Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 2 (1898).djvu/430

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398
THE ZOOLOGIST.

generally of a "light-yellow colour."[1] In Equatorial Africa, Enrin Pasha states that the people of Magúngo are of a black colour, "through which, however, appears very distinctly a red ground tone"[2]; and he further describes "a streamlet dyed red with the iron that impregnates the soil."[3] In Unyóro the same author writes of the exposed "red clayey subsoil,"[4] and describes the people of this district as reddish brown in colour.[5] Again, in the Wadelai district, he writes of the inhabitants as "in colour black, with a reddish brown tinge."[6] In Mashonaland Mr. Eckersley states that the soil of the plateau between Umtali and Salisbury consists, for the most part, of decomposed granite, &c. "Large areas of red soil are, however, frequently met with," &c.[7] Of the Mashonas, he writes: "Their skin has a fine healthy glow, its colour being dark chocolate brown, some shades removed from black."[8] According to Ratzel, "Stokes, one of the most experienced of all Australian travellers, sums up his judgment in the phrase, 'The Australians vary as curiously as their soil.'"[9] Lord Geo. Campbell in one of the Fiji islands, describing the men engaged on the yam-grounds, adds: "Working on the brown soil, which is very much their own colour too."[10] Richtofen, in a work—apparently still untranslated into English—in his physical exposition of the soil of Northern China, to which the German name of Löss has been applied, states that this Loss is so predominant in the basin of the Wei river, on which stands Singanfu, that its yellow hue affects the whole landscape, and even tinges the atmosphere.[11] Its suggested partial application here to the colour of the Chinese, as an incident in the argument, requires no further emphasis.

  1. 'Miss. Travels and Researches in S. Africa,' p. 78.
  2. 'Emin Pasha in Central Africa,' p. 16.
  3. Ibid. p. 20.
  4. Ibid. p. 50.
  5. Ibid. p. 52.
  6. Ibid. p. 143.—According to Dr. Junker, "a decided black complexion nowhere occurs, and that it would be merely more correct to speak of a brown, a copper, or chocolate-coloured, than of a black race in Africa" ('Travels in Africa, 1879-1883'; Engl, transl. p. 190).
  7. 'Geographical Journal,' vol. v. p. 35.
  8. Ibid. p. 43.
  9. 'History of Mankind,' vol. i. p. 339.
  10. 'Log Letters from the "Challenger,'" p. 147.
  11. 'China—Ergebnisse eigener Reisen und darauf gegründeter Studien.'