Don Antonio Ulloa, who had extensive opportunities of forming an opinion on the natives of both the continents of America, asserts that "If we have seen one American, we may be said to have seen all, their color and make are so nearly the same."--_Notic. Americanas_, p. 308. See, likewise, Garcia, _Origin de los Indios_, p. 55-242; Torquemada, _Monarch. Indiana_, vol. ii., p. 571. "If we except the northern regions, where we find men similar to the Laplanders, all the rest of America is peopled with inhabitants among whom there is little or no diversity. This great uniformity among the natives of America seems to proceed from their living all in the same manner. All the Americans were, or still are, savages; the Mexicans and Peruvians were so recently polished that they ought not to be regarded as an exception. Whatever, therefore, was the origin of those savages, it seems to have been common to the whole. All the Americans have sprung from the same source, and have preserved, with little variation, the characters of their race; for they have all continued in a savage state, and have followed nearly the same mode of life. Their climates are not so unequal with regard to heat and cold as those of the ancient continent, and their establishment in America has been too recent to allow those causes which produce varieties sufficient time to operate so as to render their effects conspicuous."--Buffon, Eng. trans., vol. iii., p. 188.] [Footnote 232: See Appendix, No. XLVIII. (see Vol II)] [Footnote 233: See Appendix, No. XLIX. (see Vol II)] [Footnote 234: There would never have been any difference of opinion between physiologists, as to the existence of the beard among the Americans, if they had paid attention to what the first historians of the conquest of their country have said on this subject; for example, Pigafetta, in 1519, in his Journal preserved in the Ambrosian library at Milan, and published (in 1800) by Amoretti, p. 18.--Benzoni, _Hist. del Mundo Nuovo_, p. 35, 1572; Bembo, _Hist. Venet._, p. 86, 1557; Humboldt's _Personal Narrative_, vol. iii., p. 235. "The Indians have no beard, because they use certain receipts to extirpate it, which they will not communicate."--Oldmixon, vol. i., p. 286. "Experience has made known that these receipts were little shells which they used as tweezers; since they have become acquainted with metals, they have invented an instrument consisting of a piece of brass wire rolled round a piece of wood the size of the finger, so as to form a special spring; this grasps the hairs within its turns, and pulls out several at once. No wonder if this practice, continued for several generations, should enfeeble the roots of the beard. Did the practice of eradicating the beard, originate from the design of depriving the enemy of such a dangerous hold on the face? This seems to me probable."--Volney, p. 412.]