Homo peli nigra, a name given to a variety of the human species, who are entirely black, and are found in the torrid zone, especially in that part of Africa which lies within the tropics. In the complexion of Negroes, we meet with many various shades; but they likewise differ far from other men in all the features of their face. Round cheeks, high cheek-bones, a forehead somewhat elevated, a short, broad, flat nose, thick lips, small ears, ugliness, and irregularity of shape, characterize their external appearance. The negro women have the loins greatly depressed, and very large buttocks, which gives the back the shape of a saddle. Vices the most notorious seem to be the portion of this unhappy race; illibleness, treachery, revenge, cruelty, impudence, stealing, lying, profanity, debauchery, nastiness, and intemperance, are said to have extinguished the principles of natural law, and to have silenced the reproofs of conscience. They are strangers to every sentiment of compassion, and are an awful example of the corruption of man when left to himself.

The origin of the negroes, and the cause of their remarkable difference from the rest of the human species, has much perplexed the naturalists. Mr Boyle has observed, that it cannot be produced by the heat of the climate: for though the heat of the sun may darken the colour of the skin, yet experience does not show that it is sufficient to produce a new blackness like that of the negroes.

In Africa itself, many nations of Ethiopia are not black; nor were there any blacks originally in the West Indies. In many parts of Asia under the same parallel with the African region inhabited by the blacks, the people are but tawney. He adds, that there are negroes in Africa beyond the southern tropic; and that a river sometimes parts nations, one of which is black, and the other only tawney. Dr Barriere alleges that the gall of negroes is black, and being mixed with their blood is deposited between the skin and scarf-skin. However, Dr Mitchell of Virginia, in the Philosophical Transactions, No 476, has endeavoured by many learned arguments to prove, that the influence of the sun in hot countries, and the manner of life of their inhabitants, are the remote causes of the colour of the negroes, Indians, &c. Lord Kames on the other hand, and such philosophers as he, whose genius and imagination are too lively to submit to a dry and painful investigation of facts, have contended that no physical cause is sufficient to change the colour, and what we call the regular features of white men, to the dark hue and deformity of the woolly-headed negro. Their arguments have been examined with much acuteness and ingenuity by Dr Stanhope Smith of New Jersey, Dr Hunter, and Professor Zimmerman, who have made it in a high degree probable, that the action of the sun is the original and chief cause of the black colour, as well as distorted features of the negro. See AMERICA, No 48—51, and COMPLEXION.

True negroes are found in no quarter of the globe where the heat of the climate is not very great. They exist nowhere but in the torrid zone, and only in three regions situated in that zone, viz. in Senegal, in Guinea, and on the western shores of Africa, in Nubia, and the Papous land, or what is called New Guinea. In all these regions the atmosphere is scorching, and the heat excessive. The inhabitants of the north are whitest; and as we advance southwards towards the line, and these countries on which the sun's rays fall more perpendicularly, the complexion gradually assumes a darker shade. And the same men, whose colour has been rendered black by the powerful action of the sun, if they remove to the north, gradually become whiter (at least their posterity), and lose their burnt colour. Whites when transported into the burning regions of the torrid zone, are the first subject to fever; the skin of the face, hands, and feet, becomes burnt, hardens and falls off in scales. Hitherto the colour of negroes appears to be only local, extrinsic, and accidental, and their short frizzled and sparse hair is to be accounted for in the very same manner.

