INTRODUCTION. 33 



the Nubians of the Nile; the color of the former, and their hair, is 

 different from that of the Negro ; they are a handsome people, of 

 fine form and features; the latter are supposed to be the descend- 

 antsofthe Nobatae, "brought fifteen centuries ago from art oasis in the 

 rn country, by Diocletian, to inhabit the valley of the Nile; 1 ' 

 Prichard thinks they furnish an instance of the transition from the 

 Negro to the ancient Egyptians, though be admits that the evidence 

 is upen to many sources of fallacy. 



The Abyssinians, a fine, dark, but not Ni _ r :'" people, are inter- 

 esting, as having preserved alone, "in the heart of Africa, and in 

 the midst of Moslem and Pagan nations, its peculiar literature, and 

 cient Christian Church ;" it has also extensive remains of a 

 wide-spread Judaism, and a language approaching, more nearly than 

 any living tongue, to the pure Hebrew. Abyssinia has been overrun 

 lately by the Gal la, a barbarous people, who approach more nearly 

 to the Negro type. 



Of the black races of the interior of Africa, the principal are the 



imbian nations, viz., the Mandingos, remarkable for their 



industry and energy of character, and who carry on the principal 



traffic of northern Africa, and the Fulahs, who are supposed by 



some to be an onset of the Polynesian race. 



The true Negro characters are most strongly displayed on the 

 sea-coast, " which encircles the projecting region of Western Africa, 

 to the inmost angle of the Bight at Benin ;"' the region which has 

 been the centre of the slave-trade, and whose inhabitants are reduced 

 to the lowest physical and moral degradation. One peculiarity of 

 the African cranium is said to be that " the sphenoidal bone fails to 

 reach the parietal bonus, so that the coronal suture, instead of 

 impinging upon the sphenoidal, as it does in most European heads, 

 and in the human cranium in general, joins the margin of the tem- 

 poral bone." This peculiarity has been given as a distinguishing 

 mark between the orang and the chimpanz£, but it is by no means 

 constant. 



In the vast regions of South Africa, in a country analogous to the 

 high region of Eastern Asia, we find nations which may be com- 

 pared with the Nomadic Mongolian races. The Hottentots, and 

 il _i r oppressed descendants, the Bushmen, in the width of their 

 orbits, and their distance from each other, in the form of the eye, 

 the prominent cheek-bones, and the large size of the occipital fora- 

 men, resemble the Chinese and the Northern Asiatics, and even the 

 Esquimaux. 



The warlike Kafirs, to the north of the Hottentots, are said to 

 bave the high forehead and prominent nose of the European, the 



