 516,500,000. The augmentation of the world's bread-eating
population in a geometrical ratio is evidenced by the fact that the
yearly aggregates grow progressively larger.... To supply 516,500,000
bread-eaters, if each bread-eating unit is to have his usual ration,
will require a total of 2,324,000,000 bushels for seed and food.
According to the best authorities, the total supplies from the
1897-'98 harvest are 1,921,000,000."
It will be observed that while the English average consumption is
said to be six bushels, the average employed in this computation is
four and a half bushels per head. He then remarks upon the large
harvests for seven years, saying:
"Bread-eaters have almost eaten up the reserves of wheat, and the
1897 harvest being under average, the conditions become serious....
It is clear we are confronted with a colossal problem that must tax
the wits of the wisest. Up to recent years the growth of wheat has
kept pace with demands. As wheat-eaters increased, the acreage under
wheat expanded. We forget that the wheat-growing area is of strictly
limited extent, and that a few million acres regularly absorbed soon
amount to a formidable number. The present position being so gloomy,
let us consider future prospects."
He then deals successively with the United States, Russia, Canada,
and other countries. In regard to the United States he remarks:
"Practically there remains no uncultivated prairie land in the
United States suitable for wheat-growing. The virgin land has been
rapidly absorbed, until at present there is no land left for wheat
without reducing the area for maize, hay, and other necessary crops.
It is almost certain that within a generation the ever-increasing
population of the United States will consume all the wheat grown
within its borders, and will be driven to import, and, like
ourselves, will scramble for a lion's share of the wheat crop of the
world."
It is difficult for a citizen of the United States who has given any
attention to the potential of our land to conceive of such views
being held by an Englishman of highest scientific intelligence. When
I was in England last summer I had a long interview with the editor
of one of the papers of widest influence in all Great Britain. I then
remarked that there were forces in action in the United States in
three or four different directions which would profoundly change all
the conditions of British industry, and render the English-speaking
people of the United Kingdom and the United States more and more
interdependent. It is seldom that one finds more than an occasional
half a column in any great English paper devoted to the subject of
our economic relations and to the development either of the American
iron industry, of its agriculture, or of the cotton production and
manufacture. Yet, in all these branches of industry, profound changes
of world-wide importance, and yet of greater importance to the
people of Great Britain, are now in progress. I may venture to say
that this address of Sir William Crookes marks even a more profound
ignorance of the forces in action in this country than even I had
ever comprehended. Sir William Crookes next submits the following
computation:
"The rate of consumption for seed and food by the whole world of
bread-eaters was 4.15 bushels per unit per annum for the eight years
ending 1878, and at the present time is 4.5 bushels.... Should all
the wheat-growing countries add to their area to the utmost capacity,
on the most careful calculation the yield would give us only an
addition of some 100,000,000 acres, supplying at the average world
yield of 12.7 bushels to the acre, 1,270,000,000 bushels, just enough
to supply the increase of population among bread-eaters till the year
1931. At the present time there exists a deficit in the wheat area
of thirty-one thousand square miles.... When provision shall have
been made if possible to feed 230,000,000 units likely to be added to
the bread-eating populations by 1931, by the complete occupancy of
the arable areas of the temperate zone now partially occupied, where
can be grown the additional 330,000,000 bushels of wheat required
ten years later by a hungry world? If bread fails--not only us, but
all the bread-eaters of the world--what are we to do? We are born
wheat-eaters. Other races, vastly superior to us in numbers, but
differing widely in material and intellectual progress, are eaters of
Indian corn, rice, millet, and other grains; but none of these grains
have the food value, the concentrated health-sustaining power of
wheat, and it is on this account that the accumulated experience of
civilized mankind has set wheat apart as the fit and proper food for
the development of muscle and brains."
Sir William then proceeds to deal with the salvation by chemistry.
But before taking notes from that part of his address, is it not
singular to remark this tendency of the scientist as well as of the
English farmer to think only in terms of wheat, wholly ignoring other
grains? It may be interesting to point out the exact difference in
the nutrients.
Wheat flour is analyzed in the following statement:
Water 11.6
Protein 11.1
Fats 1.1
Carbohydrates 75.6
Mineral matters 0.6
----
Total nutrients 88.4
Potential energy in one pound 1,660 calories.
Corn or maize meal differs only as follows:
Water 14.5
Protein 9.1
Fats 3.8
Carbohydrates 71.0
Mineral matters 1.6
----
Total nutrients 85.5
Potential energy in one pound 1,650 calories.
Oatmeal:
Water 7.7
Protein 15.1
Fats 7.1
Carbohydrates 68.1
Mineral matters 2.0
----
Total nutrients 92.3
Potential energy in one pound 1,845 calories.
Rye flour:
Water 13.1
Protein 6.7
Fats 0.8
Carbohydrates 78.7
Mineral matters 0.7
----
Total nutrients 86.9
Potential energy in one pound 1,620 calories.
It will be remarked that the difference between maize meal and
wheat flour consists only in a slightly larger proportion of fats
and a slightly less proportion of protein, a matter very easily
balanced by giving consideration to the other kinds of food which
may be used by the bread-eater. Again, it is hardly to be supposed
that the Scotchmen who listened to Sir William Crookes admitted in
their minds that wheat flour possessed any greater potential energy
in the development either of muscle or of mind than the oatmeal to
which they have been habituated for so many generations. I doubt if
any New England Yankee who had been brought up on the diet of corn
(maize) bread and baked beans, the latter supplying the protein
element in abundance, would admit any greater development of the
muscle or brain by exclusive dependence on wheat for the bread of
life. It is not, however, my purpose to deal with the relative food
values of wheat and other grains; it is simply to take up this
extraordinary delusion of Sir William Crookes in respect to the
potential of the wheat-producing area of this country. His theory
is salvation by chemistry, and he rightfully calls attention to the
necessity for obtaining a cheap and abundant supply of nitrogen. All
the other elements for fertilizing the soil are relatively abundant
at low cost, especially in this country. Our enormous supply of the
phosphates of lime and potash gives assurance on this matter, and our
one deficiency, or rather the one element heretofore of high cost,
has been the necessary proportion of nitrogen required to maintain an
even balance in the soil.
I am surprised that Sir William Crookes should attribute so little
importance to the recent discovery of the influence of bacteria,
which living and dying in nodules attached to the stalks of the
leguminous plants dissociate the nitrogen of the atmosphere, where
the supply is unlimited, converting it to the nutrition of the
plant, and thence to the renovation of the soil. Sir William deals
only with the renovating qualities of clover, having apparently no
comprehension of the existence of the cow-pea vine, the soya bean,
the alfalfa, and many other types of legumes by which the partially
exhausted soil, especially of the South, is now being renovated with
great rapidity at a low cost. Sir William's hopes of nitrogen seem
to be based on some method being found to save the sewage of cities,
but mainly on the conversion of the water power of Niagara and other
great falls to the generation of electricity and thence to the
dissociation of the nitrogen of the atmosphere.
The point to which I wish to direct attention and inquiry is this
alleged nearly complete taking up of the land of the United States
capable of producing wheat in paying quantities. The question which
Sir William Crookes puts is this: He says there is a deficit in
the wheat area of thirty-one thousand square miles which must be
converted to wheat-growing in order to keep up with the increasing
demand of the world to prevent wheat starvation in less than one
generation. It will be observed that the present necessities of the
world are computed by Sir William Crookes at 2,324,000,000 bushels,
of which this country will supply 600,000,000 to 700,000,000 bushels
from an area of land devoted to wheat of 71,000 square miles, a
fraction over two per cent of the area of the United States, omitting
Alaska.
The problem may then be stated in these terms: Given a demand of the
wheat-consuming population of the world for this whole supply of
2,324,000,000 bushels, this country could supply it at the present
average per acre by devoting two hundred and fifty thousand square
miles to this crop, or less than ten per cent of the area, omitting
Alaska. We could supply the world's present demand, but of course
such computations are purely speculative.
I venture to say that if a contract could be entered into by the
bread-eaters of the world with the farmers of the United States,
giving them an assurance of a price equal to one dollar a bushel
in London, or a fraction under thirty-three shillings per quarter
of eight bushels of sixty pounds each, which would yield to the
American farmer from sixty to eighty cents per bushel on the farm,
the land now under cultivation in wheat and not required for any
other crop or for pasture would be opened in the United States
which would be devoted to this service year by year as fast as the
consumption called for it. In fact, there are now fully one hundred
thousand square miles of land, 64,000,000 acres, fully suitable to
the production of wheat at fifteen bushels to the acre, practically
unoccupied in any branch of agriculture, which would be devoted
to wheat on an assured price of one dollar a bushel in Mark Lane,
yielding 960,000,000 bushels. Or, to limit the question yet more: Sir
William Crookes states the needs of the people of the United Kingdom
at the present time to be 240,000,000 bushels, increasing at a rate
of less than two per cent per annum, of which twenty-five per cent
is derived from her own soil. If John Bull, in place of building
granaries, could offer thirty-three shillings a quarter, or one
dollar a bushel, in London as a permanent price for the next thirty
years, would not Uncle Sam accept the offer? and if Uncle Sam should
then ask for bids among the States, are there not several single
States or Territories that would take the contract each for itself?
Having put that question, I now propose to submit an inquiry in due
form in order to sustain my own belief that we can supply the whole
present and the increasing demand of Great Britain for the next
thirty years with six bushels of wheat per head at a dollar a bushel
from land situated wholly in the Indian Territory, not yet open to
private entry, but which may soon be open when the Indian titles have
all been purchased. Or, again, I undertake to say that the State of
Texas can meet this whole demand without impairing in the slightest
degree its present products of grain, cotton, wool, and meats, and
without appropriating the use of more than a small fraction of
the area of that single State which has not yet been fenced in or
subjected to the plow to the production of wheat.
Perhaps it would be better to put a more simple proposition in order
to bring out what would be perfectly feasible. Let it be assumed
that the British public should really become so alarmed as to be
willing to put up the granaries which have been suggested for storing
fourteen weeks' consumption, or 64,000,000 bushels. That would
require a very large capital which would yield no income on which
there would be a heavy loss of interest and a considerable risk of
damage to the wheat during the period of storage. In place of this a
feasible plan would be to put up the capital which would be required
for building these granaries, invest it in consols, and pledge it as
collateral security for the fulfillment of a contract running for
thirty years for the annual purchase of 10,000,000 bushels of wheat
per month, or say 128,000,000 bushels a year, or twice the quantity
proposed to be stored.
There are several large dealers in grain and provisions in the United
States who would be ready to take this contract and to put up a
sufficient sum of capital invested in United States bonds to serve as
security for prompt delivery.
An assured supply of 128,000,000 bushels in addition to the ordinary
supply might allay the fear of scarcity and high price of bread.
It may here be observed that the low average crop per acre of the
United States has been due to the inclusion of wheat grown on land
partially exhausted by cropping or not well adapted to this grain.
The all-wheat as well as the all-cotton and all-tobacco methods of
ignorant farming or cropping year after year are now very rapidly
giving place to varied crops coupled with an increase of product
per acre. No agency has been of such service in this matter as the
Agricultural Experiment Stations, now established in almost every
State under the supervision of men of the highest capacity. Under
this system wheat, which requires a few days of machine work in the
spring and autumn, occupying very little time of the farmer himself,
is rapidly becoming the surplus or money crop of farms otherwise
maintained on the alternate products. Under such cultivation an
average crop of twenty bushels to the acre would be assured, in many
sections much more. One hundred and twenty-eight million bushels
at twenty bushels per acre would require 6,400,000 acres, or ten
thousand square miles. As an alternate with other crops in a rotation
of four, this would call for only forty thousand square miles in
varied farming. In order to satisfy the anxieties of Sir William
Crookes lest land should be taken from other necessary work, this
area might be divided among several States and Territories, say five
thousand square miles among eight. Oklahoma (38,719 square miles)
was opened to settlement only seven years since, and has yet a great
deal of unoccupied land. It will this year raise 13,000,000 bushels
of wheat from 850 square miles devoted to the crop. Give Oklahoma
five thousand square miles, the unoccupied Indian Territory (30,272
square miles) would take all the rest as soon as open; but we may
only assign five thousand square miles to that area. Five thousand
more might be assigned to the limestone section of Virginia, in the
valley of the Shenandoah and its tributaries; five thousand each to
Kentucky (40,400 square miles) and Tennessee (42,050 square miles),
while the great wheat-growing States--Kansas (82,080 square miles),
Nebraska (77,510 square miles), Minnesota (83,365 square miles),
and the two Dakotas (148,445 square miles)--would compete for the
contract each to open a little patch of five thousand square miles,
not yet adjacent to railways. We should thus have exhausted the area
called for without regard to the instant competition which would come
from California (158,360 square miles), Oregon (96,030 square miles),
and Washington (69,180 square miles), and probably from Pennsylvania
(45,215 square miles) and other Eastern or Southern States. At a
dollar per bushel in London no difficulty would be found in placing
this contract even without resort to Texas (265,780 square miles),
which could take the whole on but a small portion of its area not yet
under the plow.
The only additional measure which would then be required would be
one which must come in any event--namely, the neutralization of
the ports of export and import of food in the United States and
Great Britain and in such other countries as may choose to join,
together with the neutralization of a ferry or sea way for the
transportation of the food, wherein no hostile shot should be fired
and no seizure of private property permitted on the part of any
nation, the condition of this understanding being that if any other
nation ventured to question or contest this dedication of a neutral
way for the conveyance of food to the purposes of peace, the navies
of Great Britain and of the United States would be united to force
its acceptance, and to sweep from the ocean the fleet of every state
or nation which ventured to contest this measure. That would be a
suitable measure for beginning to make a right use of navies--for
the protection of commerce and for the destruction of every fleet or
vessel which did not accept the principle that private property not
contraband of war should be exempt from seizure upon the high seas,
coupled with a declaration limiting contraband of war so that it may
never be made to include customary articles of commerce, especially
food, not now contraband.
* * * * *
The foregoing text was set in type and one hundred advance proof
sheets were supplied, which have been sent by the writer to the
Secretaries of Agriculture and the chiefs of the Agricultural
Experiment Stations in all the States to which we look for any
considerable product of wheat. The replies are so complete and so
numerous as to make it impossible to incorporate a full digest of the
whole case within the limits of the present article. A supplement
will be prepared for a later number of this journal, in which this
information will be tabulated. For the present purpose I may avail
myself only of a part of the data which have been sent to me.
1. The evidence suffices to prove that there is not a State named
above which could not set apart five thousand square miles for the
cultivation of wheat in a rotation of four without trenching in the
slightest degree upon any other crop. 2. In previous essays, in which
I have dealt with the potential of the agriculture of this country,
I have very guardedly computed but one half our total area of three
million square miles (omitting Alaska) as being arable land, suitable
for the plow. The returns now in my hands would render it suitable to
increase that area to two thirds, or two million square miles subject
to cultivation. 3. The area now under the plow for the production of
our principal crops for the year 1897 is given in the table below. If
miscellaneous crops be added to these principal crops, the cultivated
land of this country does not now exceed, and in fact does not reach,
twenty per cent of the arable land, while from the cultivated portion
a progressive increase in product may be expected under the impetus
of improved methods of farming on lessening areas in each farm.
------------+------------+------+-------------+-------+--------------
| Acreage. |Yield.| Product. |Price. | Value.
------------+------------+------+-------------+-------+--------------
| | Per | Bushels. |Cents. |
| |acre. | | |
Maize | 80,095,051 | 23.8 |1,902,967,933| 26.3 | $501,072,952
Wheat | 39,465,066 | 13.4 | 530,149,168| 80.8 | 428,547,121
Oats | 25,730,375 | 27.2 | 698,767,809| 21.2 | 147,974,719
Barley | 2,719,116 | 24.5 | 66,685,127| 37.7 | 25,142,139
Rye | 1,703,561 | 16.1 | 27,363,324| 44.7 | 12,239,647
Buckwheat | 717,836 | 20.9 | 14,997,451| 42.1 | 6,319,188
|------------+------+-------------+-------+--------------
All grain |150,431,005 | |3,240,930,812| |$1,121,295,766
Hay | 42,426,770 | 1.43 | 60,664,876| 6.62 | 401,390,728
Cotton | 23,273,209 | | 8,532,705| 6.78 | 291,811,564
|------------| | | |--------------
|216,130,984 | | | |$1,814,498,058
------------+------------+------+-------------+-------+--------------
Maize 125,150 square miles;
Wheat 61,660 " "
Oats 40,200 " "
Barley 4,250 " "
Rye 2,660 " "
Buckwheat 1,120 " "
-------
235,040 " "
Hay 66,290 " "
Cotton 36,520 " "
-------
337,850 " "
The area under wheat in 1897 was a fraction under forty million
acres, or a little less than sixty-two thousand square miles. The
high price secured for that crop has led to an increase in land under
wheat in 1898 to a fraction under seventy-one thousand square miles
(nine thousand square miles added), on which the largest crop ever
known has doubtless been raised, variously computed at the present
time from 620,000,000 to 700,000,000 bushels. The area now under
wheat is therefore less than four per cent of our arable land.
In order to develop our potential in wheat it will be best to limit
our present consideration to three States only--namely, Minnesota,
North and South Dakota--from which we derive the greater part of
our spring wheat. The area of these three States is two hundred and
thirty-two thousand square miles, disregarding fractions. The land
which is deemed to be suitable for wheat growing is estimated by the
officials from whom I have derived reports at one hundred and sixty
thousand square miles. The crop of 1898 is computed at 190,000,000
bushels, a quantity sufficient to supply Great Britain with all that
she needs in addition to her domestic production. It has been grown
on an area of less than twenty thousand square miles, or upon one
eighth part of the land of these three States only; the rest of the
wheat land can be as surely and profitably devoted to the production
of wheat as that part already under that crop. The fact may be
recalled that the territory which now constitutes the two States of
North and South Dakota began to be computed separately from other
States only in 1880, when a little under 3,000,000 bushels were
credited to that territory. The minimum product of these two States
this year will be 100,000,000 bushels.
One of the authorities upon whom I rested for absolute information
is Mr. L. G. Powers, chief of the Bureau of Labor of the State of
Minnesota, in whose Annual Report for 1896 is the most exhaustive
study of the grain production of the Mississippi Valley that has ever
been made. I therefore do not hesitate to incorporate in this article
his comments upon the proof sheets sent to him:
"The probable product of wheat in a State like Minnesota, at a
fixed price, such as Mr. Atkinson mentions, can be estimated, even
approximately, only by taking account of a number of such factors as
the present actual and relative profit of the wheat farmer, and the
probable changes that will be made in the next few years in the cost
of cultivating wheat and of transporting it to London. A few of the
leading well-known facts relating to these subjects may with profit
be noted in this connection, and first a few words with reference to
the profits of wheat raising in Minnesota.
