PRINCIPAL FAMILIES OP MANKIND. 1047 



to a considerable extent with the ordinary Hindoo population. There is but 

 little to remind us of the Mongolian type in the countenances of the Hindoos, 

 which are often remarkable for a symmetrical beauty that only wants a more 

 intellectual expression to render them extremely striking ; some traces of it, 

 however, may perhaps be found in the rather prominent zygomatic arches which 

 are common amongst them ; but the cranial portion of the skull presents no ap- 

 proach to the pyramidal type, being often very regularly elliptical. There is a 

 remarkable difference in the color of the different Hindoo tribes ; some being 

 nearly as dark as Negroes, others more of a copper color, others but little darker 

 than the inhabitants of Southern Europe, whilst others, who can be shown to 

 have migrated at a remote- period into one of the hilly districts of Northern 

 India, have a fair complexion with blue eyes and auburn or even red hair. 

 Another marked departure from the ordinary Mongolian type is presented by 

 the Hyperborean tribes inhabiting the borders of the Icy Sea ; these have for 

 the most part a pyramidal skull, but their complexion is swarthy and their 

 growth is peculiarly stunted ; and they form the link that connects ordinary 

 Mongolidse with the Lapps and Finns of Europe on one side, and with the Es- 

 quimaux of North America on the other. 



1055. According to the usual mode of dividing the Human family, the Ethi- 

 opian or Negro stock is made to include all the nations of Africa, to the south- 

 ward of the Atlas range. But, on the one hand, there is good reason for sepa- 

 rating the Hottentots and Bushmen of the southern extremity as a distinct 

 race; so, again, the region north of the Great Desert is mostly occupied by Semitic 

 tribes ; the scattered population of the Great Desert itself is far from being 

 Negro in many of its features ; the valley of the Nile, at least in its middle and 

 lower portions, including Egypt, Nubia, and even Abyssinia, is inhabited by a 

 group of nations which maybe designated as Nilotic, and which presents a series of 

 gradational transitions between the Negroes and Kaffres and the Semitic races ; 

 a large portion of the area south of the Equator is occupied by the Kaffre tribes 

 and their allies, which cannot be truly designated as Negroes ; so that the true 

 Negro area is limited to the western portion of the African continent, including 

 the alluvial valleys of the Senegal, the Gambia, and the Niger, with a narrow 

 strip of central Africa, passing eastward to the alluvial regions of the Upper 

 Nile. Even within this area, the true Negro type of conformation, such as we 

 see in the races which inhabit the low countries near the Slave Coast consist- 

 ing in the combination of the prognathous form of skull with receding fore- 

 head and depressed nose, thick lips, black woolly hair, jet-black unctuous skin, 

 and crooked legs is by no means universally prevalent ; for many of the na- 

 tions which inhabit it must be ranked as sub-typical Negroes ; and from these 

 the gradation in physical characters is by no means abrupt to those African 

 nations which possess, in a considerable degree, the attributes which we are 

 accustomed to exclude altogether from our idea of the African race. Thus 

 the race of Jolofs near the Senegal, and the Guber in the interior of Sudan, 

 have woolly hair and deep black complexions, but fine forms and regular fea- 

 tures of a European cast; and nearly the same may be said of the dark- 

 est of the Kaffres of Southern Africa. The Bechuana Kaffres present a 

 still nearer approach to the European type ; the complexion being of a light 

 brown, the hair often not woolly but merely curled, or even in long flowing 

 ringlets, and the figure and features having much of the European character. 

 There is no group, in fact, which presents a more constant correspondence be- 

 tween external conditions and physical conformation than that composed of the 

 African nations. As we find the complexion becoming gradually darker, in 

 passing from northern to southern Europe, thence to North Africa, thence to the 

 borders of the Great Desert, and thence to the intertropical region where alone 

 the dullest black is to be met with so do we find, on passing southwards from 



