My dear Sir

I find in Guillain l’Afrique Orientale² i. 179 a passage which may interest you since it shows the attention paid by negroes to the breeding of men and women with the view of self-improvement. The truth of the passage is strongly supported in my mind by what I have myself observed. The extract is from an Arabic chronicle discovered by the early Portuguese at Quiloa.³ In reference to the gold trade carried on between the negroes of Sofala,⁴ and the Moors of Moguedchou⁵ it says “L’une des conditions imposée à ces derniers pour jouir de cet avantage etait de transporter chaque année à Sofala quelques jeunes gens de leur caste considerée par les Cafres comme étant d’une race supérieure qu’ils voulaient propager parmi eux.⁶

The chronicle goes on to relate that when the Sultan of Quiloa (an Arab colony) heard of this trade “il fit offrir aux Sofaliens de leur donner autant de pièces de drap que les gens de Moguedchou y transportaient d’individus autre que pour satisfaire du désir qu’ils avaient d’améliorer leur race il enverrait s’établir parmi eux quelques habitants de Kilowa (Quiloa) disposés à s’allier aux filles.⁷ These terms were accepted.

The Sofaliens or natives of Sofala are certainly negroes. The people they admired white men.

I am disposed to believe that reverence for the superior wisdom of the Arabs had something to do with this desire of breeding from them as we might like to breed from a dog of remarkable intelligence: but I think that there must also have been admiration of the physique as well: and surely no abhorrence of it.

With respect to Europeans in the tropics it must be remembered that their pallor is unhealthy looking: & often excites unpleasant feelings in us, when we first land, especially in West Africa.

But I believe this that if a white man & a black man were to look at a number of white faces, they would each select the same one as the most beautiful: that is if there happened to be one distinctively beautiful. The negro would not I am convinced choose an ugly flat nosed thick lipped face by preference.

And so also if both of them were looking at a number of black faces. The latter indeed is to my mind proved by a multitude of circumstances though I never methodically made the experiment.

I am longing to see your book⁸ and | remain | Yours very truly | Winwood Reade