The Black Race, as considered in the various peoples const.i.tuting its type, is distinguished by its short and woolly hair, compressed skull, flattened nose, prominent jaws, thick lips, bowed legs, and black or dark brown skin. Its members are confined to the central and southern regions of Africa and the southern parts of Asia and Oceania. The blacks found in America are the descendants of African slaves transported into the New World by Europeans.

The peoples belonging to the Black Race present great variations. Some have the type altogether peculiar to the Race we have just characterized, while others show a tendency to approach the Yellow and the White Races. The inhabitants of Guinea and Congo are quite black, but the Caffres are only excessively brown and resemble Abyssinians. The Hottentots and Bushmen are yellowish, like the Chinese, though at the same time possessing the features and physiognomy of the Negro.

As striking varieties are, therefore, observable in the Black Race as in the White, and a rigorous cla.s.sification of it is consequently very difficult to establish; but as we coincide in that which has been suggested by M. d'Omalius d'Halloy, we shall separate the Black Race into two divisions, the _Western_ and the _Eastern_ Branches.

CHAPTER I.

WESTERN BRANCH.

We shall notice three families in the _Western_ Branch of the Black Race, those of the Caffres, Hottentots, and Negroes. These general groups comprise an immense number of tribes, many of them still unknown, const.i.tuting a population of about fifty-two millions.

CAFFRE FAMILY.

The Caffres who inhabit the south-east of Africa form, so to speak, the stepping-stone or intermedium between the brown and the black nations.

Their hair is woolly, but their complexion is not so dark nor their nose so flat as those of a Negro. Possessing more apt.i.tude for civilization than the other black races, they are a.s.sociated together in large communities, each of which obeys a chief, and though half wandering in their habits, occupy some very populous towns, of considerable extent, and resembling vast camps. Their clothing is very scanty, being reduced in the men's case almost to a cloak, whilst the women are better covered in leathern garments.

The Caffres have great herds of cattle and devote themselves to agriculture. They cultivate maize, millet, beans and watermelons; make bread and beer, and manufacture earthenware, are able to utilize metals, employ iron and copper, and know how to turn both into tools and ornaments. They believe in a Supreme Being as well as in the immortality of the soul, but pervert their religious sentiments by divers superst.i.tions.

The various tribes of this great family possess physical characteristics in common which are not to be found in other African nations. Caffres are far taller and stronger; they have well-proportioned limbs, a brown skin, black and woolly hair; the elevated forehead and the projecting nose of the European with the thick lips of the Negro, and the high prominent cheekbones of the Hottentot. Their language is sonorous, sweet, and harmonious, with a rumbling in its p.r.o.nunciation.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 226.--A CAFFRE.]

We cla.s.s with this family:

1. The Southern Caffres, who include the Amakisas, Amathymbas, or Tamboukis, Amapendas, and other tribes;

2. The Amazulas, Vatwas, and some other warlike wandering hordes who have lately advanced southward into the interior;

3. The inhabitants of Delagoa Bay, who bear a closer resemblance to the Negroes;

4. The Bechuanas and all the numerous tribes situated towards the north and in the interior, speaking a language of their own, called _Sichuana_.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 227.--NATIVE OF THE MOZAMBIQUE COAST.]

The Bechuana nations are the most advanced of these four groups. The traveller Livingstone, who made a long stay in their country, has given excellent descriptions of them in his "Expedition to the Zambesi." They have made progress in arts and civilization, inhabit large towns, have well-built houses, till the soil, and know how to preserve one year's crop until the next. Their features tend towards an approach to those of Europeans.

In the region of the _Tammahas_, not far from Marhow, a town of ten thousand inhabitants, fields of corn several hundred acres in extent, testify to a rather forward state of agriculture and industry.

The _Maratsi_ cultivate sugar and tobacco, make knives and razors, construct their houses in masonry, and ornament them with pilasters and mouldings.

We must also affiliate to the Caffres, the inhabitants of the Mozambique coast, that is to say, that portion of the east coast of Africa between the mouth of the Zambesi and Cape Delgado. Fig. 227 represents a typical native of this district.

HOTTENTOT FAMILY.

The _Hottentots_, whom the Dutch colonists call Bosjesmans or Bushmen, inhabit the southern extremity of the continent. Their skin is of a dark yellowish hue, and it is only in consequence of their features and conformation, which are those of Negroes, that the Hottentots are placed in the Black Race, for if their colour is considered, they should be ranked in the Yellow one.

