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Show SHALS OF BLACK SKIN. k Journey From the Land of Palefaces and Back Again. A familiar human example will make thii general muddline&s and uncertainty of nature realizable to every one. If we see a negro in the streets of London, we immediately recognize the bro&d difference differ-ence that marks him off from thn com- i mon mass of wfaito mu by wlom lie IS ' surrounded. But that of course is only because we take an individual instance. We say quite dogmatically: "This man is black, thick lipped, flat nosed. I caU him a negro. These other men are white, thin lipped, sharp nosed. I call them Europeans." Eu-ropeans." Quite so. That is true relatively to the small area and restricted number of cases you have then and there examined. But now suppose you go ou to the Soudan Sou-dan and start from thence down the Nile through Nubia to Alexandria. At first on your way you would see few but thoroughly negroid faces black skins, thick lips, flat noses, etc.. according to sample. As you moved northward into Egypt, however, you would soon begin to find that, while the skin remained as black or nearly as black as ever, the features fea-tures were tending slowly on the average aver-age to Europeanize. Yet there would be nowhere a spot vhere you could say definitely, "Here I leave behind me the Nubian type and arrive ar-rive at the Egyptian." Never even could you pick out three or four men quite certainly cer-tainly from a group on some riverside wharf overshadowed by doum palma and say on the evidence of skin and features fea-tures alone, "These men are Soudanese, and the remainder are Nubians." Then, if you went on still through Sinai Si-nai and Palestine the regular eastern tour you would find at each Btep the tints getting lighter and the faces more Semitic. Passing farther through Constantinople, Con-stantinople, Athens, south Italy, you would observe at each change a lighter complexion and more European style; till at last, as you crossed Provence and approached central France, you would arrive pretty well at the familiar English Eng-lish type of face and feature. CornhiU Magazine. |