This is an opportune moment for alluding to a race, sprung seemingly from Hindoos of the lower classes, which had probably abandoned its own land, and from which those detached groups that traverse the entire globe, without ever fixing themselves anywhere, or ever losing their peculiar characteristics, derive their origin. Under this category come the wandering tribes, commonly known in different languages, as Gipsies, Bohemians, Zingari, Gitanos, &c., who wander over countries either as beggars or in pursuit of the lowest callings. These Gipsies and Bohemians, who are especially numerous in the South of France, and enjoy a considerable repute as horse-clippers and tinkers, who are invariably vagrants, and now and then thieves, appear to be descended from low-caste Hindoos. They are travelling Pariahs. Such, at least, is the opinion entertained by some modern ethnologists.
Malabar Family.
The Malabar Family inhabiting the Deccan differs in many respects from the Hindoo, and the peoples included in it are very dark and sometimes black in complexion. This branch is divided into three principal divisions: the Malabars proper, who dwell in the country of that name; the Tamuls, in the Carnatic; and the Telingas, in the north-east. Neither the language nor the customs of the tribes composing this group, exhibit peculiarities sufficiently important to induce us to stop to describe them.
CHAPTER II.
ETHIOPIAN BRANCH.
The African populations which we class with the Brown Race have a resemblance in the formation of the body to those of the White Race, but their skin is darker in colour, being intermediate between that of the Negro and that of the White. The natives constituting this branch have never attained to any appreciable degree of civilization, and there is a complete void of positive notions as to their origin or migrations, while even the different languages in use among them, are partly unknown to us. We shall distinguish in the Ethiopian branch, two great families, the Abyssinian and the Fellan.
Abyssinian Family.
