HOTTENTOT FEMALE.
The Hottentot. This race inhabits the south of Africa, and parts extending thence into the interior; they are of a yellowish-brown complexion, small in stature, with hair consisting of small black knobs of a crisp sort of wool, separated from each other in such a way that the skin of the head may be distinctly seen between them. They are strictly nomadic, scarcely ever remaining in any fixed spot, but following the animals they hunt and kill for food, upon the flesh of which, with a few roots, they live.
Dr. Livingstone denies that they are very small in stature; speaking of the Bushmen, a tribe of the Hottentot family, he says:—"They are the only real nomads in the country, they never cultivate the soil, nor rear any domestic animals, save wretched dogs; they are so intimately acquainted with the habits of the game, that they follow them in their migrations from place to place, and prey upon them, and thus prove as complete a check upon their inordinate increase as the other carnivora. The chief subsistence of the Bushmen is the flesh of game, but that is eked out by what the women collect of roots, beans, or fruits of the desert."
MALAY.
The Malay family are a coast-dwelling people, delighting in the water, and never found very far removed from it; they inhabit the southernmost coast of China, from Siam southwards, and all the adjacent islands. They are of a dark rich brown colour, with straight, coarse, black hair and scanty beard, which in some is quite wanting. Some of the members of this family are above the usual standard of height, such as the Polynesians and Tahitians. The moral character of the Malays, generally speaking, is of an inferior order. They are a race differing much, in some respects, from the Negro and Red Indian, being of peculiarly active temperaments; they exhibit considerable intellectual capacity, and are an ingenious people. It is extremely probable, from the fact of their being found in islands surrounded by others in the hands of the Ethiopic race, that they have pushed out the less active variety, and, in short, annihilated them; and it is likely that they will in turn suffer extinction at the hands of a superior variety, or a variety rendered superior by civilisation.
PAPUAN.
The Papuan race inhabit the Feejee Islands and the coasts of New Guinea; they are almost black, with a rough skin and thick woolly hair, which grows much longer than in the Negro, and which they wear curled up so as to form a resisting mass, and no bad protection against the blow from a club (their national weapon). Their height is above the average of Europeans. Fish and yams are their chief food.
The Negrillo are nearly black in colour, short in stature, with projecting jaws and thick woolly hair, the nose not so flat as the Negro, nor the lips so thick; they inhabit the interior of New Guinea and a few islands in its locality, of which they appear to have been the aborigines, the central parts only being occupied by them; the coasts are inhabited by the Papuan and Malay races, who have driven the Negrillo aborigines from their former abode to the central mountains.