CHAPTER IX.

OF THE VARIETIES IN THE HUMAN SPECIES.

Every thing which we have hitherto advanced relates to man as an individual. The history of the species requires a separate detail, of which the principal facts can only be derived from the varieties that are found in the inhabitants of different regions. Of the varieties, the first and the most remarkable is the colour, the second is the form and size, and the third is the disposition. Considered in its full extent, each of these objects might afford materials for a volume. Our remarks, however, shall be general, and confined to such points as have been established on undoubted testimony.

In examining the surface of the earth, and beginning our inquiries from the north, we find in Lapland, and in the northern parts of Tartary, a race of small-sized men, whose figure is uncouth, and whose physiognomy is as wild as their manners are unpolished. Though they seem to be of a degenerate species they yet are numerous, and the countries they occupy are extensive.

The Danish, Swedish, and Muscovite Laplanders, the inhabitants of Nova-Zembla, the Borandians, the Samoiedes, the Ostiacks of the old continent, the Greenlanders, and the savages to the north of the Esquimaux Indians, of the new continent, appear to be of one common race, which has been extended and multiplied along the coasts of the northern seas, in deserts and climates, considered as uninhabitable by every other nation. These people have broad faces and flat noses; their eyes are of a yellowish brown, inclining to black, their eye-lids are drawn toward the temples, their cheek-bones are extremely prominent, their mouths are large, the lower part of their countenances is narrow, their lips thick and turned outward; their voices are shrill, with heads bulky, hair black and straight, and skin of a tawny colour. They are small in stature, and though meagre, they are yet of a squat form. In general their size is about four feet, and the tallest exceed not four feet and a half. Among these people, if there is any difference to be found, it depends on the greater or less degree of deformity. The Borandians, for example, are still less than the Laplanders. The white of their eye is of a darker yellow, and they are also more tawny; and their legs, instead of being slender, like those of the latter, are thick and bulky. The Samoiedes are more squat than the Laplanders; their heads are larger, their noses longer, their complexion more dark, their legs shorter, their hair longer, and their beards more scanty. The Greenlanders have the most tawny skin, its colour being that of a deep olive, and it is even said that some of them are as black as those of Ethiopia. Throughout them all it is to be observed, the women are as unseemly as the men; and so nearly do they resemble each other, that at first it is not easy to distinguish them. The women of Greenland are very small, but well proportioned; their hair is more black, and their skin softer, than those of the Samoiede women: their breasts are of such length that children are able to receive the nipple, which is of a jet black, over the mother's shoulder. Some travellers say they have no hair but upon the head, and that they are not subject to the periodical complaints common to the sex. Their visage is large, their eyes small, black, and lively, and their feet and hands are short. In every other respect the Samoiede and the Greenland women are similar. The savages north of the Esquimaux, and even in the northern parts of Newfoundland, bear a resemblance to the Greenlanders; their eyes, it is true, are larger, but, like them, they are of small stature, have flat noses, and large and broad faces.

Nor is it alone in deformity, in diminutiveness, and in the colour of the hair and eyes, that these nations resemble each other, but also in their inclinations and manners. Incivility, superstition, and ignorance, are alike conspicuous in them all.

The Danish Laplanders have a large black cat, which they make a confidant in all their secrets, a counsellor in all their difficulties, and whom they consult on all occasions. Among the Swedish Laplanders, there is in every family a drum, for the purpose of consulting the devil; and though they are robust and nimble, they are yet so timid and dastardly, that no inducement can bring them into the field of battle. Gustavus Adolphus undertook, but undertook in vain, to form a regiment of Laplanders. Indeed there is reason to suppose that they cannot live but in their own country, and in their own manner. In travelling over the ice and snow, they use skates made of fur, which are in length about two ells, and half a foot broad, and which are raised and pointed before, and fastened to the foot by straps of leather. With these they make such dispatch on the snow, that they easily overtake the swiftest animals. They also use a pole, pointed with iron at one end, and rounded at the other. This pole serves to push them along, to direct their course, to keep them from falling, to stop the impetuosity of their career, and to kill what game they overtake. With their skates they descend the steepest precipices, and scale the most craggy mountains; nor are the women less skilful in such exercises than the men. They are all accustomed to the bow and arrow; and it is asserted, that the Muscovite Laplanders launch a javelin with so much dexterity, that at the distance of thirty paces they are sure to hit a mark no larger than a silver crown, and with such force, that it will transfix a human body. They hunt the ermine, the fox, the lynx, and the martin, whose skins they barter for brandy and tobacco. Their food consists principally of dried fish, and the flesh of the bear and rein-deer. Of the bones of fishes, pounded and mixed with the tender bark of the pine or birch-tree, is their bread composed. Their drink is either train-oil or brandy and when deprived of these, their favourite beverage is water, in which juniper-berries have been infused.

Examined in a moral sense, the Laplanders have few virtues, and all the vices of ignorance. Immersed in superstition and idolatry, of a Supreme Being they have no conception; nor is it easy to determine which is most conspicuous, the grossness of their understandings, or the barbarity of their manners, being equally destitute of courage and shame. Boys and girls, mothers and sons, brothers and sisters, bathe together naked, without being in the smallest degree ashamed. When they come out of their baths, which are warm, they immediately go into the rivers. It is the custom among all these people to offer their wives and daughters to strangers, and are much offended if the offer is not accepted.

In winter, the Laplanders, clothe themselves with the skin of the rein-deer, and in summer with the skins of birds. To the uses of linen they are utter strangers. The women of Nova-Zembla have the nose and ears pierced, and ornament them with pendants of blue stone; and to add a lustre to their charms, they form blue streaks upon their forehead and chin. The men wear no hair on the head, and cut their beards round. The Greenland women dress themselves with the skin of the dog-fish: they also paint their faces with blue and yellow, and wear pendants in their ears. They all live underground, or in huts almost so, covered with the bark of trees, or the bones of fishes. Some of them form subterraneous trenches, from one hut to another, by which, during the winter months, they can enjoy the society of their neighbours without going out. A continued series of darkness for several months obliges them to illuminate their dreary abodes with lamps, in which they burn the same train oil they use as drink. In summer they have scarcely more comfort than in winter, being obliged to live perpetually in a thick smoke, which is the only device they have contrived for the destruction of gnats, which are perhaps more numerous in these regions of frost, than in those of the most scorching heat. Under all these hardships they are subject to few diseases, and they live to a prodigious age. So vigorous indeed are the old men, that they are hardly to be distinguished from the young. The only infirmity they experience is that of blindness, which is very common among them. Perpetually dazzled by the strong reflection of the snow in winter, and enveloped in clouds of smoke in summer, few when advanced in years are found to retain the use of their eyes.

As all the different tribes or nations, therefore, resemble each other in form, in shape, in colour, in manners, and even in oddity of customs, they are undoubtedly of the same race of men. The practice of offering their women to strangers, and of being pleased when they are thought worthy of caresses, may proceed from a consciousness of their own deformity as well as that of their women. In appearance, the woman, whom a stranger has accepted, they afterwards respect for her superior beauty. At any rate it is certain, although remote from each other, and separated by a great sea, the custom is general in all the above countries. We even meet with it among the Crim Tartars, the Calmucks, and among several other nations of Siberia and of Tartary, where personal deformity is almost as conspicuous as in those of the North. In all the neighbouring nations, on the other hand, as in China, and in Persia[C], where the women are remarkable for beauty, the men are also remarkable for jealousy.

[C] La Boulai tells us, that in order to prevent all cause of jealousy, when the women of Schach die, the place of their interment is industriously kept secret, in like manner as the ancient Egyptians delayed the embalment of their wives for several days after their decease, that the surgeons might have no temptation.

In examining the different nations adjacent to this extensive territory, which the Laplanders occupy, we find they have no affinity. Alone are they resembled by the Ostiacks and the Tongusians, whose situation is to the south and south-east of the Samoiedes. The Samoiedes and Borandians bear no resemblance to the Russians; nor do the Laplanders to the Fins, the Goths, the Danes, or the Norwegians. The Greenlanders are likewise entirely different from the savages of Canada, who are tall and well proportioned, and though the tribes differ from each other, they do more so from the Laplanders. The Ostiacks, however, seem to be a less ugly and taller branch of the Samoiedes. They live on raw fish or flesh, and for drink they prefer blood to water. Like the Laplanders and the Samoiedes they are immersed in idolatry; nor are they known to have any fixed abode. In fine, they appear to form a shade between the race of Laplanders and the Tartarians; or rather, indeed, may it be said that the Laplanders, the Samoiedes, the Borandians, the Nova-Zemblians, and perhaps the Greenlanders, and the savages to the north of the Esquimaux Indians, are Tartars reduced to the lowest point of degeneracy; that the Ostiacks are less degenerated than the Tongusians, who though to the full as ugly, are yet more sizeable and shapely. The Samoiedes and Laplanders live in the latitude of 68 or 69, the Ostiacks and the Tongusians in that of 60. The Tartars, who are situated along the Wolga, in the latitude of 55, are gross, stupid, and beastly; like the Tongusians, they have hardly any idea of religion, nor will they receive for their wives any women until they have had an intercourse with other men.

The Tartars occupy the greatest part of Asia, and in fact extend from Russia to Kamtschatka, a space in length from 11 to 1200 leagues and from 700 to 750 in breadth; a circumference twenty times larger than the whole kingdom of France. The Tartars terminate China, the kingdoms of Boutan and Alva, and the empires of Mogul and Persia, even to the Caspian Sea, on the north and west. They spread along the Wolga, and over the west coast of the Caspian Sea, even to Daghestan. They have penetrated to the north coast of the Black Sea, and formed settlements in the Crimea, and in the neighbourhood of Moldavia and the Ukraine. All these people have the upper part of their face very large and wrinkled even while yet in their youth. Their noses are short and flat, their eyes little, and sunk in their head; their cheek-bones are high; the lower part of their face is narrow; their chin is long and prominent; their teeth are long and straggling; there eye-brows are so large as to cover the eyes; their eye-lids are thick; the face broad and flat; their complexion tawny, their hair black; they have but little beard, which is disposed like the Chinese; they have thick thighs and short legs, and though but of middling stature, they are remarkably strong and robust. The ugliest of them are the Calmucks, in whose appearance there seems to be something frightful. They are all wanderers and vagabonds; and their only shelter is that of tents, made of hair or skins. Their food is horse-flesh, and flesh of other animals, either raw or a little softened by being between the horse and the saddle. They eat also fish dried in the sun. Their most common drink is mare's milk, fermented, with millet ground into meal. They all have the head shaved, except a tuft of hair on the top, which they let grow sufficiently long to form into tresses on each side of the face. The women, who are as ugly as the men, wear their hair, which they bind up with bits of copper, and other ornaments of the same nature.

The majority of these tribes are alike strangers to religion, morality, and decency. They are robbers by profession; and those of Daghestan, who live in the neighbourhood of civilized countries, sustain a great traffic of slaves, whom they carry off by forte, and afterwards sell to the Turks and the Persians. Their wealth consists chiefly of horses, which are more numerous, perhaps, in Tartary than in any other part of the world. They live in the same place with their horses, and are continually employed in training, dressing, and exercising them, whom they reduce to such implicit obedience, that they actually appear to understand, as it were, the intention of their riders.

To attain a knowledge of the particular differences which subsist in the race of Tartars, we have only to compare the descriptions that travellers have given of their different tribes. The Calmucks, who are situated in the neighbourhood of the Caspian Sea, between the Muscovites and the great Tartars, are, according to Tavernier, robust, but the most ugly and the most deformed of all human beings. Their faces are so flat and so broad that their eyes, which are uncommonly small, are from five to six inches asunder; and their noses so flat that two holes are barely perceivable instead of nostrils. Next to the Calmucks, the natives of Daghestan rank in the class of deformity. The little Tartars, or the Tartars of Nogai, who dwell near the Black Sea, are less ugly than the Calmucks, though their faces are broad, their eyes small, and in their figures there is a great resemblance. From their intermixture with the Circassians, the Moldavians, and other neighbouring nations, it is probable that this race have lost much of their original ugliness. The Tartars of Siberia have, like the Calmucks, broad faces, short flat noses, and small eyes; and though their language is different, yet they bear so strong a resemblance to each other, that they can only be considered as the same people. The further we advance eastward we find the features of the Tartars are gradually softened, but the characteristics essential to the race still remain. The Mongou Tartars, according to Palafox, who conquered China, and who were the most polished, though they are the least deformed, yet, like all the other tribes, their eyes are small, faces broad and flat, scanty beards, either black or red; their noses compressed and short, and their complexions tawny. The people of Thibet, and the other southern provinces of Tartary, are also of a more agreeable aspect. Mr. Sanchez, formerly first physician to the Russian army, a gentleman distinguished by his abilities, has obligingly communicated to me in writing the remarks he had made in the course of his travels through Tartary.

In the years 1735, 1736, and 1737, he visited the Ukraine, the banks of the Don to the sea of Zabach, and the confines of Cuban to Asoph. He traversed the deserts between the countries of the Crimea and Backmut; he went among the Calmucks, who wander about without any fixed habitation, from the kingdom of Casan to the banks of the Don; as also the Crimea and Nogai-Tartars, who wander between the Crimea and the Ukraine, and likewise the Kergissi and Tcheremissi-Tartars, who are situated to the north of Astracan, between the latitude of 50 and 60. These according to him are more diminutive and squat, less active and more corpulent; their eyes are black, complexions tawny, and their faces larger and broader than those we have mentioned. He adds, that among these Tartars, he saw numbers of men and women who had no resemblance to them, but were as white as the people of Poland. They have many slaves among them, brought from among the Russians and Poles; and as their religion admits a number of wives and concubines; and as their Sultans, and Murzas or nobles, prefer the women of Georgia and Circassia for their wives, the children produced from such alliances are less ugly, and more fair than from connections among themselves. There is even a whole tribe of Tartars, called Kabardinski-Tartars, who are remarkable for their beauty. Of these Mr. Sanchez saw _three hundred_ on horseback, who were going to enter into the service of Russia; and he declares that he never saw men of a more noble and manly figure; their complexions were fair, fresh and ruddy; their eyes were large and black, and they were tall and well proportioned. He was assured by the Lieutenant-general of Serapikin, who had made a long residence at Kabarda, that the women were equally handsome; but this tribe, so different from all the Tartars around them, came originally from the Ukraine, and removed to Kabarda about the beginning of the last century.

Though the Tartar blood is intermixed, on one side with that of the Chinese, and on the other with that of the Oriental Russians, yet there is sufficient characteristics of the race remaining to suppose them of one common stock. Among the Muscovites are numbers, whose form of visage and body bear a strong resemblance to those of the Tartars. The Chinese are totally different in their dispositions, manners, and customs. The Tartars are naturally fierce, warlike, and addicted to the chace, inured to fatigue, fond of independence, and to a degree of brutality uncivilized. Altogether opposite are the manners of the Chinese; they are effeminate, pacific, indolent, superstitious, slavish, and full of ceremony and compliment. In their features, and form, however, there is so striking a resemblance, as to leave a doubt whether they did not spring from the same race.

Some travellers tell us, that the Chinese are large and fat, their limbs well formed, their faces broad and round, their eyes small, eye-brows large, their eye-lids turned upwards, and their noses short and flat; that upon the chin they have very little beard, and upon each lip not more than seven or eight tufts of hair. Those who inhabit the southern provinces are more brown and tawny than those in the northern; that in colour they resemble the natives of Mauritania, or the more swarthy Spaniards; but those in the middle provinces are as fair as the Germans.

According to Dampier and others, the Chinese are not all fat and bulky, but they consider being so as an ornament to the human figure. In speaking of the island of St. John, on the coast of China, the former says, that the inhabitants are tall, erect, and little encumbered with fat; that their countenances are long, and their foreheads high; their eyes little, their nose tolerably large, and raised in the middle; their mouths of a moderate size, their lips rather thin, their complexion ash-colour, and their hair black; that they have naturally little beard, and even that they pluck out, leaving only a few hairs upon the chin and upper lip.

According to Le Gentil, the Chinese have nothing disagreeable in their countenance, especially in the northern provinces. In the southern ones, when necessarily much exposed to the sun, they are swarthy. That in general their eyes are small and of an oval form, their nose short, their bodies thick, and their stature of a middling height; he assures us that the women do every thing in their power to make their eyes appear little and oblong, that for this purpose it is a constant practice with young girls, instructed by their mothers, forcibly to extend their eye-lids. This, with the addition of a flat nose, ears long, large, open, and pendent, is accounted complete beauty. He adds, their complexion is delicate, their lips of a fine vermilion, their mouths well proportioned, their hair very black, but that chewing beetle blackens their teeth, and by the use of paint they so greatly injure their skin, that before the age of thirty they have all the appearance of old age.

Palafox assures us that the Chinese are more fair than the oriental Tartars; that they have also less beards, but that in every other respect their visages are nearly the same. It is very uncommon, he says, to see blue eyes either in China or in the Philippine islands; and when seen, it is in Europeans, or in those of European parents.

Inigo de Biervillas asserts, that the women of China are better made than the men. Of the latter, he says, their visages are large and complexions rather yellow; their noses broad, and generally compressed, and their bodies are of a thickness greatly resembling that of a Hollander. The women, on the contrary, though they are generally rather fat than otherwise, are however of a free and easy shape; their complexion and skin are admirable; and their eyes are incomparably fine; but from the great pains taken to compress it in their infancy, there are few to be seen of whose nose the shape is even tolerable.

All the Dutch travellers allow that the Chinese have in general broad faces, small eyes, flat noses, and hardly any beard; that the natives of Canton, and the whole of the southern coast, are as tawny as the inhabitants of Fez, in Africa, but that those of the interior provinces are mostly fair. Now if we compare the descriptions we have already given, from the above authors, of the Chinese and Tartars, hardly will a doubt remain that, although they differ a little in stature and countenance, they originate from one stock, and that the points in which they differ proceed entirely either from the climate, or the mixture of races. Chardin says, "the size of the little Tartars is commonly smaller than the Europeans by four inches, and they are thicker in the same proportion. Their complexion is of the colour of copper; their faces are flat, large, and square; their noses compressed, and their eyes are little. Now these are exactly the features of the inhabitants of China; for I have found, after the most minute investigation, that there is the same conformation of face and body throughout the nations to the east and north of the Caspian Sea, and to the east of the peninsula of Malacca. From this circumstance I was inclined to believe that, however different they may appear either in their complexion or manners, they proceed from one stock, for difference of colour depends entirely upon the quality of the climate and the food; and difference in manners is determined by the nature of the soil, and by the greater or less degree of opulence."

