Mobilization.

In Great Britain, the material and equipment required are stored in times of peace at the various headquarters stations and carefully examined twice a year; and on orders for mobilization being issued, the doctors and various ranks of attendants, who have previously been told off to each unit, repair to the allotted station, draw the equipment and transport, and embark with the brigade to which they are attached. The tendency of the present day is towards reduction in bulk and concentration of strength of drugs, points which simplify the question of transport of ambulance material. As the fighting man can carry concentrated nourishment enough for thirty-six hours, in the form of an emergency ration, in a tin the size of an ordinary cigar-case, and enough sweetening material in the form of saccharine to last a fortnight in a bottle smaller than an ordinary watch, so the medical department can take their drugs in the form of compressed tabloids, each the correct dose, and each occupying about one-tenth of the space the drug ordinarily would; while the medical officers can carry hypodermic cases, not so large as an ordinary cigarette-case, containing a syringe and hundreds of doses of highly concentrated remedies. Again, the traction engines which now accompany an army can also supply electricity for X-ray work, electric-lighting, ice-making, &c. (J. R. D.)

AMBULATORY (Med. Lat. ambulatorium, a place for walking, from ambulare, to walk), the covered passage round a cloister; a term applied sometimes to the procession way round the east end of a cathedral or large church and behind the high altar.

AMBUSH (older form, "embush,'' O. Fr. embusche, from the Ital. imboscata, in and bosco, a wood), the hiding of troops, primarily in a wood, and so any concealment for the purpose of a sudden attack.

AMEDEO FERDINANDO MARIA DI SAVOIA, duke of Aosta (1845-1890), third son of Victor Emmanuel II., king of Italy, and of Adelaide, archduchess of Austria, was born at Turin on the 30th of May 1845. Entering the army as captain in 1859 he fought through the campaign of 1866 with the rank of major-general, leading his brigade into action at Custozza and being wounded at Monte Torre. In May 1867 he married the princess Maria Carlotta del Pozzo della Cisterna. In 1868 he was created vice-admiral of the Italian navy, but, two years later, left Italy to ascend the Spanish throne, his reluctance to accept the invitation of the Cortes having been overridden by the Italian cabinet. On the 16th of November 1870 he was proclaimed king of Spain by the Cortes; but, before he could arrive at Madrid, Marshal Prim, chief promoter of his candidature, was assassinated. Undeterred by rumours of a plot against his own life, Amedeo entered Madrid alone, riding at some distance from his suite to the church where Marshal Prim's body lay in state. His efforts as constitutional king were paralysed by the rivalry between the various Spanish factions, but with the approval of his father he rejected all idea of a coup d'etat. Though warned of a plot against his life (August 18, 1872) he refused to take precautions, and, while returning from Buen Retiro to Madrid in company with the queen, was repeatedly shot at in Via Avenal. The royal carriage was struck by several revolver and rifle bullets, the horses wounded, but its occupants escaped unhurt. A period of calm followed the outrage. On the 11th of February 1873, however, Amedeo, abandoned by his partisans and attacked more fiercely than ever by his opponents, signed his abdication. Upon returning to Italy he was cordially welcomed and reinstated in his former position. His consort, whose health had been undermined by anxiety in Spain, died on

the 3rd of November 1876. Not until the 11th of September 1888 did Amedeo contract his second marriage, with his niece Princess Letitia Bonaparte. Less than two years later (January 18, 1890) he died at Turin in the arms of his elder brother, King Humbert I., leaving four children — the duke of Aosta, the count of Turin, the duke of the Abruzzi (issue of his first marriage), and the count of Salemi. (H. W. S.)

AMELIE-LES-BAINS, a watering-place of south-western France, in the department of Pyrenees-Orientales, at the junction of the Mondony with the Tech, 28 1/2 m. S.S.W. of Perpignan by rail. Pop. (1906) 1247. It has numerous sulphur springs (68 deg. -145 deg. F.) used as baths by sufferers from rheumatism and maladies of the lungs. The town is situated at a height of 770 ft. and has both a winter and summer season. There are two bathing establishments, one of which preserves remains of Roman baths, and a large military thermal hospital. The town, formerly called Arles-les-Bains, is named after Queen Amelia, wife of Louis Philippe.

AMELOT DE LA HOUSSAYE, ABRAHAM NICOLAS (1634-1706), French historian and publicist, was born at Orleans in February 1634, and died at Paris on the 8th of December 1706. Little is known of his personal history beyond the fact that he was secretary to an embassy from the French court to the republic of Venice. In his Histoire du gouvernement de Venise he undertook to explain, and above all to criticize, the administration of that republic, and to expose the causes of its decadence. The work was printed by the king's printer and dedicated to Louvois, which points to the probability that the government did not disapprove of it. It appeared in March 1676, and provoked a warm protest from the Venetian ambassador, Giustiniani. The author was sent to the Bastille, where he remained, however, only six weeks (Archives de la Bastille, vol. viii. pp. 93 and 94). A second edition with a supplement, published immediately after, drew forth fresh protestations, and the edition was suppressed. This persecution gave the book an extraordinary vogue, and it passed through twenty-two editions in three years, besides being translated into several languages; there is an English translation by Lord Falconbridge, son-in-law of Oliver Cromwell. Amelot next published in 1683 a translation of Fra Paolo Sarpi's History of the Council of Trent. This work, and especially certain notes added by the translator, gave great offence to the advocates of unlimited papal authority, and three separate memorials were presented asking for its repression. Under the pseudonym of La Motte Josseval, Amelot subsequently published a Discours politique sur Tacite, in which he analysed the character of Tiberius.

AMEN, a Hebrew word, of which the root meaning is "stability,'' generally adopted in Christian worship as a concluding formula for prayers and hymns. Three distinct biblical usages may be noted. (a) Initial Amen, referring back to words of another speaker, e.g. 1 Kings i. 36; Rev. xxii. 20. (b) Detached Amen, the complementary sentence being suppressed, e.g. Neh. v. 13; Rev. v. 14 (cf. 1 Cor. xiv. 16). (c) Final Amen, with no change of speaker, as in the subscription to the first three divisions of the Psalter and in the frequent doxologies of the New Testament Epistles. The uses of amen ("verily'') in the Gospels form a peculiar class; they are initial, but often lack any backward reference. Jesus used the word to affirm his own utterances, not those of another person, and this usage was adopted by the church. The liturgical use of the word in apostolic times is attested by the passage from 1 Cor. cited above, and Justin Martyr (c. A.D. 150) describes the congregation as responding "amen,'' to the benediction after the celebration of the Eucharist. Its introduction into the baptismal formula (in the Greek Church it is pronounced after the name of each person of the Trinity) is probably later. Among certain Gnostic sects Amen became the name of an angel, and in post-biblical Jewish works exaggerated statements are multiplied as to the right method and the bliss of pronouncing it. It is still used in the service of the synagogue, and the Mahommedans not only add it after reciting the first Sura of the Koran, but also when writing letters, &c., and repeat it three times, often with the word Qimtir, as a kind of talisman.

AMENDMENT (through the O. Pr. amender, to correct, from bat. mendum, a fault), an improvement, correction or alteration (nominally at least) for the better. The word is used either of moral character or, more especially, in connexion with "amending'' a bill or motion in parliament or resolution at a meeting; and in law it signifies the correction of any defect or error in the record of a civil action or on a criminal indictment. All written constitutions also usually contain a clause providing for the method by which they may be amended. Another noun, in the plural form of "amends,'' is restricted in its meaning to that of the penalty paid for a fault or wrong committed. In its French form the amende, or amende honorable, once a public confession and apology when the offender passed to the seat of justice barefoot and bareheaded, now signifies in the English phrase a spontaneous and satisfactory rectification of an error.

AMENTIFERAE, or AMENTACEAE, a name which has been used to include in one class several natural orders of plants which bear their flowers in catkins (amenta). They are trees and shrubs chiefly of temperate climates, and include many common British trees. It comprised the following orders: — Salicaceae, willows and poplars; Corylaceae, hazel, hornbeam; Betulaceae, birch, alder; Fagaceae, oak, beech, chestnut; Casuarinaceae, Casuarina (beefwood); Platanaceae, plane; Juglandaceae, walnut; Myricaceae, bog myrtle. This class is not retained in the most modern systems of classification.

AMERCEMENT, or AMERCIAMENT (derived, through the Fr. a merci, from Lat. merces, pay), in English law, an arbitrary pecuniary penalty, inflicted in old days on an offender by the peers or equals of the party amerced. The word has in modern times become practically a poetical synonym for fine or deprivation. But an amercement differed from a fixed fine, prescribed by statute, by reason of its arbitrary nature; it represented a commutation of a sentence of forfeiture of goods, while a fine was originally a composition agreed upon between the judge and the prisoner to avoid imprisonment. The fixing or assessment of an amercement was termed an affeerment. In the lower courts the amercement was offered by a jury of the offender's neighbours (affoerors); in the superior courts by the coroner, except in the case of officers of the court, when the amount was affeered by the judges themselves. All judgments were entered on the court roll as "in mercy'' (sit in misericordia), and the word misericordia, or some contracted form of it, was written on the margin. Articles twenty to twenty-two of Magna Carta regulated the assessment of amercements.

See Stephen, History of Criminal Law; Pollock and Maitland, History of English Law; W. S. McKechnie, Magna Carta (1905).

