region, high elevations of surface, as they
produce a cooler climate, seem to occasion the appearance of light
complexions. In the high parts of Senegambia, which front the
Atlantic, and are cooled by winds from the Western Ocean, where, in
fact, the temperature is known to be moderate and even cool at times,
the light copper-coloured Frelahs are found surrounded on every side
by Negro nations inhabiting lower districts; and nearly in the same
parallel, but at the opposite side of Africa, are the high plains of
Enarea and Kaffa, where the inhabitants are said to be fairer than the
natives of southern Europe. The Galla and the Abyssinians themselves
are, in proportion to the elevation of the country inhabited by them,
fairer than the natives of low countries; and lest an exception should
be taken to a comparison of straight-haired races with woolly Negroes
or Shungalla, they bear the same comparison with the Danakil, Hazorta,
and the Bishari tribes, resembling them in their hair and features,
who inhabit the low tracts between the mountains of Tigre and the
shores of the Red Sea, and who are equally or nearly as black as
Negroes.

We may find occasion to observe that an equally decided relation
exists between local conditions and the existence of other characters
of human races in Africa. Those races who have the Negro character in
an exaggerated degree, and who may be said to approach to deformity in
person--the ugliest blacks with depressed foreheads, flat noses,
crooked legs--are in many instances inhabitants of low countries,
often of swampy tracts near the sea-coast, where many of them, as the
Papels, have scarcely any other means of subsistence than shell fish,
and the accidental gifts of the sea. In many places similar Negro
tribes occupy thick forests in the hollows beneath high chains of
mountains, the summits of which are inhabited by Abyssinian or
Ethiopian races. The high table-lands of Africa are chiefly, as far as
they are known, the abode or the wandering places of tribes of this
character, or of nations who, like the Kafirs, recede very
considerably from the Negro type. The Mandingos are, indeed, a Negro
race inhabiting a high region; but they have neither the depressed
forehead nor the projecting features considered as characteristic of
the Negro race.[644]

FOOTNOTES:

[643] Peschel, The Races of Man, pp. 462-464.

* * * * *

CHAPTER VII.

CITIES OF AFRICA.