Identifier: worldsinhabitant00bett (find matches)
Title: The world's inhabitants; or, Mankind, animals, and plants; being a popular account of the races and nations of mankind, past and present, and the animals and plants inhabiting the great continents and principal islands
Year: 1888 (1880s)
Authors: Bettany, G. T. (George Thomas), 1850-1891
Subjects: Civilization Culture
Publisher: London Ward, Lock
Contributing Library: Robarts - University of Toronto
Digitizing Sponsor: University of Toronto

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BACKWOODS AUCTION. consideration from the settlers; and who regarded the latter as the robbersof their proper hunting-grounds. Thus war of a guerilla nature waslong kept up; and possibly this developed a lawless and adventm0usspirit in many of the border settlements. But sudden accessions ofwealth owing to many causes, notably the development of the goldmines of California and the silver mines of Nevada, followed by morerapid squandering oi the same in dissipation and extravagance, and thereckless gambling fostered by such a life, have probably done much toproduce a peculiar roughness of type in many of the later settledregions. Probably, too, the continued incursions of strangers from the British THE UNITED STATES. 743 Isles, from Germany, Scandinavia, and other countries, had much influ-ence in unsettling the population in many regions. A large, unsettlecl,
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THE ELEVATED RAILWAY : BROADWAY, NEW YORK. unassimilated popiUation tends to be excitable, ever ready for immigrationa new venture, while the settled farmers are spread over the ^^ ^^ope^s. 744 THE INHABITANTS OF AMERICA. country and are not much in evidence. Thus the American type hasbecome characterised as go-ahead above everything. Cuteness, sharp-ness, and enterprise are well known and sometimes excessive features ofour American cousins, and have even been reflected in their physicalaspect. The long narrow type of face, short scraggy beard, bright,keen, mobile eyes, and a general aspect of self-reliance, energy, and nota little cockiness, are among these. On the other hand, the United States may claim to have introducedsome new types which have much to recommend them. The frank, free,unconventional woman, gracious and cultured, handsome andself-reliant, independent of male help and incapable of femi-nine pettiness ; the shrewd inventor of new machinery, new appHances,or new combin

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