The excessive mortality of European troops in India, and
the delicacy of the children of European parents, do not
affect the real question of acclimatization under proper
conditions. They only show that acclimatization is in
most cases necessary, not that it cannot take place. The
best examples of partial or complete acclimatization are
to be found where European races have permanently settled
in the tropics, and have maintained themselves for several
generations. There are, however, two sources of inaccuracy
to be guarded against, and these are made the most of by
the writers above referred to, and are supposed altogether
to invalidate results which are otherwise opposed to their
views. In the first place, we have the possibility of a
mixture of native blood having occurred; in the second,
there have almost always been a succession of immigrants
from the parent country, who continually intermingle with
the families of the early settlers. It is maintained that
one or other of these mixtures is absolutely necessary to
enable Europeans to continue long to flourish in the tropics.
There are, however, certain cases in which the sources
of error above mentioned are reduced to a minimum,
and cannot seriously affect the results; such as those
of the Jews, the Dutch at the Cape of Good Hope and
in the Moluccas, and the Spaniards in South America.
The Jews are a good example of acclimatization, because they
have been established for many centuries in climates very
different from that of their native land; they keep themselves
almost wholly free from intermixture with the people around
them; and they are often so populous in a country that the
intermixture with Jewish immigrants from other lands cannot
seriously affect the local purity of the race. They have, for
instance, attained a population of millions in such severe
climates as Poland and Russia; in the towns of Algeria they
have succeeded so conspicuously as to bring about an outburst
of anti-semitism; and in Cochin-China and Aden they succeed
in rearing children and forming permanent communities.
In some of the hottest parts of South America Europeans are
perfectly acclimatized, and where the race is kept pure it
seems to be even improved. Some very valuable notes on this
subject were furnished to the present writer by the well-known
botanist, Richard Spruce, who resided many years in South
America, but who was prevented by ill health from publishing
his researches (see A. R. Wallace, Notes of a Botannist,
1908). As a careful, judicious and accurate observer,
both of man and nature, he had few superiors. He says:
The white inhabitants of Guayaquil (lat. 2 deg. 13' S.) are kept
pure by careful selection. The slightest tincture of red
or black blood bars entry into any of the old families who
are descendants of Spaniards ftom the Provincias Vascongadas
or those bordering the Bay of Biscay, where the morals are
perhaps the purest (as regards the intercourse of the sexes)
of any in Europe, and where for a girl, even of the poorest
class, to have a child before marriage is the rarest thing
possible. The consequence of this careful breeding is,
that the women of Guavaquil are considered (and justly)
the finest along the whole Pacific coast. They are often
tall, sometimes very handsome, decidedly healthy, although
pale, and assuredly prolific enough. Their sons are big,
stout men, but when they lead inactive lives are apt to
become fat and sluggish. Those of them, however, who have
farms in the savannahs and are accustomed to take long
rides in all weathers, and those whose trade obliges them
to take frequent journeys in the mountainous interior, or
even to Europe and North America, are often as active and as
little burdened with superfluous flesh as a Scotch farmer.
The oldest Christian town in Peru is Piura (lat. 5 deg. S.),
which was founded by Pizarro himself. The climate is very
hot, especially in the three or four months following
the southern solstice. In March 1843 the temperature
only once fell as low as 83 deg. during the whole month, the
usual lowest night temperature being 85 deg. . Yet people of
all colours find it very healthy, and the whites are very
prolific. I resided in the town itself nine months, and
in the neighbourhood seven months more. The population (in
1863-1864) was about 10,000, of which not only a considerable
proportion was white, but was mostly descended from the
first emigrants after the conquest. Purity of descent was
not, however, quite so strictly maintained as at Guayaquil.
The military adventurers, who have often risen to high or
even supreme rank in Peru, have not seldom been of mixed
race, and fear or favour has often availed to procure them
an alliance with the oldest and purest-blooded families.
These instances, so well stated by Spruce, seem to demonstrate
the complete acclimatization of Spaniards in some of the hottest
parts of South America. Although we have here nothiog to do
with mixed races, yet the want of fertility in these has been
often taken to be a fact inherent in the mongrel race, and has
been also sometimes held to prove that neither the European
nor his half-bred offspring can maintain themselves in the
tropics. The following observation is therefore of interest:--
At Guayaquil for a lady of good family---married or unmarried--to
be of loose morals is so uncommon, that when it does happen
it is felt as a calamity by the whole community. But here,
and perhaps in most other towns in South America, a poor girl
of mixed race-especially if good-looking--rarely thinks of
marrying one of her own class until she has--as the Brazilians
say--``approveitada de sua mocidade'' (made the most of
her youth) in receiving presents from gentlemen. If she
thus bring a good dowry to her husband, he does not care to
inquire, or is not sensitive, about the mode in which it was
acquired. The consequence of this indiscriminate sexual
intercourse, especially if much prolonged, is to diminish,
in some cases to paralyse, the fertility of the female. And
as among people of mixed race it is almost universal, the
population of these must fall off both in numbers and quality.