Father Parennin, who lived long in China, and whose observations are so accurate and so minute, tells us, that the western neighbours of the Chinese, from Thibet northward to Chamo, differ from the Chinese in manners, language, physiognomy, and external conformation; that they are a people rude, ignorant, and slothful, charges that cannot be laid to the Chinese; and that when any of these Tartars go to Pekin, and the Chinese are asked the reason of this difference, they answer, that it proceeds from the water and the soil; in other words, that it is the nature of the country which produces this change upon the bodies and dispositions of the inhabitants. He adds, that this remark seems to be more applicable with respect to China than to any other country he ever saw; that following the emperor northward into Tartary, to the latitude of 48, he found Chinese from Nanquin who had settled there, whose children had become actual Mongous, being bow-legged, with their heads sunk into their shoulders, and a countenance which created disgust.

So strongly do the Japanese resemble the Chinese, that we can hardly scruple to rank them in the same class. Living in a more southern climate they are more yellow or more brown. In general their stature is short, their face, as well as nose, broad and flat, their eyes small, their hair black, and their beard little more than perceptible. They are haughty, fond of war, full of dexterity and vigour, civil and obliging, smooth-tongued, and courteous, but fickle and vain. With astonishing patience they sustain hunger, thirst, cold, heat, fatigue, and all the other hardships of life. Their ceremonies, or rather grimaces, in eating, are numerous and uncouth. They are laborious skilful artificers, and, in a word, their dispositions, manners, and customs are the same as the Chinese.

One singular custom which they have in common, is, so to contract the feet of the women, that they are hardly able to support themselves. Some travellers mention, that in China, when a girl has passed her third year, they bend the foot in such a manner that the toes are made to come under the sole; that they apply to it a strong water, which burns away the flesh; and then they wrap them up in a number of bandages. They add, that the women feel the pain of this operation all their lives; that they walk with great difficulty; and that their gait is to the last degree ungraceful. Other travellers say that they only compress the foot with so much violence as to prevent its growth; but they unanimously allow, that every woman of condition, and even every handsome woman must have a foot small enough to enter with ease the slipper of a child of six years old.

The Japanese, and the Chinese, we may therefore conclude, proceed from the same stock, that for their civilization we must recur to a very distant part of antiquity, and that they differ more from the Tartars in their manners than their figure. To this civilization, the excellence of the soil, the mildness of the climate, and their vicinity to the sea, have perhaps greatly contributed; while the Tartars, from their inland situation, and being separated from other nations by high mountains, have remained wanderers over their vast deserts, which are situated under a climate to the last degree inclement, especially towards the north. The country of Jesso, which is to the north of Japan, and of which, from its situation, the climate might be expected to be temperate, is however cold, barren, and mountainous, and its inhabitants are altogether different from those of China and Japan. They are ignorant and brutal, without manners, and without arts. Their bodies are short and thick; their hair long, their eyes black, their foreheads flat; and their complexions, though yellow, are rather less so than that of the Japanese. Over their bodies, and even the face, they have much hair; they live like savages, and their food consists of the oily parts of whales and other fishes. They are to the last degree indolent and slovenly; their children go almost naked; nor have their women devised any external ornament beyond that of painting their eye-brows and lips of a blue colour. The sole occupation and pleasure of the men are hunting and fishing; and though they have some customs similar to the Japanese, as that of quavering when they sing, yet in general they bear a much more striking resemblance to the northern Tartars, or to the Samoiedes, than to the Japanese.

In examining nations adjacent to China, on the south and west, we find that the Cochin-Chinese, who inhabit a mountainous region to the southward of China, are more tawny and more ugly than the Chinese; and that the Tonquinese, whose country is more fertile, and whose climate is more mild, are in every respect proportionally more handsome.

According to Dampier, the Tonquinese are of a middling height; and though their complexion is tawny, their skin is so delicate and smooth, that the smallest change is perceptible in their countenance, when they happen either to grow pale, or to redden; a circumstance in which they differ from all other Indians. In common their visage is flat and oval; their nose and lips are thick; and they use every art, in order to render their teeth as black as possible.

These nations, therefore, differ but little from the Chinese. They resemble the natives of the southern provinces in colour; if they are more tawny, it is because they live in a warmer climate; and though their faces are less flat, and their noses less contracted, we yet cannot help considering them as a people of the same origin.

Thus it is also with the natives of Siam, of Pegu, of Aracan, of Laos, &c. Of all these the features have a considerable resemblance to those of the Chinese; and though they differ from them in colour, yet their affinity to the Chinese is greater than to the other Indians. The size of the Siamese, says Loubère, is rather small, their bodies are well proportioned, their faces are large, and their cheek-bones prominent, their forehead is suddenly contracted, and terminates in a point like the chin; their eyes are small and oblique; the white of the eye is somewhat yellow; their cheeks are hollow, from the elevation of the cheek-bones; their mouths are large, their lips thick, their teeth black, their complexion is coarse, and of a brown colour mixed with red, or, according to some travellers, of an ash colour, to which the continual sultriness of the air contributes as much as the birth; their nose is short and rounded at the point; their ears are large, and the bigger they are the more they are held in estimation.

This taste for long ears is highly prevalent in the east; in different places different arts are used to render them so, and in some they draw them down almost to the shoulders. As for the Siamese, however, their ears are naturally larger than ours; their hair is thick, black, and straight; and both sexes wear it so short, that it does not descend lower than the ear. They anoint their lips with a kind of perfumed pomatum, which makes them appear very pale; they have little beard, and that they pluck out by the roots; nor is it customary with them to pare their nails.

Struys says, that the Siamese women wear pendants in their ears of such mass and weight, that the holes become so large the thumb may be put through them. He adds, that the complexion of both sexes is tawny; that though not tall, they are shapely; and that the Siamese are in general a mild and a civilized people.

According to Father Tachard, the Siamese are exceedingly alert, and have among them tumblers, &c. not less expert and skilful than those in Europe. He says, that the custom they have of blackening the teeth, proceeds from an idea that it is not becoming in man to have teeth white like the brute creation; that it is for this reason they begrime them with black varnish, and then abstain from meat for several days, that it may thoroughly adhere.

The inhabitants of the kingdom of Pegu and Aracan are more black, yet bear a strong resemblance both to the Siamese and the Chinese. Those of Aracan put great value upon a forehead large and flat, and to render them so, they apply a plate of lead to the forehead of their children the minute they are born. Their nostrils are large, their eyes are small and lively, and their ears are of such length as to hang over their shoulders. They feed without disgust on mice, rats, serpents, and fish, however corrupted. Their women are tolerably fair, and their ears are as long as those of the men. The people of Achen, who are situated further north than those of Aracan, have also flat visages, and an olive-coloured skin; they allow their boys to go quite naked, and their girls have only a slight plate of silver to conceal what Nature dictates.

None of these nations differ much from the Chinese, and all resemble the Tartars in the smallness of their eyes, the largeness of their visage, and the olive colour of their skin. In proceeding southward the features begin to change more sensibly. The inhabitants of Malacca, and of the island of Sumatra, are black, diminutive, lively, and well proportioned. Though naked from the middle upward, a little kind of scarf excepted, which they wear sometimes over the right and sometimes over the left shoulder, their aspect is fierce. They are naturally brave, and even formidable when they have swallowed a certain quantity of opium, which intoxicates them with a kind of fury.

According to Dampier, the inhabitants of Sumatra and Malacca are of the same race; they speak nearly the same language, and they have the same bold and haughty disposition. They are of a middling stature, their visage long, their eyes black, their noses of a moderate size, their lips thin, and their teeth are blackened.

In the island of Pugniatan, or Pissagan, within 16 leagues of Sumatra, the natives are tall, and of a yellow complexion, like the Brazilians; their hair is long, and they go completely naked. Those of the Nicobar islands, which lie northward of Sumatra, are of a tawny or yellowish colour, and they also go naked. In speaking of these last islanders, Dampier says, that they are tall and well proportioned; that their visage is long, their hair black and straight, and their noses of a moderate size; that the women have no eye-brows, which it is probable they do not suffer to grow. In Sombreo, an island north of the Nicobar islands, the inhabitants are very black, and they paint their faces with green, yellow, and other colours.

These natives of Malacca, of Sumatra, and of the little adjacent islands, though different from each other, are much more so from the Chinese and the Tartars, and seem to have sprung from another race. The inhabitants of Java, nevertheless, have not the smallest resemblance to those of Sumatra and Malacca, while to the Chinese (the colour alone excepted, which, like the Malaccas, is red mixed with black) they seem to be intimately related. Pigafetta describes them as a people not unlike the Brazilians. Their complexion, says he, is coarse, and their bodies are square and muscular, though in size they are neither very tall nor very short; their visage is flat, their cheeks flabby, their eyes small, their eye-brows inclined to the temples, and their beards thin and short. Father Tachard says, that the people of Java are well made and robust; that they are lively and resolute; and that the extreme heat of the climate obliges them to go almost naked. From other descriptions it appears, that the inhabitants of Java are neither black nor white, but of a purplish red, and that they are mild, familiar and courteous.

Legat informs us, that the women of Java, who are not exposed to the rays of the sun, are less tawny than the men, that their countenance is comely, their breasts prominent and shapely, their complexions beautiful, though brown; their hands delicate, their hair soft, their eyes brilliant, their smile agreeable, and that numbers of them dance with elegance and spirit.

Of the Dutch travellers, the generality allow, that the natives of this island are robust, well proportioned, nervous, and full of muscular vigour; that their visage is flat, their cheek-bones broad and prominent, their eye-lids large, their eyes small, their hair long, and their complexion tawny; that they have little beard; that they wear their hair and their nails very long; and that in order to beautify their teeth, they polish them with files. In a little island fronting that of Java, the women are tawny, their eyes small, their mouths large, their noses flat, and their hair long and black.

From all these accounts we may infer, that the inhabitants of Java greatly resemble the Tartars and Chinese; while those of Malacca, Sumatra, and of the neighbouring little islands differ from them equally in the features of the face, and in the form of the body. This may have very naturally happened; for the peninsula of Malacca, the islands of Sumatra and Java, as well as all the other islands of the Indian Archipelago, must have been peopled by the nations of the neighbouring continents, and even by the Europeans, who have had settlements there for these three hundred years. This must have occasioned a very great variety in the inhabitants both in the features and colour, and in the form of the body and proportion of the limbs. In the island of Java, for example, there is a people called the _Chacrelas_, who are altogether different, not only from the natives of the island, but even from all the other Indians. The Chacrelas are white and fair, and their eyes are so weak that, incapable of supporting the light of the sun, they go about with them lowered and almost closed till night, when their vision becomes more strong.

According to Pyrard, all the inhabitants of the Malacca islands are similar to those of Sumatra and Java in manners, mode of living, habits, language, and colour. According to Maldeslo, the men are rather black than tawny, and the women are more fair. They have all, he says, black hair, large eyes, eye-brows and eye-lids, and bodies vigorous and robust. They are also nimble and active; and though their hair very soon becomes grey, they yet live to a great age. Each island, he further remarks, has its particular language; nor can it be doubted but that they have been peopled by different nations. The inhabitants of Borneo and of Baly, he adds, are rather black than tawny; but according to other travellers, they are only brown like the other Indians. Carreri says, that the inhabitants of Ternate are of the same colour as those of Malacca, which is a little darker than those of Philippine islands; that their countenances are comely; that the men are more shapely than the women, and that both bestow particular care upon their hair.

The Dutch travellers tell us, that the natives of the Island of Banda are remarkable for longevity; that they have seen one man at the age of 130, and numbers on the verge of that period; that in general they are indolent and inactive; and that while the men amuse themselves in sauntering abroad, the women are subjected to all the offices of labour at home. Dampier observes, that the original natives of the island of Timor, which is one of those most adjacent to New Holland, are a middling size, and of an erect form; that their limbs are slender, their visages long, their hair black and bristly, and their skin exceedingly black; that they are alert and dexterous, but superlatively indolent and slothful. He adds, however, that the inhabitants of the Bay of Laphno are, for the most part, tawny or copper-coloured.

In turning northward we find Manilla, and the other Philippine islands, of which the inhabitants are perhaps more intermixed than those of any other region in the universe, by the alliances they have formed with the Spaniards, the Indians, the Chinese, the Malabars, the blacks, &c. The negroes, who live in the rocks and woods of Manilla, differ entirely from the other inhabitants; of some the hair is short and frizly, like the negroes of Angola, and of others it is long. Their colour consists of various shades of black. According to Gemelli Carreri, there are some among them who, like the islanders mentioned by Ptolemy, have tails of the length of four or five inches. This traveller adds, that he has been assured, by Jesuits of undoubted testimony, that in the island of Mindoro, which is not far from Manilla, there is a race of men called _Manghians_, who have all tails of that length, and that some of these men had even embraced the Catholic faith; that they are of an olive colour, and have long hair.

Dampier says, that the inhabitants of the island of Mindanao, which is one of the principal and most southerly of the Philippines, are of a middling height, that their limbs are small, their bodies erect, their heads small, their visages oval, their foreheads flat, their eyes black and small, their noses short, their mouths moderate, their lips thin and red, their teeth black, their hair black and smooth, and their skin tawny, but of a brighter yellow than many of the other Indians; that in point of complexion the women have the advantage of the men; that they are also more shapely, and have features tolerably regular; that the men are in general ingenious and alert, but slothful, and addicted to thievery.

Northward of Manilla is the island of Formosa, situated at no great distance from the coast of Fokien, in China, but the natives bear no resemblance to the Chinese. According to Struys, the Formosans are of small stature, particularly those who inhabit the mountains, and that they have broad faces. The women have large coarse breasts, and a beard like the men; their ears, naturally long, they render still more so by thick shells, which they wear as pendants; their hair is black and long, and their complexions are of different degrees of yellow. Though averse to labour, they are yet admirably skilled in the use of the javelin and bow; they are excellent swimmers, and run with incredible swiftness. Struys declares, that in this island he actually saw a man with a tail above a foot long, covered with reddish hair, not unlike that of an ox, and that this man assured him, if it was a blemish to have a tail, it proceeded from the climate, for all the natives of the southern part of the island had tails like himself.

I know not what credit we ought to give to this relation of Struys, for if the fact be true, it must at least be exaggerated; it differs from what other travellers have said with respect to these men with tails, and even from the account of Ptolemy, and from that of Mark Paul, the latter of whom, in his geographical description, says, that in the kingdom of Lambry there are mountaineers who have tails of the length of the hand. Struys seems to rest upon the authority of Mark Paul, as Gemelli Carreri does upon that of Ptolemy, though the tail he mentions to have seen is widely different in its dimensions from those of the blacks of Manilla, the inhabitants of Lambry, and other places, as described by other writers.

The editor of the description of the island of Formosa, from the memoirs of Psalmanazar, makes no mention of a people so very extraordinary; but says, that though the climate is exceedingly hot, the women, those especially who are not exposed to the rays of the sun, are exceedingly fair and beautiful; that with certain lotions they take particular care to preserve their complexion; that they are equally attentive to the beauty of their teeth, and instead of rendering them black, like the Japanese and Chinese, they use every effort to keep them white; that the men are not tall, but thick and strong; that they are commonly vigorous, indefatigable, skilful in war, and dexterous in manual exercises.

In their accounts of the natives of Formosa, the Dutch travellers differ from all those we have yet mentioned. Mandelslo, as well as the writers of the collection of voyages, which paved the way for the establishment of the Dutch East-India Company, informs us that these islanders are taller than the Europeans; that the colour of their skin is of a dark brown; that their bodies are hairy; and that the women are low in stature, but robust, fat, and tolerably well proportioned.

In few writers respecting this island do we find any mention of men with tails; and of the form and features of the natives, authors differ also prodigiously. With respect to one fact they seem, however, to agree, though it is not perhaps less extraordinary, namely, that the women are not allowed to bear children before the age of 35, though allowed to marry long before that period. In speaking of this custom, Rechteren thus expresses himself: "After the women are married, they must not become mothers till they have completed their 35th or 37th year. When they happen to be pregnant before that time, their priestesses trample upon their bellies with their feet, and thus occasion a miscarriage, as painful and dangerous, if not more so than the natural labour. To bring a child into the world previous to the age prescribed, would be not only a disgrace but an enormous crime. I have seen women who had suffered 16 of these forced miscarriages, and were only allowed to bring into the world their 17th child."

The Mariana-islands, or the Ladrones, which are the most remote from the eastern coast, are inhabited by a people rude and uncivilized. Father Gobien says that, till the arrival of the Europeans, they had never seen fire; and that nothing could exceed their astonishment when, on the arrival of Magellan, they first beheld it. Their complexion is tawny, though less brown than that of the natives of the Philippines; in strength and robustness they surpass the Europeans. They are tall and well proportioned; and though they feed solely on roots, fruits, and fish, they are very corpulent, which however, does not check their nimbleness and activity. They live to a great age; nor is it uncommon to find among them persons who, strangers to sickness, have already reached their 100th year.

Carreri says, that the natives of these islands are of a gigantic figure, corpulent, and so strong that they can raise a weight of 500 pounds upon their shoulders. In general their hair is frizly, their noses thick, their eyes are large, and their colour like that of the Indians. The natives of Guan, one of these islands, have long black hair, large noses, thick lips, white teeth, long visages, and fierce aspects. They are also exceedingly robust; and it is said they do not in height measure less than seven feet.

Southward of the Mariana-islands, and eastward of the Malaccas, we find the country of the Papous, and New Guinea, which seem to be the most southern regions. Argensola tells us, that the Papous are as black as the Caffres, that their hair is frizly, and their countenance meagre and disagreeable. In this country, nevertheless, there are people as fair as the Germans; but their eyes are exceedingly weak and delicate. According to Le Maire, they are not only very black, but also savage and brutal; they wear rings in their ears and nostrils, and sometimes also in the partition of the nose; they likewise wear bracelets of mother-of-pearl above the elbows and on the wrists, and cover their heads with a cap made of the bark of a tree painted with several colours. They are well proportioned, have a sufficiency of beard; their teeth are black, as is also the hair, which, though frizly, is not so woolly as that of the negroes. They run very fast, and their weapons consist of clubs, spears, and sabres, made of hard wood, the use of iron being unknown to them. They also employ their teeth as weapons, and bite like dogs; beetle and pimento mixed with chalk make part of their food. The women are of hideous aspect; their breasts hang down to the navel; their bellies are extremely prominent; their arms and limbs are small; and in their visages they resemble so many apes.

