A GLOOMY VIEW.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XIX, Issue 22, 27 February 1891, Page 25

A GLOOMY VIEW.

j (New York Tablet ) Otis Mason ot the Bureau of Ethnology of the National Museum at Washington baa evolved a theory that tne resources of the Western Hemisphere will, in a comparatively short time, be exhausted as a support for civilised man, and that North and South America will be depopulate 1, except by savages of a very low order. Professor Masou said : " In order that this may bi understood, it is first necessary to explain tnat this western part of the world, known as North and South America, is, from the scientific point of view, an interior continent as compared with the lanl masses of the other hemispheres. By that is meant, while superior to Europe, Asia, or Africa in point of vegetable productiveness, it 19 less adapted to the support of animal life. To show that this is so, make a little comparison for yourself between tne b:a3ts of this hemisphere and thosj ot the other. The elephant of the Old World 19 represented here by the tapir. What we have as a substitute for the cornel is the llama, which is just big enough and sirorg enougn to c«ry wiat would ba a loid tor a man. Tue lion and tiger of A-.ii anl Afnca are represented on this side of tne earth by little more than big cits. " But to arrive at the nust marked exhibition of this contrast you cannot do better than consider tha monkeys, which are most highly devjlopat of all betsts, approaching very n3arly to man. What is there to ba foa-vi in the Americas to correspond with the anthropoid apes of the Old Work! .' I'ae gonlU, which uses a club ; the chimpanzee, wmch is easily Uught to wait upoa the table and to perform other domestic dutua ; and the ouraig, which presents so many likenesses to the human being, are represented on this side of the world by miserable little monkeys with tails. " Thus it is that this part of tha earta is terand an inferior continent, bjc-iine it is not atle to produce or support suci high development of aaunal lite as are foanl 11 tin ot lir part. Civilisei rmn ova sh TJ tj-Jiy, no as a ni'iuil proiacc, bat as an importation." Prefesior Mason then, in elaborate detail, describe 1 the lapse of wheat farming in one State after aao:!ier, until thj fijU has bsea translerrtd to the Dakotas aud the very verge o£ tha great desert ; the rapid ex-iaas'ion of t ie srl aid ot thi tniuenls ; th; tremmdous' drain v every way upou resource*, waici, n'wly deveiopei m thay are, must be nearly exhausted evja within the next ceatury ; tha ruiuous ost of produeiug aa I tr iniporciag articles n'CJ-nary to civilian I life, lie th »n c juclu i j 1 his remarkable f orecait as f illows : " To put it plainly tho RfWill'il Ainii-ii<n M>nnu hun oirnn-i over this continent legarileas of their future. Trny'htve delved into the s jil clupped into the mountains, an 1 used up the land until tbete stares them iv the facj the alruos: immediate p.-oipict of starvation. As tor the stat.- of Nevata, we have not bjen thore twentylive years and its resource., hive bija exhausted. In other words, it will almost immediately be uuablu to supporl a population. I've people who inhabit it are obliged to go bjcau«e ihoy can no longer unke their living there, an i it is biinp y a question of a short tune when it will come a deal State aud so lapse into the onditioa of a [ Terntoiy as impossible to ievive into the living coadition of a State ad if it were a UisLiiot ou I! c tuouu. "Tho painful rclhction incidental to the subject is that other S atea, it not all ot them, are destined sooner or later to follow

Nevada s example. The population of this continent cannot necessarily survive the means of subaistance afforded it by the country. If woat-science says is true, the white man has got to go. There has been ti»lk to the effect that the Chinese must vanish, but it must be confessed that they are very much better adapted to continue existence on this hemisphere than ourselves, for the obvious reason that they will survive us here, and that they will continue iv their own manner the civilisation which we have made an attempt to start. " Bat the Caucasion, if the scientific men are to be believed, will not be able to support existence on this hemisphere after the capital,' in the way of agriculture and mineral resources, has been exhausted, as it must be soon. He will disappear. Tne natural question is by what process ? It is very evident. When a superior race becomes poor, and thereby unable to maintain its superiority, it lapses into the condition of " poor whites." If you will journey through the South and take notice of the manner in which such conditions as those have become operative, you will perceive that the Caucasion does in this way become thriftless, incapable of exertion, eventually approaching to the savage. In other words, he loses his status m the scale of creation, •' Through the progressive exhaustion of the resources of the country State after State will necessarily become uninhabitable, because it will be incapable of supporting a population. Thus will confe about the depopulation of one State after another— of course by a slow process through many years— and there will be presented the remarkable phenomenon of the dropping from the Union of these States successively because they have come to be no longer entitled to representation under the law, by Senators and representatives. " Nevada will simply be the first State to succumb to the operation of this inevitable law. The outlook is melancholy. That is not to be denied. It is not pleasant to consider the frame of mind of the last civilised man on this continent a few centuries hence, standing on a sandhill where once the maiza luxuriously grew, and shedding a silent tear of affection on the past of a continent which is given up to savagery evermore."