The Polynesians blush freely. The Rev. Mr. Stack has seen hundreds of instances with the New Zealanders. The following case is worth giving, as it relates to an old man who was unusually dark-coloured and partly tattooed. After having let his land to an Englishman for a small yearly rental, a strong passion seized him to buy a gig, which had lately become the fashion with the Maoris. He consequently wished to draw all the rent for four years from his tenant, and consulted Mr. Stack whether he could do so. The man was old, clumsy, poor, and ragged, and the idea of his driving himself about in his carriage for display amused Mr. Stack so much that he could not help bursting out into a laugh; and then “the old man blushed up to the roots of his hair.” Forster says that “you may easily distinguish a spreading blush” on the cheeks of the fairest women in Tahiti.[1312] The natives also of several of the other archipelagoes in the Pacific have been seen to blush. Mr. Washington Matthews has often seen a blush on the faces of the young squaws belonging to various wild Indian tribes of North America. At the opposite extremity of the continent in Tierra del Fuego, the natives, according to Mr. Bridges, “blush much, but chiefly in regard to women; but they certainly blush also at their own personal appearance.” This latter statement agrees with what I remember of the Fuegian, Jemmy Button, who blushed when he was quizzed about the care which he took in polishing his shoes, and in otherwise adorning himself. With respect to the Aymara Indians on the lofty plateaus of Bolivia, Mr. Forbes says,[1313] that from the colour of their skins it is impossible that their blushes should be as clearly visible as in the white races; still under such circumstances as would raise a blush in us, “there can always be seen the same expression of modesty or confusion; and even in the dark, a rise of temperature of the skin of the face can be felt, exactly as occurs in the European.” With the Indians who inhabit the hot, equable, and damp parts of South America, the skin apparently does not answer to mental excitement so readily as with the natives of the northern and southern parts of the continent, who have long been exposed to great vicissitudes of climate; for Humboldt quotes without a protest the sneer of the Spaniard, “How can those be trusted, who know not how to blush?”[1314] Von Spix and Martius, in speaking of the aborigines of Brazil, assert that they cannot properly be said to blush; “it was only after long intercourse with the whites, and after receiving some education, that we perceived in the Indians a change of colour expressive of the emotions of their minds.”[1315] It is, however, incredible that the power of blushing could have thus originated; but the habit of self-attention, consequent on their education and new course of life, would have much increased any innate tendency to blush.