Dampier says, that the natives of the island of Sabala, in New Guinea, are a class of tawny Indians, with long black hair, and whose manners are not much different from those of Mindanao, and the other oriental islands; but besides them, it is also peopled by negroes, with short woolly hair. Speaking of another island, which he calls _Garret-Denys_, he says, that the natives are black, vigorous, and well shaped; that their heads are large and round; that their hair, which they cut in different fashions, and tinge with different colours, as red, white, and yellow, is short and frizly; that their faces are large and round, and their noses thick and flat; that nevertheless their physiognomy would not be absolutely disagreeable, did they not thrust a kind of peg, about one inch thick and four inches long, across the nostrils, so that both ends may touch the cheek-bones; and that they pierce their ears with similar pegs.

According to the same author, the natives of the coast of New Holland, which is in the latitude of 16, and to the south of the island of Timor, are of all mankind perhaps the most miserable, and the most upon a level with the brutes. They are tall, erect, and thin; their limbs are long and slender; their heads are large; their foreheads round, and their eye-brows thick. Their eye-lids are always half shut; a habit they contract in their infancy to save their eyes from the gnats, and as they never open their eyes, they cannot see at a distance without raising their head, as if looking at something over their heads. Their noses and lips are thick, and their mouths large. They pull out, it would seem, the two front teeth of the upper jaw; for in neither sex, nor at any age, are they ever found to possess these teeth. They have no beard; their visage is long, nor does it contain one pleasing feature. Their hair is short, black, and frizly, like that of the negroes; and their skin is as black as those of Guinea. Their whole cloathing consists of a bit of the bark of a tree fastened round the middle. They have no houses, and they sleep on the bare ground, without any covering. They associate, men, women, and children, promiscuously, in troops, to the number of 20 or 30. Their only food is a small fish, which they catch by forming reservoirs in little arms of the sea, and to every kind of grain or bread they are utter strangers.

The natives of another part of New Holland, in the 22d or 23d degree of south latitude, seem to be of the same race as those We have now described; they are ugly to an extreme; their eyes have the same defect as those of the others; their skin is black, their hair frizly, and their bodies tall and slender.

From these descriptions it appears, that the islands and coasts of the Indian ocean are peopled by men widely different from each other. The natives of Malacca, of Sumatra, and of the Nicobar islands, appear to derive their origin from those of the peninsula of Indus, and those of Java from the Chinese, the white men excepted, who go by the name of Chacrelas, and who must have sprung from the Europeans. The natives of the Malacca islands seem also in general to have originated from the Indians in the peninsula; but those of the island of Timor, which is near to New Holland, are almost similar to the people of that country. Those of Formosa, and the Mariana islands, resemble each other in size, vigour, and features, and seem to form a race distinct from that of every other people around them. The Papus, and other nations in the neighbourhood of New Guinea, are real blacks, and resemble those of Africa, though at a prodigious distance from that continent, and separated from it by a space of 2,200 leagues of sea. The natives of New Holland resemble the Hottentots. But before we draw any conclusions from all these relations and differences, it is necessary to pursue our enquiries with respect to the different nations of Asia and Africa.

The Moguls, and other nations of the peninsula of India, are not unlike the Europeans in shape and in features; but they differ more or less from them in colour. The Moguls are olive, though in the Indian language the word _Mogul_ signifies _White_. The women are extremely delicate, and they bathe themselves very often: they are of an olive colour as well as the men; and, what is opposite to the women in Europe, their legs and thighs are long, and their bodies are short. Tavernier says, that after passing Lahor, and the kingdom of Cashmire, the women have naturally no hair on any part of the body, and the men have hardly any beard. According to Thevenot, the Mogul women are very fruitful, though exceedingly chaste, and suffer so little from the pains of child-birth, that they are often abroad the day following. He adds, that in the kingdom of Decan they are allowed to marry, the male by his tenth, and the female by her eighth year; and at that age they not unoften have children; but the women who become mothers so soon usually cease bearing before they arrive at 30, and by that period they appear wrinkled, and marked with all the deformities of age. It is not an uncommon practice among them to have their skins pricked in the shape of flowers, and by painting them with the juices of plants, they perfectly resemble them.

The natives of Bengal are more yellow than the Moguls. In disposition also they differ totally; their women, instead of being chaste, of all the Indian women are the most lascivious. In this country they carry on a great traffic of slaves, male and female. They also make numbers of eunuchs. They are comely and well-shaped, are fond of commerce, and have much mildness in their manners.

The natives of the coast of Coromandel are more black than the people of Bengal; they are also less civilized, and in general go nearly naked. Those of the coast of Malabar are still more black; their hair is black also, straight, and long, and are of the same size with the Europeans. Even in their towns men, women, and children, bathe promiscuously in public basons. Their women wear rings in their noses; they are married at the age of eight, and though black, or at least of a very deep brown, they yet are comely and well proportioned.

The customs of the different Indian nations are all very singular, if not whimsical. The Banians eat nothing which has had life in it; they are even afraid to kill the smallest reptile, however offensive to them; they throw rice and beans into their rivers as food for the fishes, and grains of different kinds upon the earth for the birds and insects. When they meet a hunter, or a fisher, they earnestly beg of him to desist; if deaf to their entreaties, they offer him money for his gun, or his nets, and when no persuasion nor offer will avail, they trouble the water to frighten away the fishes, and cry with all their strength to put the birds and other game to flight.

The Naires of Calicut form a class of nobles, whose sole profession is that of arms. These men are handsome, and of a comely aspect, though of an olive colour, and though they lengthen their ears to such a pitch as to make them fall over their shoulders, and sometimes lower, they are tall, hardy, courageous, and highly expert in military exercise. These Naires are allowed no more than one wife, but the women may have as many husbands as they please. Father Tachard says, that they sometimes have not fewer than ten, whom they consider as so many slaves, subjected by their beauty. This privilege is annexed to nobility, from which the women of condition derive to themselves every possible advantage. Those of inferior rank are allowed but one husband, but they comfort themselves under this restraint by the caresses of strangers, with whom they carry on their illicit amours, in defiance of their husbands, who dare not even speak to them upon the subject. The mothers prostitute their daughters in their early infancy. The nobles, or Naires, seem to be of a race different from the lower order, for the latter, men as well as women, are more ugly, yellow, unshapely, and more diminutive. Among the Naires there are some whose legs are as thick as the body of another man. This deformity they have from their birth, and not from any particular malady; and nevertheless they are exceedingly active. This race of men with thick legs have not increased much either among the Naires or any other classes of Indians; they are, however, in other places, and especially in Ceylon, where they are said to be the race of St. Thomas.

The natives of Ceylon are not unlike those of the coast of Malabar. They are less black, but their ears are as large, and descend as low. They are of a mild aspect, and naturally nimble, alert, and lively. Their hair which is very black, the men wear short; the common people go almost naked; and the women, according to a custom pretty general in India, have their bosoms uncovered. In Ceylon there is a species of savages, who are called _Bedas_; they occupy a small district on the north part of the island, and seem to be of a peculiar race. The spot they inhabit is entirely covered with wood, amidst which they conceal themselves so closely that it is with great difficulty they are discovered. Their complexion is fair, and sometimes red, like that of the Europeans. Their language has not the smallest affinity to that of any of the other Indians. They have no villages nor houses, nor hold any intercourse with the rest of mankind. Their weapons are bows and arrows, with which they kill a great number of boars, stags, and other animals; they never dress their meat, but sweeten it with honey, which they possess in great abundance. We are strangers to the origin of this tribe, which is far from being numerous, and of which every family lives separate. It appears that the Bedas of Ceylon, as well as the Chacrelas of Java, who are both fair and few in number, are of European extraction. It is possible that some European men and women might have formerly been deserted in these islands, or thrown upon then by shipwreck, and that for fear of being maltreated by the natives, they and their descendants have remained in the woods, and in the mountainous parts of the country, where, habituated to a savage life, they might at length consider it as preferable.

It is supposed that the natives of the Maldivia islands are descended from those of Ceylon, yet they bear no resemblance, the latter being black and badly formed; the former shapely, and, their olive colour excepted, little different from the Europeans. Besides they are a people composed of all nations. Those of the northern parts are more civilized than those of the southern. The women, notwithstanding their olive colour are handsome; and some of them are as fair as those of Europe. Their hair is universally black: this they consider as a beauty; and they studiously render it of that colour, by keeping the heads of their boys and girls constantly shaved every eight days till the age of eight or nine years. Another beauty is to have the hair very long, and very thick; and for this purpose they anoint their head and body with a perfumed oil. These islanders love exercise, and are industrious artists; they are superstitious and greatly addicted to women; and though the women are particularly cautious of exposing their bosoms, they are yet exceeding debauched, and lavish of their favours.

The natives of Cambaia are of an ash-colour; and those bordering on the sea the most swarthy. In their accounts of Guzarat, the Dutch tell us, that the natives are all of yellow shades; that they are of the same size as the Europeans; that the women who are rarely exposed to the sun, are fairer than the men; and that some of them are little more swarthy than the Portuguese. Mandelslo says, that the people of Guzarat are all of a colour more or less tawny or olive, according to the climate in which they are situated; that the men are strong and shapely, have large faces and black eyes; that the women are small but well proportioned, that they wear their hair long, also pegs in their nostrils, and large pendants in their ears. Few of them are deformed; some have a more clear complexion than others, yet they have all black straight hair. The ancient inhabitants of Guzarat are easily distinguished from the others by their colour, which is much more black, and by their being more stupid and barbarous.

Goa is the chief Portuguese settlement in the Indies, and though it may have lost much of its former splendor, it is still, however, a rich and a commercial city. Here, at one time, more slaves were sold than in any other part of the world; and where the most beautiful women and girls, from all parts of Asia, became the property of the highest bidder. These slaves were of all colours, and were skilled in music, as well as in the arts of sewing and embroidery. The Indians were chiefly captivated with the Caffre girls from Mosambique, who are all black. "It is remarkable, says Pyrard, that the sweat of the Indian men or women has no disagreeable smell; whereas of the negroes of Africa, the stench, when they are in any degree over-heated, is insupportable. He adds, that the Indian women are fond of the European men, and that they prefer them to the white men of the Indies."

The Persians are neighbours to the Moguls, and bear a considerable likeness to them; those especially who occupy the southern parts of Persia. The natives of Ormus, and of the provinces of Bascia and Balascia, are very brown and tawny; those of Chesmur, and the other provinces, in which the heat is less intense than in Ormus, are more fair; and those of the northern provinces are tolerably white. The women who inhabit the islands of the Persian gulph, are, according to the Dutch travellers, brown or yellow, and not in the least agreeable. They have several modes and customs similar to those of the Indian women, as having a hole formed through the cartilage of the nose, for the admission of a ring, and through the skin of the nose, immediately below the eyes, for that of a gold wire. Indeed this custom of piercing the nose, in order to embellish it with rings and other trinkets, has extended much farther than the gulph of Persia. Many of the women in Arabia have an incision made through their nostrils for the same purpose; and with this people it is an act of gallantry for the husband to salute his wife through those rings, which are sometimes so large as to encompass the whole mouth.

Xenophon, in speaking of the Persians, says, that they were generally fat and gross; Marcellinus, on the contrary, says, that in his time they were meagre and thin. Olearius adds, that they are to this day what the last mentioned author describes, that they are full of strength and vigour, and that their complexion is olive-coloured, their hair black, and their noses aquiline.

That the Persian blood is naturally gross, says Chardin, is evident from the Guebres, who are a remnant of the ancient Persians, and who are ugly, ill shaped, and coarse skinned. It is evident also from the inhabitants of the provinces nearest to India, who, as they never form any alliances but among each other, are little less deformed than the Guebres. Throughout the rest of the kingdom the Persian blood has become highly refined, by intermixtures with the Georgians and Circassians, two nations the most remarkable for the beauty of the inhabitants of any in the world. Thus in Persia there is hardly a man of distinction whose mother came not from Georgia or Circassia; and even the king himself is commonly, by the mother's side, sprung from a native of one or other of these countries. As it is many years since this mixture first took place, the Persian women, though still inferior in beauty to the Georgian, have become very handsome. The men are commonly tall, erect, fresh-coloured, and vigorous; their air is graceful, and their appearance engaging. The mildness of their climate, and the sobriety in which they are brought up, contribute much to their personal beauty. This they in no degree inherit from their fathers, for without the above mixture the men of rank in Persia would be extremely ugly and deformed, being descendants of the Tartars. The Persians, on the contrary, are polished and ingenious; their imagination is lively, quick, and fertile; though fond of arts and sciences, they are yet ambitious of warlike honours; they are proud and very fond of praise; have much familiarity in their tempers; they are amorous and voluptuous, luxuriant, and prodigal, and are alike unacquainted with economy and commerce.

Though in general tolerably sober, they are immoderate devourers of fruit; and nothing is more common than to see one man eat twelve pounds of melons. Some will eat three or four times that quantity, and by over-indulging their appetite for fruit, numbers lose their lives.

Fine women of every colour are common in Persia, as they are brought thither by merchants, selected on account of their beauty. The white women come from Poland, from Muscovy, from Circassia, from Georgia, and from the frontiers of Great Tartary, the tawny ones from the territories of the Great Mogul, the kingdom of Golconda and Visapore; and the black ones from the coast of the Red Sea.

Among the inferior classes of women a strange superstition prevails. Such as are barren imagine that they have only to pass under the suspended body of a gibbeted criminal to become fruitful; the influence of a male corpse, and that even from a distance, will communicate to them fecundity. When this expedient fails, they go into the canals which flow from the public baths, when they know a number of men are bathing. Should the latter supposed specific prove alike ineffectual as the former, their last resource is to swallow that part of the prepuce which is cut off in the operation of circumcision; and this they deem a sovereign remedy against sterility.

The inhabitants of Persia, of Turkey, of Arabia, of Egypt, and of all Barbary, may be considered as one and the same people, who, in the time of Mahomet and his successors, invaded immense territories, extended their dominions, and became exceedingly intermixed with the original natives of all those countries. The Persians, the Turks, and the Moors, are to a certain degree civilized; but the Arabs, have for the most part remained in a state of lawless independence. They live like the Tartars, without law, without government, and almost without society: theft, robbery, and violence, are authorized by their chiefs; they glory in their vices, and pay no respect to virtue; and all human institutions they despise, excepting such as are founded upon fanaticism and superstition.

They are inured to labour, and to which they habituate their horses, allowing them refreshment but once in twenty-four hours. Their horses are necessarily meagre, but are excellent coursers, and seem indefatigable.

In general the Arabs live miserably: they have neither bread nor wine, nor do they take the trouble to cultivate the earth. Instead of bread, they use wild grain, mixed and kneaded with the milk of their camels, sheep, and goats. These they conduct in flocks from place to place, till they find a spot of sufficient herbage for them. On this spot they erect their tents, and live with their wives and children till the herbage is consumed, when they decamp and proceed in search of more.

However hard may be their mode of living, and simple their food, yet the Arabs are robust and stout; they are of a tolerable size and rather handsome. As the generality of them go naked, or with the slight covering of a wretched shirt, their skins are much scorched by the heat of the sun. Those of the coasts of Arabia-Felix, and of the island of Scotora, are more diminutive; their complexion is either ash-coloured or tawny; and in form they resemble the Abyssinians.

The Arabs paint their arms, lips, and different parts of their body, of a deep blue, which they penetrate into the flesh by means of a kind of needle contrived on purpose, and it can never be effaced. This custom is also common among the negroes who traffic with the Mahometans. Some of the young girls among the Arabs paint various devices on their bodies, of a blue colour, which is done by vitriol on the point of a lancet, and this they consider as an embellishment to their beauty.

La Boulaye says, that the Arabian women of the Desert paint their hands, lips, and chin, of a blue colour; that in their noses they mostly have gold or silver rings, of three inches in diameter; that though born fair, they yet lose all their complexion by being constantly exposed to the sun; that the young girls are very agreeable, and immoderately fond of singing; that their songs are not melancholy and plaintive like those of the Turks and Persians, but more strange, they raise their voices as much as possible, and articulate with prodigious velocity.

"The Arabian princesses and ladies," says another traveller, "are very beautiful, and being always sheltered from the sun, are very fair. The women of the inferior classes are not only naturally tawny, but are rendered much more so by the sun, and are of a disagreeable figure. They prick their lips with needles, and cover them with gunpowder, mixed with ox-gall, by which the lips are rendered blue and livid ever after. In like manner they prick the cheeks, and each side of the mouth and chin. They draw a line of black along the eye-lids, as also on the outward corner of each eye, that it may appear more expanded, for large and prominent eyes are considered the principal beauty of the Eastern women. To express the beauty of women, the Arabs say, "She has the eyes of the antelope." To this animal they always compare their mistresses; and black eyes, or the eyes of the antelope, never fail to be the burden of their love songs. Than the antelope nothing can be more beautiful; and it particularly discovers a certain innocent fear, which bears a strong resemblance to the natural modesty and timidity of a young woman. The ladies, and women newly married, blacken the eye-brows, and make them unite on the middle of their forehead; they also prick their arms and hands, and form upon them figures of animals, flowers, &c. They also paint their nails of a reddish colour. The men paint the tails of their horses with this colour. The women wear rings in their ears, and bracelets upon their arms and legs."

To this account it may be added, that the Arabs are all jealous of their wives, and that, whether they obtain them by purchase or carry them away by force, they treat them with, mildness and even with respect.

The Egyptians, though they live so near the Arabians, have the same religion, and are governed by the same laws, yet they are very different in their manners and customs. In all the towns and villages along the Nile, for example, we meet with girls set apart for the embraces of travellers, without any obligation to pay for such indulgence. For this purpose they have houses always full of these girls; and when a rich man finds himself dying, as an act of pious charity he disburses a sum of money to provide damsels and an edifice of this kind. When any of these girls have a male child, the mother is obliged to rear him till the age of three or four, after which she carries him to the patron of the house, or his heir, who employs him as one of his slaves. The girls, however, remain with the mother, and when of a proper age they supply her place.

The Egyptian women are very brown, their eyes ate lively, their stature rather low, their mode of dress by no means agreeable, and their conversation very tiresome. They are remarkable for bearing a number of children; and some travellers pretend, that the fertility occasioned by the inundation of the Nile is not confined to the earth, but to the human and animal creation. They add, that by drinking of the Nile, or by bathing in it, the first two months after its overflow, which are those of July and August, the women generally conceive; that in April and May they are as generally delivered, and that cows almost always bring forth two calves, a ewe two lambs, &c.

