7. That Mulattoes, like Negroes, although unacclimated, enjoy extraordinary exemption from yellow-fever when brought to Charleston, Savannah, Mobile, or New Orleans.
The propositions, 1, 3, 4, and 5, are the only ones connected with our subject. They confirm, and even enhance, in certain respects, M. Jacquinot’s assertions, yet are they contested, and Dr. Nott himself has found it necessary to restrict their application. He had made his observations in South Carolina where he found the Mulattoes little prolific and short-lived. Having changed his residence, he obtained different results. At Mobile, New Orleans, Pensacola, towns on the Gulf of Mexico, he found among the Mulattoes many instances of manifest longevity and prolificacy, not merely in their crossed but in their direct alliances. What was the cause of this difference? Dr. Nott inquired whether the difference in the results might not depend upon the difference in the ethnological elements in the crossing. All the Europeans who have colonised America did not belong to the same race. The Caucasians, as is well known, are naturally divided in two groups:—the light-haired race, with grey or blue eyes, a white skin; and the brown races, with a deeper complexion and brown or black hair. The first occupy Northern Europe; the second, Southern Europe. There is thus a little less disparity, and a little more affinity between the Europeans of the South and the Negroes, than between the latter and the Northern Europeans, so that when we hear that intermixture succeeds better in the first than in the second case, it should not surprise us. But South Carolina, where the Mulattoes get on so indifferently, has been colonised by the Anglo-Saxons; whilst the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, where the Mulattoes are more prospering, have been colonised by the French (Louisiana) and by the Spaniards (Florida). Such is the explanation offered by Dr. Nott. Still in maintaining his conclusions on the issues of Negro women, and men of the Germanic race, he thinks that they are not applicable to the Mulattoes whose parents belong to a Caucasian race more or less dark in complexion. Analogous differences are often observed in animals in such crossings when they are placed in connections with species more or less approximate. Before, however, accepting Dr. Nott’s explanation, it may be as well to examine whether the fact may not be differently explained.
South Carolina, comprised between 32° and 35° N. lat., is situated beyond the zone where the African Negroes live: New Orleans, Mobile, and Pensacola are situated nearer the tropics, between the 30° and 31°, and we find in Africa, in Northern Sahara, south of Algiers, some tribes of Negroes who have lived in that latitude from time immemorial. Though the climate does not altogether depend on latitude, it may be readily believed that the Negroes become sooner acclimated upon the shores of the Gulf of Mexico than in the more northern regions. But it is known that men transplanted into climates differing much from that in which their race thrives may, by this simple fact, greatly lose their fecundity. It is not always so, but considering that it does happen, we have a right to ask whether the difference pointed out by Dr. Nott between the Mulattoes of South Carolina, and those of the region of the Gulf may not be owing to this cause.
This interpretation is, however, in opposition to two orders of facts. On the one hand, the Negroes and Negresses of South Carolina are perfectly prolific between themselves.[28] The climate of that country has not weakened their generative powers, and there is no reason why, by their alliances with a white race acclimated in that part, there should be produced an offspring less acclimated than their parents. The diminished vitality and fecundity can, therefore, not be attributed to the influence of the media in which they are brought up.
On the other hand, a result similar to that mentioned by Nott, as regards South Carolina, seems to have been obtained in Jamaica under the 18°, corresponding nearly to the latitude of Senegal and Timbuctoo. This island is situated south of Cuba, Hayti, and Porto Rico, where Negroes and Mulattoes thrive, but these islands have been colonised by the French and the Spaniards, whilst Jamaica is an English colony.[29]
The Mulattoes of Jamaica have thus the same ethnologic origin as those of Carolina; and the following remarks from the History of Jamaica, by Long, entirely confirm Nott’s opinion.[30]
“The Mulattoes of Jamaica,” says Long, “are generally well proportioned, and the Mulatto women have fine features, and seem to have more of the White than of the Negro in their blood. Some of them have married women of their own colour, but these marriages are generally sterile. They seem in this respect to resemble certain mules, being less capable of producing between themselves than with the Whites or Blacks. Some instances may possibly have occurred, where, upon the intermarriage of two Mulattoes, the woman has borne children, which children have grown to maturity; but I never heard of such an instance.
“Those Mulattoes of Jamaica, of which I speak, have married young, have received some education, and are distinguished by their chaste and regular conduct. The observations made regarding them have a great degree of certainty. They do not breed, though there is nothing to indicate that they would not be prolific by intermarrying either with the Blacks or Whites.