"Whatever may be true of wheat raising in Europe, or in the Atlantic
coast States of America, it can be positively asserted that the
average profit of the Minnesota wheat grower has been steadily though
irregularly increasing since the admission of this State to the
Union in 1858. This is evidenced by the relative number and amount
of farm-mortgage foreclosures in the State, as a whole, and in its
several sections at the present time and in the past. Properly to
use those foreclosures as a measure of the increasing prosperity of
the Minnesota wheat farmer, two facts should be kept in mind. In
1880, and prior to that time, the industry of wheat growing was most
fully developed in those counties which now constitute the First
Congressional District. The farmers of those counties at that time
depended for their income largely upon their wheat crops. Later they
have adopted a highly diversified system of agriculture in which
wheat is only an incidental cash crop. The exclusive cultivation
of wheat now finds its seat in the counties composing the Seventh
Congressional District. The lands of this district are situated
about two hundred miles on an average farther from the markets
of Europe than those of the First District. Notwithstanding this
fact and all changes in the selling price of wheat, and all allied
changes affecting the wheat industry of the State, the farm-mortgage
foreclosures in the Seventh District in the five years ending with
December, 1897, were relatively twenty per cent less than they were
in the First District in the five years 1880 to 1884, and were forty
per cent less than in the five years 1869 to 1873. To the extent
represented by these figures has the average cultivation of wheat as
an exclusive crop become more profitable in Minnesota than it was
twenty, thirty, or forty years ago. A much greater increase of farm
prosperity has taken place in those counties which have adopted a
diversified system of agriculture, and made wheat an incidental cash
crop.
"The growing farm prosperity in Minnesota above noted finds its
highest development in the past five years, during which the selling
price of wheat in London has averaged approximately one dollar per
bushel, or the amount called for by the conditions stated by Mr.
Atkinson. This increasing farm prosperity in Minnesota, which lessens
the mortgage foreclosures of the exclusive wheat growers forty per
cent in thirty years, has been the main factor in the settlement of
Minnesota and the two Dakotas. It has caused the wheat grown in the
territory of these three States to increase from 10,000,000 bushels
in 1867 to 190,000,000 bushels in 1898. With no added profit in the
business, the settlement of the vacant lands of these States and
those of Montana and of the British Northwest will move on, and
twenty-five years from now will find in the territory tributary to
Minneapolis and Duluth not less than 400,000,000 bushels of wheat
raised annually. Even then but a fraction of the possible wheat lands
of the great Northwest will be under the plow. If a material increase
should take place in the present average profits of the Northwestern
wheat grower, the imagination of man could hardly picture the
stimulus to wheat culture that would result.
"With a fixed price of one dollar per bushel in London, called for by
Mr. Atkinson's conditions, the American farmers can find increased
profit in two possible sources: decreased cost of transportation
to London, and lessening cost of wheat production in Minnesota. A
detailed analysis of the various charges that constitute the present
cost of transporting wheat from the Red River Valley of Minnesota,
the Dakotas, and of Manitoba to London gives reasonable assurance of
a reduction in the next few years of at least five and possibly seven
cents per bushel in such cost. Here is an almost certain addition,
in the next few years, of from five to seven cents a bushel to the
profit of American-grown wheat, providing only its average selling
price in London remains practically unchanged.
"A careful study of farm methods among Minnesota farmers discloses
this fact: Some wheat growers, with the best farm machinery, and
employing the best methods of agriculture, make a profit in wheat
raising of from ten to fifteen cents a bushel more than do their
less intelligent and less progressive neighbors. Now, the tendency
in the State and throughout the Northwest is to bring, by education
and a general exchange of methods, the poorer farmers up to the
level of the best. This change is rapidly taking place. It will not
require fifteen years to realize its consummation. When the methods
and facilities of the average farmer are brought up to the level of
the best of the present time, this change, with the change above
noted in transportation charges, will add to the average profit of
Minnesota farmers in growing wheat a total of not less than fifteen
and possibly of over twenty cents a bushel. Such a change would
more than double the existing net profit of the wheat grower in
the Northwest. Could it be maintained for a series of years, as is
presupposed under Mr. Atkinson's supposition of London prices, it
would furnish such an incentive to wheat growing in Minnesota and
the surrounding territory as has as yet never been experienced. A
million families of immigrants would pour into the great Northwest
within the next twenty to twenty-five years. They would take up all
the existing vacant lands of Minnesota and the Dakotas. The lands
suitable for irrigation in these States and in Montana would be set
to growing wheat. The wave of humanity anxious to raise wheat for
a dollar a bushel in London would sweep past the boundaries of the
four States mentioned, and carry the cultivation of that cereal all
over Manitoba, Assiniboia, Alberta, and Saskatchewan. In these four
British provinces and in the four American States, dollar wheat in
London would in twenty years open more acres of good land to wheat
than are now subject to the plow within their borders. Even then the
beginning only would have been made to the possibilities of wheat
culture in the British Northwest. Settlements would not have extended
as far north as St. Petersburg in Russia; neither would settlers
have trenched upon the lands with a climate as severe as that of the
Russian metropolis.
"The foregoing is a brief statement of what dollar wheat in London
would do for one section of North America in stimulating wheat
cultivation. If that statement is based upon a true conception, as
the writer believes it is, of the possibilities of the American
Northwest, it demonstrates how impossible it will be to maintain
dollar wheat in London for any great length of time in the future.
It also shows that Mr. Atkinson is wrong in not asserting a sure
continuation of that decline in wheat prices which he so fully
predicted in 1880."
_Cost of Shipping Wheat per Bushel from Moorhead, an Interior Point
in Minnesota, to Liverpool._
-------------------------+---------+---------+-----------+-------------
| On May | On July | On August | On September
|27, 1898.| 9, 1898.| 20, 1898. | 17, 1898.
-------------------------+---------+---------+-----------+-------------
| Cts. | Cts. | Cts. | Cts.
| per bu. | per bu. | per bu. | per bu.
Rate, Moorhead to Duluth | 9.30 | 9.30 | 8.70 | 8.70
Duluth elevator and | | | |
inspection charges | 0.80 | 0.80 | 0.80 | 0.80
Lake freight, Duluth to | | | |
Buffalo | 1.40 | 1.25 | 1.25 | 1.75
Elevator charges and | | | |
commission at Buffalo | 1.00 | 1.00 | 1.00 | 1.00
Canal freight, Buffalo | | | |
to New York | 3.00 | 3.00 | 2.75 | 2.50
Elevator charges, etc., | | | |
in New York | 2.00 | 2.00 | 2.00 | 2.00
Ocean freight, New York | | | |
to Liverpool | 8.00 | 3.50 | 4.50 | 6.00
|---------|---------|-----------|-------------
Totals | 25.50 | 20.85 | 21.00 | 22.75
-------------------------+---------+---------+-----------+-------------
General average, 22.525 cents per bushel.
It will be remarked that Mr. Powers says I am wrong in not asserting
a sure continuation of the decline in the price of wheat which I
predicted in 1880. In setting up one dollar a bushel in London as the
standard of this inquiry, I had no thought that our farmers could be
made happy for the next thirty years by any hope of securing so high
a price. In my predictions in 1880 I said that the time was not then
far off when the farmers of the Mississippi Valley would secure as
large a remuneration from their wheat at thirty-four shillings per
quarter in London as they had been gaining from a previous average
of fifty-two shillings. I might then have fixed the lessened price
at twenty-eight shillings, and at the present time I have a greater
expectation of a reduction in the price of wheat in Mark Lane to less
than twenty-eight shillings a quarter, or eighty-five cents a bushel,
than I had in 1880 that it would so soon reach thirty-four shillings.
I merely adopted a dollar a bushel as an arbitrary standard on which
an abundant supply of bread at low cost would be absolutely assured
to the people of England.
In fact, as I stated before the Royal Commission on Depression of
Agriculture, it is not probable that a reduction in the price of
wheat to forty cents a bushel on Western farms or sixty-five to
seventy cents a bushel in England would stop the growth of this
grain, although it might check an increase. When the price went down
to a very low point on the last excessive crop it is probable that
100,000,000 bushels of wheat were fed to swine and to cattle. It
proved to make better pork and beef than maize or Indian corn, and,
as the price of meat did not decline in anything like the proportion
to the price of wheat, the farmers who thus fed their excess secured
a profit which the sale of the crude grain might not have given.
In this comment Mr. Powers deals with the reduction in the number
of foreclosures in Minnesota. Attention should be called to the
fact that the United States census investigation for which a
million dollars was appropriated, for the purpose of recording
farm mortgages in 1890, disclosed the fact that in the ten great
grain-growing States of the middle West two thirds of the farms were
then free of any mortgage of any kind, and were well stocked; the
incumbrance on the remaining third being less than forty per cent of
the computed value of the mortgaged farms. Since that date several
State investigations have been made, leading to the conclusion
that not exceeding twenty per cent of the farms in these States
are now under any incumbrance of any kind. In the more prosperous
parts of Minnesota and other wheat sections since the substitution
of intelligent and varied agriculture for the single wheat crop,
foreclosures have almost ceased, such as do occur being attributed to
special causes; while such is the abundance of capital accumulated in
this section that the rates of interest on safe investments, which
but a few years since were nearly double those prevailing in the
seaboard commercial cities, are now about even. When certain causes
lately produced a short stringency in the money markets of the East,
remittances were made from these Western cities for investment in
Eastern commercial paper.
In regard to wheat production at a fixed price in London, the
Commissioner of Agriculture and Labor of North Dakota remarks: "Wheat
at one dollar per bushel in London would net the North Dakota farmer
on the average about seventy-five cents per bushel on the railroad
track. At that price as a standard, every farmer in the State would
utilize all the land he has, and buy up more of the land now lying
idle and in the hands of speculators. It would increase immigration
so that nearly all the vacant Government land would be taken up. We
also have over one million acres of school and State land, of which
at least eighty per cent is suitable for raising wheat. Such a price
would give North Dakota a boom that never had its equal."
A few words may be given to the report from Texas. The Secretary of
the Board of Agriculture states that "the area of arable land of
fair quality, including pasture that might be put under the plow in
this State, is two hundred thousand square miles; about one hundred
thousand square miles suitable for wheat and other grains lying north
of parallel 31°; about one hundred thousand square miles lying south
of that line adapted to cotton, sugar, fruits, and vegetables of all
kinds."
An unexpected reply comes from Idaho, as yet insignificant in wheat
production, stating that the potential of that State under the
conditions named might reach 400,000,000 bushels.
Again, from Arkansas, to which State we have looked more for
excellent cotton than for grain, "there are fifteen million acres
of good wheat land; wheat is fast becoming a cash crop, displacing
cotton--the capacity of a considerable part of the land at the
beginning being forty bushels to the acre, which, being much better
than five-cent cotton, is leading the farmers to take advantage of
existing prices."
Time has not sufficed since my questions were sent out for replies to
reach me from Oregon, Washington, and Montana, where the potential in
wheat production is probably equal to that of Minnesota, North and
South Dakota combined.
Sir William Crookes makes reference to the future necessity of
providing fertilizers, a matter to which the closest attention is
now being given by the cultivation of renovating crops. But regard
must be given to the fact that we have the most complete and adequate
supply of phosphate of lime and phosphate of potash in the vast
deposits of bone or mineral phosphates of Tennessee, Kentucky,
and Florida, while again we may look to nitrate of soda as a very
inexpensive source of nitrogen, of which the most adequate supply can
be assured at very low cost. Known methods are also being applied to
saving the enormous waste of nitrogen from our coke ovens and iron
furnaces.
I almost feel it right to apologize to Sir William Crookes for the
presentation of these facts. My function is that of the practical
business man who deals with these economic problems wholly from that
point of view, and not from the high standard of a complete mastery
of the physical sciences.
As I have stated, I happen to have dealt with this question several
times at meetings of the British Association for the Advancement
of Science, and in other ways in Great Britain as well as in this
country. I deem it of the utmost importance at the present time
that the interdependence of the English-speaking people should be
brought into view in the most conspicuous manner. In their relative
production and conditions the United Kingdom of Great Britain and
Ireland and the United States are the complement of each other. Their
mutual relation or interdependence is now being recognized, and it
can not be long before many of the legal obstructions to mutual
service will be removed. The people of this country are now passing
through a stage in their economic education closely corresponding
to that through which Great Britain passed between 1840 and 1856
under the wise leadership of Sir Robert Peel, Richard Cobden, and
William E. Gladstone. We move more quickly, not only in acts but in
ideas, than we did fifty years ago. The revolution of ideas which
has followed the revolution of institutions in the Southern States
has made the people of this country into one homogeneous nation. A
revolution of ideas in regard to the conditions of international
commerce will presently bring the English-speaking people of the
world into one homogeneous body governed by the same common law,
the same common principles of action, and the same policy in the
collection of revenue. When thus united, there can be no competition
in the commerce of the world on the part of the continental states
of Europe under their present burdens--the blood tax of standing
armies and navies and the money tax of debts that can never be paid.
There have been within a few months two witnesses to the growing
influence and power of the English-speaking people when united for
the maintenance of commerce and for the conduct of the works of
peace, order, and industry: one is the warning of the Chancellor
of the Austrian Empire, calling upon the states of middle Europe
to unite their forces in order to remain capable of maintaining
government by privilege and taxation by force of arms; the other, the
recent manifesto of the enlightened ruler of Russia, calling upon the
states of continental Europe to disarm, lest they should hereafter
be incapable of competition with the English-speaking people of the
world when they become bound together by a union of mutual service
and by community of interest which without any formal alliance will
give to them the chief control in rendering service by the exchange
of product for product to all other states and nations, to the mutual
benefit of all who are thus joined in the bonds of peace.
On my visit to Russia last year, to meet the leading economists
and statisticians of Europe, it was stated to me by well-informed
men that a plan had been considered by several continental states
in the event of war to change the present international custom by
making food products contraband of war, the purpose being to cripple
England. To such desperate conditions have some of the European
states been brought under the burden of the policy of blood and
iron. My comment upon this insane proposal was that I hoped it might
become a matter of public discussion, since nothing could so surely
and quickly bring about a commercial union of the English-speaking
people, to the end that, even if no other alliance were made, their
navies might at any moment be combined for the protection of their
commerce, and for the total cessation of any interference by war
vessels or privateers with their traffic.
The prime motive of this article is to remove from the minds of our
English friends many false impressions which I have constantly met in
my intercourse even among men who hold important positions, of which
the address of Sir William Crookes is but an extreme expression, and
to bring into common view a comprehension of the resources of this
country and of the mutual dependence of the United Kingdom and the
United States in the supply and consumption not only of wheat, but of
all the other necessaries of life.
THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE.
A SOCIOLOGICAL STUDY.
(_Lowell Institute Lectures, 1896._)
BY WILLIAM Z. RIPLEY, PH. D.,
ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF SOCIOLOGY, MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF
TECHNOLOGY; LECTURER IN ANTHROPO-GEOGRAPHY AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.
SUPPLEMENT.--THE JEWS.[1]
Social solidarity, the clearest expression of which to-day is
nationality, is the resultant of a multitude of factors. Foremost
among these stand unity of language, a common heritage of tradition
and belief, and the permanent occupation of a definite territory.
The first two are largely psychological in essence. The third, a
material circumstance, is necessary rather to insure the stability of
the others than for its own sake; although, as we know, attachment
to the soil may in itself become a positive factor in patriotism.
Two European peoples alone are there which, although landless,
have succeeded, notwithstanding, in a maintenance of their social
consciousness, almost at the level of nationality. Both Gypsies and
Jews are men without a country. Of these, the latter offer perhaps
the most remarkable example, for the Gypsies have never disbanded
tribally. They still wander about eastern Europe and Asia Minor
in organized bands, after the fashion of the nomad peoples of the
East. The Jews, on the other hand, have maintained their solidarity
in all parts of the earth, even in individual isolation one from
another. They wander not gregariously in tribes, often not even in
families. Their seed is scattered like the plant spores of which
the botanists tell us; which, driven by wind or sea, independently
travel thousands of miles before striking root or becoming fecund.
True, the Jews bunch wherever possible. This is often a necessity
imposed for self-preservation; but in their enforced migrations their
associations must change kaleidoscopically from place to place.
Not all has been said even yet of the unique achievement of this
landless people. That the Jews have preserved their individuality
despite all mutations of environment goes without saying. They have
done more. They have accomplished this without absolute unity of
language. Forced of necessity to adopt the speech of their immediate
neighbors, they have only where congregated in sufficient numbers
been able either to preserve or to evolve a distinctive speech. In
Spain and the Balkan states they make use of Spanish; in Russia and
Poland they speak a corrupt German; and in the interior of Morocco,
Arabic. Nevertheless, despite these discouragements of every kind,
they still constitute a distinctive social unit wherever they chance
to be.
This social individuality of the Jews is of a peculiar sort. Bereft
of linguistic and geographical support, it could not be political.
The nineteenth century, says Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu, is the age of
nationality; meaning obviously territorial nationality, the product
of contiguity, not birth. To this, he says, the Jew is indifferent,
typifying still the Oriental tribal idea. As a result he is out of
harmony with his environment. An element of dislike of a political
nature on the part of the Christian is added to the irreconcilability
of religious belief. It has ever been the Aryan versus the Semite in
religion throughout all history, as Renan has observed; and to-day it
has also become the people _versus_ the nation, as well as the Jew
_versus_ the Christian. Granted that this political dissonance is
largely the fault of the Gentile, its existence must be acknowledged,
nevertheless.
[Illustration: GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION of JEWS.]
How has this remarkable result been achieved? How, bereft of two out
of three of the essentials of nationality, has the Jew been enabled
to perpetuate his social consciousness? Is the superior force of
religion, perhaps abnormally developed, alone able to account for it
all? Is it a case of compensatory development, analogous in the body
to a loss of eyesight remedied through greater delicacy of finger
touch? Or is there some hidden, some unsuspected factor, which has
contributed to this result? We have elsewhere shown that a fourth
element of social solidarity is sometimes, though rarely, found, in a
community of physical descent. That, in other words, to the cementing
bonds of speech, tradition, belief, and contiguity, is added the
element of physical brotherhood--that is to say, of race. Can it be
that herein is a partial explanation of the social individuality of
the Jewish people? It is a question for the scientist alone. Race,
as we constantly maintain, despite the abuses of the word, really
is to be measured only by physical characteristics. The task before
us is to apply the criteria of anthropological science, therefore,
to the problems of Jewish derivation and descent. Only incidentally
and as matters of contributory interest shall we consider the views
of the linguists, the archæologists, and the students of religious
traditions. Our testimony is derived from facts of shape of head,
color of hair and eye, of stature, and the like. These alone are
the data indicative of racial descent. To these the geographer may
add the probabilities derived from present distribution in Europe.
No more do we need to settle the primary racial facts. Further
speculations concerning matters rather than men belong to the
historian and the philologist.
The number and geographical distribution of the chosen people of
Israel is of great significance in its bearing upon the question
of their origin.[2] While, owing to their fluid ubiquitousness, it
is exceedingly difficult to enumerate them exactly, probability
indicates that there are to-day, the world over, between eight and
nine million Jews. Of these, six or seven million are inhabitants of
Europe, the remainder being sparsely scattered over the whole earth,
from one end to the other.
