Portland Gazette, And Maine Advertiser

Admixture of the human breeds.—In a letter of lady Mary Wortley Montague, written from Constantinople to a Venetian nobleman, she remarks, The suburbs of Pera, Tophana, and Galata, are collections of strangers from all the countries of the universe. They have so often intermarried, that this forms several races of people, the oddest imaginable. There is not one single family of natives that can value itself on being unmixed. You frequently see a person whose father was born a Greek, the mother an Italian, the grandfather a Frenchman, the grandmother an Armenian, and their ancestors, English, Muscovites, Asiatics, &c. This mixture produces creatures more extraordinary than you can imagine.—In the same animal is not seldom remarked the Greek perfidiousness, the Italian diffidence, the Spanish arrogance, the French loquacity, and all of a sudden he is seized with a fit of English thoughtfulness, bordering a little upon dulness, which many of us have inherited from the stupidity of our Saxon ancestors. In describing the offspring of a Dutch husband and a Greek wife, she says, "They have the large black eyes of the country, with the fat white, fishy flesh of Holland, and a lively air, streaked with dulness." Her ladyship flatly denies the so common report, that women, according to the Mahometan creed, have no souls, and are excluded, for their sex, from any share in the sensual paradise promised by the pretended prophet.—Conn. Courant