= It is not very easy to make out an accurate account of the condition of Africa previously to the commerce in slaves, because Europeans had then so little intercourse with that country. Some proofs, however, exist, that it was in a more flourishing state than we find it to be. It is remarkable that the geographers, Nubiensis in the 12th century, and Leo Africanus in the 16th,* state that, in their time, the people between the Senegal and Gambia never made war on each other, but employed themselves in keeping their herds, or in tilling the ground. When Sir J. Hawkins visited Africa in 1562-7, with intent to seize the people (a practice which had been strongly reprobated by Queen Elizabeth), he found the land well cultivated, bearing plenty of grain and fruit, and the towns "prettily" laid

out.

Bosman, about 1700, writes that it was the early European settlers who first sowed dissensions among the natives of Africa, for the sake of purchasing their prisoners of war. Benezet quotes Wm. Smith, who was sent by the African Company, in 1726, to visit their settlements, and who stated, from the testimony of a factor who had lived ten years in the country, that the discerning natives accounted it their greatest unhappiness ever to have been visited by Europeans.

Dupuis, in his journey up to Coomassie, in 1819, gives the following description of the country then recently laid waste by the king of Ashantee :-“From the Praa, southward, the progress of the sword down to the margin of the sea may be traced by mouldering ruins, desolated plantations, and osseous relics; such

* Quoted by Benezct, p. 43.

+ Dupuis, "Journal of a Residence in Ashantee," р. 33.

are the traits of negro ferocity. The inhabitants, whether Assins or Fantees, whose youth and beauty exempted them from slaughter on the spot, were only reserved to grace a triumph in the metropolis of their conquerors, where they were again subject to a scruti ny, which finally awarded the destiny of sacrifice or bondage; few or none being left behind to mourni over their slaughtered friends, or the catastrophe of their unhappy country."

G

Traces are yet to be seen of cultivation which has once existed. Thus Ashmun, after a voyage which he made in 1822, for 200 miles to the south-eastward from Cape Montserado, remarks. †-" One century ago a great part of this line of coast was populous, cleared of trees, and under cultivation: it is now covered with a dense and almost continuous forest. This is almost wholly a second growth, commonly distinguished from the original by the profusion of brambles and brushwood which abounds among the larger trees, and renders the woods entirely impervious, even to the

or

0

a

natives, until opened by the bill-hook."

,

Speaking of the St. Paul's, he says, * " Along this beautiful river were formerly scattered, in Africa's better days, innumerable native hamlets; and, until within the last 20 years, nearly the whole river-board for one or two miles back, was under that slight cul. tivation which obtains among the natives of this country. But the population has been wasted by the rage for trading in slaves, with which the constant presence of slaving vessels, and the introduction of foreign luxuries, has inspired them. The south bank of this river,

and all the intervening country, and the Montserado, have been from this cause nearly desolated of inhabitants."

In a letter which I have recently received from Mr. Clarkson, he observes that the country of Biffeche on | the Senegal, which was once well inhabited, was in a few years, entirely depopulated by the Moorish slavehunters; and Mr. Rendall, in his papers, draws a strong contrast between the state of a district enjoying security of person and property, and when under the terrors of a slave trade. He states that he was at St. Louis on the Senegal from 1813 to 1817. At that time the place was in the possession of the English, and the surrounding population were led to believe that the Slave Trade was irrevocably abolished: they, in consequence, betook themselves to cultivating the land, and every available piece of ground was under tillage. The people passed from one village to another with out arms and without fear, and everything wore an air of contentment. Mr. Rendall was there again after the place had been made over to France, "and then," he says, "the Slave Trade had revived in all its horrors; vessels were lying in the river to receive car. goes of human flesh; the country was laid waste; not a vestige of cultivation was to be seen, and no one dared to leave the limits of his village without the most ample means of protection."

One apology for the Slave Trade has been suggested: that if there were not a market for the sale of the victims they would be put to death. I am, however, about to show that the countries in which the Slave Trade chiefly prevails are precisely those in which human sacrifices are carried to the greatest

excess.

It is possible, indeed, that, on the first check to the Slave Trade, the barbarous chiefs might be tempted to kill the captives who were no longer saleable. The possibility should be viewed, in order that the evil may be guarded against by stipulations in our treaties; but, in fact, it does not appear very likely that such a horrible consequence would ensue : it has not done so in some instances with which we are acquainted Mr. Butcher, the missionary, speaks, in 1811, of the captives being immediately sent to till the ground, on the occasion of the check put to the Slave Trade in the Rio Nunez ;* and Mr. Macbrair says, that the chiefs along the Gambia are now regretting the slaves whom they have formerly sold, as they find that their labor would be a source of greater wealth than the price received for their persons. But the most satisfactory proof that such murders are not inevitable, is the fact, that they did not ensue in the English settlements at the period of the abolition. The natives around Sierra Leone made up their quarrels, and suspended their wars without outrage or bloodshed.t

There may be a danger of riveting the chains of domestic slavery, but there seems to be no great fear that, with reasonable precautions, any dreadful massacre should occur.

In the present state of things, human life and human suffering are very lightly regarded; and so great are the cruelties and abominations now perpetrated that even injudicious interference could hardly render

* Sixth Rep. Afr. Inst., App., p. 163.
+ Rep. of Com. for Afr. Inst., p. 28.

the condition of Africa worse than it now is :-any change must be an improvement. Laird tells us that the inhabitants of the delta of the Niger were so demoralized and degraded, that he could not have conceived such a people to exist, within a few miles of ports which British ships had frequented for a century.* At Calebar, skulls were seen "kicked about in every direction." Captain Fawckner, who was detained in Benin, in great distress, in 1825, says,

66

near the palace of the King of Benin are several fetish places, the depositories of the usual objects of worship :"-" many unfortunate slaves are sacrificed in front of these temples." After reading this account of the sufferings of our countryman, whose vessel being stranded upon that coast was plundered, the crew made prisoners, and their lives only spared by a singular succession of favorable omens, it is curious to read in an author two centuries earlier that the people of Benin " will not do injury to any, especially to strangers;"§ and that they were "a gentle, loving people;" and to hear from Reynolds, that they found more sincere proofs of love and good will from the natives than from the Spaniards and Portuguese,|| even though they had relieved the latter from the greatest misery; such has been the change of 200 years !

At Dahomey, Mr. Giraud says, he was at the King's * Laird, p. 277.

† The " fetish" is a word for any being or object supposed to possess supernatural power. It is applied therefore to the demons whom the Pagans worship, and to the charms with which they protect themselves against their power.

# Fawckner, pp. 83, 84.

§ Purchas's Africa, 1601.

|| Benezct's Account of Africa, p. 59.