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 

 Maypures. 



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

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

 are dyed. 



