Page images
PDF
EPUB

Another Passage from Winkelmann.

"THE projecting mouths of the Negroes, which they have in common with their monkeys, is an excess of growth, a swelling, occasioned by the heat of the climate; like as our lips are swelled by heat or sharp saline moisture; and, also, in some men, by violent passion. The small eyes of the distant northern and eastern nations are in consequence of the imperfection of their growth. They are short and slender. Nature produces such forms the more she approaches extremes where she has to encounter heat or cold. In the one she is prompter and exhausted, and, in the other, crude, never arriving at maturity. The flower withers in excessive heat, and, deprived of sun, is deprived of colour. All plants degenerate in dark and confined places.

"Nature forms with greater regularity the more she approaches her centre, and in more moderate climates. Hence our and the Grecian ideas of beauty, being derived from more perfect symmetry, must be more accurate than the ideas of those in whom, to use the expression of a modern poet, the image of the Creator is half defaced."

(d) From the Recherches Philosophiques sur les Americains, by M. de Pauw.

.

"THE Americans are most remarkable because that many of them have no eyebrows, and none have beards; yet we must not infer that they are infeebled in the organs of generation, since the Tartars and Chinese have almost the same characteristics. They are far, however, from being very fruitful, or much addicted to love. True it is, the Chinese and the Tartars are not absolutely beardless. When they are about thirty, a small pencilled kind of whisker grows on the upper lip, and some scattered hairs are found at the end of the chin." Tome I. page 37.

“Exclusive of the Esquimaux, who differ in gait, form, features and manners, from other savages of North America, we may likewise call the Akansans a variety, whom the French have generally named the handsome men. They are tall and straight, have good features, without the least appearance of beard; regular eyelids, blue eyes, and fine fair hair; while the neighbouring people are low of stature, have abject countenances, black eyes, the hair of the head black as ebony, and of the body, thick and rough." Page 135.

"The Peruvians are not very tall; but, though thick set, they are tolerably well made. There are many, it is true, who, by being diminutive, are monstrous. Some are deaf, dumb, blind, and idiots; and others want a limb, when born. In all probability, the excessive labour to which they have been subjected, by the barbarity of the Spaniards, has produced such numbers of defective men. Tyranny has an influence even on the physical temperament of slaves. Their nose is aquiline; their forehead narrow; their hair black, strong, smooth, and plentiful; their complexion an olive red; the apple of the eye black, and the white not very clear. They never have any beard, for we cannot bestow that name on some short straggling hairs which sprout in old age; nor have either men or women the downy hair which generally appears after the age of puberty. In this they are distinguished from all people on earth, even from the Tartars and Chinese. As in eunuchs, it is the characteristic of their degeneracy." Page 144.

66

Judging by the rage which the Ameri cans have to mutilate and disfigure themselves, we should suppose they all were discontented with the proportions of their limbs and bodies. Not a single nation has been discovered in this fourth quarter of the

globe which has not adopted the custom of artificially changing, either the form of the lips, the hollow of the ear, or the shape of the head, by forcing it to assume an extraordinary and ridiculous figure.

"There are savages whose heads are pyramidal, or conical, with the top terminating in a point. Others have flat heads, with large foreheads, and the back part flattened. This caprice seems to have been the most fashionable, at least, it was the most common. Some Canadians had their heads perfectly spherical. Although the natural form of the head really approaches the circular, these savages who, by being thus distorted, acquired the appellation of bowl or bullet-head, do not appear less disgusting, for having made the head too round, and perverted the original purpose of nature, to which nothing can be added, from which nothing can be taken away, without some essential error being the result, which is destructive to the animal.

"In fine we have seen, on the banks of the Maragnon, Americans with square, or cubical, heads; that is to say, flattened on the face, the top, the temples, and the occiput, which appears to be the last stage of human extravagance.

"It is difficult to conceive how it was possible to compress and mould the bones

of the skull into so many various forms, without most essentially injuring the seat of sense, and the organs of reason; or occasioning either madness or idiotism; since we so often have examples that violent contusions in the region of the temples have occasioned lunacy, and deprived the sufferers of intellectual capacity. For it is not true, as ancient narratives have affirmed, that all Indians with flat, or sugar-loaf, heads, were really idiots; had this been the case there must have been whole nations in America either foolish or frantic, which is impossible, even in supposition."

(e) Observation by Lentz.

"Ir appears to me remarkable that the Jews should have carried with them the marks of their country and race to all parts of the world; I mean their short, black, curly, hair, and brown complexion.-Their quickness of speech, haste, and abruptness in all their actions, appear to proceed from the same causes. I imagine the Jews have more gall than other men."-(I add, as characteristics of the national Jewish countenance, the pointed chin, pouting lips, and well-defined middle line of the mouth.)

« PreviousContinue »