466 CAUSES OF THE VARIETIES 



feat of an army of this nation here, &c. They confessed 

 their ancestors had been Cliristians." The change in the 

 race produced by climate must be infinitely small, since it 

 is not yet perceptible after a lapse of thirteen centuries. 



The establishments of the Europeans in Asia and Ame- 

 rica have now subsisted about three centuries. Vasquez 

 DE Gama landed at Calicut in 1498 ; and the Portuguese 

 empire in India was founded in the beginning of the follow- 

 ing century. Brasil was discovered and taken possession of by 

 the same nation in the very first year of the sixteenth century. 

 Towards the end of the fifteenth, and the beginning of the 

 sixteenth century, Columbus, Cortez, and Pizarro subju- 

 gated for the Spaniards the West-Indian islands, with the 

 empires of Mexico and Peru. Sir Walter Raleigh plan- 

 ted an English colony in Virginia in 1584 ; and the French 

 settlement of Canada has a rather later date. The colonists 

 have, in no instance, approached to the natives of these 

 countries ; and their descendants, where the blood has been 

 kept pure, have, at this time, the same characters as native 

 Europeans. In the hotter situations, indeed, as in the 

 warmer countries of Europe, the skin is swarthy in parts of 

 the body which are not covered ; but the children, at the 

 time of birth, and women who are never exposed much to 

 the sun's rays, have all their native whiteness. This obser- 

 vation admits of no exception : in the tint of the skin, the 

 colour and other qualities of the hair, the features, the 

 form of the cranium, the proportions and figure of the body, 

 the European colonists retain all their original characters. 

 The sanguine constitution, with its blue eyes, yellow hair, 

 and fair skin, which is so remarkably different from that of 

 the natives, is nevertheless transmitted, without the least 

 alteration, from generation to generation. 



Negroes have been introduced into the New World for 

 nearly an equal length of time : in the West-Indian islands, 

 in the United States, in the various parts of Spanish Ame- 

 rica, they live under new climates, and have adopted new 

 habits : yet they have still woolly hair, black skins, flat nose, 

 thick lips, and all the other characters of their race. 



