1866, s. 163. On the Banyai, Livingstone, Travels, p. 64. On the
Kaffirs, the Rev. J. Shooter, The Kafirs of Natal and the Zulu
Country, 1857, p. 1.) Mr. Galton, in speaking to me about the natives
of S. Africa, remarked that their ideas of beauty seem very different
from ours; for in one tribe two slim, slight, and pretty girls were not
admired by the natives.
Turning to other quarters of the world; in Java, a yellow, not a white
girl, is considered, according to Madame Pfeiffer, a beauty. A man of
Cochin China spoke with contempt of the wife of the English
Ambassador, that she had white teeth like a dog, and a rosy colour like
that of potato-flowers. We have seen that the Chinese dislike our
white skin, and that the N. Americans admire a tawny hide. In S.
America, the Yuracaras, who inhabit the wooded, damp slopes of the
eastern Cordillera, are remarkably pale-coloured, as their name in
their own language expresses; nevertheless they consider European women
as very inferior to their own. (62. For the Javans and Cochin-Chinese,
see Waitz, Introduct. to Anthropology, Eng. translat. vol. i. p. 305.
On the Yuracaras, A. d Orbigny, as quoted in Prichard, Physical
History of Mankind, vol. v. 3rd ed. p. 476.)
In several of the tribes of North America the hair on the head grows to
a wonderful length; and Catlin gives a curious proof how much this is
esteemed, for the chief of the Crows was elected to this office from
having the longest hair of any man in the tribe, namely ten feet and
seven inches. The Aymaras and Quichuas of S. America, likewise have
very long hair; and this, as Mr. D. Forbes informs me, is so much
valued as a beauty, that cutting it off was the severest punishment
which he could inflict on them. In both the Northern and Southern
halves of the continent the natives sometimes increase the apparent
length of their hair by weaving into it fibrous substances. Although
the hair on the head is thus cherished, that on the face is considered
by the North American Indians as very vulgar, and every hair is
carefully eradicated. This practice prevails throughout the American
continent from Vancouver s Island in the north to Tierra del Fuego in
the south. When York Minster, a Fuegian on board the Beagle, was
taken back to his country, the natives told him he ought to pull out
the few short hairs on his face. They also threatened a young
missionary, who was left for a time with them, to strip him naked, and
pluck the hair from his face and body, yet he was far from being a
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