De l’influence exercée sur les peuples d’Afrique, d’Asie, de la terre de Van-Diemen, et de la Nouvel

CHAP. 39: > Of the influence exercised on the peoples of Africa, Asia, Van Diemen's Land, and New Holland, by the local circumstances in the midst of which these peoples have been placed.

The natives of the Cape of Good Hope were the least advanced peoples of Africa when the Portuguese discovered it; several causes could have contributed to maintaining them in a state of barbarism; but we must place among the principal ones the local circumstances in the midst of which they were placed.

The Dutch, in establishing themselves in this country, found only a soil of which the greatest part was completely sterile, and of which the others were covered only with a few shrubs and immense heaths. In the valleys where the torrents had carried a little topsoil, one found a species of onion, which, when cooked, had the taste of a chestnut; this was the only food that the vegetable kingdom offered to the population [373]. Not only did the country possess neither rivers nor streams, but nothing was rarer than to find a brook there: the possession of a simple trickle of water was and still is considered a great wealth [374]. The dryness there devoured all the plants, and the force of the winds is such that no tree of any considerable size had been able to grow there. The natives possessed herds, without it being known how they had acquired them; but they could not multiply their number, since it was not in their power to increase the quantity of fodder.

These peoples thus had no means either of increasing or of varying their subsistence; they could not engage in agriculture, since they lacked water, their soil produced no plant that it was useful for them to multiply, and they found themselves isolated from the rest of the world. Unable to penetrate into the interior of Africa except through a desert, having no means of engaging in navigation, since their country produces no trees, and no people having ever reached them, they found themselves reduced to the sole resources of their soil and their own genius. It was necessary, for them to have the means to advance a few steps, that other peoples, placed in a less unfavorable position, should have made progress in the art of navigation and in all the knowledge that this art supposes; it was necessary that these peoples should find themselves interested in enriching the Cape with the productions that existed in other countries, and that they should have sufficient capital to naturalize them there. If the currents had brought there some of the plants that we cultivate, they would not have multiplied there, because they degenerate there in a short time: one can cultivate them there only by constantly renewing the seeds [375].

The sums that the Dutch spent to establish themselves at the Cape of Good Hope, to bring water there from the mountains and to naturalize there vegetables and animals proper for their subsistence, amounted, in twenty years, to forty-six million francs; and, after having made these expenditures, the greatest part of the country still presented the aspect of a desert [376]. The proportion of cultivated lands to those that are not susceptible to cultivation is, according to Cook, one to a thousand. The valleys, which are the only places where one finds topsoil, are at an immense distance from one another. A colonist who wants to bring his produce to market sometimes has nine hundred miles to travel (a little more than three hundred leagues), and he needs five days' march to visit the cultivator least distant from his farm. The cultivated spaces, like the oases of the sandy deserts, seem like so many verdant islands in the middle of a boundless sea. One travels immense spaces without encountering a blade of grass; and the obstacles that the force of the winds opposes to the multiplication of trees are such that, with the exception of the plantations established near the city, one sees none, even in the cultivated places, having more than six feet in height and more than an inch in thickness, while the roots are the thickness of an arm [377].

The Europeans have multiplied at the Cape the vine and various species of grains and vegetables; they have, by means of the resources they found in their own country, fertilized lands formerly sterile; but if, following a shipwreck, they had been thrown naked into this country and reduced to the resources it presented to the natives, they would have been just as incapable as these peoples of making the slightest progress in civilization [378].

Africa is the part of the world that contains the fewest rivers and streams. The mouths of the rivers are situated at immense distances from one another, and the peoples who inhabit their banks can have almost no communication with one another. These rivers generally offer few means for navigation, either because at their mouths they are encumbered with dangerous bars, or because in their course they offer insurmountable obstacles. The streams, which are also very few in number, do not traverse more or less level plains like those of the other continents; they fall from cascade to cascade, and thus cannot be navigable. Not only do the peoples of the negro species lack communication among themselves, but they cannot receive the fleets of European nations.

