Darwin Correspondence Project

11 Saint Mary Abbot's Terrace, | Kensington, W.

Feb. 21. '71

My dear Sir

Very many thanks for your work duly recd.. I have skimmed through it at once, but shall study it most carefully before writing my travels: & in that work I shall enter into long details relative to some of the points touched upon in your work. Just now I am entirely taken up with history: I have determined to get rid of my historical sketch of Africa quickly, and shall have finished it by the autumn. Its proper title would be Africa's Place in History—though that is too hackneyed a title—for I bring in a good deal of European & Asiatic history as well— I also bring in a chapter on the origin of religion which may interest you, though I do not suppose that I shall say anything that has not been said before. The quotations from my letters are correct; I assure you that I feel very proud of seeing my name in such a book.

I will just note down one or two marginal mems that I made in my hasty perusal—

i. 26--7— the food of the West African is always soft: everything is boiled—so that the meat (if any) can be divided with a spoon. Are there negroes who have no pottery? I have not met with them.

i. 36. I can assert positively that the gorilla also makes nests. But I doubt whether either animal uses the nest for sleeping in. Otherwise how easy it wd be to shoot them! & it is not easy. The evidence I collected was this. That the male ga. & ce. builds the nest for the female to lie in: that the nest is not used as a sleeping place usually: but that sometimes it is so used: just I imagine as birds often roost in old nests. Compare the use of the dray or squirrel's nest by that animal. The nest-building ape of Du Chaillu is a myth.

i. 94. Suicide very common on Gold Coast. A man blew out his brains at my side one night— I have also seen a case of suicide of a chief defeated in battle. That is de rigueur. Women hang themselves, men shoot themselves. I shall write much on this head in my travels.

i. 100. The Negroes like the Orientals admire truth though they do not practise it.

i. 143. I saw a small monkey in Africa whose master used to tie its hands behind its back to make it run like a biped wh. it did with great ease, though naturally going on all fours. The gorilla goes on all fours & cannot I have been informed stand up without holding on to a branch. The disproportion between the huge trunk & the legs wh. have a stunted withered appearance as if disused in the animal when seen just after death is very striking.

i. 221. The negroes of the Gold Coast though reverencing white men, & mulattoes, have it as a maxim that mulattoes must not intermarry, as the children will be few & sickly. Otherwise they wd. probably intermarry always just as the aristocracy in France under the old régime. This is I think as important a fact as has yet been collected on this point. White men have been on the Gold Coast 400 years: the natives have had time enough to gain this knowledge by experience

The Hottentot peculiarity exists in a less marked manner among many African tribes. (i. 225) Woolly hair is a constant character—the only one—in the negroes. Complexion & contour vary immensely.

i. 242. The blackest tribes I know in Africa are found in places where the greatest possible heat coexists with moisture produced by a rainy season—a river or sea coast & marshes—e.g. the Jollofs on the Senegal— The heat of the Sahara is there blended with the moisture & pestilential exhalations of tropical Africa.

Black I maintain is more beautiful than the lighter skins in the Africans.

ii. 320. The body of the negro is not destitute of fine down. The legs I remember are often covered with hairs like ours; but these leg hairs even preserve their peculiar curly character. Men & women are well furnished with hair at the junction of the four limbs to the trunks. I do not think they differ essentially from us in that respect—as to quantity.

I think I have seen negroes with small whiskers: I believe they generally shave the cheeks, but wont be sure.

ii. 334 Magyar, the African traveller says that savages from the far interior go to the coast for trade & return to their native country singing or whistling opera airs.

ii. 346— A Moor I met seemed rather put out at finding I was whiter than he was & said the bad food of the country spoilt one's skin. The Moors are white men. But we shudder when we first land on the coast & see the cadaverous faces of the residents.

I am not disappointed in your book— It will be read by thousands, who are not naturalists. At length every man will be furnished with a satisfactory explanation of the existence of his mammæ: as for the coccyx, many men are happily unconscious of it— The governor of Lagos said to me in a very surly manner, ``yes but you said we have all got tails, didnt you?'' I owned the soft impeachment but pleaded the fact as my justification. He looked much put out. To such men, & there are many, your book will appear an outrage: but it will encourage many in their writings to tell what they believe to be the truth, whether pleasant or not. You must expect plenty of vulgar abuse: you got a good deal for only hinting for what you have now said in a very clear voice. But it wont hurt you.

With kind regards to Mrs. Darwin | believe me | yours very truly | Winwood Reade