The peoples belonging to the Black Race present great variations. Some have the type altogether peculiar to the Race we have just characterized, while others show a tendency to approach the Yellow and the White Races. The inhabitants of Guinea and Congo are quite black, but the Caffres are only excessively brown and resemble Abyssinians. The Hottentots and Bushmen are yellowish, like the Chinese, though at the same time possessing the features and physiognomy of the Negro.
As striking varieties are, therefore, observable in the Black Race as in the White, and a rigorous classification of it is consequently very difficult to establish; but as we coincide in that which has been suggested by M. d’Omalius d’Halloy, we shall separate the Black Race into two divisions, the Western and the Eastern Branches.
CHAPTER I.
WESTERN BRANCH.
We shall notice three families in the Western Branch of the Black Race, those of the Caffres, Hottentots, and Negroes. These general groups comprise an immense number of tribes, many of them still unknown, constituting a population of about fifty-two millions.
Caffre Family.
The Caffres who inhabit the south-east of Africa form, so to speak, the stepping-stone or intermedium between the brown and the black nations. Their hair is woolly, but their complexion is not so dark nor their nose so flat as those of a Negro. Possessing more aptitude for civilization than the other black races, they are associated together in large communities, each of which obeys a chief, and though half wandering in their habits, occupy some very populous towns, of considerable extent, and resembling vast camps. Their clothing is very scanty, being reduced in the men’s case almost to a cloak, whilst the women are better covered in leathern garments.
The Caffres have great herds of cattle and devote themselves to agriculture. They cultivate maize, millet, beans and watermelons; make bread and beer, and manufacture earthenware, are able to utilize metals, employ iron and copper, and know how to turn both into tools and ornaments. They believe in a Supreme Being as well as in the immortality of the soul, but pervert their religious sentiments by divers superstitions.
The various tribes of this great family possess physical characteristics in common which are not to be found in other African nations. Caffres are far taller and stronger; they have well-proportioned limbs, a brown skin, black and woolly hair; the elevated forehead and the projecting nose of the European with the thick lips of the Negro, and the high prominent cheekbones of the Hottentot. Their language is sonorous, sweet, and harmonious, with a rumbling in its pronunciation.