Prior to the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope by European navigators, the Hottentots formed a numerous people, whose little tribes lived happily and tranquilly under the patriarchal rule of their chiefs or elders. Composed of from three to four hundred individuals only, these hordes roved about with their flocks and a.s.sembled in villages, the houses of which being constructed of branches of trees and reed mats, were taken asunder on the signal of departure, and removed by oxen to the site of the new encampment selected by the chief. The wildest of them had for covering a cloak of sheepskins sewn together, and their weapons were a bow and poisoned arrows. This people were active and intrepid hunters, and they found an opportunity of proving to the Europeans that they were brave in war. Their cruel invaders, the Dutch, exterminated the majority of these tribes, others were violently divested of their possessions and hurled back into the forests or the deserts, where their wretched descendants still live.

The Hottentots or Bushmen seem to be the lowest of mankind, as much by their physical characteristics as by the inferiority of their intelligence. They are of small stature, yellowish complexion, and repulsive countenance. Prominent foreheads, small sunken eyes, extremely flat noses, and thick projecting lips, form the distinctive features of their face. In consequence of their miserable state of existence, they become worn out and decrepit early in life. They delight in personal adornment, and deck ears, arms, and legs with beads, and with iron, copper, or bra.s.s rings. The women colour the whole or part of their faces; for all covering, they throw over their shoulders a kind of sheepskin mantle.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 228.--THE HOTTENTOT VENUS.]

We give here (fig. 228), as an accurate specimen of the Hottentot race, the portrait (from a cast in the French Museum of Natural History) of a woman of that country, who died at Paris in 1828, and who was known by the name of "The Hottentot Venus." The physical specialty which rendered her remarkable, and which consisted in a considerable development of the posterior muscles, was merely an individual anomaly, and does not permit of any general conclusion being drawn from it as a characteristic of the Hottentot race. The skeleton of this female is preserved entire in the Museum, where a cast of the whole body, coloured as in life, may also be seen.

The Bushman's dwelling is a low hut or a circular cavity. They formerly lived in a species of natural caves among the rocks, and a few individuals, even to the present day, occupy these same dens, which convey to us a perfect idea of man's habitations at the time of his first appearance on the globe.

These wild beings have never been seen engaged in any other occupation than that of making or repairing their weapons and their barbed or poisoned arrows. In times of scarcity, they eat herb-roots, ants' eggs, locusts, and snakes. Their language is a mixture of chattering, hissing, and nasal grunts.

As regards physical type, the Hottentots are small, but well-proportioned, and erect without being muscular. They are generally extremely ugly. Their nose is usually flat, their eyes long and narrow, very wide apart from each other and with the inner angle rounded as among the Chinese, whom the Hottentots resemble besides in some other respects. Their cheekbones are high set and very prominent, and form almost an equilateral triangle with their sharp-pointed chin. Their teeth are very white. The women sometimes possess pleasing figures in early youth, but later on their b.r.e.a.s.t.s lengthen immoderately, their stomach becomes protuberant, and sometimes the hind part of their body is covered with an enormous ma.s.s of fat. This inclination was visible to an exaggerated excess in the case of the "Hottentot Venus;" but as we have said, she merely const.i.tuted an individual exception, and it would be erroneous to set it down as a general characteristic of the whole Hottentot family.

NEGRO FAMILY.

The Negroes occupy a large part of Central and Southern Africa.

Senegambia, Guinea, a portion of the western Soudan, the coast of Congo, along with the immense extent of country, as yet almost entirely unknown, which is comprised between Congo on the west and the coasts of Mozambique and Zanzibar on the east, are the dwelling-places of the Negroes, properly so called.

Guinea and Congo are the cla.s.sic homes of the Negro. There live the representatives of this race, with the most characteristic and repulsive features. The belief is, that, as the incursions of Asiatic and European populations into Africa were always effected by the Isthmus of Suez and the Red Sea, the aboriginal blacks were thrust back more and more towards the west of the continent. The inhabitants of Guinea and Congo would consequently be the descendants and contemporary representatives of the primitive black stock.

