NEGROLAND AND THE NEGROES.*

TWENTY-FIVE hundred years ago-so Herodotus tells us-a company of Phoenician navigators sailed southward from the Red Sea on the eastern shore of Africa. Three years after, they passed the well-known landmarks of the Pillars of Hercules, on the opposite side of the continent, within a few days' easy sail from their starting-place. These mariners told how, as seed-time came, they had twice hauled their vessels upon the shore, planted a crop of grain, waited for it to grow and ripen, and then bearing it on board their hollow ships, had set off again on their adventurous voyage over unknown seas and along strange coasts. They related also that for a while they had seen the sun to the north of them. The Father of History was a man of large belief, but this report was too much for his credulity, and he repeats it under protest; for in all his far journeyings he had never beheld the sun except to the southward. These Phoenicians were, therefore, the first civilized men who had ever passed south of the equator, or who had seen the western slopes of the mountains that girdle the African shore.

More than two thousand years passed before the vail was again lifted, for the Carthaginian navigators never reached further south than Cape Mount, midway between Sierra Leone and Liberia. It was not till near the middle of the fifteenth century that the Portuguese made their way to the Ivory and Gold and Slave Coasts.

• Western Africa: Its History, Present Condition, and Future Prospects. By Rev. J. LEIGHTON WILSON. Harper and Brothers.

VOL. XIII.-No. 74.-L

Fifty years later Vasco de Gama rounded the Stormy Cape, misnamed of Good Hope, and for the second time completed the circumnavigation of Africa.

Neither the Catholic missionaries, who soon began their operations on a gigantic scale, nor the traders who flocked thither for gold and ivory and slaves, added greatly to the stock of knowledge respecting the people of Western Africa. It is to Protestant missionaries of our own country that we are mainly indebted for what we know of the natives of the Guinea Coast.

Mr. Wilson, from whose valuable work we propose to draw largely in this article, is probably better acquainted than any other man with the negroes of Western Africa. He has resided among them for almost a score of years. Once, in the earlier part of his missionary career, he chanced to fall among a cannibal tribe. They certainly had never heard of Sydney Smith, but manifested a particular desire to try the flavor of a bit of cold missionary. For seven years Mr. Wilson dwelt among the Krumen of Cape Palmas, and for a still longer time among the Mpongwes of the Gabun River, on the very line of the equator. He has thoroughly mastered the languages of these representatives of the two great negro races of Western Africa; has composed grammars and dictionaries of both languages, and has published books in them. He has either written or furnished the materials from which have been elaborated some of the most valuable contributions recently made to the sciences of ethnology and philology. A pamphlet on the Slave Trade, from his pen, fell under the notice of the English Government at

a time when it was a matter of debate whether the British vessels should not be withdrawn from the Slave Coast; and as he has been informed by a letter from Lord Palmerston, this pamphlet decided the question in favor of the continuance of the effort to put a stop to the Slave Trade.

Whoever may sneer at the labors of missionaries, the philosopher and the scholar will not. They have added more than all other men to our knowledge of the uncivilized portions of the human family. Of these we have no hesitation in pronouncing the negro races of Western Africa to be the most worthy of attention. They are the ones who present most promise of a future career of civilization and Christianity. It is morally certain that a century hence there will not exist upon the face of the globe an individual of the copper-colored aborigines of North America, or of the brown races of Polynesia. Indications are not wanting that the Cingalese and Hindus will pass away before the conquering white races. We believe that the Chinese have had their youth and their manhood-such as it was-and that they are to go the way of the builders of Babylon and Nineveh, of Copan and Palenque.

The negroes, on the contrary, have shown that they can live face to face with the whites. In the West Indies they have multiplied in a condition in which the aborigines became extinct in two generations. We know how they have thriven, physically, intellectually, and morally among us. However much slaveholder and abolitionist may differ in theory and conclusion, they both insist upon the essential fact, that the colored race among us have made great advances,

and are capable of and destined for still greater improvement. What the natives of the slave regions are at home, and what the country which they inhabit is, we may learn from the book of Mr. Wilson.

