little while and the race will be extinct as the dodo." [1] Meanwhile Wiener goes so far as to say that the acclimatisation of the white man has only given good results where there is a cross with native blood. "Families of pure white race generally begin to die out in the third generation, and become the hopeless victims of scrofula."[2] Orton makes the admission, that few of the whites in the Amazon valley "are of pure Caucasian descent." A later American traveller, Mr. Curtis, declares that the interior of Brazil is unsuited to Europeans. "The climate is so enervating that, after an experience of two years, the German colonist will be found by his Portuguese predecessor sitting in the shade of the fig-tree, and hiring a negro to do his work." Mr. Curtis adds, that even in the southern provinces the success of colonists has been very small. "Most of the colonies have broken up," and many of the members " have succumbed to the influences of the climate and died of fever."[3] If these statements are true, and there is a good deal to support them, it would seem as if Southern and Central America, north of Uruguay, are never likely to be the home of the white man in dense masses. If the Indians are dying out, like the pure-blooded Spaniards, the country will be peopled by half-castes or by negroes, or it may be by Chinamen, who have got a footing in Peru, or by coolies, such as are working profitably in British Guiana.
Meanwhile, it must be borne in mind that some observers take a much more promising view of the prospects of the Indian than M. Wiener and Mr. Orton. Mr. Curtis distinguishes the races in Ecuador as divided
- ↑ Orton's Andes and Amazon, p. 316.
- ↑ Wiener's Pérou et Bolivie, p. 30.
- ↑ Curtis's Capitals of Southern America, p. 706.