From the Cape of Good Hope to the Sahara desert, these peoples are isolated from one another by the nature of the soil and by the Ocean; they are isolated from civilized peoples, on the Mediterranean side, by boundless sandy deserts; on the side of the Indian Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean, by the absence of gulfs, harbors, and navigable rivers; and on the side of the Red Sea, by the same causes, by a complete absence of fresh water, and furthermore by the dangers of navigation. If, to all these causes, one adds the isolation that results from the difference of species and the kind of commerce that the Europeans have established with these peoples since the discovery of America, one will easily understand how they have made less progress than others in civilization. However, if one compares them among themselves, one will find that those whose territory is the best watered or the least deprived of water are also the least retarded. The Kaffirs, whose country is cut by small rivers, are less backward than the Hottentots, and the inhabitants of the Congo are less so than the Kaffirs. The northern coasts of Africa, from Tangier to Alexandria, are not cut by any river; but, besides the fact that a large part is watered by several streams, the Mediterranean puts them in communication with the peoples of Asia Minor and with the most anciently civilized peoples of Europe: it is to this circumstance that one must principally attribute the progress to which some peoples of these coasts formerly attained. The rivers that head toward and are lost in the center of this continent doubtless favor the progress of the peoples who inhabit their banks; but the communications they offer are confined within a very narrow circle, if one compares them to those that take place by means of the seas. Let us add that these peoples, placed under a burning sky, have not had to exercise their genius to form clothing or dwellings for themselves, and that if we were to suppress from our knowledge all that relates to these two objects of our needs, we would reduce our arts and our sciences within a very narrow circle.

Egypt is the only part of Africa that is traversed by a great river, that can be abundantly watered, and that, by means of the waters, has numerous communications. Before the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope, there existed no people who had easier and more multiplied communications than those enjoyed by the Egyptians. They communicated among themselves, by the Nile or by canals, from the most distant extremities of their territory; by the Red Sea, they communicated with the Indies, Persia, and Arabia; by the Mediterranean, they communicated with Asia Minor, Greece, Spain, Italy, France, the northern coasts of Africa; they could even communicate with peoples of the north by the Black Sea. Not only could the Egyptians easily communicate with all civilized peoples; but the territory they occupied was the only point of communication between the civilized parts of Europe and of southern Asia. They thus enjoyed the commerce of the world; they could enrich themselves with all discoveries, and transport to an inexhaustible soil all known productions. Thus, there is no country in Europe that has surpassed the prosperity to which Egypt attained, and whose civilization goes back to so remote an epoch.

This country has fallen from its ancient greatness, and doubtless a large part of its decadence must be attributed to the barbarous peoples who have successively ravaged it, and especially to those who ended by remaining its masters. One must not believe, however, that all the evils were the products of slavery: Alexandria would perhaps still be as flourishing today as it was when it was conquered by the Arabs, if it had continued to be the center of commerce between Europe and Asia; the Europeans would have been forced to preserve or to bring back civilization to this country. But the discovery of a passage at the Cape of Good Hope, and the colonization of America, made the riches of the world take a new route: the ports of Egypt were then deserted; its population, ceasing to enrich itself by commerce, and being ceaselessly exposed to the extortions of its conquerors, was insensibly extinguished, and its cities no longer presented anything but piles of ruins. However, one perceives, even in its decadence, the influence that the waters that traverse its territory and the facility of communications exercise upon it. As one ascends the Nile, one perceives that riches diminish, and that the inhabitants are more stupid and more barbarous; at the point where the river ceases to be navigable, one finds nothing but arid sands, and a few fierce savages who live in the hollows of the rocks.

The natives of Van Diemen's Land, those of New Zealand, and those of Tierra del Fuego, who belong to three different species, are, as has been seen previously, the least intelligent of the species to which they belong; but they also inhabit the extremities of the southern lands, and it has been impossible for them to communicate with peoples less barbarous than themselves, until the moment when the Europeans were advanced enough in the sciences and in the arts to circumnavigate the globe; even then they have had only extremely rare and, in a way, fugitive communications. They could therefore make no physical, intellectual, or moral progress, except by perfecting the natural productions of their soil, by means of their own genius. All the progress, all the discoveries of other peoples could have no influence on them; they were ignorant of them and had no means of learning of them. But their soil offered them no production whose multiplication or perfection could be profitable to them; their barbarism or their stupidity thus had, as we are about to see, an intimate connection with the local circumstances in the midst of which they were placed.

