Page:Essays ethnological and linguistic.djvu/147

different hues speaking the same language and evidently of the same stock, but having their different hues according to their localities. But as color may be certainly ascribed to climate, so it may be positively considered more or less decided according to the length of time, which the people in their generations had been subjected to the influence of that climate. The same effect might be expected whether their progenitors had been of a lighter or darker hue. The coasts above mentioned in the north-west abound in hills often covered with snow and with verdant forests. A few degrees to the south, we come to the climate of California, which is on the other hand dry and hot to an excessive degree; the earth is barren, abounding in rocky and sandy districts, and deficient in water. The inhabitants of this country speak a different language from their northern neighbours, and in color, so far from being like them white as Europeans, are described to be as black as negroes, and having the conformation of the Papuans. Dr. Prichard says, "It seems from this description that color is not the only circumstance, in which the Californians make an approximation to the character of person prevalent in some other tropical countries as among the Negroes of Guinea, New Guinea, and the New Hebrides. The shape of their heads and features may be compared with those of the nations last mentioned" (p. 447). Go again a few degrees south and we come to other tribes of different shades of color, different languages, different conformations as regards stature and figure. Some of great stature and fierce, others mild and diminutive (p. 451), differing in form as well as in complexion (p. 453), as rendering it impossible for us to imagine that the differences could have been of any such recent date as must be assigned them, if they had sprung from one single source of immigration. Some of a coppery hue, some of a yellow tinge, some of an olive brown of different shades from light to bronze, some so fair that they are termed Yucacari or white, men, and some tawny approaching to black (p. 473), all contradictory, says Prichard, of the general assertion of uniformity of type among these races (p. 464), and in some as the Quichua nation with moral qualities in every respect strongly in contrast with the character, which some writers would represent as the universal and undeviating attribute of the native races of the New World (p. 466). Without dwelling on the extremes of dark color among some tribes, as the Charryos, or degrees of fairness in others, as for instance the Boroa tribe, or the Mandans, it seems difficult to conceive how any writer could pronounce them under these circumstances to bear all a general like-