Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 19.djvu/316

302 mulatto, called quadroon or quarter-blood, and so on; on the other hand, the descendants of negro and mulatto, called sambo, return toward the full negro type. This intermediate character is the general nature of crossed races, but with more or less tendency to revert to one or other of the parent types. To illustrate this. Fig. 10 gives the portrait of a Malay mother and her half-caste daughters, the father being a Spaniard; here, while all the children show their mixed race, it is sometimes the European and sometimes the Malay cast of features that prevails. The effect of mixture is also traceable in the hair, as may often be well noticed in a mulatto's crimped, curly locks, between the straighter European and the woolly African kind. The Cafusas of Brazil, a peculiar cross between the native tribes of the land and the imported negro slaves, are remarkable for their hair, which rises in a curly mass, forming a natural periwig which obliges the wearers to stoop low in passing through their hut-doors. This is seen in the portrait of a Cafusa (Fig. 11), and seems easily accounted for by the long stiff hair of the native American having acquired in some degree the negro frizziness.



Within the last few centuries it is well known that a large fraction of the world's population has actually come into existence by race-crossing. This is nowhere so evident as on the American Continent, where since the Spanish conquest such districts as Mexico are largely peopled by the mestizo descendants of Spaniards and native Americans, while the importation of African slaves in the West Indies has given rise to a mulatto population. By taking into account such