Climate possesses great and evident influences on the hair, not only of men, but of all other animals. If in one case these transmutations are acknowledged to be consistent with identity of kind, they ought not in the other to be esteemed criterions of different species. Nature has adapted the pliancy of her work to the situations in which she may require it to be placed. The beaver and sheep removed to the warm latitudes exchange, the one its fur, and the other its wool, for a coarse hair that preserves the animal in a more moderate temperature. The coarse and black shag of the bear is converted, in the arctic regions, into the finest and whitest fur. The colour of the hair is likewise changed by climate. The bear is white under the arctic circle; and, in high northern latitudes, foxes, hares, and rabbits, are found white. Similar effects of climate are discernible on mankind. The hair of the Danes is generally red; of the English, fair or brown; and of the French, commonly black. The hair of all people of colour is black, and that of the African negroes is likewise sparse and curled in a manner peculiar to themselves; but this peculiarity is analogous to the effect which a warm climate has on almost every other animal. Cold, by obstructing the perspiration, tends to throw out the perspirable matter accumulated at the skin in an additional coat of hair. A warm climate, by opening the pores, evaporates this matter before it can be concreted into the substance of hair; and the laxness and aperture of the pores render the hair liable to be easily eradicated by innumerable incidents. Its curl may result Negro in part from the nature of the secretion by which it is nourished, and in part from external heat. That it depends in some degree on the quality of the secretion is rendered highly probable from its appearance on the chin and other parts of the human body. Climate is as much distinguished by the nature and proportion of the secretions as by the degree of heat. (See PHYSIOLOGY, sect. 6.) Whatever be the nutriment of the hair, it is evidently combined in the torrid zone of Africa with some fluid of a highly volatile or ardent quality, which produces the rank smell of many African nations. Saline secretions tend to curl and to burn the hair. The evaporation of any volatile spirit would render its surface dry and disposed to contract; whilst the centre continuing distended by the vital motion, these opposite dilatations and contractions would necessarily produce a curve, and make the hair grow involved. External and violent heat parching the extremities of the hair, tends likewise to involve it. A hair held near the fire instantly coils itself up. Africa is the hottest country on the globe; and the influence of its heat, either external or internal, or both, in giving the peculiar form to the hair of the natives, appears, not only from its sparseness and its curl, but from its colour. It is not of a shining, but of an adust black; and its extremities tend to brown, as if it had been scorched by the fire.

The peculiarities of the negro features and form may likewise be accounted for from the excessive heat of the climate and the state of African society. Being savages, they have no arts to protect them from the rays of a burning sun. The heat and serenity of the sky preserving the lives of the children without much care of the parents, they seem of course to be, in the interior parts of the country, negligent of their offspring. Able themselves to endure the extremes of that ardent climate, they injure their children to it from their most tender age. They suffer them to roll in the dust and sand beneath the direct rays of a vertical sun. The mother, if she be engaged, lays down the infant on the first spot she finds, and is seldom at the pains to seek the miserable shelter of a barren shrub, which is all that the interior country affords. When we reflect on the influence of a glare of light upon the eye, and on the distortions of countenance produced by our efforts to repel or prevent it, we need not wonder, that the pliant features of a negro infant should, by constant exposure, acquire that permanent irregularity which we term their characteristic ugliness. But besides the climate, food and clothing and modes of life have prodigious effects on the human form and features. This is apparent even in polished societies, where the poor and labouring part of the community are much more coarse in their features, and ill formed in their limbs, than persons of better fortune and more liberal means of subsistence. What an immense difference exists in Scotland, for instance, between the chiefs and the commonalty of the Highland clans? If they had been separately found in different countries, they would have been ranged by some philosophers under different species. A similar distinction takes place between the nobility and peasantry of France, of Spain, of Italy, and of Germany.

That food and clothing, and the different modes of life, have as great an influence upon the shapes and features of the Africans as upon the natives of Europe, is evident. Negroes evident from the different appearances of the negroes in the southern republics of America according to the stations in which they are employed. "The field slaves (says Dr Smith) are badly fed, clothed, and lodged. They live in small huts on the plantations, where they labour remote from the society and example of their superiors. Living by themselves, they retain many of the customs and manners of their African ancestors. The domestic servants, on the other hand, who are kept near the persons, or employed in the families of their masters, are treated with great lenity; their service is light; they are fed and clothed like their superiors; they see their manners, adopt their habits, and insensibly receive the same ideas of elegance and beauty. The field slaves are, in consequence, slow in changing the aspect and figure of Africa. The domestic servants have advanced far before them in acquiring the agreeable and regular features, and the expressive countenance of civil society. The former are frequently ill-shaped. They preserve, in a great degree, the African lips, nose, and hair. Their genius is dull, and their countenance sleepy and stupid. The latter are straight and well proportioned; their hair extended to three, four, and sometimes even to six or eight inches; the size and shape of the mouth handsome, their features regular, their capacity good, and their look animated."

