CAUSES OF THE DIFFERENCE IN FEATURES.
We now come to a consideration of the difference in the features of
the human family, and especially the great variety to be seen in
the African race. From the grim worshippers of Odin in the woods of
Germany, down to the present day, all uncivilized nations or tribes
have more or less been addicted to the barbarous custom of disfiguring
their persons.
Thus, among the North American Indians, the tribe known as the “flat
heads,” usually put their children’s heads to press when but a few
days old; and consequently, their name fitly represents their personal
appearance. While exploring the valley of the Zambesi, Dr. Livingstone
met with several tribes whose mode of life will well illustrate this
point. He says:--
“The women here are in the habit of piercing the upper lip and
gradually enlarging the orifice until they can insert a shell. The lip
then appears drawn out beyond the perpendicular of the nose, and gives
them a most ungainly aspect. Sekwebu remarked,--‘These women want to
make their mouths like those of ducks.’ And indeed, it does appear as
if they had the idea that female beauty of lip had been attained by
the _Ornithorhynchus paradoxus_ alone. This custom prevails throughout
the country of the Maravi, and no one could see it without confessing
that fashion had never led women to a freak more mad.”[26]
There is a tribe near the coast of Guinea, who consider a flat nose the
paragon of beauty; and at early infancy, the child’s nose is put in
press, that it may not appear ugly when it arrives to years of maturity.
Many of the tribes in the interior of Africa mark the face, arms,
and breasts; these, in some instances, are considered national
identifications. Knocking out the teeth is a common practice, as will
be seen by reference to Dr. Livingstone’s travels. Living upon roots,
as many of the more degraded tribes do, has its influence in moulding
the features.
There is a decided coincidence between the physical characteristics
of the varieties of man, and their moral and social condition; and it
also appears that their condition in civilized society produces marked
modification in the intellectual qualities of the race. Religious
superstition and the worship of idols have done much towards changing
the features of the Negro from the original Ethiopian of Meroe, to the
present inhabitants of the shores of the Zambesi.
The farther the human mind strays from the ever-living God as a
spirit, the nearer it approximates to the beasts; and as the mental
controls the physical, so ignorance and brutality are depicted upon the
countenance.
As the African by his fall has lost those qualities that adorn
the visage of man, so the Anglo-Saxon, by his rise in the scale of
humanity, has improved his features, enlarged his brain, and brightened
in intellect.
Let us see how far history will bear us out in this assertion. We all
acknowledge the Anglo-Saxon to be the highest type of civilization. But
from whence sprang this refined, proud, haughty, and intellectual race?
Go back a few centuries, and we find their ancestors described in the
graphic touches of Cæsar and Tacitus. See them in the gloomy forests
of Germany, sacrificing to their grim and gory idols; drinking the
warm blood of their prisoners, quaffing libations from human skulls;
infesting the shores of the Baltic for plunder and robbery; bringing
home the reeking scalps of enemies as an offering to their king.
Macaulay says:--“When the Britons first became known to the Tyrian
mariners, they were little superior to the Sandwich Islanders.”
Hume says:--“The Britons were a rude and barbarous people, divided into
numerous clans, dressed in the skins of wild beasts: druidism was their
religion, and they were very superstitious.” Cæsar writing home, said
of the Britons,--“They are the most degraded people I ever conquered.”
Cicero advised his friend Atticus not to purchase slaves from Briton,
“because,” said he, “they cannot be taught music, and are the ugliest
people I ever saw.”
An illustration of the influence of circumstances upon the physical
appearance of man may be found still nearer our own time. In the Irish
rebellion in 1641, and 1689, great multitudes of the native Irish were
driven from Armagh and the South down into the mountainous tract
extending from the Barony of Flews eastward to the sea; on the other
side of the kingdom the same race were expelled into Litrin, Sligo,
and Mayo. Here they have been almost ever since, exposed to the worst
effects of hunger and ignorance, the two great brutalizers of the human
race.
