Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 19.djvu/323

Rh the Arctic to the Antarctic regions, he would have found no such extreme unlikeness in the inhabitants. Apart from the Europeans and Africans who have poured in since the fifteenth century, the native Americans in general might be, as has often been said, of one race. Not that they are all alike, but their differences in stature, form of skull, feature, and complexion, though considerable, seem variations of a secondary kind. The race to which most anthropologists refer the native Americans is the Mongoloid of Eastern Asia, who are capable of accommodating themselves to the extremest climates, and who by the form of skull, the light-brown skin, straight black hair, and black eyes, show considerable agreement with the American tribes. Fig.



22 represents the wild hunting-tribes of North America in one of the finest forms now existing, the Colorado Indians.

Though commonly spoken of as one variety of mankind, it is plain that the white men are not a single uniform race, but a varied and mixed population. It is a step toward classing them to separate them into two great divisions, the dark-whites and fair-whites (melanochroi, xanthochroi). Ancient portraits have come down to us of the dark-white nations, as Assyrians, Phœnicians, Persians, Greeks, Romans; and when beside these are placed moderns such as the Andalusians, and the dark Welshmen or Bretons, and people from the Caucasus, it will be evident that the resemblance running-through all these can only be in broad and general characters. They have a dusky or