If the servitude of rivers be the noblest and most important victory which man has obtained over the licentiousness1 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 civilized2 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 subjugation3 of the Tigris and the mighty4 Euphrates. To come to later times, the Rhine itself, even in the days of the early Roman emperors, must have been subjugated5 by the labours of the primitive6 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 doomed7 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 deltas9 seem healthy, and abound10 with life, with Chinese life, at least. The great rivers of the Celestial11 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 peculiar12 excellences13 and forms of civilization, excelling in some, deficient14 in other qualities of mind and body, it may undoubtedly15 happen that even the English of the present day, the most perfectly16 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 Mediterranean17 and Red Sea by a canal—the art of re-opening which seems now to be lost; even the miserable18 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 reign19 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 landmarks20. The philosophic21 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 lapse22 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 dictate23 to the world.57 Ever at variance24 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 geographical25 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 boundless26 annals of time, man’s life and labours must equally be measured as a fleeting27 moment;” but the Pyramids, and ruins of Karnac survive the Kaliffs and C?sars, the Ptolemies and Pharaohs, and countless28 monarchs29 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 antiquity30. 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 ?neas 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 consonant31 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 remains32 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 fabulous33 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. Authentic34 history, it is true, commenced with the Greeks and Romans, and the history of Germany dates from C?sar 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 unwilling35 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 entirely36 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 momentous37 question which now agitates38 the world, the admission, namely, of the primitive coloured races of men into the bosom39 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 amalgamate40; 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 purely41 savage42 race of coloured men; the problems presented by modern history of a European race attempting to hold India by the sword, to colonize43 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 aspiring44 genius of Rome sacrificed vanity to ambition, deeming it more prudent45 to adopt virtue46 and merit for her own wheresoever they were found, among slaves or strangers, enemies or barbarians47. 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 extinction48 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 spurn49 the union, climate, or as some would term it, malaria50, speedily exterminates51 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 virgin52 forests of America the aborigines lived and throve; under their hands the earth underwent no modification53; 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 premature54 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 colonized55 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 infancy56, 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 diffusion57 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 Moors58.
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, contrived59 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 rendering60 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 interferes61, 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 abode62 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, judgment63, observation, and the power of generalization64, on the right use of which faculties65 his safety must ever depend. The celebrated66 Jefferson apologizes in one his confidential67 dispatches to his government for noticing various political movements in countries seemingly remote from and devoid68 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 swell69 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 distress70 him that the finest countries in the world are nearly reduced to deserts under the administration of the odious71 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 delta8 of the Danube are simply foci of fever and pestilence72, 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 entanglement73 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 malarious74 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 insignificant75.
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 entail76 no danger to the living world, unless civilized man interferes. For civilized man she has made no provision, saving the bestowing77 on him a soil more or less fertile, a constitution more or less equal to toil78, a reasoning power, which in things practical must not be measured by the loftiness of his conceptions and generalizations79.
Whenever and wheresoever he congregates80 into masses, there “the earth, the air, and the waters,” receive modifications81 from him, which, when injurious, he alone can rectify82. The most consolatory83 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 consolation84 that he has done his best.
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1
licentiousness
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| n.放肆，无法无天 | |
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civilized
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| a.有教养的，文雅的 | |
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subjugation
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| n.镇压，平息，征服 | |
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mighty
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| adj.强有力的；巨大的 | |
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subjugated
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| v.征服，降伏( subjugate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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primitive
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| adj.原始的；简单的；n.原(始)人，原始事物 | |
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doomed
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| 命定的 | |
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delta
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| n.（流的）角洲 | |
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deltas
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| 希腊字母表中第四个字母( delta的名词复数 )； （河口的）三角洲 | |
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abound
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| vi.大量存在；(in，with)充满，富于 | |
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celestial
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| adj.天体的；天上的 | |
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peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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excellences
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| n.卓越( excellence的名词复数 )；（只用于所修饰的名词后）杰出的；卓越的；出类拔萃的 | |
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deficient
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| adj.不足的，不充份的，有缺陷的 | |
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undoubtedly
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| adv.确实地，无疑地 | |
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perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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Mediterranean
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| adj.地中海的；地中海沿岸的 | |
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miserable
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| adj.悲惨的，痛苦的；可怜的，糟糕的 | |
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reign
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| n.统治时期，统治，支配，盛行；v.占优势 | |
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landmarks
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| n.陆标( landmark的名词复数 )；目标；（标志重要阶段的）里程碑 ~ (in sth)；有历史意义的建筑物（或遗址） | |
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philosophic
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| adj.哲学的，贤明的 | |
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lapse
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| n.过失，流逝，失效，抛弃信仰，间隔；vi.堕落，停止，失效，流逝；vt.使失效 | |