AMERIA (mod. Amelia), a city of Umbria, situated about 65 m. N. of Rome on the Via Amerina (which approached it from the S. starting from Falerii and passing through Castellum Amerinum, probably mod. Orte, where it crossed the Tiber). It has a fine position, 1332 ft. above sea-level, and still retains considerable remains of the city wall, built in polygonal masonry of carefully jointed blocks of limestone, some 12 ft. in total thickness, and showing traces of reconstruction at different periods. Various remains of the Roman period exist between the walls, including a large water reservoir divided into ten chambers. The lofty campanile of the cathedral was erected in 1050 with fragments of Roman buildings. Ameria is not mentioned in the history of the Roman conquest of Umbria, but is alluded to as a flourishing place, with a fertile territory extending to the Tiber, by Cicero in his speech in defence of Sextus Roscius Amerinus, and its fruit is often extolled by Roman writers. Augustus divided its lands among his veterans, but did not plant a colony here. The bishopric of Ameria was founded in the middle of the 4th century.

AMERICA. I. Physical Geography. — The accidental use of a single name, America, for the pair of continents that has a greater extension from north to south than any other continuous land area of the globe, has had some recent justification, since the small body of geological opinion has turned in favour of the theory of the tetrahedral deformation of the earth's crust as affording explanation of the grouping of continents and oceans. America,

broadening in the north as if to span the oceans by reaching to its neighbours on the east and west, tapering between vast oceans far to the south where the nearest land is in the little-known Antarctic regions, roughly presents the triangular outline that is to be expected from tetrahedral warping; and although greatly broken in the middle, and standing with the northern and southern parts out of a meridian line, America is nevertheless the best witness among the continents of to-day to the tetrahedral theory. There seems to be, however, not a unity but a duality in its plan of construction, for the two parts, North and South America, resemble each other not only in outline but, roughly speaking, in geological evolution also; and the resemblances thus discovered are the more remarkable when it is considered how extremely small is the probability that among all the possible combinations of ancient mountain systems, modern mountain systems and plains, two continents out of five should present so many points of correspondence. Thus regarded, it becomes reasonable to suppose that North and South America have in a broad way been developed under a succession of somewhat similar strains in the earth's crust, and that they are, in so far, favourable witnesses to the theory that there is something individual in the plan of continental growth. The chief points of correspondence between these two great land masses, besides the southward tapering, are as follows: — (1) The areas of ancient fundamental rocks of the north-east (Laurentian highlands of North America, uplands of Guiana in South America), which have remained without significant deformation, although suffering various oscillations of level, since ancient geological times; (2) the highlands of the south-east (Appalachians and Brazilian highlands) with a north-east south-west crystalline axis near the ocean, followed by a belt of deformed and metamorphosed early Palaeozoic strata, and adjoined farther inland by a dissected plateau of nearly horizontal later Palaeozoic formations — all greatly denuded since the ancient deformation of the mountain axis, and seeming to owe their present altitude to broad uplifts of comparatively modern geological date; (3) the complex of younger mountains along the western side of the continents (Western highlands, or Cordilleras, of North America; Andean Cordilleras of South America) of geologically modern deformation and upheaval, with enclosed basins and abundant volcanic action, but each a system in itself, disconnected and not standing in alignment; (4) confluent lower lands between the highlands, giving river drainage to the north (Mackenzie, Orinoco), east (St Lawrence, Amazon), and south (Mississippi, La Plata). Differences of dimension and detail are numerous, but they do not suffice to mask what seems to be a resemblance in general plan. Indeed, some of the chief contrasts of the two continents arise not so much from geological unlikeness as from their unsymmetrical situation with respect to the equator, whereby the northern one lies mostly in the temperate zone, while the southern one lies mostly in the torrid zone. North America is bathed in frigid waters around its broad northern shores; its mountains bear huge glaciers in the north-west; the outlying area of Greenland in the north-east is shrouded with ice; and in geologically recent times a vast ice-sheet has spread over its north-eastern third; while warm waters bring corals to its southern shores. South America has warm waters and corals on the north-east, and cold waters and glaciers only on its narrowing southern end. If the symmetry that is so noticeable in geological history had extended to climate as well, many geographical features might now present likenesses instead of contrasts.

The relation of the Americas to each other and to the rest of the world, as the home of plants and animals, is greatly affected by the breadth of the adjacent oceans, and also by the geologically recent changes of altitude whereby the breadth of the narrower parts of the lands and the oceans has been significantly altered. Between the parallels of 60 deg. and 70 deg. N. the east and west widening of North America forms more than a third of the almost continuous land ring around a zone of sub-Arctic climate, through the middle of which runs the Arctic circle. As a result there is a remarkable community of resemblance of plant and animal life in the high northern latitudes of North America and Eurasia. In strong contrast with this relation of close fellowship is the exceptional isolation of far southern South America. Excepting the barren lands of the Antarctic regions, with which Patagonia is somewhat associated by a broken string of islands, the nearest continental lands of a more habitable kind are South Africa and New Zealand. In contrast to the sub-Arctic land ring, here is a sub-Antarctic ocean ring, and as a result the land flora and fauna of South America to-day are strongly unlike the life forms of the other south-ending continents.

For further treatment of the physical geography of the American continents. see NORTH AMERICA, SOUTH AMERICA. (W. M. D.) II. General Historical Sketch. — The name America was derived from that of Amerigo Vespucci (q.v.). In Waldseemuller's map of 1507 the name is given to a body of land roughly corresponding to the continent of South America. As discovery revealed the existence of another vast domain to the north, the name spread to the whole of the pair of continents by customary use, in spite of the protests of the Spaniards, by whom it was not officially used of North America till the 18th century.

The discovery of America is justly dated on the 12th (N.S. 21st) of October 1492, when Christopher Columbus (q.v.), the Genoese, made his landfall on the island of Guanahani, now identified with Watling Island in the Bahamas. In the 10th and 11th centuries Norse sea-rovers, starting from Iceland, had made small settlements in Greenland and had pushed as far as the coast of New England (or possibly Nova Scotia) in transient visits (see VINLAND and LEIF ERICSSON). But the Greenland colony was obscure, the country was believed to form part of Europe, and the records of the farther explorations were contained in sagas which were only rediscovered by modern scholarship. Throughout the middle ages, legendary tales of mythical lands lying in the western ocean — the Isle of St Brandan, of Brazil and Antilia — bad been handed down. Scholars, guessing from isolated passages in classic writers, or arguing on general principles, had held that the "Indies'' could be reached by sailing due west. But the venture was beyond the resources of the ships and the seamanship of the time. The opinions of scholars, and the fantasies of poets, became an enthusiastic belief in the mind of Columbus. After many disappointments he persuaded the Catholic sovereigns Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain to furnish him with a squadron of three small vessels. With it he sailed from Palos in Andalusia on the 3rd of August 1492, reached Guanahani on the 12th of October, touched on the coast of Cuba and Hispaniola, established a small post on the latter, and returned to Lisbon on the 4th of March 1493, and thence to Spain.

It was the belief of Columbus and his contemporaries that he had reached the islands described by Marco Polo as forming the eastern extremity of Asia. Hence he spoke of the "Indies,'' and "las Indias'' continued to be the official name given to their American possessions by the Spaniards for many generations. His feat produced a diplomatic controversy with Portugal which was destined to have important political consequences. In 1454 Pope Nicholas V. had given the Portuguese the exclusive right of exploration and conquest on the road to the Indies. His bull contemplated only the use of the route by the coast of Africa to the south and east. In 1488 the Portuguese Bartholomeu Diaz had rounded the Cape of Good Hope. After the return of Columbus and his supposed demonstration that the Indies could be reached by sailing west, disputes might obviously arise between the two powers as to their respective "spheres of influence.'' The Catholic sovereigns applied to Pope Alexander VI., a Spaniard, for a confirmation of their rights. The pope drew a line from north to south one hundred leagues west of the Azores and Cape Verde Islands, and gave the Spaniards the claim to all to the west (May 4, 1493) . The Portuguese thought the division unfair to them, and protested. A conference was held between the two powers at Tordesillas in 1494, and by common consent the line was shifted to three hundred and seventy leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands. The boundary line corresponded to the 50th 1 degree of longitude west of Greenwich, which strikes the mainland of South America about the mouth of the Amazon. Thenceforward the Spaniards claimed the right to exclude all other peoples from trade or settlement "beyond the line.''

Between September 1493 and the time of his last voyage (May 1502 to November 1504), Columbus explored the West Indies, reached the mainland of South America at the mouth of the Orinoco and sailed along the coast of Central America from Cape Honduras to Nombre de Dios (near Colon). Henry VII. of England allowed the Bristol merchants to fit out a western voyage under the command of another Genoese, John Cabot (q.v.), in 1497. The history of the venture is very obscure, but Cabot is thought to have reached Newfoundland and the mainland. Between 1500 and 1503 a Portuguese family of the name of Cortereal carried out voyages of exploration on the eastern coast of North America, with the consent of their government, and with little regard for the treaty of Tordesillas. In 1500 the Portuguese Pedro Alvarez Cabral, while on his way to the East Indies, sighted the coast of Brazil at Monte Pascoal in the Aimores, and took formal possession. The belief that the eastern extremity of Asia had been reached died slowly, and the great object of exploration in America continued for some years to be the discovery of a passage through to the Spice Islands, in order to compete with the Portuguese, who had reached them by the Cape route. The first Spanish settlement in Hispaniola spread to the mainland by the adventure of Alonso de Ojeda and Diego de Nicuesa in Darien in 1509. Cuba was occupied by Diego de Velazquez in 1511. In 1512 (or 1513) Juan Ponce de Leon made the first recorded exploration of the coast of Florida and the Bahama Channel. In 1513, Vasco Nunez de Balboa crossed the isthmus of Darien and saw the South Sea (Pacific). The hope that a passage through to the Spice Islands would be found near existing Spanish settlements was now given up. One was sought farther south, and in November 1520 Ferdinand Magellan (q.v.) passed through the strait which bears his name and sailed across the Pacific. At last the existence of a continent divided by a vast stretch of ocean from Asia, and mostly lying within the sphere of influence assigned to Spain by the pope, was revealed to the world.

