i. 333.
We ham e now considered the less civilized inhabitants of the American continent, in respect of their minds ; and have attended to those circumstances with regard to them, in which ingenuity and contrivance, and, in ge neral, the mental qualities and dispositions, may be sup posed to have been exercised. We have viewed them in their political state, their mode of warfare, in their religious observances, and in their domestic condition; we have turned our thoughts to the arts which were known among them when they were discovered, to their language, and to some remarkable customs, by which they are distinguished from the natives of the ancient world. Let us now proceed to consider the inhabitants of the western continent, in relation to the appearance and constitution of their bodies.
With the exception of one or two provinces in the north, and a few individuals in the central regions, the people of America are all of a light brown, or copper colour. Little or no distinction of hue is to be observed throughout the whole continent; and if a shade of dif ference prevails in any place, it is to be attributed rather to the elevation or depression of the country or to some other cause, than to its distance from the equator, or its approach to it. The adventurers who first landed on the parts of America which are situated between the tropics, were astonished to find that there were no ne groes there. The inhabitants of the torrid zone, in the New World, are of the same complexion with those who occupy the more temperate regions. " The In dians," says Ulloa, " who live as far as forty degrees and upwards, south or north of the equator, are not to be distinguished, in point of colour, from those imme diately under it." One uniform tinge of red exists; and has been thought to mark the natives of the western continent, as the descendants of a peculiar race of men.
In the ancient world, the negroes are confined to the torrid zone, and the regions adjacent to it. From this it has been inferred, that the blackness of their colour is to be ascribed to the intensity of the heat in the tro pical climates; and the inference is warranted by the consideration, that among the negroes themselves, the palms of the hands, and those parts of the body which are less exposed to the action of the sun, are compara tively white. It is known, likewise, that the Europeans
become swarthy if they are constantly in the open air during the months of summer; and that their com plexion undergoes a change, even by a short residence in the West India islands. At the same time, there is reason to admit, that the heat of the sun is not the only circumstance to which the difference of colour among human beings is to be attributed; or that this great cause is modified in its operation by others of an infe rior and less actiye character. For it is ascertained, that the people of Lapland, who inhabit a very northerly part of Einope, are by no means so fair as the natives of Great Britain, an island which lies comparatively to the south ; and that the Tartars are of a darker colour than the inhabitants of Europe, under the same parallels of latitude. What the circumstances arc, which modify the heat in producing- the differences of complexion, it is not easy to say ; it is uncertain, from the facts which have been mentioned, that such modifying circumstances do exist. Let us now put the two questions, in older to answer which, these observations have been introduced.. First, How is it, that in America there arc no negroes. in the torrid zone ? and, secondly, I low is it, that the red colour prevails unabated throughout almost all the in habitants of the western continent ?—To the first of these questions, it may be answered, that America is destitute of negroes, because there the heat of the torrid zone, if not less, is more unequally distributed than it is in Africa : and, therefore, the same effect could not be produced in both regions of the world in the same de gree. And as to the other question, it may he answered, that the red colour is preserved in the higher latitudes of the New World by the state of society, which is uni form among the rude natives of America, or by some of the modifying circumstances which we know to exist, but which •c cannot easily- point out.