NEW HOMES FOR ANGLOSAXONS.

Southland Times, Issue 649, 27 March 1867, Page 2

NEW HOMES FOR ANGLOSAXONS.

(From the " Daily Telegraph.") "Will the earth ever be too small for our race, as many countries — China, England, and others — are for their inhabitants at this day ? It is a curious speculation, and one that has engaged ingenious minds, some of which have declared that the organic life of animals and plants adds perpetually to the bulk of the planet. Others have anticipated wholesale modifications in humanity; so that, being masters of the region of the air, and, being otherwise developed^ the^ family of man will be at no loss for elbow room. While the Darwinians affirm, with the strict and cold logic of their theory, that the doctrine of " Natural- Selection" will for ever weed the weakest out,-* and*' proportion the number of living men to the spheroid which they occupy. The last view seems most plausible, since most philosophers can point to the fact that, if some such principle-did not govern the animated world, our earth would have been choked long ago with", life. Eye-witnesses describe the crowds of passenger pigeons which fly across, the American continent as obscuring the sunlight; and stretching in a continuous line sometimes for three hundred miles by three or tour in breadth. If no fixed law checked the reproduction of these birds, they would fill the world in fifty years, and crowd every living thing out of it. The locust swarms, though they, afe merely insects, also oppress those who have seen them with the same terrible plethora of numbers. Where they pass they hide the sky ; where they settle they, cover the ground ; and their unchecked" multiplication would, in a generation, make vegetation impossible. The ooze, which came up on the Atlantic Cable of 1865 has been found to be almost entirely composed of the globular casein of extinct microscopic creatures, which, could they increase without some constant law of repression; would make a jelly of the liquid sea, and produce shallows and mudbanks where it lies three thousand fathoms deep, Since a thousand, germs of Ufopefiah, ftr Qm tha,t* swyv?§B find'