Their distribution in Europe, as our map opposite shows, is
exceedingly uneven. Fully one half of these descendants of Jacob
reside in Russia, there being four or five million Jews in that
country alone. Austria-Hungary stands next in order, with two
million odd souls. After these two there is a wide gap. No other
European country is comparable with them except it be Germany and
Roumania with their six or seven hundred thousand each. The British
Isles contain relatively few, possibly one hundred thousand, these
being principally in London. They are very rare in Scotland and
Ireland--only a thousand or fifteen hundred apiece. Holland contains
also about a hundred thousand, half of them in the celebrated Ghetto
at Amsterdam. Then follow France with eighty thousand more or less,
and Italy with perhaps two thirds as many. From Scandinavia they
have always been rigidly excluded, from Sweden till the beginning
and from Norway until nearly the middle of this century. Spain,
although we hear much of the Spanish Jew, contains practically no
indigenous Israelites. It is estimated that there were once about a
million there settled, but the persecutions of the fifteenth century
drove them forth all over Europe, largely to the Balkan states and
Africa. There are a good many along these Mediterranean shores of
Africa, principally in Morocco and Tripoli. The number decreases
as we approach Egypt and Palestine, the ancient center of Jewish
dispersion. As to America, it is estimated, although we know nothing
certainly, that there are about a half million Jews scattered through
our cities in the United States. New York city, according to the
last census, contained about eighty thousand Poles and Russians,
most of whom, it may be assumed, were Jews. But they have come since
in ever-increasing numbers, with the great exodus from Russia, at
the rate of scores of thousands annually. A recent writer places
their present number in New York city at a quarter of a million. The
British provinces, on the other hand, do not seem to offer great
attractions; as late as 1870, for example, the census in Nova Scotia
could not discover a solitary Jew.
A more suggestive index of the problems of Jewish distribution,
however, is offered in the ratio of the number of Jews to the entire
population. This is directly illustrated by our map. To be sure,
this represents the situation twenty years ago, but no great change
in relativity is to be suspected since that time. Even the wholesale
exodus from Russia of recent years has not yet drawn off any large
proportion of its vast body of population. Inspection of our map
shows that the relative frequency of Jews increases in proportion
to the progressive darkening of the tints. This brings out with
startling clearness the reason for the recent anti-Semitic uprisings
in both Russia, Austria, and the German Empire. A specific "center
of gravity" of the Jewish people, as Leroy-Beaulieu puts it, is at
once indicated in western Russia. The highest proportion, fifteen
per cent, more or less, appears, moreover, to be entirely restricted
to the Polish provinces, with the sole exception of the government
of Grodno. About this core lies a second zone, including the other
west Russian governments, as well as the province of Galicia in the
Austro-Hungarian Empire. Germany, as it appears, is sharply divided
from its eastern neighbors, all along the political frontier. Not
even its former Polish territory, Posen, is to-day relatively thickly
settled with Jews. Hostile legislation it is, beyond a doubt, which
so rigidly holds back the Jew from immigration along this line.
_Anti-Semitismus_ is not, therefore, to-day to any great extent an
uprising against an existing evil; rather does it appear to be a
protest against a future possibility. Germany shudders at the dark
and threatening cloud of population of the most ignorant and wretched
description which overhangs her eastern frontier. Berlin must
not, they say, be allowed to become a new Jerusalem for the horde
of Russian exiles. That also is our American problem. This great
Polish swamp of miserable human beings, terrific in its proportions,
threatens to drain itself off into our country as well, unless we
restrict its ingress. As along the German frontier, so also toward
the east, it is curious to note how rapidly the percentage of Jews
decreases as we pass over into Great Russia. The governments of St.
Petersburg, Novgorod, and Moscow have no greater Jewish contingent
of population than has France or Italy; their Jewish problem is far
less difficult than that of our own country is bound to be in the
future. This clearly defined eastern boundary of _Judenthum_ is also
the product of prohibitive legislation. The Jews are by law confined
within certain provinces. A rigid law of settlement, intended to
circumscribe their area of density closely, yields only to the
persuasion of bribery. Not Russia, then, but southwestern Russia
alone, is deeply concerned over the actual presence of this alien
population. And it is the Jewish element in this small section of
the country which constitutes such an industrial and social menace
to the neighboring empires of Germany and Austria. In the latter
country the Jews seem to be increasing in numbers almost four times
as rapidly as the native population. The more elastic boundaries of
Jewish density on the southeast, on the other hand, are indicative of
the legislative tolerance which the Israelites there enjoy. Wherever
the bars are lowered, there does this migratory human element at once
expand.
The peculiar problems of Jewish distribution are only half realized
until it is understood that, always and everywhere, the Israelites
constitute pre-eminently the town populations.[3] They are not
widely disseminated among the agricultural districts, but congregate
in the commercial centers. It is an unalterable characteristic of
this peculiar people. The Jew betrays an inherent dislike for hard
manual or outdoor labor, as for physical exercise or exertion in
any form. He prefers to live by brain, not brawn. Leroy-Beaulieu
seems to consider this as an acquired characteristic due to mediæval
prohibition of land ownership or to confinement within the Ghetto. To
us it appears to be too constant a trait the world over to justify
such a hypothesis. Fully to appreciate, therefore, what the Jewish
question is in Polish Russia, we must always bear this fact in
mind. The result is that in many parts of Poland the Jews form an
actual majority of the population in the towns. This is the danger
for Germany also. Thus it is Berlin, not Prussia at large, which is
threatened with an overload of Jews from the country on the east.
This aggregation in urban centers becomes the more marked as the
relative frequency for the whole country lessens. Thus in Saxony,
which, being industrial, is not a favorite Jewish center, four
fifths of all the Jewish residents are found in Dresden and Leipsic
alone.[4] This is probably also the reason for the lessened frequency
of Jews all through the Alpine highlands, especially in the Tyrol.
These districts are so essentially agricultural that few footholds
for the Jew are to be found.
A small secondary center of Jewish aggregation appears upon our map
to be manifested about Frankfort. It has a peculiar significance.
The Hebrew settlers in the Rhenish cities date from the third
century at least, having come there over the early trade routes from
the Mediterranean. Germany being divided politically, and Russia
interdicting them from 1110, a specific center was established,
especially in Franconia, Frankfort being the focus of attraction.
Then came the fearful persecutions all over Europe, attendant upon
the religious fervor of the Crusades. The Polish kings, desiring to
encourage the growth of their city populations, offered the rights
of citizenship to all who would come, and an exodus in mass took
place. They seem to have been welcomed, till the proportions of the
movement became so great as to excite alarm. Its results appear
upon our map. Thus we know that many of the Jews of Poland came to
Russia as a troublesome legacy on the division of that kingdom. At
the end of the sixteenth century but three German cities remained
open to them--namely, Frankfort, Worms, and Furth.[5] Yet it was
obviously impossible to uproot them entirely. To their persistence
in this part of Germany is probably due the small secondary center
of Jewish distribution, which we have mentioned, indicated by the
darker tint about Frankfort, and including Alsace-Lorraine. Here is a
relative frequency, not even exceeded by Posen, although we generally
conceive of this former Polish province as especially saturated with
Jews. It is the only vestige remaining to indicate what was at one
time the main focus of Jewish population in Europe. It affords us a
striking example of what legislation may accomplish ethnically, when
supplemented, or rather aggravated, by religious and economic motives.
Does it accord with geographical probability to derive our large dark
area of present Jewish aggregation entirely from the small secondary
one about Frankfort, which, as we have just said, is the relic of a
mediæval center of gravity? The question is a crucial one for the
alleged purity of the Russian Jew; for the longer his migrations over
the face of the map, the greater his chance of ethnic intermixture. A
moot point among Jewish scholars is, as to the extent of this exodus
from Germany into Poland. Bershadski has done much to show its real
proportions in history. Talko-Hryncewicz[6] and Weissenberg,[7]
among anthropologists, seem to be inclined to derive this great body
of Polish Jews from Palestine by way of the Rhone-Rhine-Frankfort
route. They are, no doubt, partially in the right; but the mere
geographer would rather be inclined to side with Jacques.[8]
He doubts whether entirely artificial causes, even mediæval
persecutions, would be quite competent for so large a contract. There
is certainly some truth in Harkavy's theory, so ably championed
by Ikof (1884), that a goodly proportion of these Jews came into
Poland by a direct route from the East. Most Jewish scholars had
placed their first appearance in southern and eastern Russia, coming
around the Black Sea, as early as the eighth century. Ikof, however,
finds them in the Caucasus and Armenia one or two centuries before
Christ. Then he follows them around, reaching Ruthenia in the tenth
and eleventh centuries, arriving in Poland from the twelfth to the
fourteenth. The only difficulty with this theory is, of course, that
it leaves the language of the Polish Jews out of consideration. This
is, in both Poland and Galicia, a corrupted form of German, which in
itself would seem to indicate a western origin. On the other hand,
the probabilities, judging from our graphic representation, would
certainly emphasize the theory of a more general eastern immigration
directly from Palestine north of the Black and Caspian Seas. The
only remaining mode of accounting for the large center of gravity in
Russia is to trace it to widespread conversions, as the historic one
of the Khozars. Whichever one of these theories be correct--and there
is probability of an equal division of truth among them all--enough
has been said to lead us geographically to suspect the alleged purity
of descent of the Ashkenazim Jew. Let us apply the tests of physical
anthropology.
STATURE.--A noted writer, speaking of the sons of Judah, observes:
"It is the Ghetto which has produced the Jew and the Jewish race;
the Jew is a creation of the European middle ages; he is the
artificial product of hostile legislation." This statement is fully
authenticated by a peculiarity of the Israelites which is everywhere
noticeable. The European Jews are all undersized; not only this,
they are more often absolutely stunted. In London they are about
three inches shorter than the average for the city. Whether they
were always so, as in the days when the Book of Numbers (xiii, 33)
described them "as grasshoppers in their own sight," as compared
with the Amorites, sons of Anak, we leave an open question. We
are certain, however, as to the modern Jew. He betrays a marked
constancy in Europe at the bodily height of about five feet four
inches (1.63 metre) for adult men. This, according to the data
afforded by measurements of our recruits during the civil war, is
about the average of American youth between the ages of fifteen and
sixteen, who have still three, almost four, inches more to grow. In
Bosnia, for example, where the natives range at about the American
level--that is to say, among the very tallest in the world (1.72
metre)--the Jews are nearly three inches and a half shorter on the
average.[9] If we turn to northern Italy, where Lombroso has recently
investigated the matter, we apparently find the Jew somewhat better
favored by comparison. He is in Turin less than an inch inferior
to his Italian neighbors. But why? Not because taller than in the
case of Bosnia, for his stature in both places is the same. The
difference decreases, not because the Jew in Piedmont is taller, but
solely because the north Italians are only of moderate height. So
it goes all over Austria and Russia: the diminutiveness is plainly
apparent.[10] There is in all Europe only a single exception to the
rule we have cited. Anutchin finds them in Odessa and Riga slightly
to exceed the Christians. In order to emphasize this point it will
repay us to consider the adopted fatherland of the Jews a bit more in
detail.
[Illustration: STATURE POLAND.]
Our map herewith shows a general average of stature for Poland by
districts. This unhappy country appears to be populated by the
shortest human beings north of the Alps; it is almost the most
stunted in all Europe. The great majority of the districts, as our
map shows, are characterized by a population whose adult men scarcely
average five feet four inches (1.62 metre) in height. This is more
than half a head shorter than the type of the British Isles or
northern Germany. What is the meaning of this? Is it entirely the
fault of the native Poles? We know that the northern Slavs are all
merely mediocre in stature. But this depression is too serious to
be accounted for in this way; and further analysis shows that the
defect is largely due to the presence of the vast horde of Jews,
whose physical peculiarity drags down the average for the entire
population.[11] This has been proved directly. Perhaps the deepest
pit in this great "misery spot," as we have termed such areas of
dwarfed population elsewhere, is in the capital city of Warsaw,
where Elkind found the average stature of two hundred male Jews to
be less than five feet three inches and a half (1.61 metre).[12]
The women were only four feet eleven inches tall on the average.
Compare the little series of maps given on pages 172 and 173 if
further proof of this national peculiarity be needed. Two of these,
it will be observed, give the average height of Jews and Poles
respectively, dividing the city into districts. The social status
of these districts is shown upon our third map. Comparison of these
three brings out a very interesting sociological fact, to which we
have already called attention in our earlier papers.[13] The stature
of men depends in a goodly measure upon their environment. In the
wards of the city where prosperity resides, the material well-being
tends to produce a stature distinctly above that of the slums. In
both cases, Poles and Jews are shortest in the poorer sections of
the city, dark tinted on the maps. The correspondence is not exact,
for the number of observations is relatively small; but it indicates
beyond a doubt a tendency commonly noticeable in great cities. But
to return to our direct comparison of Poles and Jews; the deficiency
of the latter, as a people, is perfectly apparent. The most highly
favored Jewish population socially, in the whole city of Warsaw in
fact, can not produce an average stature equal to that of the very
poorest Poles; and this, too, in the most miserable section of the
capital city of one of the most stunted countries in Europe.
[Illustration: AVERAGE STATURE of POLES, WARSAW.]
[Illustration: AVERAGE STATURE of JEWS, WARSAW.]
We may assume it as proved, therefore, that the Jew is to-day a very
defective type in stature. He seems to be susceptible to favorable
influences, however; for in London, the West End prosperous Jews
almost equal the English in height, while they at the same time
surpass their East End brethren by more than three inches.[14]
In Russia also they become taller as a class wherever the life
conditions become less rigorously oppressive. They are taller in the
fertile Ukraine than in sterile Lithuania; they sometimes boast of
a few relatively tall men.[15] These facts all go to show that the
Jew is short, not by heredity, but by force of circumstances; and
that where he is given an even chance, he speedily recovers a part
at least of the ground lost during many ages of social persecution.
Jacobs mentions an interesting fact in this connection about his
upper-class English Jews. Close analysis of the data seems to show
that, for the present at least, their physical development has been
stretched nearly to the upper limit; for even in individual cases the
West End Jews of London manifest an inability to surpass the height
of five feet nine inches. So many have been blessed by prosperity
that the average has nearly reached that of the English; but it is
a mean stature of which the very tall form no component part. Thus
perhaps does the influence of heredity obstruct the temporary action
of environment.
Whether this short stature of the Jew is a case of an acquired
characteristic which has become hereditary, we are content to leave
an open question. All we can say is, that the modern Semites in
Arabia and Africa are all of goodly size, far above the Jewish
average.[16] This would tend to make us think that the harsh
experiences of the past have subtracted several cubits from the
stature of the people of Israel. In self-defense it must be said that
the Christian is not entirely to blame for the physical disability.
It is largely to be ascribed to the custom of early marriages among
them. This has probably been an efficient cause of their present
degeneracy in Russia, where Tschubinsky describes its alarming
prevalence. Leroy-Beaulieu says that it is not at all uncommon to
find the combined age of husband and wife, or even of father and
mother, to be under thirty years. The Shadchan, or marriage broker,
has undoubtedly been an enemy to the Jewish people within their own
lines. In the United States, where they are, on the other hand,
on the up grade socially, there are indications that this age of
marriage is being postponed, perhaps even unduly.[17]
[Illustration: SOCIAL STATUS WARSAW.]
A second indication in the case of the Jew of uncommonly hard
usage in the past remains to be mentioned. These people are,
anthropologically as well as proverbially, narrow-chested and
deficient in lung capacity. Normally the chest girth of a
well-developed man ought to equal or exceed one half his stature,
yet in the case of the Jews as a class this is almost never the
case. Majer and Kopernicki[18] first established this in the case
of the Galician Jews. Stieda[19] gives additional testimony to the
same effect. Jacobs[20] shows the English Jews distinctly inferior
to Christians in lung capacity, which is generally an indication of
vitality. In Bosnia, Glück[21] again refers to it as characteristic.
Granted, with Weissenberg,[22] that it is an acquired characteristic,
the effect of long-continued subjection to unfavorable sanitary and
social environment, it has none the less become a hereditary trait;
for not even the perhaps relatively recent prosperity of Jacobs's
West End Jews has sufficed to bring them up to the level of their
English brethren in capacity of the lungs.
At this point a surprising fact confronts us. Despite the appearances
of physical degeneracy which we have noted, the Jew betrays an
absolutely unprecedented tenacity of life. It far exceeds, especially
in the United States, that of any other known people.[23] This we
may illustrate by the following example: Suppose two groups of one
hundred infants each, one Jewish, one of average American parentage
(Massachusetts), to be born on the same day. In spite of all the
disparity of social conditions in favor of the latter, the chances,
determined by statistical means, are that one half of the Americans
will die within forty-seven years; while the first half of the Jews
will not succumb to disease or accident before the expiration of
seventy-one years. The death rate is really but little over half that
of the average American population. This holds good in infancy as
in middle age. Lombroso has put it in another way. Of one thousand
Jews born, two hundred and seventeen die before the age of seven
years; while four hundred and fifty-three Christians--more than twice
as many--are likely to die within the same period. This remarkable
tenacity of life is well illustrated by the following table from a
most suggestive article by Hoffmann.[24] We can not forbear from
reproducing it in this place.
_Death Rates per 1,000 Population in the Seventh, Tenth, and
Thirteenth Wards of New York City, 1890, by Place of Birth._
----------------+--------+-------------+--------+--------+-------------
| |United States| | | Russia and
AGES. | Total. | (includes |Ireland.|Germany.| Poland
| | colored). | | |(mostly Jews).
----------------+--------+-------------+--------+--------+-------------
Total | 26.25 | 45.18 | 36.04 | 22.14 | 16.71
Under 15 years | 41.28 | 62.25 | 40.71 | 30.38 | 32.31
15 to 25 years | 7.55 | 9.43 | 15.15 | 7.14 | 2.53
25 to 65 years | 21.64 | 25.92 | 39.51 | 21.20 | 7.99
65 and under | 104.72 | 105.96 | 120.92 | 88.51 | 84.51
----------------+--------+-------------+--------+--------+-------------
From this table it appears, despite the extreme poverty of the
Russian and Polish Jews in the most densely crowded portions of New
York; despite the unsanitary tenements, the overcrowding, the long
hours in sweat shops; that nevertheless, a viability is manifested
which is simply unprecedented. Tailoring is one of the most deadly
occupations known; the Jews of New York are principally engaged in
this employment; and yet they contrive to live nearly twice as long
on the average as their neighbors, even those engaged in the outdoor
occupations.
Is this tenacity of life despite every possible antagonistic
influence, an ethnic trait; or is it a result of peculiar customs and
habits of life? There is much which points to the latter conclusion
as the correct one. For example, analysis of the causes of mortality
shows an abnormally small proportion of deaths from consumption and
pneumonia, the dread diseases which, as we know, are responsible
for the largest proportion of deaths in our American population.
This immunity can best be ascribed to the excellent system of meat
inspection prescribed by the Mosaic laws. It is certainly not a
result of physical development, as we have just seen. Hoffmann cites
authority showing that in London often as much as a third of the
meats offered for sale are rejected as unfit for consumption by Jews.
Is not this a cogent argument in favor of a more rigid enforcement of
our laws providing for the food inspection of the poor?
