OF THE MARSH POISON. 297 



NOTE. 



ON THE NEGRO SKIN. 



THE adaptation of the Negro to live in the unwholesome localities of 

 the Torrid Zone, that prove so fatal to Europeans, is most happy and 

 singular. From peculiarity of idiosyncrasy, he appears to be proof against 

 endemic fevers ; for to him marsh miasmata are in fact no poison, and 

 hence his incalculable value as a soldier, for field service, in the West In- 

 dies. The warm, moist, low and leeward situations, where these perni- 

 cious exhalations are generated and concentrated, prove to him congenial 

 in every respect. He delights in them, for he there enjoys life and health, 

 as much as his feelings are abhorrent to the currents of wind that sweep 

 the mountain tops, where alone the whites find security against endemic 

 fevers. 



One of the most obvious peculiarities of the Negro, compared with the 

 European, is the texture of his skin, which is thick, oily and rank to a 

 great degree : and from this circumstance the theorist, when he speculates 

 on the mode of reception of the marsh poison into the constitution, whe- 

 ther by the lungs, the stomach, or the skin, may draw a plausible conjec- 

 tural inference (for it can be no more) in favour of the last. It is cer- 

 tain, that amongst Europeans, the thick-skinned and dark-haired with- 

 stand the influence of the marsh poison much better than those of the op- 

 posite temperament ; and it is equally certain, from the never-failing pri- 

 mary head-ache, that its first impression is invariably upon the brain, as 

 if it had been taken up by the sentient extremities of nerves, of which 

 the skin is so truly an expansion, and conveyed to the sensorium. 



Another argument of analogy, in favour of the same opinion, may be 

 derived from a reference to the plague, which is the pestilential endemic 

 fever of the Levant, or rather of the arid sandy regions of the southern 



p p 2 coasts 



