OF THE HUMAN RACE. 



213 



European and the Asiatic. So that, in a more compendious view of the 

 human race, we might contract the five varieties into three : — the Euro- 

 pean, Asiatic, and African ; and regard the other two as mere intervening 

 shades of variety. 



In this general classification of mankind, however, there are two ob- 

 servations that are peculiarly worthy of attention. The first is, that al- 

 though these distinctive characters will hold in the main, it is not to be ex- 

 pected that they will apply to every individual of the particular division to 

 which they refer ; nor that they belong so exclusively to such division as 

 never to be traced, even by a natural introduction, among other divisions. 

 The second is, that from the restless or inquiring spirit of several of the di- 

 visions, and the migrations which have hence ensued, we ought to expect 

 to meet occasionally with the distinctive characters of such divisions 

 among other divisions, and in regions to which they do not naturally ap- 

 pertain. 



A perfect jet of the skin has never, perhaps, been found in our own 

 country, in any person of genuine English race ; but a dark, swarthy, and 

 even copper-colour is by no means uncommon ; and an equal difference 

 is observable in the globularity of the head, and the flatness or sharpness 

 of the face. In like manner the skin is occasionally found fair among 

 the red tribes of America ;* and black among the tawny tribes of Aus- 

 tralia, and even the ohve nations of India. So Captain Cook informs 

 us that, among the natives of the Friendly Islands, he saw hundreds of 

 European faces, and not a few genuine Roman noses. And Adanson 

 asserts that he was struck with the general beauty and proportion of 

 several Senegambian females, in spite of their colour : while Vaillant and 

 Le Maire give a similar testimony concerning the Caffre women, and the 

 negresses of Gambia and Senegal. 



The most inquiring and consequently the most migratory of the five 

 divisions under which we are contemplating the race of man, is unques- 

 tionably the European. And hence we have reason to expect that we 

 shall meet with more numerous establishments of the European form in 

 regions to which it does not naturally belong than of any of the others, 

 and experience confirms this expectation. It is, in truth, the migratory 

 spirit of this peculiar division that has filled Europe itself ; for, as I have 

 already had occasion to remark, the division in its earhest state was con- 

 fined to the southern foot of the Caucasus, and branched out into Europe 

 from this region. And thus, in the west of Africa, extending from Fez 

 to the Zaara, we discover considerable patches of the same lineage, the 

 progenitors of which have either shot through the isthmus of Suez or 

 crossed the Mediterranean ; while every one knows that, from a similar 

 spirit of migration, America both North and South, and India, in its 

 southern promontory of the Deccan, have for several centuries past exhi- 

 bited patches of a similar kind. 



The Asiatic race, properly so called, have in like manner had their 

 migrations ; and hence we trace the form and features of this family, 

 spreading southerly thjrough the whole of Egypt and Abyssinia ; north- 

 erly from the Imaus or Caff of the Caucasus towards the arctic bounda- 

 ries of Europe and America, amidst the Laplanders and Nova Zemblians 

 of the former, and the Greenlanders and Iskimos or (as we have it from 



♦SeeM. Humboldt; Ess ai Politique siirlfft Rovaume delaNonvelle Espagne. Paris, 

 ]ROfl— 1809. 