The first aim of the Spaniards had been trade with the Indies. The Casa de Contratacion, a committee for the regulation of trade, was established at Seville in 1503. European plants and animals were introduced into Hispaniola and Cuba, and sugar plantations were set up. But the main object of the Spaniards, who could not labour in the tropics even if they had wished to do so, was always gold, to be won by slave labour. As the surface gold of the islands was exhausted, and the feeble island races perished before the invaders, the Spaniards were driven to go farther afield. In 1510 Pedrarias Davila transferred the Darien settlement to Panama. In that and the following year the coasts of Yucatan and of the Gulf of Mexico were explored successively by Francisco Hernandez Cordova and Juan de Grijalva, who both sailed from Cuba. From Cuba it was that Hernan Cortes (q.v.) sailed on the 10th (or 18th) of February 1519 for the conquest of Mexico. Hitherto the Spaniards had met only the weak islanders, or the more robust cannibal Caribs, both alike pure savages. In Mexico they found "pueblo'' or town Indians who possessed an organized government and had made some progress in civilization. The hegemony of the Aztecs, who dominated the other tribes from the central valley of Mexico, was oppressive. Cortes, the most accomplished and statesmanlike of the Spanish conquerors, raised the subject peoples against them. His conquest was effected by 1521. His example stimulated the settlers at Panama, who had heard of a great people owning vast quantities of gold to the south of them. Between 1524 and 1535 Francisco Pizarro (q.v.) and Diego de Almagro had completed the conquest of Peru, which was followed, however, by a long period of strife among the Spaniards, and of rebellions. The country between Peru and Panama was subdued before 1537 by the conquest of Quito by Sebastian de Benalcazar and of New Granada by Jimenez de Quesada. From Peru the Spaniards advanced southwards to Chile, which was first unsuccessfully invaded (1535-37) by Diego de Almagro, and afterwards occupied (1540-53) by Pedro de Valdivia. Their advance to the south was checked by the indomitable opposition of the Araucanians, but from the southern Andes the Spaniards overflowed on to the great plains which now form the interior of the Argentine Republic. The first permanent settlement at the mouth of the river Plate at Buenos Aires dates from 1580. In its main lines the Spanish conquest was complete by 1550. What the Spaniards had then overrun from Mexico to Chile is still Spanish America. Brazil, after a period of exploration which began in 1510, was gradually settled by the Portuguese, though its bounds on the south remained a subject of dispute with the Spaniards till the 18th century.

The vast territories acquired by Spain in this brief period were held to be, by virtue of the pope's bull, the peculiar property of the sovereign. When the wide and dangerous powers granted to Columbus by his patent were confiscated, Ferdinand first imposed Bishop Fonseca on him as a check. In 1509 the council of the Indies was established, but it did not take its final form till 1524. It consisted of a president, with a board of advisers, who possessed legislative and administrative powers, and who varied in number at different times. There was an appeal to it from all colonial governors and courts. The Casa de Contratacion, another hoard, regulated the trade. In America the crown was represented by governors. After the preliminary period of conquest the whole of the Spanish possessions were divided into the two "kingdoms'' of New Spain, — consisting of Venezuela and the Spanish possessions north of the isthmus — and of New Castile, a title soon changed to Peru, which included the Central American isthmus and all of South America except Venezuela and Brazil. Each was ruled by a viceroy. As the Spanish dominions became more settled, the viceroyalty of Peru was found to be unwieldy. New Granada (which included the present republics of Venezuela, Colombia and Ecuador) was created a viceroyalty in 1718 (soon abolished, but re-created in 1740). A fourth viceroyalty for the river Plate was formed in 1778. Other governments known as captain-generalships were cut out of the viceroyalties at different periods — Guatemalain 1527, Venezuelain 1773, Cubain 1777 and Chile in 1778. The captains-general corresponded directly with the council of the Indies, and were independent of the viceroys except in war time. The administrative powers of the viceroys were very great. They were, however, checked by the audiencias, or law courts, of which there were eleven from the reign of Philip IV. — Santo Domingo, Mexico, Panama, Lima, Guatemala, Guadalajara, Bogota, La Plata, Quito, Chile, Buenos Aires. They acted as councils to the governors, and had civil and criminal jurisdiction with an appeal to the council of the Indies at Seville. The towns had municipal franchises, exercised by a governing body comprised of Spaniards, either immigrants from Old Spain, or Creoles, i.e. descendants of Spanish settlers. The places were often sold, and were objects of ambition to the richer merchants. In practice the selling of a seat in the town councils, or cabildos, did not have the bad consequences which might have appeared inevitable. In the earlier stages of Spanish colonial history meetings of delegates (procurators) of the town councils, in imitation of the national cortes of Spain, were not uncommon. The kings of Spain had obtained from the popes Alexander VI. and Julius II. the right of levying the tithe, and of naming the holders of all ecclesiastical benefices. These immense concessions, made when the development of the Spanish settlements could not be foreseen, were regretted by later popes, but the crown adhered firmly to its regalities.

The government of Spain administered its dominions from the beginning in the strictest spirit of the "colonial system.'' The Indies were expected to supply precious metals and raw materials, and to take all manufactures from the mother country. In order to facilitate the regulation of the trade by the Casa de Contratacion, it was concentrated first in Seville, and when the Guadalquivir was found to be becoming too shallow for the growing tonnage of ships, at Cadiz. Merchant vessels were required for their protection to sail in convoy. The convoys or flotas sailed in October first to Cartagena in South America, and from thence to Nombre de Dios or, in later times, Porto Bello. The yearly fairs at these places received the imports from Europe and the colonial trade of the Pacific coast, first collected at Panama and then carried over the

isthmus. From Nombre de Dios or Porto Bello the convoys went to La Vera Cruz for the trade of New Spain, and returned home in July by the Florida straits. One-fifth of the produce of the mines belonged to the crown. The collection of this bullion was at all times a main object with the Spanish government, and more especially so after the discovery of the great silver deposits of Potosi in Bolivia. Forced labour was required to work them and the natives were driven to the toil. The excesses of the earliest Spanish settlers have become a commonplace, largely through the passionate eloquence of Bartolome de Las Casas (see LAS CASAS). The Spanish government made strenuous attempts to regulate forced labour by limiting the rights of the masters. An encomienda was required by anyone who wished to exact labour, i.e. the Indians of a district were given to him "in commendam'' with the power to demand a corvee from them and a small yearly payment per head. The laws endeavoured to check abuses, but there can be no doubt that they were often defeated by the greed of the colonists — more especially in the viceroyalty of Peru, which was always less well governed than Mexico. But the bulk of the inhabitants of the Spanish possessions were of pure or mixed Indian blood, and many Indians were prosperous as traders, manufacturers, farmers and artisans.

The Portuguese settlement in Brazil was more purely colonial than the Spanish possessions. Until 1534 little was done to regulate the activity of private adventures. In that year the coast was divided into captaincies, which were united under a single governor-general in 1549. Between 1555 and 1567 the Portuguese had to contend with the French Huguenot invaders who seized Rio, and whom they expelled. Between 1572 and 1576 there were in Brazil the two governments of Rio de Janeiro and Bahia, but its history is of little importance till the occupation of Portugal by Philip II. drew the country into the wars of the Spanish monarchy.

The claim of the Peninsula powers to divide the American continent between them, based as it was on an award given in entire ignorance of the facts, would in no case have been respected. In the great upheaval of the Renaissance and the Reformation it was certain to be defied. As England was in general alliance with the sovereigns of Spain during the early 16th century, Englishmen turned their attention at first towards the discovery of a route to the Spice Islands round the north of Asia. But the rivalry of Francis I. and Charles V. gave France a strong motive for assailing the Spaniards in the New World now revealed to the ambition of Europe. King Francis encouraged the ill-recorded and disputed voyages of the Florentine Giovanni da Verrazano in 1524, and the undoubted explorations of Jacques Cartier. Between 1534 and 1542 this seaman, a native of St Malo, explored the Strait of Belle Isle and the Gulf of St Lawrence, and visited the Indian village of Hochelaga, now Montreal. The claims of France to the possession of a great part of the northern half of America were based on the voyages of Verrazano and Cartier. The death of King Francis, and the beginning of the wars of religion, suspended colonial enterprise under royal direction. But the Huguenots, under the inspiration of Coligny, made three attempts to found colonies to the south — at Rio de Janeiro in 1555-1567, near the present Beaufort, South Carolina, in 1562, and in Florida in 1565. These ventures were ruined partly by the hostility of the Spaniards and Portuguese, partly by the dissensions of the colonists. Meanwhile French corsairs from St Malo and Dieppe had been active in infesting the West Indies and the trade route followed by the Spanish convoys. After the accession of Queen Elizabeth, and the beginning of the breach between England and Spain, they were joined by English sea-rovers. The English claimed the right to trade with all Spanish possessions in or out of Europe by virtue of their treaty of trade and amity made in the reign of Charles V. The Spaniards disputed this interpretation of the treaty, and maintained that there was "no peace beyond the line,'' i.e. Pope Alexander's line as finally fixed by the conference at Tordesillas. The English retaliated by armed smuggling voyages.

