The Arizona champion., 1890-11-08
NATIVES OF MARTINIQUE.
A Peculiar Type of Physical Beauty-A
 Blending of Races,

A Peculiar Type of Physical Beauty-A
 Blending of Races
 Then you begin to look about you at the black, brown and yellow faces that are studying you curiously from beneath the yellow striped Madras turbans, or from under the shadow of mushroom shaped straw hats large as umbrellas. Watching the bare backs, bare shoulders, bare legs and arms and feet, you find that the colors of flesh are more varied and surprising than the colors of fruits. And it is only with fruit colors that many of these skin tints can be compared at all, the only terms of comparison used by the colored people themselves being terms of this kind, such as peau-sapotille ''sapota skin" The sapota or sapotille is a juicy brown fruit, with a rind satiny like a human cuticle, and just the color, when fresh and ripe, of a fine mulatto skin. But among the brighter half breeds I think the colors are much more fruit like; there are gourd tints, banana tints, orange col ors, with occasional tfushes of pink show ing through, like the first pink of the mango. Agreeable to the eye the darker tints certainly are, and often very re- markable, all tones of bronze being repre- sented; but the brighter hues are abso- lutely beautiful in certain half breed types, coolie and quadroon. Standing perfectly naked at doorways, or playing naked in the sun, astonishing children may be seen-banana colored and mango colored babies But there is one peculiar type, totally unlike all the rest; the skin is an exquisite metallic yellow, a perfect gold tone; the eyes are long and black; the intensely dark and lustrous hair falls over the neck in heavy mass of thick, rich, glossy curls that show blue lights in the sun.
 cannot speak of this comedy and ex- traordinary type without translating a passage from Dr. J. J. J. Cornilliac, an eminent Martinique physician, who re- gently published a most valuable series upon the ethnology, climatology and his tory of the Antilles. In these he writes:
 "When, among the populations of the Antilles, we first notice those remark able metis whose olive skins, elegant and slender figures, fine straight profiles, and regular features remind us of the inhabi- tants of Madras or Pondicherry, we ask ourselves in wonder-while looking at their long eyes, full of strange and gentle melancholy Especially among the women), and at the black, rich, silky gleaming hair curling in abundance over the temples and falling in profusion over the neck-to what human race can be- long this singular variety, in which there is dominant characteristic that seems indelible, and always shows more and more strongly in proportion as the type is further removed from the African ele- ment. It is the Carib blood, blended with blood of Europeans and of blacks, which in spite of all subsequent cross ings, and in spite of the fact that it has not been renewed for more than two hundred years, still conserves. as re- markedly as at the time of the first inter- blending, the race characteristic that in- variably reveals its presence in the blood of every being through whose veins it flows"
 All this population is vigorous, grace ful, healthy; all you see passing by are well made; there are no sickly faces, no scrawny limbs. If by some rare chance you encounter a person who has lost an arm or leg, you can be almost certain you are looking at a victim of the fer de lance-the serpent whose venom putrefies living tissue. Without fear of exagger- ating facts, can venture to say that the muscular development of the working men here IS something which must be seen in order to be believed; to study fine displays of it, one should watch the blacks and half-breeds working naked to the waist-on the landings, in the gas houses and slaughter houses, or on the nearest plantations. They are not large men, perhaps not extraordi- narily powerful; but they have the aspect of sculptural or even of ana tomical models; they seem absolutely devoid of adipose tissue; their muscles stand out with saliency that astonishes the eye. It is marvellous. At tanning yard, while I was watching a dozen blacks at work, a young mulatto, with the mischievous face of faun, walked by, wearing nothing but clout about his loins; and never, not even in bronze, did see so beautiful play of muscles. A demonstrator of anatomy could have used him for class model; a sculptor, wishing to shape fine Mercury in bronze, would be satisfied to take cast of such body, without thinking of making one modification from neck to heel.-Lafaca- dio Hearn in Harper's Magazine.