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exclude the influence of civilization. Besides, with coppercoloured men, as with the whites, luxury and and effeminacy, by weakening the physical constitution, had heretofore rendered deformities more common at Couzco and Tenochtitlan. It is not among the Mexicans of the present day, who are all labourers, and leading the most simple lives, that Montezuma would have found the dwarfs and hump-backs, that Bernal Diaz saw waiting at his table when he dined.* The custom of marrying very young, according to the testimony of the monks, is no way detrimental to population. This precocious nubility depends on the race, and not on the influence of a climate excessively warm. It is found on the north-west coast of America, among the Eskimoes, and in Asia, among the Kamtschadales, and the Coriacs, where girls of ten years old are often mothers. It may appear astonishing, that the time of gestation, the duration of pregnancy, is never altered in a state of health, with any race, or in any climate.

The Chaymas are almost without beard on the chin, like the Tungooses, and other nations of the Mongul race. They pluck out the few hairs that appear; but it is not just to say in general, that they have no beard merely because they pluck out the hairs. Independently of this custom, the greater part of the natives would be nearly beardless.+ I say the

Bernal Diaz, Hist. verd. de la Nueva Espana, 1630, cap. 91, p. 68. + There would never have been any difference of opinion between

greater part, for there exist tribes, which, appearing distinct among the others, are so much more worthy of fixing our attention. Such are in North America the Chippeways, visited by Mackenzie, and the Yabipaees,† near the Toltec ruins at Moqui, with bushy beards; in South America, the Patagonians, and the Gua ranies. Among these last individuals are found, some of whom have hairs on the breast. When the Chaymas, instead of extracting the little hair they have on the chin, attempt to shave themselves frequently, their beard grows. I have seen this experiment tried with success by young Indians, who served at mass, and who anxiously wished to resemble the Capuchin Fathers, their missionaries, and masters. The greater part of the people, however, have as great an antipathy to the beard, as the Eastern nations hold it in reverence. This antipathy is derived from the same source as the predilection for flat foreheads, which is seen in so singular a manner in the statues of the Azteck heroes and divinities.

the beard among the Americans, if physiologists upon the existence of they had paid attention to what the first historians of the Conquest of their country have said on this subject; for example, Pigafetta, in 1519, in his journal preserved in the Am. brosian Library at Milan, and published (in 1800) by Amoretti, p. 18; Benzoni, Hist. del Mundo Nuovo, 1572, p. 35; Bembo, Hist. Venet., 1557, p. 86.

* Between latitude 60° and 65° north.

† Humb., Nouv. Esp. T. ii, p. 410. Nations

Nations attach the idea of beauty to every thing, which particularly characterizes their own physical conformation, their natural physiognomy. Thence it results, that, if Nature have bestowed very little beard, a narrow forehead, or a brownish-red skin, every individual thinks himself beautiful, in proportion as his body is destitute of hairs, his head flattened, his skin more covered with annotto, or chica, or some other coppery or red

colour.

The Chaymas lead a life of the greatest uniformity. They go to rest very regularly at seven in the evening; and rise long before day-light, at half after four in the morning. Every Indian has a fire near his hammock. The women are so chilly, that I have seen them shiver at church when the centigrade thermometer was not below 18°. The inside of the huts of the Indians is extremely clean. Their hammocks, their mat of reeds, their pots to hold cassava and fermented maize, their bows and arrows, every thing is arranged in the greatest order. Men and women bathe every day, and being almost constantly naked, they are exempted from that want of cleanliness, of which the garments are the principal cause among the lower people in cold countries. Beside a house in the village, they have generally in their conucos, near

Thus, in their finest statues, the Greeks exaggerated the form of the forehead, by elevating beyond proportion the facial line. (Cuv., Anat. Comp. T. ii, p. 6. Humb., Monum. Americ., T. i. p. 158).

some spring, or at the entrance of some solitary valley, a small hut, covered with the leaves of the palm or plaintain-tree. Though they live less commodiously in the conuco, they love to retire thither as often as they can. We have already spoken of that irresistible desire of fleeing from society, and of entering again on a savage life. The youngest children sometimes leave their parents, and wander four or five days in the forests, living on fruits, palm-cabbage, and roots. When travelling in the Missions, it is not uncommon, to find the villages almost deserted, because the inhabitants are in their gardens, or in the forests, al monte. Among civilized nations, the passion for hunting is owing perhaps in part to the same sentiments, to the charm of solitude, to the innate desire of independence, to the deep impression made by Nature, whenever man finds himself in contact with her alone.

