462 CAUSES OF THE VARIETIES 



'' The Indians of new Spain have a more swarthy com- 

 plexion tlian the inhabitants of the warmest climates of South 

 America. This fact is so much tlie more remarkable, as in 

 the race of Caucasus, which may also be called the Euro- 

 pean-Arab race, the people of the south have not so fair a 

 skin as those of the north. Though many of the Asiatic 

 nations who inundated Europe in the sixth century had a 

 very dark complexion, it appears that the shades of colour 

 observable among the white race are less owing to their 

 origin or mixture than to the local influence of the climate. 

 This influence appears to have almost no eftect on the Ame- 

 ricans and Negroes. These races, in which there is abun- 

 dant deposition of carburetted hydrogen in the corpus 

 mucosum or reticulatum of Malpighi, resist in a singular 

 manner the impressions of the ambient air. The Negroes 

 of the mountains of Upper Guinea are not less black than 

 those who live upon the coast. There are, no doubt, tribes 

 of a colour by no means deep among the Indians of the new 

 continent, whose complexion approaches to that of the 

 Arabs or Moors. We found the people of the Rio Negro 

 swarthier than those of the lower Orinoco, and yet the 

 banks of the first of these rivers enjoy a much cooler climate 

 than the more northern regions. In the forests of Guiana, 

 especially near the sources of the Orinoco, are several tribes 

 of a whitish complexion, — the Guaicas, the Guaiaribs, the 

 Ariguas ; of whom several robust individuals, exhibiting no 

 symptom of the asthenical malady which characterizes Albi- 

 nos, have the appearance of true Mestizos. Yet these tribes 

 have never mingled with Europeans, and are surrounded 

 by other tribes of a dark-brown hue. The Indians in 

 the torrid zone, who inhabit the most elevated plains of the 

 Cordillera of the Andes, and those who, under 45° S. lat. 

 live by fishing among the islands of the Archipelago of Cho- 

 nos, have as coppery a complexion as those who, under a 

 burning climate, cultivate bananas in the narrowest and 

 deepest valleys of the equinoctial region. We must add, 

 that the Indians of the mountains are clothed, and were so 

 long before the conquest ; while the aborigines, who wan- 