It was, however, not till late that they attempted to found permanent settlements. In 1578 Sir Humphrey Gilbert obtained a patent for discovery and settlement. In 1583 he perished in an effort to establish a colony in Newfoundland. His work was taken up by his half-brother Sir Walter Raleigh in 1584. Between 1586 and 1603 Sir Walter made successive efforts to settle a colony in the wide territory called Virginia, in honour of Queen Elizabeth, a name of much wider significance then than in later days. His colony at Roanoke, in what is now the state of North Carolina, was unsuccessful, and after his fall his patent reverted to the crown, but the new Virginia Company carried on his schemes. In 1607 the first lasting settlement was made in Virginia, and after a period of struggle began to flourish by the cultivation of tobacco.

In 1620 another settlement was made. A small body of religious dissentients, one hundred and one men, women and children, including some who had fled to Holland to escape the discipline of the church of England, secured leave from the Virginia Company to plant themselves within its bounds. They sailed in a single ship, the "Mayflower,'' and landed near Cape Cod, where they founded the colony of Plymouth, afterwards (1621) obtaining a patent from the council for New England. From these two centres, and from later settlements, arose the "Plantations'' of the English, which gradually increased to the number of thirteen and were destined to become the United States of America. Two strongly contrasted types were found among them. The Virginian or southern type, which may be said to have prevailed from Maryland southward, were for the most part planters producing tobacco, Indian corn, rice, indigo and cotton, largely by the labour of negro slaves. They had no very pronounced religious leaning, though Maryland was founded as a Roman Catholic refuge, but they had a prevailing leaning to the church of England. The northern or New England element began by endeavouring to establish a Puritan theocracy which broke down. But the tendency was towards "Independency,'' and the New Englanders were farmers tilling their own land, traders and seafaring men. In the middle region between them religion had a large share in promoting the formation of Pennsylvania, which was founded by the Quaker William Penn.

The English colonies, though divided by interest or character, were all alike jealous to defend, and eager to extend, their freedom of self-government, based on charters granted by, or extorted from, the crown. The settlers by degrees threw off the control of the proprietors who had received grants from the crown and had promoted the first settlements. It was a marked characteristic of the English colonists, and a strong element in their prosperity, that they were hospitable in welcoming men of other races, — Germans from the Palatinate, and French Huguenots driven out by persecution who brought with them some capital, more intelligence and an enduring hatred of Roman Catholic France. Though the British government gave, more or less unwillingly, a large measure of self-government to the Plantations, it was no less intent than the Spanish crown on retaining the whole colonial trade in British hands, and on excluding foreigners. Like the Spaniards it held that this trade should be confined to an exchange of colonial raw produce for home manufactures. Two foreign settlements within the English sphere — the Dutch colony of New Netherland, now New York, and the Swedish settlement on the Delaware — were absorbed by the growing English element.

While the English plantations were striking root along the coast, by somewhat prosaic but fruitful industry, and were growing in population with rapid strides, two other movements were in progress. To the south, the English, French and Dutch, though often in rivalry with one another, combined to break in on the monopoly of the Spaniards. They turned the maxim that "there is no peace beyond the line'' against its inventors. They invaded the West Indies, seized one island after another, and formed the freebooting communities known as the Brethren of the Coast and the Buccaneers (q.v). After the renewal of the war between Spain and Holland in 1621, the Dutch invaded the Portuguese colony of Brazil, and seized Bahia. A long period of struggle followed, but, after the declaration of Portuguese independence in 1640, local opposition, and the support given to the Portuguese by the French, led to the retreat of the Dutch.

To the north, to the west and to the south of the English settlements on the mainland, a most characteristic French colonial policy was being carried out. No sooner were the wars of religion over than the French again set about making good their claim to Canada, and to whatever they could represent as arising naturally out of Canada. In 1599, under the encouragement of Henry IV., speculators began to frequent the St Lawrence in pursuit of the fur trade. Their settlements were mainly trading posts. Their colonists were not farmers but trappers, woodrangers, coureurs du bois, who married Indian women, and formed a mixed race known as the bois brules. Not a few of the leaders, notably Samuel de Champlain (q.v.), who founded Quebec in 1608, were brave ingenious men, but the population provided no basis for a lasting colony. It was adventurous, small, scattered and unstable. The religious impulse which was so strong both in the Spanish and the English colonies was prominent in the French, but in the most fatal form. Pious people were eager to bring about the conversion of the Indians, and were zealously served by missionaries. The Jesuits, whose first appearance in New France dates from 1611, were active and devoted. Their aim was to reduce the fierce Red men to a state of childlike docility to priests, and they discouraged all colonization in their neighbourhood. It was true that the most active French colonial element, the trappers, were barbarized by the natives, and that the pursuit of the fur trade and other causes had brought the French into sharp collision with the most formidable of the native races, the confederation known as the Five (or Six) Nations. During the reign of Louis XIV., after 1660, the French government paid great attention to Canada, but not in a way capable of leading to the formation of a colony. The king was as intent as the rulers of Spain had been to keep the American possessions free from all taint of heresy. Therefore he carried on the policy of excluding the Huguenots — the only colonizing element among his subjects, — and drove them into the English plantations. A small handful of obedient peasants, priest-ridden and over-administered, formed the basis of the colony. On this narrow foundation was raised a vast super- structure, ecclesiastical, administrative and military. His priests, and his officials civil and military, gave the French king many daring explorers. While the English colonies were slowly digging their way, taking firm hold of the soil, and growing in numbers, from the sea to the Alleghanies, French missionaries and explorers had ranged far and wide. In 1682 Robert Cavelier, sieur de la Salle, who had already explored the Ohio, sailed down the Mississippi and took possession of the region at the mouth by the name of Louisiana.

The problem which was to be settled by a century of strife was now posed. On the one hand were the English plantations, populated, cultivated, profitable, stretching along the east coast of North America; on the other were the Canadian settlements, poverty-stricken, empty, over-officialled, a cause of constant expense to the home government, and, at a vast distance, those of Louisiana, struggling and bankrupt. The French remedy for an unsuccessful colony has always been to annex more territory, and forestall a possible rival. Therefore the French government strove to unite the beggarly settlements in Canada and Louisiana by setting up posts all along the Ohio and the Mississippi, in order to confine the English between the Alleghanies and the sea.

The political history of North America till 1763 is mainly the story of the pressure of the English colonies on this paper barrier. As regards Spanish America, England was content to profit by the Asiento (q.v.) treaty, which gave her the monopoly of slave- hunting for the Spanish colonies and an opening for contraband trade. In the river Plate region, where the dissensions of Spaniards and Portuguese afforded another opening, English traders smuggled. The Spaniards, with monstrous fatuity, refused to make use of the superb waterways provided by the Parana and Paraguay, and endeavoured to stifle all trade. England's main struggle was with France. It was prolonged by her entanglement in European disputes and by political causes, by the want of co-operation among the English colonies and their jealousy of control by the home government. The organization of the French colonies, though industrially ruinous, gave them

Illustrations representative of the primitive cultures of Central America, Mexico and Peru (q.q.v.) selected and arranged by Dr Walter Lehmann of the Royal Ethinographical Museum, Munich.

Fig. 1. — Stone Sculpture, from Teotihuacan Mexico. Prae-Mexican culture (? Totonacan).

Fig. 2. — View of the Giant Pyramid of the Sun. Teotihuacan. Plateau region, Mexico. Prae-Mexican culture (? Totonacan).

(Figs. 2 and 6 from photos by Waite, Mexico.)

Fig. 3. — Alabaster Vessel, with carved lizard as handle. Teotihuacan, Mexico. Proto-Mexican culture.

Fig. 5. — Carved Stone Figure of the god of sports and dancing (Xochipilli- Miacuilxochitl, "five flowers''), squatting on a stool, decorated with flowers and tonallo emblems. Plateau region, Mexico. Mexican culture.

Fig. 6. — Sculptured Frieze of the Temple of Xochicalco. Plateau region, Mexico. Mexican culture with Mayan influence.

Fig. 7. — Stone Tablet in memory of the year chicuei-acatl ("8 reeds''), A.D. 1487, when the Great Temple in Mexico was consecrated; above are the figures of the Kings Ticoc and Ahuitzol, sacrificing with the date of the beginning of the rebuilding, chicome-acatl ("7 reeds''), A.D. 1447. Mexico City. Mexican culture.

Fig. 8. — Leaf 3 of the Tonalamatl or sacred cycle of 260 days from the Aubin collection. Figures of the gods Quetzalcoatl and Tepeyollotli. Mexico. Mexican culture.

Fig. 9. — Leaf 10 of Codex Borbonicus with figure of the god of the underworld (Mictlantecutli) as regent of the tenth of the 20 sections, each of 13 days, of the tonalamatl, which begins with "one flint'' (ce tepcatl). Mexico, Mexican culture.

