MAMMALIA— MAN. 53 



they appear as threads of silk. Their eyes are large, soft, and yet full of 

 animation ; their mouth is small and expressive of a smile, and their chin, 

 Avhat it ought to be, in order to form a perfect oval. Their neck and breasts 

 are admirably formed; their stature is tall, and the shape of their body easy; 

 their skin is white as snow, and their hair of the most beautiful black." 



The Turks, who purchase a vast number of those women as slaves, are 

 a people composed of many different nations. From the intermixture, 

 during the crusades, of the Armenians, the Georgians, and the Turcomans, 

 with the Arabians, the Egyptians, and even the Europeans, it is hardly possi- 

 ble to distinguish the native inhabitants of Asia Minor, of Syria, and of the 

 rest of Turkey. All we can observe is, that the Turkish men are generally 

 robust, and tolerably well made ; that it is even rare to find among them 

 persons either hump-backed or lame ; that the women are also beautiful, 

 well proportioned, and free from blemishes ; that they are very fair, because 

 they seldom stir from home ; and that, when they do go abroad, they are 

 always veiled. 



Before the Czar Peter I., we are told, the Muscovites had not merged from 

 barbarism. Born in slavery, they were ignorant, brutal, cruel, without 

 courage, and without manners. Men and women bathed promiscuously in 

 bagnios, heated to a degree intolerable to all persons but themselves; and 

 on quitting this warm bath, they plunged, like the Laplanders, into cold 

 water. They are now a people in some degree civilized, and commercial, 

 fond of spectacles, and of other ingenious novelties. 



From the regions of Europe and Asia, our attention is noAV to be directed 

 to a race of people differing more from ourselves in external appearances, 

 than any that has been hitherto mentioned. 



In the seventeenth or eighteenth degree of north latitude, on the African 

 coast, we find the Negroes of Senegal and of Nubia, some in the neighbor- 

 hood of the ocean, and others of the Pted Sea; and after them, all the other 

 nations of Africa, from the latitude of eighteen north, to that of eighteen 

 south, are black, the Ethiopians, or Abyssinians excepted. It appears, then, 

 that the portion of the globe which nature has allotted to this race of men, 

 contains an extent of ground, parallel to the equator, of about nine hundred 

 leagues in breadth, and considerably more in length, especially northward 

 of the equator. Beyond the latitude of eighteen or twenty, there are no 

 longer any negroes, as will appear when we come to speak of the CafFres 

 and of the Hottentots. 



By confounding them with their neighbors the Nubians, we have been long 

 in an error, with respect to the color and the features of the Ethiopians. 

 Marmol says, that the Ethiopians, (Abyssinians,) are absolutely black, that 

 their visage is large, and their nose flat ; and in this description the Dutch 

 travellers agree with him. The truth, however, is, that they differ from 

 the Nubians, both in color and in features. The skin of the Ethiopians is 

 broAvn, or olive-colored, like that of the southern Arabians, from whom, it 



