mutandis_, those of the
intertropical African. This means, that the exuberance of soil, and the
heat of the climate, makes them agriculturists rather than shepherds,
and idlers rather than agriculturists; since the least possible amount
of exertion gives them roots and fruits; whilst it is only those wants
which are compatible with indolence that they care to satisfy. They
presume rather than improve upon the warmth of their suns, and the
fertility of the soil. When they get liquor, they get drunk; when they
work hardest, they cut mahogany. Canoes and harpoons represent the
native industry. _Wulasha_ is the name of their Evil Spirit, and
_Liwaia_ that of a water-god.

I cannot but think that there is much intermixture amongst them. At the
same time, the _data_ for ascertaining the amount are wanting. Their
greatest intercourse has, probably, been with the Negro; their next
greatest with the Englishman. Of the population of the interior, we know
next to nothing. Here their neighbours are Spaniards.

They are frontagers to the river San Juan. This gives them their value
in politics.

They are the only well-known extant Indians between Guatemala and
Veragua. This gives them their value in ethnology.

The populations to which they were most immediately allied, have
disappeared from history. This isolates them; so that there is no class
to which they can be subordinated. At the same time, they are quite as
like the nearest known tribes as the _American_ ethnologist is prepared
to expect.

What they were in their truly natural state, when, unmodified by either
Englishman or Spaniard, Black or Indian, they represented the indigenous
civilization (such as it was) of their coast, is uncertain.

* * * * *

That the difference between the North and South American aborigines has
been over-rated, is beyond doubt. The tendency, however, to do so,
decreases. An observer like Sir R. Schomburgk, who is at once minute in
taking notice, and quick at finding parallels, adds his suffrage to that
of Cicca de Leon and others, who enlarge upon the extent to which the
Indians of the New World in general look "like children of one family."
On the other hand, however, there are writers like D'Orbigny. These
expatiate upon the difference between members of the same class, so as
to separate, not only Caribs from Algonkins, or Peruvians from
Athabaskans, but Peruvians from Caribs, and Patagonians from Brazilia