A second cause conducive to longevity is the sobriety of the Jew, and
his disinclination toward excessive indulgence in alcoholic liquors.
Drunkenness among Jews is very rare. Temperate habits, a frugal
diet, with a very moderate use of spirits, render the proportion
of Bright's disease and affections of the liver comparatively very
small. In the infectious diseases, on the other hand, diphtheria and
the fevers, no such immunity is betrayed. The long-current opinion
that the Jews were immune from cholera and the other pestilences of
the middle ages is not to-day accepted. A third notable reason for
this low death rate is also, as Hoffmann observes, the nature of
the employment customary among Jews, which renders the proportion
of deaths from accidental causes exceedingly small. In conclusion,
it may be said that these people are prone to nervous and mental
disorders; insanity, in fact, is fearfully prevalent among them.
Lombroso asserts it to be four times as frequent among Italian
Jews as among Christians. This may possibly be a result of close
inbreeding in a country like Italy, where the Jewish communities are
small. It does not, however, seem to lead to suicide, for this is
extraordinarily rare among Jews, either from cowardice, as Lombroso
suggests; or more probably for the reason cited by Morselli--namely,
the greater force of religion and other steadying moral factors.
[_To be continued._]
FOOTNOTES:
[1] In the preparation of this article I have to acknowledge the
courtesy of Mr. Joseph Jacobs, of London, whose works in this line
are accepted as an authority. In its illustration I have derived
invaluable assistance from Dr. S. Weissenberg, of Elizabethgrad,
Russia, and Dr. L. Bertholon, of Tunis. Both these gentlemen have
loaned me a large number of original photographs of types from
their respective countries. Dr. Bertholon has also taken several
especially for use in this way. The more general works upon which
we have relied are: R. Andree, Zur Volkskunde der Juden, Bielefeld,
1881; A. Leroy-Beaulieu, Les Juifs et l'antisémitisme, Paris, 3e
éd. 1893; and C. Lombroso, Gli Antisemitismo, Torino, 1894. For all
other authorities to whom reference is made by name and year, consult
our comprehensive Bibliography of the Anthropology and Ethnology
of Europe, in a forthcoming Special Bulletin of the Boston Public
Library. In its index under "Jews" and "Semites" will be found an
exhaustive list of authorities given chronologically.
[2] Andree, 1881, pp. 194 _et seq._, with tables appended; Jacobs,
1886 a, p. 24; and quite recently A. Leroy-Beaulieu, 1893, chapter
i, are best on this. Tschubinsky, 1877, gives much detail at first
hand on western Russia. In the Seventeenth Annual Report of the
Anglo-Jewish Association, London, 1888, is a convenient census,
together with a map of distribution for Europe. On America, no
official data of any kind exist. The censuses have never attempted an
enumeration of the Jews. Schimmer's results from the census of 1880
in Austria-Hungary are given in Statistische Monatsschrift, vii, p.
489 _et seq._
[3] This is clearly shown by Schimmer in Statistische Monatsschrift,
vii, pp. 489 _et seq._
[4] See also map in Kettler, 1880.
[5] J. C. Majer (1862) ascribes the shortness of stature in Furth to
this Jewish influence.
[6] 1892.
[7] 1895, p. 577.
[8] 1891.
[9] Glück, 1896; and Weisbach, 1877 and 1895 a.
[10] Majer and Kopernicki, 1877, p. 36, for Ruthenia; Stieda, 1883,
p. 70; Anutchin, 1889, p. 114, etc.
[11] Zakrezewski, 1891, p. 38. In the October Monthly our stature map
of all Russia brings out the contrast very strongly.
[12] Centralblatt für Anthropologie, iii, p. 66. Uke, cited by
Andree, 1881, p. 32, agrees.
[13] Popular Science Monthly, vol. li, p. 20 _et seq._ (May, 1897),
and vol. lii, p. 602 (March, 1898).
[14] Jacobs, 1889, p. 81.
[15] Talko-Hryncewicz, 1892, pp. 7 and 58.
[16] Collignon, 1887 a, pp. 211 and 326; and Bertholon, 1892, p. 41.
[17] Jacobs, 1891, p. 50, shows it to be less common in other parts
of Europe. In the United States, Dr. Billings finds the marriage rate
to be only 7.4 per 1,000--about one third that of the Northeastern
States.
[18] 1877, p. 59.
[19] 1883, p. 71.
[20] 1889, p. 84.
[21] 1896, p. 591.
[22] 1895, p. 374.
[23] On Jewish demography, consult the special appendix in Lombroso,
1874; Andree, 1881, p. 70; Jacobs, 1891, p. 49. Dr. Billings, in
Eleventh United States Census, 1890, Bulletin No. 19, gives data for
our country. On pathology, see Buschan, 1895.
[24] The Jew as a Life Risk. The Spectator (an actuarial journal)
1895, pp. 222-224, and 233, 234. Lagneau, 1861, p. 411, speaks of a
viability in Algeria even lower than that of the natives.
THE PLAYGROUNDS OF RURAL AND SUBURBAN SCHOOLS.
BY ISABELLA G. OAKLEY.
While the officers and friends of education in large cities are
exerting themselves to provide open-air playgrounds for the schools,
the villages and smaller towns all over the East are reversing the
case. Except in the small district schools, the children's playground
has almost ceased to exist.
This is an evil which has crept in with the tendency to centralize
the schools. When in any place the schools begin to overflow, a
movement to put up a larger building takes place, accompanied by an
effort to create a high-school department; not so much the need of
the community as the ambitious dream of some principal who would be
superintendent, or some sort of central sun to a group of satellites.
This dream is too easily realized, because it flatters the people.
Then there rises a preposterous structure of stone and brick; a house
of many gables, out of keeping with everything, either public or
private, in the place; a temple of vanity. Now is rung the knell of
the school playground, for the new "high school," although it will
house all the children from five to fifteen, must needs be surrounded
by a fine lawn, studded with shrubbery, and threaded by bluestone
roads. The janitor has to employ an assistant to keep the grounds
in order. A shut-in, penitentiarylike place has been evolved by the
architect and school committee, gratifying to their pride and a
deep wrong to the children. There are many wrongs about it; the one
insisted upon here is the abolishing of the recess, that time-honored
joy of the American schoolboy and schoolgirl.
The cheerful sounds of play no more re-echo; the little ones march in
"lock step" from the doors to the very curb of this immaculate ornate
inclosure. If, on this beautiful lawn, any impulsive youngster is
caught running, or performing an instinctive hopscotch or leapfrog,
he is sure to be seen by a watching and powerful janitor and
reported. Leapfrog and profanity, in the true Draconian spirit, are
alike visited with the extreme penalty of a visit to the principal's
office. However, in default of a playground, the new schoolhouse
provides a gymnasium for physical culture. I speak now of a
particular school, the pride of a simple village, and a type of many.
This gymnasium is a costly room filled with elaborate apparatus,
most of which is suited only to the high-school pupils, and never
touched by the majority, who leave school at twelve or thirteen;
their physical exercises have been chiefly provided for by a box of
dumb-bells and wands. In many schools the "gymnasium" is a cavernous
and ugly basement, a place full of shadows cast by the gloomy arches
on which the building rests, with walls of brick and floors of
asphalt. Little troops of silent, pale children arrive and depart
all day for their _physical culture_, a dreary repetition of silent
dumb-bell exercises. There is no speech nor language among them, no
sound is heard but the jingle of the piano and the sharp tones of
the monitor's counting. I have never heard the children count aloud
or accompany the calisthenics by singing except in a private school.
What an alternative for a free recess! No penitentiary drill could
be more perfunctory, spiritless, dead. It must be said of the public
schools that the thing they most seem to dread is the sound of a
child's voice. The rude, untrained intonations, the slovenly speech,
the slouching attitude remain rude, slovenly, and slouching, for all
the school attempts to do for their improvement is infinitely little.
Even the blessed relief of shaking the arm and hand to attract the
teacher's attention has been reduced in some schools to lifting two
fingers.
The pupils generally hate their calisthenics, or, in the new phrase,
physical culture exercises. And they would hate just as sincerely
regulated games superintended by some impossible master of sports.
What they want is spontaneity in play. Public money is wasted in
providing these abhorrent alternatives. Poor little Carthusians as
young as six and seven years are kept in their rooms, and principally
in their seats, above two hours at each session, and often after
that to atone for some delinquency, most likely for speaking. In
many schools they do not leave the room for any kind of exercise. If
they were capable of demanding their rights they would call for both
the abolition of the school lawn and calisthenic basement, and the
restoration of their playground and recess.
From the cruelty of this repression nature finds a little way out;
the children require of the neighbors what they have been deprived
of by the school committee. All around the precincts of the temple
of learning the trodden borders of the sidewalk, churned to mire in
winter and trampled to rock in summer, speak of the victory of the
boys. There are towns, perhaps, where they all go straight home, but
in our town, they gather four times a day in knots of twenties and
fifties for some kind of fun. The patient neighbors go on removing
coats and dinner pails from the pickets, clearing away papers and
missiles from their inclosures, yet I discover that even they would
vote to keep the school lawn; it improves the town. Very true. But
ingenuity could well contrive some way of uniting the playground
and the school park. Spaces of grass to rest the eye and decorate
the square could be interspersed with inclosures of asphalt,
furnished with a few parallel bars and swings, without sacrifice
of appearances. Often the school property is so large that it could
include half a dozen such special playgrounds. We have but to begin
it to find some feasible plan.
If the palatial school and its park is reaction against the "ragged
beggar" of Whittier's lovely poem, sunning in the midst of the
blackberry vines of Hardscrabble Hill, it is a reaction that has gone
too far to suit a generation which loves to read Hosea Bigelow:
"So the old school'us is a place I choose
Afore all others, ef I want to muse;
I set down where I used to set, an' git
My boyhood back, an' better things with it--
Faith, Hope, an' sunthin', ef it isn't Cherrity,
It's want o' guile, an' thet's ez gret a rarity."
If it may be replied, that is not the generation for whom
schoolhouses are now built, it is one which may interpret the wants
of its children by just such recollections.
Another evil has grown out of the centralization of the schools.
The smaller schoolhouses formerly stood within convenient reach,
and by abandoning them we have forced many little children to walk
farther than they are able to walk. In the absence of street cars and
sidewalks this becomes a great hardship in extreme weather. In one
village in New York, out of an enrollment of fourteen hundred, there
was one month last year an average attendance of four hundred. The
new school building, which had cost seventy-five thousand dollars,
was more than two miles from some part of the district, and there
were no sidewalks; neither were there paved streets or street lamps.
In such circumstances a number of children are unable to get home
to the noon meal, usually dinner, and most important. Where do they
eat their luncheon? In their seats, watched by teachers, who are
compelled unwillingly to take turns at this duty, and who have also
to eat a cold, unpalatable lunch in bad air for a week at a time.
After lunch there is an hour to be disposed of by the children, but
there is no place to play in except the basement or the streets
of the neighborhood. The teachers frequently read them a story,
that they may stretch their minds a little if not their bodies.
It is a painful sight--few more painful to me--to see a crowd of
young children having their recreation in one of these basements.
Running and loud talking are forbidden; a police of teachers armed
with symbols of authority and punishment keep the restless little
prisoners within bounds.
Another objection to the central school is the rainy-day
half-session. Though the daily instruction may be managed so that the
pupils do not miss anything, it is still a fact that the majority of
parents expect the school to take charge of their children, and are
often much dissatisfied to have them thrown back upon their own hands
on rainy days.
How has it come about that the playground and school recess
have been so generally given up? Is it altogether on account of
appearances? Teachers plead that the children ought to be preserved
from association with objectionable playmates. This may do for the
touch-me-not, only child, but in American society it is never a
strong plea. That small fraction which seeks to educate its children
as a class can do so in a few schools limited to church, plutocracy,
Quakerism, or some such narrow basis. But the schools of a free
State are, above everything, founded on the essential equality of
individuals in the State, and the possibility of every one to rise to
a successful and honorable manhood. If there is one conviction above
another strengthened by experience, it is that, in their choice of
companions and susceptibility to influence, children are governed by
their innate qualities, and these qualities are fixed by heredity and
home influences long before the school age. In so large a community
as a public school there is companionship for all, for it certainly
represents the town itself. Let no one be afraid of the democratic
instincts of childhood.
I believe the playground is abolished because it interferes with
that deadly order and craze for supervision which is sought for as
the prime condition both inside and outside the schools. Order of
a wholesome sort is not inconsistent with the free recess of a big
school. I watched in Los Angeles a great school as it was marshaled
out to play and back again at the sound of a drum. After a quarter
of an hour of unrestrained sport, several hundreds were gathered in
lines at the tap of the drum, facing the cheerful schoolhouse in the
mild bright sun, their faces radiating contentment and good will
while they straightened up at the mere hint of the teachers on duty.
In San Francisco I once found a certain primary school keeping doll's
day, when every girl brought her doll to school and exhibited her at
recess. The school yard was a barren inclosure within a high board
fence, but a joyful place to that young company. To what purpose are
teachers urged to study psychology? The children in their seats are
emptied of everything that pertains to their souls. Not to study,
because the teacher will explain everything, and to behave just well
enough to get safe out of school, is the simple code which covers the
conduct of average children. To extend this code to ideas of social
duty--the highest--is not possible while they do not form a society.
Cultivation of friendship is just as much out of the case; awakening
of ideals, an impossibility. But thrown together half an hour or
more each day, the dead machinery that pulls the bells and adds the
marks within the school walls gives way to life; and here a man who
sympathizes with childhood has all the opportunity he needs, and
probably much more than he can use, in providing for that life where
a code of reciprocity and honor must be established. It is not as the
magistrate he will successfully rule, but as the sympathetic general
in the field, whose very name is a talisman and an inspiration to
every man. In the school yard, the bully, who comes to the front in
about every tenth child, needs to be repressed; the foul mouth must
be cleansed; against these prevailing evils the playground has a
protection the street can not possess. The boy's world is a peculiar
world, certainly, making laws for itself as rigorous and about as
barbarous as those of a gang of pirates; but it is through his
_esprit du corps_ he can be uplifted and educated; the individual may
be a selfish animal; as one of a body he is capable of heroism and
devotion to a noble idea. He can be a friend; the playground is the
field for the natural growth of friendships, and youth the generous
time of their birth.
I recall another scene in a schoolroom in a Western city long ago.
A gentle girl, magnetic, deep-hearted, large-eyed, sat after school
at her table in tears. On a seat in front of her platform were piles
of slates which she had been correcting, for she instructed all day
a succession of arithmetic classes coming to her from the different
grades. At the same time she was in charge, for all particular
purposes of their order and conduct, of about forty boys in their
early teens. Her tears were in consequence of a quarrel at recess
between two of her boys. They had settled their quarrel by a fight;
not unlikely it was a wholesome fight, for they were not boys of
the mean sort, and were friends. It is an affair of long ago, but
of a time when, in a large city, a teacher shed her influence upon
the school playground, and took account of its moral standards, its
friendships and breaches of friendship.
* * * * *
Although white men, if they take due precautions, may live and
do certain kinds of work in tropical Africa, it will never be
possible, Mr. J. Scott Keltie concludes from the results of past
experience and study, to colonize that part of the world with
people from the temperate zone. Even in such favorable situations
as Blantyre, a lofty region south of Lake Nyassa, children can not
be reared beyond a certain age, but must be sent home to England;
otherwise they will degenerate physically and morally. A plan has
been proposed of bringing Europeans down into the tropical regions
by degrees, and acclimatizing them by successive generations to
more and more torrid conditions till they are finally settled in
the heart of the continent. But the experiment would be a very
long one, if tried; and the ultimate result would probably be a
race deprived of all those characteristics which have made Europe
what it is.
UP THE SKEENA RIVER TO THE HOME OF THE TSIMSHIANS.[25]
BY GEORGE A. DORSEY, PH. D.,
FIELD COLUMBIAN MUSEUM, CHICAGO, ILL.
In a recent number of the Monthly I described some of the incidents
of a visit to the Haida and Tlingit villages about Dixon's Entrance;
now I am to speak of the Tsimshian villages on the Skeena River.
The Tsimshian Indians are one of the five great stocks which make
up the aboriginal population of the coast of British Columbia and
southern Alaska. They are shut in by the Tlingits on the north and
by the Kwakiutls on the south, while on the head waters of the Nass
and Skeena Rivers they come in contact with the great Tinneh or
Athabascan stock. The Tsimshians are probably the most progressive of
all the coast Indians, and are one of a few stocks on the American
continent which are holding their own in point of numbers.
Desiring to visit those villages which are least contaminated by
modern influence, we ascended the Skeena River to the village of
Kitanmaksh or Hazelton. The Skeena is the historic river of British
Columbia; its name signifies the "Water of Terrors." Nearly every
rock, every bend, every cañon is the scene of some mythical tale.
The scene of the birth of the Tsimshian nation lies in its valley;
the rock is still revered upon which rested the Tsimshian ark
after the flood, and the "Dum-lak-an," "the new home and place of
dispersal," is still a Mecca to which pilgrimages are made. In the
modern development of the Omenica and Cariboo gold fields the Skeena
has been the highway to the sea. For hundreds of years canoes have
been paddled up and down its waters; it has been the highway for
intertribal trade from time immemorial, and when the Hudson Bay
Company's post was established at Hazelton, and merchandise began
to pour into the upper country in a steady stream, the Tsimshians
with their canoes enjoyed for a long time a monopoly of the carrying
trade. Gradually, as they learned the ways and methods of the white
man, the price per ton of freight from the coast to Hazelton began
steadily to rise, until in 1891 the tariff of sixty dollars a ton was
declared ruinous by the company, and they decided to build their own
steamer with which to carry their freight up the river.
Port Essington is the chief port of the mouth of the Skeena, and in
Essington we found ourselves on the twenty-third day of July. The
Caledonia was up the river on her third trip, but was expected back
any hour, but so delightfully uncertain is the river voyage that, as
we were informed, "there was no telling when she would be down--in
fact, she might be caught above the cañon and wouldn't be down for
weeks."
[Illustration: VIEW ON THE UPPER SKEENA RIVER; PEAK OF THE "FIVE
VIRGINS" MOUNTAIN.]
The town of Essington dates back to 1835, when the Hudson Bay Company
established a post there. Its only rival for preeminence on the
coast is Port Simpson. The town in summer is completely given over
to fishing, the salmon cannery of Cunningham & Son being one of
the largest on the coast, and the river for twenty miles is dotted
with canneries. In one day, while we were in Essington, the catch
of salmon on the river was ninety-two thousand fish. In addition to
the cannery the town boasts of a good hotel and a Salvation Army. An
Indian Salvation Army is worth going miles to see, for the Indian is
a natural-born salvationist; the army permits him to make all the
noise he chooses, sing as loudly as he pleases, and, best of all, he
is entitled to make a speech every time it comes his turn.
