MAMMALIA — MAN. 51 



while yet in their youth. Their nose is short and flat, their eyes are little, 

 and sunk in the head ; their cheek bones are high ; the lower part of their 

 visage is narrow; their chin is long and prominent; their teeth are long 

 and straggling ; their eyebrows are so large as to cover the eyes ; their eye- 

 lids are thick ; their face is broad and flat ; their complexion is tawny ; and 

 their hair is black. They have but little beard, have thick thighs, and short 

 legs, and, though but of middling stature, they yet are remarkably strong 

 and robust. The ugliest of them are the Calmucks, in whose appearance 

 '.here seems to be something frightful. They are all wanderers ; and their 

 only shelter is that of a tent made of hair or skins. Their food is horse- 

 flesh and camel-flesh, either raw, or a little sodden 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 deformed as the men, wear their hair, which they bind up with 

 bits of copper, and other ornaments of the same nature. 



Some travellers tell us, that the limbs of the Chinese are well proportion- 

 ed, that their body is large and fat, their visage large and round, their eyes 

 small, their eyebrows large, their eyelids turned upwards, their nose short 

 and flat ; that, as for their beard, which is black, upon the chin there is very 

 little, and upon each lip there are not more than seven or eight prickles : 

 that those who inhabit the southern provinces of the empire are more 

 brown and tawny than the others ; that, in color, they resemble the natives 

 of Mauritania, and the more swarthy Spaniards ; but that those who inhabit 

 the middle provinces are as fair as the Germans. 



Le Gentel assures us, that the Chinese 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 the little girls, from the instruction of the 

 mother, forcibly to extend their eyelids ; and that, with the addition of a 

 nose thoroughly compressed and flattened, of ears long, large, open, and 

 pendant, they are accounted complete beauties. He adds, that their com- 

 plexion is delicate, their lips are of a fine vermilion, their mouth is well 

 proportioned, their hair is very black ; but that, 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. 



So strongly do the Japanese resemble the Chinese, that we can hardly 

 scruple to rank them in the same class. They only differ from them in 

 being more yellow, or more brown. In general, their stature is contracted, 

 their face as well as their nose is broad and flat, their hair is black, and 

 their beard is little more than perceptible. They are haughty, fond of war, 

 mil of dexterity and vigor, civil and obliging, smooth-tongued, and courte- 

 ous, but fickle and vain. With astonishing patience, and even almost 

 regardless of them, they sustain hunger, thirst, cold, heat, fatigue, and all 



