plan: but I supposed that European libraries might easily make up
the deficiency. Procuring a large., skeleton chart, and coloring it
into zoological realms and faunæ, I made a preliminary list of about
150 human families whose likenesses were dpsirable. Their names,
written on differently-colored pieces of paper, an inch square, were
then pasted upon this map, each one in its geographical locality, to
stand as mnemonics for the portraits to he afterwards inserted.
Through the politeness of the late M. Ducos, Minister for hTaval
Affairs, the choice library of the Ministère de la Marine, together
with the vast repository of the Dépôt de la Marine, were freely
opened to my visits ; and here, B a jot 563 in hand, my bibliographical
explorations commenced. The Bibliothèques Impériale, de l’Institut,
and du Jardin des Plantes, were equally accessible through the kindness
of friends, during eight months’ stay at Paris; and, for eight
months subsequently, I resumed my old seat in that paradise of a
bibliophilos, owing to the incomparable facilities readers obtain
there, the British Museum library. Altogether I worked in the
midst of such resources for about twelve months of time, — always
aided, when necessary, by my Wife’s enthusiastic help—guided
throughout by considerate indices from distinguished savans ; during
which period thousands of volumes were subjected to scrutiny, hundreds
yielding materials either for my wife’s pencil or my own notebooks.
In fact, no literary means were lacking for the attainment
of my object; no-efforts spared towards realizing it. Having, in
consequence, acquired practical knowledge of the probable range of
ethnographic materials accumulated at the present day, I can now
speak of their deficiencies with more confidence. Alas ! they are
great indeed !
It was not long, however, before my casting about, at Paris, ended
in the renunciation of an ethnographic map of the nature above
sketched ; owing to the frequency of lacunae, impossible to be filled
up, in the pictorial gradations of humanity spread over the earth.
Inaccurate designs of many races, false colorations of most, un-
authentic exceptions to exactness throughout the remainder, reduced
the number of reliable portraits to a very small number in published
works. To the ethnographer some otherwise valuable books, perfect
as to costumes of nations, are wholly unavailable683 as regards facial
Catalogue particulier dee Limes de Géographie et de Voyages qui se trouvent dans les
Bibliothèques du Department de la Marine et des Colonies; Paris, Imprimérie Royale, 8ro,
1840; vol. III.
s89 Such, for instance, as Georgi’s Beschreibung aller Nationum des Russichen Reichs, St.
Petersburg, 1776; also republished in smaller edition at Leipzig, 1783; and in four vols.
London, without plates, 1780: — R eckbberg , Les Peuples de la Russie, &c., with 94 plates
iconography, — the Artists, naturally ignorant of physiognomical
diversity beyond the small circle of races within their personal
cognizances, having given European features to every variety of
man ; so that, according to each designer’s country, all nations are
made to assume French, English, or German\ faces; often with as
little regard to foreign human nature as we find in Tailors’ or
Modistes’ show-plates of the newest fashions ! Some of the best
descriptive works contain plates too small for reliance ; in general
uncolored, or else tinted without regard to exactness ; at the same
time that of whole families of mankind there are no representations
whatever. It is, in fact, rare to meet with colored plates of races
worthy of confidence, before the beginning of this century: not that
I would disparage the efforts made by Cook, La Pérouse,.Krusenstern,
and other voyagers, to furnish good copper-plates of several distant
tribes of men met with in their daring circumnavigations.
But the man essentially imbued with a sort of instinctive presentiment
of the importance of human iconography, and to whose single
pencil we still owe more varied representations of mankind over the
earth than to any individual before or. since, without question Was
C h o r is .684 Chosen artist to the second Russian voyage round the
world under Ottoe von Kotzebue in the “Rurick”685—1815-18—
favored by a liberal and scientific commander, and aided by a skilful
naturalist, Adelbert de Chamisso, Choris really availed himself of glorious
opportunities (so frequently deemed unimportant in later maritime
expeditions, — compared to the triumphant collection of “new
species ” among oysters, butterflies, or parsleys), and may be rightfully
styled the father of those ethnological portrait-painters who,
like Lesueur, have so skilfully illustrated the voyages of Péron (under
Baudin) Duperrey, De Freycinet, D’Urville, Gaimard, and others.
It is-to Choris’s, more than to any other man’s labors, that the works
of Prichard, and Cuvier, as the learned copyists frequently point out,
owe their iconographie interest : and here it may be conveniently
stated that, in our Tableau, I have endeavored, as far as possible, to
of costumes. Many other works, equally defective ethnographically, if excellent for national
costumes, are in the “ King’s Library,” British Museum. Even some works of the
great French Navigators—such as D’E ntrecasteaux, 1800; De B ougainville, 1837*
L aplace, 1835; Du P et it T huars, 1841 — are almost valueless to human iconography,
however meritorious and important in descriptions, and precious in other branches of
natural history.
884 Voyage Pittoresque autour du Monde, avec des Portraits de Sauvages d'Amérique, d'Asie,
d’Afrique, et des Iles du Grand Ocean; Paris, Didot, folio, 1822. Of this work I have used
four copies at different libraries, two of them uncolored ; and, as regards the coloration of
the other two, one varied materially from the other in tints.
685 Voyage of discovery into, the South Sea, &c., transi. Lloyd, London, 3 vols. 8vu 1821.