In the afternoon, about four o'clock, on the day after our arrival,
a long, shrill blast of the whistle aroused the entire town, for
the Caledonia was in sight. Down we went to the wharf, and the
entire town followed. What a motley crowd you will find on one of
these British Columbia wharves! What coloring, what a Babel of
tongues--Tlingits from Alaska, Haidas from the Queen Charlotte
Islands, Tsimshians from the Skeena, Kwakiutls from Vancouver,
Chinamen, Japanese, Greeks, Scandinavians, Englishmen, and Yankees;
men, women, children, dogs, and from two to six woolly bear cubs. The
Caledonia is the exclusive property of the Hudson Bay Company; she
is not a common carrier, and does not encourage either passengers
or freight, as the tariff rates prove. There is a feverish haste
and hustle about the movements of the steamer which are fairly
contagious. She makes her first trip early in the spring, as soon
as the ice has left the rivers, on the Stickene; then it is a wild,
eager ambition of the company to have her make four trips up the
Skeena before the river closes up in the fall.
We had as passengers two prospectors from Spokane, a mining expert
from Victoria, a native evangelist from Essington, and about fifty
Indians, mostly women and children, each one with a varied assortment
of boxes, bales, bundles, and dogs; the crew numbered twenty, and we
had about one hundred tons of freight on board.
From Essington to Hazelton is one hundred and fifty-two miles, a
panorama of unending and unbroken beauty; never monotonous, always
interesting, it presents a river voyage which is probably not
equaled, certainly not excelled, by any other river voyage of the
same length on the American continent or in the world. We began
the voyage on Sunday morning, we tied up in front of Hazelton on
Saturday night. To recount in detail the haps and mishaps of each
day's progress would take more time than I can command. In one day
we made forty-eight miles, on another day we made one hundred yards,
on another day we didn't make a foot. With plenty of water under her
keel the Caledonia could run twenty miles an hour; she could cut her
way through a sand bar at the rate of a yard or so an hour; and at
either rate of progress she burned each hour from one and a half to
two cords of wood.
For the first ten miles the scenery does not differ materially from
that which we are accustomed to in the inland sea from Victoria
to Alaska. Then we enter fresh water and for the next forty miles
steam through one long mountain gorge, for here the river has cut
completely through the Cascade Range. The mountains begin at the
water's edge and rise almost perpendicularly to heights of from three
to four thousand feet. Their lower limits are covered with dense
green forests, which seem to grow out of the solid rock. The summits
are smooth and glistening, and often covered with snow and ice. Here
and there we can trace some tiny rivulet issuing from an ice bed high
up among the clouds, and every portion of its course can be traced
down the steep mountain wall until it gives one final and headlong
plunge into the river. At times these streams, taking their rise in
some extensive glacier, are of considerable magnitude, and fairly
roar as they leap and hurl themselves downward from their dizzy
height. And here we learned a curious fact about the river: in summer
it falls when it rains, and rises when the sun shines, so rapidly
do the pent-up snows of winter disappear and rush down the mountain
sides under the heat of the spring sun.
Until noon of the second day we had been making good time, but now
the fun began, for we had left deep water and had arrived at the
first flight of the eight-hundred-foot stairway which the Caledonia
had to climb ere Hazelton could be reached. The river had been
gradually widening as one island after another had been passed, until
now it was nearly half a mile wide and flowed through four channels.
The captain attempted one channel, but we couldn't gain an inch,
and in drifting back again down the rapids the current carried the
boat against the rocks and, with a crash and a lurch, but minus some
woodwork, she was in the stream again. Then two other channels were
tried, but without avail, although the wheel was throwing water and
gravel over the pilot house. The fourth channel was next tried, but
the current was too strong. Then we "lined her out," and this novel
method of getting a huge steamboat up a stream soon became only too
commonplace. The method of procedure is this: The boat is forced
against a sand bar and allowed to rest while men go forward in a
skiff with a long four-inch cable, which is made fast to a tree on
the bank or to a "dead man," a long spar buried deep in the earth
of a sand bar and heaped over with bowlders. When all is ready, the
boat is attached to the capstan and the wheel begins to revolve. It
is tedious work and often provoking, as when the cable parts, or the
"dead man" gives up his hold, and the whole work must be done over
again. The boat quivers from stem to stern, and the wheel, with all
possible steam on, is simply one revolving ball of water. We fairly
hold our breath as we listen to the dull vibration of the boat, the
rumbling of the capstan, and the grating sound of the keel of the
steamer as she is being dragged through the rapids over the bar;
but above all can be heard the voice of Captain Bonser as he shouts
to his Indian pilot, "Go 'head capstan," "Stop steamboat," "Stop
capstan," "Go 'head steamboat," "Go 'head capstan!" In four hours we
have made about fifty yards, but we are in open water again and the
boat settles down to its regular chug, chug, chug.
Eighty miles from Essington the Skeena in its flight to the sea
makes its first plunge into the Cascade Mountains, and its entrance
is indescribably grand. No pen or brush can do justice to the
beauties of the Kitselas Cañon. At its mouth we are in a broad, deep
basin, as if the river had felt depressed as it passed through the
quarter-mile narrow gorge and had here spread itself out to breathe
and rest before it started anew its downward journey to the sea. It
was late in the afternoon, and the western sun threw long shadows
of the lofty sky-crowned perpendicular walls of the left-hand side
of the cañon over against the rocky islets and ragged, rock-bound
eastern shore. Once we have entered, there is no faltering; "lining
it out" is impossible here, and on and on the boat labors and climbs,
twisting and turning through the narrow, tortuous channel. A quick
eye and a steady nerve must command the wheel now, for a turn too
much or too little would be fatal. One instinctively feels that the
"Water of Terrors" is the proper name for this river, and with that
feeling comes the other--that it was never intended for navigation.
[Illustration: A SKEENA RIVER SALMON CANNERY.]
After four days' grinding over sand bars and pounding against rocks
we tie up for repairs. One of the boilers had sprung a leak which
could be neglected no longer. The delay of thirty-six hours was not
without compensation, for the country about was open, and proved a
relief after the long ride through the high-walled river from the sea
to the cañon. The banks were low or moderately high and of gravel
or sand bluffs, and we could look off over a landscape broken here
and there by solitary peaks or clustered mountains, their summits
always covered with ice and snow. To the far east were the pure white
peaks of the Five Virgins, their summits glistening under the bright
sun. Even the character of the vegetation had changed, and the dense
forests of somber firs, spruces, and cedars of the lower river had
given way to great cottonwoods and underbrush of hazel and alder.
In the afternoon we climbed a bluff near the river, from which
we could look off over a country that was wild and extremely
picturesque. To one side of us could be seen a great mountain, its
summit covered by a mighty glacier whose blue-white ice gleamed and
glistened in the sun. And there was no mistaking the power of the sun
that day; its warm rays being especially welcome after some weeks of
the cold, depressing gloom and fog of the coast.
We were now really in the country of the Tsimshians, and every few
hours we drew up in front of some quiet, peaceful village, its
almost deserted cottages guarded by the totem poles of former days.
In succession we pass Meamskinesht, Kitwangah, and Kitzegukla, with
now and then a small salmon-fishing station. The villages proved
disappointing both in their smallness and modernness, and none of
them seemed worthy of any extended visit. From time to time we passed
great black patches in the forest, the result of extensive fires,
sure signs that the rainy coast was far away.
On Friday night we tied up to the bank within five miles of our
destination, but we had yet to pass Macintosh's Bar. That was
accomplished on the following day, after eleven hours' hard work, and
by five o'clock we had reached "The Forks," or the junction of the
Skeena and Bulkley Rivers. Our course was to the left, up the Skeena
for half a mile, and in a few moments more we tied up in front of the
stockaded post of the Hudson Bay Company; we had reached Hazelton.
The region about us was "Dum-lak-an," "what will be a good place,"
the home of the Tsimshians.
Before 1870 the town was farther down the river, on the flat at the
junction of the Bulkley and Skeena Rivers. It has had additions to
its population from Kis-pi-yeoux, and from villages down the river.
There are also to be numbered among the inhabitants the Indian agent,
Mr. Loring, the Hudson Bay representative, Mr. Sargent, and his
assistants, and Mr. Fields, the missionary. The Indian population
numbers about two hundred and seventy-five. The town occupies a low,
uneven plain, which, beginning at the water's edge, extends back for
a quarter of a mile, where it is hemmed in by a high bluff on the
face of the second river terrace. There are but few of the old houses
left and still fewer totem poles, and they are without particular
interest. Most prominent in the village is the warlike stockade of
the company's post, with its two bastions at opposite corners, and
the blockhouse in the center of the inclosure, but now hidden by the
store which stands in front of it. The stockade was put up in 1891,
when an Indian uprising was feared throughout the length of the river.
Wherever you find a trading post and a missionary you can not hope
to find people who retain much of their native life or who are of
great value to anthropology. But still Hazelton was sufficiently
primitive to be of interest in many respects. In matters of dress
the Indians are almost on a footing with the whites, but they still
make a curious garment for winter's use which is worn by nearly all
of the interior tribes. This is a blanket made out of long, narrow
strips of rabbit hide, and is warm, heavy, and extremely durable. We
were fortunate enough to find a woman who was engaged in making one
of these curious garments on a most rude and primitive loom. Other
garments are still occasionally made of Indian hemp, which grows wild
and in abundance. This is beaten and pounded and then spun into fine
thread, and woven into the desired form.
[Illustration: TSIMSHIAN SHAMAN'S CEREMONIAL BOW AND ARROW.]
In former days the Indians used large quantities of the wool of
the mountain sheep in making the beautiful _chilcat_ blankets that
formed an important part of the chief's costume, but now the Indians
buy most of their wool. Its chief uses are for sashes and belts,
which are still worn and made after the fashion of former days. Of
other garments of daily use, except moccasins, there is nothing
remaining. There are a few remnants of ceremonial costumes still in
existence, and by a bit of good fortune we were enabled to secure
the complete paraphernalia of a shaman, or Indian doctor, who had
only recently renounced his native practices and joined Mr. Fields's
band of Christians. In the outfit thus acquired were rattles, charms,
blankets, masks, and headdresses of various kinds. From another
individual we secured the complete costume of a member of the
fraternity, or secret society, of Dog Eaters. The Tsimshians have
four such societies, and the Dog Eaters stand third in rank, being
surpassed only by the Man Eaters or Cannibal Society. The chief
object of this outfit, apart from the white and red cedar bark rings,
was a long club, one side of which was ornamented by a fringe of red
cedar tassels. Of interest also was the curious cap made of plaited
bands of red cedar bark, and so ornamented as to represent the head
of the owl. Another object secured from a shaman was a peculiar bow
and arrow. These were purely ceremonials, and were only used in the
dances of the secret societies. By an ingenious device the point
of the arrow could be opened out, and in this position represented
the open jaws of a serpent. On the bow were two fins, that could be
lowered or raised at will by means of cords, which represented the
fin-back whale. The bow itself is of light soft wood, and is bent by
means of a string passing around the operator's body, the two ends of
the bow being fastened to the body of the bow by leather hinges.
In all the ceremonies, both religious and civil, an important part
of the costume is the mask. These are generally of wood, and portray
all manner of real and fanciful personages. Some of them are wonders
of ingenuity, being so constructed that the eyes, mouth, and often
the ears can be moved at the will of the wearer. Some of them are
even double, and so arranged that by drawing open the outer mask, an
inner one of an entirely different character can be revealed. One of
the rarest masks which was ever brought out of the Tsimshian country
is one in the possession of the museum, which was acquired some time
ago. It is of bone and finely carved, while the teeth and tusks are
those of animals.
Hazelton is of much interest to the observer of the human
countenance, for, while the residents of the town are Tsimshians,
there is a village near by on the Bulkley River, the people of which
belong to the great Tinneh or Athabascan stock, which extends from
the Arctic Circle on the north to the Territories of Arizona and
New Mexico on the south, where it is represented by the Apaches. In
some respects the differences between the Tsimshians and Tinnehs,
or Howgelgaits, as this branch is called, are quite marked, and
these differences stand out in greater relief because more or less
of the population of Howgelgait spend a part of their time in
Hazelton, and so one sees representatives of the two stocks in close
contact. The Tsimshians, like the Haidas, are great canoe people,
and are rather short-legged, with great development of the chest
and shoulders. Like the Haidas, also, they have strong, long arms,
which bespeak familiarity with the paddle. The Howgelgaits, on the
other hand, are a pure mountaineer people, and are tall, robust, and
finely proportioned. Their hair is black, coarse, and abundant. The
eyebrows are thick and remarkably wide at the outer side. This same
peculiarity may be observed in the masks of this tribe. The beard is
sparse, but it must be remembered that the hair is generally pulled
out as it appears, particularly on the cheeks, while the mustache and
the chin tuft are allowed to grow. Among the Tsimshians the face is
wide and the cheek bones are prominent. The nose is narrow, with a
depressed root. Neither the Tsimshians nor Tinneh practice artificial
deformation of the head. With the Tinneh, or more exactly the
Howgelgaits, the forehead is broad and less receding than is usual
with the American aborigines. The face is full and broad and the
cheek bones prominent, but the nose, unlike that of the Tsimshians,
is well formed and generally aquiline, although occasionally it is
thick and flattish. Their lips are also thick and the chin is more
prominent than is usual among the Tsimshians. The eyes are large and
of a deep black color; the jaws are generally very heavy and massive.
Of traces of the ancient prevalent fashion in deformity we saw very
little. One old woman still retained the labret, but it was only
a shadow of the former labrets in size. Although the long, finely
polished bone ornament which the men formerly wore in a hole through
the septum of the nose has entirely disappeared, we saw a few old
men in whom the pierced septum was still plainly visible. With the
Howgelgaits it was formerly the custom to load down the ears with
highly polished bits of abalone shells, which were suspended by means
of brass rings inserted into holes one above the other on the outer
margin of the ear, extending from the lobe around the entire helix.
[Illustration: A STREET IN THE TSIMSHIAN CEMETERY AT HAZELTON, B. C.]
Hazelton's "City of the Dead" stands on a high bluff overlooking the
town and valley, and commands a view off over the broken forest-clad
country which is as beautiful as well could be. A trail winds along
the face of the bluff until the crest of the plateau is reached,
where it divides into a right and left path leading through the
main street of the silent city. The sight is strangely odd and
picturesque. Over each grave has been erected a neat little frame
house, often of considerable dimensions. All are painted with bright
colors, and the effect is decidedly "mixed." In one of the houses,
which was substantially built and neatly carpeted, I saw through a
glass window two chairs, a washstand with full assortment of toilet
articles, and an umbrella, while at the rear of the house stood a
table on which was spread a neat cloth, and on the table was a lamp.
On the floor was a new pair of shoes. Over the table hung a large
crayon portrait of the departed occupant of the grave beneath.
In another house I saw chests of clothing, and suspended from a cord
were garments of various kinds, including a complete costume of the
fraternity of the Dog Eaters. These five-feet-deep graves covered by
little houses are not the usual manner of burial with the Tsimshians,
for until within a very few years the dead were cremated Even to-day
in the neighboring village of Kispiyeoux the dead are buried in
shallow graves just in front of the house.
Of the many charming spots about Hazelton which are well worthy of a
visit, we had time for only one--a horseback ride to the Howgelgait
Cañon. The ride was most enjoyable in every respect. The road leads
from the town up over the plateau through the burying ground, and
then on through a partly cleared forest of cottonwoods and maples.
Then we plunge into a two-mile-long lane, the trail scarcely wide
enough to admit of the passing of a horse, through a dense grove of
hazel bushes, laden to their tips with unripe nuts still protected
by their green fuzzy envelopes; and now we knew whence came the name
"Hazelton." Suddenly the grove terminates, and after dismounting and
walking forward a few steps we came to the face of the cañon. What
a sight! On the opposite cliff, but on a higher level, stands the
old deserted village of Howgelgait, with its great empty houses and
skeleton totem poles. At our feet, down a sheer precipice almost a
thousand feet below, the Bulkley River, set on edge, rushes and roars
and foams through the rocky gorge to join the Skeena a mile away.
Just by the mouth of the cañon, at the edge of the great whirlpool,
and on a gravelly beach, stands the present town of Howgelgait.
Hearing shouts, we looked closer, and far down we saw men moving
about, their forms dwarfed to almost spiderlike dimensions. They were
building a swinging bridge over the river, and the timbers already in
place looked like the meshes of a spider's web.
Looking up the cañon, we could see from the opposite wall near the
water's edge, and far below us, a rude scaffolding suspended by bark
ropes over the river, and from this Indians were lowering their
nets and drawing up salmon. One man after another would leave for
his home, his back bending under the weight of many fish, his place
to be taken by another, who begins casting his nets. And so these
rude scaffoldings here and all along the rivers are occupied by busy
fishermen throughout the summer, for salmon is chief of the winter's
food supply of these people. In one house we saw over a thousand
salmon hung up to dry for use during the winter months.
We left the cañon for the ride back to Hazelton with keen regret, for
no more fascinating spot did we find on our entire journey than right
here. On the way we encountered a woman of the Carrier tribe of the
Tinnehs from Frazer's Lake, who was returning from Hazelton laden
with provisions and cheap calicoes.
We had scarcely entered Hazelton when the tinkling of the bell of the
"lead horse" announced the arrival of the pack train. Second only in
importance to the arrival of the Caledonia to the people of Hazelton
is the arrival of the pack train, for it brings the news of the far
interior. But of much greater importance and value is the cargo of
furs which are brought out on every trip in exchange for supplies
which are taken in. On that day there were fifty-seven mules, each
laden with two bales of furs weighing two hundred and fifty pounds,
and including beaver, mink, otter, sable, and bear, all destined for
the Hudson Bay Company's house in London, there to be auctioned off
in lots to the highest bidder, and then to be distributed to all
parts of the civilized world.
[Illustration: HAGIVILGAIT CAÑON, WITH INDIAN FISH WEIRS AT BOTTOM.]
Within less than an hour's time the precious furs were aboard, and we
bade farewell to Hazelton. The Caledonia drops back, is slowly turned
around by the current, and with its steady chug, chug, we began our
journey down the river, the power of the boat aided by the swiftly
flowing water carrying us along at a rapid rate. If the slow, labored
up journey was a revelation with its worries and anxieties, what can
be said of the down journey with its kaleidoscopic panorama of sand
bars, Indian villages, far-away snowy mountains, dense forests of
mighty cottonwoods, lofty heights which tower above us clad to their
very summits with eternal green, mountain streams, and innumerable
waterfalls and cascades! And what shall one say of that memorable
ride through the cañon, the wheel reversed and throwing water over
the pilot house, the boat rocking and swaying to and fro! Before we
were fairly aware of the fact we were out into that great, deep,
silent basin again and off on the home stretch. Apart from taking on
wood and stopping at one or two Indian villages, a delay of a few
hours was made to permit some mining engineers to examine a mine.
They had just come up from the coast and brought with them news of
the gold excitement in the Yukon Valley, and now for the first time
we heard that magic word "Klondike," which was soon to "electrify
the world and put the gold fields of California, South Africa, and
Australia to shame."
