All the household The only instance own. While in other countries travellers have much to say about After all that has been said, it would be quite unjustifiable to pronounce the negro incapable of rising to a higher state; and yet to attribute the low grade of present civilization solely to the nature of the continent, would be to ignore entirely the difference of intellect in the various races of mankind. The advantage of Africa consisted, as we saw, in the fact that it was within possible though not easy reach of the Old World. From the latter the negroes have derived almost everything that has improved their condition. If this race had made its appearance in Australia, they would scarcely by their own strength have risen above the state of the Australian natives. Hence, in our estimate of natural talents, we must rank them far below the aborigines of America, who quite independently reached a far greater maturity. On the other hand, if Africa had been better formed, and had it been as accessible as Europe, the negroes would have raised themselves much sooner, and might now perhaps have enjoyed about the same social advantages as the Malayo-Chinese. VII. THE MEDITERRANEAN RACE. To the nations with which the history of ancient and modern civilization in the West has especially to deal, Blumenbach gave the name of Caucasian, but the name has been abandoned as it 43 Livingstone, Travels in Southern Africa, vol. i. p. 332. 1 Characters of the Mediterranean Race. 481 led to mistakes. The term "Mediterranean Nations" has now been -generally substituted for Blumenbach's Caucasians, and we shall therefore use it. The Mediterranean nations include all Europeans who are not Mongoloid, all North Africans, and all Western Asiatics, and, lastly, although as hybrids, the Hindoos of Northern India must be classed with them on account of their language. The prevalent forms of skull are mesocephalic and brachycephalic, yet it is only in a single case that the average index of breadth exceeds 82°. The height of the skull generally decreases proportionately with the increase of breadth. Prognathism and prominence of the cheek-bones are equally rare. In the northern nations the colour of the skin is quite fair; it is darker in Southern Europe, and becomes yellow, red, and brown in North Africa and Arabia, and in the gipsies. The hair of the head is never so long or so cylindrical as that of Mongoloid nations, never so elliptic in section or so short as in negroes, but is generally curly. The most bearded and hairy nations occur among those races, and the North Africans alone have less beard and hair on the body. The nose has always a high bridge, and is never broad or flat as in negroes or Mongols. The lips are usually thin and never intumescent. In no other race are refined and noble features so frequent; nowhere else is that ideal of beauty so often attained, which is in reality the same among all races, for, as Rohlfs significantly remarks, a woman with so-called Caucasian features is considered beautiful by the negroes of the Soudan. With few exceptions, the languages of all the Mediterranean nations are marked by grammatical genders and a highly developed morphological structure. The race itself is divided into the Hamite, Semite, and Indo-European families. The Basques stand alone, and several tribes in and about the Caucasus remain unplaced. I. HAMITES. This family occupies the whole of North Africa as far as the Soudan and the coast districts of Eastern Africa northward of the equator. It is divided into three branches: the Berbers, the + ancient Egyptians, and the East African. In addition to the The ancient Egyptians, called Retu in the hieroglyphics, are Of the Hamites of East Africa, the inhabitants of the Nubian 1 Movers, Das phönizische Alterthum, part 2, pp. 390–395. * 2 Rohlfs, Erster Aufenthalt in Marokko, pp. 56, 62. 3 Maltzan, Tunis and Tripolis, vol. i. p. 100. 4 See above, p. 468. 5 Recherches sur l'origine des Kabyles. Le Globe. Genève, 1871. Ekko "The Heroces Beiers". Nile districts, who call themselves Berâbra, or Berbers, most 6 Hartmann, Nilländer, pp. 215, 235. II Lepsius, Standard Alphabet, ed. 2, p. 203. • Werner Münzinger, Ostafrikanische Studien, pp. 341, 344 Schaffhausen, 1864. 9 Hartmann, ibid, p. 263. 10 Schweinfurth, The Heart of Africa. 11 Krapf, Reisen in Ostafrika, vol. i. p. 94. 12 Otto Kersten, Von d. Deckens Reisen in Ostafrika, vol. ii. p. 374. tolerably luxuriant; their features are regular and agreeable, not infrequently sharply cut, and rather European than Semitic.13 The Galla are a warlike, manly people, conscious of their own strength, and of a moral and noble character. The position of the Somali is less certain; they occupy the eastern promontory of Africa from near Bab-el-Mandeb to the Juba on the Indian Ocean, and border on the Galla district on the west. Otto Kersten 14 describes the Somali of Bardara as of lofty stature (men 5 ft. 7 in., women 5 ft. 3 in.), with long thin faces, beardless chins, piercing eyes, and a woolly head of stiff thick hair from six to eight inches long, and which is said to be always crimped. Guillain adds that a curly head among the Somali invariably indicates a cross with Arab blood. Some tribes of the Somali believe themselves to be descendants of the Koreishites of Mecca, and others of the Ansari of Medina. It is therefore quite possible that on closer examination the Somali may entirely lose their position as Hamites, and be regarded in future as mongrels between negroes and Semites. It is noteworthy that Kersten eulogizes their noble and manly character, although it was among them that the undertaking of Baron von der Decken was destined to end fatally. The position of the Eloikob, or Wakuafi, is also very obscure, as well as that of the Masai, both of which nations have become the terror of all negro tribes in equatorial East Africa, on account of their warlike and kidnapping expeditions. There is a deplorable scarcity of skull measurements of the Hamite family. According to Welcker, the skulls of Egyptian mummies and of Kabyl heads measure 75° in height and 74° to 75° in breadth. They are therefore on the border between dolichoand mescocephaly. Even among the Egyptians the jaws project a little, and prognathism increases the further we ascend the Nile. The straw colour of the skin gradually darkens, as we advance, into red brown, deep bronze, or dark brown. In approaching the equator the hair becomes shorter and the beard more scanty. Hartmann is right in his assertion that an approximation to the negro type thus takes place proportionately with the distance from 13 Richard Brenner, in Petermann's Mittheilungen, p. 462. 1868. |