and Fulbes among the negroes of western Sudan; or of a colonizing
people, like that of the Russians in Mongolian Siberia and of Europeans
among the aborigines of South Africa. Even in these instances race
amalgamation tends to take place along the frontiers, as was the case in
Latin America and as occurs to-day in Alaska and northern Canada, where
the "squaw man" is no rarity. The assimilation of culture, at least in a
superficial sense, may be yet more rapid, especially where hard climatic
conditions force the interloper to imitate the life of the native. The
industrial and commercial Hollander, when transplanted to the dry
grasslands of South Africa, became pastoral like the native Kaffirs. The
French voyageur of Canada could scarcely be distinguished from the
Indian trapper; occupation, food, dress, and spouse were the same. Only
a lighter tint of skin distinguished the half-breed children of the
Frenchman. The settlers of the early Trans-Allegheny commonwealths, at
least for a generation or two, showed little outward difference in mode
of life from that of the savage community among which they dwelt.[242]

[Sidenote: Vicinal groups of similar or diverse race and culture.]

The more alike the components of such a vicinal group of people, the
easier, freer and more effective will be the mediating function of the
central one. Germany has demonstrated this in her long history as
intermediary between the nations of southeastern and western Europe. The
people of Poland, occupying a portion of the Baltic slope of northern
Europe, fended by no natural barriers from their eastern and western
neighbors, long constituted a transition form between the two. Though
affiliated with Russia in point of language, the Poles are Occidental in
their religion; and their head-form resembles that of northern Germany
rather than that of Russia.[243] The country belongs to western Europe in
the density of its population (74 to the square kilometer or 190 to the