A scene of a new and astonishing nature then opened to my view. All that
the earth contains of people and of nations; men of every race and of
every region, converging from their various climates, seemed to assemble
in one allotted place; where, forming an immense congress, distinguished
in groups by the vast variety of their dresses, features, and
complexion, the numberless multitude presented a most unusual and
affecting sight.

On one side I saw the European, with his short close coat, pointed
triangular hat, smooth chin, and powdered hair; on the other side the
Asiatic, with a flowing robe, long beard, shaved head, and round turban.
Here stood the nations of Africa, with their ebony skins, their woolly
hair, their body girt with white and blue tissues of bark, adorned with
bracelets and necklaces of coral, shells, and glass; there the tribes
of the north, enveloped in their leathern bags; the Laplander, with his
pointed bonnet and his snow-shoes; the Samoyede, with his feverish body
and strong odor; the Tongouse, with his horned cap, and carrying his
idols pendant from his neck; the Yakoute, with his freckled face; the
Kalmuc, with his flat nose and little retorted eyes. Farther distant
were the Chinese, attired in silk, with their hair hanging in tresses;
the Japanese, of mingled race; the Malays, with wide-spreading ears,
rings in their noses, and palm-leaf hats of vast circumference;* and the
tattooed races of the isles of the southern ocean and of the continent
of the antipodes.** The view of so many varieties of the same species,
of so many extravagant inventions of the same understanding, and of so
many modifications of the same organization, affected me with a thousand
feelings and a thousand thoughts.*** I contemplated with astonishment
this gradation of color, which, passing from a bright carnation to a
light brown, a deeper brown, dusky, bronze, olive, leaden, copper, ends
in the black of ebony and of jet. And finding the Cassimerian, with his