8EC0NDARt SEXUAL CHARACTERS. 6G1 



whiteness may be attributed, according to this same 

 traveler, partly to the belief held by most negroes that 

 demons and spirits are white, and partly to their thinking 

 it a sign of ill- health. 



The Banyai of the more southern part of the continent 

 are negroes, but *'a great many of them are of a light 

 coffee-and-milk color, and, indeed, this color is considered 

 handsome throughout the whole country;" so that here we 

 have a different standard of taste, ^^ith the Kafirs, who 

 differ much from negroes, '' the skin, except among the 

 tribes near Delagoa Bay, is not usually black, the prevail- 

 ing color being a mixture of black and red, the most 

 common shade being chocolate. Dark complexions as 

 being most common are naturally held in the highest 

 esteem. To be told that he is light colored or like a white 

 man would be deemed a very poor compliment by a Kafir. 

 I have heard of one unfortunate man who was so very fair 

 that no girl would marry him." One of the titles of the 

 Zulu king is: "You who are black."* Mr. Galton, in 

 speaking to me about the natives of S. Africa, remarked 

 that their ideas of beauty seem very different from ours; 

 for in one tribe two slim, slight and pretty girls were not 

 admired by the natives. 



Turning to other quarters of the world: in Java a yellow, 

 not a white girl, is considered, according to Madame 

 Pfeiffer, a beauty. A man of Cochin China " spoke with 

 contempt of the wife of the English ambassador, that she 

 had white teeth like a dog and a rosy color like that of 

 potato flowers." We have seen that the Chinese dislike 

 our white skin and that the North Americans admire "a 

 tawny hide." In South America the Yuracaras, who 

 inhabit the wooded, damp slopes of the eastern Cordillera, 

 are remarkably pale colored, as their name in their own 

 language expresses; nevertheless, they consider European 

 women as very inferior to their own. \ 



*Mungo Park's " Travels in Africa," 4to., 1816, pp. 53, 131. Bur- 

 ton's statement is quoted by Scliaaffbausen, " Archiv. fur Antbro- 

 polog.." 1866, s. 163. On tbe Banyai, Livingstone, "Travels," p. 

 64. On tbe Kafirs, tbe Rev. J. Scbooter, "Tbe Kafirs of Natal and 

 tbe Zulu Country," 1857, p. 1. 



f For tbe Javans and Cocbin-Cliinese, see Waitz, " Tntroduct. to 

 Antbropology," Eng. translat., vol. i, p. 305. On tbe Yuracaras, A. 

 d'Orbigny, as quoted in Pricbard, '* Pbys. Hist, of Mankind," vol. v, 

 3d edit., p. 476. 



