574 



MONGOLS. 



plenty, indolence, luxury, ease. In Hindostan, among the natives of 

 high caste, have from time to time arisen men whose mental endowments 

 have been in no respect inferior to those of Europeans statesmen, poets, 

 soldiers, astronomers, mathematicians. Complexion apart, the portrait 

 of Ram Ruttum, a Brahmin, Fig. 269, taken Iby Mr. Branwhite, presents 

 an intelligent and agreeable countenance, though, perhaps, with an air of 

 effeminacy. 



Let us examine a second of our subdivisions, the Mongol, character- 

 ized as descending; from a common stock by the affinities of 



Variations im- f .... 



pressed on the its languages, though having a geographical distribution from 

 Mongol race. the Indian Q cean to tlie tfioKs of the Polar Sea. As with 

 the Indo-European race, so with this, the color becomes darker as the 

 tropic is approached so dark, indeed, that, in the lowest latitudes to 

 which its nations reach, they may be said to be black. From this they 

 pass through various shades of brown and olive as a progress to the 

 higher latitudes is made, the pale countenance reappearing in North Tar- 

 tary, and attaining to whiteness in the fish-feeding tribes, Samoiedes, on 

 the shores of the Icy Sea. But here, again, the complexion and the lati- 

 tude are not in correspondence : on the low shores of China the natives are 

 tawny, but in the mountainous regions of the northwest of that country 

 there are tribes spoken of by those who have seen them as of surprising 

 whiteness, and a similar circumstance occurs among the Tartar tribes of 

 the very elevated plateaux of Central Asia. 



Although the Chinese countenance, both of the indigenous race and the 



dominant Tartars, is very characteris- 

 tic, as seen in the annexed portrait, 

 Fig. 270, from Dr. Prichard, the form 

 of the skull expresses a high intellec- 

 tual culture, of which also their civil- 

 ization and their polity are a surpris- 

 ing proof. The difficulties of govern- 

 ing masses of men concentrated in a 

 narrow space seem, by the statesmen 

 of that nation, to have been in a great 

 measure overcome. On the Chinese 

 rivers there are many great cities, vast- 

 ly outnumbering in their population 

 the largest European capitals. Under 

 the government of the emperor, it is said that there live, in security and 

 repose, one third of the human race! Such a spectacle may impress 

 even the philosopher with sentiments of respect and admiration. 



The hardships of life have left their impression on the form of the skull 

 of the North Asiatic, whose energies have to be directed to the support of 



Fig. 270. 



Chinese. 



