whole is a collection of disjointed metaphors and comparifons. The light, heat, and courfe of the fun, form the principal topic of their difcourse; and these unintelligible reasonings are always accompanied with violent and ridiculous geftures. Numberlefs repetitions prolong the oration, which, if not interrupted, would last whole days: At the fame time, they meditate very accurately beforehand, in order to avoid mentioning any thing but what they are defirous to obtain. This pompous faculty of making fpeeches is also one of the grounds on which they conceive themselves to be fuperior to the nations of Europe: They ima gine it is their eloquence that procures them the favours they ask. fubjected Indians converfe precisely in the fame ftyle. Prolix and tedious, they never know when to ftop; fo that, excepting by the difference in language, it would be impoffible, in this refpect, to diftinguish a civilized Peruvian from an inhabitant of the most savage districts to the northward.

The

But fuch partial and detached views as the above, were they even free from mifrepresentation, are not the just ground upon which to form an estimate of their character, Their qualities, good and bad (for they certainly poffefs both), their way of life, the ftate of fociety among them, with all the circumftances of their condition, ought to be confidered in connection, and in regard to their mutual influence. Such a view has been given in the preceding part of this article: from which, it is hoped, their real character may be easily deduced.

Many of the difagreeable traits exhibited in the anecdotes just quoted, are indeed extracted from Don Ulloa: an author of credit and reputation; but a Spaniard, and evidently biaffed in fome degree by a defire to palliate the enormities of his countrymen in that quarter of the globe. And with regard to the worst and leaft equivocal parts of the American character, cruelty and revenge, it may be fairly queftioned, whether the instances of these, either in refpect of their caufe or their atrocity, be at all comparable to thofe exhibited in European hiftory, and staining the annals of Chtiftendom:-to thofe, for inftance, of the Spaniards themfelves, at their first discovery of America; to thofe indicated by the engines found on board their mighty Armada; to thofe which, in cold blood, were perpetrated by the Dutch at Amboyna; to the dragoonings of the French; to their religious maffacres; or even to the tender mercies of the Inquifition!

Still harsher, however, are the defcriptions given by Buffon and de Paw of the natives of this whole continent, in which the most mortifying degeneracy of the human race, as well as of all the inferior animals, is afferted to be confpicuous. Against thofe philofophers, or rather

theorists,

theorifts, the Americans have found an able advocate in the Abbé Clavigero; an historian whofe fituation and long refidence in America af forded him the beft means of information, and who, though himself a fubject of Spain, appears fuperior to prejudice, and difdains in his defcription the gloffes of policy.

Concerning the ftature of the Americans, M. de Paw fays, in general, that although it is not equal to the ftature of the Caftilians, there is but little difference between them. But the Abbé Clavigero evinces, that the Indians who inhabit those countries lying between 9 and 40 degrees of north latitude, which are the limits of the discoveries of the Spaniards, are more than five Parifian feet in height, and that those that do not reach that ftature are as few in number amongst the Indians as they are amongst the Spaniards. It is befides certain, that many of those nations, as the Apaches, the Hiaquefe, the Pimefe, and Cochimies, are at least as tall as the tallest Europeans; and that, in all the vast extent of the New World, no race of people has been found, except the Esquimaux, so diminutive in ftature as the Laplanders, the Samojeds, and Tartars, in the north of the Old Continent. In this respect, therefore, the inhabitants of the two continents are upon an equality.

