260 



HISTORY OF MEXICO. 



be demonftrated from the atteftarions of the authors the 

 beft acquainted with their cuftoms. Befides, in all the 

 countries of Mexico, or New Spain, which make at lead 

 one fourth of the new world, the Indians lived in fo- 

 cieties together, and affembled in cities, towns, and vil- 

 lages, under the care of Spanifh or Creole magiftrates 

 and governors, and no fuch inftances of cruelty towards 

 their infants are ever feen or heard of ; yet deformed 

 people are fo uncommon, that all the Spaniards and Cre- 

 oles, who came from Mexico to Italy, in the year 1768, 

 were then, and are ftill much furprifed to obferve the 

 great number of blind, hunch-backed, lame, and other- 

 wife deformed people, in the cities of that cultivated 

 peninfula. The caufe of this phenomenon, which fo 

 many writers have obferved among the Americans, muft 

 therefore be different from that to which the above men- 

 tioned authors would impute it. 



No argument againft the new world can be drawn 

 from the colour of the Americans ; becaufe their colour 

 is lefs diftant from the white of the Europeans than it 

 is from the black of the Africans, and a great part of the 

 Afiatics. The hair of the Mexicans, and of the greater 

 part of the Indians, is, as we have already faid, coarfe 

 and thick ; on their face they have little, and in general 

 (b) none on their arms and legs : but it is an error to 

 fay, as M. de Paw does, that they are entirely deftitute 

 of hair in all the other parts of their body. This is one of 

 the many paffages of the Philofophical Refearches, at 

 which the Mexicans, and all the other nations, muft fmile 

 to find an European philofopher fo eager to diveft them 

 of the drefs they had from nature. He read, without 



doubt, 



(b) We fay, in general, becaufe there are Americans in Mexico who are 

 bearded, and have hair on their arms and limbs. 



