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est periods of history.* But the climate is probably not alone to be charged as the cause of this deformity; for the neighbouring regions of Numidia and Mauritania have always nourished a straight and well proportioned race of men. And, as I have just remarked, even within that zone which exhibits, among the poorest and most servile race, the greatest deformities, you often meet, among their chiefs, with men of handsome features, and regular proportions. And Mr. Bruce informs us that, in the desert of Senaar on the eastern side of Africa, under the very tropic of Cancer, he saw, in the house of one of their chiefs, a woman of the most beautiful form, the most delicate skin, and the mostly lovely composi

[footnote]
*Petronius, Satyricon, c. 102. Atramento mutemus colores a capillis usque ad ungues. Ita tanquam servi Æthiopes --age, numquid et labira possumus tumore teterrimo implere? numquid & crines calamistro invertere? numquid et frontes cicatricibus scindere? numquid et crura in orbem pandere?
And Virgil in his Moretum, 1.31-36:
Interdum clamat Cybalen: erat unica custos,
Afra genus, tota partiam testante figura, Torta comam, labra tumens, & fusca colorem; 
Pectore lata, jacens mammis, compressior alvo,
Cruribus exilis, spatiosa prodga planta;
Continuis rimis calcanea scissa rigebant

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tion of features, he had ever beheld.* The cause of the gibbous leg of the vulgar African, therefore, we may find, not more in the climate than in some peculiar customs in the treatment of their children. 
The manners of savages often result from the necessities of their situation. Among the North-American indians the mother is always obliged to bestow the greatest assiduity in her attentions to her infant in order to protect it from the injuries of seasons which are extremely variable, and often rigorous; and to provide it with food by her own labor, in the bosom of forests where little offers itself spontaneously to be gathered. At the same time, the hardships of a wandering and hunting life present the multiplication of children, so that, frequently, one is three or four years old before she is burthened with the care of a second. The necessities, therefore, of her state require, and the intervals between her children afford her leisure for, the exercise of every ten.

*Before this rencontre he informs us he had always connected the idea of perfect beauty with a fair complexion; but when he beheld this Senaar lady, he speaks of himself as being for some moments suspended in admiration: and he was at once convinced that almost the all of beauty consists of elegance of figure, in the fineness and polish of the skin, in grace of movement, and the expression of the countenance.

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