THE AMERICAN EACE 63 



agricultural population occupied the fertile table-lands of 

 Anahuac, the wild hunter, unsubjected to the rules and tram- 

 mels of civilised life, still roams over the boundless woods or 

 interminable savannahs through which the Amazons, the Orinoco, 

 and a hundred other great streams wend their way from the 

 Andes to the Ocean. Here the primitive American can still 

 be studied ; here he exhibits the same traits of character and 

 follows the same mode of life as his fathers before him, in the 

 times of Cortez or Pizarro. 



Many of the forest tribes, indeed, have been converted to 

 Christianity, and live in missions or small settlements situated 

 far apart on the banks of the great rivers ; others are willing 

 to barter the drugs, india-rubber, or rare birds and insects, 

 they gather in the woods for articles of European manu- 

 facture ; but many desiring no more than what their native 

 wilds supply, never or but seldom cross the path of civi- 

 lised man. 



Though divided into a large number of hostile tribes, and 

 scattered over an immense extent of country, from the Atlantic to 

 the Pacific, and far beyond the bounds which separate one tropic 

 from the other, yet the American Indians so nearly resemble 

 each other, both in their features and the qualities of their 

 minds, as evidently to be descended from one source. Their 

 complexion is of a reddish-brown, more or less resembling the 

 colour of copper. There is, however, a great diversity of shade 

 among the several tribes, which appears to be less dependent 

 on the influence of climate than on an original disposition, 

 varying in the different branches of the American race. The 

 elevation above the sea, or the vicinity of the equator, seems 

 ^—^ to have no great influence, for both Ulloa and Humboldt were 

 I^K astonished to find the Indians as bronze-coloured or as brown 

 ^^H in the cold regions of the Cordilleras as in the hot plains of 

 ^■Venezuela. On the sultry banks of the Orinoco there are 

 ^Keven tribes characterised by a remarkable fairness of com- 

 plexion, living in the vicinity of others more than commonly 

 brown. D'Orbigny makes this lightness of colour coincide 

 with the woody and shady character of the quarters inhabited ; 

 the Maripas, for instance, who inhabit the most exposed coun- 

 tries, being also the darkest in hue. 



The hair of the American Indians is always black, long, coarse. 



