Chapter X · ON THE SERVITUDE OF RIVERS.

If the servitude of rivers be the noblest and most important victory which man has obtained over the licentiousness of nature,55 then assuredly ancient civilizations bear away the palm in this respect from the modern, and Britain must be permitted to occupy perhaps the lowest place in the scale of those empires and nations who, by their industry and knowledge, overcame the difficulties which the right management of river courses presents to civilized man.

More than forty centuries ago the Nile was completely at the service of the ancient Egyptians, and the prosperity of Babylon and Nineveh leaves no doubt as to the subjugation of the Tigris and the mighty Euphrates. To come to later times, the Rhine itself, even in the days of the early Roman emperors, must have been subjugated by the labours of the primitive Batavians, and the revolt of Civilis, with his Batavian legions, testifies as to the energy and intelligence of the race. And now by the patient industry of their descendants, that land, seemingly doomed by nature to be wasted on one side by the turbulent ocean, on the other by the great rivers which traverse it, presents a spectacle unequalled in the world. Even the despised Oriental race of China, that unsolved problem in the history of mankind, whose capital the combined forces of England and France now threaten, seems never to have had a difficulty in mastering the great problems which the necessity for the subjugation of rivers forces on civilized man; the Chinese waters have been turned to the most profitable account; their deltas seem healthy, and abound with life, with Chinese life, at least. The great rivers of the Celestial empire give no trouble to its inhabitants; agriculture is said to be perfect; no one seems to have proposed to throw the refuse of Pekin into the nearest stream, that stream too, as it might happen to be, the source from which the inhabitants of the capital obtain the water required for their manufactures and for the arts of life.56

Civilization on the banks of the Thames is no doubt very different and very superior to what it possibly can be on the banks of the Yellow River, but as, non omnia possumus, as different races and nations, like individuals, have each their peculiar excellences and forms of civilization, excelling in some, deficient in other qualities of mind and body, it may undoubtedly happen that even the English of the present day, the most perfectly civilized nation on the earth, or that ever lived, might take a hint from some other nations on points respecting which their otherwise inimitable genius seems to show some slight deficiencies. As regards art, for example, we owe some hints to the pitiful States of ancient Athens and Corinth; the despicable Copt had connected the Mediterranean and Red Sea by a canal—the art of re-opening which seems now to be lost; even the miserable native Peruvian and Mexican had carried the arts of mining, of irrigation, and the use of artificial manures, to an extent which surprises the men of modern times, who, in Britain at least, think that civilization really only appeared in the world during the reign of Queen Anne, as in France the era of the Grand Monarque is universally admitted to be the period when the French nation first threw off its primitive barbarous and Celtic form of civilization, assuming the character and social habits of that race to whom they owe their name, though not their descent. If we cast our eyes over the surface of the earth, aided by the lights, somewhat obscure, no doubt, of history, certain facts rising above the ocean of detail appear as landmarks. The philosophic historian points to, as peculiarly within his province, the transfer of the seat of power from nation to nation, from race to race; how before Alexander appeared there seemed to have been a Sesostris; after the son of Philip came Julius the Dictator; then Napoleon; and drawing conclusions as to the future from the past, historians see no improbability, at least no impossibility, in New Zealand, after the lapse of many centuries, producing the Hume of the southern hemisphere; whilst a future capital arising in the desert regions of Siberia or Northern America, may one day dictate to the world.57 Ever at variance as to the rise and fall of empires, they are yet agreed as to certain facts and circumstances, many of which are still verifiable by the geographical distribution of the existing rivers and mountain regions of the globe; and even if man, in the plenitude of his scepticism, were disposed to doubt, monuments exist, the undeniable work of human hands, under circumstances implying the existence of a social system which cannot well be misunderstood. “In the boundless annals of time, man’s life and labours must equally be measured as a fleeting moment;” but the Pyramids, and ruins of Karnac survive the Kaliffs and Cæsars, the Ptolemies and Pharaohs, and countless monarchs and dynasties prior even to them. Thus, whatever learned disputants may imagine as to the primitive occupation of the valley of the Nile, the date of its occupancy, and the race by whom it was first cultivated, we have in the Pyramids incontestable proofs of a vast antiquity. Whatever historians may say of the antiquity of ancient Rome, the Cloaca Maxima of Servius alone refutes the beautiful romance of Virgil—how Lavinius and Turnus received Æneas ere Rome was; how Romulus and Remus founded Rome, and were succeeded by seven kings, none of whom ever in reality existed. But the existence of the Cloaca Maxima and the researches of the illustrious Niebuhr tell another tale more consonant with what we know of man’s social and physical nature. In the most remote times, man early adopted those measures of self-preservation which nature or simple observation teaches him. History gives but little information as to the measures adopted by ancient nations to secure public health; and were it not for the remains of the Cloaca Maxima, so called, of Servius Tullius, we should be as ignorant as Virgil assuredly was of the ancient condition of Rome prior to the reign of the seven fabulous kings.58 Unquestionably the ancient race which preceded those grand Romans who fill the page of history for nearly twenty centuries, had discovered such means, and adopted measures for the safety of the people. Authentic history, it is true, commenced with the Greeks and Romans, and the history of Germany dates from Cæsar and Tacitus; but the subjugation of the double-horned Rhine59 must have commenced long before “the building of the city.”60 But the world as known to the Romans, even during the reign of Trajan, was a contracted world compared to what it is now. The tropical regions of the East, and their vast populations, were wholly unknown to them; of Africa they knew but little, of Asia still less, whilst the New World was as if it existed not. Thus certain great problems in the history of mankind were never presented to them, problems having a basis in facts which men, for obvious reasons, are so unwilling to admit. The periplus of the Mediterranean might almost be said to form the Roman world; beyond the Rhine they made no conquests; the Danube formed their north-eastern boundary; the eastern shores of the Black Sea were but rarely visited by them; beyond the Euphrates and Tigris they, the Romans, never gained a footing, whilst from tropical Africa they were entirely excluded. Thus at no time were they called on to solve the problem as to the possibility of European life maintaining its ground in tropical regions; at no period were they called upon to give an opinion on the momentous question which now agitates the world, the admission, namely, of the primitive coloured races of men into the bosom of civilized society.61 “Wheresoever the Roman conquered, he inhabits;” a just observation we owe to Seneca, confirmed by the history of that wonderful people. As their conquests were confined to countries in which the natives of Italy could at that time live and thrive, the rapid extension of their empire, language, and forms of civilization, need not be wondered at. Thus Rome successively became mistress of many nations and races, but these were races with whom the Romans could freely amalgamate; at no period of her history were they called on to contend with the two great questions, the one social the other physical, involved in the attempt to occupy by a white race a tropical country, and a land inhabited by a purely savage race of coloured men; the problems presented by modern history of a European race attempting to hold India by the sword, to colonize the American world from the Polar Sea to the Land of Fire, to inhabit, if not to cultivate, the insalubrious Antilles, the banks of the Oronoco, or of the still more dreadful Senegal, Gambia, and Niger, nowhere occur in Roman or Grecian history; so that these are problems towards the solution of which ancient history offers no assistance.