The descendants of these exiles are now distinguished physically, from
their kindred in Meath, and other districts, where they are not in a
state of personal debasement. These people are remarkable for open,
projecting mouths, prominent teeth, and exposed gums; their advancing
cheek-bones and depressed noses carry barbarism on their very front.
In Sligo and northern Mayo, the consequences of two centuries of
degradation and hardship exhibit themselves in the whole physical
condition of the people, affecting not only the features, but the
frame, and giving such an example of human degradation as to make it
revolting.
They are only five feet two inches, upon an average, bow-legged,
bandy-shanked, abortively-featured; the apparitions of Irish ugliness
and Irish want.[27]
Slavery is, after all, the great demoralizer of the human race. In
addition to the marks of barbarism left upon the features of the
African, he has the indelible imprint of the task-master. Want of food,
clothing, medical attention when sick, over-work, under the control of
drunken and heartless drivers, the hand-cuffs and Negro whip, together
with the other paraphernalia of the slave-code, has done much to
distinguish the blacks from the rest of the human family. It must also
be remembered that in Africa, the people, whether living in houses or
in the open air, are oppressed with a hot climate, which causes them
to sleep, more or less, with their mouths open. This fact alone is
enough to account for the large, wide mouth and flat nose; common sense
teaching us that with the open mouth, the features must fall.
As to the hair, which has also puzzled some scientific men, it is
easily accounted for. It is well-known that heat is the great crisper
of the hair, whether it be on men’s heads or on the backs of animals. I
remember well, when a boy, to have witnessed with considerable interest
the preparations made on great occasions by the women, with regard to
their hair.
The curls which had been carefully laid away for months, were taken
out of the drawer, combed, oiled, rolled over the prepared paper, and
put in the gently-heated stove, there to remain until the wonted curl
should be gained. When removed from the stove, taken off the paper
rolls, and shaken out, the hair was fit to adorn the head of any lady
in the land.
Now, the African’s hair has been under the influence for many
centuries, of the intense heat of his native clime, and in each
generation is still more curly, till we find as many grades of hair as
we do of color, from the straight silken strands of the Malay, to the
wool of the Guinea Negro. Custom, air, food, and the general habits
of the people, spread over the great area of the African continent,
aid much in producing the varieties of hair so often met with in the
descendants of the country of the Nile.
In the recent reports of Dr. Livingstone, he describes the physical
appearance of a tribe which he met, and which goes to substantiate
what has already been said with regard to the descent of the Africans
from the region of the Nile. He says:--
“I happened to be present when all the head men of the great chief
Msama who lives west of the south end of Tanganayika, had come together
to make peace with certain Arabs who had burned their chief town, and I
am certain one could not see more finely-formed, intellectual heads in
any assembly in London or Paris, and the faces and forms corresponded
with the finely-shaped heads. Msama himself had been a sort of Napoleon
for fighting and conquering in his younger days.
“Many of the women are very pretty, and, like all ladies, would be
much prettier if they would only let themselves alone. Fortunately,
the dears cannot change their darling black eyes, beautiful foreheads,
nicely-rounded limbs, well-shaped forms, and small hands and feet;
but they must adorn themselves, and this they will do by filing their
splendid teeth to points like cats’ teeth. These specimens of the fair
sex make shift by adorning their fine, warm brown skins, and tattooing
various pretty devices without colors. They are not black, but of a
light warm brown color.
“The Cazembe’s queen would be esteemed a real beauty, either in London,
Paris, or New York; and yet she had a small hole through the cartilage,
near the tip of her fine aquiline nose. But she had only filed one side
of two of the front swan-white teeth, and then what a laugh she had!
Large sections of the country northwest of Cazembe, but still in the
same inland region, are peopled with men very much like those of Msama
and Cazembe.”
FOOTNOTES:
[26] “Livingstone’s Travels,” p. 366.
[27] “Dublin University Magazine,” Vol. IV., p. 653.