The following example of divergent acclimatization of the
same race to hot and cold zones is very interesting, and
will conclude our extracts from Spruce's valuable notes:--
One of the most singular cases connected with this subject
that have fallen under my own observation, is the difficulty,
or apparent impossibility, of acclimatizing the Red Indian
in a certain zone of the Andes. Any person who has compared
the physical characters of the native races of South America
must be convinced that these have all originated in a common
stirps. Many local differences exist, but none capable of
invalidating this conclusion. The warmth yet shade-loving
Indian of the Amazon; the Indian of the hot, dry and treeless
coasts of Peru and Guayaquil, who exposes his bare head to
the sun with as much zest as an African negro; the Indian
of the Andes, for whom no cold seems too great, who goes
constantly barelegged and often bare-headed, through whose
rude straw hut the piercing wind of the paramos sweeps
and chills the white man to the very bones;--all these,
in the colour and texture cf the skin, the hair and other
important features, are plainly of one and the same race.
Now there is a zone of the equatorial Andes, ranging between
about 4000 and 6000 feet altitude, where the very best
flavoured coffee is grown, where cane is less luxuriant but
more saccharine than in the plains, and which is therefore
very desirable to cultivate, but where the red man sickens and
dies. Indians taken down from the sierra get ague and
dysentery. Those of the plains find the temperature chilly,
and are stricken down with influenza and pains in the
limbs. I have seen the difficulty experienced in getting
farms cultivated in this zone, on both sides of the
Cordillera. The permanent residents are generally limited
to the major-domo and his family; and in the dry season
labourers are hired, of any colour that can be obtained--some
from the low country, others from the highlands--for three,
four, or five months, who gather in and grind the cane, and
plant for the harvest of the following year; but the staff of
resident Indian labourers, such as exists in the farms of the
sierra, cannot be kept up in the Fungas, as these half-warm
valleys are called. White men, who take proper precautions,
and are not chronically soaked with cane-spirit, stand the
climate perfectly, but the creole whites are still too much
caballeros to devote themselves to agricultural work.
In what is now the republic of Ecuador, the only peopled
portions are the central valley, between the two ridges of
the Andes--height 7000 to 12,000 feet--and the hot plain at
their western base; nor do the wooded slopes appear to have
been inhabited, except by scattered savage hordes, even in
the time of the Incas. The Indians of the highlands are
the descendants of others who have inhabited that region
exclusively for untold ages; and a similar affirmation may
be made of the Indians of the plain. Now, there is little
doubt that the progenitors of both these sections came from
a temperate region (in North America); so that here we have
one moiety acclimatized to endure extreme heat, and the
other extreme cold; and at this day exposure of either to the
opposite extreme (or even, as we have seen, to the climate
of an intermediate zone) is always pernicious and often
fatal. But if this great difference has been brought about
in the red man, might not the same have happened to the white
man? Plainly it might, time being given; for one cannot doubt
that the inherent adaptability is the same in both, or (if
not) that the white man possesses it in a higher degree.
The observations of Spruce are of themselves almost conclusive
as to the possibility of Europeans becoming acclimatized in
the tropics; and if it is objected that this evidence applies
only to the dark-haired southern races, we are fortunately
able to point to facts, almost equally well authenticated
and conclusive, in the case of one of the typical Germanic
races. In South Africa the Dutch have been settled and
nearly isolated for over 200 years, and have kept themselves
almost or quite free from native intermixture. They are
still preponderatingly fair in complexion, while physically
they are tall and strong. They marry young and have large
families. The population, according to a census taken in 1798,
was under 22,000. In 1865 it was near 182,000, the majority
being of ``Dutch, German or French origin, mostly descendants
of original settlers.'' In more recent times, the conditions
have been so greatly changed by immigration, that the later
statistics cease to have a definite meaning with regard to
acclimatization. We have here a population which doubled
itself every twenty-two years; and the greater part of this
rapid increase must certainly be due to the old European
immigrants. In the Moluccas, where the Dutch have had
settlements for 250 years, some of the inhabitants trace
their descent to early immigrants; and these, as well as
most of the people of Dutch descent in the east, are quite
as fair as their European ancestors, enjoy excellent health,
and are very prolific. But the Dutch accommodate themselves
admirably to a tropical climate, doing much of their work
early in the morning, dressing very lightly, and living a
quiet, temperate and cheerful life. They also pay great
attention to drainage and general cleanliness. In addition
