70 VARIETIES OF THE HUMAN SPECIES. 



of south latitude, and the yet blacker Californians are twenty-five degrees north of 

 the equator.* 



" The nations of New Spain are darker colored than the Indians of Quito 

 and New Grenada, who inhabit a precisely analogous climate. We even find 

 that the nations dispersed to the north of the Rio Gila, are browner than those 

 that border on the kingdom of Guatimala. The people of the Rio Negro are 

 darker than those of the Lower Orinoco, yet the banks of the former of these two 

 rivers enjoy a cooler climate. In the forests of Guiana, especially near the sources 

 of the Orinoco, there exist several tribes of a whitish complexion, [to whom 

 allusion has already been made,] who are surrounded by other nations of a darker 

 brown. The Indians who, in the torrid zone, inhabit the most elevated table land 

 of the Andes, and those who, under forty-five degrees of south latitude, live upon 

 fish in the Archipelago of Chonos, have a complexion as much copper-colored as 

 they who cultivate, under a burning sun, the banana in the narrowest and deepest 

 valleys of the equinoctial regions. To this it must be added, that the Indians 

 who inhabit the mountains are clothed, and were so long before the conquest ; 

 while the aborigines that wander on the plains are perfectly naked, and conse- 

 quently are always exposed to the perpendicular rays of the sun. Every where, 

 in short, it is found that the color of the American depends very little on the 

 local situation which he actually occupies ; and never, in the same individual, are 

 those parts of the body that are constantly covered, of a fairer color than those 

 that are in contact with a hot and humid air. Their infants are never white 

 when they are born ; and the Indian caziques who enjoy a considerable degree 

 of luxury, and who keep themselves constantly dressed in the interior of their 

 habitations, have all the parts of their body, with the exception of the palms of 

 their hands and the soles of their feet, of the same brownish red or copper color."! 



After all, these differences in complexion are extremely partial, forming mere 

 exceptions to the primitive and national tint that characterises these people from 

 Cape Horn to the Canadas. The cause of these anomalies is not readily explained : 



* " Si le climat seul etait la cause de la couleur brune des Americains, les Portugais auraient du, 

 apres pliisieurs generations, prendre aussi cette couleur ; et cependent il est certain qu'ils ont la meme 

 que leurs ancetres toutes les fois que leur sang n'est pas mele avec celui des Negres ou des Indians."— 

 Prince de Wied, Voy, au Bresil, II, p. 310.— See also, Humboldt, Monuments, T. I, p. 23.— 

 DoBRizHOFFER, II, p. 9. — BoRY DE St. ViNCENT, U Homme, II, p. 20. 



tMALTE-BRUN, Geog. %^m. ed, 5, p. 14. 



