PEOPLE OF COLOUR. 77 



is by far the greatest and the solar temperatures 

 highest. 



It is a remarkable fact that almost the whole of this 

 immense region is co-terminous with the limits of the 

 strongholds of the Mahometan faith, showing that 

 even opinions, like plants and animals, have their 

 special climatic range. * Now, these people, mostly 

 of the Arabic race, as we know, comprise what are 

 physically speaking some of the finest and most war- 

 like races of mankind: showing that the fierce rays 

 of an incandescent sun have not impaired their native 

 vigour- and though it has, in various degrees, bronzed 

 their complexions, till sometimes possibly by an ad- 

 mixture of Negro blood they are as black as any 

 native of Africa : this has, however, not detracted from 

 their manly beauty, for nowhere are finely chiselled 

 classical faces more common. 



This is a fact which has been noted in all ages, 

 notwithstanding the European prejudice against people 

 of colour. Thus, the picturesque Moorish prince, attired 

 in all the magnificence of oriental costume, while 

 apologizing for his sun-burnt face, in Shakespeare's 

 celebrated play, is supposed to address his English 

 sweetheart in the following strain: 



"Mislike me not for my complexion 

 The shadowed livery of the burnish'd sun 

 To whom I am a neighbour, and near bred." f 



In like manner, so far back as the ancient scriptural 

 times, we find the dark-visaged oriental defending 



* See some interesting observations, with maps, in illustration of this 

 point, pp. 43 4 in " Seas and Skies in Many Latitudes" by the 

 Hon. Ralph Abercromby, 1888. 



j Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice, Act 2, Sc. I. 



