516 THE YELLOW RACES. 



complexion, for instance, which at the north is white with a tinge of 

 citrine, may at Canton darken to a deep brown; the almost horizonlal 

 eye may change into one more or less oblique; the nose may become 

 flatter or be raised higher; the face may chauge to one more ample and 

 more massive; the figure, the corpulency may undergo serious changes. 

 But beneath all these external variations the osteological type always 

 continues most tenaciously, and the anthropologist may ascertain that 

 the collections of heads preserved in France, in England, in Holland, 

 or elsewhere, give the same measurements with unfailing constancy. 



The morphological changes are, therefore, all on the surface, and the 

 absolute uniformity of the skeleton is complemented by a correspond- 

 ing identity of costume, manner of walking, etc. This vast nation, the 

 first in the world in point of numbers, is almost entirely subject to 

 common usages and identical manners. The queue, which the con- 

 quering Tartars compelled tbem to wear in the seventeenth century, 

 dangles now on the back of all Celestials, and the long nails, protected 

 by metal sheaths, are at the south as at the north symbols of idleness 

 and wealth. On the other hand, the custom of deforming women's 

 feet, so characteristic in central China, has never been adopted by 

 Chinese women in the south, and the wives of Manchus, the princesses 

 of the now reigning Imperial family especially, have feet like everyone 

 else. 



We have given very special attention to these various ethnographic 

 peculiarities and we have left the Chinese only after having summed 

 up as exactly as it could be done all that can aid us in improving our 

 knowledge of this people, of their intellectual manifestations as well 

 as of their physical appearance. 



I have taken especial pains to trace the history of their legendary 

 migrations, starting from the northwest, and to show you how the 

 first occupants of the lowlands near the great streams of the east were 

 driven back, step by step, toward the mountain regions of the south 

 and southwest, where we shall meet them again under the name of 

 Lolos, of Miao-tse, etc., in our search for the cradle of the Indonesian 

 tribes. 



I have as yet said nothing of Korea, which was so long looked upon 

 as a simple annex of China; nor of Japan, Avhich ethnologists quite 

 recently considered only another Cochin China. 



The Koreans and the Japanese belong without contradiction, at least 

 up to a certain point, to the great mass of peoples of the yellow race. 

 The Koreans, whom 1 have shown you in photographs, used so greatly 

 to resemble Tibetans, that they were often mistaken the one for the 

 other; but there are others who make the impression as if they were 

 the offspring of intermarriages, and more than one modern traveler, 

 unable to explain some national variations that might be called out of 

 order, lias brought in the most unexpected elements to account for 



