262 HISTORY OF MEXICO. 



and funk, their cheeks very much raifed, the upper jaw 

 low, their teeth long and difunited, their eye-brows fo 

 thick, that they fliade their eyes ; the eye-lids thick, 

 fome bridles on their faces inftead of beard, large thighs 

 and fmall legs ? Such is the picture count de BufFon gives 

 of the Tartars, that is of thofe people who, as he fays, 

 inhabit a tract of land in Afia, twelve hundred leagues 

 long and upwards, and more than feven hundred and 

 fifty broad. Amongft thefe the Calmucks are the mofl 

 remarkable for their deformity, which is fo great, that, 

 according to Tavernier, they are the mofl: brutal men of 

 all the univerfe. Their faces are fo broad that there is a 

 fpace of five or fix inches between their eyes, according 

 as count de BufFon himfelf affirms. In Calicut, in Cey- 

 lon, and other countries of India, there is, fay Pyrard 

 and other writers on thofe regions, a race of men who 

 have one or both of their legs as thick as the body of 

 a man \ and that this deformity among them is almoft 

 hereditary. The Hottentots, befides other grofs imper- 

 fections, have that monflrous irregularity attending them, 

 of a callous appendage extending from the os pubis 

 downwards, according to the teftimony of the hiftorians 

 of the Cape of Good Hope. Struys, Gemelli, and other 

 travellers affirm, that in the kingdom of Lambry, in the 

 iflands of Formofa, and of Mindoro, men have been 

 found with tails. Bomare fays (e) 9 that a thing of this 

 kind in men is nothing elfe than an elongation of the os 

 coccygis ; but what is a tail in quadrupeds but the elon- 

 gation of that bone, though divided into diftinft articula- 

 tions (/) ? However it may be, it is certain, that that 



elongation 



(<) Di&ion. de Hiftoire. Nat. v. Homme. 

 (/) See Heilter. Anat. de OJJtbus trunci. 