Fig. 10. — Leaf 54 of Codex Borbonicus B., with figures of the ancient moon-god, the twelve months, and the rabbit as the animal moon-emblem. Mexico. Mexican culture.

(Figs. 8 - 10 from the publications of the duke of Loubat.)

Fig. 1. — Male Clay Figure, holding weapon (?). From near Tzintzuntzan Michoacan, Mexico. (?) Tarascan culture.

Fig. 2. — View of the Ruins of the Pyramid Temple of Papantla, near Vera Cruz, Mexico. Totonacan culture.

Fig. 3. — Hump-Backed Clay Figure, standing on a fish; a reed staff in one hand, and incised lines on face. From Tzintzuntzan. (?) Tarascan culture.

Fig. 4. — Human Figure with a rattle-stick in the right hand. From near Alvarado, Vera Cruz, Mexico. Totonacan culture.

Fig. 5. — Stone Carving, deeply undercut, of the so-called Palma type. From Coatepec, Canton Falapa, Vera Cruz, Mexico. Totonacau culture.

Fig. 6. — Similar Carving with human figure. From Coatepec. Totonacan culture.

Fig. 7. — Stone Yoke, carved in the so-called frog-type. Vera Cruz, Mexico. Totonacan culture.

Fig. 8. — Crucified Figure, pierced with arrows of the victim at the festival of the god Nipe (Mexican Tlacaxipernaliztli), with the symbols of the god. Culture of the Mayan transitional peoples of the Atlantic coast of the Gulf of Mexico. Totonaran culture.

Fig. 9. — Temple Chambers, with stone pillars, from the ruins of Mitla, Oaxaca, with wall mosaic of joined stores. Zapotecan culture with proto-Mexican influence.

Fig. 10. — Wall Mosaic of joined stone from the ruins of Mitla. Zapotecan culture with proto-Mexican influence.

(Figs. 2, 9, and 10 are from photos by Waite, Mexico; Fig 8, from the "Codex Nuttall,'' publications of the Peabody Museum.) the command of more available military forces than were at the disposal of the English. Thus the fight dragged on, and was constantly maintained in Acadia, where the sovereignty had been early disputed, and the border never properly settled. At last, when under the leadership of the elder Pitt (see CHATHAM, EARL OF) England set to work resolutely to force a final settlement, the end came. The British navy cut off the French from all help from home, and after a gallant struggle, their dominion in Canada was conquered, and the French retired from the North American continent. They surrendered Louisiana to Spain, which had suffered much in an attempt to help them, and their possessions in America were reduced to their islands in the West Indies and French Guiana.

The fall of the French dominion on the continent of North America was practically the beginning of the existence of independent nations of European origin in the New World. The causes which led to the revolt of the Plantations, the political and military history of the War of Independence, are dealt with under the heading of UNITED STATES (History) and AMERICAN WAR OF INDEPENDENCE. The significance of these great events in the general history of America is that from 1783 onwards there was, in the New World, an autonomous community not wholly unified at once, nor without strife, but self-governing and self-subsisting, in entire separation from European control. Such a polity, surrounded as it was by territory dependent on European sovereigns, could not be without a profound influence on its neighbours. Of deliberate direct action there was not much, nor was it needed. The peoples of the thirteen states which had secured emancipation from British sovereignty were wisely intent on framing their own Federal Union, and in taking effective possession of the vast territories in the Ohio region and beyond the Mississi. But their example worked. Their independence tempted, their prosperity stimulated. From the freedom of the United States came the revolt of Spanish America, and the grant by Great Britain to Canada of the amplest rights of self-government.

The effect which the establishment of the great northern republic was bound to have on their own colonies was not unknown to the wiser among the rulers of Spain. They took, however, few and weak steps to counteract the visible peril. During the later 17th century and the whole of the 18th, the history of the Spanish colonies and of the Portuguese in Brazil, was not, as has often been said, one of pure stagnation. Apart from such a peculiar development as the rise, formation and fall of the Jesuit missions in Paraguay, there was growth and change. The Creole population increased and was steadily recruited from home. Apart from settlers who came for trade, the flow of government officials, and soldiers, both officers and men, ended generally in recruiting the Creole element. The newcomers married in the country, and died there, leaving their families to grow up Americans. San Martin, the military leader of Buenos Aires in the revolt, was the son of a Spanish army officer and a Creole mother, and he is quoted as the example of thousands. He was educated in Spain, and began as an officer in the Spanish army. Increasing numbers of Creoles came home for education, and though they rarely went beyond Spain, yet Spain itself was being permeated by the influence of French philosophic and economic writers. The Creoles brought back new ideas. Slow as the Spanish government was to move, and obstinately as it clung to old ways, it was forced to remove restrictions on trade, largely by the discovery that it could not prevent smuggling, which was, in fact, carried on with the connivance of its own corrupt officials. The attempt to prevent all trade on the river Plate was given up, and a vigorous commercial community arose. A revolt of the Indians in Peru in 1780, which was savagely suppressed, forced the government to take note of the abuses of its colonial administration. Many reforms were introduced. Spanish America was never so well governed as at the end of the 18th century, and was on the whole prosperous. But the reforms and concessions of Spain came too late. In commerce it had to compete with the highly developed maritime industry of Great Britain. In government it had to meet with the growing discontent of the Creoles, who found themselves treated as children, and their country looked on as a milch cow. The

wars of the French Revolution and of the emperor Napoleon, in which Spain was entangled, interrupted its communications with its colonies, and weakened its hold on them. The defeat, in 1806 and 1807, of two British expeditions to Buenos Aires and Montevideo, resulting in the capitulation of the English force, gave a great impulse to the self-reliance of the colonists, to whom the credit of the victory entirely belonged. When the intervention of Napoleon in Spain plunged the mother country into anarchy, the colonists began to act for themselves. They were still loyal, but they were no longer passive. The brutality of some Spanish governors on the spot provoked anger. The cortes assembled in Cadiz, being under the influence of the merchants and mob, could make no concessions, and all Spanish America flamed into revolt. For the details of the struggle the reader must refer to the articles ARGENTINA, BOLIVIA, CHILE, COLOMBIA, ECUADOR, PANAMA, PERU, PARAGUAY, URUGUAY, VENEZUELA. Brazil followed the same course in a milder way and a little later. The struggle of Spanish America for independence lasted from 1810 to 1826.

This vast extension of the area of independence in America could not but have its proportionate effect on the general balance of power among nations. So long as Spain retained her colonies on the mainland, while England held Canada, and the English, Dutch and French had possessions in Guiana, the New World must have remained in political dependence on the Old. When the Spanish colonies secured effective independence, and even before their freedom was formally recognized, foreign sovereignty became at once the exception in America. The change thus established de facto owed its first diplomatic consecration to the developments of international politics in the Old World. The committee of the great powers which, since the downfall of Napoleon, had succeeded to the authority which he had usurped in Europe (see EUROPE: History), was for the few years of its unbroken existence fully occupied with the task of preserving the "European Confederation'' from the peril to its peace of renewed revolutionary outbreaks. As early as the congress of Aix-la-Chapelle (1818), however, the question of the relations of Spain and her colonies had been brought up and the suggestion made of concerted intervention, to put an end to a state of things scandalous in itself and dangerous, if only by force of example, to the monarchical principle. The proposal came to nothing, and fared no better when revived at subsequent conferences, owing to the opposition of Great Britain and of Spain herself. Spanish pride resented the interference of an alliance in which Spain had no part; Great Britain could not afford to allow any action to be taken which might end in the re-establishment of the old Spanish colonial system and the destruction of the considerable British trade, still nominally contraband, which had grown up with the colonies during the troubles. Had the Spanish government frankly accepted the situation and acknowledged the trade as legitimate, England would have had no objection to the re-establishment of the Spanish sovereignty in America. But the stubborn blindness of Ferdinand VII. and his ministers made any such solution impossible, and, before the meeting of the congress of Verona, in 1822, Castlereagh had realized the eventual necessity of recognizing the independence of the South American states. Matters were brought to a crisis by the outcome of the Verona conferences (see VERONA, CONGRESS OF), and the re-establishment, in 1823, of the absolute power of the king in Spain by French arms and under French influence, the logical consequence of which seemed to be the reconquest, with the aid of France, of the Spanish colonies. Great Britain could not afford to stand aside and watch the accomplishment of an ambition to prevent which she had, at immense sacrifice of blood and treasure, overthrown the power of Louis XIV. and of Napoleon. She had exhausted every art of diplomatic obstruction to the aggressive action of France; her counterstroke to the unexpectedly easy victory of the French arms was the formal recognition of the revolted colonies as independent states. "If France has Spain,'' cried Canning in parliament, "at least it shall be Spain without the Indies. We have called a New World into existence to redress the balance of the Old.''