Of the shape and character of the Mexican Indians, the Abbé gives a moft advantageous defcription; which he afferts no one who reads it in America will contradict, unless he views them with the eye of a prejudiced mind. It is true, that Ulloa fays, in fpeaking of the Indians of Quito, he had obferved, "that imperfect people abounded among them; that they were either irregularly diminutive, or monftrous in fome other refpect; that they became either infenfible, dumb, or blind, or wanted fome limb of their body." Having therefore made fome inquiry refpesting this fingularity of the Quitans, the Abbé found, that such defects were neither caufed by bad humours, nor by the climate, but by the mistaken and blind humanity of their parents, who, in order to free their children from the hardships and toils to which the healthy Indians are fubjected by the Spaniards, fix fome deformity or weakness upon them that they may become useless: a circumftance of mifery which does not happen in other countries of America, nor in thofe places of the fame kingdom of Quito, where the Indians are under no fuch oppreffion. M. de Paw, and in agreement with him Dr. Robertson, fays, that no deformed perfons are to be found among the favages of America; becaufe, like the ancient Lacedemonians, they put to death thofe children which are born hunch-backed, blind, or defective in any limb; but that in those countries where they are formed into focieties, and the vigilance of their rulers prevent the murder of fuch infants, the number of No. II.

their

their deformed individuals is greater than it is in any other country of Europe. This would make an exceeding good folution of the difficulty if it were true: but if, poffibly, there has been in America a tribe of favages who have imitated the barbarous example of the celebrated Lacedemonians, it is certain that thofe authors have no grounds to impute fuch inhumanity to the rest of the Americans; for that it has not been the practice, at leaft with the far greater part of thofe nations, is to be demonftrated from the atteftations of the authors the best acquainted with their customs.

No argument against the New World can be drawn from the colour of the Americans: for their colour is lefs diftant from the white of the Europeans than it is from the black of the Africans, and a great part of the Afiatics. The hair of the Mexicans, and of the greater part of the Indians, is, as we have already faid, coarfe and thick; on their face they appear to have little, and in general none on their arms and legs: but it is an error to fay, as M. de Paw does, that they are entirely deftitute of hair in all the other parts of the body. This is one of the many paffages of the Philofophical Refearches, at which the Mexicans, and all the other nations, muft fmile to find an European philofopher fo eager to diveft them of the drefs they had from nature. Don Ulloa, indeed, in the description which he gives of the Indians of Quito, fays, that hair neither grows upon the men nor upon the women when they arrive at puberty, as it does on the rest of mankind; but whatever fingularity, may attend the Quitans, or occafion this circumftance, there is no doubt, that among the Americans in general, the period of puberty is accom-; panied with the fame fymptoms as it is among other nations of the world. In fact, with the North Americans, it is difgraceful to be hairy on the body. They fay it likens them to hogs. They therefore pluck the hair as fast as it appears. But the traders who marry their women, and pre-: vail on them to difcontinue this practice, fay, that nature is the fame. with them as with the whites. As to the beards of the men, had Buffon, or de Paw known the pains and trouble it cofts them to pluck out by the roots the hair that grows on their faces, they would have feen that nature had not been deficient in that refpect. Every nation has its cuf "I have feen an Indian beau, with a looking-glafs in his hand (fays Mr. Jefferson), examining his face for hours together, and plucking out by the roots every hair he could difcover, with a kind of tweezer made of a piece of fine brass wire, that had been twisted round a stick, and which he used with great dexterity."

toms.

The very afpect of an Angolan, Mandigan, or Congan, would have, hocked M. de Paw, and made him recal that cenfure which he paffes