The condition of the women among the Chaymas, like that in all semibarbarous nations, is a state of privation and suffering. The hardest labour is their share. When we saw the Chaymas return in the evening from their gardens," the man carried nothing but the knife (machette), with which he clears his way among the underwood. The woman however bent under a great load of plantains; she held a child in her arms; and sometimes two other children

were

placed upon the load. Notwithstanding this inequality of condition, the wives of the Indians of South America appear to be in general happier than those of the savages of the North. Between

t

Between the Alleghany mountains and the Mississippi, wherever the natives do not live in great part on the produce of the chace, the women cultivate the maize, beans, and gourds; and the men take no share in the labours of the field. Under the torrid zone, the hunting nations are extremely scarce, and, in the Missions, the men work in the fields like the

women.

Nothing can exceed the difficulty with which the Indians learn Spanish. They have an absolute aversion to it, while, living separate from the whites, they have not the ambition to be called polished Indians, or, as it is termed in the Missions, latinized Indians, Indios muy latinos. But what struck me most, not only among the Chaymas, but in all the very distant Missions, which I afterwards visited, is the extreme difficulty, which the Indians have to arrange and express the most simple ideas in Spanish, even when they perfectly understand the meaning of the words, and the turn of the phrases. When a white questions them concerning objects which surround them from their cradle, they seem to discover an imbecility, which exceeds that of infancy. The missionaries assert, that this embarrassment is not the effect of timidity; that in the Indians who daily visit the missionary's house, and who regulate the public works, it does not arise from natural stupidity, but from the obstacles they find in the structure of a language so different from their native tongues. The more remote man is from cultivation, the greater his stiffness and moral inflexibility,

We must not then be surprised, to find obstacles among the isolated Indians in the Missions, which are unknown to those, who inhabit the same parish with the mestizoes, the mulattoes, and the whites, in the neighbourhood of towns. I have often been surprised at the volubility, with which, at Caripe, the alcalde, the governador, and the sargento mayor, harangue for whole hours the Indians assembled before the church; regulating the labours of the week, reprimanding the idle, threatening the disobedient. Those chiefs, who are equally of the Chayma race, and who transmit the orders of the missionary, speak all at the same time, with a loud voice, with marked emphasis, but almost without action. Their features remain motionless; but their look is imperious and

severe.

These same men, who displayed quickness of intellect, and who were tolerably well acquainted with the Spanish, could no longer connect their ideas, when, accompanying us in our excursions around the convent, we put questions to them through the intervention of the monks. They were made to affirm or deny, whatever the monks pleased: and indolence, attended with that wily politeness, to which the least cultivated Indian is no stranger, induced them sometimes to give to their answers the turn, that seemed to be suggested by our questions. Travellers cannot be enough on their guard against this officious assent, when they wish to support their opinions by the testimony of the natives. To put an Indian Alcalde to the

proof,

proof, I asked him one day, if he did not think the little river of Caripe, which issues from the cavern of the Guacharo, returned into it on the opposite side by some unknown entrance, after having ascended the slope of the mountain. After appearing gravely to reflect on the subject, he answered, by way of supporting my hypothesis: "How else, if it were not so, would there always be water in the bed of the river at the mouth of the cavern }"

An Autumn near the Rhine; or

Sketches of Court, Society,
Scenery, &c. in some of the
GERMAN STATES, bordering
on the Rhine.