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dictate
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| v.口授；(使)听写；指令，指示，命令 | |
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variance
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| n.矛盾，不同 | |
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geographical
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| adj.地理的；地区(性)的 | |
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boundless
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| adj.无限的；无边无际的；巨大的 | |
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fleeting
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| adj.短暂的，飞逝的 | |
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countless
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| adj.无数的，多得不计其数的 | |
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monarchs
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| 君主，帝王( monarch的名词复数 ) | |
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antiquity
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| n.古老；高龄；古物，古迹 | |
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consonant
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| n.辅音；adj.[音]符合的 | |
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remains
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| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
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fabulous
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| adj.极好的；极为巨大的；寓言中的，传说中的 | |
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authentic
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| a.真的，真正的；可靠的，可信的，有根据的 | |
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unwilling
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| adj.不情愿的 | |
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entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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momentous
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| adj.重要的，重大的 | |
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agitates
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| 搅动( agitate的第三人称单数 )； 激怒； 使焦虑不安； （尤指为法律、社会状况的改变而）激烈争论 | |
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bosom
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| n.胸，胸部；胸怀；内心；adj.亲密的 | |
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amalgamate
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| v.(指业务等)合并，混合 | |
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purely
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| adv.纯粹地，完全地 | |
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savage
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| adj.野蛮的；凶恶的，残暴的；n.未开化的人 | |
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colonize
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| v.建立殖民地，拓殖；定居，居于 | |
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aspiring
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| adj.有志气的；有抱负的；高耸的v.渴望；追求 | |
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prudent
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| adj.谨慎的，有远见的，精打细算的 | |
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virtue
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| n.德行，美德；贞操；优点；功效，效力 | |
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barbarians
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| n.野蛮人( barbarian的名词复数 )；外国人；粗野的人；无教养的人 | |
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extinction
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| n.熄灭，消亡，消灭，灭绝，绝种 | |
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spurn
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| v.拒绝，摈弃；n.轻视的拒绝；踢开 | |
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malaria
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| n.疟疾 | |
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exterminates
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| n.消灭，根绝( exterminate的名词复数 )v.消灭，根绝( exterminate的第三人称单数 ) | |
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virgin
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| n.处女，未婚女子；adj.未经使用的；未经开发的 | |
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modification
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| n.修改，改进，缓和，减轻 | |
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premature
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| adj.比预期时间早的；不成熟的，仓促的 | |
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colonized
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| 开拓殖民地，移民于殖民地( colonize的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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infancy
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| n.婴儿期；幼年期；初期 | |
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diffusion
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| n.流布；普及；散漫 | |
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moors
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| v.停泊，系泊（船只）( moor的第三人称单数 ) | |
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contrived
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| adj.不自然的，做作的；虚构的 | |
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rendering
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| n.表现，描写 | |
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interferes
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| vi. 妨碍，冲突，干涉 | |
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abode
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| n.住处，住所 | |
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judgment
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| n.审判；判断力，识别力，看法，意见 | |
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generalization
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| n.普遍性，一般性，概括 | |
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faculties
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| n.能力( faculty的名词复数 )；全体教职员；技巧；院 | |
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celebrated
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| adj.有名的，声誉卓著的 | |
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confidential
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| adj.秘（机）密的，表示信任的，担任机密工作的 | |
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devoid
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| adj.全无的，缺乏的 | |
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swell
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| vi.膨胀，肿胀；增长，增强 | |
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distress
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| n.苦恼，痛苦，不舒适；不幸；vt.使悲痛 | |
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odious
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| adj.可憎的，讨厌的 | |
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pestilence
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| n.瘟疫 | |
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entanglement
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| n.纠缠，牵累 | |
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malarious
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| （患）疟疾的，（有）瘴气的 | |
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insignificant
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| adj.无关紧要的，可忽略的，无意义的 | |
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entail
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| vt.使承担，使成为必要，需要 | |
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bestowing
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| 砖窑中砖堆上层已烧透的砖 | |
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toil
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| vi.辛劳工作，艰难地行动；n.苦工，难事 | |
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generalizations
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| 一般化( generalization的名词复数 )； 普通化； 归纳； 概论 | |
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congregates
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| （使）集合，聚集( congregate的第三人称单数 ) | |
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81
modifications
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| n.缓和( modification的名词复数 )；限制；更改；改变 | |
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rectify
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| v.订正，矫正，改正 | |
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consolatory
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| adj.慰问的，可藉慰的 | |
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consolation
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| n.安慰，慰问 | |
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