Darwin-Wallace Celebration. 113 



condition is so peculiarly grievous, that servitude is a name 

 too mild to describe their wretched state. A wife is no 

 better than a beast of burden. While the man passes his 

 days in idleness or amusement, the woman is condemned 

 to incessant toil. Tasks are imposed upon her without 

 mercy, and services are received without complacence or 

 gratitude *. There are some districts in America where 

 this state of degradation has been so severely felt, that 

 mothers have destroyed their female infants, to deliver 

 them at once from a life in which they were doomed to such 

 a miserable life of slavery f. 



CHAPTER VIII. 



On the Checks to Population in the different Parts of Africa. 

 Pages 158-164. 



The description, which Bruce gives of some parts of 

 the country which he passed through on his return home, 

 presents a picture more dreadful even than the state of 

 Abyssinia, and shows how little population depends on the 

 birth of children, in comparison of the production of food 

 and those circumstances of natural and political situation 

 which influence this produce. 



" At half past six/' Bruce says, " we arrived at Garigana, 

 " a village whose inhabitants had all perished with hunger 

 " the year before ; their wretched bones being all unburied 

 " and scattered upon the surface of the ground where the 

 "village formerly stood. We encamped among the bones 

 " of the dead ; no space could be found free from them." J 



Of another town or village in his route he observes : 



" The strength of Teawa was 25 horse. The rest of the in- 

 habitants might be 1200 naked miserable and despicable 

 ' Arabs, like the rest of those which live in villages .... 

 ' Such was the state of Teawa. Its consequence was only 

 ' to remain till the Daveina Arabs should resolve to attack 

 ' it, when its corn-fields being burnt and destroyed in a night 



* Robertson, b. iv. p. 105. Lettres Edif. torn. vi. p. 329. Major 

 Roger's North America, p. 211. Creuxii Hist. Cauad. p. 57. 



t Robertson, b. iv. p. 106. Raynal, Hist, des Indies, torn. iv. c. vii. 

 p. 110, 8vo., 10 vol., 1795. 



J Bruce, vol. iv. p. 349. 



I 



