A very few people prefer
barbarous and utterly uncivilized portions of the globe for the reason
that they receive while there new impressions, and because they like
the unexpected better than a routine of existence, no matter how
pleasant that routine may be. But the most interesting places of all
to study are those in which the savage and the cultivated man lie down
together and try to live together in unity. This is so because we can
learn from such places just how far a man of cultivation lapses into
barbarism when he associates with savages, and how far the remnants of
his former civilization will have influence upon the barbarians among
whom he has come to live.
There are many such colonies as these, and they are the most picturesque
plague-spots on the globe. You will find them in New Zealand and at
Yokohama, in Algiers, Tunis, and Tangier, and scattered thickly all
along the South American coast-line wherever the law of extradition
obtains not, and where public opinion, which is one of the things a
colony can do longest without, is unknown. These are the unofficial
Botany Bays and Melillas of the world, where the criminal goes of his
own accord, and not because his government has urged him to do so and
paid his passage there. This is the story of a young man who went to
such a place for the benefit he hoped it would be to his health, and
not because he had robbed any one, or done a young girl an injury. He
was the only son of Judge Henry Howard Holcombe, of New York.
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