On the 23rd of July 1824, a commercial treaty was signed between Great Britain and Brazil; Colombia and Mexico were acknowledged in December of the same year; and the recognition of the other states followed, as each was able to give guarantees of stable government. Meanwhile the United States, acting in harmony, but not in formal co-operation, with England, had taken decisive action. President Monroe, in his message to Congress on the 2nd of December 1823, laid down the rule that no part of America was any longer res nullius, or open to colonial settlement. Though the vast ultimate consequences of this sudden appearance of the great western republic in the arena of international politics were not realized even by those in sympathy with Monroe's action, the weight of the United States thrown into the scale on the side of Great Britain made any effective protest by the European powers impossible; Russia, Austria and Prussia contented themselves with joining in a mild expression of regret that the action of Great Britain "tended to encourage that revolutionary spirit it had been found so difficult to control in Europe.'' Great Britain and the United States were, indeed, not in complete agreement as to the legitimacy of fresh colonial settlements in the New World, but they were practically resolved that nobody should make any new settlements except themselves. From President Monroe's declaration has grown up what is now known as the Monroe Doctrine (q.v.), which, in substance, insists that America forms a separate system apart from Europe, wherein still existing European possessions may be tolerated, but on the understanding that no extension of them, and no establishment of European control over a nominally independent American state, will be allowed.

The Monroe Doctrine is indeed the recognition, rather than the cause, of undeniable fact. Europe is still possessed of some measure of sovereign power in the New World, in Canada, in Guiana and in the West Indian islands. But Canada is bound only by a voluntary allegiance, Guiana is unimportant, and in the West Indian islands, where the independence of Hayti and the loss of Cuba and Porto Rico by Spain have diminished the European sphere, European dominion is only a survival of the colonial epoch. America, North and South, does form a separate system. Within that system power is divided as it has not been in Europe since the fall of the Roman empire. On the one hand are the United States and Canada. On the other are all the states formed out of the colonial empires of Spain and Portugal. The states of the American Union are non-tropical, adapted to the development of European races, not mixed with Indian blood, and possessed by long inheritance of the machinery needed for the successful conduct of self-government. They grew during the 19th century in population and wealth at a rate that placed them far ahead of the Spanish and Portuguese states, which in the year 1800 were the richer and the more populous. The Spanish and Portuguese states of America are mainly tropical, and therefore ill adapted to the health of a white race. Their population is divided between a white minority, among whom there are to be found strains of Indian blood, and a coloured majority, sometimes docile and industrious, sometimes mere savages. They inherited no machinery of self-government. Townships governed by close corporations, and all embedded in the despotic power of the crown, presented none of the elements out of which a commonwealth could be formed. It was inevitable that in the early stages of their history, the so-called Latin communities should fall under the control of "the single person,'' and no less inevitable that he should be a soldier. The sword and military discipline supplied the only effective instruments of government. It would have been a miracle if the first generation of Mexican and South American history had not been anarchical. And though in recent years Spanish America has seemingly settled down, and republican institutions have followed upon long periods of continual revolution, yet over the American continent as a whole there is an overwhelming predominance, material and intellectual, of the communities of English speech and politically of English origin.

AUTHORITIES. — Separate bibliographies will be found under the headings of the separate states. Amid the plethora of books, the reader cannot do better than consult the Narrative and Critical History of America, edited by Justin Winsor (1886-1889), in eight large octavo volumes, in which all the chapters are supplied with copious and carefully-compiled bibliographies. (D. H.)

1 The exact position has been disputed. According to John Fiske, the line would be between 41 deg. and 44 deg. long.

III. Ethnology and Archaeology.—

The American aborigines.

A summary account is here
given of the American aborigines, who are discussed in more detail under INDIANS, NORTH AMBRICAN. Whether with Payne it is assumed that in some remote time a speechless anthropoid passed over a land bridge, now the Bering Sea, which then sank behind him; or with W. Boyd Dawkins and Brinton, that the French cave man came hither by way of Iceland; or with Keane, that two subvarieties, the long-headed Eskimo-Botocudo type and the Mexican round- headed type, prior to all cultural developments, reached the New World, one by Iceland, the other by Bering Sea; or that Malayoid wanderers were stranded on the coast of South America; or that no breach of continuity has occurred since first the march of tribes began this way — ethnologists agree that the aborigines of the western came from the eastern hemisphere, and there is lacking any biological evidence of Caucasoid or Negroid blood flowing in the veins of Americans before the invasions of historic times. The time question is one of geology.

Following Notes and Queries on Anthropology, published by the British Association for the Advancement of Science, the study of the American aborigines divides itself into two parts: that relating to their biology, and that relating to their culture. In the four subdivisions of humanity based on the hair, the Americans are straight-haired or Mongoloid. But it will free this account of them from embarrassments if they be looked upon as a distinct subspecies of Homo sapiens. Occupying 135 degrees of latitude, living on the shores of frozen or of tropical waters; at altitudes varying from sea-level to several thousands of feet; in forests, grassy prairies or deserts; here starved, there in plenty; with a night here of six months' duration, there twelve hours long; here among health-giving winds, and there cursed with malaria — this brown man became, in different culture provinces, brunette or black, tall or short, long-headed or short-headed, and developed on his own hemisphere variations from an average type.

Since the tribes practised far more in-breeding than out-breeding, the tendency was toward forming not only verbal linguistic groups, but biological varieties; the weaker the tribe, the fewer the captures, the greater the isolation and harder the conditions — producing dolichocephaly, dwarfism and other retrogressive characteristics. The student will find differences among anthropologists in the interpretation of these marks — some averring that comparative anatomy is worthless as a means of subdividing the American subspecies, others that biological variations point to different Old World origins, a third class believing these structural variations to be of the soil. The high cheek-bone and the hawk's- bill nose are universally distributed in the two Americas; so also are proportions between parts of the body, and the frequency of certain abnormalities of the skull, the hyoid bone, the humerus and the tibia. Viability, by which are meant fecundity, longevity and vigour, was low in average. The death-rate was high, through lack of proper weaning foods, and hard life. The readiness with which the American Indian succumbed to disease is well known. For these reasons there was not, outside of southern Mexico, northern Central America and Peru, a dense population. In the whole hemisphere there were not over ten million souls.

The materials for studying the American man biologically are abundant in the United States National Museum in Washington; the Peabody Museum, at Cambridge, Massachusetts; the American Museum of Natural History, New York; the Academy of Sciences and the Free Museum of Arts and Sciences, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; the Field Museum in Chicago; the National Museum, city of Mexico, and the Museum of La Plata. In Europe there are excellent collections in London, Cambridge, Paris, Berlin, St Petersburg and Prague.

Professor Putnam measured for the World's Columbian Exposition 1700 living Indians, and the results have been summed up by Boas. The breadth of the Indian face is one centimetre more than that of the whites, and the half-breeds are nearer the Indian standard; this last is true also of colour in the skin, eyes and hair. In stature, the tall tribes exceed 170 cm.; middle stature ranges between 166 and 170; and short tribes are under 166 cm. The Indians are on the whole a tall people. Tribes that have changed residence have changed stature. The tallest statures are on the plains in both Americas. The mountains of the south-east and of the west reveal the shortest statures. The whole Mississippi valley was occupied by tall peoples. The Athapascans of New Mexico are of middle stature, the Pueblo peoples are short. The Shoshoni, Shahaptin and Salish tribes are of middle stature; on the coast of British Columbia, Puget Sound, in Oregon, and northern California, are the shortest of all the North Americans save the Eskimo, while among them, on the Columbia, are taller tribes. The comparison of cranial indexes is rendered difficult by intentional flattening of the occiput by the hard cradle-board. The Mississippi valley tribes are nearly brachycephalic; the index increases around the Great Lakes, and lessens farther east. The eastern Eskimo are dolichocephalic, the western are less so, and the Aleuts brachycephalic. On the North Pacific coast, and in spots down to the Rio Grande, are short heads, but scattered among these are long heads, frequent in southern California, but seen northward to Oregon, as well as in Sonora and some Rio Grande pueblos.

The same variety of index exists in South America. In the regions of greatest linguistic mixture is the greatest heterogeneity of cephalic index.

Classification.

The concepts on which the peoples of the Old World have been classified, such as stature, colour, skeletal measurements, nationality, and so on, cannot as yet be used in America with success. The only basis of division practicable is language, which must be kept separate in the mind from the others. However, before the conquest, in no other part of the globe did language tally so nearly with kinship. Marriage was exogamic among clans in a tribe, but practically, though not wholly endogamic as between tribes, wife and slave capture being common in places. In his family tree of Homo Americanus Keane follows out such a plan, placing the chief linguistic family names on the main limbs, North American on one side, and South American on the other. Deniker groups mankind into twenty- nine races and sub-races. American are numbered thus:— 21, South American sub-race; Palaeo-Americans and South Americans. 22, North American sub-race; tall, mesocephalic. 23, Central American race; short, brachycephalic. 24, Patagonian race; tall, brachycephalic. 25, Eskimo race; short, dolichocephalic.

Farrand speaks of physical, linguistic, geographic, and cultural criteria, the first two the more exact, the latter more convenient and sometimes the only feasible bases.

Culture provinces.

Zoologists divide the earth into biological areas or regions, so both archaeologists and ethnologists may find it convenient to have in mind some such scheme of provinces as the following, named partly after the dominant ethnic groups:—Eskimo, on Arctic shores; Dene (Tinneh), in north-western Canada; Algonquin-Iroquois, Canada and eastern United States; Sioux, plains of the west; Muskhogee, Gulf States; Tlinkit-Haida, North Pacific coast; Salish-Chinook, Fraser- Columbia coasts and basins; Shoshoni, interior basin; California- Oregon, mixed tribes; Pueblo province, southwestern United States and northern Mexico; Nahuatla-Maya, southern Mexico and Central America; Chibcha-Kechua, the Cordilleras of South America; Carib-Arawak, about Caribbean Sea; Tupi-Guarani, Amazon drainage; Araucanian, Pampas; Patagonian, peninsula; Fuegian, Magellan Strait. It is necessary to use geographical terms in the case of California and the North Pacific, the Caucasus or cloaca gentium of the western hemisphere, where were pocketed forty out of one hundred or more families of native tribes. The same is true in a limited sense of Matto Grosso. That these areas had deep significance for the native races is shown by the results, both in biology and culture. The presence or absence of useful minerals, plants and animals rendered some congenial, others unfriendly; some areas were the patrons of virile occupations, others of feminine pursuits.

