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tune of attaining an adult age, and have re- 

 sisted the chances of a restless and disturbed 

 life, she dies without children. We might be 

 tempted to think, that savages all appear well 

 made and vigorous, because feeble children die 

 young for want of care ; and that the strongest 

 alone survive : but these causes cannot act on 

 the Indians of the Missions, who have the man- 

 ners of our peasants, and the Mexicans of Cho- 

 lula andTlascala, who enjoy wealth, that has 

 been transmitted to them by ancestors more 

 civilised than themselves. If in every state of 

 cultivation, the copper coloured race manifests 

 the same inflexibility, the same resistance to 

 deviation from a primitive type, are we not 

 forced to admit, that this property belongs in 

 great measure to hereditary organization, to 

 that which constitutes the race ? I use inten- 

 tionally the expression in great measure, not 

 entirely to exclude the influence of civilization. 

 Besides, with copper coloured men, as with the 

 whites, luxury and effeminacy, by weakening 

 the physical constitution, had heretofore ren- 

 dered deformities more common at Couzco and 

 Tenochtitlan. It is not among the Mexicans 

 of the present day, who are all labourers, and 

 leading the most simple lives, that Montezuma 

 would have found the dwarfs and hump-backs, 

 that Bernal Diaz saw waiting at his table when 



