226 NATURAL IILSTOItY OF 



some distance. Even women, in their brawls, have the same 

 habit. The dense spherical structure of the head, liki 

 enables several tribes to shave their crowns, and in this 

 exposed state to remain, with the lower half of the body 

 immersed in water, Under a vertical sun. This very structure 

 may influence the erect gait, which occasions the practice, 

 common also to the Ethiopian or mixed nations, of carrying 

 burthens and light weights, even to a tumbler full of water, 

 upon the head ; a feat which they effect with perfect safety 

 and gracefulness.* 



Most of the black nations are capable of protracted toil, 

 without much injury to their frames; they willingly share 

 labor with the female sex in a state of independence as well as 

 in captivity; they dig, hew wood, carry, walk, or row, for 

 many hours, in a tropical sun, without repining. They mul- 

 tiply on mountain and in morass, in sterile and in rich soil, 

 throughout the tropical region. Though a new locality like 

 South America be not their original centre of existence, they 

 spread, on both sides, beyond the equatorial belt, over the 

 lower degrees of the temperate latitudes ; do not decrease in 

 the presence of Caucasians when not overworked by their task- 

 masters ; and flourish under the fiercest solar heat, when other 

 types of man decay or perish. In constitution, they escape or 

 withstand many of the most virulent epidemics, among the 

 rest, small-pox, so fatal to all the American races ; and others, 

 incidental to the tropics, or introduced by Europeans, visit 

 them with less violence. 



In South America, where the indigenous tribes diminish, in 

 regions where white men are but little known, the Maroons 



* Though the practice is general, pride nevertheless can counteract it ; 

 for we have invariably seen the Jamaica Maroons carry their produce to 

 market on the back, and take their rest under distinct trees, apart from 

 slave Negroes, because, as they told us, they would show themselves 

 " free like Buckra man!" A second jar of water, Negroes always carry 

 upon the palm of the hand inverted. 