Van Diemen's Land, watered by a few small rivers, announced fertility before Europeans established themselves there. A part of it was covered with an impenetrable forest [379]; in some places, the natives, by means of fire, had destroyed the plants that encumbered the soil [380]; in some others, the country presented only vast swamps [381]. But, however fertile the land was, it nourished only a very small number of species of vegetables; among these species, none presented food to the natives; a single tree was susceptible of producing fruit, and this fruit was a poison [382]. The vegetable productions could have been employed for the multiplication of animals, and thus furnish subsistence to men; but the species of animals were even less numerous than those of the vegetables. There existed on this land no animal proper for domestic life; those found there could be of almost no resource, and there was no means of multiplying them [383]. Unable to exercise their intelligence either on the vegetable kingdom or on the animal kingdom, the natives could have directed their research to the mineral kingdom, since the country appears to contain iron; but minerals are useful only as instruments, and of what use can instruments be to a people who possess neither useful vegetables nor animals, and who can have no communication with other peoples? Drawing all their subsistence from the sea, it was not in their power to make the source more abundant: all they could have done would have been to perfect themselves in the art of fishing; but, to perfect themselves in this art, they would have needed to have means of navigation, and the only wood that their soil offered them was so heavy and presented such resistance to tools, that it was not possible for them to make use of it [384].New Holland, whose natives are scarcely less barbarous than those of Van Diemen's Land, resembles Africa in many respects. This continent, which embraces more than one hundred thousand square leagues of solid surface, presents on almost all sides only smooth coasts, formed of sandbanks and deprived of fresh water. The southern coasts, which span about thirty-five degrees, appear almost entirely deprived of fresh water; travelers have not been able to discover enough there to take on provisions. Vancouver was obliged to abandon them, after having visited an expanse of seventy myriameters; Dentrecasteaux was reduced to the same necessity, after having traversed one hundred and sixty myriameters (three hundred and twenty leagues) in vain [385]. The lack of fresh water there is such that the natives, who must know the state of the country well, are obliged to dig wells to find it [386].

The interior of the country, in this part of the continent, appears no more habitable than the coasts: it is strewn with sand-covered dunes, which offer the spectacle of the greatest aridity. The interval that separates these mounds from the shore presents a few shrubs whose foliage, of a blackish hue, indicates its state of suffering. The mountains one perceives in the distance themselves offer large spaces devoid of plants. The least sterile parts have only a few sparse shrubs, in the midst of which one sees, from a distance, a small number of trees of a mediocre height [387]. Where the slope and the nature of the terrain are proper to forming a few trickles of water, the sands that the winds push and pile up on the shores stop its flow, and transform the country into swamps [388].

The aridity observed on the southern coasts is the same on the western coasts and on a large part of the eastern coasts. On the latter, one finds streams at great distances from one another, but no river. The natives of the north are often obliged to dig wells, like those of the southern coasts; the English themselves, after having chosen the most suitable place for a settlement, have been obliged, like the savages, to employ the same process to have a sufficient quantity of fresh water [389]. The low parts of the country are likewise, on this side, covered with swamps formed sometimes by spring water, but more often still by seawater [390]. The large trees, in the parts closest to the shore, are placed at such a distance from one another that they would not hinder cultivation, if the terrain were cultivated; but, as one advances into the interior, the woods become impenetrable [391]. Finally, not only is the eastern coast, which is the most susceptible to cultivation, not cut by any river proper for navigation; but, in an expanse of twenty-two degrees of latitude, it everywhere hides shoals that project abruptly from the foot of the coast, and rocks that rise suddenly from the bottom in the shape of a pyramid [392].

