44 VARIETIES OF THE HUMAN SPECIES. 



and jealous Mongols followed on the footsteps of their former allies, and entering 

 Asia Minor, defeated them in a pitched hattle. But the Turks recovered them- 

 selves after a desperate struggle, drove the Mongols out of Asiatic Turkey, regained 

 the ascendancy, and have kept it from that time to the present. 



We novr find them in possession of Asia Minor, Syria, European Turkey, 

 Egypt, and various strong holds on the Barbary coast. 



Osman, the Turkish chief w^ho vanquished the Mongols in Asia Minor, trans- 

 mitted his name to his nation, whence they call themselves Osmanlies^ which in 

 Europe has been perverted to Ottomans.* 



10. THE CHINESE FAMILY. 



These people are rather below the middle stature, stout limbed and inclined 

 to flesh. The head is large, rounded and somewhat conical, owing to a high, 

 retreating forehead. The face is flat, and the cheek bones expanded ; the eye is 

 small, half closed, and drawn obliquely upwards towards the temple, at the same 

 time that the upper lid is a little projecting beyond the lower : the eyebrows are 

 black, highly arched and linear : the nose is small, flattened towards the nostril, 

 broad at its root, and separated from the forehead by a strongly marked depression. 

 The mouth is large, and the lips rather fleshy. They have uniformly black hair ; 

 and the complexion of young persons of the higher classes is fresh and fair, but 

 that of the multitude is pallid or sallow, and has been compared to a dried leaf. 



" People in Europe have been strangely misled in their notions of Chinese 

 physiognomy and appearance, by the figures represented on those specimens of 

 manufacture which proceed from Canton, and which are commonly in a style of 

 broad caricature. A Chinese of Peking might as well form an idea of us from 

 some of the performances of Cruikshank. The consequence is, that a character 

 of silly levity and farce has been associated, in the minds of many persons, with 

 the most steady, considerate and matter of fact people in the world. Their 

 features have, perhaps, less of the harsh angularity of the Tartar countenance in 

 the south than in Peking. Among those who are not exposed to the climate, the 

 complexion is fully as fair as that of the Spaniards and Portuguese. Up to the 

 age of twenty they are often very good looking; soon after that period the 

 prominent cheek bones generally give a harshness to the features, as the roundness 



* For a brief and graphic view of the connections between the Turks, Tartars and Mongols, in 

 relation to language, history and physical character, see Wiseman's Lectures, p. 110. 