At nine o'clock we were in Essington once more. "Klondike, Klondike!"
on every side. The whole country seemed to have gone daft. One
steamer after another went racing by the mouth of the Skeena on the
way to Dyea and the Skagway Trail. But our fortunes lay in the other
direction, and that night we were aboard the Islander, bound for
Victoria and the south.
FOOTNOTE:
[25] From a lecture delivered at the Field Columbian Museum, November
13, 1897.
LIGHT AND VEGETATION.
BY D. T. MACDOUGAL, PH. D.,
PROFESSOR IN CHARGE OF PLANT PHYSIOLOGY, UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA.
Light is the most important of all the external agencies which
influence the vegetal organism, and the sun's rays have been the most
potent force in shaping the development of existent plant forms.
The sunbeam stands in a manifold relation to the plant. First and
foremost, light is the universal source of energy, by the aid of
which the chlorophyll apparatus in green leaves builds up complex
food substances from simple compounds obtained from the soil and air,
a process necessary for the nutrition of the entire living world.
Some obscure organisms, such as the "nitrosomonas," soil bacteria,
are able to accomplish the construction of complex substances, by
means of energy derived from other chemical compounds, which were,
however, formed originally by green plants. These food-building
processes are designated as photosynthesis, chemosynthesis,
electrosynthesis, thermosynthesis, etc., according to the source of
energy used.
By photosynthesis, carbon dioxide from the air and water from the
cell are combined in the green cells of leaves, forming sugar and
possibly other substances. During this process an amount of oxygen
approximately equal to that of the carbon dioxide taken up is
exhaled. It will be of interest to note the relation of the living
world to the atmosphere. Eight hundred to nine hundred grammes of
carbon dioxide are produced in the respiration of a single person
for a day, and the entire product of the human race for this period
is twelve hundred million kilogrammes. In addition, large quantities
of the gas result from the combustion of the four hundred and sixty
millions of kilogrammes of coal and wood burned yearly. The lower
animals, fungi, and green plants themselves contribute an amount
which must bring the total to twice the immense sum named above.
The atmosphere contains three or four hundredths of one per cent of
carbon dioxide, or an amount of about two to three thousand billions
of kilogrammes. No especial variation in this proportion has been
detected since observations upon this point were first made. The
fact that no increase takes place is partly due to the absorption
of the gas by plants, and its replacement by oxygen, and also to
certain geological processes in constant operation. Absorption
takes place at the rate of about two and a half grammes for every
square metre of leaf surface per hour, or about twenty-five to
thirty grammes daily, since the process goes on only in daylight.
It is to be seen that a single human being exhales as much carbon
dioxide as may be removed from the air by thirty or forty square
metres of leaf surface. According to Ebermayer, a hectare (2.47
acres) of forest would use eleven thousand kilogrammes of carbon
dioxide yearly, and the amount used by plants is generally much in
excess of that furnished by the activity of the inhabitants of any
given area. Plants thrive and show increasing vigor as the amount of
carbon dioxide in the air rises until two hundred times the present
proportion is reached. An increase of the gas in the atmosphere would
therefore be partly corrected by the absorption and by the stronger
vegetation induced. Nothing short of a comprehensive cataclysm could
work such disturbance to the composition of the air as to endanger
the well-being of the animal inhabitants of the earth.
The activity of a square metre of leaf surface results in the
formation of one and a half to two grammes of solid substance
per hour in sunlight. A vigorous sunflower with one hundred and
forty-five leaves constructed thirty-six grammes of solid matter in
a day, and a squash with one hundred and sixteen leaves one hundred
and sixteen grammes in the same length of time. The amounts formed by
such trees as the beech, maple, oak, poplar, elm, and horse-chestnut,
with leaf surfaces aggregating three hundred to one thousand square
metres, must be correspondingly large.
A comparison of plants grown in strong sunlight, diffuse light,
and darkness will reveal many differences in stature and internal
structure. These differences are for the most part due to the
_formative_ and _tonic_ effect of light. Otherwise expressed,
the influence of variations of light upon plants causes adaptive
reactions, and disturbances of the nutritive processes and growth.
In consequence of these facts the reaction of any given organ to
changes in the intensity of the illumination will depend upon its
specific functions and relation to the remainder of the organism.
The stems formed by seedlings and awakening underground organs are
usually surrounded by plants or other objects which cut off more or
less sunlight. The developing shoot can not spread its leaves to the
light advantageously until it has outstripped or grown beyond the
objects intervening between it and the light. This necessity is one
of the most important conditions in the struggle for existence. To
meet it, a very great majority of seed-forming plants have acquired
the power of accelerated elongation of the stems when deprived of
their normal amount of light.
Very striking examples of this reaction are offered by the awakening
corms of the Jack-in-the-pulpit (_Arisæma triphyllum_). The corms
usually lie at a distance of five or six centimetres below the
surface of the soil, and when the growth of the large bud begins
in the spring the heavy sheathing scales elongate and pierce the
soil, opening when the surface is reached at the distance of a few
centimetres. If the corm should have been buried deeper in the
substratum by floods or drifts of leaves, the growth of the bud
scales will continue until the light is reached, though it may be a
distance of twenty centimetres. Such growth may be seen if the corms
are grown in a deep layer of sphagnum moss, or in a dark room.
After the stems emerge from the "drawn" buds they show a similar
attenuation, attaining a length of twice the normal. The excessive
elongation of stems is accompanied by variations in the structure and
contents of the tissues. The cells are generally longer, while the
walls are thinner. In consequence, organs grown in darkness are very
weak and easily bent or broken. Growth in darkness is attended by the
non-formation of chlorophyll. This is replaced by etiolin, giving the
plant a pale, waxy, yellow appearance.
The adaptive elongation is not shown by all species, however. It
has been found that stems of beet, hop, dioscorea, and a few others
show no adaptations to diminished light. The adaptive modification
of stems elongating in darkness is developed from the retarding
influence exercised by light upon growth. Thus it is a well-known
fact that the action of certain portions of the sun's rays actually
impedes or checks the increase in volume known as growth, though it
does not influence actual division of the cells to any great extent.
When this retarding action is eliminated excessive elongation ensues.
The behavior of leaves in illuminations below the normal depends upon
the relation of these organs to the storage structures of the plant
as well as upon other factors, and many types are dependent upon
their own activity for plastic material necessary for growth.
It is to be said in general that leaves of dicotyledonous plants are
incapable of full development in darkness, though to this rule there
are many exceptions. Thus the leaves of the beet develop normally, or
nearly so, in darkness.
On the other hand, leaves of monocotyledonous plants attain normal
size in darkness, especially those with straight or curved parallel
venation. Some, as the iris, swamp marigold, and onion, attain a
greater length in darkness than in light. Here, as in stems, cell
division is not modified, but the growth of the individual cell is
increased.
The growth of leaves in darkness may be easily observed if the
underground perennial stems of common mandrake are placed in a dark
chamber before the growth of the leaf buds has begun. The leaves
are peltate, and in the bud are folded about the end of the petiole
after the manner of an umbrella. Usually this umbrella expands as
soon as it has pushed upward and become free from the soil, attaining
a diameter of twenty-five to forty centimetres when outspread. In
darkness, however, it refuses to unfold, the laminæ are pale yellow
and retain the crumpled form of the bud, and as the petiole shows
an exaggerated elongation the organ takes on the appearance of a
very small parasol on a very long handle. The imperfect development
of leaves and the rapid decay of aërial organs deprived of sunlight
leads to the conclusion that the action of light is necessary to the
health and normal activity of these organs, and the light therefore
exercises a _tonic_ influence upon vegetation.
Many species of plants are so plastic and capable of such ready
response to variations in external conditions that they undergo
distinct morphological changes in response to variations in the
intensity of the light. The common potato is an example of this
fact. The edible tubers are simply thickened stems, and the plant
has the habit of storing starch in any stems not acted upon by
the light. The branches arising from the base of the main stem
are generally underneath the surface of the soil, and afford the
proper conditions for tuber formation. Sugar is constructed in the
leaves, carried down the length of the stem, and deposited in the
underground branches as starch. Space is made for the accumulating
store by the multiplication of the thin-walled cells of the pith. If
any of the upper branches should become shaded, they become at once
the focus of converging streams of sugar, and similar enlargement
ensues, resulting in the formation of tubers. Such structures are
occasionally observed in plants grown thickly together.
Vöchting, by a number of most ingenious experiments, has succeeded in
producing tubers on any branch of a potato plant by simply inclosing
the branch in a small dark chamber. As the result of one experiment
the entire main stem springing from a sprouting tuber was converted
into a new tuber nearly as large as the first. The entire plant at
the close of the experiment had the form of a dumb-bell, with the old
tuber as one ball and the new tuber as the other.
The same writer has described important results obtained from a study
of the action of light upon the stems of cactus, consisting of a
number of flattened internodes. When the growing tips of such plants
were allowed to develop in a dark chamber the new internodes grown
were cylindrical in form. Such behavior suggests that these plants
were originally furnished with cylindrical stems and foliar leaves.
The leaves at some time in the history of the plant were found
unsuitable, and gradually atrophied, while the stems were flattened
and extended to take up their functions.
Some very striking adaptations of form of organs to the intensity
of the light have been analyzed by Goebel. The common harebell
(_Campanula rotundifolia_) has an upright stem twenty to sixty
centimetres in height. The upper part of the stem bears sessile
lanceolate leaves, decreasing in size from the base to the summit.
The first leaves formed by the stem on its emergence from the soil
are entirely different in construction, showing a heart-shaped lamina
with a distinct petiole. These leaves are formed at the actual
surface of the soil, are generally more or less shaded or covered by
fallen leaves, and in fact are not known or seen by many collectors
or observers of the plant. Goebel found that similar leaves might be
formed on any part of the plant if it were shaded from the full glare
of the sun's rays. The cordate leaves at the base of the stem were
always produced, however, no matter to what intensity of illumination
that part of the plant was subjected. It is therefore safe to
conclude that the cordate leaves are inherited forms, and that the
lanceolate organs are adaptations to light which may be shown by any
individual of the species.
In general it is to be said that the leaves of sun-loving species
have a thick epidermis, entirely free from chlorophyll, with stomata
on the lower side only, a firm consistence due to the formation of
woody tissues, and are often provided with a coating of hairs. The
leaves of shade-loving plants, on the other hand, have a thin-walled
epidermis often containing chlorophyll, stomata on both sides, and
are not so plentifully provided with hairs as those in exposed
situations.
The variations in external form described above are due to the
intensity of the illumination. At the same time the structure and
arrangement of the cells depend on the direction from which the
light rays come. Thus, an organ receiving light from one side only
will exhibit a structure different from an organ of the same kind
receiving direct rays from two or more sides. Light, then, is a
cause of dorsiventrality--that is, of the fact that the upper and
lower sides of organs are not alike in structure. The leaf affords a
splendid example of dorsiventrality as a result of the exposure of
one side only to direct light. The upper side of a horizontal leaf,
such as the oak, beech, or maple, contains one or two layers of
cylindrical cells with their long axes perpendicular to the surface.
In vertical leaves, such as the iris, these _palisade_ cells, as
they are termed, are not so well defined, and in all leaves grown in
darkness this tissue is very much reduced. If a young leaf not yet
unfolded from the bud is fastened in such a position that the under
side is uppermost, palisade cells will be formed on the side exposed
to the direct rays of the sun.
The influence of light upon the sporophylls, or reproductive organs
of the seed-forming plants, is quite as well defined as upon the
vegetative organs.
In general it is to be said that stamens and pistils may reach
functional maturity in darkness or diffuse light, and if pollination
is provided for, seed and fruit formation may ensue.
The diminution of light has the effect of transforming inflorescences
into leafy shoots in some instances, however. The more common
reaction consists of alterations in the size, form, and color
of the perianth, and greater changes are induced in the petals
than in the sepals. The corolla shows greater decrease in size in
_Melandryum_ and _Silene_, in diffuse light, though the relative
form is maintained. The writer has obtained most striking results
from growing flowers of _Salvia_ (sage) in a dark chamber, inclosing
the inflorescence only. In the normal flower the irregular scarlet
corolla attains three times the length of the calyx, and two stamens
extrude from under the upper lip. When grown in darkness, the corolla
with the adherent stamens measure about three millimetres in length,
or one twelfth the normal, and are scarcely more than half the size
of the calyx, which is but two thirds the size of similar organs
grown in the light. The color is entirely lacking from the corolla,
and is found only along the veins of the calyx.
In other instances in which the corolla is composed of separate
members, an unequal reaction is exhibited. The corolla of nasturtium
(_Tropæolum majus_) consists of five approximately equal petals.
Flowers of this species grown in darkness show one of nearly normal
stature, two of reduced size, while the remaining two take the form
of club-shaped bracts.
The diminished size of the perianth of cleistogamous flowers of such
types as the violet is due directly to the action of diminished light
upon the hidden or inclosed flower.
The influence of light upon the structure, reproductive processes,
and distribution of the lower forms brings about the most widely
divergent reactions, which can not be described here.
The distribution and color of marine algæ depend upon the depth of
the water and the consequent intensity of the light. This gives
rise to distinct zones of aquatic vegetation. Thus in one series of
surveys the _littoral_ zone, the beach area covered at high water
and exposed at low water, was found to furnish proper conditions
for green, brown, and red algæ. The _sublittoral_ zone, extending
to a depth of forty metres, is furnished with red algæ, increasing
in number with the depth, and the brown algæ disappear; while
the _elittoral_ zone, from forty to one hundred and ten metres,
is inhabited by red algæ alone. The number of species of vegetal
organisms below this depth is extremely small. An alga (_Halosphæria
viridis_) has been brought up from depths of one thousand to two
thousand metres.
A very great number of bacteria are unfavorably affected by light,
and find proper conditions at some depth in the soil or water. It
is on account of this fact that the water of frozen streams becomes
more thickly inhabited by certain organisms than in the summer
time, and exposure to sunlight is adopted as a hygienic measure in
freeing clothing and household effects from infection. Bacteria occur
abundantly in sea water at depths of two hundred to four hundred
metres, and quite a number of species are to be found at eight
hundred to eleven hundred metres.
The distribution of fungi follows the general habit of bacteria in
that they thrive best in darkness.
It is to be noticed in this connection that light is also a
determining factor in the distribution of the higher land plants.
Thus the amount of light received in polar latitudes is quite
insufficient for the needs of many species, entirely irrespective of
temperature.
The retarding influence of light upon growth is even more marked in
the lower forms than in the higher. Such action is the result of
the disintegrating effect of the blue-violet rays upon ferments and
nitrogenous plastic substances.
The greater massiveness of the bodies of the higher plants enables
them to carry on the chemical activities in which these substances
are concerned in the interior, where the intense rays may not
penetrate. The attenuated and undifferentiated fungi must seek the
shade, to escape the dangers of strong light, against which they have
no shield.
The reproductive processes are particularly sensitive to
illumination. The formation of zoöspores by green felt (_Vaucheria_)
may occur only in darkness, at night, or in diffuse light, and these
examples might be multiplied indefinitely. Many features of the
germination of spores and the growth of _protonemæ_ or _prothallia_
among the mosses, liverworts, and ferns are determined by light.
Perhaps the most striking reactions of plants to light are to be seen
in locomotor and orientation movements.
Locomotor movements are chiefly confined to lower forms, and are most
noticeable in the "swarm spores," or zoöspores of the algæ, though
exhibited by spermatozoöids as well. Zoöspores may be seen collected
against the side of the vessel receiving direct sunlight, while the
opposite side of the vessel will be free from them. The chlorophyll
bodies of green cells arrange themselves similarly. The latter bodies
may move away from the exposed side of the cell if the light exceeds
a certain intensity.
The typical plant may not move its body toward or away from the
source of light, but it may secure the same end by dispositions of
its surfaces to vary the angle at which the rays are received. This
form of irritability is one of the most highly developed properties
of the plant. Wiesner has found that a seedling of the vetch is
sensitive to an amount of light represented by one ten-millionth of
a unit represented by a Roscoe-Bunsen flame. The "sensitiveness"
to light may take one of three forms: The organ may place its axis
parallel and pointing toward the source of the rays, as in stems,
when it is said to be _proheliotropic_; the axis of the organ may
assume a position perpendicular to the rays, which is designated as
_diaheliotropism_; or it may place its axis parallel to the rays and
pointing away from the light, when it is said to be _apheliotropic_.
Upright stems are proheliotropic, horizontal leaves and creeping
stems are diaheliotropic, and roots and such stems as those of ivy
are apheliotropic.
Sunlight varies from zero to the full blaze of the noonday sun,
and assumes its greatest intensity in the equatorial regions. The
intensity in latitudes 40° to 45° north would be represented by
1.5 units, and at the equator by 1.6 units. Near the equator the
intensity is so great that an ordinary leaf may not receive the full
force of the noonday sun without damage. The injury would not result
from the luminous rays, but from the temperatures, 40° to 50° C.,
arising from the conversion of light into heat. As an adaptation to
this condition nearly all leaves have either a pendent or a vertical
position, or the power of assuming this position by motor or
impassive wilting movements.
Among the plants of the temperate zone the so-called compass plants
are examples of similar adaptations. The compass plants include,
among others, the wild lettuce (_Lactuca scariola_) and rosin weed
(_Silphium laciniatum_). These plants place the leaves in a vertical
position with the tips pointing north and south in such manner that
the direct rays of the morning and evening sun only may strike the
surfaces at right angles, while the edges are presented to the
fierce rays at noonday. That this arrangement is an adaptation
against the intense light is evident when it is seen that specimens
growing in shaded locations or in diffuse light place the leaves in
the typical horizontal position. To meet the functional conditions,
both sides of the compass leaves are almost equally provided with
palisade cells for food formation and stomata for transpiration.
The estimation of the light striking a compass leaf shows that it
receives approximately the same amount of light as a horizontal leaf
during the course of a day, but the two maxima of intensity, morning
and evening, are much below that of the noon of horizontal leaves.
The influence of light upon plants may be briefly summed as follows:
Light is necessary for the formation of food substances by green
plants, and it is an important factor in distribution in land and
marine forms.
Growth and reproduction are generally retarded by the action of the
blue-violet rays.
Light is fatal to certain bacteria and other low forms of vegetable
life.
Many plants have the power of accelerated growth of stems in
diminished light as an adaptation for lifting the leaves above
"shading" objects.
The growth of many leaves and of the perianth of flowers is hindered
in diminished light.
The outward form of many organs, particularly leaves, is dependent
upon the intensity of the light received.
The internal structure of bilateral or dorsiventral organs is largely
determined by the direction of the rays.
Plants have the power of movement to adjust their surfaces to a
proper angle with impinging light rays, as a protective adaptation.
* * * * *
Matches which do not contain any phosphorus and which take fire by
friction on any surface--a match that has been long sought--have
been prepared by Mr. S. A. Rosenthal and Dr. S. J. von Kornocki.
It is represented that they can be manufactured as cheaply as
ordinary matches.
THE STONE AGE IN EGYPT.
BY J. DE MORGAN.
