Tradition : Principally with Reference to Mythology and the

8o CHRONOLOGY FROM SCIENCE,
f this inferiority v in the true negro C7 ? Without lookinoO
t the matter from the same point of view, I may appea
to Captain Burton's statements on this point as t a
fully competent, if not the highest, authority that can
be quoted on points of African travel. In the first place,
he notices " the confusion of the mixed and the mulatto
with the full-blooded negro. By the latter word I
understand the various tribes of intertropical Africa,
unmixed with European or Asiatic blood" (" \ Dahome," /
ii. 187)-, and p. 193, "I have elsewhere given reasons
for suspecting, in the great Kafir family, a considerable
mixture of Arab, Persian, and other Asiatic blood : " and
as to the particular point in question, he says (p. 200),
" The negro will obey a white man more readily than a
mulatto, and a mulatto rather than one of his own
colour. He never thinks of claiming equality with the
Aryan race except when taught. At Whydat, the
French missionaries remark that their scholars always
translate ' white and black by master and slave.'"
P. 189, " One of Mr Prichard's few good generalisations
is, that as a rule the darker and dingier the African
tribe, the more degraded is its organisation."7 I find a
very similar testimony in Crawford's " Hist, of the
Indian Archipelago," i. 18. He says, " The brown and
negro races of the Archipelago may be considered to
7 Captain Burton (ii. 165) also quotes a Catholic and a Protestant missionary
as to this point. M. Wallon says, " Avec leur tendance a nous
considerer comme re"ellement supeVieurs U eux, et leur croyauce que cette
superiorite nous est acquise par celle de notre Dieu, ils renonceraient bientot
aux leurs idoles pour adorer celui qui nous leur prions de connaitre." Mr
Dawson says, " Fetish has been strengthened by the white man, whom the
ignorant blacks would not scruple to call a god if he could avoid death."
Assuming the identity of Bacchus and Noah, it is a striking circumstance,
from this point of view, that the name of Bacchus, among the
Phanicians, was a synonymous term for mourning. - Vide Hesychius in
Bryant's "Mythology" ii. 335; vide also the verses of Theocritus. Comp.
p. 247, note (Boulauger).