Mongrels form, indeed, a large proportion of the inhabitants of the world. It is doubtful whether there are any pure races in Europe; not even the Basques can pretend to purity of blood.[1650] M. Broca found, when investigating the subject of stature, that nineteen-twentieths of the whole population of France presented, in various degrees, the characters of mixed races.[1651] In North America, different races intermingle more and more every day. In Greenland, according to Dr. Nansen, in the course of a century and a half there has been such an intermixture of races that it would now be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to find a true Eskimo throughout the whole of the west coast; and the Europeans, far from being disliked by the native women have succeeded in inspiring them with so much respect that the “simplest European sailor is preferred to the best Eskimo seal catcher.”[1652] In Mexico, the Spanish mixed breeds constitute two-thirds or three-fourths of the whole population;[1653] and South America, to quote a French writer, is “le grand laboratoire des nations hybrides ou métisses modernes.”[1654] Of twelve millions of mongrels, which is the estimated number of mongrels on the face of the globe, no fewer than eleven millions are found there.[1655] Even in remote Tierra del Fuego, according to Mr. Bridges, some mongrels of European fathers and indigenous mothers have appeared during the last few years.
In Asia there are numberless instances of intermixture of breed between the Tartars, Mongols, and Tunguses, and the Russians and Chinese, &c.[1656] In India there are many Eurasians; in the Indian Archipelago Chinese and Malays intermarry;[1657] and, in the Islands of the South Sea, the mongrels of European fathers amount to a considerable number. In Africa, the eastern Soudan is a great centre of mixed breeds between races much removed from one another. And, in Southern Africa, the Griquas—the offspring of Dutch colonists and Hottentot women—form a very distinct race.
As far as we know, there are no human races who, when intermingled, are entirely sterile. But as regards the degree of fertility of first crosses and of mongrels, the opinions of different anthropologists vary considerably. Those who do not believe in the unity of the human race have been especially solicitous to prove that crosses are almost inevitably followed by bad results in that respect. Thus Dr. Knox thinks that the half-breeds, if they were abandoned to themselves and no longer had access to pure races, would rapidly disappear, the “hybrid” being rejected by nature as a degradation of humanity.[1658] Dr. Nott asserts that, when two proximate species of mankind, two races bearing a general resemblance to each other in type, are bred together, they produce offspring perfectly prolific; but that, when species the most widely separated, such as the Anglo-Saxon and the negro, are crossed, the mulatto offspring are but partially prolific, and acquire an inherent tendency to run out, and become eventually extinct, when kept apart from the parent stocks.[1659] The same opinion is entertained by M. Broca, and by M. Pouchet, who thinks that the crossed race will exist only if it continues to be supported by the two creating types remaining in the midst of it.[1660]