Major Serpa Pinto, the Portuguese traveller in Africa who recently
turned up at Durban, has been lecturing on his travels at Lisbon. In his address, which is translated in the Standard, he testifies distinctly to the existence of a white race in Central Africa, living in territory "between the Ouch i and the Cubango." He himself spoke to men of this race, whom he describes as "whiter than Caucasians ," who call themselves Cassequers, and are not bad people, though totally uncivilised.. They have tufts of hair on their heads, like short wool. They have eyes like the Chinese, are powerful, and live a nomadic life. It is of course possible that an albino family should have multiplied, but it is more probable that a small party of Vandals or Goths were forced southward, or tried to explore southward, were compelled by circumstances to remain, and being separated from all around them by their colour, have survived as a distinct tribe. An almost perfectly white- tribe exists in the Atlas, the descendants, it is supposed, of Romans who fled to the mountain for protection against the Barbarians; and as far as is yet known, climate has little influence on colour. The Copts remain white, and the Tasmanians were quite black, though they had always lived, in a climate nearly identical with that of Britain.
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