Speaking of it recalls the curious statement of divers writers to the effect that the skin of the West Indian creole feels cooler than that of a European or American from the Northern States. The same is true of the Louisiana creole; the vigorous European or Northerner who touches a creole hand during the burning hours of a July or August day has reason to be surprised at its coolness--such a coolness as tropical fruits retain even under the perpendicular fires of an equatorial sun. II THE CREOLES When an educated resident of New Orleans speaks of the creoles he must be understood as referring to the descendants of the early Latin colonists, the posterity of those French and Spanish settlers who founded or ruled Louisiana. The diminutive _criollo_, derived from the Spanish _criar_, 'to beget,' primarily signified the colonial-born child of European blood, as distinguished from the offspring of the Conquistadores by slave women, whether Indian or African. Nothing could be more etymologically antithetical, therefore, than the phrase 'colored creoles,' although it has obtained considerable currency as a convenient term to distinguish those colored people who can claim a partly Latin origin, from the plainer 'American' colored folk who have neither French nor Spanish blood in their veins, and to whom the creole dialect is supremely unintelligible. Among the colored population of lighter tint, moreover, the characteristics of the Latin blood show themselves so strongly that the popular use of the term distinguishing them from ordinary types of mulatto, quadroon, quinteroon, or octoroon appears justifiable.