"Count de Gobineau remarks that not even a common
religion and country can extinguish the hereditary
aversion of the Arab to the Turk, of the Kurd to the
Nestorian of Syria, of the Magyar to the Slav. Indeed,
so strong, among the Arabs, is the instinct of ethnical
isolation that, as a traveller relates, at Djidda,
where sexual morality is held in little respect, a
Bedouin woman may yield herself for money to a Turk or
European, but would think herself forever dishonored if
she were joined to him in lawful wedlock."[135]
We might suppose that the coarser races would be less capable of such
aversions than the half-civilized, but the contrary is true. In
Australia nearly every tribe is the deadly enemy of every other tribe,
and according to Chapman a Bushman woman would consider herself
degraded by intercourse with anyone not belonging to her tribe.
"Savage nations," says Humboldt, in speaking of the Chaymas of New
Andalusia,
"are subdivided into an infinity of tribes, which, bearing a
cruel hatred toward each other, form no intermarriages, even
when their languages spring from the same root, and when
only a small arm of a river, or a group of hills, separates
their habitation."
Here there is no chance for Leanders to swim across the waters to meet
their Heros.
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