96 MUTUAL RELATIONS OF THE HUMAN FAMILY. 



some even 30,000 inhabitants ; a circumstance which implies a consider- 

 able advancement in industry, and in the resources of subsistence. This last 

 fact affords most striking evidence of the improvability of the Negro races ; 

 and, taken in connexion with the many instances that have presented them- 

 selves, of the advance of individuals, under favourable circumstances, to at 

 least the average degree of mental development among the European nations, 

 it affords clear proof that the line of demarcation, which has been supposed 

 to separate them intellectually and morally from the races that have attained 

 the greatest elevation, has no more real existence than that, which has been 

 supposed to be justified by a difference in physical characters, and of which 

 the fallacy has been demonstrated. 



100. The Bushmen or Bojesmen of South Africa are generally regarded 

 as presenting the most degraded and miserable condition, of which the human 

 race is capable: and they have been supposed to present resemblances in 

 physical characters to the higher Quadrumana. Yet there is distinct evidence, 

 that this degraded race is but a branch or subdivision of the once extensive 

 nation of Hottentots ; and that its present condition is in great part due to the 

 hardships, to which it has been subjected in consequence of European colo- 

 nization. This race differs from all other South African nations, both in lan- 

 guage and in physical conformation. The language cannot be shown to possess 

 affinities with those of any other stock; but in bodily structure there is a re- 

 markable admixture of the characters of the Mongolian with those of the Ne- 

 gro. Thus the face presents the very wide and high cheek-bones, with the 

 oblique eyes and flat nose, of the Northern Asiatics; at the same time that, in 

 the somewhat prominent muzzle and thick lips, it resembles the countenance 

 of the Negro. The complexion is of a tawny buff or fawn colour, like that 

 of the Negroes 'diluted with the olive of the Mongoles. The hair is woolly 

 like that of the Negroes, but it grows in small tufts, scattered over the surface 

 of the scalp, instead of covering it uniformly, resembling in its comparative 

 scantiness that of the Northern Asiatics. It is most interesting to observe this 

 remarkable resemblance in physical characters, between the Hottentots and 

 the Mongolian races ; in connexion with the similarity that exists between the 

 circumstances under which they respectively live. No two countries can be 

 more similar, than the vast steppes of Central Asia, and the karroos of South- 

 ern Africa. And the inhabitants of each were nomadic races, Avandering 

 through deserts remarkable for the wide expansion of their surface, their scanty 

 herbage, and the dryness of their atmosphere, and fee'ding upon the milk and 

 flesh of their horses and cattle. Of the original pastoral Hottentots, however, 

 very few now remain. They have been gradually driven, by the encroach- 

 ments of European colonists and by internal wars with each other, to seek 

 refuge among the inaccessible rocks and deserts of the interior; and they have 

 thus been converted from a mild unenterprising race of shepherds, into wander- 

 ing hordes of fierce, suspicious, and vindictive savages, treated as wild beasts 

 by their fellow-men, until they become really assimilated to wild beasts in their 

 habits and dispositions. This transformation has taken place under the ob- 

 servation of eye-witnesses, in the Koranas. a tribe of Hottentots well known 

 to have been previously the most advanced in all the improvements which 

 belong to pastoral life. Having been plundered by their neighbours and driven 

 out into the wilderness to subsist upon fruits, they have adopted the habits of 

 the Bushmen, and have become assimilated in every essential particular to 

 that miserable tribe. 



101. The American nations, taken collectively, form a group which ap- 

 pears to have existed as a separate family of nations from a very early period 

 in the world's history. They do not form, however, so distinct a variety, in 

 regard to physical characters, as some anatomists have endeavoured to prove ; 