Upon the whole, we hope that the reader, who shall candidly weigh in his own mind what we have said at present and under the article COMPLEXION, will agree with us, that the black colour in the torrid zone, the sparse crisp hairs of the negroes, and the peculiarities of their features and form, proceed from causes altogether extrinsic; that they depend on local temperature and the state of society; and that they are as accidental as the various shades of colour which characterise the different nations of Europe. If the whites be considered as the stock whence all others have sprung, it is easy to conceive how they have degenerated into negroes. Some have conjectured that the complete change may have taken place at the end of three centuries, whilst others have thought that it could not be effected in less than double that period. Such conjectures can be formed from no certain data; and a much greater length of time is undoubtedly necessary before negroes, when transplanted into our temperate countries, can entirely lose their black colour. By crossing the breed with whites, every taint of the negro colour may be expelled we believe, from the fifth generation (A).

But the most serious charge brought against the poor negroes is, that of the vices said to be natural to them. If they be, indeed, such as their enemies Negro represent them, treacherous, cruel, revengeful, and intemperate, by a necessity of nature, they must be a different race from the whites; for though all these vices abound in Europe, it is evident that they proceed not from nature, but from wrong education, which gives to the youthful mind such deep impressions as no future exertions can completely eradicate. Let us inquire coolly if the vices of the negroes may not have a similar origin.

In every part of Africa with which the nations of Europe have any commerce, slavery prevails of the worst kind. Three-fourths of the people are slaves to the rest, and the children are born to no other inheritance. "Most parts of the coast differ in their governments; some are absolute monarchies, whilst others draw near to an aristocracy. In both the authority of the chief or chiefs is unlimited, extending to life, and it is exercised as often as criminal cases require, unless death is commuted into slavery; in which case the offender is sold, and if the shipping will not buy the criminal, he is immediately put to death. Fathers of free condition have power to sell their children, but this power is very seldom enforced. In Congo, however, a father † will sell a son or daughter, or perhaps both, for a piece-of-cloth, a collar or girdle of coral or beads, and often for a bottle of wine or brandy. A husband may have as many wives as he pleases, and repudiate or even sell them, though with child, at his pleasure. The wives and concubines, though it be a capital crime for the former to break the conjugal faith, have a way to rid themselves of their husbands, if they have set their affections upon a new gallant, by accusing them of some crime for which the punishment is death. In a word, the bulk of the people in every state of Africa are born slaves, to great men, reared as such, held as property, and as property sold (see SLAVERY). There are indeed many circumstances by which a free man may become a slave: such as being in debt, and not able to pay; and in some of such cases, if the debt be large, not only the debtor, but his family likewise, become the slaves of his creditor, and may be sold. Adultery is commonly punished in the same manner, both the offending parties being sold, and the purchase-money paid to the injured husband. Obi, or pretended witchcraft (in which all the negroes firmly believe, see WITCHCRAFT), is another, and a very common offence, for which slavery is adjudged the lawful punishment; and it extends to all the family of the offender. There are various other crimes which subject the offender and his

(A) 1. A white man with a negro woman, or negro man with a white woman, produce a mulatto, half white and half black, or of a yellow-blackish colour, with black, short frizzled hair. 2. A white man with a mulatto woman, or a negro with a mulatto woman, produce a quadroon, three-fourths white and one-fourth black, or three-fourths black and one-fourth white, or of a lighter yellow than the former. In America, they give the name of cabros to those who are descended from a black man and a mulatto woman, or a mulatto man and a black woman, who are three-fourths black and one-fourth white, and who are not so black as a negro, but blacker than a mulatto. 3. A white man with a quadroon woman, or a negro with a quadroon woman, produce a mestizo, seven-eighths white and one-eighth black, or seven-eighths black and one-eighth white. 4. A white man with a mestizo woman, or a negro with a mestizo woman, produce, the one almost a perfect white, the other almost a perfect black, called a quinteroon. This is the last gradation, there being no visible difference between the fair quinteroons and the whites: and the children of a white and quinteroon consider themselves as free from all taint of the negro race. Negroes to be sold; and it is more than probable, that if there were no buyers, the poor wretches would be murdered without mercy.

