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beyond Europe to the great empires of the East, to Arabia, to Persia, to India, and China, this observation is still more applicable to those countries which embrace so much greater an extent of latitude. The inhabitants of Pekin are fair while those of Canton exhibit as deep a colour as the Mexicans. The Persians in the vicinity of the Caspian sea are among the fairest people in the world, and their neighbours, the Georgians and Circassians, are acknowledged to be the most beautiful. But, this delicate complexion gradually changes to a dark olive as we approach the gulph of Ormus. The inhabitants of the stony and desert Arabia are distinguished by a light copper colour, while those of the southern provinces of Mocha and Yemen are of as deep a hue as those of middle India. The same gradation holds in Egypt, from the Mediterranean Sea to the foot of the mountains of Abyssinia. The population of the southern provinces of the peninsula of India are black; on the North, and just below the range of the Caucasian mountains, the complexion changes to a light chestnut, or yellow colour. And this gradation

[[margin note]] and is even given to their pictures and statues of the Virgin Mary. Blum. p. 135.[[/margin note]]

is observed both on the Malabar, and the Coromandel coast.*

In these extensive countries in which the surface of the earth is more uniform than in Europe, and not so much broken and intersected by mountains, seas, and bays running far up into the land, the gradation of colour holds a more regular progression according to the latitude from the equator. But the influence of climate on the complexion is better illustrated by its effects on the Arabians and the Chinese, than on most other nations, who have been the subjects of frequent conquests, and great intermixtures with foreign tribes. These people have remained, from a very remote antiquity, almost wholly unmingled with foreign nations. The former, especially, can be traced by a clear, and undisputed genealogy to their origin in one family; and they have never been blended, either by conquest, or by

[[margin note]] * The authors of the Universal History. Asiatic Researches. Bruce’s Travels. Accounts of Missionaries to India from Britain, Holland, and Germany. A similar remark is made with regard to the negroes of both sides of the Senegal river, by Barbot in Churchill’s collection of voyages. But the varieties of Africa will be afterwards more particularly noticed and accounted for, [[/margin note]]

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