To reconcile this benign influence of the Nile with the troublesome disorders occasioned by it would be difficult. Granger says, that in Egypt the air is unwholesome; that the eyes are peculiarly subject to diseases so inveterate, that many lose their sight; that in this country there are more blind people than in any other; and that during the increase of the Nile the generality of the inhabitants are afflicted with obstinate dysenteries, occasioned by the water being then strongly impregnated with saline particles.

Though the women of Egypt are commonly small, yet the men are of a good height. Both, generally speaking, are of an olive colour, and the more we remove from Cairo the more tawny we find the natives, till we come to the confines of Nubia, where they are nearly as black as the Nubians themselves.

The greatest defects of the Egyptians are, idleness and cowardice. They do nothing the whole day but drink coffee, smoke tobacco, sleep, or chatter in the streets. They are extremely ignorant, yet are full of the most ridiculous vanity. Though they cannot deny they have lost that nobleness they once possessed, their skill in sciences and in arms, their history, and even their language; and that from an illustrious nation they have degenerated into a people dastardly and enslaved, they yet scruple not to despise all other nations, and to take offence at advising them to send their children to Europe, to acquire a knowledge of the arts and sciences.

Of a distinct origin are the numerous natives that inhabit the coasts of the Mediterranean, between Egypt and the western ocean, as well as the extensive territories from Barbary to Mount Atlas. The Arabs, Vandals, Spaniards, and, more anciently, the Romans and the Egyptians, peopled these regions with men very different from each other. The inhabitants of the mountains of Arras, for example, have an aspect and complexion very different from those of their neighbours; their skin, far from being tawny, is fair and ruddy; and their hair is of a deep yellow, while that of the adjacent nations is black; circumstances which have led Dr. Shaw to suppose them the descendants of the Vandals, who, on their expulsion, might have settled in some parts of these mountains.

The women of the kingdom of Tripoli, though so near to those of Egypt, have yet no resemblance to them. The former are tall; and they even consider length of stature as an essential article of beauty. Like the Arabian women they mark their cheeks and chin; and as in Turkey they so highly esteem red hair, they even paint that of their children with vermilion.

In general the Moorish women affect to wear their hair down to their heels, and those whose hair is less in length, use false locks; and they all adorn their tresses with ribbons. The hair of the eye-lids they tinge with the dust of black lead; and the dark colour which this gives to the eyes they esteem a singular beauty. In this circumstance, indeed they differ not from the women of ancient Greece and Rome.

Most part of the Moorish women would pass for handsome even in Europe. The skin of their children is exceedingly fair and delicate; and though the boys, by being exposed to the sun, soon grow swarthy, yet the girls, who are kept more at home, retain their beauty till the age of 30, when they commonly cease to have children. At this premature sterility they have less cause to repine, as they are often mothers at the age of 11, and grandmothers at that of 22; and living as long as European women, they commonly see several generations.

In reading Marmol's description of these different nations, it is evident that the inhabitants of the mountains of Barbary are fair, and those of the sea-coasts and plains are very brown and tawny. He says expressly, that the inhabitants of Capex, a city of Tunis, are poor people exceedingly black; that those who dwell on the river Dara, in the kingdom of Morocco, are very tawny; and that the inhabitants of Zarhou, and of the mountains of Fez, on the side of Mount Atlas, are white. He adds, that the latter are so little affected by cold, that even in frost and snow their dress is very slight; and through the whole year they go with the head uncovered. The Numidians, he says, are rather tawny than black; the women are tolerably fair, and even lusty, though the men are meagre; but that the inhabitants of Guaden, at the extremity of Numidia, and on the frontiers of Senegal, are rather black that tawny; that, on the other hand, in the province of Dara, the women are beautiful and fresh-coloured; and that throughout the whole regions negro-slaves of both sexes are numerous.

The difference then is not great among the nations that dwell between the 20th, 30th, or 35th degree north latitude, in the old continent; that is, from the Mogul empire to Barbary, and even from the Ganges to the western coasts of Morocco, if we except the varieties occasioned by the mixture with more northern nations, by which some of these vast countries have been conquered and peopled. In this territory, the extent of which is not less than 2000 leagues, the inhabitants are in general brown and tawny, yet well made, and tolerably handsome.

If we next examine those who live in climates more temperate we shall find that the people northward of Mogul and Persia, the Armenians, Turks, Georgians, Mingrelians Circassians, Greeks, and the Europeans at large, are the most fair and handsome in the world; and that however remote Cashmire may be from Spain, or Circassia from France, yet situated nearly at the same distance from the equator, the resemblance between the natives is singularly striking.

The people of Cashmire, says Bernier, are celebrated for beauty; they are as well made as the Europeans; they have nothing of the Tartar visages; nor have they that flat nose, and those pig's eyes we met with among their neighbours. The women are particularly handsome; and it is very common for strangers, on coming to the court of Mogul, to provide themselves with wives from Cashmire, in order to have children that may pass for true Moguls.

The natives of Georgia are of a more refined extraction than those of Cashmire. In the whole of that country we find not an ugly face; and the women enjoy from Nature graces superior to those of any other race. They are tall and well-shaped; their waist is exceedingly delicate, and their faces are truly charming. The men are also very handsome; and, from their natural ingenuity, were it not counteracted by a wretched education, which renders them ignorant and vicious, they might successfully cultivate the arts and sciences. In no country whatever, perhaps, are libertinism and drunkenness carried to so great a pitch as in Georgia. Chardin says, that even the clergy are exceedingly addicted to wine; that, in the character of slaves, they retain a number of concubines, and that at this custom, as being general and even authorised, no person takes offence. He adds, that the prefect of the Capuchins assured him, that the Patriarch of Georgia publicly declares, that he who, at the grand festivals, as those of Easter and Christmas, does not get drunk, is unworthy to be called a Christian, and ought to be excommunicated. With all their vices the Georgians are a civil and humane people, little subject to passion, but irreconcileable enemies when provoked, and have conceived an antipathy.

"The women of Circassia," says Struys, "are also exceedingly fair and beautiful. Their complexion has the finest tints, their forehead is large and smooth, and, without the aid of art, their eye-brows are so delicate, that they appear as curved threads of silk. Their eyes are large, expressive, and full of fire; their noses finely shaped, and their lips perfect vermilion; their mouths are small, and constantly expressive of smiles, and their chins form the termination of a perfect oval. Their necks and breasts are admirably formed; their stature is tall, and the shape of their body easy; their skin is white as snow, and their hair of the most beautiful black. They wear a little black stuff cap, over which is fastened a roller of the same colour; but, what is truly ridiculous, the widows, instead of this roller, wear the bladder of an ox, or a cow, blown out as much as possible, which disfigures them amazingly. In summer the inferior classes wear nothing but a shift, which is open down to the middle, and is generally blue, yellow, or red. Though tolerably familiar with strangers, they are faithful to their husbands, who are by no means jealous of them."

Tavernier says also, that the women of Comania and Circassia are, like those of Georgia, very shapely and beautiful; that they retain the freshness of their complexion till the age of 45 or 50; that they are all very industrious, and often employed in the most servile offices. In marriage these people possess an uncommon degree of liberty. If the husband is not contented with his wife, and he makes his complaint first, the lord of the district sends for the wife, orders her to be sold, and provides the husband with another. If the woman complains first, her husband is taken from her, and she is left at her freedom.

The Mingrelians are said to be as beautiful, and as well shaped as the Georgians or Circassians; and, indeed, they all seem to be of the same race. The women of Mingrelia, says Chardin, are very handsome, have a majestic air, their faces and forms are admirable, and have a look so engaging as to attract every beholder. Those who are less handsome, or advanced in years, daub their eye-brows, cheeks, forehead, nose, and chin, with paint; the rest only paint the eye-brows. They bestow every possible attention to their dress, which is similar to that of the Persians. They are lively, civil, and obliging, yet full of perfidy, and there is no wickedness they will not put in practice, in order to obtain, to preserve, or get rid of a lover. The men have likewise many bad qualities. They are all bred up to thievery, which they make a business and amusement. With infinite satisfaction do they relate the different depredations they have committed, for which they are extolled, and derive their greatest glory. In Mingrelia, falsehood, robbery, and murder, they call good actions; whoredom, bigamy, and incest, virtuous habits. The husbands are little disturbed with jealousy; and when he detects his wife in the actual embraces of her gallant, he has only a right to demand a pig from him, which is his only atonement, his only revenge; and the pig they generally eat between them. They pretend it is a very good and laudable custom to have a number of wives and concubines, because they can have a greater increase of children, whom they can sell for gold, or exchange for goods or provisions. The Mingrelian slaves are not very dear. A man from the age of 25 to 40 is purchased for 15 crowns, and if older for eight or ten, a handsome girl, from 13 to 18 for 20 crowns; a woman for 12 crowns; and a child for three or four.

The Turks, who purchase a vast number of these slaves, are so intermixed with Armenians, Georgians, Turcomans, Arabs, Egyptians, and even Europeans, it is hardly possible to distinguish the real natives of Asia Minor, Syria, and the rest of Turkey. The Turkish men are generally robust, and tolerably well made, and it is rare to find a deformed person among them. The women are also commonly beautiful, and free from blemishes; they are very fair, because they seldom stir from home, and never without being veiled.

According to Belon, there is not a woman in Asia whose complexion is not fresh as a rose, whose skin is not fair, delicate, and smooth as velvet. Of the earth of China, diluted, they form a kind of ointment, with which they rub all over their bodies before they bathe. Some likewise paint their eye-brows black, while others eradicate the hairs with rusma, and paint themselves eye-brows in the form of a cresent, which are beautiful when viewed at a distance, but quite the reverse when examined more closely. This custom is very ancient. Among the Turks, he adds, neither men nor women wear hair on any part of the body, the head and chin excepted; that they use rusma mixed with quick lime, and diluted in water, which they apply before they go into the warm bath, and so soon as they begin to sweat in thus bathing the hair rubs off with the hand, and the skin remains soft and smooth, as if there had never been any upon it. He remarks further, that in Egypt there is a shrub called _Alcanna_, the leaves of which dried and powdered make a reddish yellow colour, which the women of Turkey use to colour their hair, hands, and feet. With this they also tinge the hair of their infants, and the manes of their horses. The Turkish women employ every art to add to their beauty, as do also the Persian, but the articles they use are different, as the men of the former prefer red, and those of the latter brown complexions.

It has been pretended that the Jews, who came originally from Syria, and Palestine, have the same brown complexion they had formerly. As Misson, however, justly observes, the Jews of Portugal alone are tawny. As they always marry with their own tribe, the complexion of the parents is transmitted to the child, and thus with little diminution preserved, even in the northern countries. The German Jews, those of Prague, for example, are not more swarthy than the other Germans.

The present natives of Judea resemble the other Turks, being only a little more brown than those of Constantinople, or on the coasts of the Black Sea, in like manner as the Arabians are more brown than the Syrians, from their situation being more southern.

It is the same with the Greeks. Those of the northern parts are more fair, while those of the southern islands, or provinces, are brown. Generally speaking, the Greek women are more handsome and vivacious than the Turks; they also enjoy a greater degree of liberty. Carreri says, the women of the island of Chio are fair, handsome, lively, and very familiar with the men; that the girls see strangers without restraint; and that they all have their necks uncovered. He likewise says, that the Greek women have the finest hair in the world, especially in the vicinage of Constantinople; but that those whose hair descends to the heels, have features less regular.

The Greeks consider large eyes, and elevated eye-brows, as a very great beauty in either sex; and we may remark in all busts and medals of ancient Greeks, the eyes are much larger than those of the ancient Romans.

The inhabitants of the Archipelago are excellent swimmers and divers. According to Thevenot, they are trained to the practice of bringing up goods which have been sunk into the sea; and that in the island of Samos, a young man has no chance of obtaining a wife, unless he can dive eight, and Dapper says twenty, fathoms. The latter adds, that in some of the islands, as in Nicaria, they have a strange custom of speaking to each other at a distance, and that their voices are so strong, that when a quarter of a league, nay even a whole league asunder, they maintain a conversation, though not without long intervals, as after a question is asked, the answer does not arrive for several seconds.

The Greeks, Neapolitans, Sicilians, Corsicans, Sardinians, and Spaniards, being situated nearly under the same line, are uniform in point of complexion. Those people are more swarthy than the English, French, Germans, Polanders, Moldavians, Circassians, and all the other inhabitants of the north of Europe, till we advance to Lapland; where, as already observed, we find another race of men. In travelling through Spain, we begin to perceive a difference of colour even at Bayonne. There the women have a complexion more brown, and eyes more brilliant.

The Spaniards are meagre, rather short, yet handsome. They are yellow and swarthy; but their eyes are beautiful, their teeth well ranged, and their features are regular. Their children are born fair and handsome; but as they grow up their complexion changes surprisingly; the air and sun render them yellow and tawny; nor is it difficult to distinguish a Spaniard from a native of any other country in Europe. In some provinces of Spain, as in the environs of the river Bidassoa, it is remarked, the inhabitants have ears of an immoderate size.

Black or brown hair begins to be rather unfrequent in England, Flanders, Holland, and in the northern provinces of Germany; nor is it hardly to be seen in Denmark, Sweden, or Roland. According to Linnæus, the Goths are tail, their hair smooth and white as silver, and the iris of their eye is bluish. The Finlanders are muscular and fleshy; the hair long, and of a yellowish white, and the iris of the eye is of a deep yellow.

In Sweden the women are exceedingly fruitful. Rudbeck says, that they commonly bear 8, 10, or 12 children, and not unoften 18, 20, 24, 28, and even 30. He adds, that the men often live to the age of 100, some to that of 140; that one Swede lived to 156 years, and another to 161.

This author is an enthusiast with regard to his country, and according to him, Sweden is the first country in the world. This fertility in the women does not imply a greater propensity to love. In cold climates the inhabitants are far more chaste than in warm; and though they produce more children in Sweden, the women are less amorous than those of Spain or Portugal. It is universally known, that the northern nations have to so great a degree overrun all Europe, that historians have distinguished the north by the appellation of _Officina Gentium_.

The author of the "Voyages Historiques de l'Europe," agrees with Rudbeck, that there are more instances of longevity in Sweden, than in any other European nation; and that he saw several persons who, he was assured, had passed the age of 150. This longevity he attributes to the salubrity of their climate; and of the people of Denmark he makes the same remark; the Danes, he adds, are tall, robust, and of a lively and florid complexion; that the women are likewise very fair, well made, and exceedingly prolific.

Before the reign of Czar Peter I. we are told, the Muscovites had not emerged from barbarism. Born in slavery, they were ignorant, brutal, cruel, without courage and without manners. Men and women bathed promiscuously in stoves heated to a degree intolerable to all persons but themselves; and on quitting this warm bath they plunged, like the Laplanders, into cold water. Their food was homely; and their favourite dishes were cucumbers or melons, brought from Astracan, which in summer they preserved in a mixture of water, flour, and salt. From ridiculous scruples they refrained from the use of several meats, particularly pigeons and veal. Yet even at this period of unrefinement, the women were skilled in the arts of colouring their checks, plucking out their eye-brows, and painting artificial ones. They also adorned themselves with pearls and jewels, and their garments were made of rich and valuable stuffs. From these circumstances does it not appear, that the barbarism of the Muscovites was near a close, and that their sovereign had less trouble in polishing them than some authors have endeavoured to insinuate? They are now a people civilized, commercial, studious Of the arts and sciences, fond of spectacles, and ingenious novelties.

Some authors have said that the air of Muscovy is so salutary, as to prevent its being visited with a pestilence. In the annals of the country, however, it is recorded, that in the year 1741, and during the six subsequent years, the Muscovites were dreadfully afflicted with a contagious distemper, insomuch that even the constitution of their descendants has been altered by it; few of the inhabitants attaining now the age of an 100, whereas before that period numbers lived much beyond it.

The Ingrians and Carelians, who inhabit the northern provinces of Muscovy, and are the original natives of the country round Petersburgh, are men of vigour and robust constitutions. Their complexion is generally fair; they resemble the Finlanders, and speak the same language, which has no affinity to that of any other European nation.

By this historical description of all the different inhabitants of Europe and Asia, it appears that the variation in their colour depends greatly, though not entirely, on the climates. There are many other causes, by which not only the colour, but even the form and features may be influenced; and among the principal may be reckoned the nature of the food, and the manners, or mode of living. A civilized people, who enjoy a life of ease and tranquillity, and who, by the superintendance of a well regulated government, are protected from the fear and oppression of misery, will, from these reasons alone, be more handsome and vigorous than those of a savage and careless nation, of which each individual, deriving no assistance from society, is obliged to provide for his own subsistence, to sustain alternately the excesses of hunger and the effects of unwholesome food; to be alternately exhausted with labour and lassitude; and to undergo the rigours of a severe climate, without being able to shelter himself from them; to act, in a word, more frequently like an animal than a man. In the supposition that two nations, thus differently circumstanced, were even to live in the same climate, there can be no doubt but that the savage people would be more ugly, tawny, diminutive, and more wrinkled, than those enjoying civilized society. Should the former possess any advantage, it would consist in the superior strength, or rather hardiness of the body. It might likewise happen that among the savage people there would be fewer instances of lameness or bodily deformities; for in a civilized state, where one individual contributes to the support of another, where the strong has no power over the weak, where the qualities of the body are less esteemed than those of the mind, men thus defective live and even multiply; but among a savage people, as each individual subsists and defends himself merely by his corporal strength and address, those who are unhappily born weak and defective, or who become sick or disabled, soon cease to form a part of their number.

We must then admit of three causes as jointly productive of the varieties which we have remarked in the different nations of the earth. First, the influence of the climate; secondly, the food; and thirdly, the manners; the two last having great dependence on the former. But before we lay down the reasons on which this opinion is founded, it is necessary to describe the people of Africa and America in the same manner as we have those of Europe and Asia.

The nations of the whole northern part of Africa, from the Mediterranean to the Tropic, we have already mentioned. All those beyond the Tropic, from the Red Sea to the Ocean, an extent of 100 or 150 leagues, are of the Moorish species, though so tawny that they appear almost black. The women are rather fairer than the men, and tolerably handsome. Among these Moors there is a vast number of mulattoes, who are of a black still more deep, their mothers being negro women, whom the Moors purchase, and by whom they have a number of children.