Among the languages of America great differences exist in the sounds used. A collection of all the phonetic elements exhausts the standard alphabets and calls for new letters. A comparison of one family with another shows also that some are vocalic and soft, others wide in the range of sounds, while a third set are harsh and guttural, the speaking of them (according to Payne) resembling coughing, barking and sneezing. Powell also thinks that man lived in America before he acquired articulate speech. The utterance of these speech elements in definite order constitutes the roots and sentences of the various tongues. From the manner of assemblage, all American languages are agglutinative, or holophrastic, but they should not be called polysynthetic or incorporative or inflexional. They were more or less on the way to such organized forms, in which the world's literatures are preserved. As in all other languages, so in those of aboriginal America, the sentence is the unit. Words and phrases are the organic parts of the sentence, on which, therefore, the languages are classified. It is on this basis of sentential elements that Powell has arranged the linguistic families of North America. He has brought together, in the Bureau of American Ethnology in Washington, many hundreds of manuscripts, written by travellers, traders, missionaries, and scholars; and, better still, in response to circulars, carefully prepared vocabularies, texts and long native stories have been written out by trained collectors. A corps of specialists—Boas, Dall, Dorsey, Gatschet, Hewitt, Mooney, Pilling, J. R. Swanton—have studied many of these languages analytically and comparatively. Other institutional investigations have been prosecuted, the result of all which will be an intelligent comprehension of the philology of a primitive race.

Linguistic families.

Attention is frequently called to the large number of linguistic families in America, nearly 100 having been named, embracing over 1000 languages and dialects. A few of them, however, occupied the greater part of lands both north and south of Panama; the others were encysted in the territory of the prevailing families, or concealed in culs- de-sac of the mountains. They are, through poverty of material, unclassed languages, merely outstanding phenomena. Factions separated from the parent body developed dialects or languages by contact, intermarriage and incorporation with foreign tribes. To the old-time belief that languages multiplied by splitting and colonizing, must be added the theory that languages were formerly more numerous, and that those of the Americans were formed by combining.

The families of North America, Middle America and South America are here given in alphabetical order, the prevailing ones in small capitals:—

North America.

ALGONQUIN, E. Can., N. Atlantic States, middle States, middle western States; ATHAPASCAN, N.W. Can., Alaska, Wash., Or., Cal., Ariz., Mex.; Attacapan, La.; Beothukan, Nova Scotia; CADDOAN, Tex., Neb., Dak.; Chimakuan, Wash.; Chimarikan, N. Cal.; CHIMMESYAN, Brit. Col.; CHINOOKAN, Or.; Chitimachan, La.; Chumashan, S. Cal,; Coahuiltecan, Tex.; Copehan, N. Cal.; Costanoan, Cal.; ESKIMAUAN, Arctic province; Esselenian, Cal.; IROQUOIAN, N.Y., N.C.; Kalapooian, Or.; Karankawan, Tex.; KERESAN, N. Mex.; KIOWAN, Neb.; KITUNAHAN, Brit. Col.; KOLUSCHAN, S. Alaska; KULANAPAN, Cal.; Kusan, Cal.; Lutuamian, Or.; Mariposan, Cal.; Moquelumnan, Cal.; MUSKHOGEAN, Gulf States; NATCHESAN, Miss.; Palaihnihan, Cal.; PIMAN, Ariz.; Pujunan, Cal.; Quoratean, Or.; Salinan, Cal.; SALISHAN, Brit. Col.; Sastean, Or.; SHAHAPTIAN, Or.; SHOSHONEAN, Interior Basin; SIOUAN, Mo. Valley; SKITTAGETAN, Brit. Col.; Takilman, Or.; TANYOAN, Mex.; Timuquanan, Fla.; Tonikan, Miss.; Tonkawan, Tex.; Uchean, Ga.; Waiilatpuan, Or.; WAKASHAN, Vancouver I.; Washoan, Nev.; Weitspekan, Or.; Wishoskan, Cal.; Yakonan, Or.; Yanan, Or.; Yukian, Cal.; Yuman, L. Cal.; ZUNYAN, N. Mex.

Middle America.

CHAPANECAN, Chi.; Chinantecan, Oax.; Chontalan, S. Mex.; Huatusan, Nic.; Huavean, Tehuant.; Lencan, Hon.; MAYAN, Yuc. and Guat.; NAHUATLAN, Mex.; OTOMITLAN, Cen. Mex.; Raman, Hond.; Serian, Tiburon I.; Subtiaban, Nic.; TARASCAN, Mich.; Tehuantepecan, Isthmus; Tequistlatecan, Oax.; TOTONACAN, Mex.; Triquian, S. Mex.; Ulvan, Nic.; Xicaquean, Hond.; ZAPOTECAN, Oax.; ZOQUEAN, Tehuant.

South America.

Alikulufan, T. del Fuego; Arauan, R. Purus; ARAWAKIAN, E. Andes; Atacamenyan, S. Peru; ARAUCANIAN, Pampas; AYMARAN, Peru; Barbacoan, Colombia; Betoyan, Bogota; Canichanan, Bolivia; Carahan, S. Brazil; CARIBIAN, around Caribbean Sea; Catamarenyan, Chaco; Changuinan, Panama; Charruan, Parana R.; CHIBCHAN, Colombia; Churoyan, Orinoco R.; Coconucan, Colombia; Cunan, Panama; GUAYCURUAN, Paraguay R.; JIVAROAN, Ecuador; KECHUAN, Peru; Laman, N.E. Peru; Lulean, Vermejo R.; Mainan, S. Ecuador; Matacoan, Vermejo R.; Mocoan, Colombia; Mosetenan, E. Bolivia; ONAN, T. del Fuego; Paniquitan, Colombia; Panoan, Ucayali R., Peru; Payaguan, Chaco; Puquinan, Titicaca L.; Samucan, Bolivia; Tacanan, N. Bolivia; TAPUYAN, Brazil; Timotean, Venezuela; TUPIAN, Amazon R.; TZONECAN, Patagonia; YAHGAN, T. del Fuego; Yuncan, Truxillo, Peru; Yurucarian, E. Bolivia; ZAPAROAN, Ecuador.

Written language was largely hierographic and heroic. The drama, the cult image, the pictograph, the synecdochic picture, the ideaglyph, were steps in a progress without a break. The warrior painted the story of conflicts on his robe only in part, to help him recount the history of his life; the Eskimo etched the prompters of his legend on ivory; the Tlinkit carved them on his totem post; the women fixed them in pottery, basketry, or blankets. At last, the central advanced tribes made the names of the abbreviated pictures useful in other connexions, and were far on the way to a syllabary. Intertribal communication was through gestures; it may be, survivals of a primordial speech, antedating the differentiated spoken languages. See publications of the Bureau of American Ethnology, by F. W. Hodge (1906); Farrand, Basis of Am. History, chap. xviii.; and Orozco y Berra, Geografia de las lenguas, &c. (Mexico, 1868).

Technology.

To supply their wants the Americans invented modifications in natural materials, the working of which was their industries. The vast collections in richly endowed European and American museums are the witnesses and types of these. There is danger of confounding the products of native industries. The following classes must be carefully discriminated: (a) pre-Columbian, (b) Columbian, (c) pre-contact, (d) first contact, (e) post-contact, (f) present, and (g) spurious. Pre-Columbian or pre-historic material is further classified into that which had been used by Indians before the discovery, and such as is claimed to be of a prior geological period. Columbian, or 15th-century material, still exists in museums of Europe and America, and good descriptions are to be found in the writings of contemporary historians. Pre-contact material is such as continued to exist in any tribe down to the time when they were touched by the presence of the trade of the whites. In some tribes this would bring the student very near to the present time; for example, before Steinen, the Indians in Matto Grosso were in the pre- contact period. Post-contact material is genuine Indian work more or less influenced by acculturation. It is interesting in this connexion to study also first contact in its lists of articles, and the effects produced upon aboriginal minds and methods. For example, a tribe that would jump at iron arrow-heads stoutly declined to modify the shafts. Present material is such as the Indian tribes of the two Americas are making to-day. Spurious material includes all that mass of objects made by whites and sold as of Indian manufacture; some of it follows native models and methods; the rest is fraudulent and pernicious. The question whether similarities in technology argue for contact of tribes, or whether they merely show corresponding states of culture, with modifications produced by environment, divides ethnologists. (See Farrand, chap. xviii. )

Aboriginal mechanics.

The study of mechanics involves materials, tools, processes and products. No iron tools existed in America before the invasion of the whites. Mineral, vegetable and animal substances, soft and hard, were wrought into the supply of wants by means of tools and apparatus of stone, wood and bone tools for cutting, or edged tools; tools for abrading and smoothing the surfaces of substances, like planes, rasps and sandpaper; tools for striking, that is, pounding for the sake of pounding, or for crushing and fracturing violently; perforating tools; devices for grasping and holding firmly. These varied in the different culture provinces according to the natural supply, and the presence or absence of good tool material counted for as much as the presence or absence of good substances on which to work. As a means of grading progress among the various tribes, the tool is valuable both in its working part and its hafting, or manual part. Fire drills were universal.

