Viewing page 81 of 130

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

252

ble difference, as I have formerly remarked, in the appearance, as there is in the treatment of those domestics who are nourished in the families, and pursue their light occupation almost constantly in the presence of their mistresses or masters, and the slaves who are sent to labor in the fields under the inspection of an overseer.  The latter are obliged to be subjected to a severer discipline, and to subsist on a coarser and more scanty fare, and they are more negligently attended during the period of infancy. Generally, however, even these enjoy considerable privileges which the prudent and industrious among them improve to the amelioration of their condition, and to add, in no small degree, to the comfort of their subsistence. Hence the American negro is visibly losing the most uncouth peculiarities of the African person, and physiognomy. 
 
Having made these preliminary observations I proceed to enter into a more particular consideration of those distinguishing properties which, according to our author, discriminate the negro of Africa from the fair native Europe.*

*The following facts and reasonings may be applied also to estimate at their just value those detached observations quoted in Mr. White's appendix from professor Soemmering's essay on he comparative anatomy of the negro and European.


253

"The foot of the negro, says he, is much longer, broader, and flatter than that of the European. The os culeis, instead of forming and arch with the tarsal bones, makes with them nearly a straight horizontal line." -- Taking the second of those observations out of the technical language in which it is expressed, it is simply, that the heel extends much farther back in the black than in the white man. -- This is surely a very equivocal criterion of a distinct species. We see in our own climate, the laboring poor who are occupied in the cultivation of the ground, and who generally pass the summer season without shoes, or with very loose ones, have their feet much longer and broader than persons in the more polished circles of society, who have them always confined by tight shoes. When the foot is left entirely unconfined to bear the constant pressure of the weight of the body, it will necessarily by much dilated and extended in every direction. On the contrary, many of those slaves who are raised in genteel families, and kept near the persons of their masters and mistresses, and dressed like their superiors, exhibit comparatively little difference in this limb from the Anglo-Americans. I have now before me a young black woman, the property of a female rela- 

Transcription Notes:
---------- Reopened for Editing 2023-06-05 11:17:29