610 LOUIS AGASSIZ. 



era States. The climate is genial to them ; 

 the soil rewards the slightest labor with a rich 

 harvest. The country cannot well be culti- 

 vated without real or fancied danger to the 

 white man, who, therefore, will not probably 

 compete with the black in the labors of the 

 field, thus leaving to him an opportunity for 

 easy and desirable support. 



3d. In those sections where the blacks 

 and mulattoes together make from seventy to 

 eighty and even ninety per cent, of the pop- 

 ulation will there be, after the abolition of 

 slavery, a sufficiently large influx of whites to 

 counteract the present numerical preponder- 

 ance of blacks ? 



To answer this question correctly we must 

 take into consideration the mode of distribu- 

 tion of the white and of the colored popula- 

 tion in the more Southern States. The whites 

 inhabit invariably the sea-shores and the more 

 elevated grounds, while the blacks are scat- 

 tered over the lowlands. This peculiar lo- 

 calization is rendered necessary by the phys- 

 ical constitution of the country. The lowlands 

 are not habitable in summer by the whites be- 

 tween sunset and sunrise. All the wealthy 

 whites, and in the less healthy regions even 

 the overseers, repair in the evening to the sea- 