A historian whose works I have already quoted on several occasions, and who of all men had perhaps with most profit studied human nature, has remarked that the aspiring genius of Rome sacrificed vanity to ambition, deeming it more prudent to adopt virtue and merit for her own wheresoever they were found, among slaves or strangers, enemies or barbarians. This sacrifice it was easy for the Italian race to make; naturally swarthy, and not unfrequently olive-coloured, they met with no race with whom the Romans might not freely amalgamate. Far different is it with modern Europe and her races; follow them to tropical India, Africa, and America, and it will be seen that extinction seems the sure result of all their efforts, whether they unite with the native races or not. If they unite, their purer blood, as we may so call it, soon disappears in the stream of a darker population; if they spurn the union, climate, or as some would term it, malaria, speedily exterminates their race and name.

In the first or second chapter of this Essay I ventured to suggest that the discovery of the art to modify the earth, air, and waters of all countries, so as to render them habitable for all mankind, was the grand problem man is now called on to solve. In the construction of the continents of the globe, nature seems to have had in view the formation by centres of life of the living inhabitants of the globe. In these centres she placed forms of life equal to sustain their existence, occasionally aided, at other times unaided, by human industry. In the virgin forests of America the aborigines lived and throve; under their hands the earth underwent no modification; to the negro the deadly regions of Central Africa are healthful and pleasant, though at times abandoned to nature, at times deeply modified by human industry. India and Java, the Malayan peninsula, as well as ancient Mexico and China, were many of them highly cultivated regions, in which the aborigines multiplied and enjoyed life; to the European they are premature graves.

But when it is attempted to transfer these centres of life to other regions, the attempt has uniformly failed.