“It is a truly surprising phenomenon,” says Dentrecasteaux, “that the vast continent of New Holland, which extends over a space of thirty degrees of latitude and forty degrees of longitude, offers, on almost all its faces, only a sandy and arid land, and which, under very different latitudes, preserves the same aspect and the same sterility. One discovers there, it is true, a few trickles of fresh water placed at great distances from one another; but they can be perceived only by an effect of chance. The accounts of travelers had made me aware that the eastern and western coasts were almost entirely devoid of water; and I believed myself all the more founded in hoping to find some on the southern coast, as I thought to encounter there the mouths of great rivers; my hopes have been entirely frustrated [393].”

However, the coasts sometimes present the appearance of the mouth of a great river; but these appearances are always deceptive.

“In vain,” says Péron, “does the navigator who sails along the coasts of this immense land believe he can discover at every moment the mouth of a new river; in vain can he ascend far into the interior of the continent with the strongest boats or even with large ships; the salinity of this supposed river does not diminish: one soon recognizes that it has no other movements than those impressed upon it by the ebb and flow of the sea. However, the depth of its waters is so considerable, its width is so great, it penetrates so far into the country, that the illusion must still be sustained.... The navigation is pursued further; multiplied inlets can be perceived; they appear like so many large streams; one enters them, and nowhere does one find fresh water.... Hope, though weakened, is yet sustained by the imposing aspect of the main arm, which continues to offer all the apparent characteristics of a great river. Already one has ascended the space of sixty or eighty miles, one believes one can advance a much more considerable distance... Vain hope! This majestic river suddenly ends in a miserable stream of fresh water, incapable of carrying the weakest boats, and where, at various times of the year, a few inches of water barely flow... The astonished traveler stops, and when he comes to perceive that the ebb and flow are almost as perceptible at the end of his course as toward the coasts he has just left, he cannot conceive how, in so great a space, the slope of the land can remain so slight [394].”

The winds exert on the productions of New Holland an influence analogous to that exerted by the nature and configuration of the soil: those that blow from the north, the east, and the northwest, when they have crossed this continent, are dry and burning; they are sometimes so inflamed, although they pass over immense mountains, that they are comparable to all that Africa can offer of the most formidable in this genre: their devouring breath destroys all that is exposed to their action; nothing resists the ardor of this campsin austral; before it, the most active vegetation withers, the fountains and streams dry up, the animals perish by the thousands [395].

The species of plants that grow on this continent are not numerous, those for which the soil and climate are best suited stifling the others [396]. The species of trees proper for carpentry are only two or three in number, of the eucalyptus genus. This hard and heavy wood, like that which grows on Van Diemen's Land, never floats on water [397]. When it is sawed and exposed for some time to the sun, the resin it contains melts, and it then acquires such a degree of frangibility that the planks burst and subdivide into small splinters, as if all the parts that composed them had been bound together by means of this resin [398]. With wood of this species, it was difficult for the natives to form boats proper to facing the waves of the seas, and for their intelligence to extend to the arts and knowledge that navigation supposes or that it develops.

Among the trees that New Holland produced before the arrival of the Europeans, none bore fruits proper to be the basis of the natives' subsistence. Travelers found on a single point a few palm cabbages; but, in the other parts, they saw no fruit tree that deserved to be cultivated; they encountered no cereal plant, no kind of vegetable, with the exception of a few stalks of wild celery, and a species of heather whose roots the natives eat. None of these plants are even encountered on the southern coasts; the most fertile part of this continent, that which is occupied by the English, naturally produced only a few raspberries, currants, and a fruit no larger than a cherry [399]. The rarity of food plants is such that, when it has happened that Europeans have become lost, they have found nothing proper to sustain their existence, and most have died there of hunger [400].

The species of animals are as little varied in New Holland as those of the plants; and, among these species, none of those that we have reduced to the state of domesticity have been observed, with the exception of the dog [401]. The quadruped that furnishes the most food to the natives is the kangaroo, whose flesh, when it is no longer young, resembles that of the fox. One also finds there some animals of the opossum genus, and a small number of species of birds. The absence of fruits and cereal plants contributes greatly to restricting their species [402]. It is believed that the tracks have been recognized and the howls heard of some ferocious beasts; but animals of this kind cannot be considered a resource [403]. Reptiles are very multiplied there; some are unknown; but there are several that are very dangerous. Insects pursue man there with such relentlessness that, to protect themselves from them, the natives are obliged to envelop themselves in smoke in the time of the greatest heat, and this precaution is not even sufficient to shelter them from them [404]. Finally, fish, which are their principal resource, do not offer them an assured subsistence: like certain terrestrial animals, they are subject to migrations, and there are seasons when it is almost no longer possible to find any [405].

