tain. An industrial race coming in gradually under the protection of British arms may easily reclaim large portions of these districts, and swamp the military tribes now settled in them. Those who bear in mind that Persia, with a territory three times as large as that of France, has a population not half as large again as that of Belgium,[1] will perhaps incline to believe that here also in the southern and eastern provinces are regions which may ultimately come to have their fields tilled by coolies, and their commerce carried on by Banyahs.
Some who admit the possibility that the Chinese and Hindoo races may spread over new territory and absorb other populations in Asia may doubt the future of the American Indians, and hold that Southern and Central America are as much the destined inheritance of the white man as the greater part of Northern America seems already to be his estate. Wiener, who travelled among the Indians of Peru and Bolivia, declares that the fine qualities of the aboriginal race have been destroyed beyond the power of recovery by the degradation of centuries of misrule, that the half-caste Indian is fit for nothing but servitude, and that the free Indian has reverted to savagery.[2] Professor Orton, who saw the Indian in Ecuador and along the Amazon districts, where he is perhaps at his lowest, declares that "yet a
- ↑ This is taking the largest estimate—that adopted by the Almanack de Gotha of nearly 8,000,000 souls. It is characteristic of the uncertainty attaching to estimates of population in countries like Persia that the Statesman's Year-Book puts the population at only 4,400,000, or 20 per cent less than that of Belgium.
- ↑ Wiener's Pérou et Bolivie, pp. 731-738.
whole route from Podbar to Dushak, the capital."—Travels in Beloochistan, Appendix, p. 407. Seistan is no doubt more Afghan than Beluch. However, even of Makran, Marco Polo speaks as a country where the people had abundance of food, and to which many merchants resorted by sea and land.—Book iii. chap, xxxiv.
