A WORN-OUT RACE 
the shop, closely examined by the inhabitants, I returned 
the compliment by analysing them. What a strange, 
dried-up, worn-out appearance young and old presented! 
What narrow, chicken-like chests, what long, unstable 
legs and short arms! And, dear me! what shaggy, re¬ 
bellious hair, which stood out bristle-like in all directions 
upon their scalps! Yet those people came from ancestors 
who must have been, centuries ago, magnificent types of 
humanity, to be able to accomplish what they did in the 
way of colonization. With the habit we possess of looking 
for finer, healthier specimens of humanity in the country 
than in the cities, this condition of affairs came somewhat 
as a surprise to me, since that rule generally applied to 
most nations I have visited except Brazil. Those people, 
partly by constant intermarriage among themselves, 
partly by the mixture of black blood with the white, and 
largely owing to the effects of the most terrible complaint 
of the blood in existence — universal in Brazil — partly, 
too, by the dull, uninteresting, wasted lives they led and 
the poverty of their nourishment, were reduced to a state 
of semi-idiocy. The men seemed to have hardly the 
strength and energy to walk or even stand up, although 
I must confess, to my regret, that they had not yet lost 
the power of talking. 
Their features were unattractive. Eyes were wide 
apart and widely expanded, so that the entire circle of 
the iris was exposed, although the eyeball itself was not 
a fleur de tete, but rather sunk into excessively spacious 
orbital cavities in the skull. The part of the eyeball which 
is usually white was yellow with them, softened somewhat 
by luxuriant eyelashes of abnormal length. In fact, the 
only thing that seemed plentiful and vigorous with them 
was the hair, which grew abundantly and luxuriantly 
everywhere, just as bad grass and weeds do on unculti¬ 
vated or abandoned lands. There was a lot of hair 
everywhere: on the scalp, on the eyebrows, on the men's 
57 
