irritates them, and their anger is so violent that in the first transport,
the unhappy slave who may have excited their fury, runs the risk of being
stabbed on the spot. Hence, too doubtless the manly boldness which
characterises them, and which seems to inspire those who surround them,
with respect and submission. The Moors are, in every respect, much superior
to the Negroes: braver than they are, they reduce them to slavery, and
employ them in the hardest labour; they are, in general, tall and well
made, and their faces are very handsome, and full of expression.

However, it may also be observed that the Moors of both sexes, appear at
the first sight, like a people composed of two distinct races, which have
nothing in common, except, the extremely brown, or tanned colour of their
skin, and the shining black of their hair. The greater part of them, it is
true, are endowed with the stature, and the noble, but austere features,
which call to mind some of the great Italian painters, but there are
several, (indeed the smaller number) whose cranium and profile form a
singular contrast with the others. Their head is remarkably elongated, the
ears small: the forehead, which, in the first, is very high and finely
formed, is contracted in the latter, and becomes at the top disagreeably
protuberant; their eyes are sunk, and placed as it were obliquely, which
gives them the savage look with which they are reproached, and their lower
jaw has a tendency to be elongated. Some of them have, it is true, the high
forehead of the former: but it always differs by being sunk in at the base.
These latter are, perhaps, the descendants of the aborigines of this
country, whose characteristic features are still discernible,
notwithstanding their alliance with so many strangers? History has, indeed,
transmitted to us some of the customs of the Numidians, who were by turns,
the enemies, and the allies of the Romans; but it has not condescended to
draw their portrait. Juvenal somewhere speaks of the withered hands of the
Moors: _manus ossea Mauri_. But, besides, that this is general in hot