And yet the Romans, admitting that they never encountered a tropical climate, seem to have colonized and thriven in countries in which the natives of Western Europe cannot now maintain their ground, cannot keep an army effective in the field for any length of time. The Roman legions and citizens occupied the country of Numidia without an effort; modern France, with an army larger than Rome ever had, can scarcely maintain its position in Algeria. The young population are cut off in their infancy, and it would seem that to maintain a Celtic race in Algeria will test the energies of an empire which it is true formed but a small province of imperial Rome. When we contrast late history with the diffusion of Rome’s armies and citizens over the then known world, we are forced to the conclusion, either that the Italian constitutions of those days were stronger than those of the present inhabitants of Europe, or that the form of civilization presented more safeguards for the protection of health and life.

Nothing like the disasters of Varna and the Crimea seems ever to have overtaken the Roman legions who guarded in the time of Trajan the mouths of the Danube and the coasts of the Euxine, or restrained and kept in check the barbarous Moors.

Amongst the arts practised by the ancients, but now lost, we must include, I think, the knowledge of that discipline and practical skill by which the Roman, Greek, and even Tartar generals, contrived to keep their armies in the field in health and efficiency, whether storming the castles of Jugurtha, or building walls of defence in that land where English and French troops can neither fight nor march.62 Amongst the lost arts, still known it would seem to the Chinese, is that of rendering salubrious the site of vast cities and camps. If I am right in the principles I have endeavoured to establish throughout this Essay, this art must have been based on the practical knowledge that, generally speaking, the earth, as framed by nature, is not usually an unhealthy habitat for those races which grow up in her centres of created life, and it is only when man interferes, and interferes imperfectly, that the air and waters become pestilential to him. The secret lies, no doubt, in agriculture, that first of human arts—that art by which civilization exists. That human life is of as much value by the banks of the Meuse, the Scheldt, and the Rhine, as in Sussex or Surrey, is due to the industry of the inhabitants of Brabant and the islands of the Rhine. On man in a great measure depends the position which life is to hold in the scale of fate; he may raise it to its maximum or sink it to zero. Centuries, it is true, may elapse before human industry can render the banks of the Senegal, the Maranon, or the Zambeze, a fit abode for civilized European man, but if the European persist in transporting himself to these haunts, he must discover the means to do so in safety, or perish in the attempt. Nature did not make these countries for him, but she gave him reason, judgment, observation, and the power of generalization, on the right use of which faculties his safety must ever depend. The celebrated Jefferson apologizes in one his confidential dispatches to his government for noticing various political movements in countries seemingly remote from and devoid of all interest to a citizen of the United States of America, by remarking, that although such matters seem remote and foreign to the object of his duties, they may yet at no distant period swell into relations of sufficient magnitude to shake the world. As in the political, so in the moral world; whether the empire of the Sultans stand or fall, may be a matter of little import to an inhabitant of Western Europe, nor need it distress him that the finest countries in the world are nearly reduced to deserts under the administration of the odious Turcoman. But it may be useful to him to be on his guard as to the condition of countries through which the spirit of commerce now urges the Western nations. Many of these countries do not improve; to compare them with what they were in the days of Trajan were merely a mockery; the low lands of the delta of the Danube are simply foci of fever and pestilence, and are likely to continue so under their present government.

All history points to the East and to Africa as the seat and source of plague, and the entanglement of Eastern affairs presses more and more on the European nations; if we may trust the statistics of commerce, Western Europe at times draws a large portion of her subsistence from countries of which we know but little. On this I make no remark, my object being merely to show that, however distant these lands lie, their malarious condition has an influence over the European family of nations, an influence which daily increases socially, and which, though originating in the obscure and unknown East, has shown itself at times at Rome and Moscow, London and Paris, in characters compared to which all other evils appear insignificant.

All that lives or has lived is doomed to die, to waste away, and to disappear; as it perishes it is consumed by nature’s processes, in such a manner as to entail no danger to the living world, unless civilized man interferes. For civilized man she has made no provision, saving the bestowing on him a soil more or less fertile, a constitution more or less equal to toil, a reasoning power, which in things practical must not be measured by the loftiness of his conceptions and generalizations.

Whenever and wheresoever he congregates into masses, there “the earth, the air, and the waters,” receive modifications from him, which, when injurious, he alone can rectify. The most consolatory view which man can take of such a condition of things is unquestionably to believe them to a great extent remediable by his own labour and intelligence; for even should he fail, there remains to him the consolation that he has done his best.