Beyond this territory, in the 17th or 18th degree of north latitude, we find the negroes of Senegal and Nubia, both on the coast of the western ocean and that of the Red Sea; and after them all the other nations of Africa, from the 18th degree north to the 18th degree south latitude, are perfectly black, the Ethiopians or Abyssinians excepted. The portion of the globe by Nature allotted to this race of men, therefore, contains an extent of ground, parallel to the equator, of about 900 leagues in breadth, and considerably more in length, especially northward of the equinoctial line. Beyond the 18th or 20th degree of south latitude the natives are no longer negroes, as will appear when we come to speak of the Caffres and Hottentots.

By confounding the Ethiopians with their neighbours the Nubians, who are nevertheless of a different race, we have been long in an error with respect to their colour and features. Marmol says, the Ethiopians are absolutely black, that they have large faces and flat noses, and in this description the Dutch travellers agree. The truth, however, is, that they differ from the Nubians both in colour and features. The skin of the Ethiopians is brown or olive-coloured, like that of the southern Arabs, from whom probably they derive their origin. They are tall, have regular features, strongly marked; their eyes are large and beautiful; their noses well proportioned; their lips thin, and their teeth white. The Nubians, on the contrary, have flat noses, thick and prominent lips, and their faces exceedingly black. These Nubians, as well as the Barberins, their western neighbours, are a species of negroes not unlike those of Senegal.

The Ethiopians are a people between barbarism and civilization. Their garments are of cotton or silk. Their houses are low, and of a bad construction; their lands are wretchedly neglected, owing to their nobles, who despise, maltreat, and plunder the citizens and common people. Each of these classes live separate from the other, and have their own villages or hamlets. Unprovided with salt, they purchase it for its weight in gold. So fond are they of raw meat that, at their feasts, the second course, which they consider as the most delicate, consists of flesh entirely so. Though they have vines they make no wine; and their usual beverage is a sour composition made with tamarinds. They use horses for travelling, and mules for carrying their merchandize. Of the arts or sciences they have little knowledge; their language is without rules; and their manner of writing, though their characters are more beautiful than those of the Arabians, is so imperfect, that, to write an epistle, they require several days. Their mode of salutation is something whimsical. Each takes the right hand of the other, and carries it to his mouth; this done, the saluter takes off the scarf of the person saluted, and fastens it round his own body, by which the latter is left half naked, few of the Ethiopians wearing any thing more than this scarf and a pair of cotton drawers.

In Admiral Drake's voyage round the world, he mentions a fact, which, however, extraordinary, appears not incredible. He says that on the frontiers of the deserts of Ethiopia there is a people called the _Acridophagi_, or _Locust-eaters_, who are black, meagre, exceedingly nimble, and very small. In the spring, by certain hot and westerly winds, an infinite number of locusts are blown into that country, on which, as they are unprovided with cattle or with fish, they are reduced to the necessity of subsisting. After collecting them in large quantities they salt them, and keep them for food throughout the year. This wretched nourishment produces singular effects: they hardly live to the age of 40, and when they approach that age winged insects engender under their skin, which at first creates a violent itching, and shortly multiply so prodigiously, that their whole flesh swarms with them. They begin by eating through the belly, then the breast, and continue their ravages till they eat all the flesh from the bones. Thus, by devouring insects are these men devoured by them in turn. Were this fact well authenticated it would afford a large field for reflection.

There are vast deserts in Ethiopia, as well as in that tract of land which extends to Cape Gardafu. This country, which may be considered as the eastern part of Ethiopia, is almost entirely uninhabited. To the south, Ethiopia is bounded by the Bediouns, and a few other nations who follow the law of Mahomet; a circumstance which corroborates the supposition, that the Ethiopians are of Arabian extraction; indeed they are only separated by the strait of Babel-Mandel; and therefore it is probable, that the Arabians had formerly invaded Ethiopia, and driven the natives northward into Nubia.

The Arabians have even extended themselves along the coast of Melinda, of which the inhabitants are of the Mahometan religion, and only a tawny complexion, The natives of Zanguebar, are not black; they generally speak Arabic, and their garments are made of cotton. This country, though under the torrid zone, is not excessively hot; and yet the hair of the natives is black and frizly like that of the Negroes. We find, on the whole of this coast, as well as at Mosambique and Madagascar, some white men, who, it is pretended came originally from China, and settled there, in the time that the Chinese navigated all the Eastern seas, in the same manner as they are now navigated by the Europeans. Whatever foundation there may be for this opinion, it is certain that the natives of this oriental coast of Africa are black, and that the tawny or white men we find there, have come from other countries. But, to form a just idea of the differences among these black nations, we should examine them more minutely.

In the first place, it is evident, from comparing the descriptions given by travellers, that there is as much variety in the race of blacks as in that of the whites; and that, like the latter, the former have their Tartars and their Circassians. Those of Guinea are extremely ugly, and have an insufferable stench; those of Sofala, and Mosambique, are handsome, and have no bad smell. It is necessary, then, to divide the blacks into different races; and in my opinion, they may be reduced to two principal ones, that of the Negroes, and that of the Caffres. In the first I comprehend the blacks of Nubia, Senegal, Cape de Verd, Gambia, Sierra-Leone, the Teeth and Gold Coasts, of the coast of Juda, Benin, Gabon, Loango, Congo, Angola, and of Benguela, till we come to Cape-Negro. In the second I place the inhabitants beyond Cape-Negro to the point of Africa, where they assume the name of Hottentots; as also all those of the eastern coast of Africa, such as those of the land of Natal, Sofala, Monomotapa, Mosambique, and of Melinda; the blacks of Madagascar, and the neighbouring islands, are likewise Caffres and not Negroes. These two races of black men resemble each other more in colour than in their features, hair, skin, or smell. In their manners and disposition there is also a prodigious difference.

When we come particularly to examine the different people of which these races are composed, we shall perceive as many varieties among the blacks as the whites; and all the shades from brown to black, as we have already remarked from brown to fair in the white races.

Let us begin, then, with the countries northward of Senegal, and, in proceeding along the coasts, take a view of all the different tribes which travellers have discovered and described. In the first place it is certain that the natives of the Canary islands are not Negroes; since from authentic information it appears, that the ancient inhabitants were tall, well-made, and of a becoming complexion; that the women were handsome, and had remarkable fine hair; and that those who occupied the southern parts were more of an olive colour than those in the northern. In the relation of his voyage to Lima, Duret remarks, that the ancient inhabitants of the island of Teneriffe were tall and vigorous, though meagre and tawny, and that most of them had flat noses. Excepting the flat nose, therefore, these people had nothing in common with the Negroes. The natives of Africa in the same latitude with these islands, are Moors, and very tawny, but who belong, as well as the islanders, to the race of whites.

The inhabitants of Cape-Blanc are Moors, who follow the law of Mahomet, and who wander about, like the Arabians, in quest of pasture for their horses, camels, oxen, goats, and sheep. The Negroes, with whom they traffic, give them eight or ten slaves for a horse, and two or three for a camel. It is from these Moors, that we procure gum-arabic, which they dissolve in their milk. They scarcely ever eat any meat, and never destroy their cattle, unless dying of sickness, or old age.

The Moors are separated from the Negroes by the river Senegal; they live on the north-side, and are only tawny; but the Negroes who reside on the south, are absolutely black. The Moors lead an erratic life, while the Negroes occupy villages; the former are free and independent; the latter have tyrants who hold them in slavery; the Moors are short, meagre, of a disagreeable aspect, but ingenious and subtle; the Negroes are tall, bulky, and well made, but simple and stupid. The country inhabited by Moors is sandy and sterile, where verdue is to be seen in a very few places; that inhabited by the Negroes, is rich, abounding in pasturage, in millet, and in trees always green, though few bear any fruit fit for food.

In some places both to the north and south of the river we find a species of men called _Foulies_, who seem to form a shade between the Moors and Negroes, and whom, it is possible, are Mulattoes produced by a coalition of the two nations. These _Foulies_ are not black like the Negroes, yet darker than the Moors; they are also more civilized than the former; they follow the laws of Mahomet, and are hospitable to strangers.

The islands of Cape de Verd are peopled with Mulattoes, descended from the Portuguese, who first settled there, and the original Negro-inhabitants. They are called _copper-coloured_ Negroes, because, though they resemble the Negroes in their features, they are yet more of a yellow than black; they are well-made, ingenious, but intolerably indolent. By hunting and fishing they chiefly subsist, and they train up their dogs to hunt the wild goats. They freely resign their wives and daughters to the embraces of strangers for the smallest consideration. For pins and other trifles they will exchange parrots, porcelain shells, ambergris, &c.

The first Negroes we meet with are those on the south of the Senegal. These people, as well as those who occupy the different territories between this river and that of Gambia, are called _Jaloffs_. They are tall, very black, well proportioned, and their features are less harsh than those of the other Negroes; some of them, especially among the females, have features far from being irregular. They have the same ideas of beauty as the Europeans, considering fine eyes, a well formed nose, small mouth, and thin lips, as essential ingredients; in the ground of the picture alone do they differ from us; for, with them, the colour must be exceedingly black and glossy to render it complete; Their skin is soft and delicate, and, colour alone excepted, we find among them, women as handsome as in any other country of the world, they are usually very gay, lively, and amorous. They are very fond of white men whom they exert every assiduity to please, both to gratify themselves, and to obtain presents which may flatter their vanity. To their predilection for strangers the husbands make not the smallest opposition, (to whom indeed, they not only make a free offer of their wives, daughters, or sisters, but even construe it into a dishonour, if that offer is rejected) but undergo all the violent effects of jealousy, if they detect them with any of their own nation. These women are never without a pipe in their mouths, and their skin, when they undergo any extraordinary heat, has a disagreeable smell, though by no means so strong as that of other negroes. They are highly fond of leaping and dancing to the sound of a calabash, drum, or kettle; and all the movements of their dances are so many lascivious or indecent postures. They frequently bathe; and to render their teeth even, they polish them with files. The generality of the young women have figures of animals, flowers, &c. marked upon their skin.

While at work, or travelling, the Negro-women almost always carry their infants on their backs. To this custom some travellers ascribe the flat nose and big bellies among Negroes; since the mother, from necessarily giving sudden jerks, is apt to strike the nose of the child against her back; who, in order to avoid the blow, keeps its head back by pushing the belly forward. Their hair is black and woolly. In hair and in complexion, consists their principal difference from the rest of mankind; and, perhaps, there is a stronger resemblance between their features and those of the Europeans, than between the visage of a Tartar and that of a Frenchman.

Father du Tertre says expressly, that, if most negroes are flat-nosed, it is because the parents crush the noses of their children; that they also compress their lips, to render them thick; and that those who escape these operations their features are as comely as those of the Europeans. This remark, however, applies only to the negroes of Senegal, who, of all others, are the most beautiful. Among all other negroes, thick lips, broad and flat noses, appear formed as gifts by nature; and which are by them considered so much as beauties that every art is used upon the children who, at their birth, discover a deficiency in those ornaments.

The Negro women are very fruitful; in child-birth they experience little difficulty, and require not the smallest assistance; nor of its effects do they feel any consequence beyond the second day. As nurses and mothers they deserve great encomiums, being exceedingly tender of their children. They are more ingenious and alert than the men, and they even study to acquire the virtues of discretion and temperance. Father Jaric says, that to habituate themselves to eat and speak little, the Jaloff negro women put water into their mouths in the morning, and keep it there till the hour allotted for the first meal arrives.

The negroes of the island of Goree, and of the Cape de Verd coast, are, like those of Senegal, well made, and very black. So highly do they prize their colour, which is also glossy, that they despise those who are not the same as much as white men despise the tawny. They are strong and robust, but indolent and slothful, and cultivate neither corn, wine, nor fruit. Rarely do they eat meat; fish and millet are their chief sustenance. They eat no herbs, and because Europeans do, they compare them to horses. Of spirituous liquors they are fond to an excess, and for which they will sell their relations, children, and even themselves. They go almost naked, wearing only a small piece of calico, which descends from the waist to the middle of the thigh, and which, they say, is all that the heat of their climate will allow them to wear. Notwithstanding their poverty, and wretchedness of food, they are contented and cheerful. They also think their country is the finest in the world, and that, because they are the blackest, they are the most beautiful of men; and were it not that their women discover a fondness for white men they would deem them unworthy of their notice.

Though the negroes of Sierra Leona are less black than those of Senegal, they are not, however, as Struys asserts, of a reddish colour. The custom prevalent among them, as well as among the negroes of Guinea, of painting their bodies with red, and other colours, possibly misled that author. Among the latter the women are more debauched than at Senegal; prodigious numbers of them are common prostitutes, from which they incur not the smallest disgrace. Both sexes go with their heads uncovered, and their hair, which is very short, they shave or cut in various forms. In their ears they wear pendants, which weigh three or four ounces, made of teeth, horns, shells, wood, &c. Some have the upper lip, or nostrils, pierced, for the same purpose. They wear a kind of apron made of apes' skins and the bark of trees. They eat fish and flesh, but yams and bananas are their chief food. They have no passions but for women, and no inclinations but to remain idle and inactive. They live in wretched huts, frequently situated on dreary wilds, though in the neighbourhood of fertile and delightful spots. The roads from one place to another are commonly twice as long as they need be; they never attempt to curtail them, and even when told how in half the time they may reach any particular spot, they persist in mechanically following the beaten path. They never measure time, nor have the smallest idea of its value.

Though the negroes of Guinea are generally healthy, they seldom attain old age. A negro, at the age of 50, is a very old man. This contracted period of existence may, with great probability, be imputed to the premature intercourse between the sexes. The boys, in their tenderest years, are permitted to pursue every debauchery; and as for the girls, nothing in the whole country is so rare as to find one who remembers the period at which she ceased to be a virgin.

The inhabitants of the island of St. Thomas, of Annobona, &c. are negroes, similar to those of the neighbouring continent. Dispersed, however, by the Europeans, they are few in number, and those subjected to the bondage of their invaders. Both sexes, the covering of a kind of short apron excepted, go naked. Mandelslo says, that the Europeans, who settle on the island of St. Thomas, which is but one degree and a half from the equator, retain their white colour till the third generation; and he seems to insinuate that they afterwards become black: but that this change should be so suddenly effected seems by no means probable.

The negroes of the coasts of Juda and Arada are less black than those of Senegal, Guinea, and Congo. So fond are they of the flesh of dogs that they prefer it to all other viands; and, at their feasts, a roasted dog is always the first dish presented. This predilection for dog's-flesh is not peculiar to the Negroes, but common among the Tartars and savages of North America. The former, in some places, castrate their dogs, in order to make them fat, and more palatable.

According to Pigafetta, and Drake, who seems to have literally copied him, the negroes of Congo are black, though in a less degree than those of Senegal. Of the generality the hair is black and frizly, though of some it is red. They are of a middle stature; their eyes are either brown or of a sea-green colour; their lips are not so thick as those of the other negroes, and their features are not unlike those of the Europeans.

In some of the provinces of Congo the customs are truly singular. When, for example a person dies at Loango, they place the body upon a kind of amphitheatre, about six feet high, in a sitting posture, with the hands resting upon the knees; they deck it out in the most ornamental dress, and then light up fires before and behind it: as the clothes absorb the moisture they cover it with fresh ones, until the corpse is thoroughly dried, when, with much funeral ceremony they commit it to the earth. In the province of Malimba the husband is ennobled by the wife; and when the sovereign dies, and only leaves a single daughter, to her, provided she is marriageable, devolves the royal authority. The first thing she does is to travel over the whole of her kingdom.

On this occasion all her male subjects are obliged, previous to her arrival at each town and village, to form themselves into a line for her reception, and she selects one to pass the night with her. When returned from her journey she sends for the man who best pleased her and instantly marries him; after which the whole regal authority devolves to the husband. These facts M. de la Brosse communicated to me in his written remarks on what he saw most worthy of notice, during his voyage to the coast of Angola, in 1738; and of the vindictiveness of these negroes he adds the following anecdote:--"Every day (says he) did they demand brandy of us for the king and chief men of the place. Happening one day to refuse it them we had soon reason to repent; for several officers, both French and English, having gone a fishing up a small lake, they erected a tent for the purpose of enjoying the fruits of their pastime. While thus employed they were joined by seven or eight negroes, the chiefs of Loango, who, in the customary mode of salutation, presented to them their hands. These they had previously rubbed with a subtle poison, whose effect is instantaneous, when unhappily the persons to whom it is communicated takes any thing without first washing their hands; and so successful were they in their purpose, that no less than eight persons perished upon the spot."

As a cure for a pain of the head, or for any bodily pain whatever, these negroes make a slight wound upon the part affected, and through a small horn, with a narrow hole, they suck out the blood till they obtain relief.

The negroes of Senegal, Gambia, Cape de Verd, Angola, and Congo, are of a more beautiful black than those of Juda, Issigni, Arada, and of the circumjacent places. They are exceedingly black when in health, but when sick they become of a copper-colour.

"In our islands (says Father du Tertre in his history of the Antilles) the negroes of Angola are preferred to those of Cape de Verd, for bodily strength; but when heated, their stench is so strong, that the air whithersoever they pass is infected with it for above a quarter of an hour. The negroes of Cape de Verd smell not so strong, their skin likewise is more black and beautiful, their body is of a better shape, their features less harsh, they are much tidier, and in disposition more mild."

The negroes of Guinea are well qualified for the office of tillage, and other laborious employments; those of Senegal are less vigorous, yet are good domestic servants, and very ingenious. Father Charlevoix says, that of all negroes the Senegal ones are the most shapely, most tractable, and as domestic the most useful; that the Bambaras are the tallest, but they are all idle and knavish; that the Aradas best understand the culture of the earth; that the Congos are the smallest, but most expert swimmers; that the Nagos are the most humane, the Mondongos the most cruel; the Mimes the most resolute, the most capricious, and the most subject to despair; that the Creole-negroes, from whatever nation they derive their origin, inherit nothing from their parents but the spirit of servitude and colour; they are more ingenious, rational, and adroit, but more idle and debauched than those of Africa. He adds, that the understanding of the negroes is exceedingly contracted; that numbers of them seem to be even entirely stupid, and can never be made to count more than three; that they have no memory, and are as ignorant of what is past, as of what is to come; that the most sprightly ridicule the others with a tolerable grace; that they are full of dissimulation, and would sooner perish than divulge a secret; that they are commonly mild, humane, tractable, simple, credulous, and even superstitious; that they possess fidelity and courage, and might with proper discipline make a tolerable figure in the field.

