310 COLOUK NOT A MATTER OF EACE. Chap. XV. 



natives, and the custom of knocking out the upper front 

 teeth gives at once a distinctive character to the face. Their 

 colour attests the greater altitude of the country in which 

 many of them formerly lived. Some, however, are as dark 

 as the Bashubia and Barotse of the great valley to their west, 

 in which stands Sesheke, formerly the capital of the Balui, or 

 Bashubia. 



The assertion may seem strange, yet it is none the less 

 true, that in all the tribes we have visited we never saw a 

 really black person. Different shades of brown prevail, and 

 often with a bright bronze tint, which no painter, except Mr. 

 Angus, seems able to catch. Those who inhabit elevated, 

 dry situations, and who are not obliged to work much in 

 the sun, are frequently of a light warm brown, "dark but 

 comely." Darkness of colour is probably partly caused by 

 the sun, and partly by something in the climate or soil which 

 we do not yet know. We see something of the same sort 

 in trout and other fish which take their colour from the 

 ponds or streams in which they live. The members of our 

 party were much less embrowned by free exposure to the sun 

 for years than Dr. Livingstone and his family were by passing 

 once from Kuruman to Cape Town, a journey which occupied 

 only a couple of months. 



What the peculiarity of climate is, which favours the 

 deposition of colouring matter in the skin and hair, is yet 

 unknown ; but, in some cases observed, colour was not a 

 matter of race, for, after long residence in a hot country, a 

 wound or boil heals much darker than the rest of the body. 

 The hair of the Africans, microscopists inform us, is not really 

 wool, but a growth of identically the same nature as our own, 

 only with a greater amount of the pigment deposited. It is 

 not at all unusual to meet Europeans with hair darker than 

 the African ; and with Africans, whose hair has a distinct 



