XIV.] THE CAUCASIC PEOPLES. 537 



rising in Spain to 80 only in the Basque corner. In both regions 

 the general rise from the original 70 or 72 is due to the same 

 Keltic and Roman intrusion, acting on the Ibero-Teutons in Britain, 

 and on the Hamito-Semitic aborigines crossed by Teutons in Spain, 

 where it is to be noticed that while the round-headed Romans 

 play a very small part in the insular domain, they are extensively 

 represented in the Peninsula, the reverse being the case with 

 the Teutons. An equilibrium and surface uniformity are thus 

 established, and Ripley is right in stating that "the average 

 cephalic index of 78 occurs nowhere else so uniformly distributed 

 in Europe" except in Norway, and that this uniformity "is the 

 concomitant and index of two relatively pure, albeit widely 

 different, ethnic types Mediterranean in Spain, Teutonic in 

 Norway 1 ." 



In other respects the social, one might almost say the national, 

 groups are both more numerous and perhaps even 

 more sharply discriminated in the Peninsula than Groups* 1 

 in France. Besides the Basques and Portuguese, 

 the latter with a considerable strain of negro blood 8 , we have 

 such very distinct populations as the haughty and punctilious 

 Castilians, who under an outward show of pride and honour, are 

 capable of much meanness ; the sprightly and vainglorious An- 

 dalusians, who have been called the Gascons of Spain, yet of 

 graceful address and seductive manners ; the morose and im- 

 passive Murcians, indolent because fatalists ; the gay Valencians 

 given to much dancing and revelry, but also to sudden fits of 

 murderous rage, holding life so cheap that they will hire them- 

 selves out as assassins, and cut their bread with the blood-stained 

 knife of their last victim ; the dull and superstitious Aragonese, also 

 given to bloodshed, and so obdurate that they are said to " drive 



1 Science Progress, p. 159. 



! "The Portuguese are much mixed with Negroes more particularly in the 

 south and along the coast. The slave trade existed long before the Negroes 

 of Guinea were exported to the plantations of America. Damiao de Goes 

 estimated the number of blacks imported into Lisbon alone during the i6th 

 century at 10,000 or 12,000 per annum. If contemporary eye-witnesses can be 

 trusted, the number of blacks met with in the streets of Lisbon equalled that 

 of the whites. Not a house but had its negro servants, and the wealthy owned 

 entire gangs of them" (Reclus, I. p. 471). 



