Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/43

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

( 33 )

CHAPTER IV. ¬In which Moreen begins his Account of the Island of Armata. ¬"As there can be little doubt that this planet, like our own, was peopled from two human beings, and as from what remains of my father's writings, they seem strongly to resemble each other in all the characteristics of the species, there is probably a great similarity in their re- mote histories. — Primitive man is nearly the same every where, except as accidental circum- stances have had their influence. — In climates soft and enervating, the inhabitants have often been for ages stationary, and the robuster nations have been their conquerors. With us, indeed, they have repeatedly changed the face of things — multitudes expelling multitudes, like the waves of the sea, sweeping away yet mixing with one another, but still preserving throughout all their changes the distinct and original character of one people. The governments of mankind in ¬d the ¬