Page:An essay on the origin and relative status of the white and colored races of mankind.djvu/19

 but they say that it requires a long time for a hot climate to make a white man black. The celebrated European Naturalist, [Mr. Boyle,] says that "a black complexion cannot be produced by the heat of the climate; for though the heat of the sun may darken the color of the skin, experience does not show that it is sufficient to produce a true blackness like that of the Negroes."

Now, white men—such as Bruce, Valliant, Park, Brown, Burton, Baker, Edwards, Speke, Grant, Du Chaillu, and Livingstone, visited Africa, as Explorers, and remained a long time in that hot climate, where, in some localities, the thermometer sometimes runs up as high as to 160 degrees, and when they returned home to their native land; their complexions, though slightly tanned by exposure, soon became the same as when they left it; and, at Capetown, on the southern coast of Africa, there is a dutch colony of white, who have been there, upwards of 200 years, without any change of complexion; and, moreover, there has been a settlement of Jews on the coast of Malabar, within 10 degrees of the Equator, for over 1500 years, and they still have the features and complexion of the white Caucasian Race. And, on the other hand, the black man, who belonged to that African hot climate, and was brought to this North American latitude, upwards of 200 years ago; his descendants—where thay are unmixed—are as black this day, as their ancestors were when they first landed on our shores. Therefore, if the coloring process of a hot climate, applied to the white man over 1500 years, has made no perceptible change in his complexion—and, as it is a poor rule that wont work both ways—I am curious to know how long the process will require to protuburate the features, straighten the wool, and bleach the black man white? or to flatten the features, and color the white man black? and,