In such a state of society, what dispositions can be looked for in the people, but cruelty, treachery, and revenge? Even in the civilized nations of Europe, blessed with the lights of law, science, and religion, some of the lower orders of the community consider it as a very trivial crime to defraud their superiors; whilst almost all look up to them with stupid malevolence or rancorous envy. That a depressed people, when they get power into their hands, are revengeful and cruel, the present age affords a dreadful proof in the conduct of the demagogues of a neighbouring nation; and it is wonderful that the negroes of Africa, unacquainted with moral principles, blinded by the cruelest and most absurd superstitions, and whose customs tend to eradicate from the mind all natural affection, should sometimes display to their lordly masters of European extraction the same spirit that has been so generally displayed by the lower orders of Frenchmen to their ecclesiastics, their nobles, and the family of their murdered sovereign! When we consider that the majority of the negroes groan under the cruellest slavery, both in their own country, and in every other where they are to be found in considerable numbers, it can excite no surprise that they are in general treacherous, cruel, and vindictive. Such are the caprices of their tyrants at home, that they could not preserve their own lives or the lives of their families for any length of time, but by a perpetual vigilance, which must necessarily degenerate, first into cunning, and afterwards into treachery; and it is not conceivable that habits formed in Africa should be instantly thrown off in the West Indies, where they are the property of men whom some of them must consider as a different race of beings.

But the truth is, that the ill qualities of the negroes have been greatly exaggerated. Mr Edwards, in his valuable History of the West Indies, assures us that the Mandingo negroes display such gentleness of disposition and demeanor, as would seem the result of early education and discipline, were it not that, generally speaking, they are more prone to theft than any of the African tribes. It has been supposed that this propensity, among other vices, is natural to a state of slavery, which degrades and corrupts the human mind in a deplorable manner; but why the Mandingoes should have become more vicious in this respect than the rest of the natives of Africa in the same condition of life, is a question he cannot answer.

The circumstances which (according to the same author) distinguish the Koromantyn or Gold Coast negroes from all others, are firmness both of body and mind; a ferociousness of disposition; but withal, activity, courage, and a stubbornness, or what an ancient Roman would have deemed an elevation of soul, which prompts them to enterprises of difficulty and danger, and enables them to meet death, in its most horrid shape, with fortitude or indifference. They sometimes take to labour with great promptitude and alacrity, and have constitutions well adapted for it; for many of them have undoubtedly been slaves in Africa. But as the Gold Coast is inhabited by various tribes, which are engaged in perpetual warfare and hostility with each other, there cannot be a doubt that many of the captives taken in battle, and sold in the European settlements, were of free condition in their native country, and perhaps the owners of slaves themselves. It is not wonderful that such men should endeavour, even by means the most desperate, to regain the freedom of which they have been deprived; nor do I conceive that any further circumstances are necessary to prompt them to action, than that of being sold into captivity in a distant country. One cannot surely but lament (says our author) that a people thus naturally intrepid, should be sunk into so deplorable a state of barbarity and superstition; and that their spirits should ever be broken down by the yoke of slavery. Whatever may be alleged concerning their ferociousness and implacability in their present notions of right and wrong, I am persuaded that they possess qualities which are capable of, and well deserve, cultivation and improvement.

"Very different from the Koromantyns are the negroes imported from the Bight of Benin, and known in the West Indies by the name of Eboes. So great is their constitutional timidity and dependency of mind, as to occasion them very frequently to seek, in a voluntary death, a refuge from their own melancholy reflections. They require therefore the gentlest and mildest treatment to reconcile them to their situation; but if their confidence be once obtained, they manifest as great fidelity, affection, and gratitude, as can reasonably be expected from men in a state of slavery. The females of this nation are better labourers than the men, probably from having been more hardly treated in Africa.

