OCCIDENTAL STOCK. v 323 



arches stand widely out: the nasal bones are small, but form a ridge, 

 overhung by a bold projection, indicating the frontal sinuses. The 



superior orbital foramen is peculiarly 

 large ; but this is, no doubt, merely 

 a casual circumstance. The alveolar 

 margin is not oblique. 



The round contour of this skull, 

 viewed from above, and its vertical 

 elevation, together with its antero- 

 posterior contraction, and its facial 

 breadth, give it a remarkable ap- 

 pearance. 



of rattan. Notwithstanding the differential 



characters which have been drawn up, as separating the Columbic from 

 the American branch (setting aside the Patagonian), these differences 

 are not strictly and universally constant : there is a general similarity 

 between them, both in outward and moral characteristics, which many 

 travellers have particularly noticed, Colour, indeed, is very variable : 

 the tribes of South America have broader and flatter faces, and a shorter 

 stature, than the North Americans ; nevertheless, they both appear 

 referable to the same common stock. " The Indians of New Spain," 

 M. Humboldt says, " bear a general resemblance to those who inhabit 

 Canada, Florida, Peru, and Brazil : they have the same swarthy and 

 copper colour ; straight and smooth hair ; small beard ; squat body ; 

 long eye, with the corner directed upward toward the temples ; prominent 

 cheek-bones ; thick lips, and an expression of gentleness in the mouth, 

 strongly contrasted by a gloomy and severe look. Over a million 

 and a half of square leagues, from Tierra del Fuego to the river St. 

 Lawrence and Behring's Straits, we are struck, at the first glance, with 

 the general resemblance in the features of the inhabitants : we think 

 that we perceive them all to be descended from the same stock, notwith- 

 standing the prodigious diversity of languages which separates them one 

 from another." 



This resemblance is, perhaps, in some measure, parallel to that which 

 obtains between the numerous tribes of Africa : it varies in degree, and 

 is often indistinctly marked. Differences among tribes, all unlike ourselves 

 in physiognomy, are not easily seized upon by the unpractised eye of a 

 European, who, as the same philosopher well remarks, is liable to a par- 

 ticular illusion, when making his observations upon barbarous nations, in 

 which the physiognomy is peculiar rather to a tribe, or horde, than to any 

 individual. " He is struck with a complexion so different from our own, 

 and the uniformity of this complexion conceals from him, for a long time, 

 the diversity of individual features. The new colonist can, at first, hardlv 



