[39] A. de Quatrefages, Du Croisement des races humaines; Revue des Deux-Mondes, t. viii, p. 162, en note, 1857.
[40] In America, the intermixture between Whites, Negroes, and Mulattoes passes differently. The Mulattoes are slaves like the Negroes. A large number of Mulatresses become the concubines of the White: and the Mulattoes are mostly obliged to confine themselves to Negro women. There are, then, relatively few unions between Mulattoes of the same blood. The abolition of slavery neither could, nor will for a long time, sensibly modify this state of things. The prejudice against colour will not soon become effaced; and many Mulatto women prefer to be the mistresses of Whites to being the wives of Mulattoes. In the East Indies, the prejudice of colour does not exist. The Whites are merely considered as an aristocratic class; the Malays are free as well as the Mulattoes, they have always been so. The Mulattoes are proud of having in their veins European blood, as, in our own country, certain citizens are proud of their aristocratic alliances. They form thus, in the centres of the population, a sort of intermediate caste between the Whites and the natives.
[41] It is necessary to mention, that the expression of the first degree designates here not merely the individuals issued from the first intermixture, but also the descendants of unions which they form between themselves.
[42] Waitz, loc. cit. p. 207.
[43] Mr. Gutzlaff, the Chinese missionary, has been struck with the little fecundity of the Mulattoes of Cambojia, the offspring of the native race and the immigrant Chinese. Cambojia is situated south-west of Siam, south of Anam, between 10° and 14°. “It is remarkable,” he observes, “that the marriages of native females with the Chinese are productive at the first generation, but become gradually sterile, and completely so at the fifth generation. I have seen many such cases; but, I cannot explain such a degeneration between nations so similar in physical conformation, and their mode of life. If it were not so, the Chinese race ought to become predominant, and absorb the native race in a few centuries. Such has not been the case, and the innumerable immigrants which China pours in appear scarce among the population.” (Gutzlaff, Geography of the Cochin-Chinese Empire, Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London, vol. xix, p. 108, London. 1849.)
[44] It is unknown what is the degree of intermixture in the hybrid populations of Mexico and South America; the observations relative to these crossings are extremely difficult to collect, for the variation of Mulattoes of different degrees is not so apparent as in the Mulattoes, Quadroons, etc., of Negroes and Europeans. With regard to colour, hair, shape of the cranium, the European races, especially those of the south, differ infinitely less from the American races than from the Ethiopian and the intermediate characters; even Mulattoes of the first degree are much less marked in the first than in the second case. Thus the famous Paulistas of the province of Saint-Paul, Brazil, issued from the union of Portuguese and Indians, constitute a vigorous class, brave, and even heroic, though ferocious and turbulent. According to certain authors, the European blood predominates in them; others, on the contrary, maintain that they are pure Indians. These contradictions prove the difficulty of estimating the degree of the intermixture between the Mulattoes sprung from Europeans and Indians. The question whether Mulattoes of the first degree are indefinitely prolific between themselves,—whether they are habitually, or only exceptionally so, cannot be solved by travellers. Resident observers, and especially physicians, may ultimately furnish precise facts.
[45] The Chabeins are eugenesic hybrids, while mules, properly so called, are dysgenesic hybrids.
[46] Monthly Journal of Medical Science, Edinburgh, vol. xi, p. 301, 1850. [The most flagrant instance of this is to be found amongst the mixed blooded descendants of the Anglo-Saxon, German, Dutch, French, and Irish nations in the Federal States of America, whose “manifest destiny,” according to their own hope, is the “annexation” of the civilised world. The Puritans of New England founded their claims to the colony on the following propositions:—1. That the earth is the Lord’s and the fulness thereof. 2. That God has given the earth to be inhabited by his saints. 3. That we are the saints. The aborigines of the country were accordingly extirpated, to carry out practically these sentiments.—Editor.]
[47] We must remember that the Australians have stiff and glossy hair, while the hair of the Tasmanians is woolly.
[48] Dict. Pittor. d’Hist. Natur., art. Homme, t. iv, p. 11, Paris, 1836. See also vol. iii, Océanie, by Rienzi; the history of two Australians, Benilong and Daniel, who after living for some years free, and pampered among Europeans, threw away their clothing, and went to live in the woods.