CHAPTER IV. CAUSES OF COLOR.
The various colors seen in the natives in Africa, where amalgamation with other races is impossible, has drawn forth much criticism, and puzzled the ethnologist not a little. Yet nothing is more easily accounted for than this difference of color amongst the same people, and even under the same circumstances. Climate, and climate alone, is the sole cause.
And now to the proof. Instances are adduced, in which individuals, transplanted into another climate than that of their birth, are said to have retained their peculiarities of form and color unaltered, and to have transmitted the same to their posterity for generations. But cases of this kind, though often substantiated to a certain extent, appear to have been much exaggerated, both as to the duration of time ascribed, and the absence of any change. It is highly probable, that the original characteristics will be found undergoing gradual modifications, which tend to assimilate them to those of the new country and situation.
The Jews, however slightly their features may have assimilated to those of other nations amongst whom they are scattered, from the causes already stated, certainly form a very striking example as regards the uncertainty of perpetuity in color.
Descended from one stock, and prohibited by the most sacred institutions from intermarrying with the people of other nations, and yet dispersed, according to the divine prediction, into every country on the globe, this one people is marked with the colors of all; fair in Briton and Germany; brown in France and in Turkey; swarthy in Portugal and in Spain; olive in Syria and in Chaldea; tawny or copper-colored in Arabia and in Egypt;[14] whilst they are “black at Congo, in Africa.”[15]
Let us survey the gradations of color on the continent of Africa itself. The inhabitants of the north are whitest; and as we advance southward towards the line, and those countries in which the sun’s rays fall more perpendicularly, the complexion gradually assumes a darker shade. And the same men, whose color has been rendered black by the powerful influence of the sun, if they remove to the north, gradually become whiter (I mean their posterity), and eventually lose their dark color.[16]
The Portuguese who planted themselves on the coast of Africa a few centuries ago, have been succeeded by descendants blacker than many Africans.[17] On the coast of Malabar there are two colonies of Jews, the old colony and the new, separated by color, and known as the “black Jews,” and the “white Jews.” The old colony are the black Jews, and have been longer subjected to the influence of the climate. The hair of the black Jews are curly, showing a resemblance to the Negro. The white Jews are as dark as the Gipsies, and each generation growing darker.
Dr. Livingstone says,—“I was struck with the appearance of the people in Londa, and the neighborhood; they seemed more slender in form, and their color a lighter olive, than any we had hitherto met.”[18]
Lower down the Zambesi, the same writer says: “Most of the men are muscular, and have large, ploughman hands. Their color is the same admixture, from very dark to light olive, that we saw at Londa.”[19]