The diverse peoples of this continent cannot communicate with one another by means of watercourses, since the country possesses neither great rivers nor navigable rivers reaching the sea. Communications by land are very difficult for them, because the sterility of the soil and the need for subsistence place them at a great distance from one another, and because as one advances into the interior of the country, one finds it covered with impenetrable woods and swamps. Rapprochements between peoples can, moreover, be causes of progress only insofar as some possess resources that others lack, and they can make exchanges. When none of them possesses anything that it would be useful or possible to perfect or multiply, there cannot, properly speaking, exist any communication between them [406].

Thus, the soil of New Holland, and the nature of the products found there, were sufficient to arrest all development in the population. Before the arrival of the Europeans on this continent, the peoples there were as numerous as the state of subsistence permitted; they could engage in neither agriculture nor pastoral life, since they possessed neither plants nor animals; and it was still less in their power to multiply the fish or the wild animals; they had carried the art of fishing as far as it could go with the weak resources they possessed. These peoples were much more backward in civilization than the peoples of Africa; but they were also in a much more unfavorable position still. The Africans possessed several of our domestic animals and some cereal plants; the natives of New Holland possessed none. The former may have had, for centuries, some communications, either with the Asiatics, or with the peoples of Europe; the latter, before the arrival of European navigators, could have had none with any people on earth; they were in as complete an isolation as the inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego.

The soil of New Holland is, under the sixteenth degree of southern latitude, the same as under the thirty-sixth; it is as deprived, on one side as on the other, of communications, of fresh water, of vegetable productions, and of domestic animals. Also, whatever the difference in temperature between the diverse parts of this continent, none exists in the population. The men who inhabit the northern extremity are as weak, as stupid, as few in number, as miserable, in a word, as those who inhabit the southern extremity.

The influence exercised on the progress of civilization by the nature, exposure, and configuration of the soil, the temperature of the atmosphere, and the volume, distribution, and direction of the waters manifests itself nowhere with more evidence than on the vast continent of Asia. This continent is divided, by the configuration of the soil and by the course of the waters, into three great parts. At the southern extremity are found China, the Birman empire, Hindustan, Persia, Arabia, and Syria; in the center, Great and Little Bucharia, the deserts of Gobi and Shamo, and the country of the Mongols. At the northern extremity is found the Russian empire, from the fiftieth degree of latitude to the Arctic Ocean, and from Kamchatka to the Ural mountains. The rivers of the northern part discharge into the sea only beyond the seventieth degree of latitude, at a point where it has ceased to be navigable.

The waters of the central part are directed into the Aral Sea and the Caspian Sea, which have no communication with the Ocean, or into the Sea of Okhotsk. Finally, the waters of the southern part flow into the China Sea, the Indian Ocean, the Persian Gulf, and the Mediterranean Sea.

Arabia, by its geographical position, seems, at first glance, the country best situated to communicate with all the peoples of the globe: by the Mediterranean, it could be in relation with all the nations of Europe; by the Red Sea, it touches the eastern coasts of Egypt, Nubia, Sennar; finally, by the Persian Gulf and by the Indian Ocean, it could easily communicate with Persia, Hindustan, and China. It is thus placed so as to be able to easily appropriate the productions, the knowledge, the processes of the most anciently civilized nations of the globe. However, since the most remote times, it has made no progress. The Arabs today have the same intellectual development, the same morals, the same way of life, and the same population that they had two thousand years ago. After having made some progress in the Middle Ages, they have fallen back into their first state, if indeed they have not descended lower still. The nature and configuration of their soil largely account for this phenomenon.

