make extracts. The following resume is certainly decisive in establishing
the entire want of connexion between Types and Climate.
“ The distinguishing peculiarities of the African races may be summed up into four
heads ; viz. : the characters of complexion, hair, features and figure. We have to remark__
“ 1. That some races, with woolly hair and complexions of a deep black color, have fine
forms, regular and beautiful features, and are, in their figure and countenances, scarcely
different from Europeans. Such are the Iolofs, near the Senegal, and the race of Guber,
or of Hausa, in the interior of Sudan. Some tribes of the South African race, as the
darkest of the Kafirs, are nearly of this description, as well as some families or tribes in
the empire of Kongo, while others have more of the Negro character in their countenances
and form.
“ 2. Other tribes have the form and features similar to those above described: their
complexion is black or a deep olive, or a copper color approaching to black, while their
hair, though often crisp and frizzled, is not the least woolly. Such are the Bishari and
Danakil and Hazorta, and the darkest of the Abyssinians.
“ 3. Other instances have been mentioned in which the complexion is black and the features
have the Negro type, while the nature of the hair deviates considerably, and is even
said to be rather long and in flowing ringlets. Some of the tribes near the Zambezi are
of this class.
“ 4. Among nations whose color deviates towards a lighter hue, we find some with woolly
hair, with a figure and features approaching the European. Such are the Bechuana Kafirs,
of a light brown complexion. The tawny Hottentots, though not approaching the European,
differ from the Negro. Again, some of the tribes on the Gold Coast and the Slave
Coast, and the Ibos, in the Bight of Benin, are of a lighter complexion than many other
Negroes, while their features are strongly marked with the peculiarities of that race.”
These observations, Prichard thinks, cannot he reconciled with the
idea that the Negroes are of one distinct species ; and that the opinion
sustaining the existence, among thefii, of a number of separate species,
each distinguished by some peculiarity which another wants,
might be more reasonably maintained. The latter supposition he
conjectures, however, to be refuted by the fact that species in no case
pass so insensibly into each other. It will appear, notwithstanding,
when we come to the questions of hybridity and of specific characters,
that Prichard s doctrine, besides being in itself a non seguitur, is overthrown
by-positive facts.
Prichard himself tells us, “ there are no authentic instances, either
in Africa or elsewhere, of the transmutation of other varieties of
mankind into Negroes.” 225 We have, however, he continues, examples
of very considerable deviation in the opposite direction. The descendants
of the genuine Negroes are no longer such : they have lost
in several instances many of the peculiarities of the stock from which
they spring. To which fallacies we reply, that vague reports of misinformed
travellers alone support such assertion. Our remarks on
the Permanence of Types establish, that what physiological changes
Prichard and his schpol refer to climatic influences, are indisputably
to be ascribed to amalgamation of races.
Let us now travel through Nigritia, and ascend the tahle-lands of
Abyssinia; where another climate, another Fauna, another Flora,
and another Type of Man, arise to view. Here, for the first time
since our departure from the Cape of Good Hope, we stand among
tribes of men who are actually capacitated to enjoy a higher stage
of civilization; and, although we have not yet reached God’s
“ noblest work,” we have happily waded through the “ slough of
despond” in human gradations of Africa.
Reader! let us imagine ourselves standing upon the highest peak in
Abyssinia; and that our vision could extend over the whole continent,
embracing south, east, north and west: what tableaux-vivants would be
presented to the eye, no less than to the mind! To the south of the
Sahara we should descry at least 50,000,000 of Mgritians, steeped in
irredeemable ignorance and savagism; inhabiting the very countries
where history first finds them — vast territorial expanses, which the
nations of the north, in ancient times, had no possible means of visiting
or colonizing. Do we not behold, on every side, human characteristics
so completely segregated from ours, that they can be explained
in no other way than by supposing a direct act of creation ?
Upon the moral and intellectual traits of such abject types no impression
has been made within 5000 years: none can. be made, (so far as
science knows,) until their organization becomes changed by—silliest
of desperate suppositions—a “ miracle.” Turn we now towards the
north. There we behold the tombs, the ruined temples, the gigantic
pyramids of Pharaonic Egypt, which, braving the hand of time for
5000 years past, seem to defy its action for as many to come. These
monuments, moreover, were not only built by a people differing from
all others of Asia and Europe, in characters, language, civilization, and
other attributes; but diverging still more widely from every other human
type. Positive evidence, furthermore, exists, that Negroes, at least as
far back as the X11th dynasty, in the twenty-fourth century b . c., dwelt
contemporaneously in Africa: which is parallel with (b . c. 2348) the
era ascertained, to' a fraction by Rabbinical arithmetic, for N oah s
Flood; when all creatures outside of the Ark, except some fishes,
had found a watery grave! But we pursue our journey.
Abyssinia, according to T ellez, is called by its inhabitants Albere-
gran or the “ lofty plain; ” by which epithet they contrast it with the
low countries surrounding it on almost, every side. It is compared
by the Abyssinians to the flower of the Denguelet, which displays a
magnificent corolla surrounded by thorns — in allusion to the many
barbarous tribes who inhabit the numerous circumjacent valleys and
low lands.226
The highlands of Abyssinia, properly so called, stretch from the
southern provinces of Shoa and Efat, which are not far distant from