Ovfervafions an the Negroes, 145 



bodies, which," together with what I have read in different 

 voyages, tend more and more to convince me of the trutht 

 of the two following proportions : 



1. That between one negro and another there is as much 

 (if not more) difference in the colour, and particularly in the 

 lineaments of the face, as between many real negroes, and 

 other varieties of the human fpecies. 



2. That the negroes, in regard to their mental faculties 

 and capacity, are not inferior to the reft of the human race. 



The three negro ilculls, which I have now before me, af- 

 ford, by the verv ftriking gradation with which the linea- 

 ments pafs from the one to the other, a very evident proof of 

 the firft proposition. One of them, which Mr. Michaelis was, 

 fo good a-; to bring me from New- York, and of which I 

 have given an accurate defcription in another place *, is dif- 

 tinguifhed by fuch a projecting upper jaw-bone, that, if the 

 fame peculiarity belonged to all negroes, one might be 

 tempted to fuppofe that they had another firft parent than 

 Adam. On the other hand, the lineaments of the third 

 have fo little of the exotic form, and are fo different from 

 the firft, that if I had not differed the whole head perfe&ly 

 entire, and juft as it was when cut from the body, I (hould 

 be in doubt whether I ought to confider it as having actu- 

 ally belonged to a real negro. The fecond holds a mean 

 rank between both, and in its whole form has a great like- 

 net's to the head of the Abyfllnian Abbas Gregorius, a good 

 engraving of which by Heifs, in 1691, from a painting bv 

 Von Sand, I have now before me, and which not only 

 proves in general the clofe affinity of the Abyffinians with 

 the negroes, but approaches much nearer to the ugly ne- 

 groes, 10 fpeak according to the European ideas of beauty, 

 than the well-formed negrefs of Yverdun, or the handfome 

 young negro whofe head I diffeeled as before mentioned, or 

 than a thoufand others whofe features are little different 

 From thofe of the Europeans. What I have here laid is 

 indeed nothing elfe than a confirmation of a truth long 



* In my Oftco'ogy, p. 3;- 



known, 



