The
South American uses the horse which the European brought better than
the European. Many races use the rifle--the especial and very
complicated weapon of civilised man--better, upon an average, than
he can use it. The savage with simple tools--tools he appreciates--
is like a child, quick to learn, not like an old man, who has once
forgotten and who cannot acquire again. Again, if there had been an
excellent aboriginal civilisation in Australia and America, where,
botanists and zoologists, ask, are its vestiges? If these savages
did care to cultivate wheat, where is the wild wheat gone which
their abandoned culture must have left? if they did give up using
good domestic animals, what has become of the wild ones which would,
according to all natural laws, have sprung up out of them? This much
is certain, that the domestic animals of Europe have, since what may
be called the discovery of the WORLD during the last hundred years,
run up and down it. The English rat--not the pleasantest of our
domestic creatures--has gone everywhere; to Australia, to New
Zealand, to America: nothing but a complicated rat-miracle could
ever root him out. Nor could a common force expel the horse from
South America since the Spaniards took him thither; if we did not
know the contrary we should suppose him a principal aboriginal
animal.
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