Convincing; for though the Heat of the Sun may Darken
the Colour of the Skin, by that Operation, which we
in English call Sun-burning, yet Experience
doth not Evince, that I remember, That that Heat alone
can produce a Discolouring that shall amount to a
true Blackness, like that of Negroes, and we
shall see by and by that even the Children of some
Negroes not yet 10. dayes Old (perhaps not
so much by three quarters of that time) will notwithstanding
their Infancy be of the same Hue with their Parents.
Besides, there is this strong Argument to be alleg’d
against the Vulgar Opinion, that in divers places in
Asia under the same Parallel, or even of the
same Degree of Latitude with the African Regions
Inhabited by Blacks, the People are at most but Tawny;[10]
And in Africa it self divers Nations in the
Empire of Ethiopia are not Negroes,
though Situated in the Torrid Zone, and as neer the
AEquinoctial, as other Nations that are so (as the
Black Inhabitants of Zeylan and Malabar
are not in our Globes plac’d so near the Line
as Amara the Famousest place in Ethiopia.)
Moreover, (that which is of no small Moment in our
present Disquisition) I find not by the best Navigators
and Travellers to the West-Indies, whose Books
or themselves I have consulted on this Subject, that
excepting perhaps one place or two of small extent,
there are any Blacks Originally Natives of any part
of America (for the Blacks now there have been
by the Europeans long Transplanted thither)
though the New World contain in it so great a Variety
of Climates, and particularly reach quite Cross the
Torri’d Zone from one Tropick to another.
And enough it be true that the Danes be a Whiter
People than the Spaniards, yet that may proceed
rather from other causes (not here to be enquired into)
than from the Coldness of the Climate, since not onely
the Swedes and other Inhabitants of those Cold
Countreys, are not usually so White as the Danes,
nor Whiter than other Nations in proportion to their
Vicinity to the Pole. [And since the Writing of the
former part of this Essay, having an opportunity on
a Solemn occasion to take Notice of the Numerous Train
of Some Extraordinary Embassadours sent from the Russian
Emperour to a great Monarch, observ’d, that
(though it were then Winter) the Colour of their Hair
and Skin was far less Whitish than the Danes
who Inhabit a milder Region is wont to be, but rather
for the most part of a Darkish Brown; And the Physician
to the Embassadour with whom those Russes came,
being ask’d by me whether in Muscovy
it self the Generality of the People were more inclin’d
to have Dark-colour’d Hair than Flaxen, he answer’d
Affirmatively; but seem’d to suspect that the
True and Antient Russians, a Sept of whom he
told me he had met with in one of the Provinces of
that vast Empire, were rather White like the Danes,