If the negroes are deficient in genius, they are by no means so in their feelings; they are cheerful or melancholy, laborious or inactive, friendly or hostile, according to the manner in which they are treated. If properly fed, and well treated, they are contented, joyous, obliging, and on their very countenance we may read the satisfaction of their soul. If hardly dealt with their spirits forsake them, they droop with sorrow, and will die of melancholy. They are alike impressed with injuries and favours. To the authors of the one they are implacable enemies; while to those who use them well they imbibe an affection which makes them defy all danger and hazard to express their zeal and attachment. To their children, friends, and countrymen, they are naturally compassionate; the little they have they chearfully distribute among those who are in necessity, though otherwise than from that necessity they have not the smallest knowledge of them. That they have excellent hearts is evident, and in having those they have the seeds of every virtue. Their sufferings demand a tear. Are they not sufficiently wretched in being reduced to a state of slavery; in being obliged always to work without reaping the smallest fruits of their labour, without being abused, buffeted, and treated like brutes? Humanity revolts at those oppressions, which nothing but the thirst of gold could ever have introduced, and which would still, perhaps, produce an aggravated repetition, did not the law prescribe limits to the brutality of the master, and to the misery of his slave. Negroes are compelled to labour; and yet of the coarsest food they are sparingly supplied. Their unfeeling masters say, they can support hunger well; that what would serve an European for one meal is to them a sufficient subsistence for three days; however little they eat or sleep, they are alike hardy, alike capable of fatigue. How can men, in whom the smallest sentiment of humanity remains, adopt such maxims, and on such shallow foundations attempt to justify excesses to which nothing could ever have given birth but the most sordid avarice? But let us turn from the gloomy picture, and return to our subject.

Of the people who inhabit the coasts, or the interior parts of Africa, from Cape Negro to Cape de Voltes, an extent of about 400 leagues, we know little more than that they are not so black as the other negroes, and that they much resemble their neighbours the Hottentots: the latter are a people well known, and few travellers have omitted speaking of them. They are not Negroes, but Caffres; and their skin would be only of a tawny hue did they not render it black with paint and grease.

M. Kolbe, though he has given so minute a description of the Hottentots, considers them, however, as Negroes. He assures us their hair is short, black, frizled, and woolly, and that not in a single instance did he ever perceive it long. But from this alone we are not authorised to consider them as real negroes. M. Kolbe himself says their colour is olive, and never black, though they take the utmost pains to render it so; nor, in the next place, can there be much certainty derived from the appearance of their hair, as they never either comb or wash it, but rub it daily with grease and soot in large quantities, which gives it the resemblance of a fleece of black sheep loaded with dirt; besides, they are in disposition different from the negroes. The latter are cleanly, sedentary, and easily subjected to slavery; the former, on the other hand, are frightfully filthy, unsettled, independent, and highly jealous of their liberty. These contrarieties are more than sufficient to confirm us in the opinion that the Hottentots are of a race distinct from that of the Negroes.

Gama, who first doubled the Cape of Good Hope, on his arrival in the bay of St. Helena, on the 4th of November, 1479, found the inhabitants black, short in stature, and ugly in aspect. He does not say, however, that they were naturally as black as the negroes, and doubtless they only appeared to him so black as he describes, from the grease and soot with which they are covered. The same traveller remarks, that in the articulation of their voice there was something similar to a sigh. Their habits were made of skins, and their weapons consisted of sticks hardened with the fire, and pointed with the horn of some animal. To the arts in use among the Negroes, the Hottentots, it is plain, are utter strangers.

The Dutch travellers say, that the Savages northward of the Cape are smaller than the Europeans; that their colour is a reddish brown; that they are very ugly, and take great pains to render themselves black; and their hair is like that of a man who has long hung in chains. They add, that the Hottentots are of the colour of the Mulattoes; that their visage is unshapely; that they are meagre, of a moderate height, and very nimble; and that their language resembles the clucking of turkey-cocks. Father Tachard says, that though they have commonly hair as cottony as the Negroes, there are numbers who have it long, and which floats upon their shoulders. He even asserts, that some of them are as white as Europeans, but that they begrime their skin with a mixture of grease and the powder of a certain black stone, and that the women are naturally fair, but they blacken themselves to please their husbands. Ovington says, that the Hottentots are more tawny than the other Indians; that no people bear so strong a resemblance to the Negroes in colour and features, but that they are less black, their hair is not so frizly, nor their nose so flat.

From all these testimonies it is evident that the Hottentots are not real negroes, but a people of the black race, approaching to the whites, as the Moors of the white race do to the black. These Hottentots, moreover, form a species of very extraordinary savages. The women, who are much smaller than the men, have a kind of excrescence, or hard skin, which grows over the os pubis, and descends to the middle of the thighs in the form of an apron. Thevenot says the same thing of the Egyptian women, but instead of allowing this skin to grow, they burn it off with hot irons. I doubt whether the remark is true with respect to the Egyptian women; but certain it is that all the female natives of the Cape are subject to this monstrous deformity, and which they expose to such persons as have the curiosity to see it. The men, though not by nature, are all demi-eunuchs, being, from an absurd custom, deprived of one of their testicles at about the age of eighteen years. M. Kolbe saw this operation performed upon a young Hottentot; and the circumstances with which the ceremony is accompanied are so singular as to merit a recital.

After having rubbed the young man with the fat of the entrails of sheep, which had been killed on purpose, they stretched him upon his back, and tied his hands and his feet, while three or four of his friends held him. Then the priest (for it is a religious ceremony) made an incision with a very sharp knife, look out the left testicle[D], and in its place deposited a ball of fat of the same size, which had been prepared with certain medicinal herbs. After sewing up the wound with the tendon of a sheep they untied the patient; but the priest before he left him rubbed his whole body with the hot fat of the sheep, or rather poured it on so plentifully, that when the fat cooled, it formed a kind of crust. This rubbing was so violent, that the young man, whose previous sufferings had been sufficiently great, was now covered with large drops of sweat, and began to smoke like a roasted capon. On this crust of grease the operator then made furrows with his nails, from one extremity to the other, and after making water in them, he renewed his frictions, and filled up the furrows with more grease. The instant the ceremony is concluded they leave the patient, in general more dead than alive, yet he is obliged to crawl in the best manner he can to a little hut, built for him on purpose, near the spot where the operation is performed. There he perishes or recovers without assistance or nourishment but the fat upon his skin, which he may lick if he pleases. At the expiration of two days he generally recovers. He is then allowed to appear abroad; and as a proof that his recovery is complete he must run and shew himself as nimble as a stag.

[D] Tavernier, in speaking of this strange custom, says that it is the right testicle which they cut off.

Though all the Hottentots have broad flat noses, yet they would not be so did not their mothers, considering a prominent nose as a deformity, flatten them immediately after their birth. Their lips are also thick, their teeth white, their eye-brows bushy, their heads large, their bodies meagre, and their limbs are slender. They seldom live longer than 40 years; and this short duration of life is doubtless caused by their being continually covered with filth, and living chiefly upon meat that is corrupted. As most travellers have already given very large accounts of these filthy people, I shall only add one fact, as related by Tavernier. The Dutch, he says, once took away a Hottentot girl, soon after her birth, and bringing her up among themselves, she became as white as any European. From this fact he presumes, that all the Hottentots would be tolerably fair, were it not for their custom of perpetually begriming themselves.

Along the coast of Africa beyond the Cape of Good Hope, we find the land of Natal, and a people very different from the Hottentots, being better made, less ugly, and naturally more black. Their visage is oval, their nose well proportioned, their teeth white, their aspect agreeable, and their hair by nature frizly. They are also fond of grease, and wear caps made of the fat of oxen. These caps are from eight to ten inches high, and they take much time to make them; for the fat must be well refined, which they apply by little and little, and so thoroughly intermix it with the hair that it never falls off. Kolbe says, that from their birth and without any precaution to render it so, their noses are flat; they also differ from the Hottentots in not stuttering, nor striking the palate with the tongue; that they have houses, cultivate the ground, and produce from it a kind of maize, or Turkish corn, of which they make beer, a drink unknown to the Hottentots.

After the land of Natal, we find the territories of Sofala and Monomotapa. The people of the former, according to Pigafetta, are black, but more tall and lusty than the other Caffres. It is in the environs of the kingdom of Sofala that this author places the Amazons; but nothing is more uncertain than what has been propagated with respect to these female warriors.

The natives of Monomotapa, the Dutch travellers inform us, are tall, well proportioned, black, and of good complexions. The young girls go naked, except a bit of calico about their middle; but so soon as they are married they put on garments. This people, notwithstanding their blackness, are different from the negroes, their features are neither so harsh nor so ugly; their bodies have no bad smell; and they are incapable of servitude or hard labour. Father Charlevoix says, that some blacks from Monomotapa, and from Madagascar, have been seen in America; but that they could not be inured to labour, and that they soon died.

The natives of Madagascar and Mosambique are black, more or less. Those of Madagascar have the hair on the crown of their head less frizly than those of Mosambique. Neither of them are real negroes; and though those of the coast are enslaved by the Portuguese, yet those of the internal part of the continent are savage and jealous of their liberty. They all go absolutely naked; they feed on the flesh of elephants, and traffic with the ivory.

In Madagascar there are blacks and whites who, though very tawny, yet seem a distinct race of men. The hair of the first is black and frizly; that of the latter is less black, less frizly, and longer. The common opinion is, that these white men derive their origin from the Chinese. But, as Francis Cauche justly remarks, there is a greater probability that they are of European race; as in all he saw, there was not one who had either the flat face or flat nose, of the Chinese. He likewise says, that these white men are fairer than the Castillans; that their hair is very long; that the black men are not flat-nosed like those of the continent; and that their lips are thin. There are also in this island a number of persons of an olive or tawny colour, evidently produced by the intermixture of the blacks and whites. The same traveller observes, that the natives round the bay of St. Augustine are tawny; that they have no beard; that their hair is long and straight; that they are tall and well proportioned; and that they are all circumcised, though probably they never heard of the law of Mahomet, as they have neither temples, mosques, nor religion.

The French, who were the first who landed and settled upon the above island, found the white men we speak of; and they remarked, that the blacks paid great respect to them. Madagascar is exceedingly populous, and rich in pasturage and in cattle. Both sexes are highly debauched; nor is it a dishonour to a woman to be a prostitute. They are fond of singing, dancing, and pastimes in general. Though naturally very lazy, they have some knowledge of the mechanic arts. They have husbandmen, carpenters, potters, blacksmiths, and even goldsmiths; yet their houses are without accommodation, and they sleep upon mats; they eat flesh almost raw, and devour even the hides of their oxen after burning off the hair; they also eat the wax with the honey. The common people go almost naked; but the richer classes wear drawers, or short petticoats, of cotton and silk.

Those who inhabit the interior parts of Africa are not sufficiently known to be justly described. Those whom the Arabians call _Zingues_, are an almost savage race of black men. Marmol says, they multiply prodigiously, and would overrun all the neighbouring countries, were it not for certain hot winds, which from time to time occasion a great mortality among them.

It appears, then, from these facts, that the Negroes are blacks of a different species from the Caffres. From the descriptions we have given, it is also evident that the colour depends principally upon the climate, and that the peculiarity of the features depends greatly on the customs prevalent among different nations, such as flattening the nose, drawing back the eye-lids, plucking the hair out of the eye-brows, lengthening the ears, thickening the lips, flattening the visage, &c. No stronger proof can be adduced of the influence of climate upon colour, than finding under the same latitude, and at the distance of 1000 leagues, two nations so similar as those of Senegal and Nubia; and also that the Hottentots, who must have derived their origin from a black race, are whiter than any other Africans, because the climate in which they live is the coldest. Should there being a tawny race on one side the Senegal, and perfect blacks on the other, be stated as an objection, it is only necessary to recollect what has been already intimated concerning the effects of food, which must operate upon the colour, as well as upon the temperament of the body in general. An example may easily be had in the brute creation. The flesh of the hares, for instance, which live on plains and marshy places, is much more white than those which, though in the same neighbourhood, live on mountains and dry grounds. The colour of the flesh proceeds from that of the blood, and other humours of the body, of which the quality is necessarily influenced by the nature of the nourishment.

In all ages has the origin of black men formed a grand object of enquiry. The ancients, who hardly knew any but those of Nubia, considered them as forming the last shade of the tawny colour; and confounded them with the Ethiopians, and other African nations, who, though extremely brown, have more affinity to the white than to the black race. They concluded, that the differences of colour in men arose solely from the difference of climate, and that blackness was occasioned by a perpetual exposure to the violent heat of the sun. To this opinion, which seems probable, great objections arose, when it was known, that, in more southern climates, and even under the equator itself, as at Melinda, and at Mosambique, the generality of the inhabitants were not black but only very tawny; and when it was observed that black men, if transported into more temperate regions, lost nothing of their colour, but communicated it to their decendants. If we reflect on the migrations of different nations, and on the time which is necessary to render a change in the colour, we shall find no inconsistency in the opinion of the ancients. The real natives of that part of Africa are Nubians, who were originally black, and will perpetually remain so, while they inhabit the same climate, and do not mix with the whites. The Ethiopians, the Abyssinians, and even the natives of Melinda, derive their origin from the whites, yet as their religion and customs are the same with those of the Arabians, they resemble them in colour, though indeed more tawny than those of the southern parts. This even proves, that, in the same race of men, the greater or less degree of black depends on the heat of the climate. Many ages might perhaps elapse, before a white race would become altogether black; but there is a probability that, in time, a white people, transported from the north to the equator, would experience that change, especially if they were to change their manners, and to feed solely on the productions of the warm climate.

Of little weight is the objection which may be made to this opinion, from the difference of the features, for in the features of a negro, which have not been disfigured in his infancy, and the features of an European, there is less difference than between those of a Tartar and a Chinese, or of a Circassian and a Greek. As for the hair, its nature depends so greatly on that of the skin, that any differences which it produces ought to be considered as accidental, since we find in the same country, and in the same town, men whose hair is entirely different from one another. In France, for instance, we meet with men whose hair is as short and frizly as that of a negro; besides, so powerful is the influence of climate upon the colour of the hair, both of men and of animals, that, in the kingdoms of the north, black hair is seldom seen; and hares, squirrels, weasels, and many other animals, which, in countries less cold, are brown or grey, are there white, or nearly so. The difference produced by cold and heat, is so conspicuous, that in Sweden hares, and certain other animals, are grey during the summer, and white in winter.

But there is another circumstance more powerful, and, from the first view of it, indeed insuperable; namely, that in the New World there is not one true black to be seen, the natives being red, tawny, or copper-coloured. If blackness was the effect of heat the natives of the Antilles, Mexico, Santa-Fé, Guiana, the country of the Amazons, and Peru, would necessarily be so, since those countries of America are situated in the same latitude with Senegal, Guinea, and Angola, in Africa. In Brazil, Paraguay, and Chili, did the colour of men depend upon the climate, or the distance from the pole, we might expect to find men similar to the Caffres and Hottentots. But before we enter into a discussion of this subject, it is necessary that we should examine the different natives of America, as we shall then be more enabled to form just comparisons, and to draw general conclusions.

In the most northern parts of America we find a species of Laplanders similar to those of Europe, or to the Samoiedes of Asia, and though they are few in number yet they are diffused over a very considerable extent of country. Those who inhabit the lands of Davis's Straits are small, of an olive complexion, and their limbs short and thick. They are skilful fishers, and eat their fish and meat raw; their drink is pure water, or the blood of the dog-fish; they are very strong, and live to a great age. Here we see the figure, colour, and manners of the Laplanders; and, what is truly singular, as in the neighbourhood of the Laplanders of Europe, we meet with the Finlanders, who are white, comely, tall, and well made; so, adjacent to the Laplanders of America, we meet with a species of men tall, well made, white, and with features exceedingly regular.

Of a different race seem the savages of Hudson's Bay, and northward of the land of Labrador; although small, ugly, and unshapely, their visage is almost covered with hair, like the savages of Jesso, northward of Japan: in summer they dwell in tents made of skins of the rein-deer; in winter they live under ground, like the Laplanders and the Samoiedes, and sleep together promiscuously without the smallest ceremony. They live to a great age, though they feed on nothing but raw meat and fish. The savages of Newfoundland resemble those of Davis's Straits, they are low in stature, have little or no beard, broad and flat faces; large eyes and flat nosed; they are also far from being unlike the savages in the environs of Greenland.

Besides these savages, who are scattered over the most northern parts of America, we find a more numerous and different race in Canada, and who occupy the vast extent of territory as far as the Assiniboils. These are all tall, robust, and well-made; have black hair and eyes, teeth very white, a tawny complexion, little beard, and hardly a vestige of hair on their bodies; they are hardy, indefatigable travellers, and very nimble runners. They are alike unaffected by excesses of hunger, or of eating; they are bold, hardy, grave, and sedate. So strongly, indeed, do they resemble the Oriental Tartars in colour, form, and features, as also in disposition, and manners, that, were they not separated by an immense sea, we should conclude them to have descended from that nation. In point of latitude, their situation is also the same; and this further proves the influence of the climate, not only on the colour, but the figure of men. In a word, in the new continent as in the old, we find, at first, in the northern parts, men similar to the Laplanders, and likewise whites with fair hair, like the inhabitants of the north of Europe; then hairy men like the savages of Jesso; and lastly, the savages of Canada, and of the whole continent to the gulph of Mexico, who resemble the Tartars in so many respects, that we should not entertain a doubt of their being the same people, were we not embarrassed about the possibility of their migration thither. Yet, if we reflect on the small number of men found upon this extent of ground, and on their being entirely uncivilized, we shall be inclined to believe these savage nations were new colonies produced by a few individuals from some other country. It is asserted that North America does not contain the twentieth part of the natives it did when originally discovered; allowing that to be the fact, we still are authorised to consider it then, from the scantiness of its inhabitants, as a land either deserted, or so recently peopled, that its inhabitants had not had time for a considerable multiplication. M. Fabry, who travelled a prodigious way to the north-west of the Mississippi, and visited places where no European had been, and where consequently the savage inhabitants could not have been destroyed by them, says that he often travelled 200 leagues without observing a single human face, or the smallest vestige of a habitation; that whenever he did meet with any habitations, they were always at immense distances from each other, and then never above 20 persons together. Along the lakes, and the rivers, it is true, the savages are more populous, some sufficiently so as to molest occasionally the inhabitants of our colonies. The most considerable of these, nevertheless, do not exceed 3 or 4000 persons, and are dispersed over a space of ground frequently more extensive than the kingdom of France. I am fully persuaded there are more men in the city of Paris, than there are savages in north America, from the gulph of Mexico to the furthest extremity north, an extent of ground larger than all Europe.

