"What causes the color of the negro; what is it, and of what does it consist?" has been an enquiry of the deepest interest through all ages, among all nations, with such varied speculations that we have concluded, in addition to the foregoing chapter, to make a special explanation on color.
Said Herodotus the learned Greek, and "father of history": "The Egyptians and Ethiopians have black skins and wooly hair." Also said Strabo: "The Ethiopians are black and wooly haired;" his allusion and astonishment evidently being more at the color of their skin, than the texture of the hair. And exclaiming with wonder, said Pliny: "For who has believed the account about the Ethiopians before he saw them?"
In this special explanation, we shall feel more at liberty to summon physiology to our aid, than to intrude into other pages the full text of these.
The human skin as before explained, consists of three structures; the cuticle or epidermis at the surface; the rete mucosum immediately next and below; the cutis vera, corsium, dermis, or true skin, lying at the base of all. The first is a thin transparent colorless structure, like the thin layers of a bladder, or tissue seen between the leaf fat of fine mutton.
This is simply that which is rubbed off by abrasion from the back of the hand or leg, leaving no other wound than a fresh tender looking place, when it is said one skinned his hand or leg, by abrasion or rubbing against something. The second is a jelly like colorless substance or structure, and that which begins to throw out on the surface, where the skin is rubbed off, little globules, or clear drops of a liquid substances. The third is the true skin or hide which the butcher takes off slaughteed animals, and is tanned as leather. The upper surface of the true skin next to the rete mucosum or middle structure, is as colorless or white naturally like the tissue of leaf fat.
The rete mucosum or middle structure of the skin, now becomes the most important subject of investigation, the "opening of the second seal" of the great mystery of the revelation of color, answering the question, "When and How did that negro race begin?" In this again, rete mucosum, the coloring matter which gives complexion to all races in general and every individual in particular, lies.
It is cellular, sponge or honeycomb like, each cell being a vesicle or little pouch, capable like a bladder of holding whatever enters it in a liquid state.
In the white race these cells or pouches are mainly empty or partially filled with a colorless transparent substance, clear like water. But whenever color as a flush in the face from blushing, anger or any other emotion is seen, it is caused by the presence of red matter at the moment rushing into these little cells of the rete mucosum. When paleness ensues it is caused by the coloring or red matter leaving and remaining out of them during the paleness.
For a better comprehension without regard to chemical properties, all red matter will be termed rouge, our object being not to discuss the elementary principles of matter, but show, on this important enquiry of color, cause and effect.
Elaboration and selection, as in the preceding chapter stated, is a first process in the physiology and functional chemistry of all things, animate and inanimate, animal, vegetable, and mineral. And whether in the blood root, beet camwood, pokeberry, currant, cherry, blackberry, dahlia, rose, all flowers, and fruits as vegetable; the gills of a gobbler, comb and gills of a cock, red headed reptiles, red plumaged heads and cape feathers of birds and other fowls as animals; and the precious stone ruby, as mineral, all contain the same essential coloring matter, rouge, by the same process of elaboration and selection.
What is the coloring matter which enters the cells of the rete mucosum of the African race producing the "jet black" complexion, as it is termed? Is it homogeneous or heterogeneous, of the same or a different nature, to that which composes the color or complexion of the other races? This is the all important enquiry of ages, and opens the book of mysteries on this subject. If homogeneous, the black race has a common origin with the other two, Mongolian and Caucasian races; but if heterogeneous, none with Noah's, and consequently, none with Adam's race.
All coloring matter which enters into the human system may be termed pigment, pigmentum as before intimated; that in the fair race being red, that in the tawny being yellow in appearance, the red being modified by elaboration according to the economy of the sytem of each particular race. In the Caucasian, it is in its most simple elementary constitutent; in the Mongolian, in a more compound form. But that which gives complexion to the blackest African is the same red matter; concentrated rouge in its most intensified state.