Arabia, according to Niebuhr, can be considered only as a mass of mountains, surrounded on all sides by a strip of arid and sandy land; it has neither great rivers nor rivers. On the entire western coast, in an expanse of about twenty-eight degrees, there exist only a few torrents formed by rainwater, and which are dry for the greater part of the year. The eastern coast and the southern coast, from the mouth of the Euphrates to the strait of Bab-el-Mandeb, are no less devoid of fresh water; the Astan river, the most considerable of the eastern coast, flows only during the rainy season. The greatest part of Arabia is therefore not susceptible to cultivation; it presents only deserts strewn with bare rocks and low plains, where the action of the sun burns all plants and reduces the lands to sand. The dryness there is so great that it does not rain for entire years, and the rivers that descend from the mountains are lost in the sands without being able to reach the sea [407]. The lands that are situated at the foot of some mountains and that are susceptible to being artificially watered are cultivated, and the cultivation there is as careful and as varied as the soil permits [408]. But, without the help of the waters of these rivers, swollen in the rainy season and diverted onto the lands, the cultivator would be deprived even of the meager product of his harvests [409].

The soil of Arabia is divided into two fractions. One, which is the most considerable, is completely deprived of running water; it possesses fresh water only from wells, and is susceptible of producing only a few plants proper to feeding herds. The other, which possesses a few small rivers, is susceptible to being watered and to producing diverse food plants proper to man. The population is divided in the same manner as the soil: one part has adopted the pastoral life since an epoch more remote than the most ancient historical monuments; the other part has adopted the agricultural life and has made in agriculture the progress that its position and the nature of the soil have permitted it. The first has shown itself in its morals to be as immutable as the Desert; the second appears to have experienced revolutions analogous to those undergone by world commerce. The latter has lost its importance as other nations have discovered more fertile lands, and more numerous, more rapid, and less dangerous communications.The peoples of Hindustan and China, who are supposed to be the most anciently civilized on the globe, and who are, still today, the most numerous, are placed on a territory traversed almost from one extremity to the other by a multitude of rivers or streams. They enjoy a temperature mild enough and at the same time varied enough to cultivate a great number of species of vegetables proper to serve them immediately as subsistence. They possess the most fertile soil in the world, and they can easily communicate with one another, by sea, over an expanse of coast of about fifty-five degrees. Persia, which can have maritime communications with all the peoples of southern Asia, lacks rivers and streams, and consequently interior communications; a large part of it offers only a desert. However, as it is more susceptible to being watered than Arabia, it once made immense progress; but it has become sterile and depopulated again, since the barbarians who invaded it have let the canals that maintained its fertility perish.

In the center of Asia, between Tibet and the mountains of Siberia, is a vast plateau which, by the nature of the soil, by the elevation at which it is found above sea level, and by the lack of streams or rivers, is susceptible of producing only a few grasses and a few hard and articulated plants, proper only to serve as food for animals. It is from the bosom of this immense desert that there once came forth, according to an ancient tradition, those hordes of barbarians who spread to the southern extremity of Europe, and who marked their passage only by destruction and ruins. The men who roam these deserts are today such as their ancestors were in the most remote times: placed on an immutable soil, they have remained immutable like it.

The peoples who inhabit the north of the mountains of central Asia, beyond the fiftieth degree of north latitude, are placed on an even more ungrateful and more isolated soil. They possess some herds like the hordes of the Gobi desert; but, the land being still more sterile, they form less numerous tribes, and need, to subsist, a greater expanse of country. They are always wandering in the wake of their herds; when they have pitched their tents, it is rare that they spend more than five or six days without taking them up, to go seek new pastures elsewhere. Having adopted the same way of life as the Hottentots, they also have their morals and their stupidity; but as they are situated under a much more rigorous climate, as their soil is almost susceptible of no cultivation, and as moreover they can have no easy communication with civilized nations, it is probable that they will never emerge from the state in which they find themselves, unless a revolution occurs in the globe: they are condemned by the very nature of the places they inhabit, to remain hunters or pastoralists, and to wander eternally from desert to desert. The settlements that the Russians have formed on some points could not overcome the obstacles that nature there opposes to the efforts of man [410].