"The natives of Whidah, who, in the West Indies, are generally called Papaws, are unquestionably the most docile and best disposed slaves that are imported from any part of Africa. Without the fierce and savage manners of the Koromantyn negroes, they are also happily exempt from the timid and desponding temper of the Eboes. The cheerful acquiescence with which these people apply to the labours of the field, and their constitutional aptitude for such employment, arise, without doubt, from the great attention paid to agriculture in their native country. Bosman speaks with rapture of the improved state of the soil, the number of villages, and the industry, riches, and obliging manners of the natives. He observes, however, that they are much greater thieves than those of the Gold Coast, and very unlike them in another respect, namely, in the dread of pain, and the apprehension of death. They are, says he, so very apprehensive of death, that they are unwilling to hear it mentioned, for fear that alone should hasten their end; and no man dares to speak of death in the presence of the king, or any great man, under the penalty of suffering it himself, as a punishment for his presumption. He relates further, that they are addicted to gaming beyond any people of Africa. All these propensities are observable in the character of the Papaws in a state of slavery in the West Indies. That punishment which excites the Koromantyn to rebel, and drives the Ebo negro to suicide, is received by the Papaws as the chastisement of legal authority, to which it is their duty to submit patiently. The case seems to be, that the generality of these people are in a state of absolute slavery in Africa, and, having been habituated to a life of labour, they submit to a change of situation with little reluctance." Having recited such observations as occurred to him on contemplating the various tribes of negroes from each other, Mr Edwards thus estimates their general character, influenced as they are by circumstances which soon efface the native and original impressions which distinguish one nation from another when newly imported into the West Indies.

"Notwithstanding what has been related of the firmness and courage of the natives of the Gold Coast, it is certain that the negroes in general in our islands (such of them at least as have been any length of time in a state of servitude) are of a distrustful and cowardly disposition. So degrading is the nature of slavery, that fortitude of mind is lost as free agency is restrained. To the same cause probably must be imputed their propensity to conceal or violate the truth; which is so general, that the vice of falsehood is one of the most prominent features in their character. If a negro is asked even an indifferent question by his master, he seldom gives an immediate reply; but, affecting not to understand what is said, compels a repetition of the question, that he may have time to consider, not what is the true answer, but what is the most politic one for him to give. The proneness observable in many of them to the vice of theft has already been noticed; and I am afraid (says our author), that evil communication makes it almost general. It is no easy matter, I confess, to discriminate those circumstances which are the result of proximate causes, from those which are the effects of national customs and early habits in savage life; but I am afraid that cowardice and dissimulation have been the properties of slavery in all ages, and will continue to be so to the end of the world. It is a situation that necessarily suppresses many of the best affections of the human heart.—If it calls forth any latent virtues, they are those of sympathy and compassion towards persons in the same condition of life; and accordingly we find that the negroes in general are strongly attached to their countrymen, but above all, to such of their companions as came in the same ship with them from Africa. This is a striking circumstance: the term shipmate is understood among them as signifying a relationship of the most endearing nature; perhaps as recalling the time when the sufferers were cut off together from their common country and kindred, and awakening reciprocal sympathy from the remembrance of mutual affliction. But their benevolence, with a very few exceptions, extends no further. The softer virtues are seldom found in the bosom of the enslaved Africans. Give him sufficient authority, and he becomes the most remorseless of tyrants. Of all the degrees of wretchedness endured by the sons of men, the greatest, assuredly, is the misery which is felt by those who are unhappily doomed to be the slaves of slaves; a most unnatural relation, which sometimes takes place in the sugar plantations. The same observation may be made concerning their conduct towards the animal creation. Their treatment of cattle under their direction is brutal beyond belief. Even the useful and social qualities of the dog secure to him no kind usage from an African master. One of the most pleasing traits in their character is the respect and attention which they pay to their aged countrymen. The whole body of negroes on a plantation must be reduced to a deplorable state of wretchedness, if at any time, they suffer their aged companions to want the common necessaries of life, or Negro, even many of its comforts, as far as they can procure them. They seem to be actuated on these occasions by a kind of involuntary impulse, operating as a primitive law of nature, which scorns to wait the cold dictates of reason: among them, it is the exercise of a common duty, which courts no observation, and looks for no applause."

As the colour and features, and moral qualities of the negroes, may be thus easily accounted for by the influence of climate and the modes of savage life, so there is good reason to believe that their intellectual endowments are equal to those of the whites who have been found in the same circumstances. Of those imitative arts in which perfection can be attained only in an improved state of society, it is natural to suppose that they have but little knowledge; but the fabric and colours of the Guinea cloths are a proof of their native ingenuity. In the West Indies many of them are expert carpenters, some watchmakers, and one or two have successfully practised physic; while others have figured both in Latin and English poetry, so that we cannot doubt but that "God, who made the world, hath made of one blood all nations of men," and animated them with minds equally rational.