Why should an elaboration and selection of the same coloring matter take place so differently in the black race from that of the other two races? Or why should an elaboration and selection of the same coloring matter take place so differently in the yellow race from that of the white, or be different in either, if in reality descended from the same common origin, one parent stock? Simply because it is in accordance with the economy of the Creator, to give a general and unerring reproductive system, to each race whereby it should always be known, by its own peculiar characteristics; as also it was a part of His economy to give each individual of the same race, a particular reproductive system of temperment, whereby the same parents as father and mother, produce children of different temperments and different color of eyes and hair as before mentioned, as may be seen in almost every family of the white race.
It is needless to pursue this part of the enquiry further, as just here is where the mysterious, inscrutable wisdom of God comes in. And here also may most impressively be applied, that beautiful philosophical conclusion of the Duke of Argyll in "Primeval Man," "that creation has also had a method," Cannot we see something of this "method" here?
This is morally, physically, and consequently scientifically in perfect harmony with the variations and departure or changes from the most simple elementary color of the one to the extremely intensified color of the other of the aboriginal progenitors of the three fixed races. Should, from its blackness, the essential properties of the coloring matter of the African or negro race be disputed, let further enquiry answer. Take any or all such fruits known as black previously referred to in these pages; first green, then whitish or colorless, next a slight red, deepening daily, to the final intense red or blackness in color. Has the fruit during these changes simply increased the property of color by adding particles of coloring matter, or has it lost its original properties of red by attaining the hue of blackness? It has simply increased in color matter of the same nature, till it attained the highest degree of that color which, intensified, is simply, black, that is all. Prove it, as illustrated by the maceration of a black blood clot in water, and you will have the proof at hand.
Why is it that an increase in redness attains a hue of blackness?
Simply because, as in the case of the black blood clot referred to, the particles are compressed into a solid mass, the intenseness of which is black in hue; but when macerated in water, the particles become separated, when they reflect their true color, red.
The color then, of the negro, over which for ages there has been so much speculation in every conceivable thought almost, is no more nor less than concentrated rouge; the same color which in giving blackness of complexion to his skin, gives also in turn the most delicate rosy tint to the ruddy cheeks and ruby lips of the lily white skin of the proudest and most beautiful white lady of the Caucasian race.
This fact is still more apparent, when observing that color in the deepest dye, as it lessens in intensity upon the lips of some black persons, gradually terminating in a most striking scarlet red on the inner part of the lip at the verge of the teeth, impressively reminding us of the Song of Solomon in memory of his black beauty, the Queen of Sheba: "Thy lips are a thread of scarlet." Song So., C. in V.3.
One illustration more, by comparison. Take any of the blackest berries, as currants, whortle berries, pole berries, mulberries, black berries, as called, or black heart cherries, and on close inspection with the eye, the hue will be really a deep or dark purple. Then let the hand of the blackest person be placed on a dish or other vessel filled with this fruit, or the fruit be placed in juxtaposition with the skin of such person, and it will be found to be a dark red compared with the fruit, really a purple. So that the color of the negro, the African, is really a purple and nothing else.
But purple involves a mixture of red and blue, and implies the presence of blue in the blood, as all color elaborated in the system comes through the blood, as the only medium of circulation and deposit through the system.
Certainly it is true, or whence come the "blue veins" pf the white race shown through the colorless rete mucosum and transparent epidermis; and whence the blue eyes so much prided in by that race, as one of the characteristics of race superiority as claimed? Also the blue developed in certain pathological conditions of the system, on the skin of persons of both sexes of the white race? Blue, then, is a constituent element of the blood, or it could not be developed in any condition of the system, normal or abnormal.
Hence, then this purple color of the negro; a color that has long been derisively applied to the natives of Africa and the West Indies by foreign sailors and seamen of the white race; by the epithet "blue skins," as the American sailors styled the Haitians; and "purple skins," as applied to the natives of Africa by British seamen, as the writer himself once heard when a passenger on a British steamer some years ago, on the coast of Africa.