As we sail down the coast we pass the mouths of the great rivers Senegal and Gambia, winding through dense forests and thick jungles. Upon their banks grows the gigantic baoba, hugest of trees. The coast is under the control of the French and English, and is peopled by the Fulahs, Jalofs, and Mandingoes, the handsomest negroes of Africa, with tall elastic figures, woolly hair, and glossy black skins. The women, says one traveler, with a significant reservation, are as attractive as it is possible for black females to be. They are zealous Mohammedans, and are rapidly extending their faith among the tribes to the south.

At the flourishing settlements of Free-town and Monrovia we shall see a strange mingling of civilization and barbarism. The white man, rendered still paler by the wasting African fever, jostles the black emigrant from civilized countries, jauntily clad, and the sable denizen of the bush, with scarcely a rag to cover his nakedness. Free-town the chief settlement in the British colony of Sierra Leone, and Monrovia, the capital of Liberia, in spite of their unhealthy climate, may be fairly set down as successful experiments in African colonization. Monrovia, with its neat whitewashed dwellings and three or four churches presents an aspect not unlike that of American towns with a population of fifteen or eighteen hundred. Mr. Wilson makes the very sensible suggestion that the interests of both colonies would be materially advanced by the

union of Sierra Leone and Liberia into one State. This new State would then have a very decided preponderance in power over all of the native kingdoms on the coast.

Leaving the settlements of Sierra Leone and Liberia, and the land of the Fulahs and Mandingoes, we pass down the coast to a country inhabited by negroes of another stock. This was once known as the "Grain Coast," not from its production of bread corn, but from the Malaguete Pepper, or "Guinea Grains," once its principal article of trade. It was formerly in great demand for giving flavor and potency to the ale and porter with which our transatlantic cousins comfort their thirsty souls. These "grains" have of late years been pronounced poisonous, and their consumption has fallen off. If we may credit Mr. Wilson, the poisonous quality belongs to a different fruit, which the natives were accustomed to mix with the genuine article, which has thus lost its reputation from being found in bad company. The country is very beautiful as we coast along. Here it spreads out into broad plains dotted over with groups of feathery palms; there it rises in wooded hills, or sinks in green valleys. The sharp conical roofs of native villages are beheld rising in every direction from among the foliage.

Long before our vessel has reached her anchorage we see a throng of tiny black objects approaching us from the shore; as they approach they take the form of canoes, in each of which three or four brawny blacks, seated upon their bent legs, are paddling with all their might to be the first to reach us. These are the Krumen, and theirs is the beautiful country before us. The crew of the foremost canoe has clam

bered the side of our vessel, followed at a brief interval by the others. Their object is not theft or piracy; they wish to dispose of their labor, for a very moderate compensation.

In many respects these Krumen are the most interesting race of men on the African continent. Of late years they have become the principal laborers on all foreign vessels trading to the coast of Western Africa; and hence, though they have never engaged in the Slave Trade, Johnny Kruman is well known in every settlement from Goree to Fernando Po; and now and then he makes his way as a sailor to foreign ports. As the chances are that he has picked up a "white" nickname, and a tolerable supply of very questionable English during his variouscruises along-shore, he manages to make himself quite at home in New York or Liverpool or London.

If a Kruman were to write his autobiography, his first recollections would be of having his eyes thoroughly rubbed with red pepper, which is the African substitute for the use of the rod. As he grows older he is sent into the fields to scare the birds away from the rice-crop. When he approaches man's estate he is hired out to some captain, with whom he engages to remain as long as the vessel stays upon the coast;this may be for two months or two years. The sailors now undertake his education. The first thing is to give him a "Christian" name in exchange for his native appellation. Paphruo, or Blaino, or Barrakuo, becomes transformed into "Snowball," or "Frying-Pan," or "Pea-Soup." One supercargo, whose favorite author was probably Mr. Harrison Ainsworth, named his four oarsmen respectively "Nix," "My-Dolly,"