The multiplication of the human species depends more on society than nature. Men would not have been comparatively so numerous as wild beasts, had they not associated together, and given aid and succour to each other. In North America, the _Bison_[E] is perhaps more frequently to be seen than a man. But though society may be one great cause of population, yet it is the increased number of men that necessarily produces unity. It is to be presumed therefore that the want of civilization in America was owing to the small number of the inhabitants, for though each nation might have manners and customs peculiar to itself; though some might be more fierce, cruel, courageous, or dastardly than others; they were yet all equally stupid, ignorant, unacquainted with the arts, and destitute of industry.

[E] A kind of wild bull, different from the European bull.

To dwell longer on the customs of savage nations would be unnecessary. Authors have often given for the established manners of a community, what were nothing more than actions peculiar to a few individuals, and often determined by circumstances, or caprice. Some nations tell us, they eat their enemies, others burn, and some mutilate them; one nation is perpetually at war, and another loves to live in peace; in one country, the child kills his parent, when arrived at a certain age, and in another the parents eat their children. All these stories, on which travellers have so much enlarged, mean nothing more than that one individual savage had devoured his enemy, another had burned or mutilated him, and a third had killed and eaten his child. All these things may happen in every savage nation; for a people among whom there is no regular government, no law, no habitual society, ought rather to be termed a tumultous assemblage of barbarous and independent individuals, who obey nothing but their own private passions, and who have no common interest, are incapable of pursuing one object, and submitting to settled usages which supposes general designs, founded on reason, and approved of by the majority.

A nation, it may be replied, is composed of men who are no strangers to each other, who speak the same language, who unite, when necessity calls, under the same chief, who arm themselves in the same fashion, and daub themselves of the same colour. With truth might the remark be made, if these usages were established; if savages did not often assemble they know not how, and disperse they know not why; if their chief did not cease to be so, whenever it suited their caprice, or his own; and if their language was not so simple as to be, with little variation, the language of every tribe.

As they have but few ideas, their expressions turn upon things the most general, and objects the most common; and, though the majority of their expressions were different, yet the smallness of their number renders them easily understood; and more easily, therefore, may a savage learn the languages of all other savages, than the inhabitants of one polished nation acquire a bare comprehension of the language of any other nation equally civilized.

Unnecessary as it may be to enlarge on the customs and manners of these pretended nations, yet it may be important to examine the nature of the individual. Of all animals a savage man is the most singular, the least known, and the most difficult to describe; and so little are we qualified to distinguish the gifts of nature from what is acquired by education, art and imitation, that it would not be surprising to find we had totally mistaken the picture of a savage, although it were presented to us in its real colours, and with its natural features.

An absolute savage, such as a boy reared among bears, as mentioned by Conor, the young man found in the forest of Hanover, or the girl in the woods in France, would be a curious object to a philosopher; in observing which he might be able to ascertain the force of natural appetites; he would see the mind undisguised, and distinguish all its movements; and, possibly, he might discover in it more mildness, serenity, and peace, than in his own; he might also perceive, that virtue belongs more to the savage than to the civilized man, and that vice owes its birth to society.

But let us return to our subject. If in North America there were none but savages, in Mexico and Peru we found a polished people, subjected to laws, governed by kings, industrious, acquainted with the arts, and not destitute of religion. They lived in towns where the civil government was superintended by the sovereign. These people, who were very populous, cannot be considered as new colonies sprung from individuals who had wandered from Europe or Asia, from which they are so remote; besides, though the Savages of North America resemble the Tartars, by their being situated in the same latitude, yet the natives of Mexico and Peru, though they live, like the Negroes, under the torrid zone, have not the smallest resemblance to them. Whence then, shall we trace the origin of these people? and whence proceeds the cause of the difference of colour in the human species, since the influence of climate is, in this case, entirely overthrown?

Previous to answering these questions let us pursue our inquiries respecting the Savages of South America. Those of Florida, of the Mississippi, and of the other southern parts of this continent, are more tawny than those of Canada, though not positively brown, the oil and colours with which they rub their bodies, giving them an olive hue which does not naturally belong to them. Coreal says, that the women of Florida are tall, strong, and of an olive complexion, like the men; that they paint their arms, legs, and bodies, with several colours, which as they are imprinted into the flesh by little incisions, are indelible; and that the olive colour of both sexes proceeds not so much from the heat of the climate as from the oils with which they varnish their skin. He adds, that the women are remarkably active; that they swim over great rivers with a child in their arms, and that they climb up the loftiest trees with equal agility. In all of these particulars they entirely resemble the savage women of Canada, and other countries of America.

Speaking of the Apalachites, a people in the vicinage of Florida, the author of the "Histoire Naturelle et Morale des Antilles," says, that they are of a large stature, of an olive colour, and well proportioned; and that their hair is black and long. He adds, that the Caribbees, who inhabit the Antilles, are sprung from the savages of Florida, and that they even know, by tradition, the period of their migration.

The natives of the Lucai islands are less tawny than those of St. Domingo and Cuba; but there remain so few of either that we can hardly verify what the first travellers mention of the inhabitants. It has been pretended that they were very numerous, and governed by chiefs whom they call _caciques_; that they had priests and physicians; but this is all very problematical, and is of little consequence to our history. The Caribbees, in general, according to Father du Tertre, are tall, and of a good aspect: they are potent, robust, active, and healthy. Numbers of them have flat foreheads and noses, but these features are entirely the work of the parents, soon after their birth. In all savage nations this caprice of altering the natural figure of the head is very frequent. Most of the Caribbees have little black eyes, beautiful white teeth, and long smooth black hair. Their skin is tawny, or olive, and even the whites of their eyes are rather of that hue. This is their natural colour, and not produced by the use of the rocon, as some authors have asserted, for several of the children of these savages, who were educated among the Europeans, and not allowed the use of paint, retained the same complexion as their parents. The whole of this savage tribe, though their thoughts are seldom employed, have a pensive air. They are naturally mild and compassionate, though exceedingly cruel to their enemies. They esteem it indifferent whom they marry, whether relations or strangers. Their first cousins belong to them by right, and many have been known to have at one time two sisters, or a mother and her daughter, and even their own child. Those who have many wives visit them in turn, and stay a month, or a certain numbers of days, which precludes all jealousy among the women. They readily forgive their wives for adultery, but are implacable enemies to the man who debauches them. They feed on lizards, serpents, crabs, turtles and fishes, which they season with pimento, and the flower of manioc. Lazy to an excess, and accustomed to the greatest independence, they detest slavery, and can never be rendered so useful as the Negroes. For the preservation of their liberty they make every exertion; and when they find it impossible, will rather die of hunger or despair than live and be obliged to work. Attempts have been made to employ the Arrouaguas, who are milder than the Caribbees, but who are only fit for hunting and fishing; exercises of which, being accustomed to them in their own country, they are particularly fond. If these savages are not used with at least as much mildness as domestics generally are in the civilized nations of Europe, they either run away or pine themselves to death. Nearly the same is it with the slaves of Brazil; of all Savages these seem to be the least stupid, indolent, or melancholy. Treated with gentleness, however, they will do whatever they are desired, unless it be to cultivate the ground, for tillage they conceive to be the characteristic badge of slavery.

Savage women are all smaller than the men. Those of the Caribbees are fat, and tolerably handsome; their eyes and hair are black, their visage round, their mouth small, their teeth white, and their carriage more gay, cheerful, and open, than that of the men. Yet are they modest and reserved. They daub themselves with rocon, but do not, like the men, make black streaks upon the face and body. Their dress consists of a kind of apron, in breadth about eight or ten inches, and in length about five or six. This apron is generally made of calico, and covered with small glass beads, both which commodities they purchase from the Europeans. They likewise wear necklaces, which descend over the breast, as also bracelets round the wrists and elbows, and pendants in their ears, of blue stone, or of glass beads. Another ornament peculiar to the sex is, a kind of buskin, made of calico, and garnished with glass beads, which extends from the ancle to the calf of the leg. On their attaining the age of puberty the girls receive an apron and a pair of buskins, which are made exactly to their legs and cannot be removed; and as they prevent the increase of the under part of the leg, the upper parts naturally grow larger than they would otherwise have done.

So intermixed are the present inhabitants of Mexico and Peru, that we rarely meet with two faces of the same colour. In the town of Mexico, there are Europeans, Indians from north and south America, negroes from Africa, and mulattoes of every kind, insomuch that the people exhibit every kind of shade between black and white. The natives of the country are brown, or olive, well made and active. Though they have little hair, even on their eye-brows, yet that upon their head is very long, and very black.

According to Wafer, the natives of the Isthmus of America are commonly tall and handsome; their limbs are well shaped, chest large, and at the chace they are active and nimble. The women are short, squat, and less vivacious than the men; though the young ones are tolerably comely, and have lively eyes. Of both the face is round; the nose thick and short; the eyes large, mostly grey, and full of fire; the forehead high; the teeth white and regular; the lips thin; the mouth of a moderate size; and, in general, all their features are tolerably regular. They have black, long, and straight hair; and the men would have beards did they not pluck them out: their colour is tawny and their eye-brows are as black as jet.

These people are not the only natives of this Isthmus, for we find among them men who are white; but their colour is not the white of Europeans, but rather resembles that of milk, or the hairs of a white horse. Their skin is covered with a kind of short and whitish down, which on the cheeks and forehead is not so thick but the skin may be seen. The hair upon their head and eye-brows is perfectly white; the former is rather frizled, and from seven to eight inches long. They are not so tall as the other Indians; and, what is singular, their eye-lids are of an oblong figure, or rather in the form of a cresent, whose points turn downwards. So weak are their eyes, that they cannot support the light of the sun, and they see best by that of the moon. Their complexion is exceedingly delicate. To all laborious exercises they are averse; they sleep through the day, and never stir abroad till night. If the moon shines, they scamper through the forests as nimbly as the others can in the day. These men do not from a particular and distinct race, as it sometimes happens, that from parents who are both of a copper-colour one of these children is produced. Wafer, who relates these facts, says, that he saw a child, not a year old, who had been thus produced.

If this were the case, the strange colour, and temperament of these white Indians, can only be a kind of malady, which they inherit from their parents. But if, instead of being sprung from the yellow Indians, they formed a separate race, then would they resemble the Chacrelas of Java, and the Bedas of Ceylon, whom we have already mentioned. If, on the other hand, these white people are actually born of copper-coloured parents, we shall have reason to believe, that the Chacrelas and the Bedas originate also from parents of the same colour; and that all the white men, whom we find at such distances from each other, are individuals who have degenerated from their race by some accidental cause.

This last opinion, I own, appears to me the most probable; and had travellers given us as exact descriptions of the Bedas and Chacrelas, as Wafer has done of the Dariens, we should, perhaps, have discovered that they were no more of European origin than the latter. This opinion receives great weight from the fact that negroes sometimes have white children. Of two of those white negroes we have a description in the history of the French Academy; one of the two I saw myself, and am assured there are many to be met with among the other negroes of Africa.

From what I have myself observed, independent of the information of travellers, I have no doubt, but that they are only negroes degenerated from their race, and not a peculiar and established species of men. In a word, they are among the negroes, what Wafer says, the white Indians are among the yellow Indians of Darien, and what the Chacrelas and the Bedas are among the brown Indians of the East. Still more singular is it that this variation never happens but from black to white, and also that all the nations of the East Indies, of Africa, and of America, in which those white men are found, are in the same latitude. The isthmus of Darien, the country of the negroes, and Ceylon, are absolutely under the same line. White then appears to be the primitive colour of Nature, which climate, food, and manners, alter, and even change into yellow, brown, or black; and which, in certain circumstances, reappears, though by no means equal to its original whiteness on account of its corruption from the causes here mentioned.

Nature, in her full perfection, made men white; and, reduced to the last stage of adulteration, she renders them white again. But the natural white is widely different from the individual, or accidental white. In plants, as well as in men and animals, do we find examples of this fact. The white rose, &c. differs greatly in point of whiteness from the red rose, which becomes white by the cold evenings and frosty chills of autumn.

A further proof that these white men are merely degenerated individuals, is their being less strong and vigorous than others, and their eyes being extremely weak. The fact will appear less extraordinary, when we recollect, that, among ourselves, very fair men have very weak eyes, and that such people are often slow of hearing. It is pretended that dogs absolutely white, are deaf. Whether the observation is generally just, I know not, but in a number of instances I have seen it confirmed.

The Indians of Peru, like the natives of the Isthmus, are copper-coloured; those especially who live near the sea, and in the plains. Those who live between the two ridges of the Cordeliers, are almost as white as the Europeans. Some live in Peru more than a league higher than others; and which elevation, with respect to the temperature of the climate, is equal to twenty leagues in latitude. All the native Indians, who dwell along the river of the Amazons, and in Guiana are tawny, and more or less red. The diversity of shades, says M. de la Condamine, is principally occasioned by the different temperature of the air, varied as it is, from the extreme heat of the torrid zone, to the cold occasioned by the vicinage of snow. Some of these Savages, as the Omaguas, flatten the visages of their children, by compressing the head between two planks; others pierce the nostrils, lips, or cheeks, for the reception of the bones of fishes, feathers, and other ornaments; and the greatest part bore their ears, and fill the hole with a large bunch of flowers, or herbs, which serves them for pendants. With respect to the Amazons, about whom so much has been said, I shall be silent. To those who have written on the subject I refer the reader; and when he has perused them he will not find sufficient proof to evince the actual existence of such women.

Some authors mention a nation in Guiana of which the natives are more black than any other Indians. The Arras, says Raleigh, are almost as black as the Negroes, are vigorous, and use poisoned arrows. This author mentions likewise another nation of Indians, who have necks so short, and shoulders so elevated, that their eyes appear to be upon the latter, and their mouths in their breast. This monstrous deformity cannot be natural; and it is probable that savages, who are so pleased in disfiguring nature by flattening, rounding, and lengthening the head, might likewise contrive to sink it into the shoulders. These fantasies might arise from an idea that, by rendering themselves deformed, they became more dreadful to their enemies. The Scythians, formerly, as savage as the American Indians are now, evidently entertained the same ideas, and realized them in the same manner; which no doubt is the foundation of what the ancients have written about such men as they termed acephali, cynocephali, &c.

The Savages of Brazil are nearly of the size of the Europeans, but are more vigorous, robust, and alert: they are also subject to fewer diseases, and live longer. Their hair, which is black, seldom whitens with age. They are of a copper-colour, inclining to red: their heads are large, shoulders broad, and hair long. They pluck out their beard, the hair upon the body, and even the eye-brows, from which they acquire an extraordinary fierce look. They pierce the under lip, to ornament it with a little bone polished like ivory, or with a green stone. The mothers crush the noses of their children, presently after they are born; they all go absolutely naked, and paint their bodies of different colours. Those who inhabit the countries adjacent to the sea are somewhat civilized by the commerce which they carry on with the Portuguese; but those of the inland places are still absolute savages. It is not by force that savages have become civilized, their manners have been much more softened by the arguments of missionaries, than by the arms of the princes by whom they were subdued. In this manner Paraguay was subdued: the mildness, example, and virtuous conduct of the missionaries touched the hearts of its savages, and triumphed over their distrust and ferocity. They often, of themselves, desired to be made acquainted with that law, which rendered men so perfect, submitted to its precepts, and united in society. Nothing can reflect greater honour on religion, than its having civilized these nations, and laid the foundations of an empire, without any arms but those of virtue and humanity.

The inhabitants of Paraguay are commonly tall and handsome; their visage long, and their colour olive. There sometimes rages among them a very uncommon distemper. It is a kind of leprosy, which covers the whole of their body with a crust similar to the scales of fish, and from which they experience no pain, nor even interruption of health.

According to Frezier, the Indians of Chili are of a tawny or coppery complexion, but different from Mulattoes, who being produced by a white man and negro-woman, or a white woman and a negro-man, their colour is brown, or a mixture of white and black. In South America, on the other hand, the Indians are yellow, or rather reddish. The natives of Chili are of a good size; their limbs are brawny, chest large, visages disagreeable, and beardless; eyes small, ears long, and their hair black, straight, and coarse. Their ears they lengthen, and pluck out their beards with pincers made of shells. Though the climate is cold, yet they generally go naked, excepting the skin of some animal over their shoulders.

At the extremity of Chili, and towards the lands of Magellan, it is pretended, there exists a race of men of gigantic size. From the information of several Spaniards, who pretend to have seen them, Frezier says, they are from 9 to 10 feet high; they are called _Patagonians_, and inhabit the easterly side of the coast, as mentioned in the old narratives, which, however, from the size of Indians discovered in the Straits of Magellan, not exceeding that of other men, has since been considered as fabulous. It might be by this, says he, that Froger was deceived in his account of the voyage of M. de Gennes; as several navigators have actually beheld both these classes of Indians at the same time. In 1709, the crew of the James, of St. Malo, saw seven giants as above described, in Gregory Bay, and those of the St. Peter, of Marseilles, saw six, to whom they advanced with offers of bread, wine, and brandy, all of which they rejected; but as M. Frezier does not intimate his having seen any of these giants himself, and as the narratives which mention them are fraught with exaggerations with respect to other matters, it remains still doubtful whether there in reality exists a race of giants, especially of the height of ten feet. The bodily circumference of such a man would be eight times bigger than that of an ordinary one. The natural height of mankind seems to be about five feet, and the deviations from that standard scarcely exceed a foot, so that a man of six feet is considered as very tall, and a man of four as very short. Giants and dwarfs, therefore, are only accidental varieties, and not distinct and permanent races.

Besides, if these Magellanic giants actually exist, their number must be trifling; as the savages of the straits, and neighbouring islands, are of a moderate height, whose colour is olive, have full chests, square bodies, thick limbs, and black straight hair; who, in a word, resemble mankind in general as to size, as the other Americans as to colour and hair.

