THE BLACK RACE.
Reading edition
The Black Race, as considered in the various peoples constituting its type, is distinguished by its short and woolly hair, compressed skull, flattened nose, prominent jaws, thick lips, bowed legs, and black or dark brown skin. Its members are confined to the central and southern regions of Africa and the southern parts of Asia and Oceania. The blacks found in America are the descendants of African slaves transported into the New World by Europeans.
The peoples belonging to the Black Race present great variations. Some have the type altogether peculiar to the Race we have just characterized, while others show a tendency to approach the Yellow and the White Races. The inhabitants of Guinea and Congo are quite black, but the Caffres are only excessively brown and resemble Abyssinians. The Hottentots and Bushmen are yellowish, like the Chinese, though at the same time possessing the features and physiognomy of the Negro.
As striking varieties are, therefore, observable in the Black Race as in the White, and a rigorous classification of it is consequently very difficult to establish; but as we coincide in that which has been suggested by M. d’Omalius d’Halloy, we shall separate the Black Race into two divisions, the Western and the Eastern Branches.