303 
PHYSICAL CONFORMATION. 
tion — the duration of pregnancy, never alters in a state of 
health, in any race, or in any climate. 
The Chaymas arc almost without beard on the chin, like 
the Tungouses, and other nations of the Mongol race. They 
pluck out the few hairs which appear; but independently of 
that practice, most of the natives would be nearly beardless.* 
I say most of them, because there are tribes which, as they 
appear distinct from the others, are more worthy of fixing 
our attention. Such are, in North America, the Chippewas 
visited by Mackenzie, and the Yabipaees, near the Toltec 
rums at Moqui, with bushy beards ; in South America, the 
Patagonians and the Guaraunos. Among these last are 
some who have hairs on the breast. When the Chaymas, 
instead of extracting the little hair they have on the chin, 
attempt to shave themselves frequently, their beards grow. 
I have seen this experiment tried with success by young 
Indians, who officiated at mass, and who anxiously wished to 
resemble the Capuchin fathers, their missionaries and mas- 
ters. The great mass of the people, however, dislike the 
beard, no less than the Eastern nations hold it in reverence. 
This antipathy is derived from the same source as the predi- 
lection for flat foreheads, which is evinced in so singular a 
manner in the statues of the Aztec heroes and divinities. 
Nations attach the idea of beauty to everything which par- 
ticularly characterizes their own physical conformation, their 
national physiognomy .f Hence it ensues that among a peo- 
ple to whom Nature has given very little beard, a narrow 
forehead, and a brownish red skin, every individual thinks 
himself handsome in proportion as his body is destitute of 
hair, his head flattened, and his skin besmeared with annatto, 
chica, or some other copper-red colour. 
The Chaymas lead a life of singular uniformity. They go 
to rest very regularly at seven in the evening, and rise long 
before daylight, at half-past four in the morning. Every 
* Physiologists would never have entertained any difference of opinion 
respecting the existence of the beard among the Americans, if they had 
considered what the first historians of the Conquest have said on this sub- 
ject ; for example, Pigafetta, in 1519, in his journal, preserved in the 
Ambrosian l.ibrary at Milan, and published (in 1 S' (JO ) by Amoretti ; Pen- 
Koni, Hist, del Mundo Nuovo, 1572 ; llembo, list. Venet., 1557. 
+ Thus, in their finest statues, the Greeks exaggerated the fovm of tits 
xtrebead, by elevating beyond proportion the facial lice. 