Besides chipped stone knives, the teeth of rodents, sharks, and other animals served an excellent purpose. In north-west America and in the Caribbean area the adze was highly developed. In Mexico, Colombia and Peru the cutting of friable stone with tough volcanic hammers and chisels, as well as rude metallurgy, obtained, but the evidences of smelting are not convincing. Engineering devices were almost wanting. The Eskimo lifted his weighted boat with sheer-legs made of two paddles; he also had a tackle without sheaves, formed by reaving a greased thong through slits cut in the hide of a walrus. The north- west coast Indians hoisted the logs that formed the plates of their house frames into position with skids and parbuckles of rope. The architectural Mexicans, Central Americans, and especially the Peruvians, had no derricks or other hoisting devices, but rolled great stones into place along prepared ways and up inclined planes of earth, which were afterwards removed. In building the fortress of Sacsahuaman, heights had to be scaled; in Tiahuanaco stones weighing 400 tons were carried seventeen miles; in the edifices of Ollantaytambo not only were large stones hauled up an ascent, but were fitted perfectly. The moving of vast objects by these simple processes shows what great numbers of men could be enlisted in a single effort, and how high a grade of government it was which could hold them together and feed them. In Arizona, Mexico and Peru, reservoirs and aqueducts prove that hydrotechny was understood. (Hodge, Am. Anthrop. vi. 323.)

Time-keeping devices were not common. Sun-dials and calendar monuments were known among the more advanced tribes. Fractional portions of time were gauged by shadows, and time of day indicated by the position of the sun with reference to natural features. No standards of weighing or measuring were known, but the parts of the body were the units, and money consisted in rare and durable vegetable and animal substances, which scarcely reached the dignity of a mechanism of exchange. If the interpretation of the Maya calculiform glyphs be trustworthy, these people had carried their numeral system into the hundreds of thousands and devised symbols for recording such high numbers. (See Bulletin 28, Bur. Am. Ethnol.)

Food.

The Americans were, in most places, flesh-eaters. The air, the waters and the land were their base of supplies, and cannibalism, it is admitted, was widespread. With this animal diet everywhere vegetable substances were mixed, even in the boreal regions. Where the temperature allowed, vegetable diet increased, and fruits, seeds and roots were laid under tribute. Storage was common, and also the drying of ripened fruits. The most favoured areas were those where corn and other plants could be artificially produced, and there barbaric cultures were elaborated. This farming was of the rudest kind. Plots of ground were burned over, trees were girdled, and seeds were planted by means of sharpened sticks. The first year the crop would be free from weeds, the second year only those grew whose seeds were wafted or carried by birds, the third year the crop required hoeing, which was done with sticks, and then the space was abandoned for new ground. Irrigation and terrace culture were practised at several points on the Pacific slope from Arizona to Peru. The steps along which plant and animal domestication passed upwards in artificiality are graphically illustrated in the aboriginal food quest.

Clothing and adornment.

Except in the boreal areas the breech-clout was nearly universal with men, and the cincture or short petticoat with women. Even in Mexico and Mayan sculptures the gods are arrayed in gorgeous breech-clouts. The foot-gear in the tropics was the sandal, and, passing northward, the moccasin, becoming the long boot in the Arctic. Trousers and the blouse were known only among the Eskimo, and it is difficult to say how much these have been modified by contact. Leggings and skin robes took their place southward, giving way at last to the nearly nude. Head coverings also were gradually tabooed south of the 49th parallel. Tattooing and painting the body were well-nigh universal. Labrets, i.e. pieces of bone, stone, shell, &c., were worn as ornaments in the lip (Latin, labrum) or cheek by Eskimo, Tlinkit, Nahuatlas and tribes on the Brazilian coast. For ceremonial purposes all American tribes were expert in masquerade and dramatic apparel. A study of these in the historic tribes makes plain the motives in gorgeous Mexican sculptures.

Habitation.

The tribal system of family organization, universal in America, dominated the dwelling. The Eskimo underground houses of sod and snow, the Dene (Tinneh) and Sioux bunch of bark or skin wigwams, the Pawnee earth lodge, the Iroquois long house, the Tlinkit great plank house, the Pueblo with its honeycomb of chambers, the small groups of thatched houses in tropical America and the Patagonian toldos of skin are examples. The Indian habitation was made up of this composite abode, with whatever out-structures and garden plots were needed. A group of abodes, however joined together, constituted the village or home of the tribe, and there was added to these a town hall or large assembly structure where men gathered and gossiped, and where all dramatic and religious ceremonies were held. Powell contends that in a proper sense none of the Indian tribes was nomadic, but that, governed by water-supply, bad seasons and superstition (and discomfort from vermin must be added), even the Pueblo tribes often tore down and rebuilt their domiciles. The fur trade, the horse, the gun, disturbed the sedentary habit of American tribes. Little attention was paid to furniture. In the smoke-infested wigwam and hut the ground was the best place for sitting or sleeping. The communal houses of the Pacific coast had bunks. The hammock was universal in the tropics, and chairs of wood or stone. Eating was from the pot, with the hand or spoon. Tables, knives, forks and other prandial apparatus were as lacking as they were in the palaces of kings a few centuries before. (Morgan, Houses and House Life; Farrand, p. 286.)

Stone-working.

Stone-working was universal in America. The tribes quarried by means of crowbars and picks of wood and bone. They split the silicious rocks with stone hammers, and then chipped them into shape with bone tools. Soapstone for pottery was partly cut into the desired shape in the native ledge, broken or prised loose, and afterwards scraped into form. Paint was excavated with the ubiquitous digging-stick, and rubbed fine on stones with water or grease. For polished stonework the material was pecked by blows, ground with other stones, and smoothed with fine material. Sawing was done by means of sand or with a thin piece of harder stuff. Boring was effected with the sand- drill; the hardest rocks may have been pierced with specially hard sand. At any rate stones were sawed, shaped, polished, carved and perforated, not only by the Mexicans, but among other tribes. For building purposes stones were got out, dressed, carved and sculptured with stone hammers and chisels made of hard and tenacious rock. Stone-cutters' tools of metal are not known to have existed, and they were not needed. Their quarrying and stone-working were most wasteful. Those localities where chipping was done reveal hundreds of tons of splinters and failures, and these are often counted as ruder implements of an earlier time. The dressed stones for great buildings were pecked out of the ledges, and broken off with levers in pieces much too large for their needs. (McGuire, "The Stone Hammer," Am. Anthrop. iv., 1891; Holmes, Archaeological Studies; see Hodge's List, Bur. Am. Ethnol., 1906, and Handbook.)

Metallurgy.

Metals were treated as malleable stones by the American aborigines. No evidence of smelting ores with fluxes is offered, but casting from metal melted in open fires is assumed. Gold, silver, copper, pure or mixed with tin or silver, are to be found here and there in both continents, and nuggets were objects of worship. Tools and appliances for working metals were of the rudest kind, and if moulds for casting were employed these were broken up; at least no museum contains samples of them, and the processes are not described. In the Arctic and Pacific coast provinces, about Lake Superior, in Virginia and North Carolina, as well as in ruder parts of Mexico and South America, metals were cold-hammered into plates, weapons, rods and wire, ground and polished, fashioned into carved blocks of hard, tenacious stone by pressure or blow, overlaid, cold-welded and plated. Soldering, brazing and the blowpipe in the Cordilleran provinces are suspected, but the evidence of their existence must be further examined. A deal of study has been devoted to the cunning Tubal Cains, the surprising productions of whose handiwork have been recovered in the art provinces of Mexico and the Cordilleras, especially in Chiriqui, between Costa Rica and Colombia. It must be admitted, however, that both the tools and the processes have escaped the archaeologist, as they did "the ablest goldsmiths in Spain, for they never could conceive how they had been made, there being no sign of a hammer or an engraver or any other instrument used by them, the Indians having none such" (Herrera).

Pottery.

The potter's wheel did not exist in the western world, but it was almost invented. Time and muscle, knack and touch, a trained eye and brain and an unlimited array of patterns hanging on fancy's walls, aided by a box of dry sand, were competent to give the charming results. No more striking contrast can be found between forlorn conditions and refined art products. Art in clay was far from universal in the two Americas. The Eskimo on Bering Sea had learned to model shallow bowls for lamps. No pottery existed in Athapascan boundaries. Algonquin-Iroquois tribes made creditable ware in Canada and eastern United States. Muskhogean tribes were potters, but Siouan tribes, as a rule, in all the Mississippi drainage were not. In their area, however, dwelt clay-working tribes, and the Mandans had the art. Moreover, the mound-builders in the eastern half of this vast plain, being sedentary, were excellent potters. The efflorescence of aboriginal pottery is to be found in the Pueblo region of south- western United States, in Mexico, Central America, Caribbean Islands, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and restricted areas of eastern Brazil. (The literature on this subject is extensive. See Cushing, Fewkes, Holmes, Hough, Stevenson.) On the Pacific side of the continent not one of the forty linguistic families made pottery. The only workers in clay west of the Rockies and north of the Pueblo country belonged to the Shoshonean family of the Interior Basin.