grows to perfection, there is no particular reason to fear that those created things which escape the iron law of Selection will have no room "in the world. It is the astronomical map .which suggests the idea/of over-crowding—" this little O, the earth," looks' so.^ridiculously in the planetary system by the side of the majestic Jupiter and splendid Saturn, and the vast central luminary. /But since, whatever Darwinians maydsay, -ihe human race does not .creep more and more over the face of the globe, we really might begin to feel we were outgrowing the earth, if a glance i.'.at any glob'eydid not reassure us with the conviction that this is a matter entirely concerning posterity. There is a ..huge central Asia to be redeemed from nomadism, and the endless islands of the.; Eastern Archipelago. British I^orth America is now peopled by ! Beavers^ moose,' and coyotes, rather than settlers ; Australia lies almost a maiden continent; the southern islands of New Zealand, and "all:, the groups of the Pacific are still, virgin soil. Then, too, there is the. boundless interior of itored with lakes and rivers 'which will some day bear -a commerce iinimagined now, and rich uplands which will feed *ko -trwld with new fruits and foods. If all these lands were filled, .there r would still be the, marvellous expanse _of *" South America, merely fringed at J present with settlements, and obvernmehts4r-an expanse where, if it be true that the valley of the Mississippi can. sustain aThundred millions of men, the Orinoco,, the La Plata, the Para, and above all the mighty Amazon, could doubtless feed more souls than nows exists in the entire world. A pioneer of civilisation — the learned Agassiz — has just reported upon the watersheds and network of this last magnificent river. Looking at the ordinary atlasses, persons might be apt to imagine that a good deal was already known of the vast continent between the Pacific and the Atlantic seas. It is nicely filled in with names on the map, and it is made up of neatly, defined States — Brazil, the Grunars, Bolivio, Peru, Paraguay, Chili, La Plata, Patagonia, and the restl Nay, we hear of" wars and revolutions, 'all in the most regular manner, as if' in our usual human fashion, the land had . been thoroughly possessed first of all, and then the throat-cutting business characteristic of "land hunger" had followed. But, in : reality, next to nothing .of the vast peninsula is held or explored ; and, - ; as to population, the inhabitants of .Brazil are a merejhandful of Portuguese ans Xnoians, while Brazil alone is ten times' as big as all France. The valley of the AMazon itself and its river are terrestrial "wonders, which we are only beginning to- grasp, though Martius and Spix, Helinreichen, Humboldt, Pohl, d'Orbigiiy, Wilkes, and so many others, have tried to tell us of the marvellous land. It has" been too big for them ; but lately three very good observers have prospected this wilderness of nature. Mr Bates, the naturalist, has given us an admirableboo.k on.itsnatural history; Captain Burton is composing^ one on the races and features of the land ; and^Professor Agassiz has returned to Boston with such an account of the capacity and extent of the Nile of South America as must make the mouths of geographers water. Indeed, the Nile isWa^mere mountain torrent compared with this superb river, by for the largest in the world— a river which drains' :the better half of a continent into its channel^ and, in flowing out into the sea darkens the the waves for eighty miles with the rich alluvial washings from- millions of 1 acres of forest and savannah. Agassiz computes at 4000 miles the entire course of the stream, and he describes its valley — • if that name can be used— as a Vas.t and unbroken plain, .perfectly level,^ and densely covered with the mcab luxuriant vegetation. . Over parts of that plain the great river sometimes overflows,- when a piragua may be rowed for a. hundred leagues in any direction, through labyrinth of georgeous tropical growth,' of coral tree, magnolias, screw pine, paling uranias, eugenias, casuarinas, bread fruit, and wild melons, with flowers of dazzling splendor, and creatures of bold and beautiful shape and hue. Yet the great -naturalist declares this glowing and. humicL region to be very healthy, and fitted for universal colonisation. Mr Bates has also observed, that, in his opinion, the crowning race of man— the last : - production of " genus homo, ordo primates," will .make its home under the equator m : ;these magnificent' solitudes, of .which the mighty Amazon is -but,, the principal drain, a thousand other streams of volume feeding it from endless forests and meadows where no one has ever yet penetrated. - The temperature is Italian rather than African ; for the Gxeat -Amazon,;flowing always against the trade winds, keeps up a healthy, stir.in^the atmosphere, ; which mitigates the heat. Agassiz has passed from the ocean-like mouth of the river to its myriad, sources iii the Aides, and he also thinks that there is a region here for unwrittea. histories, and for races of men as numerous as the sands ofe the sea.; :.j.' ? ">if\ It is plain that the era. r of this (< vast southern land is coming. The-Braz&ans at Rio, San; Salvador, and Para are 3rmere sprinkling 'of ;idle Por'tuguese-'and degroes, who have lighted upon its confines like flies on the edge of a, sugar' basin. The colonisation of the/noble region will begin in earnest from' the. fecundiandcenergetic races of the Teutons; and cAngtot- Saxons. The Americans, with whom the Monroe doctrine is an ethnic instinct, .th& swarming Germans, and likewise, the people of our qwn crowded islands, will by-and-bye begin to occupy the Amazon's valley; To them it will reveal the secrets of that wealth which "it has hoarded since the making of j the world; and iw|b|knows what new arts and forms of life may* not blossom from, old civilizations transported into such glorious latitudes ! There are signs," unmistakeable to the pbservent eye, which' show that emigration will Soon take i thid road. Besides the exploratory? 6f, savants and travellers; thelnew Joute from Australia and New Zealand by the, iathmus i§ directing fttteatiga tq SquJ^

America. Last week there was a large and earnest meeting- held- in the city to open up the Nicaragua route between the two seas, after the plan of Captain Bedford Pirn ; and we have lately had for our guest here a dowager Queen of the islands which lie upon this new and grand high road of commerce. All these things point to a new impulse of trade and emigration, which will, in a few generations, make the vast Pacific sea, with its clusters of gem-like islets, and its gorgeous continent of South America, familiar things. Great cities will rise along the mighty stream, and noble ports will open under the shadows of the Andes, where navies of which no keel is yet laid— will float. Dr Cumming, who expects the millennium daily, may hesitate to believe in such a future ; but, as we hear of these " signs of the times," we incline to agree with the travellers, that the infinite waters of this Queen of Eivers were not created to give drink to tapirs and jaguars alone.