wander over an immense tract of inhospitable wilds, though their numbers, if collected, scarcely people two or three villages.* The hunters of the southern regions are not more numerous. Forster, who is by no means inclined to reduce the numbers which he estimates, reckons the Pesserais, who inhabit Terra del Fuego, the lowest of mankind: but

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though their country is little inferior in size to one moiety of Ireland, hardly two thousand inhabitants are found in this great extent of lands." The Kamchadals, Koriaks, Ostiaks, and other tribes spread along the vast shore of the Arctic Ocean, depend for subsistence almost entirely upon fish, of which the sea and rivers furnish a plentiful supply during the summer, and the redundance of that season is dried and laid up for a winter store. Here the degree of population falls so low, that the Russian government of Irkutsk has only three peron every square geographical mile.†

sons

*Heriot's Canada, 21.

+ Observations, p. 317. Tooke's Russia, i. 525.

Perhaps it may be safely stated, that the people who derive their subsistence from the chase alone throughout the globe, do not exceed, do not even equal, the number of the inhabitants of Scotland. Necessity presses them within these scanty limits. The uncertainty of the supply, whether of fish or of the wild animals of the forest; the difficulty of obtaining, the impossibility of increasing it; together with the waste attending their expeditions; all forbid their multiplication, as strongly as they prevent their civilization, and confine to a very small portion, perhaps to a four or five hundredth part of the whole, the evils belonging to that lowest state of the human race, which is necessarily consequent upon the general law of increase. It might be added, also, as concurring in the same effect, that the rigours of extreme latitudes, and the hardships of savage life, have been observed by numerous travellers,* either to restrain the attention from the

* Forster, of the Esquimaux, Greenlanders, New Zealanders, and Pesserais, 315; Bruce, of the Shangalla nations; La Vaillant, of the Hottentots.

sexual passion, or to diminish the prolific power.

II. Very far removed from these, but still in a state which admits of only a low degree of improvement, compared with a settled mode of living and regular government, are the pastoral nations of northern Asia; the Calmuk, the Mongol, and Mandshur tribes, and the numerous smaller branches which, among various shades of difference, agree in the generic character of refusing agriculture, and despising a stationary abode. the hunting nations, is in a great measure also applicable to these; their occupation, and the nature of their subsistence, though it does not render less strong the principle of population, which keeps their number fully up to the level of their support, yet reduces that level so low, that the population is not only thinly scattered, but in its total number very inconsiderable. Gibbon has observed, that the inhabitants of the vast peninsula of Arabia might be outnumbered by the subjects of a fertile and industri

What has been stated of

ous province. And the whole of the inhabitants of Asiatic Russia, comprehending the principal of the Nomadic nations, whose number, by the inquiries and registers of the Empress Catherine, was ascertained with tolerable exactness, does not exceed five millions;* so that a population amounting to little more than one fourth of that of the British isles, is spread along a hundred and seventy degrees of longitude.

The laws which regulate this low population are permanent. No art or labour on the part of a pastoral nation can increase their cattle faster than a certain ratio, or to a number beyond what can be supported by their average pasture. The ratio of increase is steadily fixed by nature. The pasture is limited by the extent of land over which the tribe can range; by the degree of security with which they can lay up a winter provision, or, lastly, by the nature of the climate, and the proportion of

* See Pinkerton, ii. 48, with his authorities.

winter provision it requires. The accounts of pastoral people exemplify to us all these several circumstances. Some wander from district to district, till they are checked in their migrations by the incursions or vicinity of more powerful neighbours: with others, a great part of the summer labour consists in stacking forage for a severer season: while others again expose their cattle to the inclemency of the winter, and trust to their finding a scanty provision among the leaves and brushwood.* These difficulties and hardships, added to the epidemic diseases which occasionally appear among the cattle, and are the most formidable evils to pastoral nations, reduce the average increase of the herds and flocks so low as to make it impossible for a large population to find subsistence.

III. But in agriculture the case is widely different. The increase of corn varies, according to the climate and the culture, from ten to

* See the account of the Choriziens, a rich tribe of the Burattes, in the Découvertes Russes, liv. vi. 109.