And as significantly bearing upon this important subject, it may not be out of place here to note the fact that purple, as a dress color, was originated in Africa; the Ethiopians and Egyptians who had the most delicate observation of color, adopted it as a royal choice, and must have had a significance as all of their design had, which was most probably emblematic of the color or complexion of their kings and queens, and therefore, the royal families. Yellow is also a constituent of the blood, as seen in the eyes, the bile, jaundice, yellow fever, and other pathological conditions of the system, which takes its place in the modifications of complexions in the human race.
It is known by medical men, that arterial blood never coagulates or clots, and is known as the red or scarlet blood; that venous blood coagulates or clots, and is known as the blie blood. Can not the wisdom of Providence be seen without the supposed intervention of a miracle in creating the color of the negro boy by a "method" in the process of elaboration and selection, a regular established law of physiology, by an adequate quantity of the red and blue bloods blending to form the deep purple for the negro complexion? More on this point is needless; the law by which it may be done is complete and comprehensive and almost defies controversy.
How strikingly is this fact of a variety of complexion arising from the same essential properties of color and stock, beautifully carried out and illustrated in what we are taught scientifically to look upon as one of the lowest orders of animated nature, the mollusca, which on certain bright, calm, sunny days, may be seen floating on the surface of the ocean, facetiously termed by seafaring men, "Portugeuse men of war," whose tissue sheets spread to the breeze vary in every hue, from a clear bladder, bubble like whiteness, increasing in the faintest rose colored tint, to the deepest purple, till it reaches the most intense dahlia like blackness. All these colors may sometimes be seen at one and the same time, looking like a flower garden; no doubt the immediate offspring of the same individual family.
It is singular that the lowest and highest orders of animal life, the mollusca and man, should exhibit as they do so truthfully, distinctly and clearly, this great mystery of the Divine economy in giving variety of complexion.
And what of the Albino, the clearest and whitest of which are born of pure stock, African or negro parents? Could not a pure white and a pure black child have easily been produced from parents of a precisely medium color as this extreme, especially when designed to subserve the ends of perfecting the establishment of races in the economy of the Creator? Certainly they could and we think this point undisputed. Concede this and nothing more, and we shall have incontrovertibly established the unity of races and color of the whole human family.
That like the vegetable kingdom, every seed, from that of a grain of mustard to a cocoanut, there is but one uniform plan and structure for reproduction; the substance of the seed which is the kernal, consisting of nothing more than the impacked leaves of whatever tree or plant produced it; and as in the animal kingdom in the anatomical structure of all vertebrates, from fish to man, the Divine Creator had but one plan; so in the human races, running through all the various shades of complexion, there is but one color, modified and intensified from negative to the extremest positive, as seen from the purest white, in all intermediate colors, to the purest black. This is the solution of the problem which reveals to us the great mystery of the races of man.
This truth as proven in regard to color, is but another evidence to show in the language of that great master in natural science, Agassiz: "That the animal kingdom especially has been constructed upon a plan which presupposes the existence of an intelligent being as its Author."
And we may be permitted to add: there is no part of this great subject (the creation of man) more convincing of the existence and wisdom of God as our Creator, than the subject now under considertion. Like the flowers of the fields, it is that which presents itself to the view of every one, making its own impression, and causing seriously enquirying reflections, as to the cause of the "variety of colors."
We have confined our explanations to the descriptions of the three original races, as we hold and believe that the Malay is simply the product of these three great races by admixture and therefore, an offshoot or composite race, and not an original one.
We also believe that the North American Indian is an offspring of the Mongolian or original yellow race of Asia, a descendant of Shem.
From what has been adduced may not his Grace the Duke of Argyll be now more reconciled, in his able enquiry wherein he says: "strongly marked as the varieties of man now are, the variation is strongest in respect to color, which in all organisms, is notoriosuly the most liable to modification and to change. And in this feature of color it is remarkable that we have every possible variety of tint from the fairest to the blackest races so that the one extreme passes into the other by small and insensible gradations."
