Sixthly, With the tropic and the latitude of the Senegal, begins the region of predominant and almost universal black, and this continues, if we confine ourselves to the low and plain countries, through all inter tropical Africa.
Seventhly, Beyond this is the country of copper coloured and red people, who, in Kafirland, are the majority, while in inter-tropical Africa there are but few such tribes, and those in countries of mountainous elevation.
Lastly, Towards the Cape are the tawny Hottentots, scarcely darker than the Mongoles, whom they resemble in many other particulars besides colour.
It has long been well known, that as travellers ascend mountains, in whatever region, they find the vegetation at every successive level altering its character, and assuming a more northern aspect, thus indicating that the state of the atmosphere, temperature and physical agencies in general, assimilate as we approach alpine regions, to the peculiarities locally connected with high latitudes. If therefore, complexions and other bodily qualities belonging to races of men depend upon climate and external conditions, we should expect to find them varying in reference to elevation of surface, and if they should be found actually to undergo such variations, this will be a strong argument that these external characters do, in fact, depend upon local conditions. Now, if we inquire respecting the physical characters of the tribes inhabiting high tracts within either of the regions above marked out, we shall find that they coincide with those which prevail in the level or low parts of more northern tracts. The Swiss, in the high mountains above the plains of Lombardy, have sandy or brown hair. What a contrast presents itself to the traveller who descends into the Milanese, where the peasants have black hair and eyes, with strongly-marked Italian and almost Oriental features. In the higher parts of the Biscayan country, instead of the swarthy complexion and black hair of the Castilians, the natives have a fair complexion with light-blue eyes and flaxen or auburn hair. And in Atlantica, while the Berbers of the plains are of brown complexion with black hair, we have seen that the Shuluh mountaineers are fair, and that the inhabitants of the high tracts of Mons Aurasius are completely xanthous, having red or yellow hair and blue eyes, which fancifully, and without the shadow of any proof, they have been conjectured to have derived from the Vandal troops of Genseric.
Even in the inter-tropical region, high elevations of surface, as they produce a cooler climate, seem to occasion the appearance of light complexions. In the high parts of Senegambia, which front the Atlantic, and are cooled by winds from the Western Ocean, where, in fact, the temperature is known to be moderate and even cool at times, the light copper-coloured Frelahs are found surrounded on every side by Negro nations inhabiting lower districts; and nearly in the same parallel, but at the opposite side of Africa, are the high plains of Enarea and Kaffa, where the inhabitants are said to be fairer than the natives of southern Europe. The Galla and the Abyssinians themselves are, in proportion to the elevation of the country inhabited by them, fairer than the natives of low countries; and lest an exception should be taken to a comparison of straight-haired races with woolly Negroes or Shungalla, they bear the same comparison with the Danakil, Hazorta, and the Bishari tribes, resembling them in their hair and features, who inhabit the low tracts between the mountains of Tigre and the shores of the Red Sea, and who are equally or nearly as black as Negroes.
We may find occasion to observe that an equally decided relation exists between local conditions and the existence of other characters of human races in Africa. Those races who have the Negro character in an exaggerated degree, and who may be said to approach to deformity in person—the ugliest blacks with depressed foreheads, flat noses, crooked legs—are in many instances inhabitants of low countries, often of swampy tracts near the sea-coast, where many of them, as the Papels, have scarcely any other means of subsistence than shell fish, and the accidental gifts of the sea. In many places similar Negro tribes occupy thick forests in the hollows beneath high chains of mountains, the summits of which are inhabited by Abyssinian or Ethiopian races. The high table-lands of Africa are chiefly, as far as they are known, the abode or the wandering places of tribes of this character, or of nations who, like the Kafirs, recede very considerably from the Negro type. The Mandingos are, indeed, a Negro race inhabiting a high region; but they have neither the depressed forehead nor the projecting features considered as characteristic of the Negro race.[644]
FOOTNOTES:
[643] Peschel, The Races of Man, pp. 462-464.
CHAPTER VII.