Frankfort on the Maine-the ancient place of inauguration of the German Emperors, the residence of the Diet which is to reconstruct the dismembered empire, a centre for colonial commerce, and the great money market of Germany, may, on every account be considered one of its most interesting cities. The approach from Darmstadt, through a noble beech wood, within the little territory of the free city, is very striking. The road gradually ascends to an old Roman tower, on the brow of the hill, half a mile distant, when the City, with its handsome white slated houses, its venerable Cathedral, and cheerful citizens' mansions and gardens, lies before you in the middle of the rich wide valley of the Maine. On the left you trace the ample course of the river towards Mayence; and a few leagues beyond the town rises the bold wooded

chain of the Taunus Mountains, the highest points of which, above Homberg, are just opposite Frankfort. The road, as far as the suburb, is lined with highly cultivated gardens and vineyards, interspersed with cheerful boxes, whose air of smart comfort an nounces at once the affluence and mercantile taste of their pos

sessors.

You pass the Maine from the fauxbourg of Saxenhausen, by an ancient stone bridge, to the city. The river on both sides presents a respectable little cluster of their antique buildings, have a shipping, and the quays, with would be more striking to any degree of life and bustle which one than an Englishman familiar with London and Bristol. If the commercial navy of the free city is comparatively insignificant, the general construction of the city itself is, in some respects, more picturesque and interesting than that of the above-mentioned money-getting Cities. A cockney would, however, no doubt, prefer the tight tenements of Cornhill, denoting the value of every foot of ground, to the stately rambling mansion, where you enter a large court-yard by a ponderous porte cocher, which does not appear constructed for the momentary ingress and egress of a very lively commerce. In almost every town in Germany, the top of one of the church towers is inhabited by a family, who watch during the night, and give alarm in case of fire. They sound a small horn at every quarter or half-hour, in evidence of their vigilance; and are provided with an immense fire-horn or alarum-bell, to rouse

the

the inhabitants in case of danger. From the tower of the church on the central Parade Place, which serves this purpose, we enjoyed a fine panoramic view of Frankfort. The compact oval city, with its handsome buildings, and white cheerful streets, lay beneath us; the Maine running along the southern side, and surrounded on all others by the luxuriant shrubberies and gardens of the merchants. The Zeil, a noble wide street, traversing the town, is the only handsome one; but the old narrow lanes, with their lofty houses, quaint casements, and gable fronts, have an antique respectability, and remind one of the early splendor of the Imperial City. The more modern parts of the town abound with handsome mansions, some of which deserve the name of palaces. The old ramparts are levelled, the ditches filled in, and their place occupied by rich shrubbery walks, laid out in the irregular English style: embellishments, chiefly the work of the Prince Primate, during his occupation of the city and territory. In a fine day you meet here the substantial bourgeois, and stately belles of the city, walking with a sedate tranquillity and grave decorum, equally remote from the gay flutter of a Parisian promenade, and the gaping curiosity of the Cockney assemblage in Hyde Park.

Frankfort is one of the four Imperial Cities, which are all that the legislators of Vienna have thought fit to restore to their ancient privileges and republican constitution. A small territory, to the extent of half a league VOL. LX.

each way, is carved out for it round the city. The two Burgomasters, the Senate, and the Council are again invested with the ensigns of republican sovereignty. The city is garrisoned by its own civic troop, of about 5 or 600 men, besides a militia of about 3,000; and the mercantile commonwealth is ostensibly established on the same footing, as in its old Imperial days. But the free cities are elements of the old constitution, which are, I fear, little calculated to survive it in their former flourishing condition. As long as the Empire existed, their dependence on its head procured the defenceless commonwealth a protection against powerful and despotic neighbours: their gold cementing their friendly union with the Imperial House but who are the worthy burghers of Frankfort to look to now in times of oppression-more likely to occur since their quiet ecclesiastical neighbours have been wiped away, to make room for keen military sovereigns, ever on the watch for aggrandizement?

1

As far as I could learn, the government of the Baron Dalberg, Prince Primate of the Rhenish Confederation, and Grand Duke of Frankfort, was by no means unpopular in the city. The impositions were nearly the same as at present, and an expensive Court produced a circulation of money and a bustle and show which help to content people as much as solid advantages. The visits of Napoleon to his crowned minion, were to be sure rather redoubtable to the good merchants. On one occasion, the happy event of his

2 H

arrival

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