518 



ing in the neighbourhood of those * who paint 

 the whole body ? 



We are struck with the observation, that the 

 Indians of the Oroonoko, like the natives of 

 North America, prefer the substances that yield a 

 red colour to every other. Is this predilection 

 founded on the facility, with which the savage 

 procures ochrey earths, or the colouring fecula 

 of anotta, and of chica? I doubt this much. 

 Indigo grows wild in a great part of Equinoctial 

 America. This plant, like so many other legu- 

 minous plants, would have furnished the natives 

 abundantly with pigments to colour themselves 

 blue like the ancient Britons f. Yet we see no 

 American tribe painted with indigo. It appears 

 to me probable, as I have already hinted above, 

 that the preference given by the Americans to 

 the red colour is generally founded on the ten- 

 dency, which nations feel to attribute the idea of 

 beauty to whatever characterizes their national 

 physiognomy. Men whose skin is naturally of 

 a brownish red, love a red colour. If they be 

 born with a forehead little raised, and the head 

 flat, they endeavour to depress the forehead of 



* The Caribbees, the Salives, the Tamanacks, and the 

 May p u res. 



+ The half-clad nations of the temperate zone often paint 

 their skin of the same colour, as that with which their clothes 



are dyed. 



I 



