Thus, among the North American Indians, the tribe known as the “flat heads,” usually put their children’s heads to press when but a few days old; and consequently, their name fitly represents their personal appearance. While exploring the valley of the Zambesi, Dr. Livingstone met with several tribes whose mode of life will well illustrate this point. He says:—
“The women here are in the habit of piercing the upper lip and gradually enlarging the orifice until they can insert a shell. The lip then appears drawn out beyond the perpendicular of the nose, and gives them a most ungainly aspect. Sekwebu remarked,—‘These women want to make their mouths like those of ducks.’ And indeed, it does appear as if they had the idea that female beauty of lip had been attained by the Ornithorhynchus paradoxus alone. This custom prevails throughout the country of the Maravi, and no one could see it without confessing that fashion had never led women to a freak more mad.”[26]
There is a tribe near the coast of Guinea, who consider a flat nose the paragon of beauty; and at early infancy, the child’s nose is put in press, that it may not appear ugly when it arrives to years of maturity.
Many of the tribes in the interior of Africa mark the face, arms, and breasts; these, in some instances, are considered national identifications. Knocking out the teeth is a common practice, as will be seen by reference to Dr. Livingstone’s travels. Living upon roots, as many of the more degraded tribes do, has its influence in moulding the features.
There is a decided coincidence between the physical characteristics of the varieties of man, and their moral and social condition; and it also appears that their condition in civilized society produces marked modification in the intellectual qualities of the race. Religious superstition and the worship of idols have done much towards changing the features of the Negro from the original Ethiopian of Meroe, to the present inhabitants of the shores of the Zambesi.
The farther the human mind strays from the ever-living God as a spirit, the nearer it approximates to the beasts; and as the mental controls the physical, so ignorance and brutality are depicted upon the countenance.
As the African by his fall has lost those qualities that adorn the visage of man, so the Anglo-Saxon, by his rise in the scale of humanity, has improved his features, enlarged his brain, and brightened in intellect.
Let us see how far history will bear us out in this assertion. We all acknowledge the Anglo-Saxon to be the highest type of civilization. But from whence sprang this refined, proud, haughty, and intellectual race? Go back a few centuries, and we find their ancestors described in the graphic touches of Cæsar and Tacitus. See them in the gloomy forests of Germany, sacrificing to their grim and gory idols; drinking the warm blood of their prisoners, quaffing libations from human skulls; infesting the shores of the Baltic for plunder and robbery; bringing home the reeking scalps of enemies as an offering to their king.
Macaulay says:—“When the Britons first became known to the Tyrian mariners, they were little superior to the Sandwich Islanders.”
Hume says:—“The Britons were a rude and barbarous people, divided into numerous clans, dressed in the skins of wild beasts: druidism was their religion, and they were very superstitious.” Cæsar writing home, said of the Britons,—“They are the most degraded people I ever conquered.” Cicero advised his friend Atticus not to purchase slaves from Briton, “because,” said he, “they cannot be taught music, and are the ugliest people I ever saw.”