The investigation of the origin of man in Egypt is a very complex
problem, belonging as much to geology as to archæology. The earliest
evidences we have of human industry, in fact, go back to so remote
a period that they should be regarded rather as fossils than as
archæological documents. They are very coarsely worked flints, which
are found near the surface of the ground among the pebbles of the
Quaternary or Pleistocene epoch, and similar to those which occur
abundantly in Europe, America, and Asia; but the study and collection
of them have been pursued with less method than in those countries.
The more recent monuments, so much more conspicuous and more easily
accessible, have attracted most attention, while these have been left
in the background.
No region in the world presents a clearer and more distinct
individual character than Egypt. Each village is a special world,
each valley a universe that has developed its own life; and man has
felt the special local impressions; and even in modern times, while
all the Egyptian villages present a similar aspect, and although the
fellah appears to be the same sort of a man everywhere, each locality
has its special individual characteristics. One who knows how to
observe men and things critically will find considerable differences.
These dissimilarities are as old as Egypt itself. They have always
existed, and are as much more intense as the communications between
district and district were formerly more difficult. They are due to
physical conditions special to each village, to the prevailing winds,
the form and character of the mountains, the extent of cultivable
lands, and the supply of water. A study of the detail of the country
is a very important preliminary to the examination of Egyptian
history. Every village and every nome had formerly its special
divinity and its particular usages. Are we sure that the gods and
customs were not imposed by local conditions? At Ombos two hostile
gods were adored in the same temple. May we not see in this fact a
recollection of the hostility which has always prevailed between the
inhabitants of the two banks of the river, and still continues?
Previous, however, to investigating these details which have been
so influential on Egyptian civilization, we ought to dispel the
darkness which hides from us the earliest traces of man in the valley
of the Nile, and examine how man lived in his beginning, to study
the geology of the country and its condition when it issued from the
seas. As one of the results of this study we find that palæolithic
man, known to us only through the rough-cut flints we find in the
alluvions, made his first appearance. After this period of excavation
came that of filling up with silt, which still continues. New
evidences of man appear in his burial places and the ruins of his
villages, the kitchen middens which he has left in his habitations
of unburned brick and in his camps. This time he is more civilized;
he chips his flints with a skill that is not surpassed in European
neolithic implements; he makes vessels of stone and clay, covers them
with rude paintings, sculptures animal forms of schist, and wears
necklaces of the shells and the stones of the country. Then comes a
foreign people to take possession of Egypt, bringing knowledge of
metals, writing, hieroglyphics, painting, sculpture, new industries
and arts that have nothing in common with the arts of the people it
has overcome. The ancient Pharaonic empire begins, or perhaps the
reign of the divine dynasties. The men with stone implements are
the aborigines; the others are the conquering civilized Egyptians.
Nothing can be more interesting than a comparison of the arts of
the aborigines and those of the Egyptians of the earlier dynasties.
Nearly all their characteristics are different, and it is impossible
to regard them as of common origin. Yet some of the native forms
persisted till the last days of the empire of the Pharaohs. These
aborigines belonged to a race that is now extinct, they having been
absorbed into the mass of the Egyptians and Nubians among whom they
lived, and from this mixture the fellah of ancient times is derived.
The origin of the conquering race--of the Egyptians as we know
them--has not been precisely determined. The weight of evidence, so
far as it has been obtained, and the balance of opinion, are in favor
of an Asiatic origin and of primary relationship with the Shemites of
Chaldea.
In Egypt more than in any other country it is necessary to proceed
with the most scrupulous circumspection in the examination of remote
antiquities. The relics of thousands of years of human life have been
piled one upon another and often intermixed. The questions they raise
can not be answered in the cabinet or by the study of texts; but
the inquiry must be prosecuted on the ground, by comparison of the
deposits where they are found and in the deposits from which they are
recovered.
From my first arrival in Egypt, in 1892, my attention has been
greatly occupied with the question of the origin of the relics of the
stone age that have been found from time to time in that country. I
have gathered up the scattered documents, explored a large number of
sites, and have bought such flint implements as I have found on sale.
I have gradually been led to believe that while some of these cut
stones may possibly belong to the historical epoch, we shall have
to attribute a much more remote antiquity to the most of them, and
that evidences of a neolithic age in the valley of the Nile are more
abundant than has generally been supposed.
In many minds the historical antiquity of Egypt, the almost fabulous
ages to which its civilization ascends, seem to challenge the
history of other countries, and the land of the Pharaohs, rejecting
all chronological comparison, to have appeared in the midst of the
world as a single example of a land which savage life had never
trodden. Yet what are the centuries since Menes ruled over the
reclaimed valleys, the few thousand years of which we can calculate
the duration, by the side of the incalculable lapse of time since
man, struggling with the glaciers and the prehistoric beasts,
began his conquest of the earth? The antiquity of Egypt, the eight
thousand years (if it be as many) since the first Pharaoh, are only
as an atom in the presence of these ages. We can assert some vague
knowledge of these pre-Pharaonic inhabitants, for two hatchets of
the Chellean pattern were found some time ago in the desert, one
at Esnet, the other near the pyramids of Gizeh; and we can now
affirm in the most positive manner that Quaternary man lived in the
country which is now Egypt, and was then only preparing to be. Four
palæolithic stations have been more recently discovered--at Thebes,
Tukh, Abydos, and Daschur. Join these sites to the other two where
isolated pieces were found, and we have the geography of what we
know at present of Chellean man in the valley of the Nile. Doubtless
continuous researches would result in similar discoveries at other
points, for I have met these relics wherever I have been able to make
a short sojourn. The Chellean implements are found in the gravels
of the diluvium on the pebbly surface. They have been disturbed and
probably scattered, but some places yield them more numerously than
others--points possibly corresponding to the ancient workshops. I
have found a considerable number of specimens at Deir-el-Medinet;
M. Daressy, of the Bureau of Antiquities, found a perfectly
characteristic Chellean hammer stone in the Yalley of the Queens at
Gurneh, as perfectly worked as the best specimens found at Chelles,
St. Acheul, and Moulin-Quignon.
The finds are not very numerous at Tukh, but one may in a few hours
make a collection there of hatchets (or hammer stones), scrapers,
points, simple blades, and a large number of stones bearing
indisputable marks of having been worked, but not presenting precise
forms. The deposit at Abydos is in the bottom of a circle behind
the ruins surrounding the Pharaonic necropolis. The specimens seem
sufficient to prove the existence of Quaternary man in Egypt, while
the search for them has hardly yet begun. In view of them it is
extremely improbable that man did not also exist there during the
long period that intervened between this primitive age and that of
the earliest Egyptians who had metals. He did exist there then, and
the evidences of it are found in neolithic remains between Cairo
and Thebes, a distance of about eight hundred kilometres along the
valley of the Nile, in the Fayum, and in Upper Egypt. Among these
are the remarkable tombs at Abydos which have been explored by M. E.
Amélineau, and of which he has published descriptions. They belong
to a category which I have characterized as tombs of transition and
as signalizing the passage from the use of polished stone to that of
metals. Their archaic character can not be disputed, and their royal
origin is probably certain. They may belong to aboriginal kings or
to the earliest dynasties. They reveal a knowledge of brass and of
the use of gold for ornament. At the necropolis of El-'Amrah, a few
miles south of Abydos, are some archaic tombs, all of the same model,
composed of an oval trench from five to six and a half feet deep.
The body is laid on the left side, and the legs are doubled up till
the knees are even with the sternum; the forearms are drawn out in
front and the hands placed one upon the other before the face, while
the head is slightly bent forward. Around the skeleton are vases,
and large, rudely made urns, often filled with ashes or the bones of
animals, and nearer to them are painted or red vessels with black
or brown edges, vessels roughly shaped out of stone, and figurines
in schist representing fishes or quadrupeds, cut flints, alabaster
clubs, and necklaces and bracelets of shells. Bronze is rare, and
found always in shape of small implements. Both purely neolithic
tombs and burials of the transition period to metals occur at
El-'Amrah. The most remarkable feature of the burials is the position
of the corpse, totally unlike anything that is found of the Pharaonic
ages.
The Egyptian finds of stone implements present the peculiarity as
compared with those of Europe, that types are found associated
together belonging to what would be regarded in other countries
as very different epochs. The time may come when subdivisions can
be made of the Egyptian stone age, but the study has not yet been
pursued far enough to make this practicable at present. Among these
articles are hatchets showing the transitions, examples of which
are wanting in Europe, from the rudest stone hammer to the polished
neolithic implement; knives of various shape and some of handsome
workmanship; scrapers, lance heads, arrowheads, saws, pins, bodkins,
maces, beads, bracelets, and combs. The large number of instruments
with toothed blades found at some of the stations may be regarded
as pointing to a very extensive cultivation of cereals at the time
they were in use. The deposits of Tukh, Zarraïdah, Khattarah,
Abydos, etc., situated in regions suitable for growing grain, yield
thousands of them, while they are very rare at the fishing station of
Dimeh. That the use of sickles tipped with flint very probably lasted
long after the introduction of metals seems to be proved by the
hieroglyphics; but very few evidences of the existence of such tools
are found after the middle empire.
No traces of articles related to the religion of the Pharaohs are
found in the burial places of the aborigines. In place of the
statuettes and funerary divinities of later times are found rude
figurines of animals cut in green schists. They represent fishes,
tortoises with eyes adorned with hard stone or nacre, and numerous
signs the origin of which is unknown, and were apparently regarded
as fetiches or divinities. Articles of pottery are very numerous,
very crude, and of a great variety of forms. It is not necessary to
suppose that the people who have left these relics were savages or
barbarians. History and even the present age afford instances of
many peoples who have obtained considerable degrees of civilization
while backward in some of the arts. It is hardly possible to
achieve delicacy of design and finish without the use of metals. I
believe I have shown that an age of stone once existed in Egypt,
and that it furthermore played an important part, even in Pharaonic
civilization.--_Translated for the Popular Science Monthly from the
Author's Recherches sur les Origines de l'Egypte._
SUPERSTITION AND CRIME.
BY PROF. E. P. EVANS.
In January, 1898, an elderly woman came in great anxiety to a priest
of the Church of St. Ursula, in Munich, Bavaria, and complained that
the devil haunted her house at night and frightened her by making
a great noise. In explanation of this unseasonable and undesirable
visit from the lower world she stated that a joint-stock company
had been formed in Berlin, with a branch in Munich, for the purpose
of discovering hidden treasures, and that in order to attain this
object a human sacrifice must be made to the devil, and that she
had been selected as the victim. A woman, whose husband was a
stockholder in the aforesaid company, had kindly communicated to her
this information, so that she might be prepared and have time to set
her house in order. Satan, however, grew impatient of the promised
sacrifice, and began to look after her. The priest sent one of his
younger assistants at the altar to read appropriate prayers in the
haunted house, and thus exorcise the evil spirit. We can hardly
suppose that his reverence believed in the reality of the reported
apparition, and yet he could not assert its impossibility by calling
in question the existence of the devil or the actuality of diabolical
agencies in human affairs without undermining the foundations of the
ecclesiastical system, of which he was an acknowledged supporter.
Such a declaration would "take away our hope," as the Scotchman said
of the denial of a literal hell-fire and the doctrine of eternal
punishment. It was for the same reason that the great body of the
Catholic clergy, from Pope Leo XIII and the highest dignitaries
of the church down to the humblest country vicar, so easily fell
into the snares laid by Leo Taxil and accepted the signature of the
devil Bitru as genuine, and his revelations concerning the pact of
the freemasons with Satan as authentic. It is certainly somewhat
startling to meet with such a case of gross superstition as the
above-mentioned in one of the seats of modern science and centers of
European civilization. In rural districts, remote from the influences
of intellectual culture, however, instances of this kind are of quite
frequent occurrence, and often result in the commission of crime.
Human sacrifices to Satan are still by no means uncommon in many
parts of Russia, and are supposed to be effective in warding off
famine and in staying the ravages of pestilence. Even in Germany and
other countries of western Europe the belief in their prophylactic
virtue is remarkably prevalent, and would be often put into practice
were it not for the stricter administration of justice and the
greater terror of the law.
In October, 1889, the criminal court in the governmental province
of Archangelsk, in northern Russia, sentenced a Samoyede, Jefrern
Pyrerka, to fifteen years' imprisonment with hard labor for the
murder of a maiden named Ssavaney. His sole defense was that an
unusually severe winter with a heavy fall of snow had produced a
famine followed by scurvy, of which all his children had died. He
therefore made an image of the devil out of wood, smeared its lips
with fat, and set it up on a hillock. He then attempted to lasso
one of his companions, Andrey Tabarey, and had already thrown the
noose round his neck, when the energetic wife of the intended victim
intervened and rescued her husband. Shortly afterward he succeeded
in strangling the girl and offering her as a sacrifice to his idol.
In the province of Novgorod, known as "the darkest Russia," it is a
general custom among the country people to sacrifice some animal,
usually a black cat, a black cock, or a black dog, by burying it
alive, in order to check the spread of cholera. In the village of
Kamenka, a peasant, whose son had died of this disease, interred
with the body eight live tomcats. The immolation of dumb animals,
however, is deemed less efficacious than that of human beings. On
one occasion, when the cholera was raging severely, a deputation of
peasants waited upon their parson, stating that they had determined
to bury him alive in order to appease the demon of the plague. He
escaped this horrible death only by apparently acceding to their
wishes and craving a few days' respite in order to prepare for such a
solemn ceremony; meanwhile he took the measures necessary to secure
his safety and thwarted the purpose of his loving parishioners. In
Okopovitchi, a village of the same province, the peasants succeeded
in enticing an aged woman, Lucia Manjkov, into the cemetery, where
they thrust her alive into the grave containing the bodies of those
who had died of the epidemic, and quickly covered her up. When
brought to trial they proved that they had acted on the advice of
a military surgeon, Kosakovitch, who was therefore regarded as the
chief culprit, and sentenced to be knouted by the hangman, and then
to undergo twelve years' penal servitude in Siberia. We are indebted
for these instances of barbarous superstition to the researches of
Augustus Löwenstimm, associate jurisconsult in the department of
justice at St. Petersburg, who has derived them from thoroughly
authentic and mostly official sources. He reports several occurrences
of a similar kind during the epidemics of cholera in 1831, 1855, and
1872. Indeed, it is very difficult to abolish such pagan practices
so long as the clergy foster the notion that animal sacrifices are
expiatory and propitiatory in their effects. In some parts of the
province of Vologda it is still customary on the day dedicated to
the prophet Elias (July 20th in the Greek calendar) to offer up
bullocks, he-goats, or other quadrupeds within the precincts of the
church. The animal is driven into the courtyard surrounding the
sacred edifice and there slaughtered; the flesh is boiled in a large
kettle, one half of it being kept by the peasants who provide the
sacrifice, while the other half is distributed among the priests and
sacristans.[26]
The belief that the walls of dams, bridges, aqueducts, and buildings
are rendered preternaturally strong by immuring a living human being
within them still prevails in many countries of Christendom, and
there is hardly an old castle in Europe that has not a legend of this
sort connected with it. Usually a child is supposed to be selected
for this purpose, and the roving bands of gypsies are popularly
accused of furnishing the infant victims. The custom of depositing
gold coins or other precious objects in the foundation stones of
important public edifices is doubtless a survival of the ancient
superstition.[27]
Löwenstimm mentions a curious superstition of pagan origin still
practiced in portions of Russia, and known as "_korovya smertj_"
(cow-death) and "_opachivaniye_" (plowing roundabout). If pestilence
or murrain prevails in a village, an old woman of repute as a seeress
or fortune-teller enters the confines of the village at midnight and
beats a pan. Thereupon all the women of the place assemble in haste,
armed with divers domestic utensils--frying-pans, pokers, tongs,
shovels, scythes, and cudgels. After shutting the cattle in their
stalls, and warning the men not to leave their houses, a procession
is formed. The seeress takes off her dress and pronounces a curse
upon Death. She is then hitched to a plow, together with a bevy of
virgins and a misshapen woman, if such a one can be found, and a
continuous and closed furrow is drawn round the village three times.
When the procession starts, the image of some saint suitable to the
occasion, that of St. Blasius, for example, in the case of murrain,
is borne in front of it; this is followed by the seeress, clad only
in a shift, with disheveled hair and riding on a broomstick; after
her come women and maidens drawing the plow, and behind them the rest
of the crowd, shrieking and making a fearful din. They kill every
animal they meet, and if a man is so unfortunate as to fall in with
them he is mercilessly beaten, and usually put to death. In the eyes
of these raging women he is not a human being, but Death himself
in the form of a were-wolf, who seeks to cross their path and thus
break the charm and destroy the healing virtue of the furrow. The
ceremony varies in different places, and generally ends by burying
alive a cat, cock, or dog. In some districts the whole population of
the village, both men and women, take part in the procession, and
are often attended by the clergy with sacred images and consecrated
banners. During the prevalence of the pest in the province of
Podolia, in 1738, the inhabitants of the village of Gummenez, while
marching in procession through the fields, met Michael Matkovskij,
a nobleman of a neighboring village, who was looking for his stray
horses. The strange man, wandering about with an eager look and a
bridle in his hand, was regarded as the incarnate pestilence, and
was therefore seized and most brutally beaten and left lying half
naked and half dead on the ground. At length he recovered his senses
and succeeded with great difficulty in reaching his home. No sooner
was it known that he was still alive than the peasants rushed into
his house, dragged him to their village, subjected him to terrible
tortures, and finally burned him. A curious feature of these remedial
rites is the mixture of paganism and Christianity which characterizes
them; and it is an unquestionable though almost incredible fact that
their atoning efficacy is often quite as firmly believed in by the
village priests of the Russian Church as by the most ignorant members
of their flock. In the autumn of 1894 some Russian peasants in the
district of Kazan slew one of their own number as a sacrifice to the
gods of the Votiaks, a Finnish race dwelling on the Volga, Viatka,
and Kama Rivers. Even orthodox Christians of the Greek Church,
although regarding these gods as devils, fear and seek to propitiate
them, especially in times of public distress.
Still more widely diffused is the practice of infanticide as the
sequence of superstition. The belief that dwarfs or gnomes, dwelling
in the inner parts of the earth, carry off beautiful newborn babes
and leave their own deformed offspring in their stead is not confined
to any one people, but is current alike in Germanic, Celtic, Romanic,
and Slavic countries, and causes a misshapen child to be looked upon
with suspicion and subjected to cruel tortures and even killed. The
supposed changeling is often severely beaten with juniper rods and
the scourging attended with incantations, so as to compel the wicked
fairies to reclaim their deformed bantling and restore the stolen
child. If the castigation proves ineffective, more summary measures
are frequently taken, and the supposititious suckling is thrown out
of the window on a dunghill or immersed in boiling water. In 1877, in
the city of New York, an Irish immigrant and his wife burned their
child to death under the delusion that they were ridding themselves
of a changeling. Cases of this kind are quite common in Ireland,
where the victims are sometimes adults.[28] Not long since Magoney,
an Irish peasant, had a sickly child, which the most careful nurture
failed to restore to health and strength. The parents, therefore,
became convinced that a changeling had been imposed upon them, and
when the boy was four years old they resolved to have recourse to
boiling water, in which he was kept, notwithstanding his shrieks and
protestations that he was not an elf, but their own Johnny Magoney,
until death released him from his torments.