In the whole of the new continent, then, there is but one race of men, who are all more or less tawny, the northern parts of America excepted, where we find some men similar to the Laplanders, and others with fair hair, like the northern Europeans; through the whole of this immense territory, the diversity among the inhabitants is hardly perceivable. Among those of the old continent, on the other hand, we have found a prodigious variety. This uniformity in the Americans seems to arise from their living all in the same manner. The natives were, and are still savages; nor, so recently have they been civilized, can the Mexicans and the Peruvians be excepted. Whatever, then, may have been their origin, it was common to them all. Sprung from one stock, they have, with little variation, retained the characteristics of their race; and this because they have pursued the same course of life, because their climate, with respect to heat and cold, is not so unequal as that of the old continent, and because, being newly established in the country, the causes by which varieties are produced have not had time to manifest their defects.

Each of these reasons merits a particular consideration. That the Americans are a new people seems indisputable, when we reflect on the smallness of their number, their ignorance, and the little progress the most civilized among them had made in the arts. In the first accounts of the discovery and conquest of America, it is true, Mexico, Peru, St. Domingo, &c. are mentioned as very populous countries; and we are told that the Spaniards had every where to engage with vast armies; yet it is evident these facts are greatly exaggerated; first, from the paucity of monuments left of the pretended grandeur of these nations: secondly, from the nature of the country itself, which, though peopled with Europeans, more industrious, doubtless, than its natives, is still wild, uncultivated, covered with wood, and little more than a group of inacessible and uninhabitable mountains; thirdly, from their own traditions, with respect to the time they united into society, the Peruvians reckoning no more than 12 kings, from the first of whom, about 300 years before, they had imbibed the first principles of civilization, and ceased to be entirely savage; fourthly, from the small number of men employed to conquer them, which even with the advantage of gunpowder, they could not have done, had the people been numerous. Though the effects of gunpowder were as new and as terrible to the negroes as to the Americans, their country has yet remained unconquered, and themselves unenslaved; and the ease with which America was subdued, appears an irrefragable argument that the country was thinly peopled, and recently inhabited.

In the New Continent, the temperature of the different climates is more uniform than in the Old Continent; for this there are several causes. The Torrid Zone, in America, is by no means so hot as in Africa. The countries comprehended under the former zone, are Mexico, New Spain, and Peru, the land of the Amazons, Brazil, and Guiana. In Mexico, New Spain, and Peru, the heat is never very great; these countries are prodigiously elevated above the ordinary level of the earth; nor in the hottest weather does the thermometer rise so high in Peru as in France. By the snow which covers the tops of the mountains the air is cooled; and as this cause, which is merely an effect of the former, has a strong influence upon the temperature of the climate, so the inhabitants, instead of being black, or dark brown, are only tawny. The land of the Amazons is particularly watery, and full of forests; there the air is exceedingly moist, and consequently more cool than in a country more dry. Besides, it is to be observed, that the east wind, which blows constantly between the tropics, does not reach Brazil, the land of the Amazons, or Guiana, without traversing a vast sea, by which it acquires a degree of coolness. It is from this reason, as well as from their being so full of rivers and forests, and almost continued rains, that these parts of America are so exceedingly temperate. But the east wind, after passing the low countries of America, becomes considerably heated before it arrives at Peru; and therefore, were it not for its elevated situation, and for the snow, by which the air is cooled, the heat would be greater there than either in Brazil or Guiana. There still, however, remains a sufficiency of heat to influence the colour of the natives: for those who are most exposed to it their colour is more yellow than those who live sheltered in the vallies. Besides, this wind blowing against these lofty mountains, must be reflected on the neighbouring plains, and diffuse over them that coolness which it received from the snow that covers their tops; and from this snow itself, when it dissolves, cold winds must necessarily arise. All these causes concurring to render the climate of the Torrid Zone in America far less hot, it is not surprising that its inhabitants are not so black nor brown as those under the Torrid Zone in Africa and Asia, where, as we shall shew, there is a difference of circumstances. Whether we suppose, then, that the Americans have been long or recently established in that country, their Torrid Zone being temperate, they are of course not black.

The uniformity in their mode of living, I also assigned for the little variety to be found in the natives of America. As they were all savage, or recently civilized, they all lived in the same manner. In supposing that they had all one common origin, they were dispersed, without being intermixed; each family formed a nation not only similar to itself, but to all about them, because their climate and food were nearly similar; and as they had no opportunity either to degenerate or improve, so they could not but remain constantly and almost universally the same.

That their origin is the same with our own, I doubt not, independent of theological arguments; and from the resemblance of the savages of North America to the Oriental Tartars, there is reason to suppose they originally sprung from the same source. The new discoveries by the Russians, on the other side of Kamtschatka, of several lands and islands which extend nearly to the Western Continent of America, would leave no doubt as to the possibility of the communication, if these discoveries were properly authenticated, and the lands were in any degree contiguous. But, even in the supposition of considerable intervals of sea, is it not possible that there might have been men who crossed them in search of new regions, or were driven upon them by bad tempests? Between the Mariana islands and Japan there is, perhaps, a greater interval of sea than between any of the territories beyond Kamtschatka and those of America; and yet the Mariana islands were peopled with inhabitants who could have come from no part but from the Eastern Continent. I am inclined to believe, therefore, that the first men who set foot on America landed on some spot north-west of California; that the excessive cold of this climate obliged them to remove to the more southern parts of their new abode; that at first they settled in Mexico and Peru, from whence they afterwards diffused themselves over all the different parts of North and South America. Mexico and Peru must be considered as the most ancient inhabited territories of this continent, being not only the most elevated, but also the only ones in which the inhabitants were found connected together in society.

It may also be presumed that the inhabitants of Davis's Straits, and of the northern parts of Labrador, came from Greenland, being only separated by these small straits, for the savages of Davis's straits, and those of Greenland, as we have just remarked, are very similar; and Greenland might have been peopled by the Laplanders passing thither from Cape Nord, the intermediate distance being only about 150 leagues. Besides, as the island of Iceland is almost contiguous to Greenland, has long been inhabited and frequented by Europeans; and as the Danes formed colonies in Greenland, it is not wonderful there should be found men who, deriving their origin from those Danes, were white and fair-haired. There is some probability also that the white men along Davis's Straits derive their origin from these Europeans, thus settled in Greenland, from whence they might easily pass to America, by crossing the little interval of sea of which this strait is formed.

In colour and in figure we meet with as great a degree of uniformity in America, as of diversity of men in Africa. From great antiquity has this part of the world been copiously peopled. The climate is scorching, yet in different nations it is of a different temperature; nor, from the descriptions already given, are their manners less different. From these concurrent causes there subsists a greater variety of men in Africa than in any other part. If we examine the difference in the temperature of the African countries, we shall find that in Barbary, and all the territories near the Mediterranean Sea, the men are white, or only somewhat tawny; those territories are refreshed on one hand by the air of the Mediterranean Sea, and on the other by the snows on Mount Atlas, and are, moreover, situated in the Temperate Zone, on this side the Tropic; so also all the tribes between Egypt and the Canary islands have the skin only more or less tawny. Beyond the Tropic, and on the other side of Mount Atlas, the heat becomes more violent, and the colour of the inhabitants is more dark, though still not black. Coming to the 17th or 18th degree of north latitude we find Senegal and Nubia, where the heat is excessive, and the natives absolutely black. In Senegal the thermometer rises to the degree 38, while in France it rarely rises to 30; and in Peru, situated under the Torrid Zone, it is hardly ever known to pass 25. We have no observations made with the thermometer in Nubia, but all travellers agree in representing the heat to be excessive. The sandy deserts between Upper Egypt and Nubia heat the air to such a degree that the north wind actually scorches. The east wind also, which is usually prevalent between the Tropics, does not reach Nubia till it has crossed the territories of Arabia; therefore that the Nubians should be black is little cause for wonder; though indeed they are still less so than those of Senegal, where, as the east wind cannot arrive till it has traversed all the territories of Africa in their utmost extent, the heat is rendered almost insupportable.

If we take all that district of Africa comprised between the Tropics, where the east wind blows most constantly, we shall easily conceive that the western coasts of this part of the world must, and actually do, experience a greater degree of heat than those of the eastern coasts; as the east wind reaches the latter with the freshness which it receives in passing over a vast sea, whereas before it reaches the former, it acquires a burning heat, in traversing the interior parts of Africa. Thus, therefore, the coasts of Senegal, Sierra Leona, Guinea, and all the western regions of Africa, situated under the Torrid Zone, are the hottest climates in the world; nor is it by any means so hot on the eastern coasts, at Mosambique, Mombaza, &c. I have not the smallest doubt, therefore, but this is the reason that we find the real negroes, or the blackest men, in the western territories of Africa, and Caffres, or black men, of a hue more light, in the eastern territories. The evident difference which subsists between these two species of blacks proceeds from the heat of their climate, which is not very great in the eastern, but excessive in the western. Beyond the Tropic, on the south, the heat is considerably diminished, not only from its situation as to climate, but from the point of Africa being contracted; and as that point is surrounded by the sea the air is necessarily more temperate than it could be in the middle of a continent. The colour of the inhabitants of this country begins to assume a fairer hue, and they are naturally more white than black. Nothing affords a more convincing proof that the climate is the principal cause of the variety in the human species than the colour of the Hottentots, who could not possibly be found less black did they not enjoy a more temperate climate.

In this opinion we shall be more confirmed if we examine the other nations under the Torrid Zone, on the east side of Africa. The inhabitants of the Maldivia islands, of Ceylon, of the point of the peninsula of India, of Sumatra, of Malacca, of Borneo, of Celebes, of the Philippines, &c. are very brown, though not absolutely black, from all these countries being either islands or peninsulas. In these climates the heat of the air is temporized by the sea; besides which, neither the east nor west wind, which reign alternately in that part of the globe, can reach the Indian Archipelago without passing over seas of an immense extent. As their heat is not excessive, therefore, all these islands are peopled with brown men; but in New Guinea we again meet with red blacks, and who, from the descriptions of travellers, seem to be absolute negroes, because the country they inhabit forms a continent to the east, and the wind is more hot than that which prevails in the Indian Ocean. In New Holland, where the heat of the climate is not so great, we find people less black, and not unlike the Hottentots. Do not these negroes and Hottentots, whom we meet with in the same latitude, and at so great a distance from the other negroes and Hottentots, evince their colour depends upon the heat of the climate? That there was ever any communication between Africa and this southern continent, it is impossible to suppose; and yet in both we find the same species of men, because the same circumstances occur which occasion the same degrees of heat.

From the animal creation we may obtain a further confirmation of what has been above advanced. In Dauphiny, it has been observed that all the hogs are black; and that on the other side of the Rhone, in Vivarais, where it is more cold than in Dauphiny, all the hogs are white. There is no probability that the inhabitants of one of these two provinces should have agreed to breed none but black hogs, and the other none but white ones. To me it appears, that this difference arises solely from the variation in the temperature of the climate, combined, perhaps, with that of the food of the animals.

The few blacks who have been found in the Philippines, and other islands of the Indian Ocean, seem to originate from the Papous, or Negroes of New Guinea, whom the Europeans have not known much longer than half a century. Dampier discovered the most eastern part in 1700, and gave it the name of _New Britain_; we are still ignorant of its extent, yet we know that, so far as has been discovered, it is not very populous.

In those climates alone, then, where circumstances combine to create a constant and excessive heat, do we meet with negroes. This heat is necessary not only to the production, but even to the preservation of negroes; and where the heat, though violent, is not comparable to that of Senegal, the negro infants are so susceptible of the impressions of the air, that there is a necessity for keeping them during the first nine days in warm apartments; if this precaution is omitted, and they are exposed to the air soon after their birth, a convulsion in the jaw succeeds, which preventing them from receiving any sustenance, they presently die.

In the History of the Academy of Sciences we read, that M. Littre, in dissecting a negro, in 1702, remarked, that the point of the glands which was not covered with the prepuce was black, and the rest perfectly white. From this observation it is evident, that the air is necessary to produce the blackness of negroes. Their children are born white, or rather red, like those of other men, but two or three days after they change to a tawny yellow, which gradually darkens till the seventh or eighth day, when they are completely black. All children two or three days after their birth have a kind of jaundice, which in white children is transitory, and leaves no impression upon the skin; but in negro children it gives a colour to the skin, and continues to grow more and more black. M. Kolbe mentions having observed this fact among the children of Hottentots. This jaundice, however, and the impression of the air, seem to be only occasional, and not the primary cause of this blackness; since it is remarked, that the children of negroes have, the instant of their birth, a blackness in the genitals, and at the root of the nails. The action of the air and the jaundice may serve to extend this blackness, but it is certain that the principle of it is communicated to the children by their parents; that in whatever country a negro may be born, he will be as black as if he had been brought forth in his own; and if there is any difference in the first generation it is imperceptible; from this circumstance, however, we are not to suppose, that after a certain number of generations, the colour would not undergo a very sensible change.

Many have been the researches of anatomists respecting this black colour. Some pretend, that it is neither in the skin, nor in the epidermis, but in the cellular membrane which is between them; that this membrane, though washed, and held ever so long in warm water, does not change colour, while the skin, and the surface of the skin, appear to be nearly as white as those of other men. Dr. Town, in his letter to the Royal Society, and a few others, maintain, that the blood is black in negroes, and from which cause their colour originates; a fact which I am inclined to believe, from having remarked, that among ourselves the blood of those who are tawny, yellow, or brown, is proportionally more black than that of others.

According to M. Barrere, this colour of the negroes is produced by the bile, which in them is not yellow, but always black as ink; of which he affirms he received certain proof from several negroes which he had occasion to dissect at Cayenne. When the bile is diffused, it tinges the skin of white people yellow; and it is probable, that if the former were black, the latter would be black also. But as when the overflow of the bile ceases, the skin recovers its natural whiteness, so on this principle there is a necessity for supposing that in the negroes there is always an overflow of bile, or at least that, as M. Barrere observes, it is so abundant, as naturally to secrete itself in the epidermis, in a quantity sufficient to communicate this black colour. It probable that the bile and blood of negroes are more brown than those of white men, as their skin is more black. But one of these facts can never be admitted as an explanation of the cause of the other; for if it is the blood or bile which, by its blackness, communicates this colour to the skin, then, instead of inquiring why the skin of negroes is black, we must inquire why their bile or blood is so; and thus, by deviating from the question, we find ourselves more than ever remote from the solution of it. For my own part, I own I have always been of opinion, that the cause which renders a Spaniard more brown than a Frenchman, and a Moor than a Spaniard, is also the cause which renders a Negro blacker than a Moor. At present I mean not to enquire how this cause acts, but only to ascertain that it does act, and that its effects are the more considerable, in proportion to the force and continuance of action.

Of the blackness of the skin, the principal cause is the heat of the climate. When this heat is excessive, as at Senegal, and in Guinea, the inhabitants are entirely black; when it is rather less violent, as on the eastern coasts of Africa, they are of a shade more light; when it becomes somewhat temperate, as in Barbary, Mogul, Arabia, &c. they are only brown; and in fine, when it is altogether temperate, as in Europe and in Asia, they are white; and the varieties there remarked proceed solely from the mode of living. All the Tartars, for example, are tawny, while the Europeans, who live in the same latitude, are white. This difference clearly arises from the former being always exposed to the air; having no towns nor fixed habitations; sleeping upon the earth, and living coarsely and savagely. These circumstances are sufficient to render them less white than the Europeans, who want nothing to render life comfortable and agreeable. Why are the Chinese whiter than the Tartars, whom they resemble in all their features? Certainly from the above reasons.

When cold becomes extreme, it produces effects similar to those of excessive heat. The Samoiedes, Laplanders, and Greenlanders, are very tawny; and it is even asserted, that some Greenlanders are as black as those of Africa. Here the two extremes meet. Violent cold and violent heat produce the same effect upon the skin, because these two causes act by a quality which they possess in common. Dryness of the air is this quality; and which cold is as equally productive as intense heat; by either the skin may be dried, and rendered as tawny as what we find it among the Laplanders. Cold compresses all the productions of nature; and thus it is that the Laplanders, who are perpetually exposed to the rigours of frost, are the smallest of the human species.

The most temperate climate is between the degrees of 40 and 50; where the human form is in its greatest perfection; and where we ought to form our ideas of the real and natural colour of man. Situated under this Zone the civilized countries are, Georgia, Circassia, the Ukraine, Turkey in Europe, Hungary, South Germany, Italy, Switzerland, France, and the North of Spain; of all which the inhabitants are the most beautiful people in the world.

As the principal cause of the colour of mankind, we ought to consider the climate; the effects of nourishment are less upon the colour, yet upon the form they are prodigious. Food which is gross, unwholesome, or badly prepared, produces a degeneracy in the human species; and in all countries where the people are wretchedly fed, they are ugly, and badly shaped. Even in France, the inhabitants of country places are more ugly than those of towns; and I have often remarked, that in villages where poverty and distress were less prevalent, the people were in person more shapely, and in visage less ugly. The air and the soil have also great influence on the form of men, animals, and vegetables. The peasants who live on hilly grounds are more active, nimble, well-shaped, and lively, than those who live in the neighbouring vallies, where the air is thick and unrefined.

Horses from Spain or Barbary cannot be perpetuated in France; in the very first generation they degenerate, and by the third or fourth they become downright French horses. So striking is the influence of climate and food upon animals, that the effects of either are well known, and though they are less sudden and less apparent upon men, yet, from analogy, we must conclude they extend to the human species, and that in the varieties we find therein, they plainly manifest themselves.

From every circumstance may we obtain a proof, that mankind are not composed of species essentially different from each other; that, on the contrary, there was originally but one species, which, after being multiplied and diffused over the whole surface of the earth, underwent divers changes from the influence of the climate, food, mode of living, epidemical distempers, and the intermixture of individuals, more or less resembling each other; that at first these alterations were less conspicuous, and confined to individuals; that afterwards, from continued action, they formed specific varieties; that these varieties have been perpetuated from generation to generation, in the same manner as deformities and diseases pass from parents to their children, and that in fine, as they were first produced by a concurrence of external and accidental causes, and have been confirmed and rendered permanent by time, and by the continual action of these causes, so it is highly probable that in time they would gradually disappear, or become different from what they at present are, if such causes were no longer to subsist, or if they were in any material point to vary.

_END OF THE FOURTH VOLUME._

T. Gillet, Printer, Wild-court.

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Transcriber Note

Paragraphs split by illustrations or tables were rejoined. All obvious typographical corrections were made. Hyphenation was standardized. On page 46, the word "ambestos" was assumed to be "asbestos" and changed. The numbers displayed in the table from pages 121 through 133 appears to have some errors as the totals shown do not always match the total obtained for each column. These were left as reported.