Negroes are also to be found in the numerous islands of the Southern Ocean; New Guinea, New Britain, New Caledonia, Australia, Madagascar, &c., &c. In the last named large island, a vast Negro kingdom is in existence, governed by a queen, who sent amba.s.sadors to England and France at the commencement of the present century. Finally, there are Negroes in the United States, and in the West Indies. From 1848, when slavery was declared abolished in the French possessions, the blacks have been free in those colonies, and the gradual emanc.i.p.ation of the Negroes which has taken place since, both in the American and Spanish territories, has completely relieved them from bondage.

We proceed to study the Negroes, firstly as regards organization, and then from the intellectual and moral stand-point.

The physiognomy of the Negro is so strongly distinctive that it is impossible not to recognize it at the first glance, even if the individual should have a fair skin. His protruding lips, low forehead, projecting teeth, woolly and half-frizzled hair, thin beard, broad, flat nose, retreating chin, and round eyes, give him a peculiar look amongst all other human races. Several are bow-legged, almost all have but little calf, half-bent knees, the body stooped forward, and a tired gait.

The masticatory muscles are more powerful in the Negro than in the White, on account of the greater length of the jaw. Their occiput is flatter than that of the White, and the great occipital hole placed further back. Dr. Madden has noticed skeletons of Negroes in Upper Egypt, showing six lumbar vertebrae instead of five, a fact which explains the length of their loins and shambling gait. The hips are less prominent than in a white man. We may add that in this race the trunk is not so broad as in the other human families, the arms are slightly longer in proportion, and the legs rather perceptibly bent, with flat and high placed calves.

The bones of the skull and those of the body are thicker and harder than in the other races.

The bony cavity of the pelvis is much narrower in the Negro than in the European, but it is broader towards the os sacrum, which renders delivery easy to a Negress. Accurate measurements show the upper portion of the pelvis to be a fourth wider in the European than in the Negro.

The thighs also differ in the Negro and the White, being very perceptibly flattened in the former.

The foot partic.i.p.ates in this general ugliness of the limbs. Flat feet, which are sufficient to exempt from military service among the French, are not only no deformity in the Negro, but a normal characteristic.

Instead of forming that curve which imparts elasticity to the whole frame, the under part of the Negro's foot is flat, thus rendering it less fitted to support the body on marches. So apparent is this malformation in the black, that they say of him in America, "The sole of his foot makes a hole in the sand;" and it is easy, in consequence, to distinguish by a mere look the footprint of an European from that of a Negro. The first only shows the marks of the toes and heel, while the other is the impress of the entire sole, from one end to the other.

Besides, the foot of the Negro is large and narrow, with wide divisions between the toes, while the nails are so sharp and pointed, that they resemble claws.

The complexion of the skin is one of the most apparent, though not most characteristic, attributes of the Negro race. The belief was long entertained that the colour of the blacks resulted from the prolonged action of the sun on their bodies, but observation has shown that such is not the case, and that their extremely dark hue by no means depends either on the intensity or brilliancy of the solar rays. White men are to be found in the central parts of Africa, in the Soudan and the Sahara, for instance, as well as among the Touaricks, whilst black tribes exist in countries subject to the most rigorous cold, such as Van Diemen's Land, and New Zealand. In another direction, too, quite close to the white Icelanders and Norwegians, people with very dark skins may be seen, like the Laplanders; and in California, a country of cold lat.i.tude, the aborigines are, as we have stated, almost black.

The black colour resides in an oily, greasy principle, termed _pigmentum nigrum_ (black pigment), which is deposited in a layer in the mucous tissue on the cuticle. This penetrates into the hair, dyeing it black, and diffuses itself throughout the entire system even to the membranes surrounding the brain. This black mucous net-work appears to protect the skin from the violent action of an African sun, and preserves it from those inflammations which are called sun-strokes in our climate.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 229.--A ZANZIBAR NEGRO.]

Crossing with the White gradually diminishes the Negro's colour, and in proportion to the preponderance of black or white in its progenitors, the offspring presents various gradations of complexion. The following are the names which according to Valmont de Bomaire are given in the colonies to the issue of the union of the two races: 1. The child of a white man and a Negress, or of a Negro and a white woman, is called a _mulatto_, who is neither black nor white, but of a blackish yellow hue, and who has short and frizzly black hair. 2. The offspring of a white man and a mulatto woman, or of a Negro and a mulatto woman, is termed a _quadroon_, who, as regards colour, is a mixture of three-quarters white with one-quarter black, or three-quarters black with one-quarter white.