Wilhelm Mannhardt, the celebrated writer on folklore, states that
when, in 1850, he was in Löblau, a village of West Prussia, he saw a
man brutally maltreating a boy on the street. On inquiry he found
that the lad had done nothing worthy of blame, but that his only
fault was an exceptionally large head. This cranial peculiarity,
offensively conspicuous in what seems to have been a narrow-headed
family, was reason enough for the parents to disown their offspring,
and to treat him as the counterfeit of a child foisted in by the
fairies. At Hadersleben, a considerable market town of North Silesia,
the wife of a farmer, in 1883, gave birth to a puny infant, which the
parents at once assumed to be a changeling. In order to defeat the
evil designs of the elves and to compel the restoration of their own
child, they held the newborn over a bed of live coals on the hearth
until it was covered with blisters and died in intense agony. In East
Prussia, the Mazurs, a Polish race, whose only notable contribution
to modern civilization and the gayety of nations is the mazurka,
take precautionary measures by placing a book (usually the Bible,
although any book will do) under the head of the newborn babe, so as
to prevent the devil from spiriting it away and substituting for it
one of his own hellish brood, thus unwittingly furnishing a marvelous
illustration of the beneficent influence of the printing press and
the magic power of literature. The Estonian inhabitants of the island
of Oesel in Livonia refrain from kindling a fire in the house while
the rite of baptism is being celebrated, lest the light of the flames
should render it easier for Satan surreptitiously to exchange an imp
for the infant. After the sacred ceremony has been performed there is
supposed to be no danger of such a substitution.
One of the most incredible instances of this extremely silly and
surprisingly persistent superstition occurred in 1871 at Biskunizy,
a village of Prussian Posen, where a laborer, named Bekker, had by
industry and frugality gradually acquired a competence and been able
to buy a house of his own, in which he led a happy domestic life
with his wife and five children, of whom he was very fond. After
fourteen years of unbroken felicity the wife's elder sister, Marianne
Chernyak, came from Poland to pay them a visit. This woman was a
crackbrained devotee, who spent half her time in going to mass and
the other half in backbiting her neighbors. She also claimed that
she could detect at once whether a person is in league with Satan,
and could cast out devils. The villagers came to look upon her as
a witch, and avoided all association with her, especially as her
aberrations manifested themselves in exceedingly malevolent and
mischievous forms. Unfortunately, she acquired complete ascendency
over her younger sister, who accepted her absurd pretensions as real.
On November 19, 1871, Marianne, after returning from confession, went
to bed, but at midnight Mrs. Bekker, who slept with her youngest
child, a boy about a year old, was awakened by a fearful shriek and
lit the lamp. Thereupon the sister rushed into the room, crying:
"The demons have stolen your child and put a changeling in your bed:
beat him, beat him, if you wish to have your child again!" Under the
influence of this suggestion, which seemed to be almost hypnotic in
its character, the bewildered mother began to beat the boy. The aunt
now seized him and swung him to and fro, as if she would fling him
out of the window, at the same time calling out to Satan: "There!
you have him; take your brat!" She then gave him back to his mother
with the words: "Throw him to the ground, drub him, beat him to
death; otherwise you will never recover your child." This advice was
followed, and the boy severely strapped with a heavy girdle as he
lay on the floor. Meanwhile Bekker, hearing the noise, got up and
at first tried to intervene for the protection of his son, but was
easily convinced by his wife that she was doing the right thing,
and persuaded to aid her in discomfiting the devil by beating the
boy with a juniper stick. The process of exorcism, thus renewed
with increased vigor, soon proved fatal. At this juncture, as the
son of the aunt, a lad of five years, threw himself down with loud
lamentations beside the dead body of his little cousin, his mother
cried out: "Beat him; he is not my child! Why should we spare him?
We shall get other children!" Thereupon he, too, was maltreated in
the same manner until he expired. The aunt then declared that the
devil had crept into the stovepipe, and went to work to demolish
the stove, but, when she was prevented from doing so, fled into the
garden, where she was found the next morning by the school-teacher.
By this time Bekker and his wife seem to have come to their senses,
and were sitting by the corpses of the murdered children, weeping
and praying, as the neighbors entered the house. The trial, which
took place at Ostrov in January, 1872, led to the introduction of
conflicting expert testimony concerning the mental soundness of the
accused, and the matter was finally referred to a commission of
psychiaters in Berlin, who decided that Bekker and his wife were not
suffering from mental disease, and therefore not irresponsible, but
that the aunt was subject to periodical insanity to such a degree as
not to be accountable for her actions. Curiously enough, the jurors
remained uninfluenced by this testimony, and pronounced her guilty
of the crime laid to her charge, and in accordance with this verdict
the court sentenced her to three years' imprisonment with hard labor.
The jurors even went so far as to declare that she herself did not
believe in the existence of elf children or satanic changelings, but
made use of this popular superstition for her own selfish purposes,
and that she guilefully denounced her own boy as an imp in order to
get rid of him. In this verdict, or rather in the considerations
urged in support of it, it is easy to perceive the effects of strong
local prejudice against the accused, who had the reputation of being
a lazy, malicious, and crafty person, and was therefore denied the
extenuation of honest self-deception. Indeed, in such cases it is
always more or less difficult to determine where sincere delusion
ceases and conscious swindling begins. Just at this point the annals
of superstition present many puzzling problems, the solution of which
is of special interest as well as of great practical importance
not only to the psychologist and psychiater, but also to the
legislator and jurisprudent, who have to do with the enactment and
administration of criminal laws.
In the penal codes of the most civilized nations the agency of
superstition as a factor in the promotion of crime is almost wholly
ignored, and, as this was not the case in former times, the omission
would seem to assume that the general diffusion of knowledge in
our enlightened age had rendered all such specifications obsolete
and superfluous. Only in the Russian penal code, especially in the
sections _Ulosheniye_ and _Ustav_ on felonies and frauds, as cited
by Löwenstimm, do we find a distinct recognition and designation
of various forms of superstition as incentives to crime. Thus,
in paragraph 1469 of the first of these sections, the murder of
"monstrous births or misshapen sucklings" as changelings is expressly
mentioned, and the penalty prescribed; and in other clauses of the
code punishments are imposed for the desecration of graves and
mutilation of corpses, in order to procure talismans or to prevent
the dead from revisiting the earth as vampires, and for various
offenses emanating from the belief in sorcery and diabolical
possession. The practice of opening graves and mutilating dead
bodies is quite common, and arises in general from the notion that
persons who die impenitent and without extreme unction, including
suicides and victims to delirium tremens, apoplexy, and other forms
of sudden death, as well as schismatics, sorcerers, and witches,
come forth from their graves and wander about as vampires, sucking
the blood of individuals during sleep and inflicting misery upon
entire communities by producing drought, famine, and pestilence. The
means employed to prevent this dangerous metamorphosis, or at least
to compel the vampire to remain in the grave, differ in different
countries. In Russia the deceased is buried with his face downward,
and an ashen stake driven through his back, while in Poland and East
Prussia the corpse is wrapped up in a fish net and covered with
poppies, owing, doubtless, to the soporific qualities of this plant.
Preventive measures of this kind are often taken with the consent and
co-operation of the clergy and local authorities. Thus, in 1849, at
Mariensee, near Dantzig, in West Prussia, a peasant's wife came to
the Catholic priest of the parish and complained that an old woman
named Welm, recently deceased, appeared in her house and beat and
otherwise tormented her child. The priest seems to have accepted
the truth of her statement, since he ordered the corpse to be
disinterred, decapitated, reburied at a cross-road, and covered with
poppies. In 1851, during the prevalence of cholera in Ukraine, in the
governmental province of Kiev, the peasants of Possady attributed
the epidemic to a deceased sacristan and his wife, who were supposed
to roam about at night as vampires and kill people by sucking their
blood. In order to stay the ravages of the scourge the corpses of
this couple were exhumed, their heads cut off and burned, and ashen
stakes driven through their backs into the ground. In 1892 a peasant
woman in the Russian province of Kovno hanged herself in a wood near
the village of Somenishki. The priest refused her Christian burial
because she had committed suicide, and was therefore given over to
the devil. In order that she might rest quietly in her grave and
not be changed into a vampire, her sons severed her head from her
body and laid it at her feet. In thus refusing to perform religious
funeral rites the priest obeyed the canons of the church and also
the laws of the Russian Empire. Until quite recently a corner of
unconsecrated ground next to the wall of the Russian cemetery was
reserved as a sort of carrion pit for the corpses of self-murderers,
and it is expressly prescribed in the _Svod Sakonov_[29] that they
"shall be dragged to such place of infamy by the knacker, and
there covered with earth." This treatment of a _felo-de-se_ by
the ecclesiastical and civil authorities directly fosters popular
superstition by tending to confirm the notion that there is something
uncanny, eldritch, demoniacal, and preternaturally malignant inherent
in his mortal remains, a notion still further strengthened by a most
unjust paragraph (1472) in the Russian code, which declares the last
will and testament of a suicide to have no legal validity. Drought,
too, as well as pestilence, is ascribed to the evil agency of
vampires, which "milk the clouds," and hinder the falling of the dew.
In 1887 the South Russian province of Cherson began to suffer from
drought soon after a peasant had hanged himself in the village of
Ivanovka, the inhabitants of which, assuming a causative connection
between the aridity and the self-homicide, poured water on the grave
while uttering the following words: "I sprinkle, I pour; may God send
a shower, bring on a little rainfall, and relieve us from misery!" As
this invocation failed to produce the desired effect, the body was
taken up and inhumed again in a gorge outside of the village. In some
districts the corpse is disinterred, beaten on the head, and drenched
with water poured through a sieve; in others it is burned.
The records of the criminal courts in West Prussia during the last
half century contain numerous instances of the violation of graves
from superstitious motives. Thus in March, 1896, a peasant died in
the village of Penkuhl; soon afterward his son was taken ill of a
lingering disease, which the remedies prescribed by the country
doctor failed to relieve. It did not take long for the "wise women"
of the village to convince him that his father was a "nine-killer,"
and would soon draw after him into the grave nine of his next of
kin. The sole means of depriving him of this fatal power would be to
disinter him and sever his head from his body. In accordance with
this advice the young man dug up the corpse by night and decapitated
it with a spade. In this case the accused, if tried in court, might
honestly declare that he acted in self-defense; indeed, he might
plead in justification of his conduct that he thereby preserved
not only his own life, but also the lives of eight of his nearest
and dearest relations, and that he should be commended rather than
condemned for what he had done. It is the possibility and sincerity
of this plea that render it so difficult to deal with such offenses
judicially and justly. Here is needed what Tennyson calls
"The intuitive decision of a bright
And thorough-edged intellect, to part
Error from crime."
Quite different, however, from a moral point of view, is the opening
of graves in quest of medicaments, and especially of talismans, which
are supposed to bring good luck to the possessor or to enable him
to practice sorcery and to commit crime with impunity. In ancient
times, and even in the middle ages, physicians sometimes prescribed
parts of the human body as medicine, and in Franconia, North Bavaria,
a peasant now occasionally enters an apothecary's shop and asks for
"_Armensünderfett_," poor sinner's fat, obtained from the bodies of
executed malefactors and prized as a powerful specific. The culprit
was tried first for murder and then for lard, and thus made doubly
conducive to the safety and sanitation of the community. Formerly
many persons went diligently to public executions for the purpose
of procuring a piece of the criminal as a healing salve, but since
the hangman or headsman has generally ceased to perform his fearful
functions in the presence of a promiscuous crowd, such loathsome
remedies for disease are sought in churchyards.
In May, 1865, a Polish peasant in Wyssokopiz, near Warsaw, discovered
that the grave of his recently deceased wife had been opened and
the corpse mutilated. Information was given to the police, and a
shepherd's pipe, found in the churchyard, led to the detection of
the culprit in the person of the communal shepherd, a man twenty-six
years old, who on examination confessed that he, with the aid of two
accomplices, had committed the disgustful deed. His object, he said,
was to procure a tooth and the liver of a dead person. He intended
to pulverize the tooth and after mixing it with snuff to give it to
his brother-in-law in order to poison him. On perceiving, however,
that the body was that of a woman, he did not take the tooth, because
it would have no power to kill a man; but he cut out the liver for
the purpose of burying it in a field where the sheep were pastured,
and thus causing the death of the entire flock in case he should be
superseded by another shepherd, which he feared might happen. All
three were condemned to hard labor in Siberia.
It is a quite prevalent notion that if any part of a corpse is
concealed in a house, the inmates will have the corresponding bodily
organs affected by disease and gradually paralyzed. A drastic
example of this superstition occurred in May, 1875, at Schwetz,
a provincial town of West Prussia, where a woman named Albertine
Mayevski became the mother of a male child, which died soon after
its birth. The father, to whom she was betrothed, refused to marry
her, and to punish him for this breach of promise she disinterred
the body of her babe, cut off its right hand at the wrist and the
genitals, and hid them in the chimney of the house of her faithless
lover, hoping thereby to cause the hand, with which he had pledged
his vow, to wither away, and to render him impotent. All this she
freely confessed when brought to trial, and was sentenced to two
months' imprisonment. But such relics of the tomb are used, on the
principle of _similia similibus_, not only for inflicting injury, but
also for bringing luck. Thus members of the "light-fingered craft"
carry with them the finger of a corpse in order to enhance their
skill, success, and safety in thievery; if the finger belonged to an
adroit thief or a condemned criminal its talismanic virtue is all the
greater. It is also believed that a purse in which a finger joint is
kept will contain an inexhaustible supply of money. The finger of a
murdered man is greatly prized by burglars because it is supposed
to possess a magic power in opening locks. The records of criminal
courts prove that these absurd notions are generally entertained by
common malefactors in East Prussia, Thuringia, Silesia, Bohemia,
and Poland. A candle made of fat obtained from the human body is
very frequently used by thieves on account of its supposed soporific
power, since with such a taper, known in Germany as _Diebslicht_
or _Schlummerlicht_ (sloom-light in provincial English), they are
confident of being able to throw all the inmates of the house
into a deep sleep, and thus rummage the rooms at will and with
perfect impunity. The danger of detection is also forestalled by
laying a dead man's hand on a window sill; and in order to make
assurance doubly sure, both preservatives are usually employed.
Hence the proverbial saying, "He sleeps as though a dead hand had
been carried round him." The desire to procure material for such
candles often leads to the commission of crime. An Austrian jurist,
Dr. Gross, in his manual for inquisitorial judges (_Handbuch für
Untersuchungsrichter_), and the folklorists Mannhardt and Jakushkin,
give numerous instances of this kind, and there is no doubt that
the many mysterious murders and ghastly mutilations, especially of
women and children, so horrifying to the public and puzzling to the
police, are due to the same cause. In most cases the prosecuting
attorneys and judges are unable to discover the real motives of such
bloody and brutal deeds because they are ignorant of the popular
superstitions in which they have their origin, and, for lack of any
better explanation, attribute them to mere brutishness, wantonness,
homicidal mania, and other vague and unintelligible impulses, whereas
in reality they spring from a supremely selfish but exceedingly
definite purpose, are perpetrated deliberately, and with the normal
exercise of the mental faculties, and can not be mitigated even by
the extenuating plea of sudden passion. Crimes of this sort are
of common occurrence not only in the semi-barbarous provinces of
Russia, but also in Austria and Germany, justly reckoned among the
most civilized countries of Christendom. On January 1, 1865, the
house of a man named Peck, near Elbing in West Prussia, was entered
during the absence of the family by a burglar, Gottfried Dallian,
who killed the maid-servant, Catharina Zernickel, and ransacked
the premises in search of money and other objects of value. Before
carrying off his spoils he cut a large piece of flesh out of the body
of the murdered girl in order to make candles for his protection on
future occasions of this sort. The talismanic light, which he kept
in a tin tube, did not prevent him from being caught in the act of
committing another burglary about six weeks later. During the trial,
which resulted in his condemnation to death, he confessed that he
had eaten some of the maid-servant's flesh in order to appease his
conscience. This disgusting method of alleviating the "compunctious
visitings of Nature" would seem to confirm the suggestion of a
writer in the _Russkiya Wjedomosti_ (Russian News, 1888, No. 359)
that the thieves' candle is a survival of primitive cannibalism,
distinct traces of which he also discovers in a Russian folk song
which runs as follows: "I bake a cake out of the hands and feet, out
of the silly head I form a goblet, out of the eyes I cast drinking
glasses, out of the blood I brew an intoxicating beer, and out of
the fat I mold a candle." It is certainly very queer to find such
stuff constituting the theme of popular song within the confines
of Christian civilization at the present day, a grewsome stuff more
suitable as the staple of Othello's tales
"--of the cannibals that each other eat,
The anthropophagi, and men whose heads
Do grow beneath their shoulders."
In the burglary just mentioned the murder and mutilation of the
maid were incidental to the robbery, and probably an afterthought,
but there are on record numerous instances of persons being waylaid
and killed for the sole purpose of making candles out of their
adipose tissue. No longer ago than November 15, 1896, two peasants
were convicted of this crime in Korotoyak, a city on the Don in
South Russia. Their victim was a boy twelve years of age, whom they
strangled and eviscerated in order to make candles from the fat of
the caul and entrails. It would be superfluous and tedious to cite
additional examples of this outrageous offense against humanity and
common sense, for, like the devils that entered into the Gadarene
swine, their name is Legion.
A still more disgusting and dangerous superstition is the notion that
supernatural powers are acquired by eating the heart of an unborn
babe of the male sex, just as a savage imagines that by eating the
heart of a brave foe he can become indued with his valor. The modern
European cannibal believes that by eating nine hearts, or parts of
them, he can make himself invisible and even fly through the air.
He can thus commit crime without detection, and defy all efforts to
arrest or imprison him, releasing himself with ease from fetters, and
passing through stone walls. This horrible practice has been known
for ages, and is still by no means uncommon. In the first half of the
fifteenth century the notorious marshal of France, Gilles de Laval,
Baron of Rayz, is said to have murdered in his castle near Nantes one
hundred and fifty women in order to get possession of unborn babes.
He was then supposed to have committed these atrocities from lewd
motives, and was also accused of worshiping Satan. A mixed commission
of civilians and ecclesiastics, appointed to examine into the matter,
found him guilty and condemned him to be strangled and burned on
October 25, 1440. In 1429, when he was thirty-three years of age, he
had fought the English at Orleans by the side of Joan of Arc, and it
was probably the desire to acquire supernatural powers in emulation
of the maid that led him to perpetrate a succession of inhuman
butcheries extending over a period of fourteen years, the real object
of which seems to have been imperfectly understood by the tribunal
which sentenced him to death.[30] Löwenstimm cites several instances
of this crime. Thus, in 1577 a man was put to the rack in Bamberg,
North Bavaria, for murdering and disemboweling three pregnant women.
In the seventeenth century a band of robbers, whose chief was known
as "King Daniel," created intense consternation among the inhabitants
of Ermeland in East Prussia. For a long time these freebooters roved
and spoiled with impunity, but were finally arrested and executed.
They confessed that they had kille
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