on the colour, the make, and the hair of the Americans. What can be imagined more contrary to the idea we have of beauty, and the perfection of the human frame, than a man whofe body emits a rank fmell, whofe fkin is as black as ink, whofe head and face are covered with black wool instead of hair, whofe eyes are yellow and bloody, whofe lips are thick and blackifh, and whofe nofe is flat? Such are the inhabitants of a very large portion of Africa, and of many iflands of Afia. What men can be more imperfect than thofe who measure no more than four feet in ftature, whofe faces are long and flat, the nofe compreffed, the irides yellowish black, the eye-lids turned back towards the temples, the cheeks extraordinarily elevated, their mouths monftroufly large, their lips thick and prominent, and the lower part of their vifages extremely narrow? Such, according to Count de Buffon, are the Laplanders, the Zemblans, the Borandines, the Samojeds, and Tartars in the Eaft. What objects more deformed than men whofe faces are too long and wrinkled even in their youth, their noses thick and compreffed, their eyes fmall and funk, their cheeks very much raised, their upper jaw low, their teeth long and difunited, eye-brows fo thick that they shade their eyes; the eye-lids thick, fome briftles on their faces inftead of beard, large thighs and fmall legs? Such is the picture Count de Buffon gives of the Tartars; that is, of thofe people who, as he says, inhabit a tract of land in Afia 1200 leagues long and upwards, and more than 750 broad. Amongst these the Calmucks are the most remarkable for their deformity; which is fo great, that, according to Tavernier, they are the most brutal men of all the universe. Their faces are fo broad that there is a space of five or fix inches between their eyes, according as Count de Buffon himself affirms. In Calicut, in Ceylon, and other countries of India, there is, fay Pyrard and other writers on thofe regions, a race of men who have one or both of their legs as thick as the body of a man; and that this deformity among them is almost hereditary. The Hottentots, befides other grofs imperfections, have that monfrous irregularity attending them, of a callous appendage extending from the os pubis downwards, according to the teftimony of the historians of the Cape of Good Hope. Strays, Gemelli, and other travellers affirm, that in the kingdom of Lambry, in the islands of Formofa, and of Mindoro, men have been found with tails. Bomare say, that a thing of this kind in men is nothing elfe than an elongation of the os coccygis; but what is a tail in quadrupeds but the elongation of that bone, though divided into diftinct articulations? However it may be, it is cer tain, that that elongation renders thofe Afiatics fully as irregular as if it was a real tail.

If we were, in like manner, to go through the nations of Afia and Africa, we should hardly find any extenfive country where the colour of men is not darker, where there are not stronger irregularities obferved, and groffer defects to be found in them, than M. de Paw finds fault with in the Americans. The colour of the latter is a good deal clearer than that of almost all the Africans and the inhabitants of fouthern Afia. Even their alledged scantiness of beard is common to the inhabitants of the Philippine Islands, and of all the Indian Archipelago, to the famous Chinese, Japanese, Tartars, and many other nations of the Old Continent. The imperfections of the Americans, however great they may be represented to be, are certainly not comparable with the defects of that immenfe people, whose character we have sketched, and others whom we

omit.

M. de Paw represents the Americans to be a feeble and diseased set of nations; and, in order to demonftrate the weakness and diforder of their phyfical conftitution, adduces feveral proofs equally ridiculous and ill founded, and which it will not be expected we should enumerate. He alleges, among other particulars, that they were overcome in wrestling by all the Europeans, and that they funk under a moderate burden; that by a computation made, 200,000 Americans were found to have perished in one year from carrying of baggage. With refpect to the first point, the Abbé Clavigero obferves, it would be neceffary that the experiment of wrestling was made between many individuals of each continent, and that the victory should be attested by the Americans as well as the Europeans. It is not, however, meant to infift, that the Americans are ftronger than the Europeans. They may be lefs ftrong, without the human fpecies having degenerated in them. The Swifs are ftronger than the Italians; and ftill we do not believe the Italians are degenerated, nor do we tax the climate of Italy. The inftance of 200,000 Americans having died in one year, under the weight of baggage, were it true, would not convince us fo much of the weakness of the Americans, as of the inhumanity of the Europeans. In the same manner that thofe 200,000 Americans perished, 200,000 Pruffians would also have perished, had they been obliged to make a journey of between 300 and 400 miles, with 100 pounds of burden upon their backs; if they had collars of iron about their necks, and were obliged to carry that load over rocks and mountains; if those who became exhausted with fatigue, or wounded their feet fo as to impede their progrefs, had their heads cut off that they might not retard the pace of the reft; and if they were not allowed but a small morfel of bread to enable them to fupport fo fevere a toil. Les Cafas, from whom M. de Paw got the account of the 200,000 Americans

whe