Having made these preliminary remarks on the admiration felt by savages for various ornaments, and for deformities most unsightly in our eyes, let us see how far the men are attracted by the appearance of their women, and what are their ideas of beauty. As I have heard it maintained that savages are quite indifferent about the beauty of their women, valuing them solely as slaves, it may be well to observe that this conclusion does not at all agree with the care which the women take in ornamenting themselves, or with their vanity. Burchell[424] gives an amusing account of a Bushwoman, who used so much grease, red ochre, and shining powder, “as would have ruined any but a very rich husband.” She displayed also “much vanity and too evident a consciousness of her superiority.” Mr. Winwood Reade informs me that the negroes of the West Coast often discuss the beauty of their women. Some competent observers have attributed the fearfully common practice of infanticide partly to the desire felt by the women to retain their good looks.[425] In several regions the women wear charms and love-philters to gain the affections of the men; and Mr. Brown enumerates four plants used for this purpose by the women of North-Western America.[426] Hearne,[427] who lived many years with the American Indians, and who was an excellent observer, says, in speaking of the women, “Ask a Northern Indian what is beauty, and he will answer, a broad flat face, small eyes, high cheek-bones, three or four broad black lines across each cheek, a low forehead, a large broad chin, a clumsy hook nose, a tawny hide, and breasts hanging down to the belt.” Pallas, who visited the northern parts of the Chinese empire, says “those women are preferred who have the Mandschú form; that is to say, a broad face, high cheek-bones, very broad noses, and enormous ears;”[428] and Vogt remarks that the obliquity of the eye, which is proper to the Chinese and Japanese, is exaggerated in their pictures for the purpose, as “it seems, of exhibiting its beauty, as contrasted with the eye of the red-haired barbarians.” It is well known, as Huc repeatedly remarks, that the Chinese of the interior think Europeans hideous with their white skins and prominent noses. The nose is far from being too prominent, according to our ideas, in the natives of Ceylon; yet “the Chinese in the seventh century, accustomed to the flat features of the Mogul races, were surprised at the prominent noses of the Cingalese; and Thsang described them as having ‘the beak of a bird, with the body of a man.’”